Preface
Preface

Summary/Abstract: The book Japan as Images: Crossing Viewpoints of Europe and Japan is a journal in which European and Japanese scholars discuss the images of Japan from the European and Japanese perspective interdisciplinary and internationally. The observation of Japan from the European perspective has been done from The Travels of Marco Polo, an impressionistic description of Japan written by a Catholic missionary in the 16th century, influencing Japonism, an aesthetic vogue for Japanese things from the mid-19th century to the present time. Thus images on Japan are constructed by a kind of accumulation of several historical and present descriptions of Japan. What is more, the period of publishing this journal is the time when the most globalized society and the most developed electronic media could be found and when various imaginary worlds constructed by the media are diffused in the world. During this time, the images of Japan constructed in the crossing of the other’s viewpoints and the self viewpoints tend to be recognized as “real Japan,” which, on the one hand, permits to promote intercultural comprehension but, on the another hand, risks to generate prejudice on Japan.

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