Japan's geographical location on the outermost edge of East Asia and its insular character have characterized its relationship to the outside world and its social development throughout the ages. This tension between "inside" and "outside" forms the leitmotif of Schwentker's depiction: phases of opening are followed again and again by periods of closure, while at the same time the inner order is strongly influenced by it. Foreign cultural loans and the indigenous will to cultural self-assertion wrestle with each other and produce their very own dynamic, which is by no means just a phenomenon of Japanese modernity, but clearly a characteristics of the country's entire history.