Cognitive Resonance

Bibliographic Data: Najita, Tetsuo. Hara Kei in the Politics of Compromise, 1905-1915. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Main Argument:

…the growth of the parties in Japan was the result of a crucial transformation among party men from an ideological to a strategical orientation; or, from an attitude of uncompromising opposition to the government based on the ideal of a single, unified, popular party (mintô gôdô) to that of realistic compromises within the government structure. In particular the successes of one party, the Seiyûkai, under Hara Kei, in pursuing this course of action were decisive in steering party politics in Japan away from multiparties toward two major competing party alignments. (xii)

Historiographical Engagement: Mostly the question of the end of "Taisho democracy," in Japanese

Preface: Argument, Sources, Examples Najita argues that at the time he was writing (47 years ago!), studies of the party era in prewar Japanese politics were generally captive to two fallacies: 1) giving too much weight to documentary evidence written "through the eyes of these idealists who believed that compromises within the political order indicated submission to 'absolutism' and that those in power could be quickly and decisively overthrown (daha) if the parties remained firmly united"; and 2) "to see the parties as the major cause for the political dislocations underlying Japan's steady drift in the 1930s toward a disastrous war" (ix, x). Hence, according to Najita, "an analytical distinction must be made between first, the sustained struggle by the parties (which, while no doubt causing political discontent along the way, changed their status from groups of marginal significance into powerful elites in the government) and second, those driving forces accompanying rapid modernization which generated political dislocations of the sort described by Maruyama. …the casual lines between the two should be treated with considerable care" [if, indeed, they exist at all] (xi).

Important points
# Hara effected a transformation in the regional political structure "from the system of 'self-government' [sic] planned by Yamagata into a pervasive, party-oriented interest structure" (78)
# By the so-called "Taisho political crisis" in 1913, "the systematic expansion of Seiyûkai power had resulted in the steady erosion of the bases of the ruling cliques" and had "made a multiparty system in Japan a practical impossibility" (121)
# Katsura forming the Dôshikai in January 1913 was a direct reaction to the Seiyûkai's power and brought about an end to the Hara/Katsura compromise that "had dominated politics since 1905, an alliance that had provided a working relationship between the major centers of power--the House of Peers, the Lower House, and the bureaucracy--and had stymied the growth of a second party" (140)
# The reforms that were enacted under the Yamamoto cabinet of 1913 were a triumph for the "politics of compromise" in that they struck down barriers to party government and reduced the influence of the Yamagata faction
# The Seiyûkai created its enemies by stimulating the growth of a rival anti-Seiyû coalition

Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Najita argues, among other things, that "by enhancing its power the Seiyûkai, in fact, from 1905 on, prevented this Meiji elite from perpetuating itself and the style of rule commonly called transcendental government" (215). He also argues that the parties' ties with the general public were "tenuous and vague" and that the elite politicians of the parties distrusted the masses and viewed them solely instrumentally (214). In summary, "the crisis of 1912-1913 dramatically reaffirmed the overall trend of parties to move steadily into the mainstream of power relationships in the Meiji constitutional order" and "the politics of compromise was [sic] intended to overcome the structural disadvantages of the Meiji political order and the Yamagata faction imbedded in it" (219).

Critical assessment: Shockingly enough, dear readers, I don't actually think that the achievement(s) of imperial democracy can be laid solely at the feet of one Hara Kei, who was if nothing else a smooth operator--indeed, he seems rather like Itô Hirobumi in this regard, with the important difference that Itô eschewed creating a faction or a reliable patronage network and Hara lived for politics and for attaining political power. We might also add that both of them were nonetheless assassinated on railway platforms; make of that what you will. More fundamentally, I think Najita is wrong about what happened in the 1930s (see Young and Gordon, below) and I think that he recommits the mistake of the elite party politicians themselves by seeing in the riots of the era of agitation for imperial democracy (1905-18) as apolitical, uninformed rabble-rousing. I leave filling in the details of my objections to that view as an exercise for the reader.

