Japanese Intellectuals Research Articles

JAPANESE AMERICAN WARTIME EXPERIENCE, TAMOTSU SHIBUTANI AND METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATION, 1942–1978

A case study of how wartime internment reverberated in the life and work of Japanese American intellectuals, this essay discusses the career and interests of Tamotsu Shibutani, a sociologist who began his training as part of Dorothy Swaine Thomas' Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS). Though recent scholarship has noted some of the ethical problems that attended the use of Japanese American participant observers during the war, this essay concentrates instead on how interned intellectuals responded to their double role of both researcher (and intellectual) and object of study. I argue that in the case of Shibutani, his circumstances and identity shaped his scholarship, both as an academic endeavor and a political project. By tracking Shibutani's postwar scholarly activities, I show that his wartime experiences--as an internee, military officer, and participant-observer--reverberated in his sociological publications long after the war's end.

The 1911 Revolution and the Politics of Failure: Takeuchi Yoshimi and Global Capitalist Modernity

Chinese historians have considered the 1911 Revolution an incomplete bourgeois revolution, especially in comparison to the more successful 1949 Revolution. On the other hand, in their famous tract in the early 1990s, Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu claimed that a rethinking of the 1911 Revolution should lead us to reject the concept of revolution altogether. In both of these formulations, as stepping stone towards socialism or demonstration that any revolution is futile, the 1911 Revolution is in some way connected to the legitimacy of capitalism. However, in post-war Japan, when Japanese intellectuals were debating the consequences of the American Occupation and Japan's role in the Second World War, the 1911 Revolution had a different significance. Post-war Japanese sinologists often turned to the 1911 Revolution as a symbol of hope, despite its failure. Takeuchi Yoshimi was the pioneer of this intellectual trend and he argued that, unlike the Meiji Ishin, which was a pale imitation of Western modernity, the 1911 Revolution represented a unique affirmation of revolutionary subjectivity, precisely because its initial attempts at modernization failed. Takeuchi and his disciples' discussions of how the 1911 Revolution produced subjectivity out of failure illustrate post-war Japanese sinologists employed the 1911 Revolution in debates about subjectivity and anti-colonialism. An analysis of their writings will open the way to thinking both the 1911 Revolution and its perception in Japan as it relates to the trajectory of capitalism and its discontents in the 20th century.

An Individual’s Endeavour to Save Sino-Japanese Relations. A Discussion of Wang Tao’s (1828-1897) Travel to Japan based on his Travel Diary

In the spring of 1879, while the relations between Japan and China was deteriorated by a series of disputes in Korea, Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands, Wang Tao 王韜 (1828-1897), a Chinese scholar, was invited by a group of prominent Japanese intellectuals, including Kurimoto Joun 栗本鋤雲 (1822-1897), Shigeno Yasutsugu 重野安繹 (1827-1910), Nakamura Masanao 中村正直 (1832-1890), and Oka Senjin 岡千仭 (1833-1914), to travel to Japan, exchanging ideas of reform and discussing the crises of Asian countries with increasing Western invasions. Wang Tao was warmly welcomed as an expert of both Chinese Classics and international affairs. Having the objectives of finding out more about the Meiji Japan and promoting friendship and strategic relations between the two countries, Wang and his hosts inevitably started a discussion on modernization, Westernization and future development of the two neighbouring countries. This was a significant intellectual exchange among Chinese and Japanese men of letters in modern history. During his visit, Wang recorded his journey in Fusang youji 扶桑遊記 (A Travel to Japan). Upon returning to China, Wang presented his diary to Kurimoto Joun and the book was published by Yūbin Hōchi, a leading news printing press in Japan. Although there are research outlining Wang Tao’s travel to Japan, its significance, especially Wang’s vision of the future development of Sino-Japanese relation has not been fully analysed. His travel diary, an important source to reveal Wang’s thought, has only been seen as a record of travel itinerary and personal romance. In fact, his senses of history and knowledge in current affairs have reminded him the threat of an ambitious Japan. He, therefore, endeavoured to rebuild and maintain the link between the two countries from historic, cultural and strategic aspects during his journey. This paper aims to examine how Wang Tao conveyed his messages in inoffensive but effective ways in his travel diary.

