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Positioning Tokyo as Global City: Anglo-American Narratives of the New Japanese Capital, 1868 - 1922

Research Project

Project/Area Number 18K12316
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists

Allocation TypeMulti-year Fund
Review Section Basic Section 02030:English literature and literature in the English language-related
Research InstitutionSophia University

Principal Investigator

WILLIAMS LAURENCE  上智大学, 外国語学部, 准教授 (50750486)

Project Period (FY) 2018-04-01 – 2024-03-31
Project Status Completed (Fiscal Year 2023)
Budget Amount *help
¥4,030,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥930,000)
Fiscal Year 2020: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2019: ¥1,690,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥390,000)
Fiscal Year 2018: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
Keywordstravel writing / British literature / orientalism / Japan / postcolonial theory / Tokyo / English literature / tourism / literature / urban studies
Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research project examined British narratives of Edo/Tokyo during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Firstly, I investigated what British people knew about Japan - and Edo in particular - during the "sakoku" period. Although it has often been asserted that British people knew little about Japan during this time, I was able to establish that a considerable amount was known about Japanese geography and history. Several British people in fact made journeys to Japan in the early nineteenth century, disguised as Dutch merchants. Next, I examined travel narratives written about Tokyo from the 1860s by British travellers such as Lafcadio Hearn and Isabella Bird. I also conducted research projects into British travel to Yokohama on steamship routes, and on British trips to Mount Fuji. Finally, I investigated the ways in which British residents in Tokyo disseminated knowledge of British culture, focusing on university professors such as Hearn, William Empson, and Edmund Blunden.

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

19世紀のイギリスにおける日本観が、啓蒙時代に発達した知識によって形作られている点について検討した。また、日本の開国以前において既に、日本に関する知識を中国を含む他のアジア諸国に関する知識と区別すべく、イギリス人が、如何なる精神構造を形成していたかについても探った。エドワード・サイードが定義した「東洋主義」との差異を問いつつ、馴染みのない江戸/東京の都市空間に関するイギリス人の記述を読み解いた。また、イギリス人の東京旅行が、英米の帝国主義や、蒸気船などのインフラの発展とどう関係していたかについても調査した。最後に、この時期にイギリス文化が日本文化にどのような影響を与えたかについて調査した。

Report

(7 results)
  • 2023 Annual Research Report   Final Research Report ( PDF )
  • 2022 Research-status Report
  • 2021 Research-status Report
  • 2020 Research-status Report
  • 2019 Research-status Report
  • 2018 Research-status Report
  • Research Products

    (22 results)

All 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018

All Presentation (11 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 5 results,  Invited: 5 results) Book (9 results) Funded Workshop (2 results)

  • [Presentation] Nineteenth-Century British Writing on Japan and Isabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks2023

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams
    • Organizer
      Japan University, English Department Special Lecture
    • Related Report
      2023 Annual Research Report
    • Invited
  • [Presentation] Sexual Politics of Empires panel2023

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams (Chair)
    • Organizer
      Society for Global Nineteenth Century Studies, Singapore Management University
    • Related Report
      2023 Annual Research Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] John Keats and Lafcadio Hearn’s Translations of Japanese Insect Melody2022

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams
    • Organizer
      48th Japan Association of English Romanticism Conference, Matsuyama University
    • Related Report
      2022 Research-status Report
  • [Presentation] Re-Evaluating Elizabeth Craven: A Pioneering Eighteenth-Century Traveller and Feminist Writer2022

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams
    • Organizer
      “What’s in a Name? Re-evaluating marginalized figures from the Early Modern Period in Britain”, King’s College London, UK (online)
    • Related Report
      2022 Research-status Report
    • Int'l Joint Research / Invited
  • [Presentation] “The real melancholy inspired by autumn”: Lafcadio Hearn’s Translations of Japanese “Insect Melody”2022

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams
    • Organizer
      Panel on "Translating British Romanticism in East Asia", University of Ghent "Unknown Tongues" seminar series
    • Related Report
      2022 Research-status Report
    • Int'l Joint Research / Invited
  • [Presentation] "Romanticism in Asia" (panel chair)2019

