What’s the Matter with Saying ‘The Orient’? Excerpt

Posted by Yuka as Japan

by Chris Hill for About Japan: A Teacher’s Resource

Over the last twenty years most foreign scholars of Japanese history and society have stopped using phrases such as “the Orient,” “the Far East,” and “the East” in their classes and writing. Phrases like these have also largely disappeared from political discourse: it would be unusual, these days, to hear a diplomat talk about a country’s “Far Eastern alliances” or a trade negotiator refer to “economic relations with the Orient.” Nonetheless, it is still common to encounter these phrases in daily life.

A restaurant may say that its cooking has “a touch of the Orient”; a bookstore may have a section called Eastern philosophy. When I conduct teacher workshops participants will occasionally say that they want to help their students understand the Far East. Many whose careers are devoted to teaching about East Asia share the goal, but would resist describing it that way. So what is the problem with calling East Asia “the Orient”? There are several reasons scholars now avoiding using phrases like “the East,” “the Far East,” and “the Orient,” including the exoticism they convey, their association with modern empires, the skewed view of world geography they present, and their tendency to homogenize large, diverse parts of the world as if they shared a single cultural identity. In place of these “big” phrases I would suggest the simple solution of being specific: If one means Japan, say so; if one means East Asia, use that phrase. They may not sound as grand, but they probably convey what one means better.