The Rise of Antiquarianism in Japan and Western Europe

Author(s): Michael A. Hoffman

Source: Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 11, Supplement: Festschrift Issue in Honor of Chester S.
Chard (1974), pp. 182-188
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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 THE RISE OF ANTIQUARIANISM IN JAPAN AND
WESTERN EUROPE
MICHAELA. HOFFMAN
ABSTRACT
This paper touches on certain functional
and historical similarities in the development of
Japanese and Western European archaeological
and antiquarian inquiry from the 17th through
early 19th centuries. These similarities include:
relative cultural insularity, a revival of interest
in and a dichotomy between "Classical" and
"local" antiquarianism, interest in artifact
description within a general context of compara-
tive studies, a relationship between power elites
and the financing of antiquarian research and
the growth of state- grade political, economic
and ideological systems.
INTRODUCTION
One of the most enjoyable experiences of
my graduate training with Professor Chard at
Wisconsin was getting to know people who were
conducting research in areas and time periods
outside my own field of concentration. In a real
anthropological sense , this contact led to the
constant re-evaluation of ideas in a cross-
cultural and comparative light. Specifically, my
own exposure to Japanese and American colleagues
first awakened me to the lure of Japanese social
and intellectual history.
Recently, while teaching a course in
"prehistory," it occurred to me that some striking
parallels exist between the development of
Japanese and Western European archaeological
and antiquarian inquiry from the 17th through early
19th centuries. I believe this subject to be an
appropriate one for this volume. Therefore, in the
following pages I shall try to explain the reasons
for these parallels by focusing on both the
intellectual and social context and the particular
historical course of development characteristic
of early archaeological and antiquarian studies
in Japan and Western Europe.
Since several popular and scientific authors
182
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have already discussed the background of pre-
17th century antiquarian research in Western
Europe (Ceraml952, 1958; Daniel 19^2, 1967;
Hoffman 1973; Rowe 1965; Slotjcin 1965), I will
touch only lightly on this era in order to set the
stage for discussion of the period under con-
sideration. It is usually agreed that
archaeological- antiquarian interest can be
traced far back into ancient times and, although
too much credit and originality is undoubtedly
accorded to the "ancient Greeks," it does have
a long and deeply rooted past. I have suggested
elsewhere (Hoffman1973) that there are certain
functional correlates of antiquarian interests in
both small, non-literate societies and large
state-grade societies. In the latter,
archaeological and antiquarian inquiry is often
linked intimately to the aims of the state (see
also Balandier 1972:19-20) . I shall expand on
this important point in regard to the two areas
under consideration at the end of this paper.
Along these lines, it must always be kept in
mind that in dealing with both Western Europe
and Japan in the time period considered, we are
dealing with emerging (or re- e merging) national
states. Externally, those states were linked in
different degrees by systems of international
trade while internally the personnel who produced
and those who financed antiquarian inquiry were
bound by certain reciprocal relationships
intimately involved with establishing, defining
and maintaining the political and economic
superstructure of the nation.
WESTERNEUROPEANARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
ANTIQUARIANINQUIRY FROMTHE 17TH
THROUGHEARLY19TH CENTURIES
Contrary to popular and scientific
conceptions, the Classical interest in things
antique which had spawned such chronological
schemes as Lucretius' three age system of stone,
bronze and iron did not die out with the
Arctic AnthropologyXI-Suppl, 1974
Hoffman: Antiquarianism in Japan and Europe
disintegration of the Western RomanEmpire in
the 5th century A.D. (Hoffman 1973). Only
Western Europe, cut off from the great urban
centers of the Old World and reeling under the
effects of economic depression, demographic
collapse and an influx of new peoples , saw the
disappearance of the literate, urban basis of
Romansocial and political organization. In the
Eastern Mediterranean, urban life continued
under the aegis of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine)
Empireand the ArabCaliphates. The continuing
and even increasing intercourse of these powerful
states with new and strange cultures actually
prompted periods of increased interest in and
awareness of the customs and history or pre-
history of other peoples. Scholars showed an
increased interest in the strange customs and
ancient past of far away peoples and lands,
especially in periods of economic and political
expansion.
