ahorbinski | Entries tagged with d: history

Bibliographic Data: Beasley, W. G. The Meiji Restoration. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972.

Main Argument: The Meiji Restoration was a product of political and socioeconomic changes in the bakumatsu period in particular and the Tokugawa period in general, once the opening of the country gave it the necessary push.

( The Meiji Restoration )

Critical assessment: I just want to point out that something being "feudal" and capitalist at the same terms is basically a contradiction in terms--it is definitely so by the Marxist definitions, and arguably so by less doctrinaire definitions. More seriously, I guess I think that Beasley is mostly right in what he says in this book, but I have to disagree on the question of nationalism; or, no, not disagree, but qualify the term "nationalism," which Beasley never does; like Beth Berry, I agree that there was a sense of nation in the Tokugawa period, but I don't know that I would call the Meiji Restoration a nationalist revolution. I would, however, call it a revolution, full stop; not every revolution is world historical: viz the American Revolution, for one.

Further reading: Craig, Chôshû in the Meiji Restoration; Baxter, The Meiji Unification through the Lens of Ishikawa Prefecture; Huber, The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan; Kim, The Age of Visions and Arguments

Meta notes: "A little revolution, every now and then, can be a good thing."

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: Wilson, George M. Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Main Argument: In answer to the question, "Who took part in making the Meiji Restoration?" Wilson says that "there are many answers, that many groups of agents participated" (ix). Rather than just samurai, "all of these different agents may be viewed as participants in a total set of activities, a concert of mutual interaction: it is this interaction that shaped the nature of the restoration that followed" (x).

Historiographical Engagement: All the historiography about this period, and a lot of theory too.

( To redeem the time… )

Critical assessment: I wish this were actually a monograph about commoners and the ee ja nai ka flash mobs in the bakumatsu period. Then it would be much better at doing its thing. As it is, this is an interesting book, but not a wholly successful one; as a wise person who shall remain nameless remarked about it, "Well, he tried."

Further reading: It's hard to even know who to recommend to read about the Meiji Restoration. The standard work is still probably Beasley, which should say something, namely that someone needs to write a new book on the subject.

Meta notes: "Everybody who writes history has a bone to pick with the past."

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: Fujitani, Takashi. Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Main Argument: Fujitani says that he "want[s] to remember the instant of historical rupture, the moment of the imperial institution's new emergence in modern Japan" (4). He argues that "the strong sense of national consciousness and identity that has characterized the modern Japanese is less a product of natural circumstances that can be traced back in time to the geological formation of the Japanese archipelago than of strategically motivated cultural policies pursued by Japan's modern ruling elites" (5). In sum, "the invention of Japan's modern national ceremonies was, quite simply, a response to specific domestic and international political forces of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries," and "however limited the Meiji regime might have been in producing a uniformity of belief or a uniformly self-disciplining population, its successes were considerable. Moreover, the imperial pageants as well as other elements in the regime's folklore certainly succeeded in producing a new sense of national simultaneity—a sharing of time among people who could not possibly have had face-to-face contact" (15, 29).

Historiographical Engagement: Geertz; Foucault; Durkheim, all of whom are wrong to varying degrees

( Splendid monarchy )

Critical assessment: It's honestly surprising to me that Fujitani did his PhD here at Berkeley, as there is far too much theory in this book for it to represent a Berkeley approach; one might say that it smacks of the Harootunian. That said, there are a few points where I can hear Irv Scheiner in the text--as when Fujitani talks about things being "necessary but not sufficient," a locution I have heard multiple times in my Japan seminars--and I think Fujitani's work represents a really excellent synthesis of the Berkeley approach with theory. This is one of the few works of history I've read that I wish I had written, and all in all, it's an excellent book.

Further reading: Kenneth J. Ruoff, The People's Emperor, Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Meta notes: Very monarchy. Much splendid. So pageantry.

