¹ Readers are encouraged to understand this collision as a process because it was the product of many intersecting forces and, most importantly, because it unfolded over time.

² One example of this was Japan's influence on pan-Arab nationalism in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20^th century. For a good discussion on this topic, see Renée Worringer, “Japan's Progress Reified: Modernity and Arab Dissent in the Ottoman Empire,” Japan Focus, September 2008, ID: 2896, http://japanfocus.org/data/japan%20Reified%20Worringer.pdf.

³ The term “black ships” is the English translation of the Japanese original kurobune. It refers to the black smoke pouring from the funnels of Perry's coal-fired steamships. There is some evidence, however, that the term originated in the 16^th century, referring to the colour of the hulls of Portuguese ships that were covered in black pitch.

⁴ For arguments about the lack of unity among Japanese pan-Asianists and a lack of support from official circles, see the articles in this reader by Cemil Aydin, and Saaler and Szpilman.

⁵ For a good discussion of these associations in China, see Prasenjit Duara, “Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900-1945,” The American Historical Review, 102:4 (Oct., 1997), 1030-1051. Duara used the term transnational rather than pan-Asian because many of these Chinese associations preached a redemptive message that was founded on a combination of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian moral principles, but one that spoke to all humans, not just Asians.

⁶ Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, (1917), Kessinger Publishing, 1998, 57.

⁷ Ibid., 17.

⁸ Ibid., 39.

⁹ Ibid., 74-5.

¹⁰ Ibid., 110.

¹¹ The Chinese had their own version of this phrase, Zhong xue wei ti, xi xue wei yong (Chinese learning as the principle, Western learning for the application), as did a little later the Koreans, Dongdo seogi (Eastern way, Western tools).

¹² According to the complete Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest usages of the West in the sense we are familiar with today go back only to the mid-19^th century. For an argument that the West as a political idea shorn of its racial edge began even later in the 20^th century, see Alastair Bonnett, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics, and History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

¹³ This phrase is an intentional play on the original “There but for grace of God goes John Bradford,” attributed to the English reformer and martyr of the same name. It highlights one of the major narratives in Japanese and Western writing about Japan until the last 20 years or so that characterized Japan as a follower, a latecomer, and an imitator. In this story the West was Japan's opposite: a leader, a pioneer, and a creator.

¹⁴ Although we credit Charles Darwin as the father of modern evolutionary theory, we should not forget that Alfred Russel Wallace independently derived the same idea from his work in the Amazon and Southeast Asia. In fact, knowledge of Wallace's theory was the final push that drove Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859. A year earlier, the now-famous Darwin-Wallace paper was read at the Linnean Society of London by Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, The full text of this is available at http://wallacefund.info/the-1858-darwin-wallace-paper. Readers should also note that both men were deeply influenced by Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population, J. Johnson, 1798, available online at http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPop.html.

¹⁵ Charles Darwin, On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 2^nd ed. John Murray, 1860, 61-62, available online at http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F376&viewtype=text&pageseq=1.

¹⁶ While Darwin did not use this term in the first four editions of his famous work, he did cite Spencer's phrase approvingly in the fifth edition, saying it was “more accurate [than natural selection] and [was] sometimes equally convenient.” On the Origin of Species, 5^th edition, John Murray, 1869, 72. Available online at http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=F387&viewtype=text.

¹⁷ For a good discussion of these ideas and particularly Darwin's place in the 19^th century European intellectual world, see Gregory Claeys, “The ‘Survival of the Fittest’ and the Origins of Social Darwinism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 61:2 (Apr. 2000), 223-240.

¹⁸ Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” in The Strength of the Strong, MacMillan, 1910, 60-80. In this chilling tale, set some 70 years in London's future, he recounts how the nations of the world, led by a brilliant American scientist, exterminate the entire Chinese race through biological warfare due to fears of China overbreeding. It is the earliest form of fiction I have found that treats both germ warfare and genocide.

¹⁹ Future war is also known as military science fiction or simply science fiction. However, it was a genre of adventure stories for boys in Japan in the early 20 ^th century known as mirai sensô (future war). For more on this genre, see my article in this reader.

²⁰ Anagarika Dharmapala, “Japan's Duty to the World,” quoted in Janaka Perera, “White peril vs. ‘yellow peril’ then and now,” Asian Tribune, September 21, 2009, http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/13340. I have not yet found a copy of Dharmapala's original article.

²¹ Anatole France, The White Stone (Sur la pierre blanche), trans. Charles E. Roche, The Bodley Head Limited, 1905, 152.

²² Ibid., 162.

²³ Sidney Lewis Gulick, The White Peril in the Far East: An Interpretation of the Significance of the Russo-Japanese War, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1905, 5.

²⁴ Ibid., 19-20.

²⁵ Rabindranath Tagore, “The Sunset of the Century, 1899. The poem was written in Bengali on the last day of that year and translated and reprinted in English in 1917 in Nationalism.