WRITING EAST AND FROM LATIN AMERICA: LITERATURE, NATIONALISM AND CRITIQUE IN THE WORKS OF ENRIQUE GÓMEZ CARRILLO

FACUNDO GARASINO1

This paper is an attempt to open, expand and order of Western modernity for mapping the World, diversify the cartographies of Japanese Studies into have been central to defining political identities, intellectual, literary and cultural encounters with boundaries and agencies in transnational Latin America. For this purpose, this paper focuses intellectual encounters (2013, p.14). Consequently, on the writings of literary critic, journalist and travel in Japanese Studies the idea of Western modernity literature author Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1873- has also been the focal point for historical 1927) on and Japan at the closing and the scholarship on modern Japan (Konishi 2013, p.3). aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War (1905-1907). In Within this framework, Western modernity has the field of transnational intellectual history, much been regarded as the ultimate engine of Japan’s has been discussed regarding the Russo-Japanese modern development, therefore narrating Japan’s War as a moment when the emerging Japanese modern intellectual history either as to embrace, Empire became a focus of global attention as an negotiate with or resist to ideas and categories alternative model in discussions and movements for originated in West and North America, achieving emancipation, criticizing imperialism, namely the prime locus for modern intellectual and reinterpreting modernity in non-Western history. This East-West binary framework for societies (Aydin 2007). However, this paper focuses mapping intellectual history, logically resembling on a space that remains largely overlooked, that of Eurocentric Orientalism, does not leave much the intellectual encounters between East Asia and margin for focusing on other geographies as Latin America at the turn of the twentieth century. relevant spaces for intellectual production. That is By analyzing Enrique Gómez Carrillo’s not to ignore that inter-Asian approaches have been commentaries on Japan’s debates over the a rich field for exploring modern intellectual intellectual and cultural implications of the Russo- encounters beyond the purported East-West divide. Japanese War, and his accounts on the political Yet, this paper is another attempt to shift the East- situation of East Asia, it will become possible to West divide, by introducing a different illustrate the impact of Japan’s modern experience transregional framework between Japan and Latin on the Latin American intellectual sphere. This America. This scope will aim at overcoming familiar analysis will demonstrate that the dialogues boundaries of Area Studies defined by continents between Asia and Latin America have not just the and other geographical and political conventions. potential to reframe the prevailing cartographies As will be explained below, Migration and routes for mapping modern transnational Studies and Latin American Literature have started intellectual history, but also to challenge and to explore the space open by the encounters between decenter hierarchical divisions of West and East, the Asia and Latin America, challenging the very categories that have been central for navigating Eurocentrism inherent in national and regionalist it. narratives. Moreover, in the field of Japanese As Konishi Sho indicates, categories of East Studies, notwithstanding the pioneering works by and West, as the particular temporal and spatial Tsuda (2003), Masterson and Funada-Classen

1 This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi, and to all my colleagues in University, who provided me with insightful comments which were of immense help to improve the manuscript. New Ideas in East Asian Studies 2017 (Special Edition) 40

(2004), and García (2014) in accounting historical ambiguous nodal point between Global North and and contemporary migration between Japan and Global South, the West and the Rest. Latin America, Japanese connections with Latin As it will be explained in the following America remain largely unexplored. Therefore, this sections, Carrillo’s condition as a Latin American paper shall explore Carrillo’s writings on East Asia and Japan as an attempt to re-frame the intellectual intellectual writing from Paris located him in a marginal positionality, he gained literary and encounters between Asia and Latin America within commercial success mediating global modernity to the field of Japanese Studies. This exploration shall Latin American audiences from the European also demonstrate that Carrillo destabilized and metropolis (Colombi 2004). Comparably, even when suspended hierarchical constructions of the East- popular European and North American perceptions West divide through explorations of world literature, in the context of the encounter with East may have regarded Japan as inferior vis-à-vis Christian and white nations, at the turn of the Asian societies at the end of the Russo-Japanese twentieth century, Japan emerges as a colonial War. empire exercising hegemony over its Asian Important studies on travel writing and neighbors. Therefore, by looking critically at practices of world literature in Latin America have marginalized subjects