Book R eview
Constructing East Asia:
Technology, Ideology, and Empire in
Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931–1945
Aaron Stephen Moore
Stanford University Press, 2013
xii + 314 pages. ISBN 978-0-804-78539-6
The Japanese empire played the role of a Promised Land for several hundred thousand
settlers. It also conjured a vision of a large-scale laboratory for Japan’s intellectuals and
technocrats. In Constructing East Asia, Aaron Moore, assistant professor of history at
Arizona State University, explores Japan’s colonial construction project and lays out the
intellectual discourse that inspired and rationalized Japanese technologies of development.
His transnational and interdisciplinary approach combines intellectual history with the
history of technology. The close study of actual manifestations of technology in the empire,
like dams, city planning, and industrial development, sets the book apart from recent works
on Japanese “scientific nationalism” and “techno-fascism.”1
“Technological imaginary” is Moore’s key concept, which he defines as “the ways
that different groups invested the term ‘technology’ (gijutsu) with ideological meaning
and vision” (p. 3). This generic term allows him to conceptualize the astonishingly porous
boundaries between left wing thought and right wing imperialism as well as between
utopian visions and technocratic pragmatism. Moore devotes three chapters to the ideas
and ambitions of exemplary Japanese intellectuals. He presents a Marxist in the employ of
Japanese colonialism, an energetic anti-capitalist engineer at the Home Ministry, and a chief
ideologue among Japan’s reform bureaucrats.
Aikawa Haruki, a theorist of technology, is arguably the most colorful person in
Moore’s account. As a Marxist, Aikawa was arrested several times for his left wing activities.
Then, in 1937, he converted to staunch support of Japanese colonial expansion. Aikawa’s
research for the South Manchuria Railway Company provided a detailed plan for the
industrialization of Japan’s colonies. He based his proposal on Marxist concepts to avoid
capitalism’s “warped development” (p. 45). When Aikawa was drafted in 1945, he managed
to desert to the Soviet Union where he participated in the “reeducation” of Japanese POWs
until his return to Japan in 1949.
Miyamoto Takenosuke was an employee of the Ministry of Home Affairs. He also was
an engineer with a vision. Moore’s account of Miyamoto convincingly demonstrates how
Japan’s expanding empire offered a unique opportunity for Japanese engineers to advance
their traditionally low social status and income. The case of Miyamoto also exemplifies a
1 See, for example, Mizuno 2009 and Mimura 2011.
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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Book R eviews
notion among Japanese engineers that their professional understanding of efficiency and
precision was not compatible with liberal capitalism and its narrow focus on maximizing
profit. Miyamoto, who became responsible for planning the industrialization of north China,
advanced the idea of “comprehensive technology” that was to allow engineers to escape their
narrow specialization and engage with the cultural, political, and economic spheres.
Mōri Hideoto is introduced as the exemplary reform bureaucrat who acted as a
modernizer and who, at the same time, invoked the “eternal Japanese spirit” (p. 208). Mōri
emphasized the productive and creative aspects of technology for mobilizing people and
building up a managed economy. In Moore’s view the combination of anti-modern and
modern concepts in the service of the “revolutionary transformation and mobilization of
society” (p. 8) qualifies for the label of fascism. Such a narrow definition might adequately
characterize Japanese reform bureaucrats. However, one could object that it contributes little
to the ongoing debate if fascism is an analytical category that adequately describes Japan’s
political development between 1931 and 1945.
Moore dedicates two chapters to specific Japanese infrastructure projects on the
continent. These chapters are fascinating on-site accounts of Asian development at work.
We learn about river improvement in Manchuria; urban planning in North China; a largescale industrial project at the Manchurian-Chinese border; and the building of two of the
world’s largest dams, the Fengman Dam in Manchuria and the Sup’ung Dam in Korea.
Rather than treating these projects as distinct case studies, Moore emphasizes their common
points. The sheer scale of each enterprise forced the Japanese engineers to adopt Miyamoto’s
comprehensive approach. They not only had to cope with incomplete data and an increasing
shortage of labor and material, but also found themselves confronted with local resistance:
they were forced to negotiate the conflicting interests of the military, industrialists, and
settler companies. Moore aptly shows how, in an atmosphere of “ambiguity, contradiction,
incoherence, and contingency” (p. 104), the engineers had to adjust their utopian dreams
about rationality and efficiency to a sobering reality.
While providing us with minute details—like the regular morphine dosage for
dam workers—Moore appropriately avoids presenting a “great men’s history” of heroic
industrialists and engineers. Still, considering how prominently ideologues, bureaucrats,
and intellectuals figure elsewhere in Moore’s account, it is astonishing how little agency
he attributes to eminent figures like Ayukawa Yoshisuke, the founder of Manchurian
Heavy Industry, or Noguchi Shitagau, a key player in Korea’s industrialization. Noguchi’s
company, Japan Nitrogenous Fertilizer (Nichitsu), was a driving force behind the building of
enormous hydraulic power plants in Korea that were to feed his electrochemical factories. In
a similar way, the role of Kubota Yutaka, Noguchi’s chief dam engineer, is mentioned only
in passing, and the reader is surprised to see him reemerge in the epilogue as the key figure
in Japan’s postwar infrastructure projects in Vietnam, Korea, and Sumatra.
In his epilogue, Moore argues that post-war Japan adapted “techno-fascism” and
“techno-imperialism” to promote domestic economic growth and foreign developmental
assistance (p. 227). Yet it seems that, if these concepts were so easily transformed into
consumerism and soft power, little of their fascist or imperialist legacy can have remained.
Arguably, Japan’s continuing faith in technology led to the emergence of the construction
state, where the Japanese just continued to build dams at home and abroad. As for Japan’s
former colonies, rather than treating the Fengman Dam as a despicable symbol of Japanese
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Constructing East Asia
techno-imperialism, the People’s Republic of China effected the completion of the dam. In a
twist of fate, the sustained importance of the Sup’ung Dam for North Korea’s infrastructure
was confirmed by massive U.S. air attacks on the dam’s power plant during the Korean War.
The book’s overall structure reveals one of its shortcomings. The two chapters on
Japanese technology are sandwiched between those dealing with Japan’s intellectual history.
The theorist Aikawa and the reform bureaucrat Mōri do not appear in the case studies,
making it difficult to determine their concrete role in “constructing East Asia.” It seems
that the engineers and planners at the construction sites gave little heed to the intellectual
discourse and just wanted to get their jobs done. In a similar way, after 1945, Japanese
engineers and politicians were apparently able to shed most of Japanese technology’s
ideological baggage, and continue their infrastructure projects in the name of reconstruction
and reparation.
Such criticism aside, Constructing East Asia deserves praise for bridging the disciplinary
gap across the technological and intellectual divide. Moore inspires his readers to take a
more comprehensive view of colonial modernity that pays close attention to the history of
specific artifacts, even as it takes into account the dynamic interplay of power, technology,
and ideas.
REFERENCES
Mimura 2011
Mimura Janis. Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State.
Cornell University Press, 2011.
Mizuno 2009
Hiromi Mizuno. Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan.
Stanford University Press, 2009.
Reviewed by Juergen P. Melzer
Japan Review 27 (2014)
245
Book R eviews
Book R eview
The Aesthetics of Strangeness:
Eccentricity and Madness in Early
Modern Japan
W. Puck Brecher
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013
272 pages. ISBN 978-0-8248-3666-5
The nail that sticks out gets ….praised? Within an academic climate that is still inclined
to depict the early modern Japanese as lacking in individuality, this observation is bound
to raise a few eyebrows. Nonetheless, it accurately characterizes the mindset behind a cult
of eccentricity (ki) that arose during the Edo period. Whether it was obsessing over striped
patterns (Striped Kanjūrō, p. 26), staging one’s own funeral (Yamazaki Hokka, p. 60), or
“welcoming” a wealthy guest by placing a urinal bucket at the front gate (Ike no Taiga, p. 72),
such idiosyncratic acts and their unconventional perpetrators were not regarded as socially
disruptive; rather they were objects of admiration in the eyes of their contemporaries, who
turned the biographies of such individuals into bestsellers. It is this fascinating premise that
is the starting point of Puck Brecher’s book, in which he sets out to explain how deviance—
mainly that of bunjin—came to earn not only social tolerance, but social capital as well.
Whereas previous scholarship has evaluated early modern eccentrics as either subversive
entities who ultimately failed to effect political change or heroes of a burgeoning “modern”
ethos, Brecher rejects both interpretations and promises instead to offer an “interdisciplinary
reconsideration of how aesthetic eccentricity emerged, evolved as a social identity, and
exerted lasting impacts on Edo society” (p. 21). And interdisciplinary the work is indeed.