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams
    • Organizer
      Japan Association for English Romanticism (JAER), Otsuma Women's University, Tokyo
    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
  • [Presentation] “First Impressions of Yokohama and Tokyo for Nineteenth-Century Western Travellers”2019

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams
    • Organizer
      Simul Academy, Ginza
    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
    • Invited
  • [Presentation] “Steamship Tourism and the "Arrival Scene" in Japan in Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives”2019

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams
    • Organizer
      “Aesthetics of Oceans” (Seikei University, Tokyo)
    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
    • Invited
  • [Presentation] “A Problematic Period?: Teaching the Long Eighteenth Century”2019

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams (presenter and panel chair)
    • Organizer
      Liberlit Conference (Seikei University, Tokyo)
    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
  • [Presentation] “Frankenstein at 200”2018

    • Author(s)
      Williams, Laurence
    • Organizer
      “Humanity and the Post-Human in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A 200th Anniversary Symposium", Sophia University, Tokyo
    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] “The “Sacred Mountain”: Visual and Religious Sublimity in Western Representations of Mount Fuji, 1880 to 1900”2018

    • Author(s)
      Williams, Laurence
    • Organizer
      American Comparative Literature Association, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Book] Bloomsbury Handbook of British Romanticism and Asia2024

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams, Peter Kitson, Rosinka Chaudhuri, Alex Watson
    • Publisher
      Bloomsbury
    • Related Report
      2023 Annual Research Report
  • [Book] Pacific Gateways: Trans-Oceanic Narratives and English Literature2024

    • Author(s)
      Laurence Williams and Tomoe Kumojima
    • Publisher
      Palgrave
    • Related Report
      2023 Annual Research Report
  • [Book] Romantic Environmental Sensibility: Nature, Class and Empire2022

    • Author(s)
      Ve-Yin Tee, Laurence Williams
    • Total Pages
      304
    • Publisher
      Edinburgh University Press
    • ISBN
      9781474456470
    • Related Report
      2021 Research-status Report
  • [Book] Pacific Insularity: Imaginary Geography of Insular Spaces in the Pacific2021

    • Author(s)
      Michael Heitkemper-Yates, Thomas Schwarz, Laurence Williams
    • Publisher
      Rikkyo University Press
    • ISBN
      9784901988384
    • Related Report
      2020 Research-status Report
  • [Book] Handbook of British Travel Writing2020

    • Author(s)
      Barbara Schaff, Laurence Williams
    • Publisher
      De Gruyter
    • ISBN
      9783110499834
    • Related Report
      2020 Research-status Report
  • [Book] 大学的富士山ガイド2020

    • Author(s)
      加藤 めぐみ, 志村 三代子, ハウエル エバンズ, Laurence Williams
    • Total Pages
      260
    • Publisher
      昭和堂
    • ISBN
      9784812219195
    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
  • [Book] Handbook of British Travel Writing2020

    • Author(s)
      Barbara Schiff, Laurence Williams
    • Publisher
      De Gruyter
    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
  • [Book] Eastern Resonances in Early Modern England: Receptions and Transformations from the Renaissance to the Romantic Period2019

    • Author(s)
      Claire Gallien, Ladan Niayesh, Laurence Williams
    • Total Pages
      207
    • Publisher
      Palgrave Macmillan
    • ISBN
      9783030229245
    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
  • [Book] British Romanticism in Asia: The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature in India and East Asia2019

    • Author(s)
      Williams, Laurence, and Watson, Alex
    • Total Pages
      414
    • Publisher
      Palgrave Macmillan
    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report
  • [Funded Workshop] Cugoano's Economics: Urban Space and Labor in Eighteenth-Century Slavery Narrative2019

    • Related Report
      2019 Research-status Report
  • [Funded Workshop] The Scientist as Mental Traveller, seminar with Dr Noah Heringman (University of Missouri), Sophia University, 22 October 20182018

    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report

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Published: 2018-04-23   Modified: 2025-01-30  

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