ABSTRACT
In 19th-century Europe, especially in Britain, the medieval period was romanticized as a period of authentic, artistic life, in contrast to their own industrial landscape. Hence, the “opening” of Japan led to a Western fascination with the “medieval” artisanal Japanese (as they viewed them), seen in international exhibitions, and portrayed in the popular opera The Mikado, set in a fictionalized Japan. The European art world eulogized the prints of Japanese artists, such as Hokusai. Western travellers flocked to see this idyllic fairyland, with its charming, artistic, doll-like inhabitants. Japan became a playground of the West, with Western men, away from the strictures of their own society, taking Japanese girls as temporary “wives”, as characterized in the Madame Butterfly opera. The Japanese were regarded as having a very different, artistic, mentality to the technological Westerners (a view that supported their 19th-century racial ideology). Consequently, the rapid modernization and industrialization of Japan – a successful way of avoiding Western colonization – came as a shock to many in the West. Rather than accepting the Japanese idea of bushido as a chivalrous and civilized spirit, it was regarded by Westerners as an indicator of Japanese militarism; a threat termed the “yellow peril”.