Brecher adopts an impressively wide perspective, weaving together intellectual history,
biography, and art history into a theoretically sophisticated narrative packed with ideas and
anecdotes that will appeal to anyone interested in the Edo period.
Following a lucid introduction, Brecher traces how eccentricity emerged during the
late seventeenth century based on a Chinese model of secular reclusion (insei), madness
(kyō), and uselessness (muyō).
muyō). The next three chapters then proceed to detail the eighteenth
muyō
century transformation of eccentricity into a means for bunjin to construct “independent
aesthetic realms for individual pleasure” (p. 90), and its subsequent domestication and
commercialization in Ban Kōkei’s seminal work Kinsei kijinden (Eccentrics of Our Time,
1790), which infused eccentricity with a native ethos. The final two chapters describe how
this increasing commercialization diluted the social value of eccentricity within bunjin
culture, causing the term to get reappropriated by “countercultural energies and political
dissidents” (p. 170).
As the space of this review does not allow me to point out all of the many merits of this
book, I have chosen to focus on addressing two points regarding which I feel the work might
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The Aesthetics of Strangeness
have been improved. The first is Brecher’s rather narrow focus on merely aesthetic eccentricity,
highlighting predominantly the usual bunjin suspects such as Gion Nankai, Yanagisawa
Kien, Baisaō, Ike no Taiga, Soga Shōhaku, Itō Jakuchū, Hattori Somon, Fukai Shidōken,
Kinoshita Chōshōshi, Ishikawa Jōzan, Uragami Gyokudō, Kagawa Kageki, and Watanabe
Kazan. Valuable though this perspective is, it does come at the cost of ignoring a large group
of non-bunjin eccentrics: a diverse range of virtuous scholars, skilled physicians, chaste wives,
loyal servants and filial children who appeared alongside bunjin in the same biographical
compilations. Even though Brecher features some of these characters in short anecdotes, he
makes no effort to incorporate them systematically into his study. Recognition of the need to
set limits to a study notwithstanding, one cannot help but wonder how including such nonbunjin might have enriched the analysis. I find it hard to imagine that Brecher would, for
example, evaluate filial piety as a “self-making potentiality” (p. 114) as well.
This reference to the “self ” brings me to my second point: Brecher’s framing
of aesthetic eccentricity as a problem of “social identity.” This seems a claim that is
fundamentally incongruent with the sources that make up the bulk of his evidence,
namely, the biographies of eccentrics. With biographies’ well-known tendency to turn
hagiographical, can they, in any sense, be taken to reflect reality? Brecher’s evaluation of
this matter is historiographically prudent, as he wholeheartedly agrees with Marvin Marcus’
observation that early modern biography “concerned itself less with objective realism and
more with reinventing its subjects as embodiments of certain desirable traits” (p. 117), and
he correctly stresses the fact that Kinsei kijinden often takes deliberate pains to convert
biographical data into evidence of eccentricity (p. 127). Given the inventive nature of these
biographies then, in what sense are we to read them as a problem of identity, self-discovery,
self-invention, or self-making potentialities? From the standpoint of the biographer, perhaps;
but surely not, as Brecher would have it, from that of the eccentric. To be fair, Brecher
himself is perfectly aware of the “intrinsic inaccessibility” of his subject, and suggests that
the problem can be “ameliorated by attention to historical context and by plotting eccentrics
positionally vis-à-vis more knowable norms” (p. 9). Yet, amelioration is not a remedy, and
I do not think Brecher ultimately manages to bridge the gap between the nature of his
sources and his claims about social identity. However, even without taking this leap of faith
into the identity problematic, the foundations of Brecher’s book stand firmly as a splendid
account of changing discourse on and representations of aesthetic eccentricity.
Despite these two blemishes, this is an extremely gratifying work, offering, for the first
time, a well-balanced and meticulously documented analysis of a group—a genre even—
of characters that have been the playthings of a fickle historical memory that has either
branded them as losers or lauded them as heroes. I have no doubt that, in the same way
that these eccentrics animated and informed their society, Brecher’s work will stimulate and
inspire further debate on bunjin culture.
Reviewed by Niels Van Steenpaal
Japan Review 27 (2014)
247
Book R eviews
Book R eview
Kokugaku in Meiji-period Japan:
The Modern Transformation of
‘National Learning’ and
the Formation of Scholarly Societies
Michael Wachutka
Global Oriental, 2013
xv + 307 pages. ISBN13 9789004235304; E-ISBN 9789004236332
Michael Wachutka’s monograph is the first in English dedicated to tracking and explaining
the development of the kokugaku movement during the Meiji period. As Dr. Wachutka
states, more often than not in Western academics the story of kokugaku ends just as
modernity is said to begin, until new kokugaku arises in the writings of influential twentieth
century scholars such as Yanagita Kunio and Orikuchi Shinobu. It is clearly important and
necessary to explain this failure by omission of the academic community.
Dr. Wachutka makes a case for the importance of his study based not only on the
historical significance but also on the contemporary social relevance his results display.
He makes another case for the importance of his work by highlighting his choice of the
prosopographical method. He expresses the hope that a study based on collective biography
can create the grounds for sound and meaningful generalization, while also preserving
appreciation for the unique characteristics of the particular individuals for whom greater
historical information is now readily available in English.
The first two chapters examine the influence of kokugaku in the fields of politics
and academics towards the beginning of the Meiji period. However, Dr. Wachutka is
first required to perform the difficult, but I think successful task of summarizing the
main currents of bakumatsu era kokugaku and introducing the representatives of these
main currents who were still politically, academically, and socially relevant in the early
years following the Meiji Restoration. Although these various currents are well explained
and nuanced, they necessarily become simplified. In their unity, they are characterized
as essentially a movement in search of Japanese identity. However, Wachutka explains
this Meiji kokugaku movement as having divided into two main directions of inquiry.
One direction, not absolutely but generally, that of Hirata-school-influenced kokugaku, is
characterized here as conservative and deeply concerned with theological Shinto beliefs. The
second direction, again not absolutely but generally, is that of more philologically-focused
kokugaku, which the author characterizes as progressive, practical, and deeply concerned
with defining essential Japanese cultural production. When expressed politically, this latter
inquiry encouraged ideas of an essential and unique Japanese kokutai as found in ancient
Japanese classics.
Wachutka explains in these first two chapters that the ideal of merging government and
religion could not be achieved, as this more dominant conservative direction of early Meiji
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Kokugaku in Meiji-period Japan
kokugaku had hoped. Governmental control was not to be the future of Meiji kokugaku. The
focus of the second half of the book, therefore, falls on the remaining option of a progressive
search for nativist studies in support of imperial kokutai. Dr. Wachutka’s middle chapters
concerns kokugaku influence on the construction of nativist-inclined curriculums in public
and private schools and other types of educational societies and institutions, and show how
the more practical and progressive direction of kokugaku rose to ascendance in the latter part
of the Meiji period. They also show how elements of the more religious and conservative
direction transformed and preserved their messages in more moderate and acceptable forms.
The later chapters inform us that, in the second half of the Meiji period, there was a
prevailing sentiment, also expressed by the Meiji emperor, which feared the devaluation of
Japanese culture and ushered in the pressing need to implement nationwide programs and
projects with the sole intent of preserving what was considered to be essentially Japanese
in any and all aspects of culture. The nativist expertise of certain schools of Edo kokugaku,
previously considered by some to be as frivolous as they were antiquarian, suited the
educational emphasis on Japanese language, Japanese literature, Japanese history, and even
Japanese law.
In the final chapters, Dr. Wachutka reveals that in late Meiji national learning classes
were attended by an unexpectedly wide range of the general public in Tokyo. These classes
were staffed by volunteer kokugakusha who were often qualified, degreed and dedicated
professional instructors. The lectures they gave were then transcribed, and offered for mailorder, distance-learning purposes. In late Meiji, tens of thousands of Japanese from all walks
of life and from every corner of Japan signed up and purchased these lectures on various
Japanese classical literary topics.
Dr. Wachutka’s work contains much more information of importance that I have had
to omit in this short review. This book displays extraordinary and admirable erudition. Its
greatest strength is in its detail. There are times, however, in the execution of his collective
biographical method when this reviewer wondered whether very long lists of names and
biography might have been relegated to the much appreciated appendices. There are also
times in the telling of the trials of these kokugakusha when more detail could have been
spent describing the Buddhist, Neo-Confucian, or Western Studies opposition, but that
might have made for a different book. This book also left me wondering about a metanarrative that this topic in this era naturally brings to mind. Is the failure of irrational,
religious kokugaku and the success of rational, progressive, and pragmatic kokugaku as
identified by the author due to a greater process of Weberian-like secularization, or simply
modernization? Or has religion just “taken cover” or “gone underground,” as perhaps
hinted at by the author when he remarks that Kokugakuin still uses their Hirata school
influenced school-song? Furthermore, is the government’s recent grant for kokugaku studies
at the Kokugakuin University Center of Excellence a hint of the coming end of a religious
conservative dormancy, or else a portent of imminent changes in Japanese identity politics?
