CC. The Larger Context

7. Yokoyama, Toshio. Japan in the Victorian Mind: A Study of Stereotyped Images of a Nation, 1850-80. London: Macmillan, 1987.

Yokoyama’s richly-detailed account supplements the earlier work by Lehmann (4) and like that study provides a careful account of conceptions and misconceptions of Japan that persisted into the twentieth century. Lehmann’s focus had been the shaping and shifting of attitudes in response to Japan’s rapid and unexpected modernisation, but Yokoyama is more often interested in the misrepresentation of Japan and Japanese culture in Britain in the years under study, in the popular and performing arts, public exhibitions, books, newspapers, and reviews and magazines of national circulation and influence, particularly Edinburgh Review, Cornhill Magazine and Blackwood’s Magazine. Includes reference throughout to intermediaries and others whose work is of importance here, including Dickins (D3), Mitford (D4), Chamberlain (D5), and Aston (D13). See also 12.