Interesting account....
chinajapan.org/articles/01.2/01.2.41-56ichiko.pdf
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Eto Shinkichi, the "dean" of Sino-Japanese studies in Japan, was one of the first scholars to go through the diaries and records left by those aboard the Senzaimaru (千歳丸) when it made its famous 1862 voyage to Shanghai, the first authorized Japanese trip to China in 223 years. He analyzes the travel accounts of three men in particular as a vehicle for assessing these early Japanese views of China. Takasugi Shinsaku, Notomi Kaijiro, and Hibino Teruhiro. These three chronicles were finally edited and published together after the war as Bunkyu ninen Shanhai nikki (文久二年上海日記).
Prior to this trip, the Japanese had little firsthand knowledge of China, save reports from merchants whose ships went astray and ended up in China or from books or Chinese residents in Nagasaki. There was, of course, secret trade along the Chinese coast, but no Japanese made a point of publishing an account of China based on contacts of this sort, because such a violation of the sasoku edict would have been sufficient to warrant ececution. By 1862, the Bakafu had had over two decades to assimilate, albeit in piecemeal fashion, China's fate after trying to withstand European penetration; and it was a handful of years following Commodore Perry's forced opening of Japan. The time was ripe for an investigative mission, with representatives from each of the domains, into business conditions in what was already reputed to be China's most
bustling port city. One must assume that the Japanese authorities somehow learned that Shanghai had already outstripped Canton as a center of international trade.
Eto concentrates on how these particular three men understood and tried to assimilate what they witnessed in China. He excludes from consideration the accounts each gave of the Taipings, because it has been dealt with by Ichiko Chuzo. Upon arrival in Shanghai, all three were immediately stunned by the tremendous prosperity, with countless ships in the harbor and countless merchants engaged in business. Apparently nothing prepared them for this experience, and it interestingly had a largely negative impact on all three.
Because these three men had all recieved Confucian educations, they were able to communicate with Chinese via the instrument of the "pen conversation" (筆談) through the medium of literary Chinese. Takasugi was the most critical of what he perceived in China and the most concerned about what it all meant for Japan. He saw Europeans swaggering about the streets as if they owned the country, while the Chinese seemed meekly to wander or cower in the shadows. Hibino thought the Chinese looked utterly ridiculous with their queues, and he expressed great sympathy for their poor masses. Notomi similarly wrote of rampant hunger, death, illness, and floating corpses in the Huangpu River. He well understood the toll that the Taiping Rebellion was exacting on poor Chinese peasants.
All three men, especially Takasugi, despised the presence of Christian missionaries in China. He lauded the valiant but unsuccessful efforts of Lin Zexu and others in expelling these foreign enemies from Chinese soil. He scoured the bookstores for a copy of Lin's collected writings, but without success. It was simply unbelievable for them to find China--"the country of unparalleled literature," according to Notomi, and "the country of ... Yao and Shun," according to Hibino--so thoroughly weak and apparently in fear
on the hated Westerners. How could China have declined to this state of decay? Hibino answered this rhetorical question most clearly: the Chinese had erred by violating the admonitions of their sages and currying favor with the barbarians. The latter had fooled the Chinese people with their false faith and their drugs; their ultimate wish was to annex China, and thus it had been wrong to allow the opening of any ports other than Canton. Nor would the Taipings offer substantive relief of China's major problems, for they believed in the venomous "false faith" of the barbarians. Notomi offered a less logical, if ultimately more dispassionate, analysis of China's predicament. He felt badly that China was weak and poor, but he failed to explain why he thought that situation had come about.
Takasugi Shinsaku adopted a much more radical and much more practical line of attack. He saw countless foreign ships in the Shanghai harbor and went out and ordered a warship from the Dutch for his, native domain of Choshu. When he found t hat the writings of Wei Yuan were out of print in China and that the Chinese were not forcefully preparing to drive the foreigners out of their country, rather than derive from this a long analysis of the failures of the Chinese people, he extracted lessons for the future of Japan. Contemporary China became an enormous negative example for him. His only critique of the Chinese was for their failure to abandon ways that were proven failures and to adopt from the strengths of the enemy. Japan could not, in his opinion, maintain isolation, and he envisioned trade with Canton, Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, and Washington. The issue was no longer retaining Confucianism versus abandoning it; it was now East Asia versus a Western invasion.
chinajapan.org/articles/01.2/01.2.41-56ichiko.pdf
chinajapan.org/articles/01.2/01.2.41-56ichiko.pdf
.
.
.
.