These few suggestions and questions aside, this book should not be passed over by any
scholar who pretends to study the Meiji period, whatever field they specialize in.
Reviewed by Wilburn Hansen
Japan Review 27 (2014)
249
Book R eviews
Book R eview
Three-Dimensional Reading:
Stories of Time and Space in Japanese
Modernist Fiction, 1911–1932
Edited by Angela Yiu
University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013
280 pages. ISBN 978-0-8248-3801-0
The 1910s through early 1930s comprised one of the most adventurous and fascinating
times for Japanese literature. These years bridged the initial modernist movement after the
Meiji Restoration (1868) to the mature modernism of the early Showa period (1926–89).
It was a time when literary imagination responded to the nation’s transformation, as Japan
went through major industrialization, and expanded and asserted its presence in Asia. Dur
During the early decades of the twentieth century, writers dealt with the internalization of self,
thereby establishing the I-Novel genre. In the Taishō period (1912–26), they transitioned
from confessional and I-Novel formats to novels that expressed imaginary internal reality.
This was also an exciting time of literary experimentation in which writers tested Marxist
thinking, proletarian motifs, cosmopolitanism, the avant-garde, Dadaism, futurism, formalism, surrealism, anarchism, and utopianism in their fictional works. Many writers featured
in Angela Yiu’s anthology Three-Dimensional Reading
Reading, such as those of the Shinkankaku-ha
(New Sensationalism), pursued new methodologies and art theories in the form of versatile
modes of expression, narrative strategy, and languages.
In Three-Dimensional Reading
Reading, editor Angela Yiu thoughtfully curates a collection of
fourteen short stories published between 1911 and 1932 with a central theme—“a discovery
of a conceptual depth” in the fictional imagination’s response to Japanese modernism,
and its spatial, temporal and abstract representation of modern consciousness (p. 3). In
describing critic Maeda Ai’s contribution to the study of Japanese modernity, urbanization,
space and temporality, Harry Harootunian stated in his article “A Walker in the City”
that Maeda “made Japan’s inflection interchangeable with modernizing experiences found
elsewhere throughout the globe and thus as accessible as any other instance of the modern
to seekers of the meaning of modernity” (Harootunian 2004, p. xii). Yiu aims for a similar
result by introducing these works to English-speaking readers within the contextual
framework of time and space from both Western and Japanese terminology, and by using
the concepts and theories of Heidegger, Bachelard, Lefebvre, de Certeau, Harvey, Benjamin,
Blanchot, Isoda Kōichi and Maeda Ai himself.
All of the pieces in Three-Dimensional Reading are newly translated into English,
and represent modern consciousness through what Seiji Lippit calls “multiple textual
allusions” with their diverse forms, aesthetics and styles (Lippit 2002, p. 56): they are
serious, humorous, farcical, grotesque, beautiful, melancholic, despondent, obsessive, and
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Three-Dimensional Reading
phantasmal. Readers, who have not yet been introduced to the wide variety of modernist
writings by such well-known writers as Natsume Sōseki, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Kawabata
Yasunari, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Satō Haruo, will be surprised and delighted. All
are supplemented by Yiu’s introduction, in which she displays her thorough knowledge of
the literature, literary theory, and history of this period. With great skill, she places each
author, his distinctive and innovative usage of urban space, and his contributions to the
development of Japanese modernism within a cultural and historical context. Despite an
uneven amount of biographical, background information, additional introductions penned
by the editor help the reader visualize the spatial construction of each story. For example,
Tamura Taijirō’s arresting drawing of his vision (pp. 88–100) and Yokomitsu Riichi’s
detailed mapping of a town (pp. 103–108) resonate with Yiu’s reference to cubist theory and
to Western modern paintings. Moreover, the stories become increasingly three-dimensional
and textured when they are complemented by contemporary artist Sakaguchi Kyōhei’s
illustrations. Yiu’s intention is thus successfully realized: she creates a visualization of the
multi-layered, “multiperspective” internal consciousness expressed in phantasmal, modernist
spatial and temporal construction (p. 2).
Part One of the anthology begins with a section titled “Scenes of the Mind”
comprising four short stories, published between 1911 and 1926. They demonstrate
the ways in which modernist authors depicted interiority as they portrayed the blurred
boundary between intimate, enclosed space and open, urban exteriority. Part Two, “Time
and Urban Space” introduces six short fictions, including those by Tamura and Ryūtanji Yū
(pp. 125–42), never before available to English speaking readers. The urban spaces featured
here embody proletarian social criticism—a criticism against materialism and the many
facets of colonization. These spaces range from a homemade fantasy of outer space and the
landscape of the age of machines to “a sinister periphery” of society, and to colonized Korea
(Maeda 2004, p. 150). Here, Yui attempts to “establish the possibility of multiple imaginary
crossings in which different temporal dimensions (of past, present, future and existential
moment) intersect to engender a rich and deep reading experience” (p. 4). The thematic
attention to time is not confined to the stories in Part Two. Rather, the entire collection
demands that the reader attend to the modernist temporal impulse that is intricately related
to “spatial configuration” (p. 8). However, “Landscape with an Officer: A Sketch in 1923”
by Nakajima Atsushi (set in colonized Korea) stands out in terms of its specific reference to
historical time.
In Part Three, “Utopia and Dystopia,” Yiu presents a rich variety of utopian, dystopian
literature. Here, stories are located in a fantasy West/East hodgepodge of a space which
is created variously out of a man’s vision of aesthetic perfection in Tanizaki’s “A Golden
Death” (pp. 162–200); an island in a Gulliver-like satirical dream in Akutagawa’s “Wonder
Island” (pp. 202–210); a cylinder shaped totalitarian utopian/dystopian nation, a spatial
actualization of Foucault’s Panopticism in Satō Haruo’s “A Record of Nonchalant” (pp.
213–39); and a utopian, remote island in Yumeno Kyūsaku’s “Hell in a Bottle” (pp.
242–50).
The works included in this anthology are also a good representation of the time when
“[modernism’s] relationship with language” was being tested (Lippit 2002, p. 31). Earlier,
around the turn of the century, a movement toward unification of the spoken and written
language (genbun itchi) had started. The fictions in this anthology were written during the
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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transitory time when Japanese writers were expressing modern consciousness in both “the
language for writing” and colloquial language. Writers such as Akutagawa and Yokomitsu
resisted the vogue of using colloquial language, and were still writing in formal language
while others (Satō and Uno being major advocates) experimented with vernacular styles
and forms. Given this background, it is vital that the translated texts keep the integrity and
authenticity of the original. This anthology is indeed translated intelligently and skillfully.
The translation of Kajii Motojirō’s hauntingly evocative passages is typical. Uno Kōji’s “The
Law Student in the Garret” attempts to retain the original narrative rhythm. The different
voices that narrate “Hell in a Bottle” by Yumeno, known for his playfulness with words, are
rendered in such a way as to convey the dystopian horror and despair felt by the protagonist
over the gradual collapse of innocence due to his incestuous relationship in a utopian space.
Yiu’s use of these fourteen short stories to locate Japanese modernist experimentation
in fiction within a global exchange by introducing the reader to their responses to urban
transformation and “the aestheticization of local, regional or national politics” should be
applauded (p. 7). Readers will find this anthology a fertile and relevant source for modern
Japanese literature, comparative studies and translation studies. Moreover, the works of
fiction in this collection will give the reader the pure enjoyment of reading good and
varied stories.
REFERENCES
Harootunian 2002
Harry Harootunian. “A Walker in the City: Maeda Ai and the Mapping of Urban
Space.” In Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity, ed. James A. Fujii. Duke
University Press, 2004, pp. xi–xv.
Lippit 2002
Seiji M. Lippit. Topographies of Japanese Modernism. Columbia University Press, 2002.
Maeda 2004
Maeda Ai. “Asakusa as Theatre: Kawabata Yasunari’s The Crimson Gang of Asakusa.”
Trans. Edward Fowler. In Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity, ed. James A.
Fujii. Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 145–62.
