Essay Questions for Thinking through Sources 19

1. Explaining change: How and why had Japanese perceptions of themselves and their relationship to the West changed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? What elements of continuity in Japanese traditions are evident in these sources?
2. Making comparisons: Based on these sources and the documents in Working with Evidence: Changing China in Chapter 19, how might you compare Japanese and Chinese perceptions of the West during the nineteenth century? What accounts for both the similarities and differences?
3. Distinguishing modernization and westernization: Based on a careful reading of Chapter 19, including the documents and images, do you think that technological borrowing (modernization) requires cultural borrowing (westernization) as well? Was it possible during the nineteenth century to modernize while avoiding the incorporation of Western culture at the same time? What do the examples of China, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan suggest about this question?