Images of
“If East is East and
Where will
This
paper explores the meaning of
Japan
has always occupied a unique position in the eyes of Western travelers. Neither
“white” nor Christian, Japan offered a topsy-turvy world with its seemingly
“civilized” features such as politeness, cleanliness, refinement, courage (i.e.
Samurai), and its “preoccupation with questions of honor and etiquette”
(Littlewood, 1996, p. 3). However, writings of Western travelers who visited
Japan were not exempt from Orientalist articulation. To borrow Edward Said’s
definition, Orientalism as cultural myth had been articulated through
metaphors, which characterize the East in ways that emphasize its strangeness
and otherness. The Orient is seen as separate, passive, eccentric, and
backwards, “with a tendency to despotism” (as cited in Rosen, 2000, para. 2). Accordingly, Orientalists’ Japan was also a
static land; and hence the opposite of the West: Otis Cary, who authored “Japan
and Its Regeneration” in 1898, describes the Japanese as a people who “lack
steadfastness of purpose," surrender too "easily to sin" (as
cited in Burns, 1999, para. 38). Townsend Harris, the
American consul to Japan at that time, wrote that the Japanese were full of
"deceit and flattery" and are "the greatest liars on earth"
(as cited in Burns, 1999, para. 23), while Lowell
commented on the complete lack of individualism in Japanese culture, which was
something that contrasted sharply with the West where the Weberian protestant
ethic reigned supreme, such as praise at work, efficiency and trust (Lowell,
1998, ch. 1, para. 16).
The
Orientalist desire to portray Japan as an exotic country caused the Western
writers to overlook the real Japan of the time that was, to use Patrick Smith’s
words, "...erecting factories ...conscripting an army ... [and] preparing a parliament. There were
universities, offices, department stores, (and) banks” (as cited in Burns,
1999, para. 2).
Overlooking
how rapidly Japan was modernizing and industrializing in the 1880s and 1890s,
Western travelers were merely in search of Eastern mysticism in Japan. However,
even then, they were astonished at traditional Japan’s cultural hybridity and
the presence of “Western” features in Japanese culture that were viewed as “civilized.”
Japan
blurred the White Man’s Burden mentality regarding the East, which refers to
the old colonialist idea that the West, specifically Western Europe as the
ideal civilization, has an obligation to rule the non-European, uncivilized or
semi-civilized East and encourage the adoption of western ways, even if this is
a burden for the West. Western travelers visiting Japan were puzzled by the
topsy-turvyness of the culture, where “the people spoke backwards, read
backwards, and wrote backwards”, while “in politeness, in delicacy, the
Japanese have as a people no peers” (Lowell, 1998, ch.
1, para. 5). In other words, the Western Man was not
sure how to apply his mission to an already “civilized” culture. Commodore
Perry after his expeditions in 1853 and 1854 wrote that the United States
represented the "civilized world" whose humanitarian mission was to
“kindly take her [Japan] by the hand, and aid her tottering steps” (as cited in
Burns, 1999, para. 10); the application of this
statement, however, was another issue.
Western
travelers of the 19th century came to realize that Japan is a
civilized land: Japan would have the same features of civilization with the
exception that they are upside down. Adjectives that are attributed to Japan
and their antonyms are sometimes found in the same sentence in Western travel
diaries, revealing the paradoxical character of Japan: Aggressive and
unaggressive, militaristic and aesthetic, insolent and polite, rigid and
adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, brave and timid,
conservative and hospitable, loyal and treacherous, innovative and imitators,
cruel and kind, rich yet wealthless, confident but confused, prudent and
cultured, the reverse of European but also the reverse of savage, and many others
(Littlewood, 1996, p. 4-11). Thus the Japanese appeared to be a paradox, being
a combination of “chrysanthemum and sword” as the title of Ruth Benedict’s book
(1946) on Japanese culture indicates.