Reviewed by Midori Tanaka Atkins
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Japan Review 27 (2014)
Book R eview
Tumultuous Decade:
Empire, Society, and Diplomacy
in 1930s Japan
Edited by Masato Kimura and Tosh Minohara
University of Toronto Press, 2013
328 pages. ISBN 9781442612341
Tumultuous Decade is a bold rethinking, not only of Japanese history during the truly
tumultuous decade of the 1930s, but also, and more broadly, of what it means to do
Japanese history for any period. As Akira Iriye puts it in his Preface, “[Tumultuous
Tumultuous Decade is
part of] an ambitious new series, ‘Japan and Global Society,’ [that] will explore how Japan
has defined its identities and objectives in the larger region of Asia and the Pacific and, at
the same time, how the global community has been shaped by Japan and its interactions
with other countries” (p. vii). This project of “rescuing history from the nation” goes beyond
fashionable transnationalism to encompass even “non-national entities, such as regions, religions, and civilizations” (p. viii). There is also in this “hyper-transnationalism” something
of a changing of the guard heralded by the publication of this book; pushing back against
“a wave of post-modernism” in history departments, the editors decided to work beyond
the American academy and collaborate with their colleagues across the Pacific. Eschewing
theory, questioning standard narratives, and dedicated to the rigorous research and objective
scholarship that remain the hallmarks of the historical profession, the eleven scholars who
have contributed to this work are to be commended for returning to the archives and, at
times, radically reconceptualizing one of the most difficult periods in all of modern Japanese
history. Tumultuous Decade has big goals, and it succeeds splendidly.
The book is divided into three sections. Part One, Economics, Culture, Society, and
Identity, contains exciting research into the zaikai, the Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai, panAsianism as compared with pan-Islamism, and the 1940 National Eugenics Law. Part Two,
The Empire and Imperial Concerns, comprises three essays: one on social work in colonial
Taiwan, one on collaboration and conflict in wartime Korea, and, intriguingly, one by new
scholar Yuka Fujioka on public diplomacy by Japanese immigrants to the United States. Part
Three, High Diplomacy and the Statesmen, has, to my mind, some of the most compelling
essays of the entire volume. Here, we have new, and sometimes extensively reworked,
portraits of Uchida Kōsai and his post-League of Nations withdrawal foreign policy, the
diplomatic “gamble” of Matsuoka Yōsuke, the security policies of Admiral Toyoda Teijirō,
and Tōgō Shigenori’s role in the fateful decision-making that culminated in war with the
United States.
Space allows me to focus on just one essay from each section of this altogether fine
book. In chapter Three Section One, Cemil Aydin’s “Japanese Pan-Asianism through the
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Mirror of Pan-Islamism” situates Japanese pan-Asianism within the evolving search for an
“ʻalternative’ vision of world order” (p. 44) in the 1930s. In the 1920s, Aydin argues, such a
conception of Japan was “irrelevant,” because diametrically opposed to the confident postWWI internationalism that drove Japan’s foreign policy. Some forty years earlier, though,
pan-Asianism had actually been redundant, because early pan-Asianists (and, indeed, panIslamists) largely agreed with the European project of civilization and enlightenment—they
simply asked that that project be expanded to include non-Europeans, as well. Aydin reminds
us that it was the romantic critiques of European superiority by Westerners themselves that
inspired some of the most passionate pan-Asia partisans in the East, including Okakura
Tenshin and Rabindranath Tagore. But as the discourse on comparative civilizations shaded
into more sinister rankings based on race, internationalism became fraught with alienation
and schemes for grand assimilation. In 1907, for example, South Manchuria Railway
president Gotō Shinpei expressed to Resident General of Korea Itō Hirobumi his desire to
unite Japan and China in reclaiming “Asia for the Asians.” Itō warned Gotō not to use such
language lest it alienate Japan’s Western allies. While the cooperation between Japan and
the United Kingdom held sway, pan-Asianism was downplayed, but when Japan’s involvement
in the world order began to break down, largely after Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931,
pan-Asianism assumed a powerful new rhetorical force as a justification for Japan’s alternative
vision of regional involvement. Ottoman intellectuals, too, had turned from engaged
civilizational interaction to stricter pan-Islamist opposition, and largely for the same reason.
After the end of WWII, pan-Asianists and pan-Islamists alike became scapegoats, their
once-popular views now denounced by the very intellectuals who had formerly subscribed
to them. This powerful current of revisionism, Aydin argues, has affected the way we
understand the pan- movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In Section Two, Yuka Fujioka’s “The Thought War: Public Diplomacy by Japan’s Immigrants in the United States” provides compelling new insights into the issue of issei and
nikkei in America before WWII. Fujioka reanimates the familiar points of this narrative,
including the 1924 act banning Japanese immigration to the United States, into a dialectic
through the inclusion of the Gaimushō’s larger strategies involving Japanese emigrés in
North America. The Gaimushō, Fujioka argues, was trying to achieve a delicate balance
between American continental expansion, the internal politics of exclusion and immigration
in the U.S., issei and nikkei concerns, and superior Chinese diplomacy, especially in the
wake of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and her hostility toward China after 1937. As Fujioka
points out, the anti-Japanese turn in American politics prompted Tokyo to take a fresh look
at its diplomatic practices. “The addition of public diplomacy to [the Gaimushō’s] arsenal,”
Fujioka explains, “was a turning point for Japanese foreign policy” (p. 163). Ironically, the
Japanese population of the United States was so vociferously pro-Japan that it caused some
embarrassment to the Gaimushō. But as the Japanese faced increasingly fewer options for
engagement with American society and politics, they supported Japan with ever greater
intensity. The Gaimushō became an alternative to the ballot box, a means by which issei and
nikkei could influence, however indirectly, the policy of the country in which they lived.
Fujioka is to be commended for her new interpretation of this period, especially since in
1996 the FBI destroyed many contemporary documents. Indeed, the Japanese Association of
America (JAA) still has not opened its archives. The relocation of Japanese-Americans also
meant that vital records were often lost, and pro-Japan documents were widely destroyed
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after Pearl Harbor by fearful issei and nikkei. Today, the quest for reparations means that
many surviving issei and nikkei are reluctant to share their earlier allegiance to Japan, for
fear they harm their chances of an apology for President Roosevelt’s internment policies.
All of this makes the study of Japanese immigrants in the 1930s in the U.S. a challenging
historical enterprise.
The last section is, to my mind, the strongest of the three, but which essay to highlight?
Rustin Gates’ “Meiji Diplomacy in the Early 1930s: Uchida Kōsai, Manchuria, and Postwithdrawal Foreign Policy” is a perfect example of the multiple-archives-based scholarship
on which this entire volume is based. Uchida Kōsai is often remembered as having turned
sharply to the right after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Gates, though, sees Uchida
as essentially a Meiji diplomat trying to cultivate bilateral relations with individual Western
powers in an attempt to maintain Japan’s position in Manchuria. Gates positions Uchida’s
diplomacy, and in particular the Manchurian crisis (1931–33) “[as] the last gasp of Meiji
imperialism, rather than the first volley of Shōwa militarism” (p. 190). Gates here follows
Uchiyama Masakuma in seeing great consistency in Kasumigaseki seitō gaikō (Kasumigaseki
diplomacy), whose overarching goals from early Meiji had been to join the ranks of the
foreign imperial powers, and be viewed by those powers as equals. As for Uchida’s infamous
“scorched earth” remark, Gates brilliantly reconstructs the diplomatic and political context
of those very carefully chosen words to show that, on the one hand, the remark was actually
received favorably or with indifference by diplomats and journalists in the West (with Japan
watcher Hugh Byas praising it fulsomely), while on the other hand the main target of the
pronouncement was probably those in the military who favored a direct confrontation with
the Soviet Union over expansion into Siberia. Thus, Uchida remained a savvy practitioner
of the Meiji art of intelligent realism in foreign affairs. Gates’ essay is a masterly critical
rethinking of a controversial figure, who is all too often portrayed one-dimensionally in
historical narratives.
The very breadth of Tumultuous Decade may make some professors reluctant to assign it
to their undergraduates or graduates. The essays’ trans-archival nature sometimes makes this
volume’s constituent parts difficult to classify. This is precisely the point, I think; even if the
book as a whole is a taxonomic challenge, individual essays will greatly complement courses
on diplomacy, law, colonialism, intellectual history, empire, business and institutional
history, and twentieth century East Asian history in general. And, any essay in Tumultuous
Decade would be a model for teachers of the discipline of history. Tumultuous Decade is
historical scholarship at its very best, and one looks forward with great excitement to the
future work of its contributors.
