ABSTRACT
In April 1868, the leaders of Japan's newly established Meiji government issued a constitution, the first of its kind in Asia. Called the “Charter Oath,” the document promised, in its fifth and last article, to “seek knowledge throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule.” 1 The actors who headed Japan's transformation pledged allegiance to the 17-year-old Mutsuhito, who took the reigning name of Meiji, and were themselves young men ranging in age from their early 20s to early 40s. The Japanese desire to know the West, glimpsed at by the Russian travelers Golovnin and Goncharov, appeared to have found embodiment in this group of ambitious samurai, who now zealously pursued the political and cultural models of the West. And while Oblomov's robes remained indelibly associated with the Orient in Russian minds, Japan's leaders began in the 1870s to actively promote the use of Western dress and hairstyles among its population, in a manner reminiscent of Russia's experience under Peter the Great. “Change,” James Huffman writes, “was the currency of the Meiji era.” 2 On the other hand, surprise was the dominant reaction of Westerners to this change, followed by perplexed admiration and a vague sense that the Japanese had defied, to use Rotem Kowner's words, “some ‘unwritten’ rules of the colonial encounter” pertaining to the relationship of East and West. 3 One American observer remarked in 1876: “We have been accustomed to regard that country as uncivilized […] but we found here abundant evidence that it outshines the most cultivated nations of Europe in arts.” 4