A major aspect of the Western European
Renaissance of the late 15th and 16th centuries
was the revival of interest in the Greco-Roman
past. Western artists, humanists and scientists
working under the patronage of a newly emerging
elite eager to enrich itself and validate its
claims to status and authority began to dig for
art treasures. Such activities naturally began
in the lands of the old Classical Mediterranean
cultures. The activities of these art collectors
and their patrons came to be called "dilettantism"
(Daniel 1967:24) and soon every European ruler
with a pretense to enlightenment possessed a
minor museum filled with the trophies of his
diligent dilettanti. In many cases where a par-
ticular monarch did not have access to the
Mediterranean or old Greco-Roman heartland, he
financed locally- oriented antiquaries in their
search for respectably ancient ancestors. In
part, some clues to these ancestors were supplied
by Classical writers like Caesar and Tacitus who
spoke of the lands and customs of non-Roman
"barbarian" peoples. As Tudor England was one
of the first of the Western European countries
to emerge from this period with a centralized
national government, it is not surprising to note
that as early as 1533 Henry VIII commissioned one
John Leland as King's Antiquary (Kendrick1950:47) .
It was Leland1s task to describe the non-Roman
antiquities of Britain and, incidentally, to justify
the claim of the Tudor family to be the revivers of
ancient British greatness by demonstrating their
Welsh lineage (Kendrick1950:34-64) . One may
also imagine Henry's delight at publicizing the
non-Classical background of England at the very
moment he was finalizing his break with Catholic
Rome.
By the beginning of the 17th century, then,
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183
we may detect two principal strands of anti-
quarian interest in Western European thought.
The first was concerned with the world of the
Greeks and Romans and the second with the
barbarians . In neither case was there yet a
need to deal with archaeological remains entirely
beyond the ken of written history. The great
revolution in the extension of the prehistoric
time scale lay far ahead in the 19th century.
Nevertheless, the door to a more or less prag-
matic investigation and reconstruction of man's
past by the recovery and interpretation of his
material remains had been opened. Much of
the motivation for early archaeological research
had been provided by the re-emergence of
national states whose patronage networks were
linked to the political, social and economic
aspirations of their rulers and aristocracies.
The elite classes thus financed antiquarian
research in order to more effectively reinforce
old myths of national origins and bolster their
own and their families' status and prestige.
Such a practice was nothing new and, as I have
previously noted (Hoffman 1973), was a
recurrent theme in many ancient and medieval
states. What was new, however, were the
side effects spawned by the Newtonian revolution
and the rise of rationalistic and systematic
inquiry and the widespread use of the experi-
mental technique (i.e., fieldwork) . Odd as it
may seem at first, the rise of modern science
was to find a strange and unwitting ally in
both the Classical and Romantic movements
which swept European literary, philosophical
and artistic circles in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The non-Classical segment of the anti-
quarian movement came into its own during the
17th century with the appearance of such men as
John Aubrey (1626-1697). Aubrey was an early
member of the Royal Academy who wrote
influential and detailed accounts of the monuments
of Wiltshire, attributing these to the ancient
Druids (Powell 1963) . He was succeeded by the
indefatigable William Stuckeley (1687-1765), one
of the founders of the Romantic movement.
Stuckeley undertook extensive field investigations
of a high caliber, studying, measuring and
sketching the monuments of Stonehenge and
Avebury in 1718 and 1725 and publishing his
accounts in 1740 and 1743 respectively (Piggott
1950) . Stuckeley even excavated a mound and
produced a tolerable stratigraphic sketch.
