Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- A Word about Language -- Figures -- Between Engagement and Imagination -- Interlude: A Pair of Parables -- Mapping the Margins: The Ragged Edges of State and Nation -- Imagining and Imaging “Anthropos” -- Indianizing Iberia/Performing Portugal: Responses to the Iberian Irruption -- Parades of Difference/Parades of Power -- The Birth of the Hairy Barbarian: Ethnic Slur as Cultural Marker -- The Mountain That Needs No Interpreter: Mt. Fuji and the Foreign -- Antiphonals of Identity -- Back Matter -- Bibliography -- Index.

In Engaging the Other: “Japan and Its Alter-Egos”, 1550-1850 Ronald P. Toby examines new discourses of identity and difference in early modern Japan, a discourse catalyzed by the “Iberian irruption,” the appearance of Portuguese and other new, radical others in the sixteenth century. The encounter with peoples and countries unimagined in earlier discourse provoked an identity crisis, a paradigm shift from a view of the world as comprising only “three countries” ( sangoku ), id est, Japan, China and India, to a world of “myriad countries” ( bankoku ) and peoples. In order to understand the new radical alterities, the Japanese were forced to establish new parameters of difference from familiar, proximate others, id est, China, Korea and Ryukyu. Toby examines their articulation in literature, visual and performing arts, law, and customs.