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14 - Cultural Interactions between Japan and Russia: The Japanese Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2024

Kazuhiko Togo
Affiliation:
Shizuoka University, Japan
Dmitry Streltsov
Affiliation:
Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
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Summary

Towards the end of Shogunate, Russia was recognized by Japanese as the worst threat to the nation and that image remains to this day. This, however, has not prevented Japanese from being strongly attached to, and receiving major inspiration from, Russian culture. The influence of Russian literature has been most remarkable, but the enthusiasm in Russian culture has been multifarious, found in the fields of theater, ballet, music, art, film, and so on. The Japanese admiration for Russian culture has remained active to this day. It never declined even in times of political/military/diplomatic conflicts such as the Russo-Japanese War, World War II, the Cold War, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This admiration has coexisted ambivalently with hostility toward Russia as a nation. The relationship of the Japanese with Russia has been highly ambiguous.

Introduction

Russia was among the Western powers that first attempted to approach Japan, which had been dormant in its isolation policy for two centuries. Commodore Perry’s rather threatening visit to the port town of Uraga in his fleet of kurofune (Black Ships) in 1853 is normally remembered as an incident that made Japan “wake up from the dream of peace,” but by a delay of a mere month Admiral E. Putyatin entered Nagasaki in his Pallada. Famously, I. Goncharov (1812–1891), the author of the 19th-century classic Oblomov was onboard Pallada as the secretary to the admiral. Together with Putiatin he landed on Japanese soil, was received by the bugyō (feudal magistrate) of Nagasaki and the ambassadors from Edo. Later he published Frigate Pallada to record his impressions from the trip which were neither objective nor fair. For instance, in the memoire he complains of the Japanese custom of serving tea without sugar.

Facing threatening visitors from the North, Japanese started to investigate Russia on their part. One of the major sources of information were accounts by castaways (returnees). The earliest recorded case of a castaway is that of Denbei from Osaka, who reached Kamchatka in 1695 and later taught Japanese at the command of Peter the Great in Moscow, never to return home. Another castaway, Gonza helped with the editing of a Russo-Japanese dictionary and a grammar book and taught at the School of Japanese founded in 1736 in St. Petersburg.

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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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