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

Bibliographic Data: Mass, Jeffrey P. Yoritomo and the Founding of the First Bakufu: The Origins of Dual Government in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Main Argument: "It is the central contention of this book that, thanks to the policies fashioned by Yoritomo in the period before 1200, the traditional order in Japan was extended for another century" (10). Moreover, both the Taira and the Minamoto were not the titans familiar from the literary record; rather, in the case of Kiyomori, his power peaked at the end of his life rather than earlier, and in the case of both, their achievements were not "military" in character. Yoritomo's achievement was "more modest" than Mass first thought when he began writing, though it "is still hugely impressive given the constraints and obstacles that confronted him" (xi). Similarly, the Kamakura bakufu was "an organization that mostly repudiated the use of force, stressing mediation, persuasion, and procedure instead. …In a sense, Kamakura waged a war of words against violence and aggressive behavior throughout the era, as it sought to transmute what it saw as the most threatening forms of juan competition into verbal exchanges in the courtroom" (x). This is not anything like a "warrior government."

Historiographical Engagement: This is a top to bottom rewrite of Mass's first book, which was itself based on his dissertation; he read all the scholarship on medieval Japan in both Japanese and English in the interim.

( The bakufu: not all it's cracked up to be )

Critical assessment: This is a very nicely written book, and I think that Mass, who after all basically knew best, is right in most of what he says here. That said, he is not a counter of things (most of the documentation of all of these phenomena is very, very slight), and I also don't endorse the idea that Yoritomo created a "dyarchy." What he did create was a new branch of government that essentially did some duty as military police but, more fundamentally, created an administrative need by inaugurating the jitô and then filled it by managing them. It's quite a neat trick, really, but all the samurai wanted central/courtly preferment and offices, not simply "military honors," the Heike monogatari not withstanding.

Meta notes: Counting things is important.

Bibliographic Data: Rosenstein, Nathan. “War, State Formation, and the Evolution of Military Institutions in Ancient China and Rome.” In Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, 24-51. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

( War & State Formation )

Bibliographic Data: Scheidel, Walter. “From the ‘Great Convergence’ to the ‘First Great Divergence’: Roman and Qin-Han State Formation and Its Aftermath.” In Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, 11-23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

( Convergence & Divergence )

Bibliographic Data: Turner, Karen. “Law and Punishment in the Formation of Empire.” In Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, 52-82. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

( Law and Punishment )

Bibliographic Data: Bang, Peter Fibiger. “Commanding and Consuming the World: Empire, Tribute, and Trade in Roman and Chinese History.” In Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, 100-120. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

( Tribute & Trade )

Bibliographic Data: Dettenhofer, Maria H. “Eunuchs, Women, and Imperial Courts.” In Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, 83-99. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Main Argument: Women and men of humble background surrounded the emperor in both Rome and China; in Rome these men were first freedmen and then equestrians, and then in late antiquity, eunuchs, while in China they were eunuchs throughout the period. Moreover, women and eunuchs were natural allies--or bitter rivals--in the struggle for political influence, made easier by their service to the emperor in intimate matters. Eunuchs came to prominence at the Roman court after the crisis of the 3rdC isolated the emperor from elites both physically and through ritual. Moreover, "eunuchs were unpopular in both societies. They represented a despised group that was only able to exist inside the court and under the emperor's protection" (98).

Bibliographic Data: Lewis, Mark Edward. “Gift Circulation and Charity in the Han and Roman Empires.” In Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires,121-136. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

( Gifts & Charity )

Bibliographic Data: Scheidel, Walter. “The Monetary Systems of the Han and Roman Empires.” In Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, 137-207. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

( Cash Money )

Critical assessment: These chapters are for the most part very good, although I have several specific complaints. First, the Detenhoffer article is an intellectual fluff piece made actively bad by its completely thoughtless throwing around of terms such as "bisexual" in a totally non-contextualized and untheorized way. I also disagree with Karen Turner's implicit argument that Roman law in the empire or in its successor states was somehow more humane than imperial Chinese law; the fact that England eventually developed trial by jury is totally irrelevant to the actual question. I also think Wally Scheidel's inability to recognize the Second Great Convergence beginning in the 19thC is problematic, since the whole point of--many things, including this book--is that we are now in a unified world system, for better and for worse. Finally, while I take Bang's point, it's a little weird to me to just subsume trade under tribute as the same thing.

