ABSTRACT
Tanaka reframes ‘chinoiserie’ beyond Europe to show how Edo Japan thrived through sustained, creative mimesis of Chinese culture. She argues Japanese literature belongs to a pan-East Asian, sinographic sphere: from Kojiki and Man'yōshū written with Chinese graphs, to Wakan rōeishū, Honchō monzui, Zen Five Mountains writing, and Edo genres—kyōshi, haibun, sharebon, kibyōshi, and yomihon—that adapted Tang-Qing models playfully and critically. Interpreters in Nagasaki funnelled texts, while visual and musical chinoiseries flourished via Shen Nanpin, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual, porcelain (Kakiemon, Nabeshima), and imported instruments. Rather than ‘isolation’, Edo culture emerges as hybrid, dialogic, and generative—its creativity grounded in continuous Sino-Japanese exchange.
