Amicable Diplomacy? Korean Embassies and Japanese Intellectuals in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Abstract

ABSTRACTNeighborly relations (K. kyorin kwangye, J. kōrin kankei) between the governments of Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan, their officials, and local elites in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have long been represented as a portrait of amicable diplomatic engagement over these two centuries. Their relations, however, also included more critical views than scholarship has suggested, especially at the individual level where they were not necessarily favorable to the other. Seeking to broaden the range of discourses found in Korean and Japanese depictions of this other in these neighborly relations, this article explores cultural frictions among elites who played important roles in diplomacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This article also examines how the concept of ‘othering’ generated friction during diplomatic interaction.