Traditional Thought and Utopian Egalitarianism in the Tianyi bao: The Rise of an Anarchist Ideal among Chinese Communities in Tokyo

This essay discusses the experience of anarchism among young Chinese intellectuals based in Japan between 1907-1908. The rise of an anarchist ideal among Chinese intellectuals was firstly related to their acquaintance with Japanese radicals. In 1907 division among the Tongmenghui leadership and the conversion of Japanese intellectuals to anarchism made Chinese students and intellectuals based in Tokyo more susceptible to radical political doctrines. Anarchism emerged as a new trend out of this political turmoil. Liu Shipei, He Zhen and Zhang Ji were the central figures of the Tokyo Group and the main supporters of the anarchist propaganda in Japan. Through the acquaintance with the Kinyōkai 金矅会 (Friday Group), the radical socialist faction led by Kōtoku Shūsui, they were able to bring together the Chinese overseas communities in Japan, who were dissatisfied with the principle of Tongmenghui and its leadership. The close relations with Kōtoku and Japanese socialists, the affiliation with the Tongmenghui and the quarrels within the same Alliance concerning Sun’s leadership, the establishment of societies among Chinese students in Japan and the publication of a journal, all consent to define the contours of anarchist activities in Japan between the years 1907-1908. My goal in the following pages is to highlight the Japanese route of Chinese anarchism outlining anarchist thinking and propaganda as delineated in the pages of their official organ, the Tianyi bao (Journal of Natural Justice). Overall, I will try to answer these three questions. First, how did Chinese traditional thought become a means to sustain utopian egalitarianism? Second, how did Kōtoku Shūsui and Japanese anarchists influence the rise of an anarchist ideal among Chinese intellectuals based in Japan? And third, how did the Tianyi bao promote a racial, social and political revolution in order to create an ideal society?

The Culture of Japanese Fascism (review)

Reviewed by: The Culture of Japanese Fascism Bill Mihalopoulos The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Edited by Alan Tansman. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009. 496 pp. $99.95 (cloth); $27.95 (paper). The Culture of Japanese Fascism is a multidisciplinary collection of essays dealing with the relation between aesthetics—as a critique of experience and "the true situation of the present"—and political action. The common thread among the diverse collection of essays is the starting point of analysis: Japan's fascist turn was a product of efforts to come to terms with "modernity." Japanese intellectuals experienced the shock of rapid change as a fundamental homesickness for a past when the world was fully accessible, and the transparency in human relations safeguarded Japanese civilization from outside corruption. In an effort to overturn the forces of modernity responsible for the present-day corruption and degenerate forms of life, Japanese thinkers, rural leaders, and social reformers turned to culture and community as a solution. Culture and tradition were conceptualized as the storehouses of an unchanging, transhistorical Japanese essence. In terms of aesthetics, culture and tradition were the elixir to prevent Japan turning into an inferior copy of the West. Politically, culture and the tradition held the key for Japan's quest to liberate Asia from Western colonial hegemony. More or less, each essay deals with a core issue in Japan's fascistic turn: how to revert to the premodern unity of ethics, politics, and economics. Capitalist development brought a rupture from the past. Precapitalist Japan was organized around direct interpersonal relations. Capitalism (re)organizes society impersonally, by means of the market, transforming labor power into production power. Capitalist modernity also undermined existing bonds of solidarity. Politics and economics no longer constituted a coherent whole. The intensification and spread of commodity relations from the mid 1900s transformed the outer and inner life of Japanese society. After the Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese economy shifted from state-sponsored projects aimed at beefing up military and technological infrastructure to commodity production. The transformation to a higher level of capitalist production brought [End Page 893] about a significant transformation in social agency, as the wealth of objects and the knowledge and aspirations that constituted the lived world became subsumed under the capitalist principle of money begetting more money. The multiple new forms of life unleashed by the forces of commodity production transformed simultaneously the mind and material world: human social relations were objectified into things, and consciousness (the realm of judgment and value) was subjected to the principles of rationalization that constitute the world of commodities. That is to say, capitalist development involved the concurrent transformations in relations of production and subjectivity. This transformation led to a crisis of government. Namely, Japanese leaders had to invent new ways of governing to coordinate a whole field of new realities and multiplication of interests that threatened to tear Japan apart. What each essay reveals is a snapshot of how Japan's fascist turn is the gradual evolvement of heterogeneous forms of government, often conflicting, that intervened deep in everyday life, aiming to constitute a uniformed subjectivity. The vapor-like quality of fascism was due to the micro-level alignments of everyday choices and personal investments to the power circuits of the state. The Culture of Japanese Fascism is enriched by a tension between three distinct strands in analyzing fascism. Kevin Doak, Aaron Gerow, Noriko Aso, and Aaron Skabelund attempt to situate fascist ideals as a cultural manifestation of ethnic ultranationalism. Harry Harootunian, Michael Baskett, and Angus Lockyer are more interested in fascist aesthetics as a transnational movement where Japan's turn to ethical and cultural exceptionalism is an effect of capitalism. This approach posits an important point of debate that needs clarification. In this approach, fascism does not refer to the state fascism of Mussolini but to a generic authoritarian propensity immanent in capitalist societies. This propensity, or force, comes to the fore in times of crisis. During times of danger, diverse institutions in capitalist societies, such as school, family, police, and religious institutions become despotic and limit individual and collective action by demanding that one and sundry act and behave like "responsible" citizens, or, in the...

