The “Orient” in the West: The Japanese Architect Itō Chūta’s Travels in the Ottoman Empire and Its Challenge to the Oriental Narrative (original) (raw)
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[conference report] Japan and the Ottoman Empire in the Eye of the European Beholder: A Comparison
2019
The interdisciplinary joint seminar, which took place at the University of Kyoto on 1st and 2nd June 2019, compared perceptions of Japan and the Ottoman Empire in the Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern Period. By doing so, the seminar responded to a researched desideratum: While perceptions of the Ottoman Empire have been the focus of research for decades, interest in the perception of Japan is recent and research has focused mostly on Jesuit missions and the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Comparisons of Japan and the Ottoman Empire, however, are lacking. Organised by Haruka Oba (Kurume University, Japan), Arno Strohmeyer (ÖAW, INZ, Vienna and University of Salzburg), Marion Romberg and Doris Gruber (both ÖAW, INZ, Vienna), the seminar brought together specialists from Europe and Japan as well as their broad material base, ranging from diplomatic correspondence to travelogues, plays, and sculptural and pictorial sources.
2019
The interdisciplinary joint seminar will compare the perceptions of Japan and the Ottoman Empire in the Holy Roman Empire in a workshop taking place at the University of Kyoto from May 31st to June 3rd, 2019. The research situation is as diverse as the focused regions: In the German-speaking lands research on the perceptions of the Ottoman Empire in the Holy Roman Empire has long been established and is increasingly being promoted. More systematic investigations as well as new methods are being undertaken, which in particular use the new possibilities of digitization and digital humanities: FWF projects “The Mediality of Diplomatic Communication: “Habsburg Envoys in Constantinople in the middle of the 17th Century“, (2017–2021); “Perceptions of the Other in Travelogues 1500–1875 – A Computerized Analysis”, (2018–2021); “Continent Allegories in the Baroque Era”, (2012–2016). While perceptions of the Ottoman Empire are increasingly being investigated, those of Japan have so far hardly been analyzed. The research interest is recent and first results are published in highly selective studies. The few studies that deal with relations between early modern Japan and Europe focus on the missionary work of the Jesuit order in the 16th and 17th centuries and the work of the Europeans in the wake of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th and 18th centuries in Japan. The Joint Project "Japan on the Jesuit Stage: German-speaking Areas and Beyond" (2017–2019) shows the added value of such international projects as well as their necessity. Within the framework of the joint seminar, the varied material basis of these projects, ranging from diplomatic correspondence to travelogue to sculptural and visual sources, will now be presented comparatively in view of the articulated perceptions of the Ottoman Empire and Japan. Through their systematic and comparative study, the mechanisms of perceptions of otherness and its representations in the Holy Roman Empire can be analyzed much more clearly than before. Ultimately, the joint seminar will enable a deepening of scientific cooperation between Japan and Austria as well as further development of methods and results of each participants. The importance of the seminar also lies in the challenges of today. Each of us is constantly confronted with diversity due to global phenomena such as globalization and international migration. The analysis of the treatment of otherness in the past offers historical orientation for today and tomorrow. The Joint Seminar is financed cooperatively by the Austrian Science Funds FWF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
Ito Chuta and the narrative structure of Chinese architectural history
The Journal of Architecture, 2015
This article examines the intellectual and political environment that gave rise to the basic narrative structure in the writing of Chinese architectural history during the formative stage of the discipline through the career and works of the Japanese architectural scholar Ito Chuta (1867–1954). The author argues that the heavy emphasis on pre-Tang history in the early literature on Chinese architecture was a result of the power shift in late-nineteenth to early-twentieth-century East Asia, namely, the decline of China and the rise of Japan. By analysing the textual and visual information in Ito's major scholarly works, this article reveals the political agenda behind the methodological discrepancy between Shina kenchikushi and Shina kenchiku soshoku: the former is more historical and the latter is more anthropological, which echoes the cultural contradictions in Japanese colonialism, and shows how Ito's scholarships on Horyuji helped to identify such a shift in the mantle of East Asian tradition from ancient China to modern Japan.
Global Perspectives on Japan, 2020
In the historiography of Japan’s Interaction with the Turkish and the Muslim World, Ahmed Münir İbrahim (1887-1941) has been overshadowed by his father, Abdürreşid İbrahim (1857-1944). Abdürreşid, a Russian Tatar scholar and journalist, spent five months in Japan in the first half of 1909. After his journey, he published a two-volume travelogue entitled Alem-i İslam ve Japonya’da İntişar-ı İslamiyet in Istanbul in 1910. This travelogue has remained one of the most important sources for the history of early Turkish-Japanese relations and has predominantly been regarded as an expression of pan-Islamist and pan-Asianist thinking. Similar to his father, Münir too traveled to Japan in December 1910 as a member of the first Ottoman student delegation. Münir and his two companions, Hasan Fehmi and Mehmed Tevfik, were sent to Japan at the request of the pan-Asianist society Ajia Gikai to take up their studies in Tokyo. After his arrival in Japan, Münir published a brief, serialized travelogue in the Kazan newspaper Beyanülhak, which relates the students’ journey from Harbin to Tokyo, alongside other articles on Harbin and Japan. While Münir’s articles in the Ottoman journal Sebilürreşad and the Japanese journal Daitō have recently been scrutinized by historians, his travelogue in Beyanülhak has to date remained completely obscure. This article will, first, provide a concise discussion of the Ottoman student delegation to Japan and, second, examine key aspects of Münir’s travelogue, which may provide historians with important insights into the more mundane aspects of Turkish- Japanese exchanges behind the idealizing visions of pan-Islamism and pan-Asianism.
Academic Social Resources Journal , 2022
Encounters have led to significant changes in world history. They have allowed cultural exchange between different parties such as the East and West. In the case of Ottoman Empire and Europe, it is also possible to observe the consequences of this issue. Until the eighteenth century, Ottomans did not feel the need to interact and learn from Europeans; however, things changed in this period. The newly formed political and economic relations between Ottomans and Europeans became influential in many areas, including architecture. Cultural exchanges and different attitudes of both parties can be explored by examining the terms of Orientalism and Occidentalism, which can shed light on how they contributed to shaping their architecture. This paper aims to investigate the similitude and contrasts between the concepts of Orientalism and Occidentalism in relation to how they can be used for an analysis of Eighteenth-Century Ottoman and European Architecture.