Japanese Aesthetics: British Perceptions and Japanese Responses
Lesson Plan Production Details
Overview
As Ross Forman has argued in China and the Victorian Imagination: Empires Entwined (2013), examining Britain and China as “empires entwined” requires us to expand our understanding of imperialism to include informal means of exercising geopolitical power over distant territories. Through its defeat in the Opium Wars, China was forced to open its ports to Western trade, but it maintained a degree of sovereignty that distinguished it from the colonies that Britain directly controlled. The same can be said of Japan, which had come under British influence in the nineteenth century but had never been part of Britain’s formal empire.
This lesson plan explores the history of British interactions with Japan in the long nineteenth century, from the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853 to the end of the Asia-Pacific War in 1945. By critically analyzing literary texts, nonfiction essays, and visual media from Britain and Japan, this lesson plan crosses conventional boundaries of geography, period, and media to investigate the myriad connections that exceeded the grasp of formal British imperialism in the long nineteenth century.
In exploring Anglo-Japanese interactions, this lesson plan foregrounds the critical concept of transimperiality. In her contribution to the “Keywords” special issue of Victorian Literature and Culture, Sukanya Banerjee argues that the term “transimperial” is less anachronistic and more appropriate than “transnational” in describing cross-border interactions in the nineteenth century. For Banerjee, the term “transimperial” draws attention to 1) Britain’s relations with other imperial powers, such as Japan, and 2) multidirectional relations between places that cannot be neatly reduced to the conventional dichotomies of domination/subordination and colonizer/colonized. This module employs “transimperiality” as a useful framework for thinking about Britain’s relations with Japan in the long nineteenth century, especially as Japan rapidly became an imperial power in its own right in the first half of the twentieth century.
Central Questions
- How did British writers and artists perceive Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century in the context of informal British imperialism in East Asia?
- How did Japanese writers respond to these British perceptions in the early twentieth century in the context of rising Japanese expansionism in East Asia?
- How can this history of cultural interaction illuminate our understanding of Japanese imperialism in the long nineteenth century (1895–1945)?
Works Cited
Banerjee, Sukanya. “Transimperial.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 46, no. 3–4, 2018, pp. 925–28.
Forman, Ross. China and the Victorian Imagination: Empires Entwined. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Structure and Organization
The lesson plan is divided into two sections, juxtaposing British perceptions of Japan with Japanese responses. The first section of the lesson plan explores the British fascination with “Old Japan,” a romantic fantasy of a primordial Japaneseness that the British felt was being eroded by Western incursions into Japan (including their own). Section I thus begins with A. B. Mitford’s retellings of Japanese legends and folktales, which he published after his sojourn in Japan during the country’s transformation from a feudal samurai kingdom to a modern nation-state (1866–1870).
Mitford’s early attempt at Japanology is followed by Lafcadio Hearn’s Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894) and Kwaidan (1904), which continued Mitford’s project of preserving “Old Japan” through the act of writing about it. Hearn, however, was also writing about “Old Japan” – which he called “Unfamiliar Japan” – in the wider context of the Aestheticist movement in Britain and its celebration of Japanese aesthetics. Hence, after discussing Hearn, the section goes back in time to discuss J. M. Whistler’s paintings from the 1860s and 1870s, as well as Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticist manifesto, “The Decay of Lying” (1889).
The second section of the lesson plan examines Japanese responses to British perspectives on Japan and Japanese aesthetics. Japanese intellectuals in the early twentieth century took issue with late Victorian attitudes that lauded but also patronized Japan for its beautiful yet ultimately useless aesthetics. In Bushido (1900), Nitobe Inazo contended that, far from having disappeared, the samurai spirit of “Old Japan” was the motivating force behind the success of “New Japan” as a modern nation-state and a rising imperial power.
