| This study reconstructs Japanese rhetorical strategies employed in discussing Japan's foreign policies during the 1783-1853 period, the period leading to U.S. Commodore Perry's arrival in Japan to negotiate a treaty to open its ports to Western intercourse. My chief focus is on the discourse of the following intellectuals active outside of the Tokugawa administration: Kudo Heisuke, Hayashi Shihei, Honda Toshiaki, Sugita Genpaku, Sato Nobuhiro, Aizawa Seishisai, Takano Choei, and Watanabe Kazan. The textual analysis of their rhetorical acts is important, largely because the strategies they employed provide theoretical insights into how the Japanese argued strategically using language. The findings regarding the Japanese rhetorical strategies are, then, interpreted in order to reproduce and formulate Japanese patterns of rhetoric within the philosophical frame-work of ontology, epistemology, and axiology. In the conclusion of this thesis, those theoretical implications are used to suggest that the Japanese during the pre-Perry period were far from a-rhetorical or Confucian-centered and that the conventional wisdom regarding the rhetoric of Japan needs to be reconceptualized. |
