Re: your mail (Subject & Power...)

At 8:47 PM 96.4.24 -0500, c627234@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>On Wed, 24 Apr 1996, Malcolm Dunnachie Thompson wrote:
>

>One instance of colonialism that was not supported by some Western power
>is Japan and its lurid historical relationship with China. You only
>asked for one and you asked for a contemporary instance (*today*). I
>can't vouch for how contemporary this is for you. You are correct in
>saying that colonialism is something Europe raised to an art-form, but
>what you are collapsing is Europeanism and colonialism. Eurocentrism is
>no better nor worse than any ethnocentrism when it comes to exclusion.
>Centrism relies on exclusion. What is not relevant is silence or
>euphemizing a generalization such as "the human condition."$B!!!!(B

Yanagita Kunio's recommendation, made in the 1920s, seems ironical in
retrospect, in part because of the subsequent turn of events, and for its
repressed voice and insightful, even prophetic, critique of occidental
imperialism:

Speaking both historically and from the present situation, Japan appears to
be the only country [in Asia] which has the potential to prove that the
colored races, as opposed to the civilization of white people, also have
the capacity to create a truly humane environment. It is our country which
can show [to the West] that, had it not been for the erroneous history of
intervention [by the West] in the past several hundred years, the colored
people of many countries and islands who today are not being treated as
human beings, would have been able to create much better countries of their
own, if only they had had a little more time . . . It is a pity that
[Japan] is following the evil ways of the colonization policies of some
distant countries, and engages in racial discrimination [against its fellow
Asians] (Qtd. in Kawada, Minoru _Origin of Ethnography in Japan: Yanagita
Kunio and his Times._ London: Kegan Paul, 1993$B!!(B(82)).

Cordially

Michael Guest

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$B%^%$%1%k!!%2%9%H(B Dr Michael Guest
$B@E2,Bg3X(B Shizuoka University
$B@E2,!!F|K\(B Shizuoka Japan
guest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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