in the non-West engaging focused on the contestation of ubiquitous protocols with hegemonic structures, this paper will explore of representation in European exotic travel writing how subjects in a colonized intellectual space can in Carrillo’s texts (Colombi 2004). Among this line, challenge the claimed division between the West Siskind (2014) stresses that Carrillo’s interventions and the rest, from a position oscillating between contradicted Eurocentric Orientalism by opening up Global South and Global North, the East and the a counterpunctual space of cosmopolitan West, thus complicating and disrupting the very contestation (228). However, while Siskind centers structures creating their peripherality. on the transatlantic space, this paper focus on the displacement to a transpacific intellectual space The first section considers how Carrillo defined his critical positionality between his opened by the encounters between Japan and Latin centrality as a cosmopolitan intellectual writing America. This will render a new space for counter from Paris, and his marginality as a Latin American hegemonic interventions outside the alleged in the European metropolis. Delving into Carrillo’s centrality of European intellectual arenas. ambivalent positionality will allow light to be cast In analyzing Carrillo’s encounters with on the historical complexities confronted by the Japan and East Asia, this paper also engages in subjects implicated in intellectual encounters dialogue with reformulations of Orientalism in between Japan and Latin America, oscillating in the Latin America. López-Calvo (2012) and Camayd- blurry line between the West and the Rest Freixas (2013) argue that the concept of Orientalism The second section explores how Carrillo as the intersection between knowledge about the critically interpreted world literature from his “others” and the ideological and institutional structures of power and domination (Said 2003), location and juxtaposed that literature as independent entities, not in a hierarchical structure. must be reformulated for discussing representations It will demonstrate how his nation-centered of Asian and Middle Eastern worlds in Latin conception of the world literary field destabilized American literary and cultural productions. They the colonial divide between the West and the Rest, characterize representations about the so-called both in the literary and the political spheres. In “” in Latin America as representations of non- West formulated by another non-Western subject. addition, his explorations of non-Western literature through the encounter with East Asia at the closing Therefore, this encounter between formerly of the Russo-Japanese War redefined cultural colonized and continuously marginalized subjects nationalism as an anti-colonialism that challenged enables autonomous South-South dialogues, the legitimacy of imperialist competition over the disrupting Eurocentric paradigms of the West as the influence over Korea. exclusive and original center of modernity (López- Calvo 2012). The third section shows how Carrillo’s ambiguous position as one Global South elite in the Acknowledging influence from the above Global North colonial metropole would not miss the work, this paper attempts a further critical hybrid Japanese position, namely a racialized exploration by problematizing subjects oscillating country trying to modernize following the model of amid centrality and marginality, challenging clear- the Western powers by colonizing its neighbors. cut lines dividing the Global South from the Global North. It will offer an account for the historical Previous studies on the global impact of the Russo- Japanese War have dealt with discussions of Japan complexities and ambivalences of subjects partaking as an alternative model to for modernization and in the intellectual encounters between Japan and nation building (Laffan 2007). In contrast, this Latin America. While the current theorizations section centers on Carrillo’s criticism of Japan’s endorse subaltern subjects by dint of their radical emerging imperialism. It will make clear that by re- difference towards the West as the privileged agency for counter hegemonic contestation of interpreting Orientalist imagery about Japan through his nation-centered conception of world Eurocentric structures (López-Calvo 2010, p.5-6), literature, Carrillo praised and appropriated Japan’s this paper will aim to de-privilege the subaltern nationalism as a model for modernization while subject by focusing on subjects wandering in the criticizing its colonialism and self-celebrating New Ideas in East Asian Studies 2017 (Special Edition) 41 theories on the “merging of East and West”. This American writing in Paris before the inquisitive will enlighten the critical potency that Orientalist metropolitan gaze. Carrillo’s autobiographical narratives took in the intellectual space between account of what he calls the initiation into the Latin America and Japan for decentering hegemonic bohemian nightlife of the French capital is hierarchic structures. representative of this imposture and simulation. Carrillo ventures alone in a café in the midst of the Finally, this paper provides an overview of Latin Quartier for the very first time. There, a young a novel research