근대 한・일 관계사 속의 기독교 . Kŭndae Han-Il kwan'gyesa sok ŭi Kidokkyo [Christianity in the History of Modern Korea-Japan Relations] (review)

Reviewed by: 근대 한・일 관계사 속의 기독교 . Kŭndae Han-Il kwan'gyesa sok ŭi Kidokkyo [Christianity in the History of Modern Korea-Japan Relations] Niwa Izumi, Professor 근대 한・일 관계사 속의 기독교. Kŭndae Han-Il kwan'gyesa sok ŭi Kidokkyo [Christianity in the History of Modern Korea-Japan Relations]. By 양현혜 Hyŏn-hye Yang, Seoul: Ewha Womans University Press, 2009, 479p. This book may undoubtedly be referred to as one of the best books ever written on the history of modern Korea-Japan relations with a focus on Christianity. Setting her focus on Christianity in Korea-Japan relations, the author succeeds in quite lucidly highlighting the essential characteristics of Japan's Emperor-centred political system from the time of the Meiji Restoration (Meiji Ishin). Above all, her detailed analysis of the socio-political situation in Japan, utilizing ample literature and primary source materials, delves deeply into many historical facts often overlooked by Japanese scholars while also succeeding in convincingly presenting the quite fascinating subject at issue. The book consists of four parts, namely: 1. Christianity and the Japanese state under the Emperor system (일본 천황제 국가와 기독교) 2. Christianity in the history of Korea-Japan relations (한일 관계사 속의 기독교) 3. Christianity and Korean and Japanese intellectuals in the modern era (근대 한일 지식인과 기독교) 4. Christianity and present-day Korean society (현대 한국 사회와 기독교) Paraphrasing the author, this book was written with the objective of analysing what logical structures created in Korea and Japan a historical [End Page 143] consciousness of Christianity, notably examining the role of Christianity in associations with modern Western civilization, modern relations between Korea and Japan, as well as ethnic identity. The author's answer to this question, if I may summarize it, is as follows: Modernization in Japan constituted, in some ways, an internalization of the logical structure of the strong and capitalistic West under the ideology of the modern Emperor system as a way of countering the West and its influence. Under such circumstances, almost all of the Christian organizations in Japan accepted the ideology of the Emperor system as a "state" ritual - and thus non-religious - and tried to present themselves as leaders in the education of "good Japanese subjects." On the other hand, Christian organizations in Korea, through an ethos of "inner-worldly asceticism toward the better life" (세속내적 향상주의의 금욕 ), employed logic for the purpose of establishing their ethnic identity; consequently, in Korea was internalized as in Japan the logical structure of the strong and capitalistic West. The author persuasively delineates these arguments in sections one, two and four. But the author's main concern in this book is to provide portraits of two notable figures, Kim Kyo-sin (김교신 ) and Ham Sŏk-hŏn (함석헌 ). According to the author, these figures are to be considered Korean Christians who demonstrated that historical consciousness of Christianity in Korea which pursues a renewed world in which all of humankind would stand on its own feet without a single subjugated person. This would be accomplished through "creative self-suffering" (창조적 자기 수고 ), non-violence and tolerance, which is an imperative in Korean Christianity today. This book may be considered a very successful endeavor by the author. More specifically, this reader felt that the viewpoint of the author was accompanied by specific measures of evaluation grounded in critical theory or cultural studies currently prevailing in the field of humanities and social science. In this sense, the author's perspective is quite clear and easy to understand. But at the same time, despite such sharp analytical skills, this approach tends to obscure the author's analysis when she tries to delve into the logic of faith. [End Page 144] From the perspective of religious studies, the question of how Christian faith can associate with nationalism is quite an intriguing one, especially in the case of the Non-Church Movement 무교회주의, 無教会主義) founded by Uchimura Kanzo (内村鑑三) and his disciples. Kim Kyo-sin, Ham Sŏk-hŏn and Uchimura Kanzo are well-known as ardent Korean and Japanese patriots. What enabled them to keep their close and strong ties, despite the geopolitical realities of the time, was the logic of faith characteristic of the Non-Church Movement. Of course, there were differences in their positions - one was Japanese on the side of a suzerain power while the others were Korean, on the side of the colonized. Thus, between...

