From White to Yellow

An examination of the evolution of European racial views of the Japanese.
When Europeans first landed in Japan they encountered people they perceived as white-skinned and highly civilized, but these impressions did not endure. Gradually the Europeans' positive impressions faded away and Japanese were seen as yellow-skinned and relatively inferior.
Accounting for this dramatic transformation, From White to Yellow is a groundbreaking study of the evolution of European interpretations of the Japanese and the emergence of discourses about race in early modern Europe. Transcending the conventional focus on Africans and Jews within the rise of modern racism, Rotem Kowner demonstrates that the invention of race did not emerge in a vacuum in eighteenth-century Europe, but rather was a direct product of earlier discourses of the "Other." This compelling study indicates that the racial discourse on the Japanese, alongside the Chinese, played a major role in the rise of the modern concept of race. While challenging Europe's self-possession and sense of centrality, the discourse delayed the eventual consolidation of a hierarchical worldview in which Europeans stood immutably at the apex.
Drawing from a vast array of primary sources, From White to Yellow traces the racial roots of the modern clash between Japan and the West.
“From White to Yellow is a big book in every way. The product of immense research, it is an exceptionally ambitious work that makes a string of innovative and far-reaching arguments. Even more strikingly, it is simply the first of a planned two-volume series that, once completed, will span over six hundred years of European interactions with Japan. ... The scale of the task and the depth of the research invite a comparison to Donald Lach’s Asia in the Making of Europe, a groundbreaking series that can best be described as an almost supernatural feat of scholarship. … Overall the work is a significant achievement that should be read by anyone working in the field. It moves Japan from the margins to the very center of discussions over the development of early modern racial discourse, making a powerful case for the importance of the European encounter with Japan. Japan represented a problem for Europeans, and Kowner brilliantly dissects the varied ways in which they struggled to deal with it in the early modern period.” Monumenta Nipponica
“A path-breaking book, rich in insights and extraordinary well researched, with a huge bibliography covering works in twelve languages. Kowner has meticulously explored the ramifications and details of encounters between Europeans and the various Others. [From White to Yellow] is unsurpassed in its careful examination of European writings on Japan.” Journal of World History
“A remarkable scholarly achievement. It throws valuable light on evolving European attitudes to race and to racial hierarchies and demonstrates how they were filtered through different social mechanisms - religion, trade, power.” Ethnic and Racial Studies
“In this erudite, complex, and ambitious work, Rotem Kowner complicates the history of the construction and development of the idea of race. A short review cannot do justice to Kowner’s rich, multilayered work. The concluding chapter offers a prologue for the forthcoming second volume, which will examine how the Japanese were relegated to inferiority in the eighteenth century, and how a virulently racial discourse ensued.” Journal of Jesuit Studies
“Focusing on the five centuries between Marco Polo’s first report of a mysterious island called Cipangu and Linnaeus’s categorization of the Japanese as a “yellow” race in 1735, Kowner builds a compelling argument that traces the development of racism from Europeans’ earliest imaginings of the Japanese people to the heart of Enlightenment thought. … I can think of many other works that attempt to do the same but lack the clarity found here. This work is both timely and adds something new to the contemporary debate on the birth of race in Western thought.” Itinerario
“This magisterial work by Rotem Kowner fills an important gap in contemporary scholarship about racial history and European perceptions of the Japanese during the age of maritime explorations, beginning with the voyages of Marco Polo. The author approaches a delicate and complex topic with a breadth of knowledge and erudition based on the careful analysis of primary documents from a wide variety of both printed and manuscript sources in numerous languages.” M. Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J. Center for the Pacific Rim, University of San Francisco
“Rotem Kowner has written an extraordinary book which will be must-reading for anyone interested in Western perceptions of the Japanese from the beginning (Marco Polo’s account) to the 18th century, and to anyone interested in the history of the very concept of ‘race.’" Gary Leupp, Department of History, Tufts University
“Erudite, comprehensive, and clearly-written, From White to Yellow offers the reader a panorama of the Euro-Japanese encounter in the pre-modern period that is unsurpassed in previous scholarship.” Ronnie Hsia, Department of History, Pennsylvania State University