Unfortunately, his interpretations were
increasingly marred by a tendency to see Druids
literally under every stone - a case in which
his technological scientism gave way to his
conceptual Romanticism. Despite his excesses,
the type of pursuits in which Stuckeley engaged
184
soon became fashionable for the educated squire
interested in local history and set the stage for
a large number of amateur excavations and dis-
coveries before the end of the 18th century (e.g. ,
John Frere's report of a handaxe from Hoxne) .
This tradition found perhaps its finest exponent
in the philosophical scientific generalism of
Thomas Jefferson, whose excavation of an
Indian burial mound in the Rivanna bottomlands
of Virginia in 1784 is unrivalled in its day for
accuracy of description and the application of
the technique of archaeological excavation to a
historical and ethnographic problem.
At the same time that interest in local
origins and non-Classical antiquities was
growing in Western Europe, the fascination with
ancient Greece and Rome continued to flourish
and became enormously popular in the 18th
century with the revival of Classical styles in
art, literature and architecture. Even more than
their non-Classical colleagues, many wealthy
collectors of the period built great private
collections which later formed the cores of
museums all over Europe. Thus, the 17th century
Earl of Arundel's collection became the heart of
the Ashmolean Museum and aided in popularizing
Classical antiquarian studies. The founding of
the Society of Dilettanti in 1714 in England and
the establishment of their journal, Antiquity,
in 1732 promoted an interchange of ideas, led to
increased scholarly interest and even encouraged
foreign expeditions (Daniel 1967:24). Between
1751 and 1754, the painter James Stuart and the
architect Nicholas Revett lived in Athens ,
studying and recording the monuments of Greek
antiquity which they published in an influential
four-volume opus entitled Antiquities of Athens
(Hawkes 1963:13) . But perhaps the biggest boost
to Classical archaeology came with the discovery
of the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and
Herculaneum. The first successful excavations
began at Pompeii in 1748 under the direction of
the engineer Rocco Gioachino de Alcubierre
acting in the employ of King Charles III of
Naples (Ceram 1958:11) . The discovery of
magnificent works of art and impressive archi-
tectural remains at Pompeii were publicized by
the paintings and engravings of the older and
younger Piranesi and did much to encourage the
practice of digging for antiquities (Ceram 1958:
15-16) . Whatthe Piranesi did for propagandizing
Classical archaeological discoveries, the
scholar Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768) did for
organizing them into an orderly, disciplined
study. It was Winckelmann who first introduced
the concept of differentiating various styles of
Classical sculpture in order to detect chronologi-
cal and cultural differences - a forerunner of
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Arctic Anthropology XI-Suppl.
Petrie's artifact seriation.
Despite the genuine scientific contributions
of men like Winckelmann and the papyrologist
Antonio Piaggio, Classical archaeology remained
much more under the control of wealthy collectors
and free-booting diplomats than prehistory. This
is , in part , explained by the high monetary value
attached to individual Classical works of art.
Certainly a similar situation prevailed amongst
early 19th century European colonial ventures into
the Middle East, and it was not until the mid-19th
century that Classical and Middle Eastern
archaeology began to develop as scientific
disciplines .
In summarizing the underlying interests and
nature of Western European antiquarianism and
archaeology during the 17th, 18th and early 19th
centuries, we can detect four main themes:
1) the emergence of national states interested in
glorifying and publicizing their ancient pasts,
2) an interest in both the Classical and non-
Classical history (and prehistory) of Europe,
3) an interest in the recovery and description
of ancient and curious artifacts and monuments
and 4) the beginnings of accurate fieldwork and
description within a context of general and
comparative studies. During the later 17th and
18th centuries, these interests were espoused by
an increasingly educated and prosperous class of
gentleman scholars who carried the tradition of
archaeology through its formative stages; their
interests and discoveries finally permeated the
great national museums which became the focal
points for research in the 19th century.
