Basic Research into the Cultural Understanding Achieved by the Second French Empire through Its Diplomacy in the Far East

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K01020
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 03040:History of Europe and America-related
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Nomura Keisuke 東北大学, 国際文化研究科, 教授 (00305103)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 日仏外交史 / フランス第二帝制 / フランス外交 / 外交代表 / 異文化経験

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In official documents not previously scrutinised fully, diplomatic representatives active in Japan in the two decades from 1850 reported to their home government. By analysing these documents, this study investigates how French diplomacy during the Second Empire planned to make contact with little-known cultures in order to understand them. There is no doubt that through the period concerned, France, unlike Great Britain, continued to regard the Shogun in Edo as the ‘Emperor of Japan’, although how the two designations came to be perceived as equivalent remains uncertain. Thus, further investigation is required of the sources underlying this perception, which could go back to the views held by Jesuit missionaries in the late sixteenth century.

Free Research Field

近代フランス史

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は，従来すぐれて国家間外交史の枠組で考察されてきた欧米列強による幕末日本への進出に関連して，フランス外交による対日接近の初期局面における異文化接触・理解への関心に立脚しており，とりわけ外交代表（外交官）の活動，生活，感じ方（日本観など）を中心にすえるという意味で一定の独創性をもつ。とりわけ，日本国制がどうみられたかという側面は，欧米の伝統的な国制観が日本という異文化理解の局面においていかに発揮されたかという問題とも関連しており，研究を深める価値をもつ。幕末史に関連する一般的関心は高く，本研究はそのような状況に対する西洋史研究側からの寄与であり，今後とも継続的にとりくみたい。