At
the same time, topsy-turvyness served to sharpen the cultural difference
between Japan and the West. Regardless of whether it is a frozen
half-civilization or not, Japan was confusing and different. In other
words, although “little need be said to prove the civilization of a land where
ordinary tea-house girls are models of refinement” (Lowell, 1998, ch. 1, para. 5), Japan would
still pertain to the impersonal and impassive East that “at bottom it is
to-day, what it was centuries ago” (Lowell, 1998, ch.1, para.
12).
Whereas
Harris found the Japanese to be "a clean people" all the while being
appalled by their habit of mixed bathing “in a state of perfect nudity” (as
cited in Burns, 1999, para. 22), Littlewood used a
calmer language to otherize Japan:
“European
women use artificial means to make their teeth white, Japanese women
deliberately blacken them; the doors of our houses are hinged, theirs slide on
grooves; in Europe it is effeminate for a man to use a fan, in Japan it would
be a sign of lowliness and poverty for him not to use one. Everything is grist
to the mill; our lavatories are hidden behind the house, theirs are in front;
we pick our noses with the index finger, the Japanese use the little finger:
our toothpicks are short, theirs are long” (Littlewood, 1996, p. 9).
Bamboozled
Western travelers soon tried to dismiss this “half-civilized”, hybrid culture
by posing the question of originality. As Lowell argues:
“From before the time when they began
to leave records of their actions the Japanese have been a nation of importers,
not of merchandise, but of ideas. They have invariably shown the most advanced
free-trade spirit in preferring to take somebody else's ready-made articles
rather than to try to produce any brand-new conceptions themselves” (Lowell,
1998, ch. 1, para. 10).
This
“imitation” discourse again is part of the Orientalist assumption that the
Eastern lands, frozen somewhere in the middle of history, cannot develop ideas
by themselves: the West should show them the way for progress.
Even as a distinguished traveler figure who
admires the Japanese land and people, Lafcadio Hearn starts out with the same
Orientalist assumptions. In his book, “My First Day in the Orient” he
writes, “Elfish everything seems; for
everything as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious: the little
houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and
smiling little people in their blue costumes,” “...everywhere, since all is
unspeakably pleasurable and new, that one first receives the real sensation of
being in the Orient, in this Far East so much read of, so long dreamed of, yet,
as the eyes bear witness, heretofore all unknown,” “I see Chinese
texts-multitudinous, weird, mysterious,” “Why should the trees be lovely in
Japan,” “It appears to me that everything Japanese is delicate, exquisite,
admirable- even a pair of common wooden chopsticks in a paper bag with a little
drawing upon it” (Hearn, 1976, p. 3, 2, 28, 21, 8).
Hearn’s
longing for “tiny” streets, tiny-little smiling kindly “beings” (Hearn, 1976, p.
7), bright blue colors, for the charm of the cool Japanese spring, speaking
symmetry of ideographs (Hearn, 1976, p. 3) etc. symbolize his search for the
totally different and rather historically “frozen” mystic Far Eastern society,
where one cannot find any traces of industrialization, modernization and
Western enlightenment. Therefore, for Hearn, Japan is defined as a world of
torii, kashi (sugar-cakes), kuruma (“the most cozy little vehicle imaginable”),
and tera (Buddhist temples where you take off your shoes), which belong to the
“past” or to the “premodern”: the admirable is the religion, the art, the
nature; the naivety, the nostalgia and the discovery of the unknown and/or the
forgotten.
Change in Attitude: The Threat
The image of Japan after its opening to
the West in the 1850s as a land of tiny, harmless, polite and
smiling beings began to change towards the end of the 19th century.
Japan’s militarization and growing imperialist aspirations, paving the way to
the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), was among
the causes of this image transformation into the “Yellow Peril.” However, it
was the immigration of Japanese (along with Chinese) laborers to various Western countries, most notably to the United
States, that triggered the creation of the term. Yellow Peril refers to the
skin color of east Asians, and to the fear caused by the
mass immigration of Asians that threatened white wages, standards of living and
civilization itself.