field by focusing on the intellectual woman approaches him, intrigued by seeing space opened by the dialogues between Asia and someone drinking absinthe after dinner time, Latin America. something that even the most hard-drinking Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1873-1927): Writing bohemians of Paris would not usually do. Curious between the West and the Rest about this eccentric behavior and the peculiar facial features of the young drinker, the woman inquiries Recent studies have stressed the central role about Carrillo’s origins, guessing whether he was of Enrique Gómez Carrillo in mediating global “Romanian” or “Greek”. Then, when Carrillo modernity (Colombi 2004) and introducing revealed he was “from Guatemala”, the woman literature utterly strange to suddenly bursts into laugh, nervously and soundly. readerships at the turn of the twentieth century, Unable to restrain herself, she exclaimed “gratte moi creating a cosmopolitan world literary moment là…!”, meaning, “scratch me there”. Carrillo within Latin American modernismo (Siskind 2014). discovers with indignation and sadness "the comic In contrast, this section will problematize Carrillo’s insignificance of the American countries with odd intellectual centrality in conjunction with his names" (1919, p.28) to the eyes of a Parisian. marginality in negotiating his fragile status as a Latin American writing from the European My luminous Guatemala […] had turned, in the metropolis. By clarifying how he wandered between mouth of a Parisian in good moods, into a established national and regional boundaries, Rabelaisian country called “scratch-me-there”, hegemonic and peripheral positionalities, and the situated on a fabulous continent. […] The same West and the Rest, this section will elucidate the wound was suffered nearly by all the Hispano ambivalent complexities of challenging hierarchical Americans in Europe. “From Guatemala, From constructions of East and West at the crossroads of Venezuela, from Uruguay, from Bolivia”. These Japan and Latin America’s modern experience. are words that a Frenchman or an Englishman would pronounce with the same accent than As Argentinian writer Manuel Ugarte Montesquieu's famous character who said, recalled, in Paris at the outset of the twentieth “How can one be Persian?” In effect, it cannot be century Carrillo “occupied every crossroad of the conceived, neither at Piccadilly nor at the city, keen to look like the center of anything the Boulevard, how a gentleman who speaks Ibero-Americans in France attempted to do" (1947, properly, who dresses well, and who does not p.133). His name would be associated with an have a monkey face, could possibly be from eclectic constellation of topics encompassing the those exotic regions. (1919, p.28) multiple faces of an expanding global modernity. Born in Guatemala in 1873, he left for Madrid in 1891 The woman at the Latin Quartier examining the and settled in the French capital soon after. From drinker symbolizes the gaze of European hegemonic there, Carrillo authored a vast array of articles for structures of cultural and racial difference newspapers and magazines of Latin America and questioning Carrillo’s legitimacy to participate in Spain, and published dozens of books throughout European metropolitan culture. It made no sense his career. Early works such as Foreign Literatures: that someone speaking French and drinking Cosmopolitan Studies (1895) commented and absinthe, the green muse of Verlaine and other introduced to Spanish for the very first time a wide decadent poets, could ever be from an unheard of arrange of world literatures, as he was able to read and almost circus-like country. Therefore, the through French translations (Siskind 2014, p.150). metropolitan gaze exposes Carrillo’s exteriority in Sensations of Paris and Madrid (1900) accounted for approaching the central locus of the modern the latest aesthetic trends among the boulevards, aesthetics. literary cafes, and theatres of the two cities. Still, Carrillo does not confront the Additionally, From Marseille to (1906), Greece hegemonic gaze bluntly, but rather negotiates his (1908), Jerusalem and the Holy Land (1910), and The difference by a productive performance of Sphinx’s Smile (1913) depicted distant lands to a marginality in the metropolitan space. Back to her readership hungry of exotic scenes. Finally, he senses, the woman asks if "Gratemoila" had actually reported on the Western Front at World War I in been a joke. Carrillo answers affirmatively, From the Trenches (1916) and The Feats of the Legion "cowardly denying my birthplace as Peter denied (1918). Altogether, Carrillo was celebrated for his master" (p.28). And “choosing among the presenting rare landscapes and for the poetic power nationalities she offered” to him “the most flattering of his prose in bringing aesthetic renovation to one”, he added: “I am Greek...from Athens”. Hispanophone literature. Carrillo accepted a subaltern position by performing Moreover, this centrality as an all- a foreign boulevardier that, although bearing the encompassing cosmopolitan was inseparable from marks of difference, is still entitled to partake in the performances to negotiate his marginality as a Latin metropolitan space, yet as Europe’s periphery.

