Japanese Historiography Research Articles

КОЛОНИАЛЬНАЯ КОРЕЯ ГЛАЗАМИ ЯПОНСКИХ ИСТОРИКОВ: ОСНОВНЫЕ НАПРАВЛЕНИЯ ЯПОНСКОЙ ИСТОРИОГРАФИИ КОНЦА ХIХ–ХХ вв.

The author presents an overview of Japanese historiography on colonial Korea (late 19th – 20th centuries). Mainstream Japanese historiography arose out of a fusion of Western historiography introduced by Ludwig Riess and the Chinese kōshōgaku tradition. Japanese historiography on East Asia generally followed the negative portrayals of China and Korea. Tokyo Imperial University’s 1890 history of Japan, the Kokushigan, argued for a common ancestry to Koreans and Japanese. Views of Korea's historical subjugation to Japan became widely accepted in Japanese scholarship. From the beginning of the XX century Japan promoted the idea of a joint and inseparable “Manchurian-Korean history”, where Korea was subjected to heteronomy in politics and economics. After WWII, the subject of colonization has been always featured prominently in such publications, ever since the founding of the Japanese Society for the Study of Korean History in 1959. Such publications featuring colonial history as Japanese history (1962) and an eight-volume series entitled Contemporary Japan and its Colonies played a crucial role in the Kindai Nihon to shokuminchi debates on Japan’s responsibility towards Asia in the early 80-s. About this time the Japanese Society for Colonial Studies was founded.

The Birth of Japanese Historiography by John R. Bentley (review)

The Birth of Japanese Historiography by John R. Bentley (review)

荒井信一における「植民地責任」に到る道

This paper traces the evolution of histriography by Shinichi Arai(1926-2017), a Japanese historians of the history of international relations. In particular, we will focus on developments since the 1990s, when Japan's war responsibility, responsibility for colonial rule, and historical awareness were severely questioned. Through this, we will examine how Japanese intellectuals deepened their awareness of the issue of Japanese colonial rule.
 Arai is not an expert on the history of the Korean history or the history of Japan-Korea relations. However, his last book was Colonialism and Cultural Properties: Thinking from Modern Japan and Korea. This book positions Japan-Korea relations within the major trends in world history of colonial rule. This reflects the characteristics of postwar Japanese historiography.
 How did Arai come to write this book? I will first explore the originality of Arai's analysis in postwar Japanese historiography. In his research, the perspective of war responsibility was particularly emphasized, whereas colonial responsibility was not emphasized until the 1980s.
 From the 1990s onwards, Arai participated in the establishment of the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility and was one of its representatives. There, he made contributions as a historian to the issue of Comfort Women and the damage caused by air raids against Japan and China. In the controversy over the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, he raised the issue from an original perspective that Japanese and Korean history experts do not have. He also contributed to the creation of a forum for common discussion among East Asian intellectuals on the issue of Japanese history textbooks. Through such exchanges of intellectuals, Arai deepened his understanding of the history of colonial rule.

The Khalkhin Gol Conflict and Japan’s Foreign Policy in 1939 – early 1941 (Review of Japanese Historiography)

The authors look into the history and events of the Khalkhin Gol war through the prism of political and economic processes in East Asia, using rare historical sources that usually fall under the radar of most researchers. The Japanese troops in the Khalkha River area stopped hostilities due to the position of the country’s top politicians. The authors show that decisions of the Japanese government were determined by China's unyielding resistance against the aggression and the difficult economic situation in Japan, which had lost access to a number of foreign markets after 1 September 1939, causing its interest in the Soviet Trans-Siberian Railway as an alternative route for trade with Europe including Germany. Moreover, the authors point out that one of the key factors that prompted Japanese leadership to agree to peace negotiations with Moscow and stop escalating the military aggression against the USSR was the effectiveness of the Red Army’s actions in Khalkhin Gol. At the same time, Japan’s military expenses significantly increased as a result of the Nomongan conflict. However, as the article proves by concrete examples, the Japanese militarists did not fully abandon their plans of a war against USSR. At the same time, the authors demonstrate that by 1941 Japanese military leaders had reached a dead end in their strategic planning against Soviet Union. Their projects turned out to be inefficient for tasks and goals that had emerged as a result of the Red Army’s victory at Khalkhin Gol.

