In 1898, the American China Development Company sent civil engineer William Barclay Parsons to China to survey and to help build a railway line connecting the northern and the southern regions. The organization had been formed in 1895 to garner industrial concessions and exclusive rights within the country, signaling Americans’ growing interest in that part of the world.Footnote 1 In addition to laying railroad tracks, Parsons believed that he was there to evaluate the Chinese potential for “industrial development.”Footnote 2 He found the country to be “interesting” but lagging behind the rest of the international community in its acquisition of new technology and ways of life since it was steeped in ancient customs. According to Parsons, China, therefore, required “a new birth … seeds for a new life” in order to become a “great nation” once again.Footnote 3 The Chinese had to eradicate outdated practices and adopt new ways, including the construction of a global consciousness, to survive modernity. Progressive Era beliefs in scientific methods and the possibility for individuals to effectuate positive change were transplanted with the civil engineer to China and, in turn, shaped his assessment of the country's capacity for advancement. Parsons's journey to China took place at a time when East Asia was imbued with new significance for U.S. political, ideological, and cultural modalities. While Europeans dominated the early era of interaction with Asians, by the late nineteenth century, unprecedented levels of trans-Pacific encounters spurred on by white Americans’ fascination for the exotic would reconceptualize the geopolitical meaning and importance of Asia for the United States.Footnote 4
These moments of global exchange between the United States and Asia highlight the unstable, fluid, and mobile processes in the production of racial, cultural, and national identities. The usefulness of what was then known as “the Far East” changed with evolving needs across historical time. Kristin Hoganson and Caroline Frank have detailed Americans’ search for adventure and bric-a-brac in Asia from the colonial period onward as a means to showcase their worldliness and sophistication through the reimagining of the domestic space.Footnote 5 Literary scholars have expounded upon the influence of Asian poetic styles on the work of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams.Footnote 6 And yet others have studied the intersection between the appeal of the “light … offered from the East” and the reshaping of American and European notions of nationalism.Footnote 7 In particular, historian John Tchen has maintained that Americans’ long-standing interest in Chinese goods had created intercultural zones that affected the development of American ideals and values.Footnote 8 However, Tchen posits, by the late nineteenth century, anxiety over the so-called Yellow Peril, as embodied by the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, worked to marginalize the impact of Asian cultures in the United States. This did not mean, though, that Asia disappeared altogether from the American cultural horizon. During this point in time, as T. J. Jackson Lears and others have contended, the curiosity for unfamiliar foreign cultures became part of the strategy that the disaffected and disheartened American bourgeoisie utilized to come to terms with their increasingly urbanized and mechanized surroundings.Footnote 9 Feeling unmoored in the industrial era, some went across the Atlantic and became enchanted with what Old World Europe had to offer.Footnote 10 For others, however, it was Asia that held the promise of intellectual rejuvenation and spiritual resuscitation.
To be sure, Progressive Era travelers were not the first to turn to the Pacific for adventure and inspiration. Europeans and, specifically the British, were well-known for documenting their multitude of exploits in South Asia and other parts of the world. In fact, the late 1800s saw a proliferation of published travelogues by British globe-trotters.Footnote 11 Scholars of literary and cultural studies have been especially interested in exploring how Victorian women used travel writing and photograph albums as a way to forge an identity for themselves independent of the conventions of the era.Footnote 12 Many women of means were able to transgress expectations of gender and class when they were abroad, away from the carefully curated bounds of British polite society. Interestingly, more often than not, those same women who found a degree of liberation through their encounters with the exotic participated in the subjugation of the people of color they met by replicating racial stereotypes in their writings. At the time, the Britons who wrote about Indians were applauded for taking an interest in a marginalized group of people, but they nevertheless elevated themselves at the expense of the South Asian colonial subjects, creating what Indira Ghose and Ronald Inden have called a “hierarchical relationship” between the writers and their “objects of knowledge.”Footnote 13 According to Mary Louis Pratt, the imperial gaze produced through travelogues enabled both men and women to assert their dominance within British India and other colonies.Footnote 14 For most of these Britons who were part of a powerful empire, their writings served to bolster and to reinforce colonial rule.
Whereas the British had been seasoned world travelers for centuries, the vogue for wandering in foreign lands would take hold in the United States in the late nineteenth century. By this historical juncture, Americans—having solidified their continental ascendancy—were starting to look outward, toward the Pacific. As Julian Go and others have argued, the 1890s saw the beginnings of an American overseas empire with the acquisition of the Philippines and other territories after the Spanish-American War of 1898.Footnote 15 The foundations for empire-building were predicated upon and interconnected with ideas and perceptions of “Asianness” that would facilitate the United States’ increasingly global turn. The process of imperialism depended upon the simultaneous development of cultural, political, and socioeconomic institutions and systems of thought. President Theodore Roosevelt, writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others who had not been to Asia themselves but who made proclamations about the region from afar outnumbered those who wrote travelogues after journeying to China, Japan, and other Asian countries.Footnote 16 But in many ways, these two different kinds of discourses mirrored each other, often expressing similar sentiments. Just as British travelers had done for South Asia, many of the Americans who ventured abroad also would work to decipher the cultures and peoples of East Asia, a region that had a long history of exchanges with the United States. For instance, Protestant missionaries would memorialize their work in China, codifying some of the earliest American impressions of the country and its inhabitants.Footnote 17 Writers Percival Lowell and Lafcadio Hearn wrote at length about their visits to Asia, especially Japan; their works were well-known to contemporary readers of the Atlantic Monthly and other publications.Footnote 18 Going beyond written records, Theodore Wores and other American artists would craft a visual nomenclature through the artworks they created from their trips to Japan and other Asian countries. And as far back as the colonial era, merchants had brought back Asian objects such as porcelains, silks, and lacquerwares for the wealthy to display in their homes, further adding to the Asian presence in the United States.Footnote 19 By the last decades of the nineteenth century, with changes in global economies and advancements in transportation taking place amidst international cultural, political, and ideological transformations, Americans would no longer just collect Asian artifacts from a distance, but would instead come into closer contact with Asianness in situ.
