The article analyses the book Japan by Aluísio de Azevedo, who was Brazils vice-consul in Yokohama, between 1887 and 1889. It tries to insert the author's opinions and the fascination he seems to have for the Emperor in the complex context of japonization-process which ran throughout Japan at the end of the 80ies of the last century. Talking into account that the country of that time is immersed in a debate which opposes modernization to tradition inside the parameters of an exalted nationalism, the aim here is to investigate the fundaments of a perspective suggested by an author characterized by his brasility and by an idyllic perception of Japanese isolationism, a measure of purity in relation to Europe. The analysis emphasizes the oscillation between a look which tends to see the Orient as a homogeneous block contrasting with the Occident as well as the national question, which precisely is the assertion of a specificity.
Japan; modernization; nationalism; Orient/Occident; Aluísio de Azevedo