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Simeone, John B.
1968.
1968 Annual Supplement.
p.
1.
Article contents
The Britain of the East? A Study in the Geography of Imitation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Extract
To an Englishman of my generation, whose schooling took place during the 1920–30s, the practice of comparing Japan with Britain has long been a commonplace. School geography lessons on Japan invariably began with a reference to the temperate offshore island kingdom of eastern Asia as the ‘Britain of the East’, and this theme was often elaborated to include the characterization of Osaka and Kobe respectively as the Manchester and Liverpool of Japan. But following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 the climate of opinion began to change, and so did the analogy. In 1936, Freda Utley, in a book which attracted widespread interest, observed:
Although the real Japan comes a little closer to being the Prussia of Asia than the Britain of Asia, it is fundamentally unlike all these romantic pictures, and in so far as it resembles another country, that country is Russia under the tyranny of the Tsars.
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References
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2 Although the opening sentence of the chapter on Japan in the 12th edition of Stamp, L. D., Asia, London, 1967, refers to the analogy, it implies that it is of limited validity, as does a similar reference inGoogle ScholarSchwind, Martin, Das Japanische Inselreich, Vol. I, Berlin, 1967, p. 8.Google Scholar
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27 Vladivostok was normally icebound for five months in the year.
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39 Black dragon is a symbolic name for the Amur river.
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