Transmitted Perceptions of Animals: How China Shaped Japan's View of the Nonhuman World

Abstract The Japanese are rumored to have a deep understanding of nature and therefore a deeper bond to the natural world as well as the creatures that inhabit it. However, recent studies to determine the attitudes, knowledge, and behavior of the Japanese toward free-living animals have proven the popular image of a nature-loving people to be misleading. Instead, the results have displayed an almost frightening ethical and ecological indifference toward free-living animals. In order to understand this contradictory attitude toward nonhuman animals, I claim that it is necessary to take a closer look at the ancient Chinese encyclopedic sources that have shaped the discipline of honzōgaku 本草学 (“natural history”) in early modern Japan. This article aims to show how the depiction and descriptions of nonhuman animals in medieval Chinese encyclopedias were passed on to Japan and became the basis of their knowledge of the nonhuman world.