The Progressive Era marked a new epoch and mode of transnational interchange that made possible the reinvention of the U.S. worldview through the interpretation of selected Asian traditions and the state of development in China and Japan. More and more, Americans considered “the East” and “the West” to be interdependent and coeval, galvanizing curious sightseers to venture to China and Japan. In the 1870s, it got to the point that the prominent Japanophile, William Elliot Griffis, protested that “the circummundane tourists have become so frequent and temporarily numerous in Yokohama as to be recognized as a distinct class.”Footnote 20 The presence of globe-trotters would be felt even more keenly in China, with tour books accentuating its exoticism.Footnote 21 The rising number of Americans in East Asia would engender ideological shifts that were articulated through the writings, guidebooks, and other sources produced by and for travelers. This article argues that travel writings revealed how white Americans’ increased interactions with Asian peoples and customs represented broader cultural and political currents in the United States that led to the reification of modernist Orientalism, which called for the coterminous existence of tradition and innovation during the Progressive Era. Building upon earlier scholarship on United States–Asia relations, this analysis focuses on East Asia, a region that has been in the American popular consciousness since the eighteenth century. However, the Progressive Era turn toward the Pacific manifested itself in a different vein—one that reflected the intersectionality between modernity, cultural taxonomy, and racial discourses within the context of global exchange and the narrative of advancement. While focusing primarily on Americans who journeyed to China and Japan, this study also examines the work of a few Asian travelers who wrote and published in the United States as part of their effort to promote a new form of Buddhism. In so doing, they were able to help to cultivate the understanding of “the Orient” at a time when Asian voices were rendered invisible in U.S. cultural and intellectual spheres.
The American travelers analyzed in this article were from diverse walks of life, ranging from an engineer to Christian missionaries and curious middle-class sightseers. What is striking is that despite their disparate backgrounds and motivations for visiting East Asia, they frequently expressed similar sentiments about the modifications and adaptations that nation-states had to undergo to become “modern.” None of the writers identified themselves as progressives, but their points of view corresponded with reformers’ belief in the transformative power of eliminating outmoded customs and habits. This highlights the pervasiveness and the far-reaching influence of the Progressive Era ideals that percolated throughout American society and culture. The activities and writings of travelers like Hearn, Lowell, artist John La Farge, and others have been explored extensively by scholars and are not the subjects of this study.Footnote 22 With the exception of marine zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse, this article looks at travelers who are not particularly well-known and for whom little biographical information can be gleaned.Footnote 23 Their writings are nevertheless significant because they memorialized a wide array of observations on contemporary China and Japan. In their assessment of the Chinese and the Japanese, travelers carried the progressive worldview with them across the Pacific, using terms such as “the Orient,” “East,” “West,” “modern,” “traditional,” “civilized,” and “primitive,” among others, to describe what they experienced and encountered. Scholars in a multitude of disciplines and fields have underscored the ideological implications of these social constructs in recent decades.Footnote 24 The employment of these expressions throughout this article should not be construed as an endorsement of what they connote; rather, they are in keeping with the language of that historical era, and conjured up specific social, political, and cultural meanings and contexts for both the Americans and the Asians under examination.
Instead of being antimodernist, as Lears and other scholars have asserted, the fetishization of Asia, especially Japan, served as a way to rein in and define modernity for American purposes. Just as China needed to sprout “seeds for a new life,” it was believed that the United States ought to move forward into the “modern age.” Moreover, the act of categorizing and measuring the contemporary achievements and cultural offerings of China and Japan worked to integrate the young republic within late nineteenth-century global currents. American travelers like Parsons, the civil engineer, often reproduced the Progressive Era conviction that obsolete ways such as those of the Chinese needed to be abolished in favor of ushering in modern/Western efficiency and productivity. China had to be rescued by Americans. In contrast, certain practices such as Buddhism, albeit reconstituted through contact with communities outside of Asia, were perceived to be important tools for ensuring the well-being and vitality of contemporary societies amidst dramatic socioeconomic and political transformations happening around the world. The fascination for Asian ideals worked to connect seemingly divergent cultures and societies across geographical spaces and enabled Asian Buddhists who traveled to the United States to play a significant role as cultural interpreters. In the process, the Japanese strain of Buddhism was redefined as being “modern” and “scientific.” It was touted as having the power to transform and renew societies and was seen as an exemplary illustration of modernity, combining both the old and the new, as possessing the extraordinary capacity to alleviate the tension between traditional and modern praxes. Japan contained “the seeds” of change and was worthy of American admiration. These altered conceptions of tradition could then both impede and facilitate the restructuring of axes of power and interracial dialogues in these temporary contact zones where Americans met up with Asians. The development of historical places and geographical spaces in Asia and the United States were affected by the movement of peoples and ideas.
While this interest in Buddhism and other Asian practices might initially appear to be a break from the xenophobic fear of the Yellow Peril and the backlash against immigrant laborers in late nineteenth-century Progressive Era politics and society, the consumption of Asianness was a way for the American bourgeoisie to interweave the reclamation of their cultural status with colonialist discourses, forming a specific iteration of American Orientalism that contained the racialized other.Footnote 25 Indeed, the Orientalist system of thought that was created during the Progressive Era impacted American life and culture, but it was a more diverse and complicated one than the dialectical binary between “the West” and “the East” that Edward Said proposed in his seminal 1978 work, Orientalism. Said contended that “Westerners” generated imagined oppositional entities that demarcated the “civilized West” from the “primitive East” for their own political, social, and intellectual gain, enabling them to exert control over peoples of color.Footnote 26 Americans, however, did not see all of Asia as one monolithic unit. Instead, they believed that the Japanese were becoming “modern” while the Chinese were mired in “primitivity.” Tropes of deserving and undeserving Asians were fabricated and disseminated; whereas some transformed themselves for the better, others did not. Embedded with racial and cultural hierarchies, the Progressive Era faith in the possibility of engendering change for the sake of improving individual lives and national institutions was transported across the Pacific. Orientalism was, therefore, a process and not a static and self-contained entity. Asia became a reference point for determining the meanings of modernity and progress for late nineteenth-century Americans. In the end, the flow of culture, ideas, and peoples between Asia and the United States enabled white Americans not only to turn toward the Pacific, but to also begin to construct a global “modern” identity for themselves and to carve out a prominent role for the nation within the international community.
Dichotomies of Asianness
When marine zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse traveled to China in 1882, he was astonished and dismayed by the “wreck and ruin” that he encountered everywhere.Footnote 27 Morse, a Harvard-trained scholar, had first gone to Japan in June 1877 on a research trip to study mollusks and brachiopods. Within a month of his arrival, he was hired by the Meiji government as a professor of zoology at Tokyo Imperial University.Footnote 28 Morse would eventually be credited with bringing the theory of evolution to Japan in addition to mentoring the first generation of Japanese life scientists. While he was influential as a scientist, he would also acquire renown as an ethnologist and art connoisseur. His interest in Asian aesthetics and traditions led him to China during his third visit to Japan in 1882. Morse's belief in the power of reform to eliminate outdated and deleterious practices and institutions would serve as the lens through which he evaluated the Chinese and the Japanese.