JAPANESE ARCHAEOLOGICALAND ANTIQUARIAN
INQUIRY FROM THE 17TH THROUGH
EARLY 19TH CENTURIES
The East Asian intellectual attitude toward
the nature of antiquity contrasts with its Greco-
Roman counterpart in that early discoveries of
prehistoric relics could be accommodated within
the main philosophical schemes of the day. These
schemes saw man's past as a continuum of steady
technological progress and contrasted markedly
with Hesiod's and Virgil's models of human
degeneration. In China, the unrecorded
"
prehistoric" past was believed to be linked to
the living historical tradition. By the 3rd century
B.C. , a sequence of the "three ages of man" had
been set forth which included successive periods
of stone, bronze and iron (cf. Lowie 1937:13 and
Daniel 1967:23) . Whereas in Western Europe and
even the Middle East similar scientific arrange-
ments (e.g. , that of Lucretius) lay dormant for
almost two millennia, the Three Ages of the
Chinese philosophers never lost its relevance.
Hoffman: Antiquarianism in Japan and Europe
The acceptance of a relatively cut and dried
technological scheme of man's past in China
permitted early thinkers like Confucius in the
5th century B.C. to suggest the surprisingly
pragmatic opinion that flint arrowheads found in
fields belonged to the Su Shen peoples who lived
in the northeast. Han Fei Tzu, who lived during
the succeeding Warring States period (450-221
B.C.), took a similarly materialistic position
when he described painted and incised pottery
of the Neolithic period and classified these
ancient, prehistoric "relics" according to the
traditional three ages system.
Despite the long existence of such
materialistic and rationalistic conceptions of
ancient remains on the East Asian mainland, many
of the pre-17th century Japanese sources which
mention ancient and curious artifacts attribute
their origin to supernatural agencies much in the
manner of their contemporary Western European
colleagues . The oldest known Japanese
description of ancient artifacts occurs in a
manuscript by Naga-gun writing in the Nara
period (8th century A. D.) entitled Hitachi Fudoki
("Ethnographyof Fudoki"; Kamaki1965:2) . A
portion of this work deals with a shell midden at
Ogushino, the material from which the author
attributes to giants. A similar tone is struck in
two slightly later manuscripts , ShokuNinonKoki
(A.D. 869) and Sandai Jits uroku (A.D. 908), in
which there are accounts of stone arrowheads
believed to have fallen from heaven (Kamaki1965:
2). Thus, during the Medieval period, we might
regard Japan as intellectually peripheral to
Chinese civilization in the same way that
contemporary Western Europe lagged behind the
Eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern
scholarly worlds .
This picture changes radically, however,
after about A.D. 1600 when the preference for
supernatural or mythological explanation gave
way to a sort of natural science approach
reminiscent of the Baconian and Newtonian
intellectual revolutions in 17th century Western
Europe. One of the primary reasons for this
shift must be found in the emergence of a strong,
centralized national state in Japan at this time.
In 1598, Iyasu succeeded in establishing the
house of Tokugawa in the office of the Shogunate
and consolidated the peace and unification
brought to Japan by his immediate predecessors,
Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. As a result of this
political change, the Tokugawa family was to rule
Japan until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Of more
direct concern to the intellectual history of the
period is the policy of selective isolationism
imposed upon Japan under Iyasu1s successors.
Despite the officially hostile attitude toward
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185
things Western espoused by the Tokugawa shoguns,
however, several intellectual currents arose at
this time which led Japanese scholarship to a
new view of temporal causality and, by extension,
a new view of the past.
