CC. The Larger Context

		‘Popular fallacies and lerned misconceptions.’

3. Steadman, John M. The Myth of Asia: A Refutation of Western Stereotypes of Asian Religion, Philosophy, Art and Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969.

Steadman’s study of both the ‘popular fallacies’ and the ‘more learned misconceptions’ about Asia in Europe and the United States is contentious and well-argued, and provides a context for better understanding both the use and misuse of Japanese materials by poets under study here. The primary aim of the work is to dislodge the European and American misconception that ‘Asia’ is ‘a single entity’ (the famous starting point—‘Asia is one’—of Okakura’s Ideals of the East [see D16]), but along the way Steadman discusses the ways the traditions of Asia have been misconstrued, popularised, and fixed in the Western imagination. Includes discussion of Binyon, Hearn (see D9), Fenollosa (D10), Okakura, and Suzuki (D28), and frequent reference to Japanese poetry, art, and religion (see index). See also 12.