When global and local culture meet: Esperanto in 1920s rural Japan
In the 1920s Aomori prefecture, a rural part of northern Japan, a group of Esperanto clubs emerged as a sub-part of a “local arts movement”. This movement was an attempt to counter a perception of underdevelopment through the cultivation of local arts and culture together
with a simultaneous engagement with global and transnational ideas such as Esperanto. By studying this unexpected manifestation of internationalism (as well as debates regarding the local/global relationship) it is argued that Esperanto represented a cosmopolitan world view that retained explicit
respect for local and cultural differences, a “rooted cosmopolitanism”. This enabled the residents of Aomori to imagine an alternative to the process of modern nation building in which their local identity was seen as a remnant of an undesirable past.
Keywords: Esperanto; Japan; cultural internationalism; language problems; local history; transnational history
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 2013
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