Archaeology, Society and Identity in Modern Japan (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Archaeology, Society and Identity in Modern Japan Walter Edwards (bio) Archaeology, Society and Identity in Modern Japan. By Koji Mizoguchi. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006. xvi, 183 pages. $80.00. The focus of this volume is on archaeology as grounded in modern society. Taking the Japanese case as his immediate subject matter, Koji Mizoguchi [End Page 225] looks at the history of the field in terms of its relationship with the emergence and development of the modern nation-state and seeks in particular to explain the fragmentary nature of contemporary archaeological discourse as deriving from the conditions of postmodernity. Heavily theoretical in his approach, Mizoguchi draws on the sociology of Niklas Luhmann in outlining a three-part sequence of social development from premodern to the classic modern then postmodern stages, each characterized by a different value framework for supporting the social order (or for "deparadoxizing communication," in Luhmann's terms). In premodern societies, appeal could be made to something outside the human realm "such as the divine and god-given order" (p. xiii). While this was no longer possible with the onset of modernity, which brings greater social complexity and increased relativity in value perspectives, during the classic stage appeal could still be made to a transcendental, common identity—such as the "ethnie"—forming the basis of the nation-state, whose emergence was closely linked with the transition to modernity itself. By contrast, postmodernity is characterized by a fragmentation so total that appeals to common, shared frameworks are no longer possible, and all of society and communication are thoroughly relativized, multivocal, and indeterminate. Under this formulation, the Japanese premodern stage came to an end with the Meiji Restoration, and classic modernity changed to postmodernity sometime in the 1970s. Mizoguchi's presentation of this framework is piecemeal and at times inconsistent, but a more serious problem involves his characterization of the classic stage of modernity. The assertion that once the nation-state had emerged, appeals could no longer be made to divine authority openly contradicts Meiji documents such as the Imperial Rescript on Education, whose bland exhortations of Confucian morality are sandwiched between declarations of a sacredly endowed, absolute moral order. Basil Chamberlain had little trouble recognizing in such statements the birth of a "new Japanese religion [consisting] . . . of worship of the sacrosanct Imperial Person and of His Divine Ancestors."1 But the same period also saw the development of the family state metaphor, which as Mizoguchi notes was indeed intended as an organically based, "common, shared framework" of identity for the nation-state. Accordingly, and regardless of whether this error stems from Luhmann's formulation or Mizoguchi's application of it, dichotomization of value frameworks into "pre-modern=divinely endowed" versus "classic modern=common identity" types is too simplistic. Put differently, the ideology of the prewar state was more complex than the scheme allows. [End Page 226] But apart from this, the framework serves adequately as backdrop for Mizoguchi's analysis of the historical development of Japanese archaeology. This has long been structured by an opposition he traces to the tensonkōrin myth in the ancient chronicles, which implied a division of the past into a prehistory peopled by indigenous, non-Yamato residents prior to the arrival of the imperial ancestors, versus the "history" of the Japanese people from that point forward. Archaeological data were readily matched to this scheme by taking Jōmon materials as remains left by the former group, and the study of Jōmon culture accordingly advanced unimpeded as it never threatened the mythological framework. Materials of the Yayoi period, however, were by implication traces of the imperial ancestors' migration to the archipelago, and those of the Kofun period included mounded tombs designated as imperial mausolea. The study of these remains had to be approached with caution lest doubt be cast on the authenticity of the mythological account forming the basis of the kokutai, the ideology of the nation-state. Whatever misgivings archaeologists had, as they sorted out the chronologies of these materials in the first part of the twentieth century, were kept private, and archaeological research into the Kofun period in particular was stunted. This opposition between "safe" versus "dangerous" (or "contentious") archaeology...