Identity politics in Tokugawa Japan: A difference of cultures between Sinophiles and Sinophobes.

Introduction

The Japanese society was tilted towards Sino Japanese cultural exchanges which were based on classical Chinese texts revived from the Qing and Ming dynasty as the Chinese controlled the Ningbo – Nagasaki trade routes. Japan was experiencing their cultural revival moment during this period, they adopted Kanbun [ 漢 文] as their royal lingua franca which became the standard for textbooks and framed a new socio-cultural movement to push the Confucius movement to stabilize the rapidly changing customs. The medicinal trends were inspired from traditional Chinese cures as the elite started to favor empirically based diagnosis which was the basis of the book, Shanghan Lun even though Japanese physicians preferred Western medicine. Till the eighteenth century, Qing Chin and Tokugawa Japan recognized each other as equal counterparts, even though there were no formal relations in this period but yes, local business and cultures prospered through trade routes but after the invasion of Korea by the Manchu troops and the seize of Beijing, the Tokugawa faced a possibility of invasion from their East Asian neighbours. The Japanese responded remarkably with resilience and the scholars started studying classical Chinese thus subduing Taiwan towards their side forming a military alliance. Their fascination of Chinese grew, and eventually wanted to surpass the continental power because the will to improve their country was strong so the studied from the most advanced state, the Japanese wanted to model their state and they looked up to China, but this fascination ended in the nineteenth century as the Japanese started to look towards the west after the rise of the British Empire.

New proposition of Trade

The Japanese refused to acknowledge the Ming Chinese empire as the leading power in East Asia but the government was not hostile and maintained healthy trade relations to discourage conflict, local affinity grew as Nagasaki become the first Japanese town to open a Chinese colony called Chinatown which at its peak brought thousands of Chinese traders to the city, however the Japanese control of their trading routes to ensure autonomy forced a decline in the number of Chinese trading ships and merchants but the traders perished and applied for trading rights. Realism perished, trade flourished even though they were stringent regulations by the Japanese government. New regulations in the year 1715 were controversial as the chief minister Arai Hakeskei, an alleged Sinophile played a cardinal role as he feared that the Chinese merchant houses had restrained domestic trade within the country which led to an increase in smuggling and devaluation of local goods as most of gold and silver currency were spent on foreign trade with the Chinese, this was strengthened by economic fears as the government thought it as measure to weaken the economy. The government in a protective mode refused to acknowledge Korea as Chinese protectorate as the Japanese wanted to project themselves superior to Korea, this, in turn, led to divisive political missions in which Korea sent official embassies to Japan making it the only country to maintain formal relations with Japan until the nineteenth century.

Chinese Influences and Japanese Society

Trade, limited diplomatic relations and cultural exchanges of literature and medical knowledge between China, Korea, Japan in the eighteenth century framed the way of an East Asian community of philosophers, students, and scholars before the coming of a major western power. During transformation, the Japanese society started to change from a traditional society where power was encapsulated by the military class (Samurai) and aristocracy to a more commercial society increasingly employing sailors and merchants. Although traditional scholars still followed classical Buddhist and Japanese literature, a new wave of political thought also emerged in the shadows which were dominated by secular thinkers based on Confucian learning deep rotted in Chinese culture, although these thinkers did not form the majority view, they slowly became the part of the cultural elite. Researchers in Japan drove a beneficial profession as grammarians who likewise educated the elite. Their reading material set up as basic grammar and structures, which empowered Japanese students in the eighteenth century to ace Chinese traditional linguistic structure, regardless of the possibility that they mentally translated sentences into Japanese word order. What pulled in the elite classes to such classical instructors, was that Chinese traditional learning insisted on excellence which in turn was a social message which helped the elite to consolidate their power. Classical studies become important as it resonated with the conservative atmosphere of the society as a guide to right choices, in Japan unlike China the reputation of the teacher dependent on public reputation as there were no scholarly exams and this was why the Japanese scholars were different from the Chinese which in turn paved the way for a mixed society with different thoughts.