Prewar Japan Research Articles

Plato in East Asia?

Shadi Bartsch in her recent publication Plato goes to China (2023) has argued that Plato and the Greek classics have had an out-sized impact on Chinese politics and intelligentsia. This article, while sympathetic to her approach, argues that there is little evidence that Plato and the Greek Classics have exerted any direct influence on Chinese politics. Rather it argues that what influence Plato has had on China is actually indirect via a pre-war national socialist Japanese filter. In pre-World War II Japan Plato was fetishized as the ancient source of western socialist and communist thinking. Radical extremists such as Kita Ikki and Kanokogi Kazunobu created a new ideology that mingled aspects of Platonism with socialism and Japanese nationalism. They hoped thereby to create a modern-day Platonic utopia for the East Asian races (and for the Japanese in particular). This article examines how this modern-day “version” of Platonism with “Asian” characteristics impacted on pre-war Japan and modern East Asia as a whole.

Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan by Garrett L. Washington (review)

Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan by Garrett L. Washington (review)

In Defense of Prewar Japan: Promoting the Past in Studies of Crime during the Asia-Pacific War and Allied Occupation

Abstract: While scholarship on the memories of the Asia-Pacific War is extensive, less information is available on the way individuals defined, imagined, or idealized the prewar period. This article examines studies relating war to civilian crime on the main islands, illustrating the role of the prewar period in assessments of wartime and postwar society. Contributing to positive views of prewar Japan detached from the "undesirable past" of the war, the authors of these studies anticipated some of the concerns, interpretations, and aspirations of postwar political and academic notables as well as postbubble social critics calling for the revival of so-called traditional values.

Higashi ajia no naka no mantetsu (The South Manchuria Railway in East Asia)

In the past few years, Lim Chaisung has published major works on the history of railways. In this ambitious book, he takes on explaining the railway management of the South Manchuria Railway (SMR), the sprawling enterprise at the centre of East Asian railway history. However, Lim’s book is not simply an SMR case study. He also explains SMR’s involvement in the process of turning the Empire of Japan into a distinctive railway empire. As a result, this book is spurring discussions among scholars of imperial history and colonial economic history, as well as among railway historians. The following paragraphs will introduce the book’s chapters, along with a little commentary. The book’s preface, ‘Railway empire and the SMR’, begins with a discussion of the framing of prewar Japan as a railway empire. It also recounts how SMR has been portrayed as emblematic of Japan’s absorption of Western technology and as an intermediary in transferring technology to its colonies. SMR overcame its technological disadvantage against its European counterparts and is credited with exceeding the transport capacity of Japan’s domestic railways. While noting the value of viewing SMR as a case study of Japanese settler colonialism and colonial management, Lim explains how the history of SMR is important to the history of the metropole as well.

CHURCH SPACE AND THE CAPITAL IN PREWAR JAPAN. By Garrett L.Washington. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022. Pp. xii + 342. Hardback, $72.00; Paperback: $30.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 49, Issue 1 p. 96-96 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: East Asia CHURCH SPACE AND THE CAPITAL IN PREWAR JAPAN. By Garrett L. Washington. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022. Pp. xii + 342. Hardback, $72.00; Paperback: $30.00. First published: 24 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16397Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume49, Issue1Special Issue: Unique Approaches to Christianity in Africa and BeyondMarch 2023Pages 96-96 RelatedInformation

Public health, agricultural administration, and colonial policy studies in pre-war Japan: a comparison with imperial and Commonwealth studies in Britain

ABSTRACT Tadao Yanaihara was the most prominent intellectual in pre-war Japan who worked on the study of empire and colonial policy and he seems increasingly to attract a large part of the scholarly attention in English and Japanese literatures on pre-war colonial policy studies in Japan. However, more attention should be paid to figures who belonged to preceding generations such as Shimpei Goto and Inazo Nitobe, because they played significant roles in the early establishment of colonial policy studies in Japan, to which public health and agricultural administration could be considered as central. The interactions between these figures, especially between Goto and Nitobe and between Nitobe and Yanaihara, are important factors in understanding pre-war Japanese colonial policy studies. In addition, a comparison with Britain and an examination of inter-imperial relations between Britain and Japan (particularly the influence of the former on the latter) will help enhance our understanding about characteristics of colonial policy studies in pre-war Japan. This article attempts to advance such understanding.