Consistent Conservatism in Changing Times: An Analysis of Japanese Conservative Intellectuals' Thought

Conservatism is about defending the status quo; in both Germany and Japan, the status quo is the postwar democratic regime. However, while the representatives of Germany’s intellectual conservatism have come to accept the democratic status quo of the postwar period, the same can hardly be said about intellectual conservatism in Japan, despite the two countries’ similar modern histories. This article seeks to explain this puzzle by pointing to a lack of pressure to adapt and the resulting freedom allowing Japanese conservatives to take a peculiar and consistently negative view of the postwar system’s foundations, which they do not recognize as a new tradition worth building on, but rather a deplorable ideological import forced upon Japan. Based on those observations, the article makes a case for an autonomous intellectual conservatism.

Japan and the global revival of the ‘civil society’ idea: contemporaneity and the retreat of criticality

This article examines the pioneering role of Japanese intellectuals in the contemporary (post-1945) global revival of civil society. Although often overlooked or discounted in recent scholarship, Japanese intellectuals were among the first contemporary theorists worldwide to re-conceptualize civil society as a remedy for two of the central problematics of the post-World War II era: the theoretical and practical crisis in Marxism, on the one hand, and the anomie of advanced capitalist development, on the other hand. The article argues that any comprehensive global history of contemporary civil society must consider the insights of these Japanese thinkers alongside those of their Continental and North American counterparts. More critically, the article also suggests that Japanese civil society thought merits attention because it vividly exposes the dearth of criticality and excess of celebration in the idea's recent resurgence. The result in Japan (and elsewhere) has been an ironic and troubling retreat of criticality coupled with a naïve faith in the therapeutic capacity of civil society.

Interpreting “liberty”: an analysis of the history of ideas

The goal of the current paper is to analyze “liberty” in the context of the history of ideas, in order to delineate the historical and cultural transformation it embodies. This paper attempts to demonstrate that modern Chinese perceptions of “ziyou” (freedom or liberty) cannot be separated from the “West” as the “other,” because the modern use of the term originated with the arrival of the West, and it was the evolution of Western history that bestowed values on “ziyou.” The word is also politicized and it tends to provide an interpretive framework for the State, society and the individual. In the meantime, liberalism, which is very relevant to “liberty,” has also become an indispensable component in the analysis of the history of ideas. As a matter of fact, because of the highlighting of its negative connotations by conservative Chinese and Japanese intellectuals, “liberty” could hardly be extolled as an “ism,” while a variety of “isms” prevailed, as, for example “statism” and “nationalism,” which were prioritized during the late Qing. During the May Fourth period, the divisions within the West, particularly the bankruptcy of bourgeois civilization, also resulted in the decline and fall of “liberty” and “liberalism.”

Metanoia as a Response to Philosophy’s Death: From Injustice to Conversion

When the fate of the Japanese people has been decided at the end of the war, the Japanese intellectuals cannot feign a naive stance of innocence that would have mitigated pursed lips, silent pens and empty sheets of paper. And when some of them did take this recourse, or worse, tried to revise their earlier positions with regard to the Japanese' involvement in the World War by tampering on their published works, Hajime Tanabe took the road less traveled and confronted the issue of flawed scientific philosophical position head-on; his is a genuine attempt at self-criticism that would put to question every inveterate beliefs one has held at the expense of an openness to a reality that is neither pre-given nor statically perfect. This paper, then, will be a reflection on Tanabe's suggestion on what we should or could do if rationality has become pathological, if thinking can no longer contain the irrational, and if at the demise of philosophy, nothing remains but the haunting gossamer of injustice's debris crying for recognition, demanding for an apology.

Rethinking Plasticity: The Politics and Production of the Animated Image

Writings on animation have often noted the plastic quality of the image: objects stretch, squash and change forms. Such discussions of the plastic quality of animation tend to equate plasticity with the appearance of the image. This article proposes a rethinking of plasticity in animation, suggesting that it is not simply an attribute of the finished image, but an aspect of the material conditions of its production. Introducing the work of Imamura Taihei and Hanada Kiyoteru, two leftist Japanese intellectuals who wrote on Disney animation during the 1940s and 1950s, and contrasting their work with the writings of their European counterparts, this article will suggest that these Japanese thinkers focus our attention on the importance of Fordism in the production of Disney animation. The work of Imamura and Hanada enables us to critically approach plasticity in animation in terms of the material conditions of the image production within Fordism, thus enabling us to consider plasticity at the level of the medium as well as that of labor.

