The Far West is a Chinese and Japanese term for Europe, or more broadly, for the entire

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

as a cultural region comparable to

East Asian cultural sphere The East Asian cultural sphere, also known as the Sinosphere, the Sinic world, the Sinitic world, the Chinese cultural sphere, the Chinese character sphere encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically ...

. Originally a name for parts of

Inner Asia Inner Asia refers to the northern and landlocked regions spanning North, Central and East Asia. It includes parts of western and northeast China, as well as southern Siberia. The area overlaps with some definitions of 'Central Asia', mostly t ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

, the term Far West as a Chinese

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

for the West was coined by the Italian Jesuit priest

Matteo Ricci Matteo Ricci, SJ (; la, Mattheus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610), was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the , a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. ...

. Ricci invented the phrase as an Asian parallel to the Eurocentric notion of the

Far East The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The ...

, which positioned Europe as a region on the fringes of a Sinocentric world. The term Far West was also used in Japan and appears in many Japanese publications.

History

China

It was originally used in China as a name denoting parts of

and

. The meaning of the term was changed to encompass Europe during the Chinese

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peo ...

. This

semantic change Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from ...

is credited to the Italian Jesuit priest

, who used the Far West as the Asian counterpart to the

Eurocentric Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world ...

concept of the

. The Jesuits called India the Little West () and identified their homeland as the Far West or the Great West (). In his essay ''An Essay on Friendship in Answer to Prince Jian’an'', Matteo Ricci introduces himself by saying, "I, Matteo, from the Far West, have sailed across the seas and entered China with respect for learned virtue of the

Son of Heaven Son of Heaven, or ''Tianzi'' (), was the sacred monarchical title of the Chinese sovereign. It originated with the Zhou dynasty and was founded on the political and spiritual doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. Since the Qin dynasty, the secula ...

of the Great Ming dynasty." He may have used the term to ingratiate himself with his Chinese hosts by identifying Europe as a region on the western fringes of the known

Sinocentric Sinocentrism refers to the worldview that China is the cultural, political, or economic center of the world. It may be considered analogous to Eurocentrism. Overview and context Depending on the historical context, Sinocentrism can refer to ...

world. In 1601, an editor revised the essay by replacing the term Far West with Extreme West (), possibly because he considered ''taixi'' an awkward-sounding name. European knowledge was designated in China as ''tàixī xué'' (). Zhou Bingmo gave Western learning a more elaborate name by calling it ''taixi zhixue'', which first appeared in a

postface A postface is the opposite of a preface, a brief article or explanatory information placed at the end of a book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of pap ...

for the 1628 edition of Matteo Ricci's ''Jiren shipian'' (The Ten Paradoxes). The term taixi was still used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The "Western Sea" () and ''yuanxi'' () were alternative Chinese names for Europe. The Chinese referred to European people as ''xiren'' () and European missionaries as ''xiru'' (). The term Far West was later expanded to include the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

. The official Zhi Gang wrote a diary titled ''Chushi Taixi Ji'' (Record of the First Diplomatic Mission to the Far West) during the 1868 Burlingame Mission, a Chinese

diplomatic mission A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...

to Europe and America.

Japan

Europe was also called ''taisei'' ("the Far West") in Japan.

Rangaku ''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: /Shinjitai: , literally "Dutch learning", and by extension "Western learning") is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Weste ...

, which literally means "Dutch Learning", was an intellectual tradition that came to prominence in the

Sakoku was the isolationist foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate under which, for a period of 265 years during the Edo period (from 1603 to 1868), relations and trade between Japan and other countries were severely limited, and nearly a ...

period. The term ''taisei'' appears in many sources about Western learning published during that era. Examples include the ''Taisei gankazensho'' (Complete book on Western ophthalmology) in 1799, ''Taisei honzomeiso'' (Botany of the West) in 1829, and ''Taisei naika shusei'' (Compilation on Western internal medicine) in 1832. Western influence also introduced the Japanese to the geographical nomenclature of Europe, which included the idea of Asia as a continent. There were some Japanese intellectuals that opposed adopting the Western notion of Asia, and instead advocated retaining East Asian geographical terminology. One example is

Aizawa Seishisai , born , was a Japanese samurai (retainer of the Mito Domain) and a nationalist thinker of the Mito school during the late shogunate period. In 1799 he became involved in the compilation of the ''Dai Nihon-shi'' (Great History of Japan) being ...

(1781–1863), who claimed that calling Japan an Asian country was an insulting name for the . He favored the continued use of traditional terms such as "Far West" or .

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * {{Western culture Historical Chinese exonyms Regions of Europe Alternative place names History of the foreign relations of China History of the foreign relations of Japan Western culture