Our class's original hypothesis was that the Japanese managed to maintain a strong sense of national pride justified by their accomplishments, even though they were largely influenced by Western culture. After reading the text, I believe that our thesis was a little bit skewed. Japan was, for the most part, not largely influenced by Western culture. They originally rejected any contact with them at all, refusing to welcome even shipwrecked Westerners who desperately needed help. Eventually, however, they learned from China's mistakes and saw that there was no outright refusing contact with the Westerners. They agreed to some unequal treaties and trading ports, but still managed to maintain their own culture. In fact, opening trade to outside of Japan helped to further weaken the shogunate's claim on the country. The country experienced a surprisingly successful civil war which resulted in them becoming an even more united country than before.
Japan was able to prosper in this difficult time for the Asian countries because it was able to learn from the mistakes of others. Japan managed to preserve its own "superior," secluded culture because it did not open itself up entirely to the outside world while still allowing enough outside influence to keep the other superpowers in the world satisfied. Japan learned from China's failures, and managed to restore and restrengthen its government quickly and without weakening itself first. It also avoided direct conflict in almost every situation, which did not weaken the country in any way.
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Hello Emily. I agree with most of your points, but disagree with some of your points here and there. I think the Japanese were influenced by the West, even though they had no actual contact with them. They needed to keep up with technology, so they would not fall behind. I wouldn't say that Japan avoiding conflict in every situation didn't weaken the country in any way. Because they did not fight, they made it easy for the Westerners to take advantage of them, without harming their attackers. If they did fight, they might not have lost such assets, but they would have had casualties.
ReplyDeleteLike Frannie, I both agree and disagree with you. I thought that your last paragraph made some really good points about how Japan learned from others' failures to come out on top, which I completely agree with. However, I disagree with the part of the first paragraph where you state that "Japan was, for the most part, not largely influenced by Western culture." While Japan managed to maintain their own culture, I think that it was greatly influenced by EUrope. One example is from the painting of the royal family, one of the primary documents we analyzed. If you look at it, all of the clothing and hair styles were distinctly western, a sign that European culture influenced even the highest parts of Japanese society. hHile Japan certainly was isolationist for a while, once it let in the west, cultural changes were pretty much inevitable.
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