Once considered a powerful and wealthy nation, by this time, the romantic vision of China had long disintegrated. It had lost several wars, including the two Opium Wars (1839–42 and 1856–60), and was thought to be defeated by various foreign powers.Footnote 29 For centuries, it had been an inspiration to other civilizations, but China was now regarded as “peculiar,” “dismal,” and “dilapidated.”Footnote 30 It was a “decaying civilization” that was economically impoverished and politically unstable, presumably all but conquered by its inability to keep up with modernity.Footnote 31 To Morse and others, the country “left the impression of neglect.”Footnote 32 Many late nineteenth-century visitors saw the Chinese as the epitome of a people who had been left behind by the progression of time. They were overly nationalistic and insular, and as American traveler Charles Hendley noted, the nation seemed to have remained unchanged in “its form or manner of living in hundreds of years.”Footnote 33
During this time, Americans would continuously compare China to Japan. The two countries were perceived as being on divergent developmental paths, with one destined to fade away while the other ascended to spectacular supremacy. Travelers who ventured to China would remark on its aesthetic and moral decline, which they deemed to be signs of the country's failure to evolve and to stay in step with the rest of the “modern world.” Conversely, the conception of late nineteenth-century Japan as the backwater would be recast as it became an imperial power. In many ways, the high praise heaped upon the Japanese reflected Americans’ approval of these Asians’ desire to become more like the West; they would be remade in the image of “civilized” and “refined” Americans. Downtrodden China, in turn, was the very manifestation of what the United States might become if it did not alter its narrow and shortsighted focus on domestic affairs, avoiding involvement in international matters. In pitting the Chinese against the Japanese, Americans promoted the division between different groups of Asians. It also replicated the fear of the diseased Chinese horde in the United States, a motif that was prevalent in Progressive Era racial and legislative politics.
Many sightseers believed that the Chinese character was innately debased. Bayard Taylor, who traveled to Asia in the 1850s, proclaimed that they were a “passive” and “listless” people.Footnote 34 This view would persist well into the late nineteenth century, when Hendley, Parsons, and others visited China. To begin with, they gave the impression of being unable to learn new languages and ideas, according to Hendley.Footnote 35 Even the physical features of the Japanese were “much better than those of the corresponding class of Chinese.”Footnote 36 Moreover, everywhere Americans went, they seemed to encounter the “dead leaden color” on the Chinese faces, “old and young, male and female.”Footnote 37 This infirmity was blamed on “the plague” caused by the allegedly insatiable appetite for opium.Footnote 38 The country appeared to have been rendered useless by its citizenry's fondness for the drug. In assessing the problem, Americans relegated the history of the forced importation of opium into China by the British to the periphery. Instead, addiction to the drug was perceived as the outward manifestation of an inherent flaw in the Chinese race. Methodist missionary Virgil Hart arrived in China in 1891 and wrote at length about the “degeneracy” caused by the indiscriminate use of opium.Footnote 39 As the representative of the U.S. Methodist Church and the eventual founder of two missions in central and western China, he thought that the Chinese necessitated moral and spiritual intervention to deal with this pressing problem.Footnote 40 Hart was emblematic of the reform impulse of the Progressive Era. Opium addiction led to “idleness, debauchery, poverty, the ruin of their physical strength, and the complete prostration of their intellectual and moral faculties … [rendering the Chinese] incapable of attending to any kind of business, insensible to every event.”Footnote 41 The drug habit not only caused moral decline but led to the collapse of the national economy and social order, and this delinquency was reflected in just about every facet of Chinese society.
For many American travelers, yet another sign of primitivity and incivility could be found in the ramshackle state in which ancient Chinese sites had been left. While on a boat ride on the Yangtse, headed toward Shanghai, Morse noticed what looked to be “prehistoric mounds.” He soon learned that they were “ancestral tombs, or burial places,” and observed that they were “in the most neglected and dilapidated condition.”Footnote 42 The traditional reverence for the dead was all but forgotten. Sightseers noted that other celebrated national monuments were likewise “entirely destroyed.”Footnote 43 Over and over again, Americans were surprised by the “shocking state” of antiquities.Footnote 44 The beleaguered Chinese government had deserted temples and shrines, allowing them to be pillaged by local villagers.Footnote 45 On the other hand, in Japan, even “three hundred years old [monuments were] … still freshly decorated with flowers.”Footnote 46 The Chinese seemed to be barbarians when evaluated against the purportedly more civilized Japanese. To Morse, the sight of “dreary, dirty-looking priests, shoes, stockings and all, fairly dingy with dirt” not only “present[ed] a striking contrast to the same class in Japan” but also served as further evidence of China's moral and cultural deterioration.Footnote 47
In contrast, the Japanese were moving out of centuries of isolationism under the Tokugawa Shogunate and becoming an industrializing, global civilization under the Meiji rulers.Footnote 48 On April 6, 1868, the emperor put forth an official edict ordering the country to “abandon absurd customs of former times” and “seek knowledge from all over the world” in order to ensure its national well-being and security.Footnote 49 Both salvation and dominance would come from the acquisition of Western methods and traditions. In their attempt to “enlighten” Japan, the liberal majority within the Meiji government hired American and European academics to teach science and English at Japanese institutions of higher learning. In spite of the barrage of criticism leveled by political and cultural conservatives who feared the loss of ancient values in the rush to Westernize, official teams of delegates were likewise sent out to Europe and the United States to help the Japanese acquire new technologies developed during the machine age.Footnote 50 Within the next few decades and until the death of the emperor in 1912, over three thousand foreigners were employed by the government as well. The French, the English, and the Germans dominated the judicial arena, while the Ministries of Education, Finance, and Foreign Affairs saw American influences.Footnote 51 The proactive acquisition of Western knowledge recalibrated previous American perceptions of Japan as backward, homogeneous, and narrow-minded. The industrializing nation was now seen as an exemplary model of modernity, one worthy of Asian and American emulation. Japan would be commended for its efforts to become more like the West.
