Ed. Note: On two other groups, the question has been raised as to whether
Edward Said's conceptualization of "orientalism", derived from his study of
West Asia, is also applicable to East Asia. Since the following two replies
suggest readings related to this subject as it touches Japan, I am
cross-posting them.
1)--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Chris Hill
hill@twics.com
Nicholas Clifford <clifford@panther.middlebury.edu> asked:
> Can anyone point me to any studies of the
> applicability or non-applicability of E. Said's theories of
> Orientalism to what he calls the "Far Orient," and particularly
> to China and Japan?
I'm not aware of any studies that ask the question of whether
Said's analysis of Orientalist scholarship on the Near East "applies" to
scholarship on East Asia, but since the 1970s there has been a lot of
discussion among Americans working in the field about its political
position. Since the 1980s, Said's work has figured prominently. In the
'70s, criticism of the field focused mainly on its cold-war affiliations
(an issue Said treats in the third part of _Orientalism_); since then it
has focused more on discursive and epistemological issues, a change
prompted not only by Said but also by the work of Foucault, the Subaltern
Studies group, and others.
In English, some places to start would be:
John W. Dower, "E.H. Norman, Japan, and the Uses of History," in Dower,
ed., _Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E.H.
Norman_, NY: Pantheon, 1975;
Masao Miyoshi, "Against the Native Grain: The Japanese Novel and the
"Postmodern" West," Miyoshi and H.D. Harootunian, eds., _Postmodernism and
Japan_,Durham: Duke UP, 1989;
Miyoshi, _Off Center: Power and Cultural Relations between Japan and the
United States_, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard UP, 1991, and "back of the book"
essays in the journal _positions: east asia cultures critique_, which began
publishing in 1993. These essays generally deal with
methodological and theoretical issues.
Stefan Tanaka has written on the appropriation of orientalist
discourse in Japan and its use in Japanese historians' representations of
China beginning in the late nineteenth century. _Japan's Orient:
Rendering Pasts into History_, Berkeley: U. of Calif. P., 1993.
2)---------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Eric Reinders
6500rein@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu
Regarding Nicholas Clifford's question about the extention of Said's
Orientalism discussion to East Asia,
I think Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Curators of the Buddha: The Study of
Buddhism under Colonialism (U. of Chicago press, 1995) has some relevant
discussion; The editor says the extention of Said's project Eastward was
the starting point of this book.
I particularly liked the chapter by Bob Sharf, "the Zen of Japanese
nationalism"; and one by Gustavo Benavides, "Giuseppe Tucci, or
Buddhology in the Age of fascism."
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