Japanese Society and Marine Civilization viewed from the Diary of the Journey to the East (東游日記) after the Sino-Japanese War

While Qing was carrying out system reform during the end of the late Qing Dynasty (淸末新政), Japanese society had become a good example in various aspects such as central control, military, finance, jurisdiction, education etc. Many government officials of Qing Dynasty, scholars and persons in business circles moved to Japan and made an inspection competitively to learn experience of Japan. And many of them left a variety of inspection reports and travelogues. The Diary of the Journey to the East (東遊日記) which is a record of inspection of Japan is the record of Sino-Japan cultural exchange and historical material to read the process of the political reform and modernization of China. This paper classified and categorized the aforementioned as education, business and law․administration, examining marine civilization of Japanese society appeared in it. In the Diary of the Journey to the East, contents of education field are believed to contain the majority out of the whole quantity. Of the contents, maritime schools like Merchant Marine Academy and Fisheries Academy were included. Merchant Marine Academy aimed to cultivate shipping personnel basically, but was used as a school for training Chinese navy manpower. Fisheries Academy was considered a place where characteristics of Japan, island country were very well shown and Japan certainly believed that it was a world-class school. As for the business circles of Japan such as agriculture ․ industry ․ commerce inspected by the merchants of the Late Qing Dynasty, there is an unusually large number of mentions about technical and vocational education, which brought about rise in technical and vocational education to China afterward. Interest in new industries like maritime and fisheries can be found without difficulties. They paid attention to the Japanese Government’s encouragement of shipping industry, development of harbor construction and shipbuilding industry as well as to the importance of fishing industry. Chinese visitors also showed a keen interest in the field of lawㆍadministration under the centralism of Japan, which was closely associated with political situation of the Qing Dynasty in those days. Meanwhile, Diary of the Journey to the East was littered with fragmentary records of marine culture of Japanese society.