Douglas HowlandBorders of Chinese Civilization
Geography and History at Empire's End
Acknowledgments vii
Note ix
Introduction 1
I. Encountering Japan 9
1. Civilization from the Center: The Geomoral Context of Tributary
Expectations 11
Civilization and Proximity 13
The Bounds of Diplomatic Protocol 15
Japan in the Qing Record 18
An Aside: The Aborted Legacy of the Ming 26
The Matter of International Treaties 28
The Decision to Grant Japan a Treaty (1870) 31
Japanese Incident/Dwarf Intrusion (1874) 35
2. Civilization as Universal Practice: The Context of Writing and Poetry 43
Brushtalking 43
The Written Code: Hanwen/Kanbun 45
The Play of the Code 48
Tong Wen: Shared Writing/Shared Civilization 54
Playing the Code: Occasional Poetry 57
Celebrating Tong Wen: Poetry and History 62
The Value of Civilization in Japan 65
II. Representing Japan 69
Prologue: Geographical Knowledge 71
3. Journeys to the East: The Geography of Historical Sites and Self in the
Travelogue 80
Images of the East 81
Recovering History through Geographical Sites 86
Travel Accounts 92
4. The Historiographical Use of Poetry 108
The Poems on Divers Japanese Affairs 110
The Epistemological Basis of the Poetry-History Homology 119
Poetry and Geography 129
Evidential Research 135
5. The Utility of Objectification in the Geographic Treatise 157
The Decade of Geographic Treatises on Japan 158
The Local Treatise as a Model 164
Utility as Means and End 173
Strategies of Objectification 176
III. Representing Japan's Westernization 195
6. Negotiating Civilization and Westernization 197
Analogy and Containment 200
The Precedence of Learning before Action 201
Western Learning and Western Ways 203
Alternative Approaches to World Order 222
Afterword 242
Notes 251
Bibliography 303
Glossary 323
Index 333
