Japan and Altai: Discourses of Orientalism in the illustrated supplement to the newspaper Sibirskaya Zhizn’ (1903–1904)

This article is dedicated to the examination of Orientalism discourses in the Sunday illustrated supplement of the newspaper Sibirskaya Zhizn ’ [Siberian Life] edited by the ideologist of Siberian regionalism Grigory Potanin and published in 1903 and 1904. Drawing from the materials of Sibirskaya Zhizn ’ articles, the Sunday supplement, Potanin’s biography and creative legacy, as well as his epistolary heritage, reminiscences, and other works by his contemporaries, the authors reconstruct the specific narrative strategies employed in the issues of the illustrated supplement. These strategies revolved around the idea that the political events of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 as well as the British expedition to Tibet and the emergence of Burkhansim in the Altai actively discussed in Russian and Siberian newspapers served merely as a backdrop for more substantial regional questions, formulated in a popular scientific format. Discourses on the Altai and Japan were pivotal in shaping this publishing project. From a semiotic perspective, the issues of the illustrated supplement are considered as a unified text, bound by the intricate and somewhat contradictory task of discussing the foreigner question in Siberia in connection with the tragic events of the Russo-Japanese War. Potanin, as the editor, crafted a distinctive composition for the issues, where textual and visual elements intentionally entered into complex semiotic relationships: drawings and photographs did not always directly correspond to the adjacent articles, but almost always established an indirect connection, signaling the existence of a subtext - a “hidden” message for participants in the regionalist discourse. The formula “text - image - image caption - image commentary” allowed for overcoming the limited format of the publication and engaging the interested reader in polemical discourses of Siberian regionalism. The textual and visual unity of the illustrated supplement is realized on three levels: (1) the unity of individual articles and illustrations, (2) the unity of each issue, and (3) the unity of all supplement issues linked by a shared discourse, within which we can find minus-devices (e.g., lack of direct connection with political events) that constructed a highly intricate structure of a mature regionalist project. Materials concerning the natives of Siberia and the inhabitants of Japan (as well as, contextually, China, Tibet, and Mongolia) in the illustrated supplement of the newspaper Sibirskaya Zhizn ’ were a synthesis of Orientalism discourses, which, on the eve and during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, transmitted specific regional narratives about internal and external Eastern “Others”. Thanks to Potanin’s editorial work, the fates of these Eastern “Others” were directly linked for the supplement’s readers to Siberia, its colonial past, semi-colonial present, and hypothetical post-colonial future. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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