Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Clash of Two Orders: The Far East on the Eve of the War
- Part II The War: The Dividing Line Between Two Eras
- Part III The Settlement: The Modern Era in Far Eastern Diplomacy
- Epilogue: Perceptions, Power, and War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Bibliography
- Index
Part I - The Clash of Two Orders: The Far East on the Eve of the War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Clash of Two Orders: The Far East on the Eve of the War
- Part II The War: The Dividing Line Between Two Eras
- Part III The Settlement: The Modern Era in Far Eastern Diplomacy
- Epilogue: Perceptions, Power, and War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For hundreds of years, Japan and China have enjoyed a history of intercourse and communication as friendly neighbors. We share the same roots in politics, law, literature, the arts, morals, religion, and all other elements of civilization; and in ancient times, Japan was often blessed with the introduction into the country of many splendid aspects of China's civilization. Hence, China assumed the position of an advanced nation while we took something of the role of being a more backward one.
Mutsu Munemitsu, foreign minister of Japan, 1895Japan …was organized …So when the West impinged on her, she put what it had to tell her in a sieve and sifted out the parts useful to her – for example, all the sciences and the art of war. She looked at what was left behind …and most of it she threw in the dustbin. But what she sifted out she absorbed into her body political as a lump of sugar is absorbed in a glass of water …[I]n China Western knowledge and Western cults descended on her unguided and uncontrolled. There was no winnowing of it; there was no sifting of what was good for China from what was bad …The simile here is not the lump of sugar …. here it is that of blobs of oil floating in the water and tending to go putrid.
William Ferdinand Tyler, naval adviser to China during the war- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895Perceptions, Power, and Primacy, pp. 1 - 2Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002