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The Floating World Around And Between; Print Culture, Racial Blurring, And Japanese Views Of Black People From The 15th To The 19th Century, Angel J. Wakiihuri

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This paper seeks to investigate the relationship that exists within Japanese print culture (woodblock prints, newspapers, etc.) from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries as a means of investigating how interactions with Western empires, specifically the United States influenced perceptions and awareness of Blackness and Black people. These images and the analysis surrounding the interactions between empires help to establish what Americans perceived as the performance of “blackness” through minstrel shows and blackface performances as a means of blurring and attaching racial lines and distinctions upon the Japanese people and as a response allow for the Japanese to build an …