those of the East. One of the most eVective ways to oppose cultural imperi-
alism is to mimic the institutions created in the West. In doing so, however,
the unequal balance of power soon became evident. In nineteenth-century
archaeology it was the East which imported the institutions of the West and
not the other way round. However, the transmission did notXow unidirec-
tionally. In the case of the interpretation of monuments, Western Sinologists
and Orientalists could not but absorb the knowledge accumulated in the East
and employ this as a basis for the development of their discipline. Paul
Pelliot and other historical archaeologists drew upon centuries of work
undertaken by Chinese scholars. Prehistoric archaeologists nowadays still
use the nomenclature of ancient artefacts devised by the Sung antiquarians
(Chang 1986: 9). Changes in China in the late seventeenth century seem to
have enabled an easier introduction of Western empiricism. In the case of
Japan, Barnes suggests that in addition to this, there were three traditions of
scholarly enquiry which facilitated the introduction of prehistoric archae-
ology: the Naturalist tradition of collecting and describing; a tradition focusing
on the collection of rocks, fossils and artefacts; and the yosoku-kojitsu which
gave importance to precedence throughout time, and developed within history
(Barnes 1990: 932). Thus, the situation was already prepared to accept change
when both China and Japan were compelled to open their frontiers to the West.
In their confrontation with the West, China and Japan followed diVerent
strategies. China broadly resisted Westernization until the First World War.
Japan’s tactics, however, were very diVerent. Japan tried to become an
imperial power like its Western counterparts, and to a great extent these
eVorts were successful. Both in China and in Japan, historic archaeology
showed a certain reluctance to accept Western-style historical writing until
the First World War. This contrasted with developments in prehistoric
archaeology in Japan. There, the rapprochement with the West, encouraged
by the Meiji government from 1868, led to early measures related to an-
tiquities: the edict of 1871 to protect historical records, collections, and
objects, and the opening of museums. The core of the institutionalization
of historic archaeology in Japan was the Imperial Museum, whose curators
had a historical training. In 1895 they formed the Archaeological Society ‘for
the study of archaeology in our country, with the view to throwing light on
customs, institutions, culture and technologies in the successive periods of
our national history’ (in Ikawa-Smith 1982: 301). Historical archaeology
maintained many links with pre-Meiji scholarship and therefore with anti-
quarianism. Only in 1916 would the situation start to change. Of key
importance in this process was Hamada Kosaku (1881–1938), who had
studied in England under the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, and who, on his
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