The image of Japan in Czech society of second half of 19th century

This master's thesis intends to capture the image of Japan in Czech society, which was formed in the second half of 19th century. Japan, a country previously almost unknown for European people, had transformed itself from a faraway, mysterious Far Eastem country into a world power during fifty years, which naturally resulted in change of its image in Europe. Reconstruction of historical image in certain society is dependent on sources, which had the greatest influence on view of the world of people of that time. fu this thesis, those sources are divided into two categories, "image-creating" and "image-forming". The first one is historical school textbooks of geography, which had the most significant impact on students' way of creating image of the world in their mind. fu the second category, there are newspapers, magazines, caricatures and encyc1opedias, which helped those student s form images in their adult !ife. In the first part of this thesis, I compare the image of Japan and that of China In order to highlight Japan's uniqueness and specificity, how much it was emancipated from traditional image of Asia, and how much the image was supported by facts. In the second part, I try to analyze four most important aspects of image of Japan in the Czech society at that time. First one is based on questions,..