Nationalism in Japanese Historiography of the 1990-2010s

The object of the study is the phenomenon of Japanese nationalism in foreign historiography of the 1990-2010's. The subject of the study are the factors that historically formed the concept of Japanese nationalism and its modern perception by researchers. The Japanese political model and its components, including nationalism, are often subject to biased interpretation. Western approaches to Japanese nationalism almost always boil down to the fact that Japanese individualism is considered not as a kind of individualism, but as nationalism. The author examines the works of nationalism researchers who have used various methods and approaches to the analysis of this topic in order to compare the main models of nationalism in Japan and Western states. The author uses problem-chronological and comparative research methods. The novelty of the research lies in the author's comparison and study of the concepts of national identity and nationalism used in Japan by political elites to solve the problem of consolidating power, establishing state control over all aspects of the life of Japanese society, as well as combating external threats. The study of a country with a non-Western political culture demonstrates that if in Western approaches "nationalism" is usually defined as a phenomenon, a sense of solidarity arising from a common historical experience, then nationalism in the Japanese sense is an ideological mixture of militaristic, industrial and reformist aspects of the national idea and contains many complex factors. In addition to Japanese researchers, the author also studied the works of Russian and Western researchers.

Past and Present in Japanese Historiography: Four Versions of Presentism

For many intellectual historians, presentism is viewed as a cardinal sin—linked to unreflective anachronism and the inappropriate projection of present-day values onto a very different past context. However, by embracing the ways in which the present inevitably shapes our modes of inquiry, our historical interests, and even the moral underpinnings of our analysis, we can find in the present tools that can make our history better, and help make sense of historical debates and controversies. This essay gives an account of Japanese historiography organized around four versions of presentism. The first is political presentism, an analytic lens that emerged in the “objectivity debate” over what constituted politicized scholarship and reflected the political antagonisms of the Cold War in Asia. Consciously or unconsciously, political convictions shape our scholarship. The second version is the presentism of social context. Each decade that followed the Asia–Pacific War possessed its particular zeitgeist, and histories written during those moments were products of their time. The third form of presentism is the connection between past and present via analogy or likeness: using a past event or person to understand the present and vice versa. To analogize past and present means finding a correspondence that makes the past feel familiar and less “other.” The fourth version of presentism is the project of contemporary history: the past in the present, the past leading to the present, the present as the starting point for historical inquiry.

Japanese Historiography on 18th-Century Russian History in 2000–2020

Japanese Historiography on 18th-Century Russian History in 2000–2020

Рецензия на книгу: Fublishing in Tsarist Russia: A History of Print Media from Enlightenment to Revolution / ed. By Y. Tatsumi, T. Tsurumi. London: Bloomsbury academic, 2020. 280 p.

The monograph is dedicated to the broad topic of the development of printing and publishing in Russia in the 18th - early 20th centuries. The study is not generalizing: this task is too complex and multifaceted. The authors touched upon different and at the same time interrelated subjects, some of which were practically not previously investigated. The reviewer notes that the project is based on Japanese historians and literary critics, which once again shows the productive work of Japanese historiography of late imperial Russia. Nine chapters of the monograph are divided into three parts according to the key periods: XVIII-XIX, XIX-XX centuries. and the eve of the 1917 Revolution. At the same time, thematic blocks are visible in each part. The first focuses on the Russian language and literature during the period of their transformation into a part of world culture. Y. Toriyama highlights the activities of the Society Striving for the Translation of Foreign Books created by Catherine II. A.I. Reitblat draws attention to the formation of the very concept of Russian classical literature. H. Kaizawa makes an attempt to rethink the “reactionary” 1880s, noting the importance of this period for the development of Russian literature, recognition of its importance and influence in Russia and around the world. The second part focuses on the development of the press of the peoples of the empire and the role of foreigners. The importance of the latter is noted by Y. Tatsumi, who speaks about several immigrants from Poland and Germany who managed to create large publishing firms in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. T. Inoue analyzes in detail the influence of the Russian press on the national identity and representation of the Kalmyks. D. Ross tells about the development of newspapers and magazines in the Tatar language, and A. Sakurama about the publishing activities of the baptized Tatars. Finally, the third part focuses on the impact of the 1905 Revolution and World War I on print and publishing. M. Stockdale examines in detail the period of 1914-1918, noting the importance of the press in the interest of Russian society in the events on the fronts of the war. T. Tsurumi briefly describes the situation and development of the Zionist press in Siberia and Chinese Harbin on the eve and during the Revolution and the Russian Civil War. On the whole, the monograph leaves the impression of a thorough work, in which important and interesting plots, though often poorly covered in historiography, are raised. Perhaps, there is a lack of a more detailed analysis of the development of the press during the revolutionary period, but this does not reduce the merits of the book, a rare example in modern historiography of late imperial Russia. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Reorienting Japanese Studies with Views from the Nan’yō

