Westernization

About: Westernization is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1154 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15791 citations. The topic is also known as: occidentalization.

Staging Reality: Premodern Drama in China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract: The turn of the twentieth century was an exciting period of change and continuity in China. The article describes the process of modernization of drama in the period on the Chinese Mainland and in Hong Kong. It is found that the “Chinese modern” was formulated not with complete Westernization, which has been the assumption of most critics and literary historians. Modernization went through tortuous ways of interaction, appropriation, negotiation and renegotiation, an interweaving of different pathways of tradition and the new. There was an awareness of the differences between what was Chinese and what was Western and of the contrast between the old and the new, but not to the point of destroying tradition as ferociously as with the later May Fourth generation. In the process, a new conception of reality of the theatre evolved, pointing the way towards the predominance of realism in modern and contemporary China.

Василий Аксенов: Недописанный Роман Русского Западничества

Abstract: Ilya Gerasimov interprets the last three novels by the famous Russian writer Vasily Aksyonov as an attempt to find an explanation to the failure of democratic (from below) westernization in Russia. Since the early 1960s, Aksyonov based all his books on the complicated relationships of Russian westernized intellectuals with Russian society at large, on the one hand, and idealized western culture and society, on the other. The gradual realization of the elusiveness of an idealized single “West” and vulnerability of modernity compelled Aksyonov to revise the old simplified worldview of the Russian intelligentsia. Gerasimov contends that in his last books Aksyonov came out with a new scenario for Russian intellectuals vis-a-vis the seemingly westernized regime and conservative popular masses.

Confrontation, Embarrassment and Reflection: Japan Meets the West

Abstract: In this paper, I try to analyze the cultural gap between Japan and the West from a comparative literary point of view. After a very long period of national seclusion, Japan was obliged to open herself to the world. The government controlled by warriors soon came to an end and a new era of the Meiji began in 1868. For most progressive people in the Meiji Era it was an urgent necessity to modernize their country and modernization was nearly equivalent to westernization. On the other side, there were men of letters who did not approve of this hasty westernizing. Okakura Tenshin suggested in The Book of Tea: “Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each other, and be sadder if not wiser by the mutual gain of half a hemisphere.... You have gained expansion at the cost of restlessness; we have created a harmony which is weak against aggression. Will you believe it? −the East is better off in some respects than the West!” Nitobe Inazo, who served as under secretary general of the League of Nations for seven years, published Bushido: The Soul of Japan in 1899. He appealed that the main motive of Japan’s transformation was Bushido or the code of warriors. In Silence Endo Shusaku made a quondam missionary observe that “this country is a swamp... . Everything, if it is planted in this swamp, begins to wither from its roots.” Endo once declared, “I grieve that there is no drama where there is no God. My dream as a writer is to make this grief compete against European novels that describe man’s conflict with God.” It is doubtless that Bushido is no longer the soul of Japan. Besides, foreign ideas have not filtered into Japanese people’s hearts. They are inclined to run after unfruitful pleasures without deep emotion. Japan should earnestly wonder what to do with her heritage and how to communicate with the West.

Westernization in Ottoman Culture and Built Environment

Abstract: The time frame of this study corresponds to an era from the 14th century to the end of the Ottoman Empire. The westernization trends and changes in culture and architecture were faster and radical particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries and the changes that the Empire passed through reveal a need of handling new understandings attributed to education, social and political situation as a whole. This period also coincides with a period when the Ottoman Empire was questioned in a socio-political sense, and accordingly, change was inevitable. In this context, the radical change of the empire reveals the need to address the new meanings imposed on education, lifestyles, families and women as a whole. The increasing economic and political relations between Ottoman and Western world caused Ottoman society to change its shell in a social and cultural sense. While early changes in culture and built environment were mostly political and military-based and limited to certain public buildings, later the changes spread to the whole society, particularly to those living in cities, which resulted in changes in lifestyles, housing, space organizations and interiors. One has to also realize that Istanbul, being one of the major centers for commerce, transportation, education and administration in Europe, took a leading role in this process. Based on early written Ottoman texts and studies on the history and architectural history, a general overview of westernization will be made with reference to culture and built environment relations with specific emphasis on social changes in the society, family life and home interiors.