Reviewed by Jason Morgan
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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Book R eview
Sword of Zen:
Master Takuan and His Writings on
Immovable Wisdom and the Sword Taie
Peter Haskel
University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2012
208 pages. ISBN 978-0-8248-3543-9
There is something appealing about the Zen warrior ideal associated with Japanese martial
arts. The Zen monk Takuan’s (1573–1645) two short exegeses on swordsmanship, The
Record of the Marvelous Power of Immovable Wisdom and The Sword Taie, can be considered
the apotheosis of this ideal, insofar as they espouse an unusually profound connection
between the physical and philosophical approach to the practice of martial skills. The impact of Takuan’s thought, however, seems to have been limited mainly to Yagyū Munenori
(1571–1646)—the sword instructor of the third Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu and recipient of
The Record
Record—and the Yagyū Shinkage Ryū school of swordsmanship until much later.
Takuan’s influence has been most keenly felt during the modern period, when works
like Eugen Herrigal’s Zen and the Art of Archery (1971) and Taisen Deshimaru’s The Zen Way
to the Martial Arts (1982) helped popularize the Zen warrior ideal. But Takuan’s connection
to it undoubtedly got its biggest boost from Yoshikawa Eiji’s novel Musashi and Hiroshi
Inagaki’s titular films, both of which depict Takuan as an omniscient tutor to the rusticated
Miyamoto Musashi. Subsequently Takuan’s importance to the development of martial
philosophy has been taken as a matter of course and the subject of little critical analysis. I
am happy to report that Peter Haskel rectifies this oversight, satisfying the desire of both
the scholar and the martial artist to learn more about the monk whose ideas would become
a fundamental part of Japanese martial arts philosophy.
English language works dealing with Takuan include William Scott Wilson’s The
Unfettered Mind (1988) and The Life-Giving Sword (2003), Sato Hiroaki’s The Sword and
the Mind (1988), and Nobuko Hirose’s Immovable Wisdom: The Art of Zen Strategy: The
Teachings of Takuan Soho (1992). Of these, only Hirose’s Immovable Wisdom and Wilson’s
The Unfettered Mind deal directly with Takuan; the others are concerned with Yagyū
Munenori’s Heihō kadensho and Takuan’s influence on the master swordsman. I do not wish
to compare the quality of those translations (though I must say I prefer Haskel’s for the
way in which it replicates Takuan’s liveliness and vigor). What truly distinguishes Haskel is
his exhaustive interpretation of Takuan’s thought on swordsmanship, meticulously culled
from and compared with his other writings, as well as Haskel’s analysis of the monk’s life,
which gives the reader valuable insight into Takuan’s development as both an individual and
member of the broader medieval Zen community.
Since Haskel’s knows that the personal nature of enlightenment makes it nearly impos-
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Sword of Zen
sible to transmit any sort of concrete method for its attainment through the written word,
his attempt to interpret Takuan’s writings in Chapter 1 is valiant. Like mondō (Zen-based
dialogues) and kōan, writings such as Takuan’s provide a handhold for the unenlightened in
a tradition that favors direct mind-to-mind transmission (ishin denshin 以心伝心). It is here
that Zen overlaps with swordsmanship: enlightenment, like mastery of the sword, cannot be
reached without personal experience, and yet it is acknowledged that the written word can
be an effective tool for impelling the aspirant toward it.
Haskel also spends considerable time discussing the development of swordsmanship
before moving on to the translations in Chapter 2. While it has generally been accepted
that it transformed into a spiritual exercise during the Tokugawa period, Haskel argues the
opposite, that during the sixteenth century “sword schools grew in popularity and prestige,
not in spite of the spiritual elements they incorporated but precisely because of them” (p.
26). In other words, swordsmanship was from the beginning an aristocratic art in the vein
of tea ceremony and flower arrangement, and the men most associated with it were “eccentric
itinerant masters like Aisu Ikōsai and Kamiizumi, men who regarded themselves as artists
rather than combat technicians” (p. 25). This is a provocative reconsideration of the notion
that a dramatic increase in attempts to cultivate philosophy around the sword occurred
during the Tokugawa that was in direct proportion to a decline in skill accompanying the
“bureaucratization” of the samurai.
Nevertheless, I believe that Haskel has exaggerated the artistry of these “naked” sword
schools (kyōha), when he writes that “sword schools like [Yagyū] Munenori’s were no more
intended to transmit practical modes of killing and combat than the tea ceremony was
intended to convey utilitarian procedures for the brewing and consumption of powdered
tea” (p. 26). This statement ignores the many individuals who were wounded or killed in
duels that utilized the very techniques which men like Aisu and Kamiizumi developed in
actual combat (Hurst 1998, pp. 41–44); Munenori himself demonstrated his mastery of the
blade in front of the second Tokugawa shogun Hidetada (1579–1632), saving his life during
a raid (Wilson 2003, pp. 14–15). Still, Haskel’s point remains accurate insofar as it relates to
the spiritual component of swordsmanship.
Chapter 3 deals with Takuan’s life. Particularly important is Haskel’s analysis of the
Purple Robe incident, the outcome of which had a causal relationship with Takuan’s decision
to write The Record. Haskel’s investigation of this incident elucidates the nature of the influence
of temple politics on Takuan. For instance, as abbot of Daitokuji he was compelled to
defend its prerogative to have abbots appointed directly by the emperor (receiving from
him the namesake Purple Robe) against the Tokugawa shogunate’s abrogation of that right
following the enactment of the “Various Points of Laws for Temples” ( Jiin shohatto 寺院諸法
度). What Haskel does well here is to accurately connect the Purple Robe incident, Takuan’s
subsequent exile, and his redemption following the deaths of his tormentors Hidetada and
the architect of the Jiin shohatto, Ishin Sūden (1569–1633). Indeed, Haskel makes it quite
clear that this chain of events gave Takuan the opportunity to influence both Munenori and
Iemitsu through discussions and writings such as The Record, which would in turn benefit
Yagyū swordsmanship, and later, martial arts philosophy in general.
I also appreciated Haskel’s inclusion of an appendix of popular tales about Takuan.
Such tales challenge more formal hagiographies by presenting the eccentric monk “in action”
and thereby constitute his “informal Zen legacy” (p. 118).
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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There are three minor flaws, one bibliographic and the others stylistic. First, it is
surprising that Haskel has not cited G. Cameron Hurst’s Armed Martial Arts of Japan.
Haskel’s argument is not necessarily harmed by this oversight, but it might have prevented
him from overstating kyōha swordsmanship’s lack of utility, as well as provided a sounding
board for his ideas about swordsmanship’s esoteric origins. Second, he might have included
section dividers in Chapter 1, to aid the reader in processing Takuan’s elliptical thought.
Third, it would have been helpful had Haskel provided Japanese characters for terms like
the aforementioned kyōha either in the text or in the endnotes. In any event, none of these
issues is enough to mar what is otherwise an enlightening read.
Medieval Japanese swordsmanship was waiting for one such as Takuan who could give
an authoritative and ennobling voice to the fusion of sword and spirit. If not for Haskel’s
efforts, modern readers of Takuan’s works might not have the opportunity to contemplate
the true tenor of that voice. Sword of Zen will appeal to anyone with an interest in Zen, the
martial arts, or Japanese history. I recommend it enthusiastically.
REFERENCES
Herrigal 1979
Eugen Herrigal. Zen and the Art of Archery. Routlege and Kegan Paul, 1979.
Hirose 1992
Nobuko Hirose. Immovable Wisdom: The Art of Zen Strategy: The Teachings of Takuan
Soho. Element Books, 1992.
Hurst 1998
G. Cameron Hurst III. Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery. Yale
University Press, 1998.
Sato 1988
Hiroaki Sato. The Sword and the Mind. Overlook, 1988.
Taisen 1982
Taisen Deshimaru. The Zen Way to the Martial Arts: A Japanese Master Reveals the
Secrets of the Samurai. Penguin Arkana, 1982.
Wilson 1988
William Scott Wilson. The Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword
Master. Kodansha International, 1988.
Wilson 2003
William Scott Wilson. The Life-Giving Sword: Secret Teachings from the House of the
Shogun. Kodansha International, 2003.
Reviewed by Jeremy A. Sather
258
Japan Review 27 (2014)
Book R eview
Sacred High City, Sacred Low City:
A Tale of Religious Sites in Two Tokyo
Neighbourhoods
Steven Heine
Oxford University Press, 2011
220 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-538620-2 (hardcover);
978-0-19-986144-6 (paperback)
This book is the first academic monograph on sacred space in the capital city of Tokyo,
based on the author’s on-the-ground observations in the neighbourhoods of Yamanote
and Asakusa. Steven Heine, a well established researcher in the field of Japanese religions,
has devoted most of his long scholarly career to Zen Buddhism. Here, however, he turns
his attention to sacred space in the Japanese capital postulating an “objective and neutral
yet subjectively engaged standpoint,” free of the shortcomings of previous approaches to
religion like exceptionalism, cultural relativism, postmodernism and the “discourses of lost
Japan” (pp. 24–27).
