Source 19.6: A Critique of Westernization
Not everyone in Japan was so enthusiastic about the adoption of Western culture, and by the late 1870s and into the next decade numerous essays and images satirized the apparently indiscriminate fascination with all things European. Source 19.6, drawn by Japanese cartoonist Honda Kinkichiro in 1879, represents that point of view. One caption that accompanied the drawing reads as follows: “Mr. Morse [an American zoologist who introduced Darwin’s theory of evolution to Japan in 1877] explains that all human beings were monkeys in the beginning. In the beginning — but even now aren’t we still monkeys? When it comes to Western things we think the red beards are the most skillful at everything.”5 A second caption in English below the drawing further develops this theme.
Questions to consider as you examine the source:
- What specific aspects of Japan’s efforts at westernization is the artist mocking?
- Why might the artist have used a Western scientific theory (Darwinian evolution) to criticize excessive westernization in Japan?
- Why do you think a reaction set in against the cultural imitation of Europe?
Critique of Wholesale Westernization
Notes
- Quoted in Julia Meech-
Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions of a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), 182.