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Negating his national and Latin American "Contemporary Greek Literature" and "Japanese cultural identity cost him harsh critics and disdain Plays". Carrillo thus defined the nation as the prime from his contemporaries. Nonetheless, just as he agency for participating in the world literary field, took an overnight Greek citizenship, later in Japan expressing literarily the nineteenth century ideal of he would find he had an "Oriental artist’s Soul" the nation as the requirement for defining an (Carrillo 1906, p.ix), and even legally took Spanish autonomous identity in the world. and Argentinian citizenships. In doing so, he Although Carrillo’s navigation of rather relativized national and regional identities heterogeneous literatures could seem eclectic and performing a protean cosmopolitanism. Paris would erratic, by commenting on multiple national provide the stage for that performance by rendering literatures, he attempted to organize within a visible a wider world beyond the Eurocentric transatlantic field, yet remaining a central locus of unified totality the world’s literary diversity. Or rather, by navigating national literatures the world global modernity. Standing in the misty zone itself appears as a unity composed of interconnected between America and Europe, hegemony and literatures, as expressed in the below commentary marginality, Carrillo would explore non-Western on Chinese Tang poetry read through French literatures and Japan’s modern experience, translations. complicating categories of hegemony and subalternity, What provoked for me the greatest admiration when I first read Pavie's book, was the multiple Mapping the World: Literature, Orientalism and similitudes existent between the Chinese poets the Nation of the seventh century and our contemporary This section explores Carrillo’s encounters poets. “Li-Tai-Pe”, I said to myself, “is a with East Asia through the practice of world precursor of Baudelaire, a grandfather of literature. Although he regarded French Symbolism Wyzewa, a master of Ruben Dario” (Carrillo among other fin de siècle European literatures as the 1895, p.98). standard for reading world literatures (Siskind 2014, Carrillo reads the poetry of Li Bai (romanized as “Li- p.150), this section will illustrate how he Tai-Pe”) to reveal an interconnected network of destabilized hierarchical divisions of East and West, national literatures which makes possible to connect both in the literary and political spheres. Tang Chinese aesthetics not only with the Carrillo appears in literary circles, symbolism of Charles Baudelaire and Téodor de introducing the latest aesthetic trends in French Wyzewa, but also with the contemporary Latin literature, eager to cooperate with fellow young American modernist poetry of Ruben Darío. This Latin American writers in constructing aesthetic inter-connectedness and mutual resonance of world modernity (Carrillo 1891, p.12). This endeavor can literatures disrupts colonial patterns of influences be identified with modernismo, the first permeating from the West to the Rest, suggesting manifestation of a distinctively American voice in that aesthetic influences could go the other way. Yet Spanish literature, and the first aesthetic response to from a twenty-first century perspective, it is Latin America's uneven modernization. Seeking to problematic to echo directly contemporary counter the positivism and social Darwinism of the aesthetics familiar to the reader with those of a text hegemonic landowning oligarchy, and the historically and culturally afar. Ignoring the materialism of the rising commercial bourgeoisie, distance kept by the cultural specificity of the source intellectuals and authors constructed a parallel text could lead into a monophonic discourse that aesthetic world (Miller 2008, pp.12-14). It was in this may translate diverse literatures as a watered-down context that Carrillo opposed the symbolism of Paul version of oneself (Damrosch 2003, p.163). Verlaine, Jean Moréas and others to Spanish poetic Nevertheless, the above parallelisms suggest that tradition and its prevailing naturalism. literary works never enclose themselves within their self-sufficient cultural particularity, but are most Still, broadening the scope of Spanish productively read in dialogue with other traditions. literature to shape modern aesthetics would lead This scope will allow Carrillo to subvert a-priori him to venture out the Western Europe-centered hierarchical divides between literatures written in transatlantic literary field. Essays such as the West and those of the Rest. “Alexander