Western Japan, China - Japanese "dream"

After China's defeat in Opium War in 1840,the East Asian countries were facing the threat Western powers.Japan was also looking for surviving strategy when it was forced to open up.As per the concept of "Chinese Characters Culture Cycle",Japanese used to divide the world world as Japan,China,Foreign Countries and Vassal States. When the Western Power appears in East Asia region and oppressed China as the'Vassal States"and destroyed the orders of the old world, they were also a threat to the independence of Japan.After the end of Edo Shogunate and before the opening up of Japan,till the Meiji Restoration period,Japan needs strong central power to unify the state; and for the foreign affairs,Japan needs to measure the strength and that of the Western.Under such situation,Japan began to re-search Japanese position in the world.The tendency of epoch forces Japanese to change their world point of view.Actually,we can say,after the Meiji Restoration,Japanese tried to locate themselves among the original Japan within the Chinese Culture Circle,the prevenient suzerain China and the newly emerging Western Countries.So at this time,the relationship between China and Japan is specially important.During the course of modernization after the Meiji Restoration in Japan,Japanese continuously keep trying to locate themselves by taking China as the contrast.In this doctoral dissertation,the doctor candidate(the author) chooses Shanghai as the sample for observation since Shanghai has special origin with Japan and Shanghai is a very suitable city for observation for Japanese.Both the Western power and Chinese power co-existed in this city and Japanese also joined the competition in this city later.The purpose of this research is,through the observation the relation between Japanese and Shanghai,to clear the city image of Shanghai under the description of Japanese intellectual,to reveal the Japanese's response of Shanghai society in all the various aspects and all kinds of lays,and to think about what Shanghai means to Japanese and modern Japan.When conducting the research,the doctor candidate specially focuses on the Japanese who lived in the Concession of Shanghai,on the change of Japanese's opinion about Shanghai,and on the influence on Shanghai from Japanese policy to China.The author divided the writing by Japanese on Shanghai into four stages according to time sequence:1,Before the first Shanghai Incident(1932.1.28);2,From the first Shanghai Incident to the second Shanghai Incident(1937.8.13);3,The solitary island period of Shanghai(1937.11.14——1941.12.8);4,The Occupation period of Shanghai by the Japanese Army(1941.12.8——1945.8.10).The Forward Part is literature review.The author reviews three monographs of this field which are regarded as milestone by Japanese academic circles.Part One,The author describes the background and origin of Shanghai city in detail,introduces the city development history of Shanghai,observes the heuristic procedure of the Concession in Shanghai and the course during which Japanese turned to be the strong migration group inside the Concession in Shanghai.Part Two,the doctor candidate chooses the works of three earliest Japanese authors(Akutagawa Ryunosuke,Muramatsu Syofu and Yokomitsu Riichi) who described Shanghai before the first Shanghai Incident in 1932.From the angle of interpersonal relationship among them and their motivation of coming to Shanghai,the author analyzes the multivariant and complicated relationship among the Western Countries, Japan and China digged up by the three authors in their works,clears the Shanghai image appeared in the three Japanese's authors' works,think over the change of Shanghai city image under the description of the three Japanese authors,thinks about what the three Japanese authors saw in Shanghai at that time.Part Three,the doctor candidate conducts farther analysis on the articles about Shanghai published in two big magazines＜The Reconstraction＞and＜The Central Review＞which were distributed domestically in Japan.The articles on these two magazines deeply reflect the true standpoints of Japanese on Shanghai in a direct way.Through the analysis of these articles,we can know Japanese true image about Shanghai and understand the change of Japanese image about Shanghai at that time.