Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program Read Online Free PDF Page A

early sixteenth century saw the beginnings of
European influence in Japan in the form of Christianity, European languages, and Western technology. Following the return of four Japanese
voyagers from Europe, a Western craze set in: even the shogun Hideyoshi
Toyotomi and his retainers frequently wore Portuguese-style dress. But in
the early seventeenth century, under the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, the tide
shifted dramatically; by 1636 the death penalty was prescribed for any Japanese caught trying to visit the outside world. The official policy of seclusion (sakoku) was to last for over two centuries.
    Unquestionably, the insularity that developed during the sakoku period
can still be felt today. Yet two important points bear mentioning. First, the
Tokugawa policy was a purely practical measure aimed at consolidating po litical power; it cannot be used as evidence of innate Japanese xenophobia.17
Second, the Chinese and Dutch traders were allowed into the artificial port
in Nagasaki, enabling the government to continue to pick up foreign technical and commercial information. For example, at Nagasaki officers of foreign ships were routinely questioned about Chinese capacities for agriculture and for silk production.18 By 1740 two of the shogun's retainers were
studying Dutch, and between 1764 and 1789, there was a "Dutch craze"
(Rampeki) among the merchant class. Temple schools (terakoya) developed during this period, and the view that Western learning was quite appropriate for practical matters, though not for acquiring wisdom and
virtue, became widespread.19

    Meiji Japan Awakes to the World
    In their fervor for Western things during the early Meiji period, the Japanese seemed determined to compensate for any attitude of reaction against
the rest of the world that had emerged in two hundred years of selfimposed isolation in the Tokugawa period. In a surprisingly short time, English replaced Dutch as the primary medium by which Western ideas and
technology were imported. Japanese individuals who had for various reasons been marooned overseas now returned to a very positive reception
and sometimes considerable power. In 1856 an Institute for the Investigation of Barbarian Writings (Bansho Torishirabe-dokoro) was set up, thus
beginning a systematic borrowing of ideas and institutions from the West.
The Iwakura mission, which included many senior government officials,
was sent to the United States and Europe in 1871 to renegotiate Japan's international status; a less formal purpose, as W. G. Beasley explains, was to
"assess the civilization of the West, with a view to adopting those parts of
it which would be of value to Japan .1121 Some of Japan's best and brightest
were sent abroad for longer periods before taking up positions of influence.
Mori Arinori, for instance, returned from many years in England and the
United States to become minister of education. So impressed was he with
Western cultures that at one point he officially advocated that Japanese be
abolished and English be made the national language.
    In retrospect, several features of cultural borrowing in early Meiji Japan
stand out. Japanese were able to incorporate foreign technology with impressive speed, largely because of the high level of education and literacy of
the general population, and particularly of workers in the industrial sector,
by the end of the late Tokugawa period. Moreover, the cultural borrowing
had become extremely selective. As Beasley notes, seventh-century Japan seemed "backward" in every respect compared with China, but late Tokugawa Japan had achieved remarkable heights in poetry, painting, music,
and religion and chose to focus on Western scientific skills and technology.
In that focus, the Japanese relied on what Rohlen calls "alert objectivity,"
the ability to scan one's external environment in order to grasp the essence
of other social and technological orders." One result was that Japanese
borrowing from