Pushkin”, "Contemporary Greek Literature", "The Egyptian Molière", which [In exploring non-European literatures) discussed Egyptian Jewish author Yaqub Sanu, and surprises abound, as Mr. Pavie and Mr. de Saint- "Great Japanese Female Writers" which introduced Denys know by experience. They both set on a Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shōnagon and others, were literary journey to , searching for horrific pioneering in rendering visible new literatures for monsters, and yet they only encountered with Hispanophone readers. These literary travels would civilized men. […] I too expected to find a great open a non-Eurocentric literary field, envisioning a procession of monsters coming out from the space to connect the literary and intellectual anonymous works of China […]. The production of Asia with that of Latin America. disappointment was as absolute as it was sweet. (Carrillo 1895, pp.88-89) It can be noted that Carrillo regarded the nation as the primal unit for organizing the world’s Carrillo debunked prejudices about the aesthetic literary corpus, as shown by the gentilics prefixing value of literary works based on their origin in either the titles of essays on “Young French Poets", the West or the Rest, self-reflectively denaturalized

New Ideas in East Asian Studies 2017 (Special Edition) 43 his own desires for encountering exoticism and Traveling across the networks of imperialism in awkwardness in Chinese literature. He suggested Asia and Africa, Carrillo’s world literary readings that all literatures deserved being appraised on denaturalizing the colonial divide would provide a equal footing, destabilizing hierarchical divides scope for engaging critically with Japan’s modern between the West and the Rest. experience. Carrillo would reframe his aesthetic Writing Japan for Latin America: Nationalism and principle of equality and commensurability Critiques to Imperialism amongst national literatures (Lyon 1994, p.230) This section will unfold Carrillo’s crossing from the literary into the political sphere discussions on Japan’s modern development at the thus challenging the colonial divide in East Asia at closing of the Russo-Japanese War. It is well known the closing of the Russo-Japanese War. In late June 1905, Carrillo headed to Japan to report to that the Russo-Japanese War marked a momentum when Japan was globally discussed as a model for Argentinian and Spanish newspapers on the social, achieving national emancipation in anti-colonial political and intellectual situation of the country’s struggles, criticizing imperialism, and struggle with Russia. He travelled with the French reinterpreting modernity in non-Western societies navy company Messageries Maritimes, calling at (Aydin 2007, Kowner 2007). Nevertheless, it is not Port Said, Djibouti, Colombo, Singapore, Saigon, and Shanghai before landing in clear how the self-emancipating and anti-imperialist celebration of Japan’s military victory came up to Yokohama. Carrillo moved among the colonial terms with the expanding imperialism that emerged networks of British and French empires at their as a result, especially towards Korea. This section height and the emerging Japanese Empire. He will describe how Carrillo, although celebrating would leave a testimony of the colonial situation in Japan’s nationalism, managed to hold a critical East Asia as he navigated through the Korean Strait scope over Japan’s crescent imperialism. by introducing the classic Chunhyangjeon, which he read in the joint French version by Hong Jong-u and Since the 1870’s, diplomats, scientists and Léon de Rosny. Making a comparison between the government officials from Mexico, Brazil, Argentina international notoriety of Japanese literature and and other countries visiting Asia focused on Japan’s arts with the invisibility of Korean works, Carrillo advancement in public health, education, military emphasized the meaning of studying Korean and industrial development. Having gained literature in the context of an inter-imperialist war: independence through the first two decades of the At these moments, when two great predator nineteenth century, Latin American countries followed a technocratic model for modernization. nations are disputing the dominance over the Largely inspired by positivism and social gentle country of the Morning Calm, nothing is Darwinism, political elites attempted to eliminate more interesting that analyzing this unique the negative consequences of Spanish colonialism novel. (Carrillo 1906, p.126) and racial mixing by promoting industrialization At a time when Korea’s sovereignty was at stake, and agricultural colonization by