Some writers have speculated that the Japanese people may be direct descendants of part of the Ten Lost Tribes. Tudor Parfitt writes that "the spread of the fantasy of Israelite origin... forms a consistent feature of the Western colonial enterprise":
"It is in fact in Japan that we can trace the most remarkable evolution in the Pacific of an imagined Judaic past. As elsewhere in the world, the theory that aspects of the country were to be explained via an Israelite model was introduced by Western agents."[61]
well obviously sharifu lali but im thinking not in terms of appeals to other ethnic commonality but appeals to other types of links.
alternatively one could posit that the chinese copied this technique off the west. but somehow i imagine with the eternal kingdom idea that annexed by assimilation over conquest that this idea seems even more chinese .
i know people argue that human rights discourse acts to legitimate intervention in much the same way as missionaries seeking to provide salvation. but i am wrestling with how to think about this problem because there is something just as problematic in taking that position. i guess its about how you get these nuances out - or rather how to think both positions together
Some writers have speculated that the Japanese people may be direct descendants of part of the Ten Lost Tribes. Tudor Parfitt writes that "the spread of the fantasy of Israelite origin... forms a consistent feature of the Western colonial enterprise":
ReplyDelete"It is in fact in Japan that we can trace the most remarkable evolution in the Pacific of an imagined Judaic past. As elsewhere in the world, the theory that aspects of the country were to be explained via an Israelite model was introduced by Western agents."[61]
ahaaaa
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-Jewish_common_ancestry_theory
So the question is what would equivalent examples be now?
ReplyDeletewell obviously sharifu lali but im thinking not in terms of appeals to other ethnic commonality but appeals to other types of links.
ReplyDeletealternatively one could posit that the chinese copied this technique off the west. but somehow i imagine with the eternal kingdom idea that annexed by assimilation over conquest that this idea seems even more chinese .
i know people argue that human rights discourse acts to legitimate intervention in much the same way as missionaries seeking to provide salvation. but i am wrestling with how to think about this problem because there is something just as problematic in taking that position. i guess its about how you get these nuances out - or rather how to think both positions together
so perhaps one could make an apocryphal analogue project, something like the ten lost tribes of ....
ReplyDelete