This paper describes how Japanese studies can expand its relevance, approached from my perspective as a Philippine postcolonial historian. In the course of my research on the Japanese locals of Davao and Guam, Japanese studies has been essential. Japanese imperial history has provided me with a regional perspective that transcends the limits of Philippine national historiography and has given me access to source materials about the localities under study. As I became invested in Japanese studies, I realised that Philippine historiography has much to contribute back. A Philippine perspective can question the limits of the concept of who is Japanese, particularly in the case of Filipino-Japanese and CHamoru-Japanese mestizos. Moreover, Japanese historiography, which is still in many cases limited to the archives, may source alternative approaches or methodologies from its Philippine postcolonial counterpart, which has for decades been experimenting with methods of writing more inclusive national histories. More broadly, by conversing with specialists of areas with which Japan has been historically connected, I suggest that Japan scholars can not only extend Japanese studies’ relevance beyond its own field but also infuse it with new ideas and approaches.

Sayaka Chatani. Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies.

In Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies, a strikingly original new work on pre-1945 Japan and its empire, Sayaka Chatani begins by posing a simple but compelling question: Why did tens of thousands of young men across the Japanese empire in the 1930s and 1940s, not only in Japan but also in colonies such as Korea and Taiwan, embrace the military mobilization of the period and even seek to enlist voluntarily in the Imperial Army? Chatani frames her answer around a conception of Imperial Japan as a “nation-empire,” an attempt “to form a nation across imperial domains” (4) through a radical and atypical process of imperial ideological assimilation in which Japan sought to make its colonized subjects “similar” to the colonizer and to integrate them into the Japanese “Yamato race.” She takes as her main focus the government-sponsored “village youth associations” (seinendan) (22) that proliferated throughout the empire, which she regards as the most important top-down vehicle for youth mobilization. And here Chatani makes the first of several bold interventions in the existing scholarship. Since Andre Schmid’s famous critique twenty years ago of Japanese historiography for its neglect of empire (and of Korea specifically) as part of the study of Japanese modernity, the field has been greatly enhanced by many studies of one or more aspects of Japanese imperialism. But there have been few studies, especially in English, that look at the empire holistically through the lens of a common question or theme. One reason for this is the daunting linguistic challenges such studies face. At a minimum, the responsible scholar must be able to handle not only Japanese but also Chinese and Korean. Chatani appears to excel in this regard, drawing deeply from primary and secondary sources, including personal interviews, in all three languages, as she takes readers chapter by chapter from seinendan in Japan and Okinawa to those in Taiwan and Korea, highlighting “translocal” similarities but also pointing out key differences in each case. In focusing on the youth associations, moreover, which were all located in the countryside, Chatani makes another important scholarly intervention. The histories of modern East Asia have for the most part been studies of urban change and modernity, but as Chatani rightly notes, the vast majority of the populations in the Japanese empire were farmers living in rural areas, and to neglect this key demographic is to leave out a crucial part of the modern story. In the case of Korea, for example, where more than 80 percent of the colonial population were peasants, the dominant “colonial modernity” scholarly paradigm has to a great extent ignored the rural population, seeing “modernity” as essentially an urban phenomenon.

A Rankean Moment in Japan: The Persona of the Historian and the Globalization of the Discipline,c.1900

This article attends to a formative moment in the history of Japanese historiography around 1900, when many Japanese historians began to identify with the eminent German historian Leopold von Ranke—curiously, however, without a substantial preceding engagement with his work. The article employs the concept of the “scholarly persona” to explore the views of influential Japanese historians on the significance of Leopold von Ranke as an embodiment of scholarly virtues. Contrasting Ranke's image in Japan with that prevalent among German and European practitioners, the article argues that Ranke did not function as a marker of a “Western” or “modern” way of doing history, as most previous accounts of his impact in Japan have asserted, but as a universally appropriable icon of a globalizing discipline.

