"The Cartography of Epistemology: The Production of ""National"" Space in Late 19th Century Japan"

Through careful reading of Shiga's Landscape, this dissertation demonstrates the complex processes of creating a tradition of topographic writings. On the one hand, Shiga's text embodies scientific discourses to explain the beauty of Japanese landscape. At the same time, he makes a link to a well-known traveler and scholar, Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714), who developed a new mode of writing about space and topography, movement across the landscape, and the relationship of spaces in the present to moments in the past. By separating Ekiken's spatial writings from conventional travel writing, this dissertation traces a genealogy of spatial writings from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. Ultimately, it articulates social imagination of national space and time for modern Japan, which was grounded in the aestheticization and naturalization of Japan's geographic beauty.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

East Asian Languages and Cultures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Toyosawa, Nobuko

Contributors dc:contributor

• Toby, Ronald P.

• History, Asia, Australia and Oceania

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3337944

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/87209