Subaltern Imperialists: The New Historiography of the Japanese Empire

Abstract

Of six references to Japan in the introductory chapter of Eric Hobsbawm’s classic The Age of Empire three appear in brackets, while the remaining three mention Japan in passing, as an exception to the point being made. 1 This datum is of only incidental significance with regard to Hobsbawm’s book, yet telling of the field. Japan has generally been placed in brackets by historians of imperialism. It has seldom received extended treatment in survey histories or theoretical works on empire. Few scholars until recently endeavoured to compare the traits of Japanese colonial rule with those of other colonial empires. And although atrocities committed under Japanese imperialism are known the world over, the complex post-colonial social and cultural legacies of Japan’s empire in East Asia and the Pacific, unlike post-colonial legacies in South Asia and Africa, have been seldom remarked. Two reasons for this bracketing and relative disregard present themselves. The first is that non-Western history itself tends to be bracketed off within Western academe. Study of modern Japan has been cordoned within Asian Studies under the protection of a distinct group of specialists. Since Japan was never part of a European empire, it finds no place within the study of modern empires, which has been carried out in a field centred on Europe. The second reason is that in Japan and the United States (where Japan’s strategic importance ensured generous funding for Japanese studies throughout the cold war) it was convenient to forget the empire. Forgetting allowed scholars in both countries to narrow their concern to the (supposedly) homogeneous nation state that resulted from the terms of Japan’s surrender in 1945. In the standard post-war telling of Japanese imperialism, Japan joined the club of powers with its military victories over Qing China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, then became increasingly aggressive on the continent, leading ultimately to the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1940, Pearl Harbor and the invasion of South-East Asia. After a series of costly naval campaigns, the atomic bombs finally forced Japan’s unconditional surrender. From the perspective of the United States after 1945, Japan, like Germany, had experienced a Sonderweg , or straying from the path of normal modernization. That path was now righted. Japanese imperialism had been soundly defeated and could be considered an unfortunate past. Returning to examine Japanese empire (as opposed to Japanese imperialism) would only confuse interpretation of the Second World War in Asia, and of the modern era itself, by raising the spectre of entanglements with and comparisons to other empires.