Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Gttingen 2015. In the study of German expatriates in Asia, the active participation and input of local host societies has often been ignored. Using an influential group of Germans in Meiji Japan (1868-1912) and their relationship to the host society as a case study, this essay argues that "Germanness", a concept that has been long regarded as the exclusive domain of German nationals, was subject to global influence, articulated, created, and imagined by those who wanted to define it for their own interests and agenda. In Meiji Japan, the appropriation and embodiment of Germanness by German-educated Japanese elites (not a quality exclusive to ethnic Germans) functioned as scaffolding for the enduringly positive image of Germany throughout the tumultuous decades of the 1890s and 1900s, while dislodging German professionals from their privileged positions in Meiji Japan.