A study of “gymnastics” for children with physical disabilities in prewar Japan:

A study of “gymnastics” for children with physical disabilities in prewar Japan:

Natural disasters and regional industrial production efficiency: evidence from pre-war Japan

ABSTRACT In this paper we investigate whether destruction due to natural disasters induces industries to increase their regional production efficiency using the case of pre-war Japan, a setting of frequent disasters and technological upgrading. To this end we compile a regional sectoral dataset of natural disaster destruction and production for machinery and textiles. We then employ a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach to estimate the role of disaster events on changes in production efficiency. Our results show that earthquakes led to increases in efficiency for both machinery and textiles, although they were substantially greater for textiles due to the recovery persisting longer. Overall earthquakes contributed 6.8% of efficiency gains in textiles and 3.1% in machinery. However, allowing events to compound in their impact showed that such gains were dampened when there were damaging earthquakes in subsequent years. In contrast, for climate-related natural disaster events there is only weak, if any, evidence that these played a significant role in determining productive efficiency.

Conscription insurance in pre-war Japan - Private enterprise and national interest

ABSTRACT Japan’s Conscription Law of 1873 constituted a core element of the military reforms implemented by the Meiji government. The law implied an additional burden in the form of a “tax in kind” which would not be shared equally, because only a small portion of those eligible to serve were actually recruited. As the government neither alleviated the hardship nor corrected the inequalities created by the conscription system, local communities and private entrepreneurs took initiative. One response was conscription insurance. Introduced toward the end of the 19th century, it established itself as an important segment of Japan’s insurance industry in pre-war Japan with a performance comparable to that of the life insurance industry. Despite its success, Japan’s conscription insurance has so far not attracted the attention of international scholars. This paper takes a first step towards filling the gap. It describes the background of the major companies, evaluates their core product and analyses the performance of the industry. It argues that a major factor in the success of the industry was the ability of the companies to position themselves and their product as serving the national interest.

전후 미국학계에 소개된 한국사 연구와 식민주의 역사학

As the Cold War system was established after World War II, American academia’s interest in East Asia as well as Korea, the front line of the Cold War, increased. Establishment of East Asian research institutes, new courses and professorship as well as the publication of Korean Studies Guide in the 1950s, shows considerable interest in East Asia and Korea in American academia right after World War II. Especially, the fact that Suematsu’s 『朝鮮史のしるべ』(1936) and Hatada’s 『朝鮮史』(1951) were translated and published in the days when there were very few Korean history books in English in the academic field, are an implication of the relation between the colonial historiography in pre-war Japan and post war Korean studies in the U.S. These two books, known to American academia by the Korean Studies Guide and its writers, received conflicting reviews from the time they were first introduced and even after the release of the book. A Short History of Korea was welcomed as a textbook and reference material in the absence of an English history book, but A History of Korea was evaluated as a fresh and objective Korean history book because it was not only based on socioeconomic perspectives but also described in strict criticism of colonial rule.BR Indeed, the two books revealed a clear difference in their description and composition, but they were common in that they negatively portrayed Korean history based on the study by former Japanese researchers. Hatada’s work based on socioeconomic perspectives was in line with the theory of lack of feudalism, which Japanese historians argued in the past, that the production relationship revealed in Korean history was developmental but centered on ancient production until the late Joseon Dynasty. This discussion was to find the reason why only Japan could succeed in modernization through feudalism from the time it first appeared by Japanese researchers in the early 20th century, which could lead to the modernization theory that emerged in American academia after the war. In addition, both books deal with the pressure and aggression of foreign forces on Korea as important historical nodes, which have resulted in not only emphasizing the heteronomy of Korean history but also explaining the development of Japanese history. The establishment of the Four Chinese Commanderies(Hansagun), and the Imjin War was a representative basis that not only showed Korea suffering from foreign invasion, but also described as a major phase revealing the historical relationship between the island country Japan and the continent. This was based on the research of former Japanese historians who tried to explain the history of Tōyō(東洋) centered on Japan, and could also be linked to the U.S. policy of pursuing U.S. hegemony and national interests in postwar East Asia.BR In conclusion, A Short History of Korea and A History of Korea are not only based on the identity and heteronomy of Korean history, but also faithful to the perspective of former Japanese historians in that they explain the historical relationship between Japan and the continent through Korean history. The reason why these works were able to be distributed to American academia was that the discussion of colonial historiography could easily match the U.S. policy and modernization theory that tried to carry out the security and U.S. national interests in East Asia with Japan as a policy partner.