European Carrillo’s pioneering reading of Chunhyangjeon migrants, advocating for foreign models especially affirmed the legitimacy of Korean literature to in the United States, France and Britain (Miller 2008, participate in the world literary field against its p.16). Within this picture, Meiji Japan seemed an precarious political condition between two empires. alternative model for transforming a pre-modern By doing so, Carrillo projected his notion of the non-European people into a modern nation capable nation as the core agency for partaking in the world of embodying Western civilization, attaining literary field, into a political agency challenging the political stability, national unity and economic divide between colonizer sovereign-nations and progress (Gasquet 2007). Therefore, travelogues and subjects denied that right. The author emphasized other reports on Japan’s modern development held the universality of Chunhyangjeon, a story of two a high public value and found easily their way into lovers which overcome familiar and societal the press. obstacles until a happy conclusion of dramatic reunion (Kwon 2015, pp.101-102), and its artistic When the newspaper La Nación of Buenos Aires announced Carrillo’s departure to Japan on its value which positioned the Korean classic among issue of the 20 of June 1905, it did so among the same the most sophisticated European novels in aesthetic eagerness to learn from that “palpitating example of sensibility and dramatic impact. Carrillo’s assertion what a good organization and a clear plan are of the autonomy of Korean literature challenged not capable for the development of nations”. Carrillo only the alleged subalternity of non-Western cultures against the West, but also the illegitimacy boarded the “Sydney” from French navy company Messageries Maritimes at Marseille, sent by the of imperialist policies towards a nation with its own influential La Nación of Buenos Aires and El Liberal autonomous culture. of Madrid. Until his return on October, he published Although analogies with works of numerous articles in both newspapers, later preeminent European authors at the outset of the compiled in three books, From Marseille to Tokyo twentieth century such as Gabriel D'Annunzio and (1906), The Japanese Soul (1907), and Heroic and Paul Bourget were also present in asserting the Gallant Japan (1912). These enjoyed positive critiques aesthetic value of Chunhyangjeon, his commentary in Europe and America that prompted French and nevertheless destabilized Eurocentric perceptions of Portuguese translations. the backwardness of non-Western cultures. 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Carrillo did not diverge from the editorial embody the modernista aesthetic ideal of "living line of accounting Meiji Japan as an exemplary case among beauty", Japan’s success as a nation did not for Latin American societies. Indeed, he dedicated grant rights for colonial tutelage against Korea. The Japanese Soul to Guatemala’s president Manuel Carrillo’s re-readings of canonical Orientalist Estrada Cabrera, stressing that the two countries imagery encompassed an ambivalent movement of shared awareness on the importance of popular aligning with Japan’s nationalism whereas rejecting education for nurturing national morality (Carrillo its imperialism. Hence, his writings on Japan 1907). presented a criticism that question binary categories of resistance to hegemonic structures against Moreover, as his writing stood close to acquiescent assimilation in discussing Intellectual modernismo’s aesthetic reaction against the History in the non-West. materialism of the conservative oligarchic state, Carrillo expressed his gaze on Japan’s modern The same posture can be seen in Carrillo’s irony development through highly idealized exoticist towards the cultural and racial exceptionalism seen motifs about things Japanese. In the prologue of in discussions about the “merging of East and West” From Marseille to Tokyo, Carrillo announced that he (Tōzai Bunmei Yūgōron), notorious in public and had encountered a country of “dolls and smiles”, intellectual discourses after the war. These sustained not different from the Japan of Pierre Loti, Rudyard that Japan, having internalized modern civilization, Kipling and Lafcadio Hearn (1906, p.ix). had come to stand in equality with the Western Accordingly, he wrote about "The Samurai", powers as the representative of the Orient, while "Yoshiwara" and "The Temples of Nikko", but he holding rights for tutelage over the modernization interpreted aestheticized Japanese cultural of its Asian neighbors. It was argued that this traditions as