First, it is possible to detect a kind of
rational dilettanti antiquarianism as early as the
first quarter of the 17th century. In a manuscript
of the Tsugaru clan dated January 1, 1623, and
entitled EirokuNikki, an account is given of the
excavation of "strange old potteries" at Kamegoaka
in Nishi Tsungaru-gun, Amori Prefecture (Kamaki
1965:2-3). Significantly, the anonymous author
of EirokuNikki not only recognized these ancient
potteries as products of normal human beings who
lived in the past, but identified the function of
the pots as water jars through "ethnographic
analogy." In looking at the date of this manu-
script, one might suspect some Western European
influence and, although this is a possibility,
the social and functional context of Eiroku Nikki
as well as the still rather primitive nature of
Western European antiquarianism argues for an
autochthonous origin for the research. It should
be noted that the manuscript belonged to a noble
clan and that, since Nara times, noble families
had patronized schools for their progeny and
kinsmen. Further, certain fields of scholarship
continued as the provinces of aristocratic clans
even after the Meiji Restoration (Encyclopaedia
Britannica 12:954) . Given the stabilized con-
ditions of Tokugawa times and the reduced spheres
of activities open to many noble houses, a
flourishing of scholarship under their patronage ,
especially antiquarian scholarship aimed at
validating their own historically-derived statuses,
is not at all unusual. In fact, the parallels with
contemporary Western Europe and modern
"Colonial" archaeology in the Eastern United
States are striking.
A second intellectual stream which led to a
new historiographic attitude was the rise of
Neo-Shintoism. This doctrine began to emerge as
early as the late 17th century and gained momentum
in the 18th and 19th. Its initial concern was the
preservation of traditional Japanese customs and
religious beliefs against what it perceived as a
threat from Chinese culture to overrun the country.
Considering the strongly Neo-Confucian orientation
of the Tokugawa court at the time , Shinto teachings
were not met with great favor (McNeill 1963:720-
721). Nevertheless, in a continuing search for
reinforcement for its increasingly nationalistic
doctrines , Neo-Shintoism preached an interest in
Japan's most ancient past. Despite the fact that
grossly chauvinistic interpretation often resulted
from their uncritical and propagandistic approach,
the Neo-Shinto theorists of this period did help
186
to expand Japan's interest in her own pre-
Classical (i.e., non-Chinese) and prehistoric
past. Some of the Neo-Shintoists present a
striking parallel to the early European
Romanticists, uniting an interest in a primitive
past with a rejection of "Classical" rationalism.
One of the outstanding Japanese exponents of
this approach was Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801)
who examined the early 8th century Kojiki annals
and found in their anecdotal and semi- legendary
accounts of old ruling families
. . .some primeval elements, such as strong
indications of a sun worship exprés sed in the
adoration of the Sun Goddess , and the sublima-
tion of the life-impulse symbolized by install-
ing Takami-musubi (vitality) andKami-musubi
(fertility) in the early Shinto pantheon. For
Motoori, the primal acts of adoration, which he
called pure and spontaneous sentiment, meant
more in human life than philos ophical s ys terns
or ethical injunctions. This shift in emphasis
from the rational and the moral to the emotional
side of human nature is characteristic of
Motoori1 s whole approach to the study of
Japanese history and literature , wherein he
attempts to show what is genuinely Japanese
and what is adulterated. (Tsunoda et al. 1964
11:3-4).
A third trend which was to alter Japan's
view of her past was the so-called "Dutch
Learning" (rangaku) . Despite the hostility of
the early Tokugawa shoguns to Western
influence, beginning in the early 18th century,
there was an increasing realization that the
adoption of at least some European innovations
might be useful. The first official breakthrough
came during the reign of the Shogun Yoshimune
(1716-1744) . During this era some European
scientific books were translated into Japanese
and some restrictions on the circulation of
foreign literature were revoked. Interestingly
enough, one of the stimuli for an appreciation of
Western learning was the wish to create a more
effective calendar - a tool for conceptualizing
and segmenting time. By the late 18th century,
permission was given for physicians to study
medicine because it was deemed of great
practical value to the state. In addition to
medicine, however, Japanese scholars were now
beginning to flock to the Dutch trading center at
Nagasaki in order to learn the new ways (Keene
1954:79-80).
A related fourth trend which must be
considered was the emergence of a formal and
scholarly approach to history which embraced
the techniques of ethnohistory and prehistoric
archaeology. One of the first and most
illustrious exponents of this approach was the
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Arctic Anthropology XI-Suppl.
universal scholar, Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725).
