China in Okakura Kakuzo with special reference to his first Chinese trip in 1893

This study of Okakura Kakuzo (l862-1913), an important and complex individual in modern Japanese thought, focuses on how his intellectual and physical experience of China shaped and altered his art history, civilization, and political theories throughout his life as an art historian, critic, nationalist, and spokesman for Asian ideals.;Closely reading new and familiar primary sources from a broadly contextualized Chinese perspective, this study goes beyond the theoretical frameworks used in the past, sidestepping artificial Sino-Japanese parallels and ideological comparisons. Avoiding one-dimensional interpretations, it looks at Okakura's struggles with Eurocentrism, Sinocentrism and Japancentrism in a double-edged colonialist ideology. It also highlights a gender approach in Okakura's political agenda and connects this to Tokugawa Confucians' analogies and the Taisho avant-garde's advocacy of "returning to Japan.";The issue of China emerged in Okakura's early career as he promoted an ambitious diplomatic campaign by Japan and became a critical component of his anti-Hellenistic construction of Japanese art history. To further develop China's role in this construction, he took his first trip to China at the dawn of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). This visit not only destroyed his Chinese fantasy but also became a milestone in his thought, laying a substantial foundation for his art history, civilization, and political theories. He discovered shasei (realism) in Chinese landscape painting; gained significant perspective, especially on racial issues, from North-South differences he observed; made interesting linguistic experiments in his playful kanshi compositions; expanded his definition of bijutsu in the Chinese art market; fully developed an anti-Hellenistic statement in the Longmen Caves; and offered political strategies and intellectual solutions for the Sino-Japanese conflict. All these ideas were fully applied and expanded in his subsequent thought and art practices.;Okakura explored the image of China as Japan's Other in the past and the metaphor for Japan's antiquity; to help Japan reach parity with the new Other---the West---he disarmed modern China by dismantling its centrality in the modern order of Asia. Dedicated to the construction of Japan's new identity, all Okakura's efforts demonstrated the complexity of Japanese intellectuals' political, and particularly racial, agendas.