supplying the values for nurturing prominent position between two civilizations had national subject’s morality. given Japan the unique mission of forging a new civilization out of the merging of East and West The nationalist sentiment takes advantage of all (Yamamuro 1996). Summarizing the opinions the warlike legends. The learned one’s account expressed by bureaucrat Watanabe Kunitake in for more than one hundred poems and up to Taiyō, protestant religious leader Ebina Danjō in two hundred plays inspired in the veridical Shinjin, Nichiren Buddhist scholar and activist story of the forty-seven Ronin […]. Today, the Yamakawa Chiō in Jidai Shichō, and philosopher Japanese worship these heroes as their holiest Inoue Tetsujirō in Nihonjin, Carrillo disapproved the saints, and their forty-seven tombs […] compose claims of Japanese racial superiority and its an altar in where every good subject of the privilege to become the new center of civilization. Mikado swears to emulate the sublime conduct of the Ronin if someday circumstances oblige On the Nihonjin, Inoue Tetsujirō answers to him to do so (Carrillo 1907, pp.44-46). those who ask about the reason of Japanese greatness: “The reason is that Japan has always Carrillo reinterpreted Orientalist motifs (which he avoided intermarry with other people”. Hardly accessed through accounts of A.B. Mitford, Pierre could someone be more nationalist. It must be Loti and Lafcadio Hearn) through his literary and said that in this delightful country, where politic nationalism, to envision Japan as an everyone smile and all foreigners are respected, exemplary model of a successful nation-state the contempt against everything that is not from encompassing both distinctive and sophisticated here is universal. cultural traditions and political autonomy. Nevertheless, Carrillo’s conviction on the mutual […]“Our navy”, Inoue Tetsujirō says, “is like equality of nations on their diversity, much in the England’s, our army like Germany’s, our artistic vein of the cultural nationalism delineated by culture is like France’s […] But besides all of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), would be at this, we have our soul, which fusions and odds with attempts of one nation-state to conquer or embellishes everything” Oh, admirable, oh colonize the others (Lyon 1994, p.230). Having adorable, oh ingenuous pride! access to publications such as Kokumin Shinbun, Shinjin and Taiyō, mediated by the selection and Though Carrillo was the most notorious Hispanophone author celebrating the beauty of Spanish translation of a Japanese collaborator Japanese artistic culture and the greatness of its related with diplomatic circles, he was able to read modern development, he relativizes the about the discussions over the postwar policies aestheticized “delightful country” to expose the towards Korea at the close of the Russo-Japanese racial and cultural exclusivism in postwar War: intellectual discussions. His re-reading of But as the intellectuals argue, the bureaucrats Orientalist narratives as an expression of a robust and the military are acting. And to act, between national tradition supporting Japan’s political the Japanese who today engage with the autonomy was incompatible with self-celebrating colonization or conquest of Korea, means to exceptionalism over other national cultures. This abuse, to tyrannize, to humiliate. (1907, p.222) critical scope makes Carrillo stand out from prevailing attitudes among nineteenth century Although Japan may have been in its “heroism, English-speaking writers that favored the Japanese adoration of justice, loyalty and chivalry” (1906, over other Asians who supposedly were incapable p.218) a model for envisioning national unity, and of awaking themselves from their "Oriental its artistic traditions and local lifestyles seemed to lethargy" (Starrs 2006, p.205), and from other Latin New Ideas in East Asian Studies 2017 (Special Edition) 45

American commentators that applauded it of the Global South against the oppressive Global uncritically as an example of patriotism and political North. efficiency. Carrillo’s literary and intellectual Resembling Eva Illouz’s notion of “impure endeavor between Asia and Latin America shows criticism” (2007), Carrillo’s interventions in that nationalism and Orientalism, as malleable ideologies, can acquire critical potency to decenter destabilizing Eurocentric hegemonic categories had some empowering implications for marginalized hegemonic structures, although always in complex subjects, yet they were indivisible from the relations to structures of power. interiorization and appropriation of the same