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    Borders of Chinese Civilization
    Geography and History at Empire's End

    Douglas Howland (Author)

    9780822317753

    Hardback, published 25 April 1996

    352 pages, 4 maps
    22.7 x 16.9 x 3.1 cm, 0.771 kg

    D. R. Howland explores China’s representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century and, in so doing, examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbors. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, he undertakes an unprecedented analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan-the travel diary, poetry, and the geographical treatise. In his discussion of the practice of “brushtalk,” in which Chinese scholars communicated with the Japanese by exchanging ideographs, Howland further shows how the Chinese viewed the communication of their language and its dominant modes-history and poetry-as the textual and cultural basis of a shared civilization between the two societies.
    With Japan’s decision in the 1870s to modernize and westernize, China’s relationship with Japan underwent a crucial change-one that resulted in its decisive separation from Chinese civilization and, according to Howland, a destabilization of China’s worldview. His examination of the ways in which Chinese perceptions of Japan altered in the 1880s reveals the crucial choice faced by the Chinese of whether to interact with Japan as “kin,” based on geographical proximity and the existence of common cultural threads, or as a “barbarian,” an alien force molded by European influence.
    By probing China’s poetic and expository modes of portraying Japan, Borders of Chinese Civilization exposes the changing world of the nineteenth century and China’s comprehension of it. This broadly appealing work will engage scholars in the fields of Asian studies, Chinese literature, history, and geography, as well as those interested in theoretical reflections on travel or modernism.

    Acknowledgments vii
    Note ix
    Introduction 1
    I. Encountering Japan 9
    1. Civilization from the Center: The Geomoral Context of Tributary Expectations 11
    Civilization and Proximity 13
    The Bounds of Diplomatic Protocol 15
    Japan in the Qing Record 18
    An Aside: The Aborted Legacy of the Ming 26
    The Matter of International Treaties 28
    The Decision to Grant Japan a Treaty (1870) 31
    Japanese Incident/Dwarf Intrusion (1874) 35
    2. Civilization as Universal Practice: The Context of Writing and Poetry 43
    Brushtalking 43
    The Written Code: Hanwen/Kanbun 45
    The Play of the Code 48
    Tong Wen: Shared Writing/Shared Civilization 54
    Playing the Code: Occasional Poetry 57
    Celebrating Tong Wen: Poetry and History 62
    The Value of Civilization in Japan 65
    II. Representing Japan 69
    Prologue: Geographical Knowledge 71
    3. Journeys to the East: The Geography of Historical Sites and Self in the Travelogue 80
    Images of the East 81
    Recovering History through Geographical Sites 86
    Travel Accounts 92
    4. The Historiographical Use of Poetry 108
    The Poems on Divers Japanese Affairs 110
    The Epistemological Basis of the Poetry-History Homology 119
    Poetry and Geography 129
    Evidential Research 135
    5. The Utility of Objectification in the Geographic Treatise 157
    The Decade of Geographic Treatises on Japan 158
    The Local Treatise as a Model 164
    Utility as Means and End 173
    Strategies of Objectification 176
    III. Representing Japan's Westernization 195
    6. Negotiating Civilization and Westernization 197
    Analogy and Containment 200
    The Precedence of Learning before Action 201
    Western Learning and Western Ways 203
    Alternative Approaches to World Order 222
    Afterword 242
    Notes 251
    Bibliography 303
    Glossary 323
    Index 333
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