Assimilation, Association, and French Advice to Japan on How to Rule Taiwan

Abstract Quels liens trans-impériaux ont existés entre l’empire colonial de la France et celui du Japon? Dans un exemple qui se raconte fréquemment dans l’historiographie coloniale japonaise, l’on discute du conseil que l’expert judiciaire français Michel Revon a présenté en 1895 quant au système administratif que le Japon devrait instaurer à Taiwan. Dans une note de politique, Revon aurait recommandé que l’on adopte un système français d’assimilation, ce qui aurait exercé une influence considérable sur le futur Premier ministre Hara Takashi. Cet article démontre que ce compte-rendu des faits n’est pas tout à fait exact et il présente donc une analyse nouvelle des sources primaires dans le contexte des théories françaises coloniales qui étaient dominantes pendant les années 1890. Nous avançons que Revon était en fait un partisan de l’association et que le programme d’assimilation coloniale de Hara Takashi n’était que superficiellement influencé par des modèles français.

A fekete hajók előtt

It is a well-known fact in Japanese historiography that the country was openedup to Western powers by the American Perry expedition in 1853, dubbed inJapan ’the arrival of the black ships’. However, those ships did not comeout of nowhere; there had been various earlier attempts to establish diplomaticand commercial relations with Japan, first by Russia and later by other Westernpowers. These attempts sparked heated debates in Japan regarding the dangercaused by the foreign ships and the best way to avoid this menace. In this paper, after providing a brief description of earlier initiativesaimed at establishing diplomatic relations with Japan, I concentrate on UnitedStates foreign policy vis-à-vis Japan: the USA came into contact with Japanthrough its thriving whaling industry, as in the 1820s US whalers frequentedthe waters close to Japan. Later various economic considerations led to thedecision to organize an expedition to Japan to effectively ensure that Japaneseports would receive US ships and to open the country for commerce. Thesuccess of the US expedition was due to various factors, not least the motivation and determination of its leader, Matthew C. Perry.

JAPANESE IMMIGRATION INTO THE USA AND THE JAPANESE-AMERICAN RELATIONS ON THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY (HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE QUESTION)

The article is devoted to the American and Japanese historiography of history of the Japanese immigration into the USA and the American-Japanese relations on the beginning of the XX century. Author of the publication issued historiography about this historical problem, mainly the historiography of the USA, and the historiography of such states as Japan and Russia. Such historical problems were discussed as Californian Conflict of 19061909 and 1913, so called Gentlemen Agreement (1907) and Root-Takahira exchange of notes (November 1908). From the beginning of Japanese immigration into the USA on the end of the XIX century the struggle for the Japanese exclusion had started especially in California on the Pacific coast. Restrictionism and antirestrictionism were created as main streams of American ethnic historiography. Such streams of the historiography as political idealism and political realism deals with the Japanese immigration problem too.American historians, who are the members of the so called political idealism approach to the foreign policy of the USA problems, usually make some detailed issues of the American policy in the Far East. The American-Chinese and American-Japanese relations were based on such main streams of the Far Eastern policy as internationalization of railroads in Manchuria and the American load to Manchu government during the period of international financial consortium in China. Political idealism in the American historiography was connected with such authors as R.A. Esthus, R.W. Curry and Ch. Neu, whose monographs and articles were issued by the author of this publication. The question on Japanese immigration in the USA was respected as one aspect of the whole Japanese-American relations on the Pacific problem.Another main stream of the American historiography of international relations is connected with works of ethnic historians such as B. Hosokawa and K. Kawakami. Author of this publication discussed question of ethnic historiography in the USA (about the Japanese immigrants and their role in the American social-political life). Main theme of this historiographical sketch were some perspectives of the 2nd generation of Japanese immigrants development in the American conditions of life. The most of the ethnical historians in the USA called the representatives of the 2nd generation of the Japanese immigrants as Nisei. Authors of this article research of the Nisei history is some innovational method in Russian historiography.

