Editing Yellow Peril (section)

{{short description|Racial color metaphor}}
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The '''Yellow Peril''' (also the '''Yellow Terror''', the '''Yellow Menace''', and the '''Yellow Specter''') is a [[Racism|racist]] [[color terminology for race|color metaphor]] that depicts the peoples of [[East Asia|East]] and [[Southeast Asia]]{{efn|Also known as the [[Far East]].}} as an existential danger to the [[Western world]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Odijie |first1=Michael |title=The Fear of 'Yellow Peril' and the Emergence of European Federalist Movement |journal=The International History Review |date=2018 |volume=40 |issue=2 |page=359 |doi=10.1080/07075332.2017.1329751|s2cid=158011865 }}</ref>

The concept of the Yellow Peril derives from a "core imagery of apes, lesser men, primitives, children, madmen, and beings who possessed special powers",<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dower |first=John W. |title=War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War |publisher=Pantheon |year=1986 |isbn=978-0394751726 |location=New York |pages=3–13 |language=EN}}</ref> which developed during the 19th century as Western imperialist expansion adduced East Asians as the Yellow Peril.<ref name="Yang">{{cite web| last = Yang| first = Tim| title = The Malleable Yet Undying Nature of the Yellow Peril| publisher = Dartmouth College| date = 19 February 2004| url = http://www.dartmouth.edu/~hist32/History/S22%20-The%20Malleable%20Yet%20Undying%20Nature%20of%20the%20Yellow%20Peril.htm| access-date = 18 December 2014| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150102102520/http://www.dartmouth.edu/~hist32/History/S22%20-The%20Malleable%20Yet%20Undying%20Nature%20of%20the%20Yellow%20Peril.htm| archive-date = 2 January 2015| url-status = live}}</ref><ref>Dower, John. "Patterns of a Race War" pp. 283–287, in ''Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear'', John Kuo Wei Tchen & Dylan Yeats, Eds. London: Verso, 2014 pp. 285–286.</ref> In the late 19th century, the Russian sociologist Jacques Novicow coined the term in the essay "Le Péril Jaune" ("The Yellow Peril", 1897), which Kaiser [[Wilhelm II]] (r. 1888–1918) used to encourage the European empires to invade, conquer, and colonize China.<ref>John Röhl. ''The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany'', Cambridge University Press, 1994. p. 203.</ref> To that end, using the Yellow Peril ideology, the Kaiser portrayed the Japanese and the Asian victory against the Russians in the [[Russo-Japanese War]] (1904–1905) as an Asian racial threat to white Western Europe, and also exposes China and Japan as an alliance to [[Slavery|conquer, subjugate, and enslave]] the Western world.

The [[Sinology|sinologist]] Wing-Fai Leung explained the origins of the term and the racialist ideology: "The phrase ''yellow peril'' (sometimes ''yellow terror'' or ''yellow specter''){{nbsp}}... blends Western anxieties about sex, racist fears of the alien Other, and the [[Oswald Spengler|Spenglerian]] belief that the West will become outnumbered and enslaved by the East."<ref>{{cite news| last = Leung| first = Wing Fai| title = Perceptions of the East – Yellow Peril: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear| newspaper = The Irish Times| date = 16 August 2014| url = https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/perceptions-of-the-east-yellow-peril-an-archive-of-anti-asian-fear-1.1895696| access-date = 4 January 2015| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140829175110/http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/perceptions-of-the-east-yellow-peril-an-archive-of-anti-asian-fear-1.1895696| archive-date = 29 August 2014| url-status = live}}</ref> The academic Gina Marchetti identified the psycho-cultural fear of East Asians as "rooted in medieval fears of [[Genghis Khan]] and the [[Mongol invasion of Europe|Mongol invasions of Europe]] [1236–1291], the Yellow Peril combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped, by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East";<ref name="Marchetti 1994"/>{{rp|2}} hence, to oppose Japanese imperial militarism, the West expanded the Yellow Peril ideology to include the Japanese people. Moreover, in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, writers developed the Yellow Peril ''[[literary topos]]'' into codified, racialist motifs of narration, especially in stories and novels of [[ethnic conflict]] in the genres of [[invasion literature]], [[adventure fiction]], and [[science fiction]].<ref name=":0" /><ref>''A Handbook to Literature'', 4th ed. (1980), C. Hugh Holman, Ed., pp. 444–445, 278–279.</ref>