As transformações sociopolíticas e culturais no Japão da Era Meiji (1868-1912) a partir das Cartas do Japão, de Wenceslau de Moraes

Abstract

This dissertation focused on understanding the political and cultural processes of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) through a foreign perspective, by means of the Letters of Japan, written by Wenceslau de Moraes, portuguese consul in Kobe and Osaka, from 1899 to 1913). For this, we will carry out a historical contextualization and a historiographic discussion about the processes that culminated in the imperial restoration and the Japanese modernization in the middle of the nineteenth century. Questions concerning interculturality and otherness will be worked on in order to understand and decompose the mosaic of Japanese Westernization into its gene. We will try to apprehend the gaze of the "other", in this case, the gaijin (foreign) about this moment of destabilization of socio-cultural anchorages in Japan.