As
for U.S.-Japan relations, rivalry and competition came to dominate
diplomacy, industry and commerce. Soon, fear from Japanese commodities
inundating U.S. markets added to the build up of the Yellow Peril. One American
author of the period argues:
“Japan
has entered upon a commercial war against the great industrial nations of the
world with the same energy, earnestness, determination and foresight . . . the
industrial revolution now in progress in Japan is a real menace to some of the
most important interests of America” (Iriye, 1975, p. 75).
With
their “alien” civilization, the Japanese, self-confident as a result of their
victory over Russia, would settle en masse in the United States, driving
Americans out of their jobs (Iriye, 1975, p. 76). “The stage had been set for what would become
four decades of U.S.-Japan confrontation for the causes of power, prestige,
commerce, and patriotism which would culminate in the Second World War and subsequent Allied
Occupation of Japan” (Burns, para. 40).
A term first used for Chinese and Japanese
in the United States, Yellow Peril soon squeezed all Asian people together into
one single threat to American culture. Gina Marchetti states in her book,
“Romance and the Yellow Peril,” that, “The yellow peril combines racist terror
of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the West will be
overpowered and enveloped by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East”
(Marchetti, 1993, p. 2).
Besides immigration, and
Japan’s military victories and imperialist aspirations, there was the fear that
the Japanese would invade the United States; this fear was very clearly
expressed in American media before World War I (Iriye, 1975, p. 78). The Tanaka
Memorial of 1927, which is an alleged Japanese master
plan for world conquest, had a significant impact on
these fears.
Sharing the fears that Iriye and Marchetti
mention and convinced by the idea that "Japan is
the most diabolical conspiracy on Earth”, Walter Pitkin, in his book “What Should We
Do About It” states that, “Americans concerned with the future of “the white
man” (should)
implement a
multi-step policy against “the yellow-brown world” (as cited in Burns, 1999, para. 43). Besides a series of economic and population
policies, including “allowing Japan to send its surplus population to
places like Mexico, Siberia, and South America”, his one suggestion, namely “avoiding
interracial marriage”, indicates another fear regarding Japan, the fear of miscegenation (as cited in Burns,
1999, para. 43).
The Cheat
The
fear of mixing races that appeared because of Asian immigration to the United
States is one of the crucial aspects of the Yellow Peril concept. The fantasy
of the demonized, sex-driven Asian male seducing an innocent White female is
represented in film and literature, while such a sexual interaction symbolizes
the fear of a political takeover of Japanese over the Americans. Cecil B. Demille's film
“Cheat” (1915) is a good example of such a “rape fantasy”, as Marchetti calls
it (1993).
In
the “Cheat”, Tori (Sessue Hayakawa) is an ominous Oriental man who wants to
possess a white woman, named Edith (Fannie Ward). When Edith loses her money in
the stock market, afraid to tell that to her husband, she borrows it from
wealthy Tori. In turn, Edith agrees to surrender herself sexually to Tori.
However, later wanting to pay him back with money, Tori is angered and, calls
her a cheat and brands her shoulder with a Japanese sign of his ownership. The
“victim,” Edith, responds to this symbolic rape by shooting Tori.
Gina
Marchetti sees a close relationship between the Japanese character Tori and
Japan itself: “Both brutal and cultivated, wealthy and base, cultured and
barbaric, Tori embodies the contradictory qualities Americans associated with
Japan. Like Japan itself, Tori is powerful, threatening, wealthy and enviable;
however, his racial difference also codes him as pagan, morally suspect, and
inferior. Moreover, just as Japanese attempts to assimilate Western technology
and material culture to strengthen itself economically and militarily during
the Meiji era posed a threat to American domination of Asia, Tori’s attempts to
adapt to and adopt elements of Western society also pose a threat to American
conception of itself. Like any new Asian immigrant seeking to assimilate into
the mainstream, Tori threatens America’s definition of itself as white,
Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant” (Marchetti, 1993, p. 19).
