There was a whole period in US History where they determined that orientalia was THE thing.    From Wordnik.com.  [MISSING COLEMAN ALERT - HUNTING BUNTING] Reference

Some of this can be explained by the use of Aurelia as narrator, I suppose, but places the book securely in the tradition of orientalia using outsiders as stand-ins for the non-native readers — Shogun, or a lot of other genre fiction.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Teahouse Fire: Painstaking] Reference