![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Bibliographic Data: Han, Jung-sun N. An Imperial Path to Modernity: Yoshino Sakuzo and a New Liberal Order in East Asia, 1905-1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Main Argument: This study argues that
Historiographical Engagement: Najita, Hara Kei; Gordon, Imperial Democracy; Barshay, State and Intellectual; Duus, Party Rivalry and Political Change; Fromkin, The Peace to End All Peace
( Liberal elitism in imperial Japan )
Critical assessment: This book has several related problems that are all features of its single overarching problem, which is that it never articulates its central intellectual problem and why it matters. As Professor Berry would say, it lacks gravitas, and particularly compared to a book like State and Intellectual in Modern Japan, it's kind of bloodless--as a certain wise scholar said to me, there's never a sense of why people in general thought of Yoshino as the great Japanese democratic hope, so ironically given her remarks in the introduction, Han winds up reiterating the elitism that other scholars have identified in the "liberals" of late Meiji and Taisho. She also never explains why Royama Masamichi is the person to follow of of Yoshino's circle, or to what extent all this theorizing of the cooperative community had any impact on the people who were setting it up, and setting it up to run itself into the ground. There are some good points in here, but they all need to be expanded by a significant percentage, in my opinion. In other words, this is a missed opportunity.
Further reading: Fogel, Politics and Sinology; Jones, Developmental Fairy Tales
Meta notes: But no really, why do we care? The book needs to tell us this.
Main Argument: This study argues that
Perceiving the tacit relationship between liberalism and the imperialist order, the Japanese chose to conform to liberal ideas and institutions to direct Japan's transformation into an imperialist power in Asia. … Trying to sustain and rationalize the imperial project, Japanese liberals actively sought to make the domestic political stage less hostile to liberal ideas and practices by appealing to the interests of the new middle class. The press was their main instrument of power. Facilitating the creation of print-mediated public opinion, liberal intellectuals attempted to enlist the new middle class as a social ally in circulating liberal ideas and practices within Japan and throughout the empire. (6, 7)
Historiographical Engagement: Najita, Hara Kei; Gordon, Imperial Democracy; Barshay, State and Intellectual; Duus, Party Rivalry and Political Change; Fromkin, The Peace to End All Peace
( Liberal elitism in imperial Japan )
Critical assessment: This book has several related problems that are all features of its single overarching problem, which is that it never articulates its central intellectual problem and why it matters. As Professor Berry would say, it lacks gravitas, and particularly compared to a book like State and Intellectual in Modern Japan, it's kind of bloodless--as a certain wise scholar said to me, there's never a sense of why people in general thought of Yoshino as the great Japanese democratic hope, so ironically given her remarks in the introduction, Han winds up reiterating the elitism that other scholars have identified in the "liberals" of late Meiji and Taisho. She also never explains why Royama Masamichi is the person to follow of of Yoshino's circle, or to what extent all this theorizing of the cooperative community had any impact on the people who were setting it up, and setting it up to run itself into the ground. There are some good points in here, but they all need to be expanded by a significant percentage, in my opinion. In other words, this is a missed opportunity.
Further reading: Fogel, Politics and Sinology; Jones, Developmental Fairy Tales
Meta notes: But no really, why do we care? The book needs to tell us this.