ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the development of Japanese studies in the United States, as an important source of knowledge about Japan, following Said's presumption knowledge determines power relations. The focus of Edward Said's seminal 1978 work Orientalism was the Near or Middle East, and specifically the British and French concepts of it. Orientalism had expanded over time, and now included the larger Orient: A wide variety of hybrid representations of the Orient now roam the culture. Japan, Indochina, China, India and Pakistan: their representations have had, and continue to have, wide repercussions. The Japanese have always had an independent attitude toward foreign powers, and objected to American rule or Western domination in general. Anthropologist Michael Richardson pointed to two related problems in Said's rea-soning. In 1909 the Board of Regents of the University of Washington stated, 'Because of our commercial intercourse and business relations with Japan, the University should offer instruction in the Japanese language'.
