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Bibliographic Data: Berry, Mary Elizabeth. The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Main Argument: The century-long upheaval of the Sengoku (Warring States) period that began in Kyoto with the Ônin Wars (1467-77) were felt in the capital distinctly differently than in the rest of the country, partly because Kyoto was virtually the only city of note in the country and partly because the shogunate and its welter of challengers, allies, and enemies--and what all of them wanted out of the shogunate and out of the imperial court--were centered on Kyoto. This urban experience of civil war developed its most distinctive features in the politics of demonstration, which relied on the power of mass witness to make its point, even as all the old certainties were discarded and put to the test, whether in the culture of tea or in the Lotus Uprising, in which sectarian commoners governed the city autonomously for nearly four years before being violently suppressed. The era of civil war defies an easy narrative, and Professor Berry doesn't succumb to the temptation to give it one; there was no clearer view in the 1550s than in the 1460s of how any sort of unity could be reknit out of the shattered pieces of Japan, of how that a society that had for all intents and purposes come apart at the seams could be bound up again. How and why it did--and, moreover, in virtually an entirely new form--is another, more reassuring book.
( Cultures of lawlessness and of demonstration )
Critical assessment: This is one of the best works of history I've read, and it is unquestionably the best book I've read all year. As much as I thought Japan in Print was great, this book is even better.
I know that I have, in this review, utterly failed to convey the sheer verve and genius that animate this book. If I could have everyone who reads this blog read just one book, it would unquestionably be this one; what Berry says about cities, change, war, demonstration, politics, resistance, complicity, negotiation, are relevant wherever there are cities and those who live in and would claim power over them. Cities, as someone once said, are humanity's greatest invention, and Berry's book provides as clear a demonstration as any why that is: the potential and the power that accrues when so many people gather together in one specific place, even though it inevitably fractures into factionalism, is nothing short of revolutionary, and at certain moments when it is unified it is earth-shattering. Prof. Berry was inspired to write this book by the Lebanese civil war, which was fought primarily on urban battlefields, and a clear sense of the danger, fear, and chaos that urban wars engender among inhabitants pervades the book. But reading it today, during an Arab Spring that has produced transcendent results (Tunisia, Egypt) and ongoing struggles whose results are much more ambiguous so far (Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan), the real courage that danger inspired in Kyotoites and in people across the Arab world who faced and are facing it are as inspiring as the eventual end of the Lotus Uprising, and the statist violence that peaceful demonstrators have faced across much of West Asia, are sobering. This book makes eminently clear, as well, that it wasn't Twitter and Facebook that created those revolutions; Twitter and Facebook simply enabled people to re-cognize the potential of the city around them, to know--contrary to what dictators in command of 20thC communications technology had told them--that they were not alone.
As I said before, I don't know how the uprisings across West Asia will turn out, though I know what I hope, and I know that the region will never be the same. By the same token, as Berry's narrative proceeds, it rends my heart as someone who had the privilege of being a Kyotoite for a year and who considers the city a home to see the city convulsing, to read the chronicle of its destruction and to chart the progress of its conflagration. But, however unlikely it may have seemed to Kyotoites at the time and however unwelcome those changes were, it is also possible to see the city I know and love, however slowly, being born.
Further reading: Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi; James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
Main Argument: The century-long upheaval of the Sengoku (Warring States) period that began in Kyoto with the Ônin Wars (1467-77) were felt in the capital distinctly differently than in the rest of the country, partly because Kyoto was virtually the only city of note in the country and partly because the shogunate and its welter of challengers, allies, and enemies--and what all of them wanted out of the shogunate and out of the imperial court--were centered on Kyoto. This urban experience of civil war developed its most distinctive features in the politics of demonstration, which relied on the power of mass witness to make its point, even as all the old certainties were discarded and put to the test, whether in the culture of tea or in the Lotus Uprising, in which sectarian commoners governed the city autonomously for nearly four years before being violently suppressed. The era of civil war defies an easy narrative, and Professor Berry doesn't succumb to the temptation to give it one; there was no clearer view in the 1550s than in the 1460s of how any sort of unity could be reknit out of the shattered pieces of Japan, of how that a society that had for all intents and purposes come apart at the seams could be bound up again. How and why it did--and, moreover, in virtually an entirely new form--is another, more reassuring book.
( Cultures of lawlessness and of demonstration )
Critical assessment: This is one of the best works of history I've read, and it is unquestionably the best book I've read all year. As much as I thought Japan in Print was great, this book is even better.
I know that I have, in this review, utterly failed to convey the sheer verve and genius that animate this book. If I could have everyone who reads this blog read just one book, it would unquestionably be this one; what Berry says about cities, change, war, demonstration, politics, resistance, complicity, negotiation, are relevant wherever there are cities and those who live in and would claim power over them. Cities, as someone once said, are humanity's greatest invention, and Berry's book provides as clear a demonstration as any why that is: the potential and the power that accrues when so many people gather together in one specific place, even though it inevitably fractures into factionalism, is nothing short of revolutionary, and at certain moments when it is unified it is earth-shattering. Prof. Berry was inspired to write this book by the Lebanese civil war, which was fought primarily on urban battlefields, and a clear sense of the danger, fear, and chaos that urban wars engender among inhabitants pervades the book. But reading it today, during an Arab Spring that has produced transcendent results (Tunisia, Egypt) and ongoing struggles whose results are much more ambiguous so far (Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan), the real courage that danger inspired in Kyotoites and in people across the Arab world who faced and are facing it are as inspiring as the eventual end of the Lotus Uprising, and the statist violence that peaceful demonstrators have faced across much of West Asia, are sobering. This book makes eminently clear, as well, that it wasn't Twitter and Facebook that created those revolutions; Twitter and Facebook simply enabled people to re-cognize the potential of the city around them, to know--contrary to what dictators in command of 20thC communications technology had told them--that they were not alone.
As I said before, I don't know how the uprisings across West Asia will turn out, though I know what I hope, and I know that the region will never be the same. By the same token, as Berry's narrative proceeds, it rends my heart as someone who had the privilege of being a Kyotoite for a year and who considers the city a home to see the city convulsing, to read the chronicle of its destruction and to chart the progress of its conflagration. But, however unlikely it may have seemed to Kyotoites at the time and however unwelcome those changes were, it is also possible to see the city I know and love, however slowly, being born.
Further reading: Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi; James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia