ABSTRACT This article examines how Japanese perceptions of blackness and modern knowledge about bankoku (myriad lands) were formed in early modern Japan. From about the mid-seventeenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, Japanese intellectuals absorbed the Western sciences, technology, and medicine through contact with the Dutch in Nagasaki. This field of study is called rangaku (Dutch studies). In this context, the Japanese intellectuals expanded their knowledge about the world – specifically, geographical spaces and numerous races. During this process, they shaped their ethnic and racial stereotypes, including racist ones about black Africans. The idea of black inferiority became deeply embedded into Japanese geographical and anthropological knowledge. I use Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘genealogy’ as an analytical framework for a diagnosis of the current condition. My genealogical investigation of the concept of kokujin (blacks) reveals the historical processes in which Japan’s indigenous, pre-contact sangoku (three-land) cosmology became invalidated and marginalized from modernist discourses on bankoku. This approach enables a critique of modernity itself, which has been associated for centuries with global distributions of various forms of Western knowledge and power – those upon which our present-day practices and discourses still depend.

中文翻译：

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论国人的谱系：对银行国形成的批判性思考和现代日本人对黑色的看法

摘要 本文探讨了日本人对黑色的看法和关于银行（无数土地）的现代知识是如何在近代日本形成的。大约从 17 世纪中叶到 19 世纪中叶，日本知识分子通过在长崎与荷兰人的接触，吸收了西方的科学、技术和医学。这个研究领域被称为 rangaku（荷兰研究）。在这种背景下，日本知识分子扩展了他们对世界的了解——特别是地理空间和众多种族。在这个过程中，他们塑造了自己的民族和种族刻板印象，包括对非洲黑人的种族主义刻板印象。黑人自卑的想法深深植根于日本的地理和人类学知识中。我使用米歇尔福柯的“谱系学”思想作为诊断当前状况的分析框架。我对 kokujin（黑人）概念的谱系研究揭示了日本本土的、接触前的三国（三国）宇宙学在现代主义关于银行的话语中变得无效和边缘化的历史过程。这种方法可以对现代性本身进行批判，几个世纪以来，现代性一直与各种形式的西方知识和权力的全球分布联系在一起——我们今天的实践和话语仍然依赖于这些知识和权力。接触前的三国（三地）宇宙学在现代主义关于银行的论述中变得无效和边缘化。这种方法可以对现代性本身进行批判，几个世纪以来，现代性一直与各种形式的西方知识和权力的全球分布联系在一起——我们今天的实践和话语仍然依赖于这些知识和权力。接触前的三国（三地）宇宙学在现代主义关于银行的论述中变得无效和边缘化。这种方法可以对现代性本身进行批判，几个世纪以来，现代性一直与各种形式的西方知识和权力的全球分布联系在一起——我们今天的实践和话语仍然依赖于这些知识和权力。