Body as Battlefield

Body as Battlefield Nobuko Ishitate-Oku(no)miya Yamasaki (bio) Memories that cannot be narrated or historicized. Memories as fragments. Memories that resist being treated as such. Memories that bridge the lives of present individuals with those of the past. The lives, in other words, that cannot manifest the processes for turning themselves into history, or the lives that embrace fragmentary memories while unable to historicize themselves. The crucial fragments for life.1 —Lee Chonghwa, Tsubuyaki no seiji shisō Even after the defeat of the Japanese empire in 1945, many Koreans continued to live in Japan, where they came to be known as Zainichi Koreans. Today, a number of fifth- and sixth-generation Zainichi Koreans are living in Japan. Yet despite the durability of this minority population over time, Zainichi Koreans occupy a fraught, tenuous position in Japanese society, history, and imagination; master narratives of Japanese identity and history—who and what, exactly, constitute Japan and Japanese-ness culturally, [End Page 391] ethnically, socially—provide, at best, only a marginal place for Zainichi and their history.2 Zainichi women, in particular, are doubly repressed; as male Zainichi struggle with their lack of social, economic, and political agency and mobility, some of them tend to vent these frustrations in the only place they can: their homes, upon their Zainichi wives and mothers. The patriarchal structures that subjugate women in Japanese society are redoubled upon these minority women, such that Zainichi women have become conspicuous by their absence from Japanese historiography. Fragile and resilient by turns, they have been grossly ignored, marginalized, and abused—yet, paradoxically, even worshipped at times. The margin is always a part of the whole. As any structure demands alterity within itself for its total formation, Japanese historiography (and identity) needs "outsiders" and "others" like the Zainichi within in order to define itself against those it excludes. Zainichi women, as "insider-outsiders," are critical figures in the construction of identity in both Japanese and Korean societies and cultures, intrinsic to narratives that need to both claim and exclude them simultaneously. These women thus possess a unique power to disrupt normalizing discourses of nationhood in both Japan and Korea, opening up the possibility of negotiating new futures and new subjectivities. The work of Akutagawa Award–winning author Yi Yang-ji (1955–1992) reveals this rich potential. In Yi's novella Kazukime (Woman Diver, 1983),3 the Zainichi woman Ane and her mother employ the physical body as a political battlefield, where the struggle for and with subjectivity, belonging, history, and power is negotiated. Through their bodies, Ane and her mother negotiate ethnic, national, and class differences, which combine, compete, [End Page 392] and complicate each other throughout the novella. For Ane, these battles are seen, for example, in the abuse she suffers at the hands of her stepsiblings (including rape, which leads to pregnancy and abortion); her excessive and defiant expressions of sexuality; and her efforts to prevent reproduction and boycott motherhood. Ane's mother's battles are manifested in both her violent marriages, her choice to wear kimono as an attempt to pass as Japanese, and in her defeat by uterine cancer. However, it is ultimately Ane's narrative in Kazukime that works against or resists Japanese biopolitical power and asks ethnically Japanese nationals to reconsider nation-building activities such as the coming-of-age ceremony. In this way, Yi crafts new narratives that cut through and across processes of masculine nationalist discourses, disrupting and eliding the linear temporalities that are endemic to such discourses. Yi Yang-ji Who? Born in Japan in 1955, Yi Yang-ji was a Zainichi Korean writer. Naturalized as a Japanese citizen at the age of nine, Yi wrote in Japanese (her first language) but maintained an uneasy relationship with the country of her birth throughout her short life (Yi died in 1992, at the age of 37). In a short memoir-like essay titled "Contempt Against Koreans That Is Passed Down to Younger Generations" (Wakamono ni denshō sareteiku Chōsenjin besshi, 1979), she observed that her parents' naturalization as Japanese made her "aware of the harsh reality, permeating through Japan, that they could not live otherwise."4 She also describes how her...

Russia and Its Northeast Asian Neighbors: China, Japan, and Korea, 1858–1945 ed. by Kimitaka Matsuzato