Conflicting views of Japan's mission in the world and national moral education: Yamaji Aizan and his opponent Inoue Tetsujirō

In this paper, I discuss the conflicting views of Japan's mission in the world and national moral education held by Yamaji Aizan and Inoue Tetsujirō, two eminent intellectuals of the Meiji and Taisho periods. In doing so, I suggest that one can not understand the dilemma that Japanese intellectuals faced when they realized the limits of Meiji modernization if one simply labels them as ‘nationalists’. Inoue Tetsujirō made a sharp distinction between Japanese culture and other cultures and regarded foreign countries as a threat to Japan. Inoue attempted to establish the Japanese spirit embodied in bushido as the basis of ‘state-centred education’ (kokkashugi kyōiku), while believing that Japan's mission was to spread this unique spirit to the world. In opposition to such arguments, Yamaji Aizan criticised Inoue's idea of Japanese cultural uniqueness, which he thought could hinder cross-cultural understanding. Yamaji was also opposed to Inoue's method of investigating Japanese spirit in history and utilising it as the basis of national moral education. Instead Yamaji asserted that there was a common humanity behind the different manners, customs and ways of thinking in each nation. Although often considered an imperialist, Yamaji believed that Japan's mission was to promote better cross-cultural understanding by removing prejudice and discrimination.

When ethnic returnees are de facto guestworkers: What does the introduction of Latin American Japanese Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) (LAN) suggest for Japan's definition of nationality, citizenship, and immigration policy?

Japan officially bans unskilled foreign labor. A 1990 change in Japanese immigration law provides Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) a renewable visa that allows them to live and work in Japan on the basis of their Japanese blood descent. 1 Some argue this was a government initiated de facto guestworker program to satisfy demands for cheap labor under the guise of a policy to facilitate “ethnic return” migration. Since 1990, over 300,000 Latin American Japanese (LAN) descendants have emigrated to Japan. However, despite Japanese mythic notions of common ethnic ancestry and ethnic affinity, a spring 2009 program facilitates the paid voluntary repatriation of unemployed Latin American Nikkeijin workers. This article discusses these policies and programs what they imply for the realities of Japan's immigration policy and society. The findings suggest an emergent separation of the traditional notion of a simultaneous Japanese nationality and citizenship away from jus sanguinus with ethnicity less of a criteria for membership and point to a need for a more coordinated approach to Japanese immigration policy amidst the growing realities of an increasingly multicultural society. 1 There is some ambiguity as to the distinctions between definitions of ethnicity and nationality ( Castles and Davidson, 2000, pp. 12–13; Lie, 2001, p. 3; Castles and Miller, 2003, p. 41). Following Hobsbawn (1990, p. 8) and Lie (2001, p. 3), the terms nationality and ethnicity are defined here respectively as, “any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard themselves as members of a ‘nation’ as a national or ethnic group” ( Lie, 2001, p. 3). Citizenship is normally defined as legal membership that includes a broad range of civil, political, and social rights, i.e. in the “legal sense to designate the formal status of membership in a political community” ( Bosniak, 2001, pp. 240–241). As Castles and Davidson (2000, p. vii) note the “pivotal right is that of participation in law-making and government”. Although Sassen (2006, p. 281) points out that the terms citizenship and nationality essentially refer to the same concept and others note they are sometimes used interchangeably, I draw some distinctions in the Japanese case in this paper. As argued by Lie (2001, p. 144), in Japanese there is not an “intrinsic” distinction between shiminken (citizenship) and kokuseki (nationality). In his view, shiminken is generally regarded as a foreign concept and kokuseki is an extension of koseki (household or family registry) and thus denoting nationality as an “extension of the family”. Minzoku (ethnics) are also sometimes referred to as nationals ( Lie, 2001, pp. 144–145). Pak (2006, p. 85) suggests the term shimin (citizen) rather than kokumin (national) is a more inclusive term used by Japanese intellectuals, politicians, leftists, progressives, and some local governments to refer to “local citizenship” that is more reflective of participatory democracy. This may include foreigners (without formal legal Japanese nationality/citizenship), minorities, women, civil society, and social movements.

