Kangaku and the State

This article examines the response of kangaku 漢学, or traditional sinological study, to modernity in Japan and colonial Korea by focusing on institutionalization and the interactions between scholars of traditional sinology in Japan and colonized Korea. In the Japanese Empire, kangaku actively demonstrated that it could contribute to the nation-state and became a part of the modern educational system, including the Imperial University. The favorable atmosphere toward kangaku in the Japanese Empire also enabled the institutionalization of kangaku in colonial Korea. The process of institutionalization there was deeply influenced by the traditional network of Japanese sinologists. Traditional sinologists in Japan and colonial Korea were able to cooperate based on a shared “shibun (斯文 “This Culture of Ours”) consciousness,” a kind of consciousness of crisis that originated in the Analects. The shibun consciousness was rooted in the traditional literary world, where borders and contemporaneity were relatively ambiguous. Within the university system, kangaku gradually faced the pressure of specialization and elaboration of modern scholarship and the demands of the nation-state. Thus, successive generations of Korean and Japanese sinologists moved toward a new modern ideology that went beyond “shibun consciousness

Ancient history · China · Colonialism · Consciousness · Economics · Economy · Empire · Ideology · Institutionalisation · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sinology · Sociology · State (computer science · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy

• Japan's Orient

  Stefan Tanaka•Japan's Orient•1994

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• Chinese Learning (kangaku) in Meiji Japan (1868–1912)

  Open Access•Matthias Mehl, Margaret Mehl•History•2000

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