“민족생명력”을 위한 과학과 의료

This paper analyzes a Japanese physiologist’s activities and writings during the Sino-Japanese and the Pacific Wars. Uramoto Masasaburō (浦本政三郎, 1891-1965) was one of the leading physiologists of prewar Japan, whose expertise spanned from general physiology, reflex theory, kinesiology to sports medicine. As a founding member of the Physiological Society of Japan (PSJ) and physiology professor at the Tokyo Jikei University of Medicine, Uramoto actively engaged in the public discourse regarding the relationship between nation (minzoku), science, national vitality, and the role of physiology/medicine in society. Ultimately, he resonated with a group of his contemporaries who sought to construct nationally defined philosophy of science and medicine. This particularistic approach to science and medicine faced fierce criticism and was often labeled as “unscientific and irrational Japanism (nihonshugi)” by critically minded scientists, especially the Marxist scientist group. Although Uramoto and his like-minded physiologists have long been forgotten, his active involvement in the conceptual and institutional pursuit of wartime medical new order (ikai shintaisei) - centering on the role of a nation-state -left lasting legacies in postwar Japan.

Hypnosis, psychoanalysis, and Morita therapy: the evolution of Kokyō Nakamura’s psychotherapeutic theories and practices

Psychotherapy had developed into a dynamic and diverse field in pre-war Japan. Apart from thousands of spiritually oriented lay psychotherapists, there were a few quasi-professional practitioners who insisted on a rational approach and experimented with a variety of psychotherapeutic methods. Among them was Kokyō Nakamura, whose quest for a viable psychotherapeutic method is intriguing and illuminating. This paper examines the evolution of Nakamura's theories and practices by dividing it into three stages: hypnotic suggestion, psychoanalysis, and Morita therapy. His pragmatic and adaptive approach to psychotherapy provides not only an interesting example for studying the spread of psychotherapy across nations and cultures, but also valuable clues to understanding its nature as a body of knowledge and therapeutic method.

The Relationship between Yakyū (Baseball) and Militarism: Baseball Discourse in Japanese Shōnen (Boys’) Culture

This article analyses the popular post-war boys’ baseball manga Kyojin no Hoshi, to highlight how pre-war militaristic values were carried over into post-war Japanese sports. Militarism in pre-war Japan was underpinned by bushidō, a set of beliefs that idealised the values upheld by samurai, and which greatly influenced Japan’s pre-war physical education system. While post-war Japan achieved democratisation in many ways, the democratic transformation in sports after the war was much slower. For this reason, elements of military training that were included in sports training prior to the war continued to be emphasised in the post-war era. This article uses examples taken from Star of the Giants to highlight this phenomenon, as well as the broader connection between manga and cultural context. It also touches upon cultural representations of fathers and the male gender in post-war Japanese boys’ fiction.

The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan ed. by Michael Raine and Johan Nordström

Reviewed by: The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan ed. by Michael Raine and Johan Nordström Kerim Yasar (bio) The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan. Edited by Michael Raine and Johan Nordström. Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 227 pages. €106.00, cloth; €105.99, E-book. The publication of Elisabeth Weis and John Belton's edited volume Film Sound: Theory and Practice in 19851 marked a watershed in Anglophone film studies: Here, at last, was a collection of historical and theoretical works that not only took the relatively neglected topic of film sound seriously, but put it front and center. The publication, in French, of Michel Chion's La voix au cinéma2 in 1982 signaled a similar renewal of interest in Francophone film circles. Film sound, as an object of serious and sustained academic inquiry, had arrived. Or had it? Even as film studies expanded its purview beyond canonical film theory into topics as varied as industrial and technological history, star studies, and historical poetics, the study of film sound, for whatever reasons, continued to seem relegated to the margins. This is not to say that the "sonic turn" of the 1980s was a false start; rather, the study of sound, like sound itself, seems always to be vanishing even as it comes into being. This sense of marginalization persists to this day, as can be seen in the opening lines of the present volume's introduction. Michael Raine and Johan Nordström begin by quoting a series of rhetorical questions posed by the late Thomas Elsaesser in his influential essay, "The New Film History as Media Archeology": "Have we been fixated too exclusively on 'the image', [End Page 478] and forgotten about sound; have we been concentrating on films as texts, and neglected the cinema as event and experience?" (p. 9). In this economical fashion, the aims and methodological coordinates of the collection are announced. The rest of the introduction is a tour de force and would alone be worth the price of admission if the price of the book were not so blisteringly high. Raine and Nordström offer not only a brief but dense history of the development of sound cinema and adjacent auditory technologies in Japan, but also an overview of previous scholarly approaches and a coherent and compelling theoretical framework for the variegated lines of inquiry that follow. As they explain, the individual contributions come together "to approach Japanese cinema as what Christian Metz, borrowing from Marcel Mauss, called a 'total social fact', embedded in technological and economic changes and framed by wider fears and aspirations" (p. 9). What this entails is not only an examination of the filmic texts themselves—which would be challenging when so few films from the prewar era survive—but also of the social, industrial, and technological contexts that conditioned both the production and the reception of those texts. In more concrete terms, the contributors examine the collaborations and tie-ins between film studios and other media concerns like gramophone record companies, radio stations, and magazines and newspapers; the changing roles of katsudō benshi (film narrator); the technological and aesthetic challenges of early sound film production; and even the changing architecture of exhibition spaces. In their effort to examine the "total social fact" of early Japanese sound cinema as both "event and experience," the editors and contributors leave few stones unturned. Those contributors represent some of the most prominent and innovative researchers working on early Japanese cinema today. All except Raine and Nordström are Japanese and teach at Japanese institutions; Nordström teaches at a Japanese university and publishes in both Japanese and English. In addition to its intrinsic merits, this volume thus represents a rare and exciting glimpse into the work of Japanese scholars who, with the exception of Hosokawa Shūhei, may not be as well known outside Japan as they deserve to be. Transnational scholarly collaborations of this kind are still not as common in Japan studies as one would hope, and that makes this volume even more welcome.3 I cannot do justice in this brief review to each individual contribution, but in the following I...

