Published on June 22, 2020
Job titles and other details are as of the time of publication.
(The interview was conducted in Japanese and was thereafter translated into English.)

Exploring the Image of the East in the Eyes of 18th Century France

My research areas are 18th century French literature and the history of thought, with a special focus on the French Encyclopédie.

The Encyclopédie is the French encyclopedia produced and published over the span of more than 20 years between 1751 and 1772. Coordinated by the Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot and others, the work have resulted in a massive 35-volume publication upon completion, consisting of 17 volumes of text, 11 volumes of illustration plates, 4 volumes of supplements, 1 volume of plate supplements, and 2 volumes of index.

As its subtitle “A Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts” indicates, the Encyclopédie is a monumental enterprise rationally covering and assembling in one publication all branches of human intellectual activity.

The main objective of my research is to understand how the East, Japan and China in particular, was perceived in 18th century France, a society that gave birth to the Encyclopédie. Japan is mentioned in as many as 389 articles in the 17 text volumes alone (excluding plates and supplements). As for China, there are no less than 711 articles.

Presumably, the writers did not travel to Japan and write the articles from direct observation; they must have relied on earlier studies about Japan. I therefore set my sights on these original studies, namely the sources of the Encyclopédie’s articles. What works of literature were chosen for this project? Which passages and chapters were used? Was information added or deleted, and if so, why? In the early days of my research, I primarily examined the sources related to the images of the East.

Presently, however, my interest lies in the act of writing something based on the sources, or reorganizing knowledge, rather than identifying the sources associated with specific disciplines. I will explain this shift in interest later in the article.

My Student Days that Saw a Shift in Interest from the French Revolution to the Ideologies Guiding the Revolution

In high school, I encountered the theory of hybrid culture proposed by Japanese critic Shuichi Kato. This theory made me acutely aware that the society in which I lived, namely Japan in the latter half of the 20th century, was under the influence of Western culture. In other words, I realized that I needed to thoroughly understand Western culture in order to comprehend myself and the society I lived in.

Modern-day Japan saw an influx of various cultural elements from the West, with the prime example being democracy. My interest in the French Revolution, triggered by the storming of the Bastille in 1789, an event I had studied in my world history class, sparked the desire to pursue research on the French Revolution that served as a catalyst for democracy.

My interest was not in studying the individual political developments but in analyzing democracy by going back to its origins, so I chose to enroll in the faculty of letters at university. Soon after entering the university in 1987, I promised myself to be in Paris in two summers’ time, when on July 14, 1989, France would be commemorating the bicentennial of Bastille Day. I wanted to be there in Paris, the capital of France, to experience that moment.

To achieve my goal of visiting France, I enrolled in an intensive French language course instead of the regular course. The cross-faculty course held a fifth period session four-times a week, during which I underwent rigorous training to develop practical language skills. Taking heed of my past failure in learning English, I worked extremely hard to master French.

My efforts paid off and I improved to a conversational level in French, so I set off for France in 1989 during the summer vacation in my third year at university. I stayed two months, from the end of June to the end of August. It was my first overseas trip, but I made a deliberate choice not to make detailed plans. I spent the first two weeks in Paris and then travelled around the country with a Eurail Pass. I also visited Berlin in Germany, and little did I imagine then that the Berlin Wall would come down just two months later. You never know what’s around the corner.

I should mention that the Bastille Square, the main focus of my trip, was occupied by the newly completed Opera House at that time and failed to arouse any particular emotion in me. Not that this had any relevance, but my interest in the French Revolution began to shift to the current of thought which led to that uprising. While studying 18th century France in depth, I encountered the Encyclopédie and found resonance with the critical thinking that sifts everything through the sieve of reason.

On the one hand, there I was—a 20th century Japanese man—trying to grasp 18th century French culture. On the other hand, that spirit of a foreign culture had tried to comprehend a culture—Japanese culture—which is foreign to its own.

I thought about the views towards the East in the eyes of 18th century France, and imagined that if I were to peer into that view, I would see both elements of the West and the East as reflected in a mirror that was the West. Deeply intrigued by this idea, I decided to illuminate how Japan and China were presented in 18th century French society by studying, as mentioned at the beginning, the Encyclopédie’s literary sources.

Why Did the Encyclopédie’s Editors Create a Comprehensive List of Geographic Names?

The Encyclopédie is a massive work. The text alone comprises 17 volumes, with each containing around 1,000 pages. Back when I started studying the Encyclopédie, there was no digital text like we have today, so the first thing I did was go through all 17 volumes page by page.

I kept a close watch and searched for the character strings Japon/Japonois and Chine/Chinois, and when I came across them, I typed each entry into my computer to create a database. Next, I classified the entries based on their topics. For example, an entry about names of a location would go under “geography,” and an article explaining the process of pottery making was categorized as “technology.” Finally, I looked up the literary sources and analyzed what pieces of information the authors chose to use and how they presented that information in their contributions.

As I repeatedly went over the database I had created, I became fascinated by how the geography database functioned like a catalog.

The Encyclopédie geographic articles are paragraphs of a mere two to five lines, and are neither particularly engaging nor profoundly educational. Yet once organized in a list, the comprehensive set of articles is inexplicably powerful, and makes you appreciate the sheer effort of its editors to create a full list of geographic names.

Why was a list of proper nouns, namely geographic names, contained in the dictionary? Why was it inevitable that such a list be included? While investigating the reasons behind the choices and uses of the sources, I began to ask the same questions of “why?” about the field of geography.

The most complete geographic dictionary during the time the Encyclopédie was published was Bruzen de La Martinière’s Grand Dictionnaire Géographique et Critique. Bruzen had been critical of the geographic dictionaries that preceded his work. By comparing these dictionaries, we learn that the academic perceptions of geography itself underwent a gradual transformation, from a knowledge discipline to a modern academic discipline. The Encyclopédie is a product of this transitional period. Through researching the sources, I was able to witness the process of knowledge transformation.

Follow a Link and Stumble across New Topics of Interest—Herein Lies the Thrill of a Career in Research

I am aware that the direction of my studies has deviated from my initial research aims I had when I first began studying 18th century French literature and the history of thought. But I firmly hold the view that herein lies the thrill of pursuing a career in research.

While studying a certain topic, you always develop an awareness of other issues. That awareness leads you to delve into different topics, only to discover an unexpected fascination with them. This is the concept of “links.” While engrossed in an online article, you click a link and stumble across utterly unexpected information, which helps broaden your interests and areas of study.

Put differently, this is the kind of personal growth achieved only through deep emersion in the study of a topic. That is what I routinely tell my students. I hope that sometime during their days of fervent research they will stumble across a goldmine at the end of a “link.”