By bringing attention to urban sacred space clusters, Heine’s case study of Tokyo
aligns with a recent trend in sacred space analysis that tackles urban sacred space and ritual
in context, focusing on networks of religious sites and the community’s engagement with
them, like Kawano Satsuki’s monograph on Kamakura (2005) or Elisabetta Porcu’s study
of Kyoto (2012). Heine’s main contribution is the reassessment of some of the so-called
“contradictions” or “conundrums” of contemporary Japanese religiosity. He questions
the use of quantitative data on which these are often based, and instead proposes a more
nuanced approach based on on-the-ground observation and qualitative analysis at both a
macro and micro level.
The first part of the book tackles the secular-sacred polarity. Chapter 1 offers a crosscultural comparative perspective, comparing Tokyo to U.S. cities, while Chapter 2 justifies
the choice of Tokyo by stressing that it is the epitome of the pervasiveness of sacred space
religious practice in modern secularized life, its shrines and temples being integrated in
people’s ordinary life and interconnected as clusters. In the second part of the book, Heine
discusses Japanese religiosity’s “structure” and “motivation,” to prove that “there are more
important elements for understanding religious structure than focusing on division (or
union) of Buddhism and Shinto and for understanding motivation than emphasizing the role
of pragmatism in a world of vanishing tradition” (p. 23). The author dedicates a chapter to
each of these two aspects of Japanese religiosity for the sake of analysis, although he insists
that they are connected, affirming that “in Japan, a seamless web of interactions encompasses
the practicality and impracticality of the continuum of living and dying” (p. 178).
Chapter 3 stresses the important role of “living Inari”—which Heine identifies here as
just one of many popular deities chosen here to represent “folk religion”—as the underlying
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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religious layer that transcends and connects the over-stressed ritual specialization of Buddhism and Shinto in practices related to the dying and the living respectively. He provides
counter examples in which temples perform rituals for the living and shrines for the dying,
and states that “the layer of folk religion as the basis for the interrelation of Buddhism and
Shinto is as evident in ceremonies for dying as in rituals for living” (p. 131). Thus he concludes “the funerary process in many respects is Buddhist in name only, just as life-oriented
rites are Shinto in name only. In fact, rituals for both existence and nonexistence are part
and parcel of Japanese folk religiosity, which generates endless examples of assimilation,
amalgamation, and various and sundry combinatory or syncretistic movements that embrace
the unity of the living and dying” (p. 183).
Chapter 4 tackles the issue of ritual practice motivation, claiming that it is not only
the search for practical benefit (genze riyaku), as proposed by Reader and Tanabe (1998).
Heine points at other factors and considers that “the labelling of all religious practices
as genze riyaku … may go beyond legitimate criticism and lead to a cynical view based
on an Orientalist judgement” (p. 180). Instead, he postulates “a multifunctional view
of Japanese religiosity based on the impractical this-worldly benefits of anshin rather
than the practical this-worldly benefits of genze riyaku” (p. 181). To prove his point, the
author looks at the changes in the so-called “butsudan belief,” or memorial ceremonies
in the household, as well as in design trends and marketing strategies of the butsudan
shops in Inari chō. He grants that the benefits sought in funerary rituals are indeed thisworldly, in the sense that they are performed for the benefit of the living rather than the
deceased (as was the case in premodern times). Heine argues, however, that the living
perform such rites not exclusively for pragmatic or materialistic reasons; rather, they
are seeking after “anshin,” i.e. peace of mind; hence he chooses to talk of “im-practical
worldly benefits” (p. 177).
These nuanced refinements to broadly accepted scholarship are without doubt a
courageous and important contribution to the field of Japanese religions. Having said that,
there are a few areas, which I wish the author had further developed. First, “folk religion” is
a controversial category itself, as the author shows in discussing previous literature, so one
wants to know more of the author’s definition and understanding of “living Inari,” and its
equation to “folk religiosity” (p. 132). Secondly, further reflection on the theoretical frame
regarding sacred space and the discussion of categories often taken for granted―like high/
low, outer/inner or front/back―is desirable, because it would allow connections to be established between the author’s case study and the existing models presented in previous spatial
approaches to urban religious sites and ritual. Finally, Heine’s critiques of nationalism,
culturalism and other biases in previous scholarship are very well argued and illuminating,
but this reviewer at least wishes he had elaborated more on what exactly is entailed in his
proposed “middle way.” These are, in my view, three crucial methodological areas of interest
to researchers beyond the field of Japanese studies that Heine merely puts on the table here,
and that he will elaborate hopefully in future publications.
This book is undoubtedly an important contribution to scholarship on Japanese religiosity, and will provide food for thought for both researchers and students of Japanese studies, but it will also appeal to the general public. The author narrates his walks around the
Akasaka and Inari chō neighbourhoods in a way that might well be replicated by the reader,
and the book’s maps, pictures and detailed descriptions of the religious sites themselves,
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Japan Review 27 (2014)
Sacred High City, Sacred Low City
their history and function nowadays provide a deluxe and highly documented guidebook to
Tokyo’s Sacred High City and Sacred Low City.
REFERENCES
Kawano 2005
Satsuki Kawano. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action.
University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005.
Porcu 2012
Elisabetta Porcu. “Observations on the Blurring of the Religious and the Secular in a
Japanese Urban Setting.” Journal of Religion in Japan 1 (2012).
Reader and Tanabe 1998
Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe Jr. Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1998.
Reviewed by Carla Tronu
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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Book R eview
Public Law, Private Practice:
Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession
in Nineteenth-Century Japan
Darryl E. Flaherty
Harvard University Asia Center, 2013
334 pages. ISBN 9780674066779
While the history of lawyers in Japan has attracted wide attention since the 1950s, very little
scholarship has been published in languages other than Japanese. Professor Flaherty’s work
is ground-breaking as it contributes to the subject in at least four significant respects. First,
it clearly outlines the broad history of legal practitioners in Japan spanning almost 300
years; second, it presents new findings which have previously been unknown to Japanese
scholars; third, it makes successful use of original nineteenth century legal periodicals; and,
finally, it sheds light on the activities of important Japanese lawyers such as Hoshi Tōru for
the first time in English. Let me address each of these points in order here.
Flaherty’s book offers readers an overarching description of both legal practices and
the activities of legal practitioners in Japan from the 1600s (the Edo era) to the 1890s (the
middle of the Meiji era). Interestingly, there is no precedent for this sort of broad coverage
in Japanese. From a legal and historical perspective, Flaherty’s work builds on earlier,
more limited studies to make a significant contribution to the overall understanding of
Japanese legal practice prior to the establishment of the Kujigata osadamegaki, which is a
judicial code compiled by Shogun Yoshimune in 1742 (pp. 40–51). Although Dan Fenno
Henderson published a monumental work on Edo era judicial systems, the activities of legal
practitioners were not sufficiently clarified there. Flaherty’s book thus makes an important
contribution to this field.
Professor Flaherty also deserves credit for his novel insights into the field of legal
history. For example, his work introduces Sono Tel, a female legal practitioner active
during the transition from the Edo to the Meiji eras, who was previously quite unknown to
Japanese scholars. In addition, he details the activities of legal and political study groups in
early Meiji. Among these organizations, Hokushūsha, one of the earliest associations of legal
advocates and scriveners (known in Japanese as daisho, daigen’nin), played a particularly
important role in the popular rights movement. Flaherty insightfully explores the group’s
activities and uses a wide variety of historical materials in his introduction of the president
of the association, Shimamoto Nakamichi.
Flaherty’s extensive investigation of legal periodicals from the early and middle
Meiji period is also worth noting. He has furnished scholars not only with a valuable
historical list of legal journals published but also an in-depth analysis of their contents.
This is especially significant because these journals have not been the subject of thorough-
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Public Law, Private Practice
going research until this time.1 After the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, former samurai legal
advocates turned to the political arena to express their opposition to the Meiji government.
The legal debates of these men are recorded in the journals of the period, and their
practical significance goes without saying. For example, the legal journal Hōritsu zasshi
introduced contemporary legal discourse concerning public meeting regulations. It should
be noted, however, that Flaherty’s arguments in this area merit further embellishment.
He states, for example, that “the impact of articles in legal journals extended beyond
scholarship, officialdom, and the court” (p. 179). Given that most of these legal periodicals
were published for less than a year, more information on how they were circulated is
necessary to render his argument persuasive.