Eto Shinkichi, the "dean" of Sino-Japanese studies in Japan, was one of the first scholars to go through the diaries and records left by those aboard the Senzaimaru (千歳丸) when it made its famous 1862 voyage to Shanghai, the first authorized Japanese trip to China in 223 years. He analyzes the travel accounts of three men in particular as a vehicle for assessing these early Japanese views of China. Takasugi Shinsaku, Notomi Kaijiro, and Hibino Teruhiro. These three chronicles were finally edited and published together after the war as Bunkyu ninen Shanhai nikki (文久二年上海日記).
Prior to this trip, the Japanese had little firsthand knowledge of China, save reports from merchants whose ships went astray and ended up in China or from books or Chinese residents in Nagasaki. There was, of course, secret trade along the Chinese coast, but no Japanese made a point of publishing an account of China based on contacts of this sort, because such a violation of the sasoku edict would have been sufficient to warrant ececution. By 1862, the Bakafu had had over two decades to assimilate, albeit in piecemeal fashion, China's fate after trying to withstand European penetration; and it was a handful of years following Commodore Perry's forced opening of Japan. The time was ripe for an investigative mission, with representatives from each of the domains, into business conditions in what was already reputed to be China's most
bustling port city. One must assume that the Japanese authorities somehow learned that Shanghai had already outstripped Canton as a center of international trade.
Eto concentrates on how these particular three men understood and tried to assimilate what they witnessed in China. He excludes from consideration the accounts each gave of the Taipings, because it has been dealt with by Ichiko Chuzo. Upon arrival in Shanghai, all three were immediately stunned by the tremendous prosperity, with countless ships in the harbor and countless merchants engaged in business. Apparently nothing prepared them for this experience, and it interestingly had a largely negative impact on all three.
Because these three men had all recieved Confucian educations, they were able to communicate with Chinese via the instrument of the "pen conversation" (筆談) through the medium of literary Chinese. Takasugi was the most critical of what he perceived in China and the most concerned about what it all meant for Japan. He saw Europeans swaggering about the streets as if they owned the country, while the Chinese seemed meekly to wander or cower in the shadows. Hibino thought the Chinese looked utterly ridiculous with their queues, and he expressed great sympathy for their poor masses. Notomi similarly wrote of rampant hunger, death, illness, and floating corpses in the Huangpu River. He well understood the toll that the Taiping Rebellion was exacting on poor Chinese peasants.
All three men, especially Takasugi, despised the presence of Christian missionaries in China. He lauded the valiant but unsuccessful efforts of Lin Zexu and others in expelling these foreign enemies from Chinese soil. He scoured the bookstores for a copy of Lin's collected writings, but without success. It was simply unbelievable for them to find China--"the country of unparalleled literature," according to Notomi, and "the country of ... Yao and Shun," according to Hibino--so thoroughly weak and apparently in fear
on the hated Westerners. How could China have declined to this state of decay? Hibino answered this rhetorical question most clearly: the Chinese had erred by violating the admonitions of their sages and currying favor with the barbarians. The latter had fooled the Chinese people with their false faith and their drugs; their ultimate wish was to annex China, and thus it had been wrong to allow the opening of any ports other than Canton. Nor would the Taipings offer substantive relief of China's major problems, for they believed in the venomous "false faith" of the barbarians. Notomi offered a less logical, if ultimately more dispassionate, analysis of China's predicament. He felt badly that China was weak and poor, but he failed to explain why he thought that situation had come about.
Takasugi Shinsaku adopted a much more radical and much more practical line of attack. He saw countless foreign ships in the Shanghai harbor and went out and ordered a warship from the Dutch for his, native domain of Choshu. When he found t hat the writings of Wei Yuan were out of print in China and that the Chinese were not forcefully preparing to drive the foreigners out of their country, rather than derive from this a long analysis of the failures of the Chinese people, he extracted lessons for the future of Japan. Contemporary China became an enormous negative example for him. His only critique of the Chinese was for their failure to abandon ways that were proven failures and to adopt from the strengths of the enemy. Japan could not, in his opinion, maintain isolation, and he envisioned trade with Canton, Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, and Washington. The issue was no longer retaining Confucianism versus abandoning it; it was now East Asia versus a Western invasion.
chinajapan.org/articles/01.2/01.2.41-56ichiko.pdf
I know Wiki is not a very good source, but this being not really a center of any political debate, I think it gives you a general idea of what the received wisdom is in Japan. And I've never presented it in a way "Wiki is saying this, so it must be true". For example, I don't believe the list of Italian words are unreliable just because it is on Wiki, and it can easily be verified. Also, it usually provides a link to the English version of the article (though the contents can be very different). If you think the content of the link is questionable, please point it out. I'll try to find more reliable source.