Chinese Learning (kangaku) in Meiji Japan (1868–1912)

Abstract

Japan’s development since the middle of the nineteenth century is usually summarized under the headings ‘modernization’ and ‘westernization’. Such a perspective neglects the importance of indigenous traditions in the shaping of modern Japan, including Chinese learning (kangaku), which had been thoroughly assimilated and had formed the basis of the dominant ideology in the Tokugawa period (1600‐1868). The leaders of the Meiji restoration of 1868 all had a kangaku education and their ideas were strongly influenced by it. Kangaku continued to play a dominant role in Japanese culture until well into the Meiji period and did not fall into decline until the mid‐1890s. The main reason for this was not contempt for contemporary China in the wake of the Sino‐Japanese war (1894‐5), as has been argued, but the new national education system which stressed western knowledge. It was not a sign of waning interest in China, but of new forms this interest took. China became the object of new academic disciplines, including tōyōshi (East Asian history), which applied western methods and a new interpretative framework to the study of China.