ABSTRACT
Masao Miyoshi describes Japan’s experiences with the West during the Meiji period
from 1868 to 1912, when Japan opened up to the rest of the world after over 200
years of self-imposed isolation, as a ‘nearly colonial encounter’.1 While other coun-
tries were experiencing colonial domination as a consequence of having been taken
over against their will, with new settlers imposing their way of life, Japan in the late
nineteenth century requested and commissioned Western-style industrialisation, mili-
tarisation, education and architecture, employing experts from Britain and elsewhere
to facilitate the desired changes. As a result, new concepts were introduced and
assimilated, in such a way that, as Yuko Kikuchi has pointed out,
Japanese cultural nationalism was heavily dependent on Occidental ideas.