Urban Riots and the Everyday Practice of Male Laborers in Prewar Japan

This essay explores cultural factors in urban riots that occurred frequently in early twentieth-century Tokyo, extending from the 1905 Hibiya riot to the 1918 rice riots, by focusing on the everyday practice of young male laborers, including artisans, factory workers, and day laborers, who were the main participants in these riots. The essay first surveys the characteristics of urban riots in Tokyo in the period from 1905 to 1918 and then examines the everyday practice of male laborers, focusing particularly on the role of violence and impulsiveness. Many works of reportage on the urban lower classes published in the Meiji era (1868-1912) and Taisho era (1912-1926) depicted a lifestyle among male laborers that revolved around drinking, gambling, fighting, and patronizing prostitutes. These behaviors, as well as the emphasis on a Robin Hood–style bravado, were socially retrogressive, but constituted a distinctive culture of masculinity. By behaving “manly,” male laborers could earn esteem in their communities, although they lacked fame, fortune, or education, and could live proudly despite little chance of advancing their social status. This culture among male laborers was deeply related to the frequent occurrence of urban riots, and its waning ultimately led to the decline of riots in Tokyo in the 1920s.

The Imperial Portraits Ho-an-den of Former Hsin-Hua Ordinary Elementary School- Focusing on the Exploration of Imperial Rescript on Education

Hsin-hua Primary School, Hsin-hua District, Tainan City, Taiwan, was celebrating its 120th anniversary in 2017. The school was formerly known as the Tavocan branch of Tainan Institute of Japanese, founded in 1898 during the Japanese colonial rule. As part of its commemorative project, it has restored the Ho-an-den, a post-war Japanese period building with slogans on all four walls of the campus. Ho-an-den, commonly known as "imperial portraits Ho-an-den", was a building used to enshrine the portraits of contemporary emperors and empresses in schools and other educational institutions in Japan and its colonies, such as Taiwan and Korea, before the World War II. Although it is called "Imperial Portraits Ho-an-den", in general, except for "Imperial Portraits", A transcript of the imperial descript on education, the highest philosophy of education in pre-war Japan, will also be included. This Ho-an-den is one of the only two remaining in Taiwan. It is an important testimony of the Japanese rulers' emphasis on "emperor system" education. Keywords: Japanese colonial period in Taiwan, the imperial descript on education, imperial portraits, Ho-an-den.

