Korean History Studies in Japan: The 2001 Shigaku Zasshi Review of Historiography

Abstract

Antiquity through Parhae With the twenty-first century before him, Takeda Yukio has reviewed re search on history in Japan from its beginnings. While providing a retro spec five on research trends in South Korea and North Korea, he criticizes the framework of Korean which projects the nation-state perspective onto history, and facile interpretations of sources. As a perspective onto future research, he emphasizes respect for scientific research methodology and its autonomy.1 His comments are important as guides that subsequent studies should follow. The question of how we are to free ourselves from the framework of nation-state his tory remains among the important issues to be overcome. Takeda's Chosenshi is a revised edition of a volume he wrote for a series of national histories. In the Preface the historical limitations of this framework are problematized, mak ing us think that general histories cannot stand as such.2 As an attempt to be free from the fetters of the nation-state perspective on history, from early on, there has been the theory of an Asian world. In Kodai Higashi Ajia sekai to Nihon, Yi Songsi compiled various papers by Nishijima Sadao, who posed this historiographical approach.3 In his analysis of Nishijima's research as well as in his own Higashi Ajia bunkaken no keisei, Yi untangles the process by which Nishijima established this argument and its the oretical structure and reexamines the argument's significance. He contends that the theory of an Asian world reflects realistic issues of the time during which it was conceived. Further, in considering a framework that will transcend the nation-state perspective on history, a more effective framework based upon contemporary issues and recognizing that the history and culture of East Asia must be forged.4 If we keep these debates in mind, as has been indicated for some time