In this article, I reconstruct late nineteenth century discourses on race, gender and nation as they intersect in the
novel Kontorrock and Konsulatsmütze [Office Coat and Consular Cap] (1886). The novel is set in Japan during the
period of upheaval prior to and shortly after the Meiji Restoration (1868). It was written by Arthur Richard Weber, a
merchant from the duchy of Schleswig, who had lived and worked in Japan during that time. My analysis shows how
colonialism, stereotypes of gender and race, nationalist sentiment and anti-capitalism, as well as the anxieties of the
narrator-protagonist as a member of the "late-coming" German nation, an expatriate, and a member of the merchant
class - often stereotyped as greedy and egoistic - converge in this gendered construction of the expatriate German
merchant and his Others. My rereading of Weber's novel from the viewpoint outlined above also implies reservations
regarding the way in which it has been treated by some previous commentators, namely, as a straightforward source on
the events surrounding the "opening" of Japan, on the history of Germans in Japan, and on life in the treaty ports. Such
an approach has tended to coincide with, on the one hand, laudation of the author as an early Japanophile and, on the
other, a lack of sensitivity to the racism, colonialism and misogyny implicit in this text.

2011.2.14正誤表(Errata）追加