The Far East, as an expression, suggests a great distance from the West, but it may as well evoke a total disconnection with the familiar. China, Japan, and North and South Korea are the dominant nation-states in what is also called, less ethnocentrically, East Asia. Since the end of World War II, and particularly in response to an expansion of economic activity, Western interest in this seemingly far-away region has increased.
Within anthropology, studies of China and Japan (by Western and Eastern scholars) have proliferated, but increasing attention is also being given to many smaller cultural groupings. These studies have at times provided anthropology with challenges, not least because of the special characteristics of some East Asian cultures as ethnographic objects (e.g. because of the vast quantities of written Japanese and Chinese history). But it may also be argued, and perhaps because of these same characteristics, that East Asian ethnography has so far had a surprisingly minor impact on anthropology in general.
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