THE UNITED STATES'S propensity for elevating its self-image by diminishing others did not begin in the late nineteenth century. As this book by Joseph M. Henning shows, however, it assumed gale force in the writings of American observers of Japan during the sixty years after Matthew Perry's squadron initiated contact between Japan and the United States in 1853.

The book's major contribution is to make clear how a myriad of U.S. writers used Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912) to construct an identity for their own homeland, how they endlessly analyzed the Pacific archipelago not so much to understand Japan itself (their ostensible goal) as to reaffirm long-standing preconceptions about “white, Christian superiority” (p. 4). The worldview of these observers, Henning argues, was hierarchical, with white Christians at the apex. And while Japan rapidly embraced modernity and achieved world power status without becoming Christian, or white, most writers never gave up on the religious or racial yardsticks by which they measured national worth.

Following a look at the diminutive ways in which early observers described the Japanese – childlike, disposed to public nudity, licentious – Henning draws on a wide range of English-language articles and books to evaluate portraits by analysts from different walks of life. One of his more interesting chapters assesses the work of several hundred missionary women, a group that has been slighted in historical studies.

Labeling them “diplomats of domesticity” (p. 61), he argues that they blended altruism and condescension when they taught English and Bible, launched girls’ schools, and wrote articles for religious journals across the United States. We see these women fighting against the abuse of Japanese womanhood and portraying a land where “ethical thought and social practice negated the possibility that women could maintain moral households” (p. 57).

Two other groups – a relatively small set of secular analysts, and a larger number of artistic types – are portrayed as looking on Japan more sympathetically. The former, represented by journalists and professors like Edward H. House and Edward Morse, portrayed the Japanese as intelligent, progressive, and more tolerant in religious matters than their Western counterparts. The latter included men like the art preservationist Ernest Fenollosa, who adored traditional Japanese aesthetics, and the painter John LaFarge, who found in Japan a spiritual antidote to materialism.