Xing: The Discourse of Sex and Human Nature in Modern China

In Modern Chinese, xing is the character most commonly used to denote sex, gender and sexuality. However, the character was a specialist Confucian term originally meaning ‘human nature’ in Classical Chinese, and only came to signify both sex and human nature in the early twentieth century. This usage was invented by Japanese intellectuals in the late nineteenth century for their translations of sexological texts from Europe, in which they encountered the concept of sex as a natural drive and the fundamental core of individuals. This article investigates the convoluted linguistic career of xing, and argues that in China in the 1920s, sex/xing became the point of anchorage for a new politics, which naturalised sex, legitimised talk about reproduction and desire, and made imperative the intensification of the production of scientific knowledge on sex (and by extension ‘human nature’). It is emphasised that the history of xing in China in the 1920s is not just a curiosity or appendage to more ‘mainstream’ history of sexuality; rather, it is impossible to appreciate the global nature of modernity without a thorough understanding of the circulation of sexual ideas.

Takenaka Yoshihiko, The Cross of “Liberalism” and “Socialism” in Modern Japanese Intellectuals

Takenaka Yoshihiko, The Cross of “Liberalism” and “Socialism” in Modern Japanese Intellectuals

Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture Richard M. Jaffe (bio) Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture. By Elisabetta Porcu. Brill, Leiden, 2008. xi, 263 pages. €119.00. Apart from a few notable exceptions, scholars of Japan not in the field of religious studies have paid little attention to the established Buddhist denominations after the Tokugawa period. English-language surveys of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese art, history, and literature lack in-depth analysis of the role of religion, particularly the established Buddhist denominations. If one looks at the now, admittedly, somewhat dated Cambridge History of Japan, for example, it is notable that the two volumes covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries do not have a single chapter devoted to religion, let alone Buddhism. More recent one-volume surveys of Japanese history do not do a much better job dealing with the topic. Historians are not unique in this regard. As Patricia Graham points out in her valuable recent survey of Buddhist art from the seventeenth century to the present, Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600–2005 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), most scholars of Japanese modern art and architecture have been equally dismissive of traditional Buddhist visual culture and the Buddhist sources that continue to inspire independent, secular artists. Elisabetta Porcu's Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture brings much-needed attention to Buddhism's impact on Japanese culture in the twentieth century. Although the main purpose of Porcu's work is to highlight the ongoing importance of Pure Land Buddhism, particularly Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism, in modern Japanese culture, her book also demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Buddhism in literature and the arts. In this fine book, Porcu explores why one of the largest established Buddhist denominations in Japan, Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land) Buddhism, has been overlooked as a vital cultural force in Japan. Porcu limits her discussion of Pure Land Buddhism's influence to literature, "creative" (visual) arts, and traditional arts (primarily tea ceremony), so entitling the book Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture is somewhat misleading. Many other vital cultural arenas (for example, politics, economics, and social organization) in which Pure Land Buddhism has played a role receive no mention. Nonetheless, Porcu does an excellent job revealing the contributions of Jōdo Shinshū to literature and the arts in modern Japan. Given the relevance of this subject for most Japanologists, it would be a shame if the high price of the book and the apparent narrowness of the topic prevented a wide readership. [End Page 198] Porcu builds on the writing of scholars such as Galen Amstutz1 who have attempted to explain why scholars have paid so little attention to Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism, despite its size and prominence. Porcu writes not as a partisan of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism but as one hoping to utilize the methods of the Study of Religion (Religionswissenschaft) to complicate mono-causal, essentialist understandings of modern Japanese culture that portray Buddhist creative arts and, particularly, traditional arts such as tea ceremony and flower arranging as solely the by-products of Zen Buddhist influence. In her useful first chapter, "Creating Images of Japanese Buddhism and Culture," the author traces how Orientalist and Occidentalist sentiments shaped the reconceptualization of Japanese Buddhism that took place during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like many other scholars of this subject, Porcu places blame for this monolithic understanding of the traditional arts and the use of Zen as a synecdoche for an unchanging Japaneseness at the feet of Japanese intellectuals D. T. Suzuki, Nishitani Keiji, Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, and Abe Masao, along with many others. In this chapter, Porcu provides a thorough summary of two decades of scholarship concerning the ways these proponents marketed their repackaged Buddhism as the foundation of Asian culture and Zen as a free-floating, decontextualized system of thought that had influenced every aspect of Japanese cultural life. The chapter does not depart from the conclusions of scholars such as Bernard Faure, James Ketelaar, Robert Scharf, and Judith Snodgrass with regard to the ways Japanese Buddhism was used to promote Japanese cultural nationalism. However, the author's command of Italian...

Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan (review)

Reviewed by: Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan Viren Murthy Calichman, Richard (ed.) — Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Pp. 227. Since the rise of post-colonialism and the critique of Eurocentrism in the 1990s, scholars have increasingly questioned the significance of European modernity. A recent example of this trend is Dipesh Chakrabarty's well-received book Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), which criticizes Eurocentric [End Page 487] visions of the world. However, scholars often overlook that in 1942, in the midst of World War II, a group of Japanese intellectuals from different backgrounds organized a symposium that anticipated contemporary discussions about modernity. The symposium was entitled "Overcoming Modernity" (kindai no chōkoku) and is now available in this well-crafted translation by Richard Calichman. In addition to a translation of the text, Calichman provides readers with an interpretive introduction, in which he develops a philosophical critique of the various participants' attempts to theorize how to overcome modernity. As Calichman explains, the symposium was attended by three different groups of intellectuals: the Kyoto School philosophers, such as Nishitani Keiji; members of the Romantic School (nihon rōman ha), such as Hayashi Fusao; and members of the Literary World Group, such as Kobayashi Hideo. Intellectuals from these different factions specialized in various areas including philosophy, literature, music, and physics. Calichman has translated all of the twelve short symposium statements, along with the two round-table discussions at the end of the symposium. Reading the various statements in the volume, one is struck by the breadth of the topics covered, from film, philosophy, music, theology, and even extending to science. However, the writings coalesce around a concern about what was happening to Japan as it confronted European modernity. The above formulation resembles a question that Asian scholars and officials pose even today, namely, can Asian countries remain themselves and at the same time be modern? In his introduction to this volume, Calichman argues that one must understand the various statements in the symposium from a philosophical perspective, which can grasp how the various participants attempted to affirm Japanese identity while overlooking the philosophical conditions that make identity possible. In short, Calichman claims that most of the participants were worried that Japanese identity was being contaminated by Western modernity, and thus they sought some type of return to a pure Japanese essence or identity. We can see this in Hayashi Fusao's imperative, "Japanese literature, return to your true nature!" (p. 110). Drawing on Jacques Derrida, Calichman contends that the participants of the symposium did not realize that identity is always already contaminated by the Other, and thus pure identity is an oxymoron. Moreover, in Calichman's view, because this contamination does not happen in time, we must understand this logic of identity and contamination by means of philosophical reflection and not through historical analysis. In other words, it is not the case that Japanese identity was pure at one point and then became contaminated after contact with Western modernity. One of the great strengths of this volume is that, after developing his interpretation of the symposium in the introduction, Calichman lets the texts of the symposium speak for themselves so that readers may develop alternative interpretations. I would like to suggest one such alternative. As the subtitle of Calichman's translation indicates, the symposium occurred in the midst of World War II, and thus participants often argued about culture as part of a larger project to legitimize the Japanese colonial enterprise and Japan's role in the war. Calichman mentions the war but does not amply stress that, when [End Page 488] participants developed ideologies supporting the war, they were not only concerned about identity, but they also envisioned a type of world-historical transformation. I will cite just one example from the symposium to make my point. In the final statement of the symposium, Suzuki Shigetaka's "A Note on 'Overcoming Modernity'," Suzuki makes the following comments: [T]his issue of overcoming modernity must in a sense be seen as related to us, since European civilization has today already become deeply internalized within our country and...

Rethinking Cai Yuanpei

Although Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940) is generally accepted as a leading liberal educator of modern China, his contributions to female schooling and his ideas on women have been ignored by Western scholarship. This article, therefore, intends to make known to scholars some neglected aspects of the sources of his ideas on women. Previous assumption has emphasized excessively the influence of a radical mid-Qing scholar, Yu Zhengxie (1775-1840), on Cai’s ideas. Yu only constituted one source of Cai’s ideas. The assumption reflects the progressive side of a coin. When fuller attention is paid to other sources of Cai’s ideas, a different picture emerges. Cai actually derived some traditional views on women from his predecessors and contemporaries. These views, to some extent, slowed down his progressive speed when he implemented female schooling at the later stage of his educational career. How did Cai’s predecessors and contemporaries identify the inferiority of women in traditional China? How did they contribute to women empowerment? How did Cai learn from the experiences of his predecessors and contemporaries? This article will argue that Cai borrowed his ideas on women not only from Yu alone, but also from some indigenous Chinese and Japanese intellectuals. This alternative interpretation stems from the use of new materials, including archives, new versions of Cai’s collected works, and unexplored literature on women.