Further reading: Gordon, Imperial Democracy; Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire

Meta notes: It's not (only) politicians who make history.

Bibliographic Data: Bowen, Roger W. Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan: A Study of Commoners in the Popular Rights Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Main Argument: This study attempts to take the people who participated in the violent incidents (gekka jiken) of the Freedom & Popular Rights era seriously, arguing that they "were rebellions, not only in the sense that their goal was 'liberation' from certain economic and political injustices, but also in the sense that they were less than revolutionary in effect (as opposed to intent), or, from another perspective, they were revolutions which failed in the attempt to establish a 'foundation of freedom'" (5).

( Freedom & Popular Rights )

Critical assessment: This is a massive book, perhaps needlessly so, but it's quite good, particularly considering the period in which it was written. Bowen does an excellent job of restoring agency and intelligence to the farmers who rose up to demand their rights in the 1880s, whose actions should not be consigned to the category of "failure," or lightly forgotten.

Further reading: Gordon, Imperial Democracy; Kim Kyu Hyun, The Age of Visions and Arguments

Meta notes: But the human microphone will find a voice/And a change is gonna come/Said the signal to the–

Bibliographic Data: Jansen, Marius B. Sakamoto Ryôma and the Meiji Restoration. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Main Argument: "Within Japan the Meiji Restoration leaders also served as examples of a new and ideal type in politics: that of the idealistic, individualistic, and courageous patriot who gave his all for the imperial cause--the shishi. …the idealism, dedication, and courage of the shishi was usually combined with a practicality and desire for self-attainment that made for something of a pattern of response to the challenge that was brought by the West" (x-xi).

Historiographical Engagement: E.H. Norman, Japan's Emergence as a Modern State

Useful points

The Tosa scene, in turn, was one variant of a national picture in which bakufu policies, internal bureaucratic rivalries, and social and economic tensions made for contrasting and contradictory policies followed by the great fiefs. The han authorities alternately utilized and repressed the activities of their subordinates according to the way in which they read the signs of the times. In many respects the years after 1860 were remarkable for the degree to which samurai from different fiefs worked together, often in continuation of patterns of conspiracy that had begun in the Edo fencing academies. A comparable sense of common interest and danger produced cooperation between a number of great lords who saw in the slogan kôbu gattai, reconciliation of court and camp, an opportunity to improve their own positions relative to those of the bakufu and its other vassals. Not that national interests were beginning to predominate for the daimyo; the regional advantage might be interpreted in various ways, but it was never ignored. After 1860 all groups looked for allies and claimed the support of tradition, with the result that the court nobles were drawn into the political picture once again. The loyalist years were remarkable for the boldness with which some of the Kyoto aristocrats turned to national politics. (94)

# That said, "bakufu policies determined the political alternatives available to the great lords and court nobles" to a large extent (ibid)

# The shishi were young, idealistic, romantic, classist jerks, by and large, often fatally naive, at least initially; by the mid-1860s, however, "they had a new understanding of the complexity of the problems their country faced. They begin to emerge from their papers and letters as confident and dedicated men, tempered by danger. They had shown and seen enough courage to take it for granted, and they were now concerned with other qualities--generosity, foresight, prudence" (205)

# NB: class division within the samurai legal status--lords and upper level retainers whose positions were not threatened by economic problems tended to remain conservative, partly because reform was associated with lower, poorer samurai; and vice versa

# By 1867 things had changed drastically--despite the ability of the new shogun, his position was shown to be very weak, and the loyalists now planned to overthrow the bakufu by force. Moreover, "the day for intrigue and secrecy was giving way to one of formal alliances and high-level discussions. The free-wheeling rônin were no longer as necessary to the alliances formed, for self-interest among the domains provided all the spur that was needed" (311). Unsurprisingly, many of them including Ryôma sought a rapprochement with their home fiefs as part of this turn, and in Ryôma's case and others, succeeded.

# Jansen argues that "Sakamoto's ideas about the government that was to follow the shogun's resignation deserve careful study, for they provide the link between the vague doubts about feudalism of his early years and the dramatic reforms of the early Meiji period in which he did not live to take part" (312).

Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Jansen argues again that "the outstanding intellectual and political experience in the formative years of the Restoration activists was the discovery that their society was incapable of successful resistance to the Western threat" (347). We confront again the question of class interest, which Jansen does not see in Tosa; for him the division is between loyalists and reformers among the samurai status group, which to some extent is also an urban/rural divide. Jansen also argues that "the individual purpose and daring of the late Tokugawa shishi tended, in the overwhelming majority of cases, to be set in an atmosphere of broad agreement on goals, though not on methods" (377), which he attributes to the vitality of Tokugawa values even as he notes that the shishi tradition was open to being appropriated by others ranging from Sun Yat-sen to the assassins of 1930s Japan; "the self-confidence, conviction, and arrogance that made the shishi such formidable antagonists were something new. … Self-motivated, they established a tradition of dissent and personal intervention that survived to become one of the most dynamic aspects in modern Japanese politics" (376).

Critical assessment: It's trippy to read a book written before the Economic Miracle. That said, I don't think Jansen is wrong about the Restoration or Ryôma's role in it, though his overarching arguments do smack somewhat of impact-response theory in a way that I would want to investigate further. I do think he totally ignores some aspects of what was going on, such as the domestic context and the ee ja nai ka flash mobs. (I just really like the flash mobs, okay?)

Further reading: Beasley, The Meiji Restoration

Meta notes: "海の向こうに、世界が広がっている。"

Bibliographic Data: Ching, Leo T. S. Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Main Argument:

…the problem of Japanese colonialism lies not only in political and economic exploitation, but also in its imposition of Japanese culture and customs onto the Taiwanese and the aborigines. … By formulating the problem of Japanese colonialism solely in terms of of the violent imposition of Japaneseness onto the colonized, it remains oblivious to the gap between cultural identification and political discrimination, between becoming Japanese and not having the rights of a Japanese citizen. … I argue that Japanese or Japaneseness, Taiwanese or Taiwaneseness, aborigines or aboriginally, and Chinese or Chineseness--as embodied in compartmentalized national, racial, or cultural categories--do not exist outside the temporality and spatiality of colonial modernity, but are instead enabled by it. (7, 11)

( Identity in coloniality )
Critical assessment: This was not the book I wanted or was entirely expecting, which leads me to conclude that there is still at least one book to be written about the Japanese colonization of Taiwan. It's not that I think Ching is wrong about anything that he says; it's just that I actually wanted a book about the actual process of colonizing Taiwan, and this isn't it.

Bibliographic Data: Bradley, Keith. Slavery and Society at Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Main Argument: Slavery was a fundamental part of Roman society, and Bradley lays down its various fundamental aspects. As a slave society, Rome cannot be understood without considering slavery, and what it was like to be a slave at Rome.

( Slavery and society at Rome )

Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Slaves were subject at all times to indignity, violence, and caprice, and the fact that it was possible for freedmen to rise high in Roman society does not render the institution any less brutal.

It is a historical, objective reality that slavery was an evil, violent and brutalizing institution that the Romans themselves, across a vast interval of time and space, consciously chose to maintain, for which they themselves were responsible, whose justification they never seriously questioned and for which no apology or exoneration can now be offered. Slavery for the Romans was not a peculiar institution but the standard by which all else in society was measured and judged: it was a way of thinking about society and social categorization. To recognize this is not to depreciate the successes of elite culture or even to assign blame; it is only to bring into proper historical and intellectual focus the incalculable degree of human misery and suffering those successes cost, and to guarantee that a sanitized and distorted version of the past does not prevail. (181)

Critical assessment: By and large this book does what it says on the tin, with the added bonus of refusing to be deceived by romanticism about the Romans and their slaveowning practices. It also does a nice job of bringing out the fact that, although slaves shared the same legal status, they were in fact of vastly differing classes--i.e. the slaves in the familia Caesaris versus agricultural laborers, for example.

Further reading: Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World; Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves