Japan began forming a modern culture when it came into contact with the West. Then the Portuguese brought matchlocks to Japan, and Francis Xavier brought Christianity. In the nineteenth century, Japan underwent crucial development as a result of exchanges with the West, and this development has continued to the present with ongoing cultural contacts.

This was not the first time that Japan borrowed from other cultures. Yet Japanese borrowing in the modern period was much different from Japanese contacts with Chinese and Korean civilizations between the fifth and thirteenth centuries. In the case of these earlier contacts, because seafaring voyages were full of danger, the oceans surrounding the Japanese archipelago provided a buffer zone. Moreover, the cultures and civilizations of China and Korea, imbued with Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist philosophies, were not as aggressive as modern...