Chapter 3 - The 1890s and East Asia: Toward a Critical Cosmopolitanism

Summary

Writings about East Asia provide an invaluable archive to study 1890s understandings of cosmopolitanism. In this period that predated the extensive translation of East Asian literatures into English, the work of cultural and literary mediation was carried out largely by nonspecialists. Focusing on Japan and China respectively, this chapter compares the representation of East Asian cultures in Lafcadio Hearn’s Kokoro (1896) and Wo Chang’s Britain Through Chinese Spectacles (1897). Both writers sought to widen the aesthetic, ethical, and political horizons of English-speaking readers. This chapter argues for the need to look beyond orientalism in order to appreciate the complexity of writers’ critical engagement with cosmopolitanism, and to understand the aspirations and failures of cosmopolitanism in this period. 1890s writings about East Asia affected the world consciousness of the 1890s and simultaneously contributed to the processes of literary networking that opened English literature to wider exchanges and connections.