Reviewed by: Russia and Its Northeast Asian Neighbors: China, Japan, and Korea, 1858–1945 ed. by Kimitaka Matsuzato Ivan Sablin (bio) Kimitaka Matsuzato (Ed.), Russia and Its Northeast Asian Neighbors: China, Japan, and Korea, 1858–1945 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017). 206 pp., ills. Index. ISBN: 978-1-4985-3704-9. This edited collection of comprehensive case studies explores the relations between the Russian Empire/Soviet Union and China, Japan, and Korea between the formal arrival of the Russian state in Northeast Asia after the Treaties of Aigun and Tianjin in 1858 and the radical reconfiguration of the regional political and economic landscape following the Japanese defeat in World War II and Soviet occupation of Manchuria and North Korea in 1945. The volume is edited by Kimitaka Matsuzato, a University of Tokyo professor specializing in the history and politics of Russia and Ukraine. As a leading Japanese and international expert in the field, Matsuzato has both the experience and expertise required to compile and edit such a collection. The book consists of an introduction and ten chapters penned by scholars from Japan, Russia, Germany, and Hong Kong. In the introduction, Matsuzato outlines the main goal of the book, which is to inscribe Russia into the history of Northeast Asia as both "a decisive factor" and a participant of the interstate community since 1858 (P. vii). Matsuzato provides an overview of English and Japanese historiography on the subject, which is indeed insufficient in its discussion of the role played by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in regional politics and economy. The authors of individual chapters include otherwise rarely discussed East Asian perspectives on Russia (such as the discourse of the Russian threat in Japan) in order to counterbalance the much more frequent European and Russian perspectives on East Asia within the recurring theme of contemporary "yellow peril" discourse. The Qing Empire is also discussed in the volume as an imperial formation with its own agency, rather than an object of foreign imperialisms and a victim thereof. The introduction claims that the volume departs from state-centered perspectives by focusing on the dynamics within imperial formations and exploring public opinion apart from official policies (P. xii). Although the introduction rightfully points at numerous gaps in historiography, the book presents a collection of essays, which are different in their focus, period, genre, theoretical approaches, and methodology, rather than a coherent monograph-like collective endeavor. Most of the chapters deal with the Russian Empire and, in fact, almost [End Page 345] completely ignore Korea. The imperial formations in question – the Russian Empire/Soviet Union, the Japanese Empire, and the Qing Empire/Chinese Republic – appear somewhat static over the period, and there is hardly anything on the ruptures and their perception in the region. A chapter (or chapters) on regional roots and consequences of the revolutions in the Russian and Qing Empires (including Japanese interventions in Russia and China) would certainly have enhanced the book. Despite the inclusion of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s in the title, there is hardly anything on the circulation of revolutionary ideas in general and the Communist International in particular in the volume. Because of this, there seems to be too much implied continuity between the respective monarchies and the troubled Soviet and Chinese republics in the region. Despite these critical observations, the book presents an informative selection of empirical case studies based on obscure or hitherto unexplored archival materials. Thus, they are a valuable contribution to the fields of Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Eurasian, and East Asian histories. Furthermore, the volume connects Japanese, English, and Russian historiographies, which alone can be seen as a tremendous achievement given the separation of national histories and respective area studies in international scholarship. The attention to institutions, populations, and press, treated separately from governments, also makes the book a welcome addition to the scholarship of the region. Following the introduction, the volume is divided chronologically, even though some essays overlap in their time frames. The chapter of Shinichi Fumoto (Niigata University), "Russia's Expansion to the Far East and Its Impact on Early Meiji Japan's Korea Policy," focuses on the consequences of Russian imperialism for Meiji decision making and, practically, the...

일본 전후(역)사학과 『오키나와현사(沖縄県史)』 편찬의 역설 — ‘국민사’에서 ‘탈국민사’로

일본 전후(역)사학과 『오키나와현사(沖縄県史)』 편찬의 역설 — ‘국민사’에서 ‘탈국민사’로

Legacies of Japanese Colonialist Historiography and Scholarly Views on Wiman Joseon

Legacies of Japanese Colonialist Historiography and Scholarly Views on Wiman Joseon

Analysis of Japanese influence on the three major historiographical trends in early modern China

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the intrinsic relationships between Japanese historiography and the three great historiographical trends of New Historiography, Debates on Ancient History, and Marxist historiography, from the macroscopic perspective of the transformation, development, and early modern growth of modern and early modern Chinese historiography, exploring how Chinese historical researchers selected, deviated from, and assimilated Japanese historiography, while also particularly focusing on how the recipients utilized Japanese historiographical methods and concepts as well as the achievements of Japanese scholars in researching Chinese history to construct their own interpretation of Chinese historiography, in a study of the academic trend of indigenization.

Eighteen Histories in Brief and its influence in Japan

ABSTRACTEighteen Histories in Brief (Shiba shilue 十八史略) was a concise general history text created in the Yuan dynasty, which developed into many editions and achieved widespread popularity by the Ming dynasty. After being introduced to Japan, Eighteen Histories in Brief became as well known as historical classics such as the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji 史记) and the Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (Zizhi tongjian 资治通鉴). During the Meiji Restoration period, a demand for abbreviated histories arose in Japan. This was seen in the large-scale publication of many new editions of Eighteen Histories in Brief. Continuations to the book, as well as histories in brief of Japanese and Western history were also widely published. This had a profound impact on Japanese society, culture, and historiography, with a legacy extending into the contemporary period.