This paper analyses the eclectic cultural patterns which combined western and indigenous culture in the everyday lives of the Meiji Japanese and the Ottoman Turkish elites during the nineteenth century. The use of dress, home interiors, and etiquette by elites are discussed in the comparative framework of Norbert Elias's "civilizing process" that engendered the modern individual in the West. The above framework is applied to the nineteenth century reformist elites. The paper argues that the individual in both countries underwent a new "civilizing process" due to the introduction of western culture to an already existent milieu of indigenous forms and norms of civilization. The introduction of western culture engendered the politically charged symbolism of bi-cultural forms. They were seen as part of an eclectic cultural environment of reform and tradition. Both societies faced the "double" tension stemming from the self-perception of the rational in western and traditional culture representing "civilized behavior" in public spheres. Unlike standard arguments that see tradition as an emotive haven of security from the tension of modernization, the individual in Japan and Turkey found emotive refuge in alternative eclectic cultural environments with less defined cultural boundaries in private interior spheres.
Selçuk Esenbel (Sat,) studied this question.