Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the process of the introduction of Western archaeological thought in Japan during the Meiji period. The main works related to this issue will be analysed from a translatological and intellectual perspective.

Paper long abstract:

Modern archaeology began in Japan with the activities of a heterogeneous group of Western professors, researchers, and diplomats in the last third of the 19th century. Among them, the American scientist Edward Sylvester Morse and the German diplomat Heinrich von Siebold played the most significant roles. Morse's name is especially remembered today for leading the first scientific excavation (Omori shell midden) in 1877 and writing the first archaeological report in Japan (English / Japanese).

In the same period, Siebold's Kōko-setsuryaku (1879) and the Japanese edition of the Encyclopaedia Chambers, which included an article devoted to archaeology, were published. These two works, together with the Omori excavation report, constitute the first Japanese-language texts that spread the existence of the discipline of archaeology as it had been defined in the West. These texts not only taught the Japanese about the existence of primitive cultures discovered in Europe but also provided new epistemological tools for understanding material remains from the past. These remains had traditionally been associated with the actions of mythical figures such as giants or meteorological phenomena, but belonged to cultures that predated the emergence of writing in Japan, i.e., prehistoric cultures.

This paper will analyze, through primary sources, the process of introduction of Western archaeological thought, represented by the Three Ages system and the idea of prehistory. It will be demonstrated how this knowledge transfer required a translational effort to express the new Western terminology and concepts. At the same time, it will be discussed how this transfer did not take place in an intellectual or ideological vacuum, but that the ideas of time brought by Westerners represented a knowledge without parallel in the antiquarian and cultural tradition of the Edo period. The understanding and acceptance of these ideas concerning the past required a profound mental readjustment, which would not be completed in a strict sense until the 20th century.