Although Hakuseki is of principal importance to
archaeology for his researches in stone implements,
this interest was merely an extension of his
broader cultural , historical inquiries. Indeed,
his evolutionary approach to social, political
and historical questions as well as his interest
in geography and linguistics (Tsunoda et al. 1964,
1:463) mark him as an early anthropologist very
much in the manner of Condorcet and Jefferson in
the West. Even though many of Hakuseki' s notes
on archaeological matters were not published
until 1790, his widely acclaimed scholarship and
wide-ranging intellectual interests must have
spread his influence amongst the small group of
scholars and intellectuals in the same way that
membership in the Royal Society gave John Aubrey
access to the small, tight-knit body of scientists
and literati in 17th century England.
In terms of specific contributions to
archaeological research in Hakuseki1 s tradition,
the name of Tamura Sanzo is prominent. In a
manuscript entitled Ai zuSekifu ("Stone Tools From
Aizu") published in 1783, Sanzo noted that stone
tools and pottery occur together at sites which
are usually located on high ground. His position
that stone tools must antedate iron tools and his
application of this old East Asian philosophical
arrangement to his field data precedes by 50 years
Christian Thomsen's revival of the three ages
system in Scandinavia (Kamaki 1965:3) . Another
important investigator of this period was Sugae
Musumi (1784-1829) who illustrated Jomon pottery
from Tohoku in his Shinko Shukuyohin-rui no Zu
("Illustrations of Ritual Vessels Past and Present").
In addition to comparing this pottery to material
from Kamegaoka and Hokkaido, Musumi suggested
that it had once been manufactured by the Ainu -
an hypothesis which has aroused no little interest
and debate amongst modern anthropologists and
archaeologists (Kamaki 1965:3) . Perhaps the most
important figure in 18th century Japanese
archaeology, however, was Kinai Sekitei (1724-
1808) . Sekitei organized amateur collections of
stone artifacts from all over Japan and published
the results of his investigations in unkonshi
("Collections of Relics") . He also attempted to
set up a typology for stone arrowheads and
polished stone implements - again foreshadowing
the classificatory interests of Western European
prehistorians by 50 years (Kamaki 1965:3-4). The
results of Sekitei' s activities were an increased
interest in the collection and recording of
artifacts and sites throughout Japan.
To summarize the important features which
characterized archaeological and antiquarian
thought in Japan during the period under con-
sideration, the following points should be
Hoffman: Antiquarian! sm in Japan and Europe
emphasized: 1) the role of emergent nationalism
and political stabilization, 2) aristocratic
patronage of dilettanti antiquarianism, 3) the
rise of an anti-Chinese (anti-Classical) ,
nationalistic and antiquarian Neo-Shinto
philosophy, 4) the influence of European ideas
in general and "Dutch learning" in particular
and 5) the development of a scholarly tradition
of prehistoric-antiquarian research within a
context of intellectual generalism and comparative
cultural studies emphasizing accurate fieldwork
and recording.
CONCLUSION
Having reviewed something of the course
and historical context of archaeological-
antiquarian thought in Western Europe and Japan
from the 17th through early 19th centuries, it
remains to pinpoint some of the principal
similarities and differences between the two
areas in order to discuss their broader functional
and historical significance. We have seen how
both Western Europe and Japan occupied
intellectual peripheries to the "great" or
scholarly traditions in their respective areas of
the world. Western Europe embarked on its
florescent period of economic, social and
political growth perhaps 100 to 150 years before
Japan. In Western Europe, national states
emerged between the late 15th and middle 17th
centuries while in Japan, this development
occurred at the turn of the 16th century. In
Western Europe, the political subordination of a
large, aristocratic landowning class saw many
of its energies channeled into colonization and
patronage of the arts , including local anti-
quarianism. In Japan, the Tokugawa policy of
isolation eliminated the colonial outlet (though
not the commercial) for aristocratic patronage,
but permitted, and indeed encouraged, patronage
of antiquarian and humanistic enterprises . In
Europe, nationalism was given added ideological
impetus by the emergence of Protestantism and
a reformed Catholicism. In Japan, the isola-
tionism of the political regime at first found
ideological reinforcement in the romantic and
introspective doctrines of Neo-Shintoism and
antiquarianism espoused in a reaction to
Chinese Classicism. The closest approximation
to Neo-Shintoism which contemporary Europe
could offer was perhaps the Romantic Movement,
beginning with such men as Stuckeley and
emphasizing the "primitive," non-Classical roots
of Europe's past. As in Japan, this trend found
an occasionally sympathetic ear in those wishing
to glorify their family's past and indirectly
reinforce their claims to legitimate authority.