In comparing the Chinese and the Japanese, many American visitors remarked that a nation's degree of civility was best reflected in its artworks, which represented the essential character and spirit of a people. Architectural designs and other art forms epitomized the historical circumstances within which they were created. Consequently, in order to assess a nation's cultural productions, one must also comprehend the conditions under which they were crafted.Footnote 52 Praising Japanese aesthetics for “driv[ing] out of our dwellings the nightmares and horrors of design we had before endured so meekly,” Morse and some visitors lauded the positive effects that a well-ordered home could have on the inner self and psyche.Footnote 53 The simplicity and sparseness of Japanese architecture and the “household art of Japan” were considered to be even more exceptional than those seen in the United States or Europe.Footnote 54
In stark contrast to the openness and airiness of Japanese houses, Chinese ones often were encircled and protected by a brick wall that led to an internal courtyard.Footnote 55 This design choice for residential dwellings seemed to symbolize the national insularity of this particular group of Asians. On his first visit to a private residence in China, Morse found that “there was no fire in the house, and no visible means of providing warmth; the apartments were dark, damp, and chilly, the floor was wet and cold.”Footnote 56 The kitchen was “gloomy and dirty. It was anything but appetizing to see so much dirt and to remember that here was to be prepared the dinner I was invited to eat.”Footnote 57 According to Morse, Chinese houses were not only aesthetically unattractive but also extremely uncomfortable for their occupants. For Hart, Chinese architecture was just as bewildering; home designs appeared to be odd and “incomprehensible.”Footnote 58 The seemingly inept Chinese were incapable of everyday housekeeping duties, leaving their homes “untidy and littered with all manner of waste.” Moreover, their domiciles were as “cheerless as prisons, —devoid of light and beauty.”Footnote 59 These architectural conventions demonstrated the overall cultural and artistic failings of the Asian civilization since they showcased “the Chinese lack of originality and progress of development.” To Parsons, the “construction of their houses illustrate[d] the regrettable side of their abilities—the want of thoroughness. In all their work they use[d] poor material and workmanship, so that their buildings [would] not stand close inspection, and [would] soon succumb to the ravages of time.”Footnote 60 He considered the Chinese to be devoid of modern know-how and techniques. The pagodas were “the only symmetrical things in Chinese architecture,” and they were not even original to China, but rather were inspired by India.Footnote 61 Ultimately, the “only taste which the Chinese exhibit[ed] to any degree, [was] a love of the monstrous.”Footnote 62
Many visitors, therefore, called for the Chinese to follow European design and form because they were “utterly destitute of original taste.”Footnote 63 It was only “the sight of … common products imported from England or France [that made] the country [China], and even the people, seem a little nearer and dearer to” the travelers.Footnote 64 Americans used familiar objects from the United States to make their visit to the Asian country more tolerable. Since it was commonly believed that a nation's socioeconomic conditions were directly related to its people's cultural ingenuity and artistic advancement, late nineteenth-century China was presumed to be incapable of producing aesthetically valuable objects. As such, foreign intervention was crucial in revitalizing the supposedly downtrodden Chinese. These Asians should and could no longer remain so isolated and nationalistic; they must change and innovate.
Nationalism and the Dangers of Xenophobia
In 1900, two years after the Treaty of Paris brought the Spanish-American War to an end, giving the United States control of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, Senator Albert J. Beveridge took to the floor of Congress to speak on “the Philippine question.” Urging Americans to move quickly into the Pacific world and to expand their authority over the islands, he argued that the Philippines would give the United States “a base at the door of all East.”Footnote 65 He feared that if the young republic did not establish its dominance as soon as possible, “every other progressive nation” would jump at the opportunity to do so because “the power that rules the Pacific … is the power that rules the world.” However, according to Beveridge, the true beneficiaries of the U.S. presence in the Philippines would be the “children of barbarism” who would receive orderly governance and enlightened civilization through their American guardians and protectors. Cultural and political objectives thus went hand-in-hand with the vision of an American economic empire in the Pacific world.Footnote 66
Reflecting this growing worldview, American visitors’ evaluations of late nineteenth-century East Asian societies were an extension of their belief that the United States needed to rethink its role within the international community and, in particular, the Pacific world. Moreover, this was in congruence with the Progressive Era precept in reforming society and groups of people for the better; the discourse of improvement dominated. The sense of moral superiority was implicit in Americans’ dealings with the Chinese, as they deemed themselves to be the best caretakers of inefficient and failing Asian nations. These travelers’ estimation of contemporary Chinese malaise signified their own fear of what might befall the United States if it did not keep up with global trends, including stepping up its connections with the Pacific world. The prevailing perspective was that all nations must change and engage with new and often unexpected domestic and international phenomena. Parsons concluded that the U.S. government had been overly “occupied” in the development of the domestic front, choosing not to “interfere in foreign affairs.”Footnote 67 Instead, the United States should “awake to the realization” of “opportunities” abroad and, more specifically, to embark on an “invasion, not only of China, but of other Oriental lands as well,” lest it face the same fate as the Chinese.Footnote 68 The language that Parsons used evoked a colonialist project that entailed the American “invasion” of foreign lands, but to him, it was for China's own benefit. The Asian country's inevitable destruction would be the culmination of its continued nationalistic tendencies and inward-looking mindset.
At the end of the nineteenth century, American visitors surmised that China's “extreme disinclination to change” would cause its eventual downfall. The “Chinese Wall” had prevented the infusion of much-needed innovations from the United States and Japan.Footnote 69 Rather than modifying outmoded infrastructures and habits, these Asians remained in “stagnant waters” and, consequently, seemed to be “hopeless of improvement.”Footnote 70 According to Hendley, who traveled throughout Asia in the early twentieth century, the desire “to be let alone” and to be “satisfied with her lot” would lead to the nation's undoing.Footnote 71 The Chinese were “centuries behind” the United States in every aspect.Footnote 72 To Parsons, their emphasis on teaching the classics like Confucianism instead of newly acquired knowledge in science and technology was one of the principal causes of their doom.Footnote 73 In fact, he declared that it was a nation that had “died centuries ago” and all that remained was “this deadness and arrest of development.”Footnote 74
One of the foremost challenges the Chinese faced was purported to be their propensity to distrust new ideas and peoples from the outside world. This “exclusiveness” had not only “shut China in from other nations” but had “prevented that flow of thought from within outward and from without inward, a reciprocal action which [was] as necessary for the development of a nation as [was] variation in physical and mental exercises for the development of an individual.”Footnote 75 Ironically, at a time when Americans were passing a series of nativist and exclusionist legislations that attempted to stem the flow of Asian immigrants into the United States, these travelers criticized the intolerance and racism they witnessed in China. Walter Del Mar, an American banker and journalist who wrote about his extensive travels in Asia in the late 1800s, claimed that the Chinese fear and suspicion of foreigners frequently turned to outright hatred:
The “arrogance” of the Chinese led to the “hereditary hatred of the foreigner and the conviction of superiority,” resulting in tensions and even violence.Footnote 77 Del Mar was dismayed to see that foreign quarters like Shameen (Shamian) Island in Canton had to be guarded by policemen and armed patrols to “keep [the] Chinese mob at bay” and to “protect” the residents.Footnote 78 The Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) was deemed to be the pinnacle of unwarranted Chinese xenophobia and fear of the “foreign devil.”Footnote 79 It was an anti-imperialist and anti-Christian movement that took place amidst domestic instability, a series of natural disasters, and increased foreign infringements within China.Footnote 80 Attempting to drive all Japanese, Europeans, and Americans out of the country, much of the young participants’ hostility had been directed toward missionaries, bringing about violence against Christians along with a series of attacks on foreign legations.Footnote 81 To American visitors, these years of chaos and bloodshed wrought by the “Boxer fanatics” signified the ultimate barbarity and savagery, the very symbol of Chinese depravity and anarchy.Footnote 82
