Japan and the Japanese : A postcolonial and gender analysis of Swedish travel writings in the Japanese society during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the Japanese women during the Tokugawa shogunate through Swedish travel narratives and their perspective of the Japanese culture. This will be executed through a qualitative textual analysis with focus on three different categories: Occupation, Appearance and Marriage & family. The main source of this essay is the travel narrative of the Swedish traveler Carl Peter Thunberg and his journey to Japan. Other Swedish travel narratives will be used as comparative material to Thunberg’s diary. The analysis will focus on postcolonial theory combined with a gender perspective which will serve as a base for this paper. The study argues that the Swedish view will impregnate their culture on to the Japanese woman. The paper will also show that a social hierarchy is reproduced where the Japanese woman is beneath the men