"Kokutai" i "nihonjinron". Polityka i kultura jako filary współczesnej japońskiej tożsamości narodowej

The Idea of kokutai and nihonjinron and National Identity in JapanThis paper is an attempt at a political and cultural interpretation of national identity in pre- and postwar Japan. For clarity of analysis the essay is divided into two parts. The first one deals with the category of kokutai, which can be translated as national character or national polity. The kokutai was the most important idea in prewar Japan and one which was exploited for creating a political sense of Japanese nationality. The concept of ethnic nationalism (minzokushugi) as well as the document Kokutai-no hongi [Cardinal Principles of the kokutai], published in 1937, were the most expressive examples of the political sense of national identity. The second part discusses the concept of nihonjinron (theories about the Japanese), which is connected with the cultural background of nationalism in contemporary Japan. The significance of this idea can be seen in a continuity of ethnic sense of national identity earlier expressed by kokutai (but without support of governments). In the other sense the nihonjinron is understood as a rank-and-file initiative of the contemporary Japanese society. It can be seen in the activity of Japanese writers, philosophers and artists who thus create a unique vision of Japan.

Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin by Brian Daizen Victoria

Reviewed by: Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin by Brian Daizen Victoria Melissa Anne-Marie Curley (bio) Brian Daizen Victoria. Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin. By Lexington Books, 2019. xxii, 352 pages. $34.00, cloth; $32.00, E-book. With Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin, Brian Victoria brings to a close his trilogy examining the ways that Japanese Zen Buddhist thought served, over the course of the twentieth century, to variously [End Page 157] motivate, enable, legitimate, and excuse state violence. The publisher's description for Zen Terror tells us that this third book "explodes the myth of Zen Buddhism as a peaceful religion." This perhaps does not do justice to the profound impact of the earlier books in the series, Zen at War (Weatherhill, 1997) and Zen War Stories (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), on both Zen institutions and Buddhist studies. As Victoria notes in the preface to Zen Terror, his Zen at War was cited by Rinzai Zen and Sanbō-kyōdan leaders as "one of the catalysts" spurring those institutions to issue "formal apologies for their sect's wartime complicity" (p. xvi); his work has likewise been required reading for students of Japanese religion for the last two decades. Alongside those readers who will come to Zen Terror with a naive understanding of Zen Buddhism as a peaceful religion then, there will be others whose sense of that history, informed directly or indirectly by Victoria's influential earlier work, is already more complex. These latter readers may also have grappled with some of the other studies of Buddhism and violence that have appeared in the years since Zen at War was first published, including, for example, work by Juliane Schober, Jacob Dalton, the many scholars represented in Vladimir Tikhonov and Torkel Brekke's edited volume Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia, and of course the field-defining contributions of Michael K. Jerryson.1 Zen Terror does not, however, engage these more recent examinations of Buddhism and violence. This observation is intended not as a criticism but as an indication of the kind of book Victoria set out to write: not an academic volume but a book that might find a large popular audience, and in doing so be able to effectively continue the trilogy's work of moral suasion, prompting Zen Buddhists first "to honestly admit" that "elements/teachings that have been used to justify, even encourage, the use of violence" exist within the tradition and then to "address" them (p. 235). This process of self-critique and self-correction is absolutely required, Victoria writes, if we are ever to "save the blood-soaked boat called 'religion'" (p. 232). With such a project in mind, Victoria seeks in Zen Terror to "take readers inside the mind, inside the very 'skin,' of one terrorist leader" (p. 8): Inoue Nisshō (1887–1967), the head of a group dubbed the Blood Oath Corps (Ketsumeidan), [End Page 158] which in 1932 carried out a plot resulting in the assassinations of banker and politician Inoue Junnosuke (1869–1932) and business magnate Takuma Dan (1858–1932). This is not, Victoria writes, "an objective history" (p. 8); readers interested in such a thing are directed to "the many academic books and articles describing this period and the role Inoue and his terrorist band played in it" (p. 7) (although Victoria also calls into question "the degree of objectivity or simple accuracy" of such works, insofar as they identify Inoue as influenced primarily by Nichiren Buddhism rather than by Zen). In reviewing Zen Terror in this journal then, I am conscious that I am reading it at cross-purposes, focused on what Victoria's academic readers might discover in a text that is not primarily intended for them. The core of the book is a "life-history" of Inoue (p. 5), unfolding in ten chapters which take us from Inoue's "troubled youth" through his time as a mercenary, spy, and army interpreter in China, his experiments with religious practice upon his return to Japan, the Ketsumeidan Incident and its aftermath—which saw Inoue first imprisoned and then installed as an advisor to Prince...

Envisioning prefabricated housing and equipment design for a new residential lifestyle in prewar Japan

Envisioning prefabricated housing and equipment design for a new residential lifestyle in prewar Japan

On the Reforms of Chinese Language Acquisition in Pre-War Japan

On the Reforms of Chinese Language Acquisition in Pre-War Japan