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187
In both Western Europe and Japan, the many
threads of the new antiquarian movement con-
verged in gentleman- scholars who distinguished
themselves by the breadth of their knowledge,
the sophistication of their humanistic insights
and their tendency to rely on the experimental
method. In antiquarianism, this latter tendency
took the form of rigorous fieldwork which was the
immediate forerunner of modern archaeology. One
gets the impression that were we to place
Hakuseki, Jefferson, Aubrey and Sekitei in the
same drawing room, they would soon discover
that they had much in common.
In surveying the comparative developments
of Japanese and Western European antiquarianism
in the period under consideration, we are struck
by the overwhelming similarity in both the social
context and the chronological sequence of their
development. There remain, however, two
important points of contrast which suggest useful
avenues for further cross-cultural research. The
first, and perhaps the most important, is that the
appearance of similar philosophical developments
in both Europe and Japan at virtually the same
moment might be due in large part to the rapid
transmission and ready acceptance of Western
ideas by the Japanese. We do know, for instance,
that there was extensive and direct contact
between the two areas, first with the Portuguese-
Jesuit proselytizing in the middle and late 16th
century and later by the more closely controlled
influx of European ideas through "Dutch learning."
At present, it seems as if the transmission of
ideas was essentially one-way - from Western
Europe to Japan. Indeed, it was Japanese scholars
like Honda who attempted to learn Western
languages and speculated on the social evolu-
tionary superiority of Western European to Japanese
and Chinese culture (Keene 1954:79-80). This
attitude and the lack of comparable interest by
contemporary European scholars in Japan suggests
that the rather wise Tokugawa policy of isola-
tionism functioned more to isolate the West from
Japanese ideas than vice versa. On the other
hand, as always, the functional context of
Japanese society possessed enough accidental
structural and historical similarities to that of
contemporary Europe so that it could readily
incorporate such ideas into its own philosophical,
economic and social systems without causing
undue disruption.
The one remaining contrast between
antiquarian-archaeological development in both
areas is the apparent absence of a strongly
developed Classical bent in antiquarian research
in Japan. This might be because Europe, to
paraphrase the 18th century Japanese scholar
Honda, had a much older antiquity and its
 188 Arctic Anthropology XI-Suppl.

Classical period was much further removed, hence Kamaki, Yoshimasa

much "safer" to deal with than was Japan1s . 1965 A Survey of Jomon Culture, Nihon No
Perhaps a more satisfactory explanation, however, Kokogaku, 2. Translated manuscript
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and more culturally diverse than Japan. It Department of Anthropology ,
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Britain and France which traced their ancestry Keene, Donald
to both Classical and "barbarian" roots, and 1954 The Japanese Discovery of Europe.
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one cannot accuse Japanese scholarship and Kendrick, T. D.
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Confucianism was an important influence in the Lowie , Robert H .
Tokugawa court and men like Hakuseki worked 1937 The History of Ethnological Theory.
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conceptual framework. Nevertheless, Japan
did not develop a strong interest in its Classic McNeill, William H.
Chinese-derived antiquities to the same degree 1963 The Rise of the West. Chicago.
that Europe did, nor did her emerging archaeology
focus a significant part of its energies on Piggott, Stuart
Classical studies till a much later date. 1950 William Stuckeley, An Eighteenth
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