The “solution of the Chinese problem” was to be an immediate transfusion of foreign initiatives and systems of thought for the Asian country's own good.Footnote 83 In fact, to Hendley and other American sightseers, the “childlike” Chinese often brought violence onto themselves.Footnote 84 The British seemed to have been justified in their “declaration of war with China in consequence of the oppression to which foreigners were subjected by the native authorities.”Footnote 85 The First Opium War of 1839 was supposedly caused by China's own recalcitrant and myopic adherence to nationalist agendas and abhorrence of outsiders. To Parsons, the Chinese “invited” conquest by “opposing” “Occidental reforms [and] methods,” especially in pushing back against trade with foreigners.Footnote 86 Instead of waiting for the Asian country to act, Americans like him believed that they should step in and force it to engage with the wider world and to obtain an infusion of new knowledge and “progress” in order to “regenerate” it.Footnote 87
The cities of Macau and Hong Kong were recognized as exemplary models of what the “New China” could become. By the end of the 1800s, both were occupied by European powers—the Portuguese in Macau and the British in Hong Kong. In contrast to other cities in China, visitors like Del Mar deemed them to be “picturesque” and “quaint.”Footnote 88 More importantly, Roland Kinney and his fellow American travelers considered these cities to be “modern.”Footnote 89 Late nineteenth-century guidebooks were extraordinarily effusive and enthusiastic about the improvements that foreigners had brought to the province of Canton, making the area “most esteemed” and worthy of the journey. It was filled with shops “for the purchase of lacker, silks, jewellery [sic]” that fulfilled American tourists’ consumerist proclivities.Footnote 90 In particular, Hong Kong was extolled for having a “good deal of beauty … [and] handsome streets.”Footnote 91 It was, according to the guidebooks, “well built,” “imposing,” and “striking.” The city had “large” and “handsome” homes on “roads and streets admirably made and kept,” and “exquisite” public gardens, generating “an air of comfort and luxury.”Footnote 92
It soon became clear that both the guidebooks and the visitors commended Macau and Hong Kong for being cosmopolitan, incorporating both Eastern and Western traits. In these two regions, the American sightseer could expect to find the comforts that he or she was accustomed to and not be subjected to the typical “‘Taipan’ hospitality,” since Western-style “hotels and club house[s]” provided “good accommodation.”Footnote 93 In addition, many shops supplied the Western amenities and goods that visitors might crave. All in all, American sightseers assumed that these two territories had been improved and enhanced by their European occupiers and colonizers. While visiting Hong Kong, artist Elizabeth Keith thought that it was “the most beautiful place [she] had ever seen.” This was not because the area embodied the best of what the Chinese had to offer, but rather that she “enjoyed hearing English voices once more” and relished the “pleasure” of seeing “Englishmen in their well-cut clothes.”Footnote 94 She favored the British colony because it reminded her of home; she was happy to be back in the company of other Europeans and white Americans. “Handsome” architecture and the “finest” harbor had been built by the British, made all the more idyllic by the presence of cavorting European children.Footnote 95 These Westernized areas were preferred “to any other place in China” because they were “less Chinese.”Footnote 96 Whenever possible, visitors were drawn to places that replicated the familiar.
Shameen Island, the “European community” in the city of Canton, was likewise praised by Del Mar and others for having “a pleasant promenade where the residents [took] their constitutionals and the native amahs play[ed] with the children, well-laid-out streets, and fine offices and dwelling-houses, as well as a church and a comfortable club which contain[ed] a theatre.”Footnote 97 For Albert Reese, a representative of the Smithsonian Institution who visited China in the 1910s, it was the best of what the country had to offer because it was “different from the Chinese Canton.”Footnote 98 The writer of one guidebook claimed that it had been a “swamp” that was “converted” into an “attractive” island settlement thanks to the hard work of foreigners.Footnote 99 And Reese maintained that Shameen Island was a “picture of wonderful fascination.”Footnote 100 In short, China was changed and beautified by Western presence. Other cities in the country also were beginning to feel the influence of American and European aesthetics and technologies, including the construction of foreign-style homes, public gardens “well stocked with flowers and ferns,” and railroads, among other things.Footnote 101 Western modes of living were being transplanted to China and were regarded as a move toward modernity and global integration for the Chinese.
New Buddhism, Hybridity, and Global Consciousness
In 1883, while traveling in Asia, Phillips Brooks, the rector of Boston's venerable Trinity Church, made a special effort to visit the temple in Bodh Gaya, India, where Buddha was believed to have attained enlightenment. During his trip, he declared that “this pilgrimage … [was] the duty of a minister who preaches to Bostonians” since “in these days … a large part of Boston prefers to consider itself Buddhist rather than Christian.”Footnote 102 Industrialization and urbanization in the postbellum United States had given rise to an influx of unfamiliar economic practices, cultural habits, and ethnic-racial peoples. These perceived disruptions to the status quo generated feelings of disquietude and alienation among bourgeois Americans and kindled their desire to bring order and meaning to their mechanized world. Sensing the growing interest in Buddhism among the New England middle class, Brooks felt obliged, as a local religious leader, to make an attempt to comprehend the allure of the seemingly mystical belief system. While he professed admiration for his congregants’ “strong attraction” to Buddhism and “aspects of life and kinds of thought very different from those in which all of us who live in New England were brought up,” he himself did not delve any further into Asian ideals when he returned home.Footnote 103 For others, though, who were “in search of Nirvana,” a reformed variety of Japanese Buddhism would be touted as the perfect incarnation of modernity and the solution to their search for spiritual inspiration.Footnote 104 At the same time, it would also enable Asian Buddhists who traveled to the United States to serve as cultural brokers in their effort to promote the religion outside of Asia.
Historian Arthur Versluis has argued that “the encounter of Oriental and Occidental religious and philosophical traditions, of Buddhist and Christian and Hindu and Islamic perspectives, must be regarded as one of the most extraordinary meetings of our age.”Footnote 105 He contends that such interchanges between the East and the West had left indelible impressions upon Europe and the United States, restructuring the course of cultural and intellectual developments in both regions. This was a compelling example of how the appropriation of Asianness impacted American society and culture. By the end of the nineteenth century, Parsons and other American travelers’ interest in Japan and its customs would be stoked by their admiration for the Asian nation's rise “from a condition far inferior to that of China” in just a few short decades.Footnote 106 They thought that the central strategy it used to achieve this meteoric ascent was the “consumption of foreign articles” and ideas.Footnote 107 Previously, under the Tokugawa regime, the Japanese had been “rabidly anti-foreign,” shunning anything new or different.Footnote 108 They had closed themselves off to the world. Del Mar averred that this period of isolationism had hindered national development and caused irreparable damage to the economic, social, and cultural sectors. While they had been “formerly bitterly opposed” to outside influences, they realized the error of their ways and were “well disposed” to new technologies and methods by the late nineteenth century.Footnote 109 The Meiji rulers’ policy reversal in the 1860s not only “opened” up Japan to the international community, but worked to encourage domestic development that brought prosperity to all classes of people.Footnote 110 The country was prosperous because, unlike China, it had reformed its xenophobic ways and embraced more efficient and technologically sound ideas and practices from the outside world.
