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Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the wider context of writings against „Yellow Peril” after the Russo-Japanese war, presenting several different motives getting connected: the changing image of Japan, the Japanese efforts to influence this image, and the different perception of Japan in East Central Europe.

Paper long abstract:

The paper tries to present the wider context of an actual case of a Hungarian orientalist scholar writing against the idea of „Yellow Peril” that emerged in Europe after the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. Examining the context of this case, several different motives got into the focus of the research. The Russo-Japanese war changed the image of Japan differently in various parts of the world, resulting the emergence of the “Yellow peril” idea in the West. East-Central Europe had different concepts of the East and of Japan, affected partly by Western Europe, partly by the historical context of East-Central Europe, and partly by the results of Japan’s development during the second half of the 19th century. After the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) there was a strong adoration of Japanese military and political modernity in that region, and it defined the perceptions of Japan of that time. In Western Europe and the USA, more critical opinions started to be formed about Japan. In connection with this less favourable Japanese image, the mechanism of the Japanese efforts to influence the formation of this image can also be studied, with the connections that Japan tried to build with prominent foreign persons to persuade them to support a favourable Japanese image. The scholar, Arminius Vámbéry (1832-1913) was a well-known scholar of Asian studies in Europe because of his travels in the Ottoman Empire and in Central Asia in the 1850-60s (on which he published books in English in Great Britain), and he was known as a committed supporter of Asian cultures. He is said to be one of the initiators of a special idea of “Pan-Asianism”, and this may have been the reason why Japanese diplomats asked Vámbéry to write favourably about Japan. His views were popular among the public, as the Japanese development was regarded an example, which proved that modernisation, as a Western type of progress, could be achieved without sacrificing national identity or cultural heritage. Under the Japanese model, the defence of national interests and the preservation of national culture were regarded as contemporary ideas, not as the enemies of modernity.