청말 중국인의 여행기에 나타난 해국(海國)일본 -청일항로와 개항장 화상(華商)을 중심으로

Abstract

Chinese intellectuals' visit to Japan prior to the Sino-Japanese War outnumbered that made to Europe because of geographic advantage and historical familiarity. Their status spanned diversely from delegates despatched by the Qing Dynasty for diplomatic purposes, researchers despatched by the Chinese local governments for the modernization to intellectuals who travelled at their own expenses. They left a large number of notes of travel to Japan. While individual research on notes of travel to Japan is not small in its number, few research has been made on the subject of 'Maritime Nation Japan'. This study examined the images of Maritime Nation Japan focused on Sino-Japanese travel routes and Chinese living in Japan's open parts, out of Chinese travel notes to Japan in the Qing Dynasty's latter years. Unlike the period of Joseon diplomatic missions to Japan, Sino-Japanese travel routes all used ocean routes to Yokohama near to Tokyo with navigation speed uncomparable with the past. Though there were Chinese guesthouses at Nagasaki port since long, China had almost no knowledge of Japanese geography compared with Joseon people (Korean). This can be also confirmed from the fact that many Chinese thought Japan was made of three islands of Nagasaki, Satsuma, Tsushima. Chinese travellers at the Qing's latter years could get detailed information about Japan from Chinese merchants living at Nagasaki, Kobe and Yokohama as well as grasp the situation of trades including seafood from them. In many cases, Chinese merchants living in Japan moved to Japan in the footsteps of Western merchants, and trade prospered in the order of Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki. Some intellectuals like Huan Zunxian and Wang Tao out of Chinese intellectuals prior to the Sino-Japanese War, admiring the outcomes of Japan's Meiji Restoration, asserted to learn from the West and Japan, and sympathized with the legal reforms. While plenty of Chinese scholar officials expressed their surprise at the conveniences of modern civilization including railroad, they still considered Japan as a small island country - not great. All in all, early notes of Chinese travel to Japan could be deemed as fluctuating between the new and old thinking. This phenomenon disappeared following the Sino-Japanese War.