Japan had attained such a heightened level of “civility” and “progress” by the early twentieth century that some American visitors felt that it should take on the responsibility of uplifting its less fortunate neighbors. Korea was especially in need of assistance. For some Americans who took side trips to the country, they could not help but make comparisons between it and the other Asian cultures they encountered. To Hendley, Del Mar, and others, Korea was deemed worse off than downtrodden China in all manners of life, “dirtier” and even more “uninteresting.”Footnote 111 The “Korean question” was of great importance to Japan and could only be resolved by the growing Asian empire.Footnote 112 Korea required and necessitated Japan's tutelage and aid. After besting the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and as it began to make its presence known in China, American travelers perceived Japan as being ready to take the “positive step” of colonizing Korea and “making it a part of her realm.”Footnote 113 This point of view was in keeping with official U.S. policies regarding the Pacific world. By 1908, the United States would enter into the Root-Takahira Agreement with Japan, essentially acquiescing to and permitting the Asian empire's colonization of Korea.Footnote 114 Japanese intervention was seen as an opportunity for improving the “pathetic” Koreans:
Even though Hendley and other American travelers pitied these people because they were no longer in possession of their own country, ultimately, they presumed that the Koreans were “better off” with their Japanese occupiers in control. The colonizers had brought advancements everywhere; there were countless benefits to Japanese rule. For instance, Hendley observed that whereas Koreans had destroyed the environment through indiscriminate clearing of the countryside, “denud[ing] the hills and mountains,” Japanese reforestation efforts were recuperating the ecological system and saving the country from a natural disaster.Footnote 116 Echoing Beveridge's sentiments regarding the Philippines, American visitors believed that the Japanese could help to raise up Korea, that positive changes could be produced through the domination of one nation over another. The desire for improvement seemed to trump all else.
Many of the travelers thought that Japan's superiority came about because it had “selected and adopted the best of everything” from foreigners while retaining its own traditions. By the early twentieth century, Del Mar maintained that the Japanese had the right to proclaim their “supremacy” within Asia:
This group of Asians seemed to be an exceptional mix of both Japanese and Western ideals. Even though Japan was undergoing rapid industrialization and Westernization, guidebooks for travelers put forth a romanticized image of a country that was holding onto “ancient features and implements” of the “long-gone times.”Footnote 118 It was “wise” enough to have retained the “counsel of both times; of the ancient time what is best; and of the latter so-called civilised time what is fittest.”Footnote 119 The country was so full of “national vanity” and assured of its abilities that it believed it was “destined to rule the whole of Asia” and beyond.Footnote 120 To Del Mar and other sightseers, Japan was becoming a global power by incorporating the latest Western technology while holding onto the very essence of Eastern spirit.
The reconceptualization of Buddhism as encompassing both Eastern and Western qualities was touted as a tangible illustration of Japan's successful fabrication of a global consciousness, a step that all nations, including the United States, must take. Japan had deftly evolved and transformed itself. This new framework for reimagining Japan and its cultural forms would impact American travelers’ evaluation of the country. While many Japanophiles had argued that Meiji Japan had been made all the better by its devotion to Buddhism, in actuality, the religion's appeal had been on a steady decline within the Asian country. In an attempt to convince the international community of its modernity, the Japanese leadership was systematically abolishing traditional customs and habits such as the use of ink brushes in favor of pencils. Adding to this was the Meiji government's desire to bolster and cement its authority by institutionalizing Shintoism over Buddhism. This state-sanctioned religious realignment became part of the nation-building process. The renewed emphasis on Shintoism had an ideological usefulness for the Meiji rulers since it was indigenous to Japan and dictated that the emperor was a divine being and the head of the religion, thereby granting him legitimacy and power to rule over Japan. Buddhism, on the other hand, was a foreign import that could destabilize the newly established imperial regime. In the face of persecution, devout Japanese Buddhists strove to reposition Buddhism as a “modern,” “scientific,” and “cosmopolitan” world religion.Footnote 121 For certain Buddhist leaders within Japan, the United States and its legions of uninitiated converts became a primary focus.
At this historical juncture, the ancient religion was “remodeled” so that it might “synthesize” the old and the new, benefiting the world over.Footnote 122 It became modern and hybridized, a version that combined Eastern and Western readings for the “general good” of humanity.Footnote 123 Both Asian and American disciples highlighted the notion that it could serve as the solution to the spiritual decay brought on by modernity. Interestingly, this recalibration of Buddhism provided Asian travelers the opportunity to serve as cultural intermediaries within the United States; they became important interpreters of Asian ideals. For instance, Ceylon's Anagarika Dharmapala, credited as being the first Buddhist missionary to the United States, gave a talk entitled “The World's Debt to Buddha” at the World's Parliament of Religions during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Proclaiming that all human beings yearned for “something higher,” he maintained that similar to the United States, ancient India had been the site of “spiritual struggle.”Footnote 124 As such, the “quest [for] truth … [and] a panacea for the evils of suffering” had led to the establishment of Buddhism.Footnote 125 The religion was presented as the key for unraveling the spiritual, socioeconomic, and cultural uncertainties that India had encountered. Dharmapala thus accentuated the efficacy and relevance of Buddhism for both the ancient and modern times as well as Eastern and Western civilizations. It was a viable tool that offered followers a way to realize “the essential, immortal self, transcending the relative world of life and death.”Footnote 126 Buddhists cultivated the perception that an understanding of Eastern beliefs—particularly the modern rendition of Buddhism—could serve as the antidote to problems generated by an increasingly materialistic and industrialized world. The ancient religion was marketed as a dependable buffer against modern decadence for both Asians and Americans. The primary “value” of Buddhism rested in “its possibilities for promoting peace, progress and the general happiness of the modern world in the future.”Footnote 127 It was the answer to the onslaught of modernity and mechanization in the West. It was not a surprise, then, that this specific brand of Japanese Buddhism would appeal to certain Americans who were looking for a cure that could assuage feelings of spiritual emptiness. Disgruntled Americans found this “Buddhism for all peoples” to be especially enthralling in their search for both solace and renewal.Footnote 128
Practitioners of this “New Buddhism” labeled it as a hybrid entity that cut across preexisting oppositions and joined together tradition and innovation as well as religion and science. First and foremost, it was touted as being “scientific.” Late nineteenth-century Americans were captivated by new scientific discoveries such as “the physiological facts of brain activity; the investigations of experimental psychology; and the religious and ethical aspects of soul-life.”Footnote 129 Since Buddhism was both “scientific” and “rational,” it was marketed as being in harmony with contemporary developments in the United States; most American and Japanese Buddhists rejected the version of Buddhism that focused on its mystical and esoteric nature. During this time, definitions of “science” included hypnotism and the occult. For instance, The Open Court, a monthly publication that provided a forum for the discussion of philosophy and science, contained many articles on visits to mediums; in fact, the Progressive Era saw “an increasing interest … in occult or mediumistic phenomen[a].”Footnote 130 There was, on the whole, a great deal of fascination with magic and other mystical occurrences.Footnote 131 Regardless of how unscientific Americans’ interests really were, the attempt to equate Buddhism with the sciences marked a concerted effort to make it appear “modern” so that it would appeal to a multitude of potential converts. Even though Japan was discarding its Buddhist traditions, many believed that the religion would “endure to reconcile its sublime declarations with … the discoveries of science, and [would] be … no enemy but a potent, constant ally” for modern America.Footnote 132 Christianity, on the contrary, was not “scientific” because it remained untouched by the latest innovations, according to K. Kino, a Buddhist missionary from Japan who wrote about Buddhism for American readers.Footnote 133 He insisted that religious traditions must “not contradict scientific investigation.”Footnote 134 Ultimately, the most advanced theories of modern science were “in harmony with the fundamental teaching” of Buddhism.Footnote 135