The most outstanding feature of this book is its focus on the specific activities of Meiji
lawyers. One lawyer to whom Professor Flaherty devotes much space is Hoshi Tōru, who
was called to the bar in England and engaged in legal practice in Japan from the late 1870s.2
It is well known among English readers that Hoshi later became a prominent politician
in the Japanese Liberal Party (Jiyūtō). However, his activities as a practicing lawyer have
received very little attention thus far. Flaherty’s description of the transformation of
former samurai into legal advocates with strong inclinations toward democratic politics
is also persuasive. He analyses brilliantly the relationship between legal advocates, liberal
democracy, and their representation in court cases related to the popular rights movement.
Among the questions which occurred to this reviewer while reading this fine book
were: What, after all, is a lawyer? How can we define a lawyer and other members of the
legal profession in an historical context? As Professor Flaherty notes, legal practitioners
existed in various forms throughout Japanese history, and those in the Edo and early Meiji
periods resembled legal practitioners in early modern Europe in terms of the considerable
overlap between individuals engaged in both legal practice and government business (pp.
33–35). Building on prior scholarship, Flaherty outlines this relationship. He explains for
example how inn owners and suit solicitors, approved by the bakufu government in preMeiji Japan, gave legal advice concerning the laws and litigation in support of litigants
(clients), drafted legal documents on their behalf, and negotiated settlements out of court.
In addition, he notes how such “quasi lawyers” accompanied their clients to the court
buildings, even though they were not allowed to represent them directly. According to
Sakamoto 2007, however, suit inn owners were not used when commoners living inside Edo
brought suit. In those cases, only town officials were expected to support the parties.3 It
seems that further exploration into the role of suit inns (or kujiyado) in the Edo era judicial
system is required.
This reviewer also wonders whether Meiji legal advocates were in fact the successors of
the suit-inn owners, suit solicitors and legal practitioners, such as Sono Tel. Flaherty stresses
the difference in social class between legal advocates recruited from the former samurai
class and suit inn owners or suit solicitors who were generally commoners. When the
former samurai legal advocates concentrated on political activities between 1874 and 1880,
litigants presumably had no choice but to deal with the legal practitioners of the Meiji era
1 See Takahashi 2011.
2 The first Japanese barrister was not Hoshi Tōru, but Yoshiyama Gorōnosuke [Fukubara Yoshimichi
(Yoshiyama)] who was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn on 6 June 1874. See Hori 2012 and Fujita 2013.
3 See also Yoshida 2004 and 2005.
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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Book R eviews
known as dainin. Although non-licensed, these individuals represented clients in court, and
scholarship suggests that they enjoyed the right to represent clients as far as the Japanese
Supreme Court (Daishin’in).4 Sono Tel was one of these non-licensed dainin, and it seems
she may have continued her legal practice in court at least until 1893 and out of court until
as late as 1933, as was the case with other non-licensed legal practitioners.
The early legal field in Japan included licensed lawyers, many of whom were former
samurai who often focused their attention on politics and the political movements of the
day, as well as non-licensed advocates who conducted the practical day to day representation
of their clients. In my view, both of these groups helped craft the modern Japanese legal
profession. This is something to which Professor Flaherty gives too little consideration. In
addition, the role of the police in the settlement of private disputes during the early Meiji
period should not be overlooked in further research.
In summary, Professor Flaherty’s dynamic book on the Japanese legal profession has
opened the door to many new areas of scholarship, and will no doubt become standard
reading for both legal and political historians.
REFERENCES
Fujita 2013
Fujita Ikuko 藤田郁子. Nihon saisho no barrister: Kyū Ube ryōshu Fukubara Yoshiyama
kō no sokuseki o tazunete 日本最初のバリスター: 旧宇部領主福原芳山公の足跡を訪ねて.
Yotsuba Saron, 2013.
Hashimoto 2005
Hashimoto Seiichi 橋本誠一. Zaiya “ hōsō” to chiiki shakai 在野「法曹」と地域社会.
Hōritsu Bunkasha, 2005.
Hashimoto 2010
Hashimoto Seiichi. “Daishin’in hōtei ni okeru daigen’nin/dainin: 1875–1880 nen” 大
審院法廷における代言人・代人: 一八七五〜一八八〇年. Shizuoka Daigaku hōsei kenkyū
静岡大学法政研究 14:3–4 (2010).
Hori 2012
Hori Masaaki 堀雅昭. Ishin no eiketsu: Fukubara Yoshiyama no shōgai 維新の英傑: 福原
芳山の生涯. Ube Nippōsha, 2012.
Misaka 2011
Misaka Yoshihiro 三阪佳弘. “Kindai Nihon no chiiki shakai to bengoshi: 1900 nendai
no Shigaken’iki o daizai to shite” 近代日本の地域社会と弁護士: 一九〇〇年代の滋賀県
域を題材として. Hō to seiji 法と政治 62:1 (2011).
Misaka 2013a
Misaka Yoshihiro. “Meiji matsu･Taishōki Kyōji chiiki ni okeru bengoshi to hibengoshi:
Zoku, kindai Nihon no chiiki shakai to bengoshi” 明治末・大正期京滋地域における
弁護士と非弁護士: 続・近代日本の地域社会と弁護士. Handai hōgaku 阪大法学 63:2
(2013).
4 See Hashimoto 2005 and 2010, and Misaka 2011, 2013a and 2013b.
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Public Law, Private Practice
Misaka 2013b
Misaka Yoshihiro. “Meiji zenki minji hanketsu genpon ni arawareta Dainin: 1877–90
nen no Kyōjihan chiiki no dainin no jirei” 明治前期民事判決原本にあらわれた代人:
1877–90年の京滋阪地域の代人の事例. Handai hōgaku 阪大法学 63:3–4 (2013).
Sakamoto 2007
Sakamoto Tadahisa 坂本忠久. Kinsei toshi shakai no “soshō” to gyōsei 近世都市社会の「訴
訟」と行政. Sōbunsha, 2007.
Takahashi 2011
Takahashi Hiroshi 高橋裕. “Meiji chūki no hōritsu zasshi to Ōsaka Kōhōkai” 明治中
期の法律雑誌と大阪攻法会. Hō to seiji 法と政治 62:1 (2011).
Yoshida 2004
Yoshida Masashi 吉田正志. Kujiyado/gōyado kara daishonin/daigen’nin e no tenkan
katei ni kansuru kenkyū 公事宿・郷宿から代書人・代言人への転換過程に関する研究.
Monbushō Kakenhi Hojokin kenkyū seika hōkokusho 文部省科研費補助金研究成果報告
書 13–15 (2004).
Yoshida 2005
Yoshida Masashi. “Sendai jōka no goyōyado” 仙台城下の御用宿. In Kinseihō no
saikentō: rekishigaku to hōshigaku no taiwa 近世法の再検討: 歴史学と法史学の対話, ed.
Fujita Satoru 藤田覚. Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2005.
Reviewed by Makiko Hayashi
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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The Archaeology of Japan:
From the Earliest Rice Farming
Villages to the Rise of the State
Koji Mizoguchi
Cambridge University Press, 2013
385 pages. ISBN 9780521884907 (hardback), 9780521711883 (paperback)
This lengthy and dense book will take any reader, myself included, a long, long time to
assimilate: it is a masterful assemblage of data and interpretations, many never before
expressed in English. I welcome it not only for its revelations but also because it was written
by a Japanese scholar: it is time they spoke for themselves without having their works passed
through a foreign scholar’s mind. However, Mizoguchi offers this work as an “intervention”
for “illustrating to the international audience the potential and excitement of the study of
the Yayoi and Kofun periods,” because he thinks “the periods have not attracted as much
international interest as the Jomon period” (p. xviii). With this sweeping statement he
dismisses much good work by foreign scholars (Barnes, Chard, Edwards, Farris, Hudson,
Kidder, Pearson, Piggott, Seyock…), as well as many Japanese writing in English. Far better
to have said he was taking this opportunity to apply Niklas Luhmann’s social system theory
to Japanese prehistory.
Although published in large format hardback, this is neither an introductory text nor
a coffee table book: there are no color pictures. Instead we have an academic text written in
a philosophical manner with overt self-reflexivity. Contextualizations in theory, the practice
of archaeology in Japan, the environment and the East Asian setting are introduced in
Chapters 2–4; period dates are not given until Table 3.1, which might make it frustrating
for his intended “international audience.” The chronology and environment sections are
poorly presented in choice of terms and explanations. Mizoguchi’s definitions of relative
and absolute dating are unusual, while radiocarbon and its relation to climate are not well
explained. A great disappointment is his decision not to engage in the debate about the
controversial radiocarbon dates for the beginning of Yayoi. He is therefore forced to use the
relative pottery scheme to frame discussion.
