With introductory chapters on Japan's historic love-hate relationship with China, the author goes on to explore his subject under five main themes: Europeanization fever and conservative reaction, which includes a discussion on Samuel Smiles's "Self-Help" - the best-selling guidebook for Meiji Japan's modernization; from war to peace, which includes an analysis of Takeyama Michio's "Harp of Burma" (1948) and the image of former British enemies; attempt at reciprocal elucidation, which includes an appraisal of the "Divine Comedy" from a Japanese perspective; Lafcadio Hearn's "Understanding of the Ghostly World of the Japanese", including a chapter on animistic belief and its use in Japanese literature; and Japanese writers between East and West, including an evaluation of Takamura Kotaro's love-hate relationship with the West.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Part I: Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with China; 1–1 Chinese Culture and Japanese Identity: Traces of Bai Ju-yi in a Peripheral Country; 1–2 National Poetics and National Identity; 1–3 The Awakening of Asia; Part II: Japan’s Turn to the West; 2–1 The Meaning of Dutch Studies in Tokugawa Japan; 2–2 Japanese Experience Abroad; 2–3 Teachers of ‘Arts and Sciences’: Foreigners in Meiji Government Employ; 2–4 First Translations from Western Literature; 2–5 Reaction against ‘Slavish’ Westernization; 2–6 Rokumeikan: the Europeanization Fever in Comparative Perspective; 2–7 Benjamin Franklin and Fukuzawa Yukichi: Two Autobiographies Compared; Part III: Return to the East; 3–1 Yearning for the West and Return to the East: Patterns of Japanese and Chinese Intellectuals; 3–2 Uchimura Kanzo and America: Reflections on the Psychological Structure of Anti-Americanism; 3–3 The Yellow Peril and the White Peril: The Views of Anatole France; 3–4 Natsume So¯seki and His Teacher James Murdoch: Their Opposite Views on the Modernization of Japan; Part IV: From War to Peace; 4–1 Signals of Peace Not Received: Premier Suzuki Kantaro’s Efforts to End the Pacific War; 4–2 R. H. Blyth and Hirohito’s Denial of the ‘Divine’ Nature of the Japanese Emperor; 4–3 Prisoners in Burma; 4–4 The Image of Former Enemies in Takeyama Michio’s Harp of Burma (1948); Part V: Attempt at Cross-Cultural Elucidation; 5–1 Aesop’s Fables and their Japanese Translations: An Attempt at Comparative Work Ethics; 5–2 The Divine Comedy and the No Plays of Japan: An Attempt at Reciprocal Elucidation; 5–3 Dante’s Inferno from a Japanese Perspective; 5–4 How to Go into Inferno in the Literatures of East and West: Brecht’s Adaptations of the Japanese No Play Taniko; 5–5 Arthur Waley’s Aesthetics in Translating the No Play Hatsuyuki; 5–6 Love in the West, Friendship in the East: Poetical Predilections as Perceived by Arthur Waley and Natsume Soseki; Part VI: Japanese Writers between East and West; 6–1 Mori Ogai’s Ambivalent Relationship with his Mother as Evoked in his Later Historical Works; 6–2 Intellectual Loneliness or Intellectual Companionship: Portraits of a Foreign Teacher by Soseki, E.V. Lucas and Lu Xun; 6–3 The Poet-Sculptor Takamura Kotaro’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West; 6–4 Those Who Understand mono no aware and Those Who Do Not: Human Capacity to Be Affected by Things of Nature in Kawabata’s The Sound of the Mountain and Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine; 6–5 Changing Appreciations of Japanese Literature: Basil Hall Chamberlain versus Arthur Waley; Postscript; Index