Race, religion, and civilization: The United States and Japan, 1868-1905

This dissertation explores American and Japanese discourses on race, religion, and civilization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the first Asian and non-Christian nation to become a modern power, Meiji Japan (1868-1912) presented an anomaly to Americans who assumed that civilization and progress were inseparable from Anglo-Saxon ancestry and Christianity. Acutely aware of this dilemma, Japanese officials worked to influence U.S. policy and public opinion. In diplomatic relations and the American press, they assured Americans that Japan had adopted the central tenets of Western civilization, which both nations identified as constitutional government, freedom of religion, and open commerce. In response, most Americans modified rather than jettisoned their assumptions about race and religion. To avoid separating civilization from Christianity, American diplomats, scholars, and missionaries depicted Japan as East Asia's guarantor of religious freedom. To avoid abandoning the concept of racial hierarchy, they categorized the Japanese as adoptive Anglo-Saxons who were promoting Western civilization and commerce. Americans manipulated Japan's success to confirm their belief that modern progress was synonymous with Anglo-Saxon ancestry and Christianity. To the satisfaction of the Japanese, this ensured revision of the unequal treaties and American sympathy in their wars with China (1894-95) and Russia (1904-05). Japan thus became a significant point of contention in American discourses on racial categorization and on the putative conflict between Christianity and secular progress. American depictions of Japan illuminate the process of identity construction. In the face of Japan's challenge, American observers felt constrained to protect the exclusiveness of their self-identity as white, civilized Christians. Doing so required the construction of new identities for the Japanese--identities that acknowledged their progress but distinguished them from other Asians. From this perspective, Japan was a remarkable exception among Asian nations. As an exception it disproved nothing about race or religion and served to underscore the ostensible backwardness of its neighbors. In order to fully appreciate the tenacity of the American faith in white, Christian superiority, we must understand the American response to the intellectual challenge of Meiji Japan.