Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time , and: China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895-1904 (review)

Reviewed by: Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time, and: China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895-1904 Robert Eskildsen Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time. By Joshua A. Fogel. Harvard University Press, 2009. 206 pages. Hardcover $35.00. China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895-1904. By Urs Matthias Zachmann. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. 256 pages. Hardcover: £85.00/$150.00. The relationship between China and Japan during the modern period has been difficult and eventful, and nationalistic sentiments have often exacerbated the conflicts between the two nations. Articulating the Sinosphere, by Joshua Fogel, and China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period, by Urs Matthias Zachmann, both take the difficult twentieth century relationship between the countries as an intellectual starting point for their inquiries. While the two books approach Sino-Japanese relations in completely different ways and for different purposes, each provides a useful view of Sino-Japanese relations before the twentieth century and suggests just how anomalous the contemporary relationship between the two countries has been. In Articulating the Sinosphere, based on the Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures given in 2007, Joshua Fogel presents accessibly, succinctly, and with impressive depth a fresh understanding of Sino-Japanese relations. In order to explain the long-term dynamic relationship between China and Japan during the premodern period, Fogel introduces the evocative idea of the "Sinosphere," which he sees as a long-term, relatively stable realm of cultural interaction between China and Japan. The first essay, "Sino-Japanese Relations: The Long View," presents what Fogel calls a "macro-historical" overview that covers the entire span of the relationship between China and Japan before the modern period. One motivation for this approach, Fogel notes, is to counterbalance the negative view of the relationship between the two countries that has been shaped by the short and anomalous period of conflict from the Sino-Japanese War to World War II. Fogel starts the essay with a familiar explanation of Japan as it appears in Chinese dynastic histories, conveying the story with clarity and insight. Along the way he briefly introduces various historiographical debates based on scholarship in Chinese, Japanese, and English. As Fogel tells it, in the beginning Japanese embassies accepted a relationship of Chinese superiority and Japanese subordination because the arrangement proved politically convenient to both sides. The situation changed around the time of Empress Suiko and Prince Shōtoku, when Japan sent many large-scale embassies to China (an appendix lists the Japanese embassies to the Tang court). As the Tang dynasty declined, Japan sent fewer embassies, and after the dynasty fell the intensity of contact dropped off even further. Cultural interactions continued, however, largely in the form of Buddhist monks traveling to and from China, and for the first time sizeable levels of trade took place between the two countries. By the time of the Northern Song dynasty, or Kamakura period, the activities of Buddhist monks accounted for nearly all of the cultural exchanges, and by the Yuan dynasty Japanese Zen monks who visited China spent much of their time in cultural pursuits such [End Page 168] as painting, poetry, and sculpture, the cultural impact of Buddhism having broadened considerably beyond religious learning. Trade continued to flourish, and during the Ming dynasty, or Muromachi period, Japan sent dozens of trade missions to China (these are listed in a second appendix). Two problems complicated the relationship between China and Japan during these years: piracy, which plagued coastal areas for centuries, and the need for the Japanese ruler to accept a status subordinate to the Chinese emperor. Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea disrupted trade between China and Japan, and at the beginning of the Edo period Tokugawa Ieyasu sought to restore trade relations. It is notable that Fogel focuses on trade and culture during the crucial transition from the Muromachi to the Tokugawa period and deemphasizes diplomacy and political ideology. For example, he glosses over the ideological problem caused when Ashikaga Yoshimitsu accepted investiture from the Ming emperor as "king of Japan...