A Review of Academic Exchange between Japan and China

In this paper the author addresses several viewpoints to investigate cultural and academic exchange between Japan and China. In the latter half of nineteenth century, when Japan began to remodel herself into a modern nation-state, two trends of research for Chinese history emerged. One was Sinology, including Chinese philosophy and literature, and the other was Oriental history, not only for China proper but for Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia and Chinese Turkistan. In the same time, the traditional China set out to reform its regime, and some works of Japanese historians were translated into Chinese. A new trend of Chinese history in Japan, however, seemed to have no interest for China for all that many scholars of China had intimate acquaintance with Japanese scholars. Therefore the development of Sinology in China during twentieth century had no relation to the rise of Orientalism in Japan. On the other hand, most of Japanese Orientalists at that time had great interest in the Orientalists in Europe as rivals in research, but seemed to be unconcerned with the historical achievements in China. The academic exchange between Japan and China before World War II could not get over this difference in research paradigm and the author is afraid that current situation may be the same as one hundred years ago. One of hopeful approaches is, the author proposes, a foundation of comparative Sinology, which can take the difference of sinology between Japan and China into account