Gazing at the Pacific Islands: a contemporary history of travel writing by Japanese travellers

Nishino, Ryota (2012) Gazing at the Pacific Islands: a contemporary history of travel writing by Japanese travellers. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Travel writing has engendered new interdisciplinary enquiry encompassing numerous disciplines. Amongst many sources, travel writing by European travellers served a role in forming the Pacific Island historiography. Scholars operating in the postcolonial and post-structural paradigms attempt to bring imperial historiography under scrutiny. Travel writing seems to fall into their purview. This paper adds to the emergent initiative by bringing the analyses of the Japanese travel-writers' accounts. Analysing the Japanese travel-writers 19 accounts be no less significant than the Europeans 19. Japan 19s defeat in 1945 resulted in the changes of its status in the Pacific. For the younger generations, writing about foreign travel enabled the expression and exploration of new identities. My analysis unravels the nature of the travel by those writers, their observations of the Pacific Island societies and cultures, as well as their own national and personal identities. To explore these themes, the paper addresses how the travellers employed various methods of gazing at the Pacific. The paper creates a historical account of the changes and continuity of those strategies of gazing. To this end I analyse the writings by several travel-writing by Kita Mario, Iida Y.

Item Type:	Other
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts, Law and Education (FALE) > School of Social Sciences
Depositing User:	Ms Shalni Sanjana
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2013 00:00
Last Modified:	06 Feb 2013 22:01
URI:	http://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/5446

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