Negotiating Otherness? Mission Discourse of Difference among the Swiss and German Schooling Projects in 19th Century Japan

Abstract

This article explores the personal encounters between the Swiss–German missionaries and their Japanese students through their school projects in the late nineteenth century, as a fresh approach to disclose an entirely new analytical angle to mission education and the production of otherness. By examining the personal encounter of missionaries with their students, it problematizes scholars’ reliance on the concept of otherness as a unidirectional transfer of knowledge from West to non-West. Instead, this study argues, that the process of “othering” should be looked at as a negotiation beyond an East–West hierarchical divide, in which new forms of beliefs and practices for Japanese converts emerged. An analysis of relevant missionary sources reveals that in the period 1885 to 1893 the missionaries’ work with the Japanese students evolved into a seemingly contradictory state. On the one side, the missionaries devoted a great number of resources and time in educating their Japanese subjects into what they perceived to be true Christians. On the other side, they repeatedly expressed deep doubts about their students’ potential to become the type of Christians they envisioned. Focusing on three cases of missionaries’ encounters with Japanese students, this article argues that the attempts and results of negotiating otherness in the Swiss–German mission school projects opened new possibilities for identity formation among Japanese Christians.

Keywords

• modern Japanese religion
• liberal Christianity
• indigenous Christianity
• mission education
• self-colonization
• postcolonial theory