Meta notes: Two houses, both alike in equal dignity…

Bibliographic Data: Lurie, David B. Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011.

Main Argument: "This study is, first and foremost, a history of writing in early Japan, but as the subtitle suggests, it also aims to rethink the wider history of writing in general" (2). "By insisting on the multilingual nature of the 'Chinese' script, which crossed and complicated language boundaries in real time as well as over long periods, this book presents an unfamiliar picture of writing in Japan and the wider region around it. Attention to the history of reading, and to the varied ways in which writing has been linked to language, shows that there are overlaps and intersections between uses of writing that have traditionally been separated into categories like foreign and native or Sinitic and vernacular" (vii).

Historiographical Engagement: History and theory of writing and history of writing in Japan.

Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples "Deeper understanding of early Japanese inscription will transform comparative discussions of literacy and reading practices, and remake our sense of the wider patterns of the world history of writing systems" (1). Lurie discusses the difficulty of defining what it means to say that writing ever "begins," and he argues that the explosion of writing in Japan in the 7thC, although obviously connected to accelerating state formation, is in fact quite varied: "Rather than a uniform transition from orality to literacy, these materials reveal different modes of writing appearing around the same time and coexisting in a variety of configurations. …different social groups are simultaneously using texts in radically different ways" (4). Lurie also criticizes the implicit "alphabetism" of scholars of writing, who, he says, "should do more to avoid teleological assumptions about progress towards photography, assumptions that are often implicitly linked to claims about the (Greek) alphabet as a guarantor of cultural superiority" (5). He argues, moreover, that the process of kundoku, "reading by gloss," "dominated all modes of literacy in early Japan, from at least the mid-seventh century on. This means that we cannot describe texts arranged in accordance with Chinese vocabulary and syntax as being written 'in Chinese' (no matter what their origins, a conclusion that has profound implications for Japanese cultural history, which has been framed by a linguistic opposition between Chinese and Japanese" (ibid). Moreover, considering Chinese writing as the "East Asian writing system," for example, and early Japanese reading and writing systems, "threatens widely held assumptions about the place of phonographic adaptation in the world history of writing" (6). The history of these questions assumptions about the "historical development of inscription and also more technical discussions of the relations between script and language" (7).

( Literacies and writing systems )

But the broader point remains: in terms of their functioning in society and development over time, it is difficult to find deep, qualitative differences across various systems of writing. As visually and structurally distinctive as many features of Japanese writing are, it seems that they neither produced, nor were determined by, sharp cultural or social differences. In a sense, this means that although writing in Japan (and to some extent, writing in general) does not work quite in the way that has often been assumed, that difference itself turns out to be less consequential than might be expected. Many scholars and theorists have taken an integral developmental logic of writing to be a key to the history of humanity; but such a logic may not even be a key to the history of writing itself. … Writing's connection to natural language and its catalytic effect on so many other historical developments make it seem to be a special case. Perhaps it is. But in its multifariousness and malleability, it is as resistant as any other human practice to monocausal, deterministic explanation. (363-64)

Critical assessment: This is a really excellent book that I am sure these notes have not fully captured. I need to think about everything that Lurie says some more, but I think a lot of his arguments could be profitably applied to technologies other than writing in Japan, such as states. And of course, there's the arguments about the history of writing, which seem to me, from what I know about it (I did some research on the development of the Greek alphabet for a while once, so I know some things; in fact, when it comes to the Greek alphabet, I actually know many things), to be right on the money.

Further reading: Tom Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan; Tomiko Yoda, Gender and National Literature

Meta notes: Techno-determinism is as much at work in how we think about writing as it is in how we think about computers.