Conclusion categories. Indeed, Carrillo’s resort to French translations and metropolitan aesthetics testify the This paper illustrated Enrique Gómez weight European culture had for the transatlantic Carrillo's writings on East Asia and Japan at the Hispanophone intellectual sphere, yet they actually closing of the Russo-Japanese war to expand the connected the Latin American and East Asian scope of Japanese Studies into the intellectual literary fields to overcome Eurocentric views of the encounters with Latin America. Carrillo was the world. most prominent Hispanophone writer in illustrating Japan’s literary and cultural traditions as source of Additionally, Carrillo’s distinction between inspiration for achieving aesthetic literary the praise of an Orientalized Japan from the critique renovation and national development in Latin of its imperialism and jingoism provides a critical America. His writings highlight the shared scope for accounting the multiple and contradictory experiences of Japan and Latin America for defining outcomes of marginalized subjects’ attempting to modern agencies in a world marked by colonial and disrupt colonial divides in a colonized intellectual imperial differences. This endeavor revealed an space. In sum, Carrillo’s accounts of Japan at the intellectual space for mapping modern turn of the twentieth century, itself marginalized by transnational intellectual history beyond the hierarchic racial structures yet developing itself as prevailing boundaries of Area Studies. the hegemon in East Asia, show how subjects defining modern agencies in the non-West were Carrillo’s accounts destabilized and deeply within the very power structures they were suspended hierarchical constructions of the West attempting to criticize. Further research must and the Rest in defining a literary and modern contextualize historical, social and cultural political agency. His conviction of the equality and implications of competing and overlapping notions commensurability among national literatures and practices of race, nation, colonialism and questioned prejudices about the aesthetic value of imperialism in the Japanese migration to the literary works based on their origin in the West or Americas, diplomatic relations between Japan and the Rest. Additionally, Carrillo projected his notion Latin American countries, and the literary, of the nation as the core agency composing the journalistic and scholarly discussions of Latin world literary field into the inter-national political American intellectuals towards Asia. field, denaturalizing the colonial divide between the West and the Rest. This scope was the basis for References portraying Japan as an ideal case of correspondence Aydin, C., 2007. The Politics of antiwesternism in between robust national literary and cultural Asia: Visions of world order in pan-Islamic and pan- traditions, and its apparent success in modernizing, Asian thought. New York: Columbia University yet at the same time openly criticizing its crescent Press. imperialism and the self-celebrating exceptionalism in post Russo-Japanese war prevailing in intellectual Camayd-Freixas, E., ed., 2013. Orientalism and identity in Latin America: Fashioning self and Other discourse. from the (post) colonial margin. Tucson: University of Yet, this paper problematized the fact that Arizona Press. the above critical scopes emerged by internalizing Colombi, B., 2004. Viaje intelectual: Migraciones and working with the very Eurocentric hegemonic y desplazamientos en América Latina (1880-1915). categories producing Latin America and Asia’s Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo. marginality in the modern world. Indeed, Carrillo Damrosch, D., 2003. What is World Literature? adhered to French Symbolist and other European Princeton: Princeton University Press. authors’ work as the global standard for measuring García, J., 2014. Looking like the enemy: Japanese and comparing diverse world literatures. Mexicans, the Mexican State, and US hegemony, 1897- Additionally, Carrillo deeply identified with 1945. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. nineteenth century French and English Orientalist Gasquet, A., 2007. Oriente al Sur: El orientalismo and exoticist literature, thus carrying out a romantic literario Argentino de Estevan Echeverría a Roberto Arlt. essentialization of Asian societies. Altogether, Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Carrillo stood between marginality in the Gómez Carrillo, E., 1895. Literatura extranjera: metropolitan center as a Latin American, and Estudios cosmopolitas. 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