ABSTRACT
The impressions of Japan as a distant, exotic country were epitomized by Russian travellers in their notebooks and memoirs. They contained a peculiar amalgamation of astonishment and disdain. On the one hand, they viewed the Land of the Rising Sun as a wonderland, a territory of inner harmony, which was differentiated greatly from the Christian world of challenges and contradictions. On the other hand, the Japanese were portrayed in their essays as people, morally and intellectually, inferior to Europeans.