At
the very beginning of the film, Tori seems to be a “harmless” character, and
thus Edith’s husband does not take him seriously so that he treats him as he
treats a “female”. Tori, however, eventually becomes a menacing figure: in his
room, which is exotically decorated with a Buddha statue, incense, rich silks,
ivory figures and a tree with falling petals resembling the cherry blossoms, he
shows his “real” face which is much more masculine, potentially aggressive, and
cruel. Also, his kimono, instead of the Western cloths he wore in the previous
scenes, emphasizes the separation of the two spheres, Japan and the West.
Hence, Tori, in his American outer shell, accurately represents American
perceptions on the Japanese mentality of the time: adopting Western ways to
fight on the same level with the West, while preserving his “Japaneseness”, and
hiding his real face as a brutal, power-mad demon.
From Mystery to Hysteria
Japan,
as “the land of mystery” blending the “human and inhuman”, caused great panic
in the West when its imperialist aspirations became evident. During World War
II, anti-Japan campaigns were built upon the Yellow Peril imagery discussed
above that came to dominate the American media since the beginning of the 19th
century. Historian John Dower demonstrates in “War Without Mercy: Race and
Power in the Pacific War: “… the enemy in Europe was the madman Hitler, and the
enemy in Asia was "the Japs"” (as cited in Boaz, 1989, para. 6).
The racist caricatures of Emperor
Hirohito during World War II, portraying him as a yellow monkey was another
development that continued in the same dehumanizing Orientalist vein; Tori in
the film Cheat is a good example of this dehumanization, something that even
Lafcadio Hearn’s description of the Japanese as “smiling kindly beings” cannot
completely escape. Also, as Dower illustrates in his “War Without Mercy”
(1986), American wartime political cartoons, propaganda popular songs and films
often presented the Japanese, variously, as bats, monkeys, vermin, octopuses,
rapists, giants, and midgets, which can be best understood when considered
within this Orientalist image transformation that took place under specific
historical conditions.
Indeed,
it can be argued that under the heavy syrup of Orientalism, it is easier to
build up alienating images than to deconstruct them. This is true for Japan as well: 60 years
later and one of the most loyal of American allies, Japan’s attempts to conduct
U.S. polls and opinion surveys on its image, aiming to show a positive
evaluation of Japan-U.S. relations (not to mention that these surveys are held solely on the U.S.), reveal
Japan’s enduring concern of improving its Yellow Peril image of the past.
The attempts to improve Japan’s image
and overcome Orientalist clichés will, hopefully, achieve fruition in post-war
America and the Western World. As Burns puts it, the West “will rediscover
another Japan, which would reflect its own history, culture, and purposes
better than it would reveal anything about who the Japanese might really be”
(Burns, 1999, para. 58).
Bibliography
Littlewood, Ian. (1996). The Idea of Japan: Western Images, Western
Myths. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Hearn, Lafcadio. (1976). Glimpses Of Unfamiliar Japan. Tokyo:
Tuttle Publishing. (Original work published 1894)
Iriye, Akira. (1975). Mutual Images: Essays in American Japanese
Relations. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Marchetti, Gina. (1993). Romance and the Yellow Peril. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Benedict, Ruth. (1989). Chrysanthemum and Sword: Patterns of
Japanese Culture. Boston: Mariner Books. (Original work published 1946)
Dower, John W. (1986). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the
Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books.
Rosen, Steven L. (2000). Japan as Other:
Orientalism and Cultural Conflict. Journal
of Intercultural Communication, 4. Retrieved September 26, 2003, from
Lowell, Percival. (1998). The Soul of the Far East. (Original work
published 1998) Retrieved
Boaz, David. (1989). Yellow Peril Reinfects America. Retrieved
Burns, Tom. (1999). America’s “Japan”
(1853-1952). Kyoto Journal, 40.
Retrieved
Kipling, Rudyard. (1899). The White Man’s Burden. Retrieved
FILMS:
Cecil B. Demille (Director). (1915). Cheat (Motion Picture). New York: Kino International
© Özge Baykan