History of the Republic of China and “historical narrative”

Abstract

Do you know the term “revolutionary historical perspective?” “Revolutionary historical perspective” is a term for an apologetic view of history for the political justification of the Chinese Communist Party in modern Chinese history and is still used in present-day China as the officially recognized historical view. In fact, even in postwar Japanese research on modern Chinese history, there was a time in which this “revolutionary historical perspective” had a heavy influence. The background reflected the pre-World War II Japanese invasion of China and the sympathy of historians in Japan in regard to the successful establishment of the Communist Party via the Chinese Civil War. However, in the midst of the demystification of the CCP’s revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, the “revolutionary view of history” began to lose its magical appeal, and in its stead a new framework of historical recognition, “the people’s view of history,” appeared. In this chapter, the process of how the Japanese reflected on prewar invasions of China and the method of discussing the recognition of modern Chinese history will be evaluated by re-reading Japanese research on modern Chinese history and the relationship of these two views. It is my hope that through this process the dialog regarding historical perspectives of modern Chinese history will be opened to all Anglophone readership.