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Paper short abstract:

Many Victorians saw Japan after 1858 as a throwback to an idealized Medieval past. This paper argues that, in the light of the influence of Romanticism, this view helps to explain Japan's intellectual and cultural attraction to the West and was not necessarily intended to denigrate.

Paper long abstract:

The Victorian image of Japan in the years following the latter's opening to the West was dominated by first-hand accounts of this newly discovered country that portrayed it as nothing less than a throwback to an idealized Medieval past. Some scholars have taken such writings as their cue to apply the idea of 'Orientalism' to British interactions with Japan and to argue that these Britons were involved in constructing a discourse that sought to trivialize and infantilize the Japanese. While some contemporary accounts might fit this description, this paper argues that it is important to see British perceptions of Japan in this vein in the context of the crucial role that Romanticism in the arts had in shaping Victorian thinking. Taking into account the novels of Sir Walter Scott, the iconography of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the contemporary interest in folk stories and fairy tales, and the cultural backlash against industrialization found in the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris, the comparison of Japan with the pre-modern era in Europe becomes far less of a condemnation designed merely to elevate the observer's self-esteem. Instead, one can see that for some Britons Japan's attraction was rooted in its stark contrast to a philistine industrial world and its possession of an exoticism that reverberated with the contemporaneous fascination with the supernatural. This paper will seek to illustrate this interpretation of Victorian perceptions of Japan by drawing on writings in the periodical press including works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Douglas, and Algernon Mitford.