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  • 11 - The Problem of Western Knowledge in Late Tokugawa Japan

  • from PART II - Economy, Environment, and Technology
  • Edited by David L. Howell, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    15 January 2024
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023, pp 363-396

  • Summary

    The acquisition of “Western knowledge” in late Tokugawa Japan, particularly in fields of science, technology, and medicine, has functioned as a central resource not only in modernization narratives but in the legitimization of imperial geographies that situate Japan as Asia’s rightful hegemon. This chapter brings together emerging research that decenters and pluralizes existing understandings of “Western knowledge,” placing “Western knowledge” instead within broader flows of global modernity. Specifically, by examining how a “transimperial educational commons” rendered diverse new texts and resources available to late Tokugawa scholars, this chapter argues that “Western knowledge” was in fact the product of networks of mediation across South, Southeast, and East Asia. Particular sites considered include circulation and brokerage through Dutch Indonesia and Qing China. The sum of these studies indicates that the problem of late Tokugawa engagements with Western knowledge can only be solved by examining sites both beyond the West and beyond Japan.