著者

薄 培林

出版者

関西大学東西学術研究所

雑誌

関西大学東西学術研究所紀要 (ISSN:02878151)

巻号頁・発行日

no.47, pp.207-224, 2014-04

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In the late nineteenth century, the international order in East Asia was undergoing a transition from tradition to modernity. Relations among the nations in the region were being radically transformed. In the 1870s, confrontation between the Japanese and Chinese governments regarding sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands was aggravated. In the midst of these difficulties, the late-Qing intellectual Wang Tao (王韜) was invited by Japanese scholars of Chinese literature and culture to Japan, where he made the acquaintance of many Japanese intellectuals of the period. Wang Tao's visit took place immediately after the Meiji government had carried out the "Ryukyu shobun" (policies that eventuated in the annexation of the Ryukyus by Japan as Okinawa Prefecture), a time when tensions between China and Japan had reached a new level. This paper focuses on the issue of the Ryukyus as a source of conflict between Japan and China in the 1870s and 1880s. It analyzes the related writings by Wang Tao and his Japanese acquaintances such as Nakamura Masanao (中村正直), Shigeno Yasutsugu (重野安繹), and Oka Senjin (岡千仞). It examines the question of how Japanese and Chinese intellectuals perceived the international status and identity of the Ryukyus in the rapidly changing East Asian international order, and how they associated the Ryukyu issue with Sino-Japanese relations at the present and the triangular relations of China, Japan and the Ryukyus in the future. At the same time, this paper will highlight the contradictions between the perceptions of these intellectuals concerning the Ryukyu issue and their proposals to "Develop Asia" (興亜), and analyze the nature of the intellectual shift toward modernity manifested in the perceptions of international relations and global politics by the Chinese and Japanese intellectuals of this period.