Japanology and Ideology A Review Article

Abstract

Prior to World War II, ignorance of Japan and of Japanese scholarship was the primary reason for the nonparticipation of Western scholars in the debate over the meaning of the Restoration. Hugh Borton and Herbert Norman stood virtually alone among Western Japanologists in showing either an interest in or an understanding of the material.1 Then, after the war, the field of Japanology was quickly dominated by a number of former American military officers who learned the Japanese language in military language schools before or while participating in the American occupation of Japan. Arguably, this new breed of Japanologists studied aspects of Japanese society, history, and politics that did not conflict either with their politically conservative beliefs, nurtured by the emerging cold war, or with the occupation's attempt at politically engineering a democratic Japan remolded in America's image of itself. During the 1950s and 1960s, this new generation of Japanologists produced dozens of tomes that dealt with Japan's great historical figures, the successes of its political institutions, and the praiseworthy Confucian social