More specifically, Buddhists went on to argue that the ancient practice was scientific because it was the very embodiment of Darwinism. Kino and a number of followers of Buddhism contended that religions, like all living beings, must go through the process of natural selection—only the most worthy would survive.Footnote 136 This was reminiscent of the American travelers’ insistence on the need for China and the United States to transform themselves—nations also must constantly evolve. D. T. Suzuki, a Japanese Buddhist recognized for traveling throughout the United States and Europe to teach Buddhism, asserted that all belief systems ought to change with the demands of the time and were “surely doomed” if they remained “rigid as a corpse and not amenable to the laws of evolution.”Footnote 137 On an individual level, it was the very ability to adapt that enabled human beings to achieve Nirvana.Footnote 138 Reincarnation was explained in scientific terms akin to the Darwinian theory of evolution.Footnote 139 The “cycle of re-birth” would continue until “universal knowledge is attained.”Footnote 140 According to this modern redefinition of Buddhism, “the law of evolution” encouraged the disciple to endlessly strive for self-improvement.Footnote 141 To American travelers who encountered Buddhism, it was, in essence, “a doctrine of evolution.”Footnote 142 This line of thought hinged upon the supposition that the “soul is a process.”Footnote 143 For many, “the Buddhist doctrine of impermanency is the doctrine also of modern science.”Footnote 144
The famed American Buddhist, Williams Sturgis Bigelow, is a noteworthy example of someone who integrated Darwinism with the Asian religion. In 1882, the Bostonian was so inspired by a series of lectures Morse gave on Japan that he left for the country soon thereafter. During his stay, Bigelow became mesmerized by Buddhism and converted to the ancient religion. He would write about Buddhism and continue to practice it after returning to the United States. In his writings, Bigelow quoted Darwin and averred that not only were physical traits capable of being inherited and changed but “the process of evolution” also enabled the soul to arrive at the highest level of “universal consciousness.”Footnote 145 In fact, he believed that Buddhists could now selectively choose to leave “the limitations of material existence” and to reach the highest plane of consciousness given that they had “come a long way up in the scale of evolution guided by natural selection.”Footnote 146 To Bigelow, Kino, and certain adherents, then, Buddhism was “the treating of evolution and devolution of sentient beings by their merits or demerits done during their past and present lives, and the practice or realization of this principle by them. In this sense … the theory of evolution is partly the expression of the grand and magnificent theory of evolution and devolution treated in Buddhism.”Footnote 147 Direct correlations were made between the Asian religious tradition and modern scientific views. This redefinition attracted American travelers like Bigelow and it echoed the Progressive Era faith in a future fueled by technology, efficiency, and ingenuity, even when it came to matters of spirituality.
As an example of Buddhism's ability to evolve and adapt, Suzuki and its followers pointed out that it frequently aligned itself with indigenous traditions.Footnote 148 This malleability was noticeable even to the non-believers. While in China, Hart, the Methodist missionary, observed that new deities were created to suit regional beliefs in order to convert local residents.Footnote 149 It not only “tolerated” existing customs but, moreover, sought to “cultivate” and “elaborate” further upon them to win over hearts and minds.Footnote 150 On the whole, the religion had gone through “many transformations throughout the countries of its journey; in China it assumed the Chinese fashion; in Korea it wore the Korean costume; in Japan it also was assimilated to the national atmosphere; and even in the same country it was differently affected according to the varied times.”Footnote 151 This capacity to mutate in accordance with changing environments and to be transplanted to foreign lands ensured its survival. This was, ultimately, in keeping with the Darwinian theory of evolution and ideals of modernity.
Additionally, Buddhists emphasized the syncretism between Christianity/the West and Buddhism/the East, so much so that the new iteration of Buddhism was nicknamed “Protestant Buddhism.” They often pointed to the possibility of attaining salvation or Nirvana through self-help and hard work, which were analogous to the methods employed by Christians to guarantee a good afterlife. In a similar vein, Shaku Soyen, who had served as a Rinzai Zen representative at the World's Parliament of Religions, stressed commonalities between the East and the West, likening Buddha not only to Jesus Christ but to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as well.Footnote 152 Therefore, Japanese Buddhist leaders intentionally and selectively modified the religion to suit the needs of the scientific and mechanized United States. Buddhism was portrayed as a complement to Christianity in order to garner popular support, in the process creating a cosmopolitan prototype that incorporated both classical and modern interpretations as well as Eastern and Western outlooks.Footnote 153 Even though devout Asian and American practitioners stated that they were not following “debased modern Buddhist” principles, but instead adhering to those dictated by the religion's founder, in reality, Progressive Era Buddhism had become a hybridized version of what it had once been.Footnote 154
In time, American travelers like Bigelow and Morse saw the Japanese rendition of Buddhism as a viable alternative for grappling with the devastation caused by modernity and for uplifting unrefined cultures; their understanding of the religion conformed to and was shaped by that of the modern Buddhists. China, hence, could be rescued by a renewed devotion to Buddhism. The problem with the Asian country, according to Sinologist and missionary James Legge, was that it practiced a perplexing mix of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.Footnote 155 Initially, the introduction of Buddhism to the Chinese had served to “elevate their thoughts and give some tinge of spirituality to their worship.” Unfortunately, though, the “material aims of the Confucian were brought into collision with the higher and spiritual aspirations of the Buddhist.”Footnote 156 At best, Buddhism was “tolerated” or met with “passive indifference”; at worse, it had been tarnished and polluted by Confucianism.Footnote 157 To Hart and other travelers, Chinese practitioners held fast to a corrupted form of Buddhism that focused on outdated modes of thinking, appealing more to “the fears” of its practitioners.Footnote 158 Furthermore, the country had been tainted by the influence of Daoism, whose priests were comparable to the “sorcerers” of Egypt.Footnote 159 Lamentably, Buddhism had not successfully “obliterated an ancient faith … the superstitious and long-exercised customs [of Daoism] show[ed] through its flowing folds.”Footnote 160 China, these travelers believed, needed to shed its stubborn adherence to superstition. The cure for Chinese malaise and savagery was to revive the waning interest in Buddhism, the foundation upon which the civilization had been constructed. The disappearance of the belief system had caused socioeconomic and political instabilities in the once-prosperous and cultivated country. China had to unite both modern and traditional elements in order to persevere like Japan. Morse claimed that “in all these brief glimpses I could not help contrasting the vigorous and healthy condition of Buddhism in Japan; the fresh-looking temples, though hundreds of years old, so carefully kept and repaired, the surroundings so cleanly swept and in perfect condition, with the utter destitution and decay of the same monuments in China.”Footnote 161 He perpetuated the myth that Japanese exceptionalism was tethered to Buddhism at the very moment that the country was moving away from it. This signified a yearning for a bygone era, but also constituted a warning to the modernizing world to turn toward the religion—purportedly “the most normal and perfect among all the religions, at least, it is a more normal and healthy religion than Christianity … in which you will find your eternal and perpetual refuge.”Footnote 162 Buddhism, in sum, had lifted some Asians out of the backwater and could do the same for Americans.Footnote 163 Its true gift was that it was an amalgamation of the East and the West as well as the old and the new.
