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Recycled Images: 21st Century Edition of Fukuzawa Yukichi's Geography Textbook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Elena Baibikov
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Abstract

This essay takes a constructionist approach to Representation Studies, examining Fukuzawa Yukichi's elementary geography textbook Sekai kunizukushi (1869) and its hierarchical images of the West, juxtaposed against representations of Japan as framed by concepts of race and civilization. Furthermore, it compares these images to their “recycled” versions as constructed in the vast extra-textual apparatus of Fukuzawa Yukichi no Sekai kunizukushi de sekai wo manabu (2017), a recent translation of Fukuzawa's textbook into modern Japanese. The move to reintroduce older textbooks is here examined as an “imagebuilding” strategy, one that allows the (re-) construction of influential images in support of an ideological agenda.

Keywords

Elementary school textbooksFukuzawa YukichiMeiji periodracetextbook revisiontextbook translationimage-building
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 20 , October 2020 , e6
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2020

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