Narrating China, Ordering East Asia: The Discourse on Nation and Ethnicity in Imperial Japan

Abstract

Geography, like the nation, is very much a state of mind.Concepts of place and spatial relationships involve a web of imaginative acts and projections of interests and desires by those who are empowered with the representation of space.Cultural and geographical imaginations draw from and act on both the hard limits imposed by the presence of physical terrain and the past of earlier representations that we often call "tradition."And yet, the power of geographical mapping lies not only in specific natural features, but also in the cultural and political resources of strategic representations.i As such, the imaginative construction and reconstruction of nations and regions are historical projects.They draw from the events of their time, as well as the constantly changing discursive frameworks that are available to them, in order to present the image of a necessary relationship among contiguous political bodies.What makes the process especially complicated and fascinating is that often regional mapping, such as the Japanese construction of a modern East Asia in the 20th century, is simultaneously imposed on national mapping, and changing concepts of the region are often interwoven with, and interdependent on, changing definitions of the nation.Modern Japanese attempts to construct a new geography of East Asia provide a good example of the intersection of national and regional imaginations.As many historians have pointed out, the emergence of the modern Japanese state required a new relationship to East Asia, and especially to China.ii The Tokugawa bakufu found in neo-Confucianism a modus vivendi with the Qing policy that China was not merely a nation among others, but the "Central Kingdom," the center of the cultured world [chuka].iii The new modern Meiji state turned to the West for theories of political legitimacy, and found its strongest support in the theories of the independent modern state.Consequently, almost from its inception, the modern Japanese state was hostile to any concept of the East Asian region that was not premised on the principle of national autonomy.I do not intend to rehash the well-worn issues of the Westernized Japanese state and its aggression in "traditional" East Asia in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, although in both wars Japanese officials publicly denounced their enemies for violating Korean national autonomy (while less concerned about

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