Conclusion: The Utilities of Modernist Orientalism
Throughout the Progressive Era, Americans transitioned toward the creation of an international perspective, in part through particular kinds of interaction with East Asian peoples and cultures. It was not the first time the United States had turned to the Pacific, but this historical moment saw China and Japan take on different meanings for Americans. While many continued to consume the imported Asian goods that had served as a marker for worldliness among intellectual and cultural elites since the colonial era, others traveled to the places from whence the products came in order to experience the cultures in situ. In so doing, they became especially interested in ancient Japanese traditions such as Buddhism and considered it to be a panacea for modern decadence. This was not a rejection of modernity and industrialization in favor of Old World values, but rather a tactic for reining in and making sense of the changes taking place around them.
The question at hand for many Americans was how to evolve and become “modern,” to germinate “seeds for a new life” that would ensure the prosperity and well-being of the United States amidst momentous global changes. In the process, they constructed a new framework for imagining certain parts of Asia. During this era, a modernist iteration of Orientalism was created. It was built upon and coexisted with earlier views. In the past, China had been celebrated and praised as an unchanging civilization with thousands of years of continuous, unbroken history. Its ancient ways and obstinate devotion to longstanding practices had been its bulwark and saving grace. Wealthy Americans coveted the porcelain wares, paintings, silks, and other luxury goods merchants peddled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. China was deemed to be an ancient, powerful civilization, deserving of American adulation. By the 1880s, though, it was reclassified as a nation on the verge of collapse, with foreign powers jostling for political and economic control within its borders. What once had been admiration and wonder had by the Progressive Era turned to a sense of moral obligation to reform China in order to save it from itself since it was unable to keep up with modernity. In this reworked Orientalist narrative, visitors like Roger Sprague, an American who taught in China in 1910, disparaged it as the “stand-still kingdom,” incapable of evolving into a higher state of civilization.Footnote 164 Within the progressive discourse of improvement, it was slow in “awakening” to the wondrous benefits of what the United States and European nations could offer. And even when it attempted to adopt Western practices, misunderstandings permeated, resulting in undesirable “Chinesified” iterations. Lamentably, it remained “incredibly primitive” in spite of its efforts; it was “still China and always will be.”Footnote 165 Modernist Orientalism now required Asians to embody the best of the old and the new, to be simultaneously traditional and innovative.
Japan, on the other hand, was reconstituted as a potential force for bringing forth positive transformations in the region. To American travelers like Sprague, Hendley, Parsons, and Hart, China seemed to be emblematic of the past, while Japan represented what the future could hold. The Japanese had been even “more backward than China” in years past, but they were able to “raise themselves until they rank[ed] in arts, arms, and science with the leading nations of the world.”Footnote 166 By the late nineteenth century, they were industrializing and propelling themselves toward international domination, vying with the most powerful nations for economic, political, and imperial influence. Yet the Japanese did not appear to encounter the same social and cultural strife that the travelers experienced back home. Morse, Bigelow, and other Americans credited this with Japan's ability to retain its reverence for ancient ways of life in the midst of remarkable modernization. More specifically, the Japanese adherence to ancient religious tenets was lauded as an exemplary strategy for navigating modernity and its pitfalls.
This fascination for Japanese ideals was symptomatic of a kind of modernist Orientalism that underscored the usefulness of certain aspects of Asian cultures for turn-of-the-twentieth-century societies. In the process, a rendition of Asianness that encompassed the modern and the traditional would be codified. This was not a radical departure from previous Orientalist views, but rather a reinterpretation of the significance of East Asia for Americans who were on the precipice of modernity in the Progressive Era. The people of Japan gave the impression of having moved out of the binary of the old and the new, the East and the West, forming a hybrid, integrated identity. They had unearthed the “seeds for a new life.” For American travelers, then, this Asian country served as a superb template for modernity. If the United States did not “adopt the new,” choosing instead to cling “obstinately to the old style,” it would soon be “superseded” and eclipsed by other rising powers.Footnote 167 Indeed, Japan's impressive, rapid ascent would be regarded with both anxiety and appreciation by Americans and Europeans as it became increasingly seen as a challenger for control within the Pacific.
Many travelers like Parsons realized that this was a pivotal moment in world history as nations were “about to pass from the old into the new state of things.”Footnote 168 The United States, they believed, must not only follow suit but be a leader in this global trend. This constituted a seismic ideological shift from the earlier focus on domestic development and reforms. In many ways, the desire to transform society and individuals for the better during the age of industrialization within the United States would be reflected in the views of travelers to Asia. The creation of hybrid cultural forms such as New Buddhism was deemed to be an illustration of modernity. The blending and merging together of different entities in the East and the West was perceived to be necessary for the dawn of the modern era. Modernity was not just about embracing the new while discarding the old. In the end, beyond redefining aesthetic and religious landscapes, the consumption of “the Orient” enabled many Progressive Era travelers to simultaneously forge a lexicon of modernity and to manufacture a global consciousness for the United States.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the anonymous peer reviewers for their suggestions and insights. I would also like to thank the members of the Asian American Women Historians Writing Group, who read and commented on one of the drafts. Finally, a Faculty Research and Writing Grant from the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University helped to facilitate the completion of my work on this article.
