Bulletin > Volume 44 Meiji Japan as Seen by a German Missionary: Carl Munzinger’s Book Die Japaner

Petersen, Esben

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Die Japaner is a late-nineteenth-century text written by Carl Munzinger (1864-1937), a German missionary and member of the Swiss and German mission society Allgemeiner Evangelisch Protestantischer Missionsverein. Munzinger’s account presents a variety of ethnographic observations of the Japanese and their religions. In many ways, Die Japaner is both a product of and a comment on the dynamics that took place in Japan at the time. Munzinger’s portrayal of the Japanese is full of preconceptions and misunderstandings. However, Die Japaner is also an important record of early European encounter with Japan. It contains many descriptions that capture the “view of the other” as seen by a European 120 years ago.