The deception of the ‘idea of self‐responsibility’ and ‘individualization’: neo‐liberal rhetoric as revealed in the corporatization of Japan’s national universities

This paper will focus on the neo‐liberal ‘reforms’ of Japanese higher education that have taken the form of incorporating national universities, and are now entering a decisive stage one year afterwards. I will also describe the devastation that has resulted from university incorporation. From these descriptions, I will demonstrate how the incorporation of national universities is a typical example of neo‐liberal control in present day Japan. Moreover, we will then be able clearly to see the current situation of the weakening of Japanese intellectuals.

Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present (review)

Reviewed by: Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present David Leheny (bio) Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Edited by Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C, 2006. 446 pages. $94.95, cloth; $25.95, paper. It seems unlikely that Japan’s 1990s will ever come in for the kind of sentimental, nostalgic treatment that director Yamazaki Takashi recently created [End Page 396] for Tokyo’s 1950s in his highly popular film Always—San-chōme no yūhi (Always: sunsets on Third Street). Japanese commentators seem inclined mostly to lament the decade, while politicians suggest that they have absorbed its lessons, turning it into an instructive hiccup between the miracle growth of the 1950s through the 1980s and the “beautiful country” (to use Abe Shinzō’s term) or the “tremendous Japan” (Asō Tarō’s) of the new millennium. As the authors in Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian’s new edited collection Japan after Japan indicate, the intellectual trends and social debates of 1990s Japan reflect the difficulty of grappling not only with the Heisei recession itself but also with the meaning of the “long postwar” that had preceded it. Although its thematic connections are occasionally perplexing and its stylistic choices may prevent it from reaching many of the scholars who would benefit from reading it, Japan after Japan is a vital piece of scholarship and an indispensable guide to the social debates emerging from 1990s Japan. Yoda’s two chapters are superb. Her introduction provides an overview of some of the more visible of the myriad social and cultural debates in millennial Japan, exploring the “return to the modern” among neoconservative and left-leaning Japanese intellectuals. Yoda, whose previous book examined modern tropes in the interpretation of Heian literature, deftly traces arguments by the likes of Miyadai Shinji, Asada Akira, Fukuda Kazuya, and Karatani Kōjin, showing that in particular the last three, despite their diverse and deeply informed theoretical projects, often revert to a flawed notion of a “duality between Japan and the world (now cast as global capitalism or the United States as its embodiment)” (p. 49). In her other chapter, “The Rise and Fall of Maternal Society,” Yoda focuses partly on the mythical construction and recessionary deployment of postwar Japan as a kind of miraculous if maternalistic economic machine, generating relatively egalitarian growth, fostering harmonious labor relations, and premised on a stable and fulfilling home life for the nuclear families of the large middle class. This image was exploitable by nationalists after the collapse of the economic bubble, decrying the kind of narcissism and weakness purportedly generated by maternal structures and proposing instead a tougher, more paternalistic role for the state. While she contextualizes Japanese maternalism within transnational patterns of industrial development, Yoda neatly engages and critiques Nihonjinron-esque claims of national distinctiveness, particularly Doi Takeo’s arguments in The Anatomy of Dependence (Kodansha International, 1973) and Kawai Hayao’s reformulation of Nakane Chie’s views of Japan as a vertical society. Both chapters by Yoda astutely conclude with notions of loss: the possible disappearance of the collective drive to create a “master narrative” of national striving or cosmopolitanism (and that a “return to modernity” can presumably resuscitate), or the loss of maternalism in the face of neoliberalism, though without providing much in the way of liberation. [End Page 397] Although the editors do not explicitly say so, many of the chapters seem to be paired in their thematic concerns or source material. Harootunian’s chapter—as convincing and thoughtful as Yoda’s—and J. Victor Koschmann’s excellent essay both discuss Katō Norihiro’s 1995 book Haisengo ron (Since defeat; Kōdansha, 1997). Harootunian notes that Katō’s description of Japanese “self-loathing” in an America-driven break with the prewar “resuscitate[s] a hidden authenticity,” an imagined, original communitarian ethic that is as appealing to right-wing ideologues as it is amenable to exploitation by political figures with fascist ambitions. Providing a first-rate example of history as critical intervention, he discusses Imamura Shōhei’s 1971 documentary Nippon sengoshi: Madamu Onboro no seikatsu (History...