The logic of conformity: Japan’s entry into international society, by Tomoko T Okagaki; Völkerrechtsdenken und Außenpolitik in Japan, 1919−1960 (The discourse on international law and foreign policy in Japan, 1919−1960), by Urs Matthias Zachmann

Abstract

Tomoko T Okagaki The logic of conformity: entry into international society Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. 208pp., $43.73 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-4188-4Urs Matthias Zachmann Volkerrechtsdenken und Ausenpolitik in Japan, 1919-1960 (The discourse on international law and foreign policy in Japan, 1919-1960) Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2013. 436pp., euro102.00 (paperback) ISBN 978-3-8329-6981-3Meiji rapid response to the West often viewed in terms of cultural borrowing, but a key theme addressed here how this process also had a broader transformative effect on the Westphalian system. According to Tomoko Okagaki (National Institute for Defense Studies, Japan), ramification of entry into international society in the late nineteenth century was the expansion of this regional European concept of sovereignty into a more global structure. Writing in German, the Urs Matthias Zachmann (University of Edinburgh, UK) focuses on the works of Japanese scholars in the twentieth century who contributed to exporting interpretations of international law beyond the West. These two studies thus provide useful counterpoints to our still predominantly Eurocentric outlook on the evolution of international law. As Zachmann points out in his English synopsis, existing work on the subject is deficient in that it neglects the perspective of a major participant in its (1). Okagaki even suggests that the enduring relevance of Westphalian sovereignty itself may be attributed to its endorsement by latecomer states such as Japan.The Logie of Conformity makes a concise and largely coherent argument to explain the dynamics that impelled Meiji Japan to aspire to and attain the standard of civilisation prevalent in nineteenth-century diplomatic relations following the positivist turn in international law. In a slim volume that aims to summarize rather than explore in depth, Okagaki creatively deploys a number of models from political science and international relations theory to incorporate both internal dimensions and the global context. She also neatly distills trends in historical research on Japan to present a society not so much predisposed to modernization as already equipped with functional equivalents of European domestic institutions and thus primed for state socialisation. Tokugawa Japan, for example, had long since boasted a sophisticated urban infrastructure, consumer society, high literacy rate, printing culture, and a nascent public sphere. Historians ranging from American proponents of modernization theory in the 1960s to more recent revisionist Japanese scholars thus trace the onset of modern development to long before the encounter with the West and increasingly emphasize continuity through the nineteenth century. As Okagaki puts it, Japan's 'modernisation' was a slow process, which had started centuries before the West arrived, while its 'Westernisation' was a rapid one (98).Three chapters then describe in turn the adoption, absorption, and adaptation of international law in Meiji Japan. Although engagingly succinct, at times the exposition tends toward a general narrative, and it proves to be the least convincing component of this study, barely scratching the surface of the tortuous negotiations on treaty revision. As Okagaki subsequently admits, some comparison with Turkey or China might have been useful, a dimension explored by Cassel, Kayaoglu, and others in recent works on extraterritoriality.1 One theme identified by Kayaoglu that does not feature here, for example, the importance of regime change in allowing the Meiji leaders to wipe the slate clean with a program of legal institutionalization unfettered by the cultural constraints experienced by their Ottoman and Qing counterparts.Some omissions and factual errors also undermine the otherwise generally solid scholarship. Even in such a concise summary there should be space for the Maria Luz-the case of some Chinese coolies who escaped from a Peruvian ship that docked at Yokohama in 1872-which constitutes a landmark event in terms of winning international recognition for Japanese jurisdiction. …