A Study On The Communication And Influence Of Hai Guo Tu Zhi In Japan In The 1850's And 1860's

Hai Guo Tu Zhi which written by Wei Yuan, the representative figure of the reformer in modern Chinese, is"the first book that opened the window to the outside world for Chinese". It is the first monumental work introducing countries all over the world by Chinese themselves. In brief, the major idea throughout the book is"learn from foreigners to compete with foreigners". It's advanced ideology in China and East-Asia in the middle nineteenth century, and guided Chinese to observe the world, to explore the road of making the country more prosperous and powerful. Since then, elites in china has begun to develop their nation by learning from the Western and reforming on political and economy system of the country, which was significant at that time.Although Hai Guo Tu Zhi had such an important value of the times, it hasn't received attention it deserved in China. Conversely, when Hai Guo Tu Zhi was introduced to Japan in 1854 and got the admission to sale, it quickly became a big hit, and formed a"Hai Guo Tu Zhi Times"of the ideological and cultural history of modern Japan. The different feedbacks in China and Japan of this book reflected their distinctive attitude to challenges of the times. Its communication in Japan sparked the Japanese government's intensive interests of learning and imitating the western advanced politics, economy, education and culture. It is this vital ideological factor that promoted Japanese "Meiji Restoration" which had a significant impact on Japan modernization.So far as present, the communication of Hai Guo Tu Zhi in Japan is still a subject worthy to study. Concerning about this, the article aims at the history that Hai Guo Tu Zhi aroused tremendous response in Japan, and tries to analyze the reason for its success by the social set, its content, reader, communication channels. From the view of the social background, China's Opium War has shaken the Japanese, at the same time, Japan was invaded by the western. As for the content, Hai Guo Tu Zhi by Wei Yuan did have considerable value, and meet the needs of Japan. From the perspective of the reader, Japanese had the tradition of absorption foreign advanced culture; there was an appropriate reading group that they had high language level and were good awareness of the world. From the communication channel, people, who reprinted it, especially the Confucianism scholars made a great contribution to communicating Hai Guo Tu Zhi.Hai Guo Tu Zhi absorbed a large number of Western cultures, which was a product of East-West cultural communication; and its successful communication in Japan provides an important reference for us to understand how to effectively communicate the heterogenous advanced culture. We should learn the experience from the successful communication of Hai Guo Tu Zhi in Japan, based on the national culture, continuous learning foreign advanced culture, to promote the Chinese culture to the world.