Reconfiguring Orientalism: Japan and Korea as Depicted by Early Twentieth-Century French Orientalist Literature

Abstract

This essay investigates the nature of western knowledge of Japan and Korea by examining French Orientalist literature in the early twentieth century. The point of departure is the idea that as Japan and Korea cannot be lumped together under an umbrella term such as “the Orient”, the diverse attitudes Europeans exhibited towards them cannot be uniformly branded with Eurocentrism founded upon the East–West dichotomy. The process in which westerners formed knowledge of Asia was not monolithic, in that they employed not a single but multiple conceptual repertoires in order to make sense of their experience of the two countries. Nor was it unilateral, in that they made use of local knowledge they encountered there rather than imposing their conceptual frameworks upon the experience. The examination will show the following. First, the dichotomy between East and West was visibly registered in western discourse of both Japan and Korea, where they were often reduced to the uncivilized Other. But the binary framework was not the only conceptual repertoire with which French Orientalists made sense of their experience and observations of the two countries. Other ones, such as cultural relativism, are seen to have been adopted, which contributed to alleviating the reductive effects of the dichotomous view. Second, the diverse conceptual repertoires, however strongly they challenged the binary model, themselves constituted another layer of epistemic alienation; they were employed in a discriminatory manner, like the relativist attitude being shown towards one (Japan) more frequently than the other (Korea), thereby facilitating the establishment of a hierarchy within the conception of the Orient. Lastly, western engagement with local knowledge was highly selective and did not always end up with eroding the multiple layers of alienation. For this reason, Orientalism is defined as an interactive epistemic process with multiple structures of alienation in it.

• Early Twentieth-Century French Orientalist Literature
• Epistemic Process
• Orientalism
• Said, Edward
• Western Perceptions of Japan
• Western Perceptions of Korea

ORCID

Jong-pil Yoon http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5109-2425