Archaeological writings on the Kofun period in Japan today, he says, generally feature
“Marxist-inf luenced interpretations” and/or “references to descriptions” in the eighth
century chronicles. He himself, to explain social change, eschews a traditional Marxist focus
on contradictions between the “the force of production and the relations of production”
(Fig. 3.2A) in favor of the social systems theory of Luhmann (Fig. 3.2B). Although growing
out of structuralist-functionalist systems theory by Talcott Parsons, Luhmann’s theory
incorporates the biology of cognition and cybernetics. In simple terms (see Knodt’s foreword), Luhmann sees the social world divided into horizontal layers (treated by Mizoguchi
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as settlement or burial systems, etc.) that are self-organizing. When these layers come into
contact, they generate meaning through communication between systems; when in conflict,
they generate simplifying mechanisms that reorganize relations.
Chapters 5–11 analyze the Yayoi and Kofun periods in terms of contradictions between
these spheres, tracking the hierarchization of society through a multitude of regional data.
Early on, Mizoguchi postulates that rice and the dead are associated through mutual qualities of relating to life and reproduction (explained through Yayoi infants being buried in jars
originally destined to store rice, p. 59). Transferring this ideology to elites and their burials
in the Kofun period, he maintains that burial rituals, including the construction of large
tombs by community members, affirm the leader’s role in representing community interests and
ensuring wellbeing. I personally rejected an earlier version of these ideas in State Formation
in Japan (p. 125), while offering an alternative explanation for the rise of the mounded tomb
culture (Barnes 2007, chapter 8, and 2011, and Barnes’ essay in this volume)—with which
Mizoguchi has failed to engage.
Does Luhmann’s theory of systems communications work for Japanese prehistory?
One can see how Mizoguchi applied this theory to account for social stratification and
hierarchization. But he departs from Luhmann on the personal level. Luhmann specifically
dissociates individuals from systems operations: language is important only in that things
are said (not their content), while individual actions are important only in their attribution
to individuals or to the situation (Knodt 1995). While Luhmann excludes the personal
(perhaps this is why Knodt calls him “post humanist”), Mizoguchi foregrounds people’s
“thoughts, feelings and memories”—as evidenced by his “rice as death” idea, and by his
constant claims of what prehistoric people thought and how they were concerned with their
“identity.” These are concepts in post-processualist archaeology, not in post humanism.
Stronger editorial control could have improved this book, particularly in ensuring that
the content is readily understandable to two very different audiences (Japanologists and
general archaeologists). Inconsistent transliteration of both Chinese and Korean words and
other minor problems with English can be overlooked, but Mizoguchi is renowned for his
complicated writing style (in both English and Japanese—perhaps because he is reading
Luhmann). It was often difficult to follow the formal logic of his interpretations and the
sequential logic of his data presentations. Figures are arranged out of order with references
in the text, and chapter sub-sections not only have an idiosyncratic numbering system, but
are not even listed in the Table of Contents—rather necessary for a 70 page chapter.1
Despite these shortcomings, however, for anyone interested in the details of Japanese
protohistoric archaeology and how Luhmann’s communications theory is deployed in
hypothesizing reasons for change and restructuring of rice agricultural society, this book is
food for thought. I laud Mizoguchi for such prolific scholarship, evidencing much thought
and effort, and for writing astoundingly well in a foreign language.
1 See instead my full listing at: https://www.academia.edu/6494598/Mizoguchi13_Expanded_ToC.
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REFERENCES
Barnes 2007
Gina L. Barnes. State Formation in Japan. Routledge, 2007.
Barnes 2011
Gina L. Barnes. “Kofun jidai zenki ni okeru tōchi shihaiken kasetsu” 古墳時代前期
における統治支配権仮説. Kodaigaku kenkyū 古代学研究 190 (June 2011), pp. 1–14;
“Comments and Reply” in Kodaigaku kenkyū 古代学研究 191 (October 2011), pp.
26–45 [by Mizoguchi on pp. 28–35].
Knodt 1995
Eva M. Knodt. “Foreword” to Luhmann’s Social Systems. Stanford University Press,
1995.
Reviewed by Gina L. Barnes
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Book R eview
Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons:
Nature, Literature, and the Arts
Haruo Shirane
Columbia University Press, 2012
336 pages. ISBN 978-0-231-15281-5/978-0-231-15280-8
All of us who study Japan will no doubt have at least some vague idea of the all-important
role the seasons play in so many different areas of Japanese culture. The great virtue of
Haruo Shirane’s Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons is that it enables us, for the first
time in English, to gain a comprehensive, systematic and authoritatively scholarly view of
how very pervasive this seasonal culture is and has been since the Nara and Heian periods.
The book’s central argument is also original and thought-provoking: that the supposedly
close relation to nature and the seasons in waka and the manifold other arts, crafts and
cultural practices influenced by that classical poetic tradition has actually been a relation
not with nature-in-itself but with a man-made “secondary” nature. This argument, sustained
throughout the book, certainly provides an interesting new perspective from which to rethink the whole important issue of Japanese culture’s relation to nature. But I also think it is
a deeply problematic argument, both from a philosophical and a literary-critical perspective.
Philosophically it merely states a truism applicable to all poetry. From an ontological
point of view, all poetic imagery of nature is secondary—or indeed, if one is a Platonist,
tertiary, since Plato thought that even visible nature is but a shadow of reality. Therefore it
makes no sense, philosophically at least, to single out any one particular poetic tradition
as representing nature on a more “secondary” level than any other poetic tradition. Is, for
instance, Wordsworth’s daffodil more “primary” than Basho’s frog? If that were a Zen kōan,
one might answer: “Croak! Croak!”
Furthermore, even as a literary-critical term of convenience, “secondary nature” is
unsustainable in the long run—for instance, once we move from Heian to Muromachi
and Edo poetry. Yes, Heian court poets like Ki no Tsurayuki and Fujiwara no Shunzei
had a rather restrictive view of the aspects of nature that were appropriately “poetic,” and
generally preferred to use natural imagery that was “graceful and elegant” and gave rise to
feelings of pleasure and harmony. But, as Shirane himself points out, one of the defining
characteristics of later medieval and early modern poetry was precisely the breaking down
of these restrictions. The puzzled reader might well ask, then: at what point does nature
in this new poetry become primary rather than secondary? Are all those images of earthy,
erotic, frightening, and inelegant nature so abundant in Edo haikai, which would certainly
have offended the refined tastes of the Heian courtiers, not “real” enough to be considered
“primary?”Shirane does not address this question. Rather, doggedly determined to apply
Japan Review 27 (2014)
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Book R eviews
his term “secondary nature” to the whole of the Japanese poetic tradition, he expands its
meaning to include even poetic images of “nature in the raw” (e.g., the clamorous sexual
intercourse of cats) that would have made a Heian courtier’s hair stand on end. At one point
he does admit that it “would be hard to call beer or a short-sleeved shirt [seasonal words in
modern haiku] a form of secondary nature” (p. 217). But he does not pursue the theoretical
implications of this admission.
Actually, there is an important larger literary-critical issue at stake here too, beyond
even the history of Japanese poetry: our tendency to view and evaluate the literatures of
the past through our own rather narrow lens of what might be called “modern realism.”
What, after all, is “real” or “primary” nature, or, more to the point, poetic truth in the
representation of nature? As Makoto Ueda has pointed out, poets such as Matsuo Bashō
sought, in their hermetical retreat, “a reclusive life devoted to a quest for eternal truth in
nature” (Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters, p. 4). One wonders whether Shirane would
nonetheless consider Bashō’s nature “secondary,” even in those famous late haiku pervaded
by a tragic sense of nature’s loneliness and desolation?
No doubt this is far from Shirane’s intention, but his central argument might give the
impression, especially to those readers as yet unconvinced of the greatness of the Japanese
poetic tradition, that much of the classical poetry is of “secondary” status: precious, affected,
artificial, and in general further removed from the truth or reality of nature than the
poetry of other traditions. Widening his argument even further, he makes the provocative
suggestion, in the final paragraph of the book, that the relatively poor record of the Japanese
in protecting their environment may also have been because their supposed closeness to
nature was only a closeness to secondary nature: “the extensive cultural seasonalization and
the pervasive presence of secondary nature may have dulled the sense of urgency with regard
to conservation and the need to save the environment….” (p. 219). Thus he generalizes
what was, at most, an aesthetic prejudice of some Heian aristocrats into an all-pervasive
tendency of Japanese culture, from ancient times to the present. Although in a uniquely
negative form, this seems to me to verge on the kind of nihonjinron discourse about the
“special relationship” between the Japanese and nature that Shirane himself rightly calls
into question earlier in this book.
REFERENCES
Ueda 1991
Makoto Ueda. Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Stanford
University Press, 1991.
Reviewed by Roy Starrs
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