Det familjära bortom hemmet : hur svenska japanfarares nyfikna blick skapat kunskap om och förståelse för Edo-periodens Japan 1647 - 1793

Sammanfattning

The familiar unknown : Swedish travelers' curiosity and the making of knowledge about Edo-period Japan, 1647 - 1793. Due to the isolationist policies of the Tokugawa shogunate that came into place in the 1630s, European travel writings on Japan became more limited and scarcer resulting in an overall lesser understanding of the nation. The purpose of this essay is therefore to showcase how Swedish travellers have handled the foreign and somewhat unknown Japanese culture to establish both knowledge and understanding of it. The study is done with the following research questions: Which cultural phenomena have the Swedish travellers chosen to write about and how do they describe them; in what way have curiosity and the contemporary time period affected how the travelogues were written? Method of usage has been a qualitative text analysis where six Swedish travelogues written between 1647 – 1793 have been searched for descriptions of important cultural phenomena – which are cultural aspects that allows the traveller to make a fundamental understanding of Japan. Once found, the descriptions have been analysed by how they are describing the phenomena since this demonstrates how the foreigners have processed the new information into knowledge. The conclusion is that Swedish travellers have made use of their curiosity to find different aspects of the Japanese culture to create a basic understanding of it, they have then described it in a way that makes it possible to contextualize and understand how a phenomenon affects the culture. The phenomena can be placed under five overarching categories: geography, the people, customs and traditions, politics, and economy. The way the travellers have chosen to describe these different aspects is varied and both positive and negative sentiments are shown, however it is apparent that a neutral stance is the most prevalent. It is also clear that the contemporary apodemic style has had a large influence on how the travellers have written their travelogues. This style emphasized on objectivity and ‘dryness’ in its delivery of information. Still, curiosity have had a major part in how they write; the travellers’ curious gaze has enabled them to find the adequate information necessary to create an apodemic image of the Japanese society and its culture.