Articulating the Sinosphere

Joshua Fogel offers an incisive historical look at Sino-Japanese

relations from three different perspectives. Using first a wide lens,

he suggests a new way to capture the relationship between China and

Japan by characterizing the nature of their contact. From the first

century ce, the primary reasons for contact moved from political and

ceremonial to cultural, and on to commercial ties. This period ends

at the dawn of the modern age, when contacts involved treaties,

consulates, and international law. Switching to a microhistorical

view, Fogel examines several important behind-the-scenes players in

the launching of the countries’ modern diplomatic relations. He

focuses on the voyage of the Senzaimaru from Nagasaki to Shanghai in

1862—the first official meeting of Chinese and Japanese in the modern

era—and the Dutchman who played an important intermediary role.

Finally, he examines the first expatriate Japanese community in the

modern era, in Shanghai from the 1860s to the mid-1890s, when the

first Sino-Japanese War erupted. Introducing the concept of

“Sinosphere” to capture the nature of Sino-foreign relations both

spatially and temporally, Fogel presents an original and

thought-provoking study on the long, complex relationship between

China and Japan.