Bibliographic Data: Akamatsu Toshihide and Philp Yampolsky. “Muromachi Zen and the Gozan System.” In Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2001 [1977]: 313-30.

Argument, Sources, Examples The Gozan system, adopted from China, by which the Ashikaga shogunate managed and subordinated Rinzai Zen, quickly became "almost entirely bureaucratic in nature," and at the same time, "enthusiasm for Zen study waned" (319), possibly because Zen began to incorporate elements of an esoteric tradition and because in the 14thC (i.e. the Yuan dynasty) direct connections with China waned. Provincial (i.e. Soto) Zen gained in popularity after the Ônin War, "but it too changed radically in style. It was now a simplified and formalized teaching with numerous extraneous elements derived from other forms of Buddhism, both esoteric and Pure Land" (ibid). The leashing of Zen doubtless served the bakufu's interests, as did the generally tight links between the Zen temples and the bakufu itself.

Bibliographic Data: Itō Teiji with Paul Novograd. “The Development of Shoin-Style Architecture.” In Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2001 [1977]: 227-40.

Argument, Sources, Examples The development of what later came to be called the "shoin style" of architecture in the Muromachi age is a modification of the Heian and Kamakura style of palace architecture "in adaptation to new social and cultural practices" (228). "The crumbling of the old rigidly stratified society, the spread of freer, more casual relations between members of the military aristocracy or between upper and lower levels of society, as well as the emergence of new cultural pursuits such as the tea ceremony, renga composing parties, and the rage for displaying Chinese art and artifacts led to new forms of architecture to accommodate these changing patterns in social behavior and cultural life" (227). It is only after the consolidation of the style as such in the Momoyama period that the last of the palace style features dropped out of shoin style; all Muromachi shoin style structures retain vestigial palace style elements, as architecturally speaking the Muromachi period was a transitional phase. Shoin elements include such stereotypically "Japanese" practices as tatami mats covering the floors, no distinction between central chamber and outer veranda, and the decorative or writing alcoves with shelves for display, as well as sliding door and wall panels.

Bibliographic Data: Kawai Masaharu with Kenneth A. Grossberg. “Shogun and Shugo: The Provincial Aspects of Muromachi Politics.” In Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2001 [1977]: 65-86.

( Shogun and shugo )

Bibliographic Data: Miyagawa Mitsuru with Cornelius J. Kiley. “From Shōen to Chigyō: Proprietary Lordship and the Structure of Power.” In Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2001 [1977]: 89-106.

( Shoen to chigyo )

Bibliographic Data: Nagahara Keiji with Kozo Yamamura. “Village Communities and Daimyo Power.” In Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2001 [1977]: 107-24.

( Villages and daimyo )

Bibliographic Data: Satō Shin’ichi with John W. Hall. “The Ashikaga Shogun and the Muromachi Bakufu Administration.” In Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2001 [1977]: 45-52.

( Shogun and bakufu )
Bibliographic Data: Toyoda Takeshi and Sugiyama Hiroshi with V. Dixon Morris. “The Growth of Commerce and the Trades.” In Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2001 [1977]: 129-44.

( Commerce and trades )

Critical assessment: This book is a wealth of interesting, critical, and relevant material; I've only covered only about half of it. Even the stuff that isn't ground-breaking is interesting. Medieval Japan was far more interesting than those who talked about "the Dark Ages" would think.

Further reading: Tonomura, Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan; Segal, Coins, Trade, and the State; Keirstead, The Geography of Power in Medieval Japan; Mass, Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese History

Meta notes: Everyone had more fun in the medieval period.

Cognitive Resonance

the ironic imagination

Book review: The Meiji Restoration

Book review: Sakamoto Ryôma and the Meiji Restoration

Book review: Patriots & Redeemers in Japan

Review: Becoming "Japanese"

Book review: Splendid Monarchy

Book review: Slavery and Society at Rome

Book review: Yoritomo and the Founding of the First Bakufu

Review: Chapters from Rome and China

Book review: Realms of Literacy

Review: Chapters from Japan in the Muromachi Age

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