Okakura Kakuzo likewise challenged the feminization and trivialization of Japan in British discourses on Japanese aesthetics by rejecting the forms of Japanese art that had so enraptured Wilde, Whistler, and their contemporaries. Okakura instead championed an alternative view of Japanese aesthetics centered on samurai art as the foremost expression of a pan-Asian tradition of spirituality. In Ideals of the East (1903) and The Awakening of Japan (1904), Okakura implied that this pan-Asian nature of Japanese aesthetics meant that Japan had a special mission to revive “Asian” civilization as the antidote to “Western” materialism and imperialism. Okakura’s ideas were later appropriated by the Japanese militarist state to justify Japan’s wars in the 1930s and 1940s. The lesson plan thus ends with recent scholarship on Miki Kiyoshi, one of wartime Japan’s most prominent public intellectuals. Echoing Okakura, Miki argued that Japanese imperialism served a “world-historical” purpose of building a regional political and economic bloc founded on pan-Asian “cooperativism.”
To help instructors who may not have specialist knowledge of the topics covered here, this lesson plan highlights key historical events that provide the context for examining Britain and Japan’s relations from 1853 to 1945. The lesson plan also supplements each primary text with recommended secondary sources that will enable instructors to obtain basic background knowledge of the major historical events and figures discussed. While this lesson plan has been designed with upper-level undergraduates in mind, I have included optional readings that instructors might assign if they use this material in a graduate course.
Suggested Materials
British Perceptions
A.B. Mitford, Tales of Old Japan (1871)
Primary Source
Mitford, A.B. Tales of Old Japan. 1871. Dover Publications, 2005.
Suggested Extracts: “The 47 Rōnins,” “Concerning Certain Superstitions,” “The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima”
Key Historical Events
- 1839–42: First Opium War
- 1842: Britain and China sign the Treaty of Nanking
- 1853: Commodore Perry arrives in Japan
- 1854: U.S. and Japan sign the Treaty of Kanagawa
- 1858: U.S. and Japan sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (Harris Treaty)
- 1858: Britain and Japan sign a similar commercial treaty (Elgin Treaty)
- 1854–68: Civil war and the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate
- 1868: Establishment of the new Meiji government (Meiji Restoration)
Potential Topics for Discussion
- Mitford’s portrayal of “Old Japan”
- Samurai stories
- Weird tales of the supernatural
- Meiji modernization
- The impetus to preserve “Old Japan” through Anglophone scholarship
- The portrayal of Japanese women
Secondary Sources
Beasley, W. G. Great Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834–1858. Japan Library, 1995.
---. “The Foreign Threat and the Opening of the Ports.” Cambridge History of Japan, edited by Marius B. Jansen, vol. 5, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 259–307.
Cortazzi, Hugh, editor. Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits. Routledge, 2002.
---. Victorians in Japan: In and Around the Treaty Ports. Athlone Press, 1987.
Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford University Press, 2020.
“The Meiji Restoration and Modernization.” Asia for Educators, 2021.
Yokoyama, Toshio. Japan in the Victorian Mind: A Study of Stereotyped Images of a Nation, 1850–1880. Macmillan, 1987.
Cortazzi, Hugh, editor. Mitford’s Japan: Memories and Recollections, 1866–1906. Routledge, 2013.
Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)
Primary Source
Hearn, Lafcadio. Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. 1894. Tuttle Publishing, 2009.
Suggested Extract: “My First Day in the Orient”
Key Historical Events
See section above on “Key Historical Events” in relation to A.B. Mitford's Tales of Old Japan.
Potential Topics for Discussion
- Travel writing
- Hearn’s portrayal of “Unfamiliar Japan”
- Comparison between Mitford’s and Hearn’s representations of “Old Japan”/“Unfamiliar Japan”
- The impetus to preserve “Old Japan” through Anglophone scholarship
- Hearn’s idealization of Japan and Japanese aesthetics
Secondary Sources
“Lafcadio Hearn.” Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1 Dec. 2009.
Checkland, Olive. Japan and Britain After 1859: Creating Cultural Bridges. RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
Holt, Jenny. “Samurai and Gentlemen: The Anglophone Japan Corpus and New Avenues into Orientalism (Part I).” Literature Compass, vol. 11, no. 1, 2014, pp. 36–46.
Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan (1904)
Primary Source
Hearn, Lafcadio. Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. 1904. Tuttle Publishing, 1971.
Suggested Extracts: “Yuki-Onna,” “Hōrai”
Key Historical Events
- 1894–95: Sino-Japanese War
- 1904–05: Russo-Japanese War
Potential Topics for Discussion
- Weird tales of the supernatural
- The portrayal of Japanese women
- Hearn’s idealization of Japan and Japanese aesthetics
- The impetus to preserve “Old Japan” through Anglophone scholarship
Secondary Sources
“First Sino-Japanese War.” Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 13 Mar. 2019.
Holt, Jenny. “Samurai and Gentlemen: The Anglophone Japan Corpus and New Avenues into Orientalism (Part II).” Literature Compass, vol. 11, no. 1, 2014, pp. 47–59.
“Russo-Japanese War.” Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 4 May 2020.
J. M. Whistler, Selected Paintings
Primary Sources
Whistler, James McNeill. Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother). 1871.
---. Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen. 1864.
---. Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge. c.1872–75.
---. Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea. 1871.
---. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. 1875.
---. The Princess from the Land of Porcelain. 1863–65.
---. Variations in Flesh Colour and Green – The Balcony. 1864–79.
Selected Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints for Comparison
Katsushika Hokusai. Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura), Also Known as The Great Wave, from the Series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku Sanjūrokkei). c.1830–32.
Kitagawa Utamaro. Three Beauties of the Kwansei Period. c.1791.
Tōshūsai Sharaku. Kabuki Actor Ōtani Oniji III as Yakko Edobei. 1794.
Utagawa Hiroshige. Okazaki, Tenshin No Hashi. c.1834.
Potential Topics for Discussion
- British Aestheticism
- European fascination with Japanese art and culture
- Whistler in context: French Impressionists, Van Gogh
- British Aestheticism’s perception of Japanese aesthetics as pure formalism
- Feminine images of Japan
Secondary Sources
Checkland, Olive. Japan and Britain After 1859: Creating Cultural Bridges. RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
“James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903).” The Victorian Web, 29 Oct. 2020.
Lambourne, Lionel. Japonisme: Cultural Crossings between Japan and the West. Phaidon, 2005.
Napier, Susan J. From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Culture in the Mind of the West. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Prettejohn, Elizabeth, editor. After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England. Manchester University Press, 1999.
“The Wonderful World of Whistler.” Victoria and Albert Museum, 2021.
Lavery, Grace. Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying (1905)
Primary Source
Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying. 1889. Brentano, 1905.
Potential Topics for Discussion
- British Aestheticism
- European fascination with Japanese art and culture
- British Aestheticism’s perception of Japanese aesthetics as pure formalism
- Feminine images of Japan
Secondary Sources
“British and European Aesthetes, Decadents, and Symbolists.” The Victorian Web, 18 May 2008.
Burdett, Carolyn. “Aestheticism and Decadence.” British Library, 15 Mar. 2014.
Prettejohn, Elizabeth, editor. After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England. Manchester University Press, 1999.
Lavery, Grace. Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Japanese Responses
Nitobe Inazo, Bushido (1900)
Primary Source
Nitobe, Inazo. Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan. 1900. Edited by Alexander Bennett, Tuttle Publishing, 2019.
Suggested Extracts: “The Influence of Bushido,” “Is Bushido Still Alive?”
Key Historical Event
- 1894–95: Sino-Japanese War
Potential Topics for Discussion
- Japanese responses to British perceptions of Japan
- Samurai stories and the samurai spirit
- Masculine images of Japan
- Meiji modernization
- Japanese imperialism
- “Old Japan” as the foundation of “New Japan”
Secondary Source
Holt, Jenny. “Samurai and Gentlemen: The Anglophone Japan Corpus and New Avenues into Orientalism (Part II).” Literature Compass, vol. 11, no. 1, 2014, pp. 47–59.
Okakura Kakuzo, Ideals of the East (1903) and The Awakening of Japan (1904)
Primary Sources
Okakura, Kakuzo. Ideals of the East: The Spirit of Japanese Art. 1903. Dover Publications, 2005.
Suggested Extracts: “The Range of Ideals”; “Ashikaga Period, 1400–1600 A.D.”; “Toyotomi and Early Tokugawa Period, 1600-1700 A.D.”; “Later Tokugawa Period, 1700–1850 A.D.”
---. The Awakening of Japan. 1904. The Century Co., 1905.
Suggested Extracts: “Chapter 1: The Night of Asia”; “Chapter 10: Japan and Peace”
Key Historical Event
- 1904–05: Russo-Japanese War
Potential Topics for Discussion
- Japanese responses to British perceptions of Japan
- Japanese aesthetics and pan-Asianism
- Okakura’s critique of Westernization and Western imperialism
- Civilizational discourse and Japan’s “world-historical” mission
- “Old Japan” as the foundation of “New Japan”
- Japanese imperialism
- Masculine images of Japan
Secondary Sources
Hotta, Eri. Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War, 1931–1945. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Marra, Michele. Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader. University of Hawaii Press, 1999.
Saaler, Sven, and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, editors. Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History. Rowman and Littlefield, 2011.
Duara, Prasenjit. “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism.” Journal of World History, vol. 12, no. 1, 2001, pp. 99–130.
Miki Kiyoshi and the Shōwa Kenkyūkai (Showa Research Association)
Primary Sources
Harrington, Lewis E. “Miki Kiyoshi and the Showa Kenkyūkai: The Failure of World History.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 17, no. 1, 2009, pp. 43–72.
Kim, John Namjun. “The Temporality of Empire: The Imperial Cosmopolitanism of Miki Kiyoshi and Tanabe Hajime.” Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism, and Borders, edited by Sven Saaler and J. Victor Koschmann, Routledge, 2007, pp. 167–83.
Key Historical Events
- 1929: Great Depression
- 1931: Manchurian Incident
- 1932: Formation of Manchukuo
- 1937: Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the Japanese invasion of China
- 1941: Attack on Pearl Harbor
- 1942–45: Japanese Occupation in Southeast Asia
Potential Topics for Discussion
- Japanese imperialism
- Civilizational discourse and Japan’s “world-historical” mission
- Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
Secondary Sources
Beasley, W. G. Japanese Imperialism, 1894–1945. Oxford University Press, 1987.
“Empire of Japan.” Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2019.
Hotta, Eri. Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War, 1931–1945. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
“Manchukuo.” Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11 Mar. 2016.
Saaler, Sven, and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, editors. Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History. Rowman and Littlefield, 2011.
Saaler, Sven, and J. Victor Koschmann, editors. Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism, and Borders. Routledge, 2007.
Tarling, Nicholas. A Sudden Rampage: The Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia, 1941–1945. Hurst and Company, 2001.
Yellen, Jeremy A. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War. Cornell University Press, 2019.
Young, Louise. “Imagined Empire: The Cultural Construction of Manchukuo.” The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, edited by Peter Duus et al., Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 71–96.
Developer Biography
Waiyee Loh is an Assistant Professor of World Literature at Kanagawa University in Yokohama, Japan. She is currently completing a book manuscript on contemporary neo-Victorian texts and practices from Britain, Japan, and Singapore. Her research and teaching interests include British and Japanese imperialism in East Asia and their legacies today.
Header Image Caption
Whistler, James McNeill. “Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen.” 1864. Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, F1904.75a. Creative Commons (CC0 1.0). Smithsonian Terms of Use.
Page/Lesson Plan Citation (MLA)
Waiyee Loh, les. plan dev. “Japanese Aesthetics: British Perceptions and Japanese Responses.” Menglu Guo, Hyungji Park, Jessica R. Valdez, Rae X. Yan, collab. peer revs.; Sophia Hsu, les. plan clust. dev. Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, 2022, https://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_japanese_aesthetics.html.