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Bibliographic Data: Nimura Kazuo, The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan. Trans. Terry Boardman and Andrew Gordon, ed. Andrew Gordon. Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 1997.
Main Argument: In this book--the amended and slightly revised translation of a book that was originally published as a compilation of papers Nimura had written at various points--Nimura takes issue with several orthodoxies of postwar Japanese social and labor history, particularly Maruyama Masao's [yes, him again] theory of "spontaneous resistance" and Ôkôchi Kazuo's theory of the "migrant labor pattern," using the riot at the Ashio copper mine in February 1907 to demonstrate that both theories were fundamentally flawed. By doing this, Nimura demonstrates that the premises of the "lecture school" (the kôza-ha) of Japanese Marxism, which held sway from the 1920s through at least the 1960s, were fundamentally flawed. He succeeds on all counts.
Historiographical Engagement: Nimura is mostly working within the Japanese language-scholarship on this issue, although Andrew Gordon, the editor and second-round translator, gets more than a few shoutouts. At several points I was also forcibly reminded of Tom Smith's Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization. And of course, Uncle Karl (Marx).
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples In the prologue, Nimura discusses his arguments and his methodology, and why he chose the Ashio mine riot at his source. In the 1950s while he was working on chapter 2, "the vast majority of labor history research focused on labor movement history" (4, emphasis original), and these works were actually just debates about Marxism. In chapter 1, written in the 1970s and 1980s, Nimura heeded his own call to examine labor disputes in the history of particular corporations and went back to the Ashio archives, now augmented by previously secret files: "To be sure, a study of a single dispute shows us just one tree, but I felt that conventional research at the time remained outside the forest entirely and could not teach us anything about its internal composition. We had to enter the forest and investigate representative trees and shrubs to comprehend the nature of the forest as a whole. Of course, one tree does not grow in isolation…" (10).
( I predict a riot )
Critical assessment: This is an excellent, excellent book, a marvel of methodology and of evidence-based historical scholarship. Although the analysis and the prose is very straightforward, there is much to dig into here, and it is very worthwhile indeed to have this book in English.
Further reading: Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan; Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan; Elyssa Faison, Managing Women; Tom Smith, Political Change and Industrial Development in Japan; Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan
Meta notes: I do love it when scholars straight up quote Marx as an explanation.
Main Argument: In this book--the amended and slightly revised translation of a book that was originally published as a compilation of papers Nimura had written at various points--Nimura takes issue with several orthodoxies of postwar Japanese social and labor history, particularly Maruyama Masao's [yes, him again] theory of "spontaneous resistance" and Ôkôchi Kazuo's theory of the "migrant labor pattern," using the riot at the Ashio copper mine in February 1907 to demonstrate that both theories were fundamentally flawed. By doing this, Nimura demonstrates that the premises of the "lecture school" (the kôza-ha) of Japanese Marxism, which held sway from the 1920s through at least the 1960s, were fundamentally flawed. He succeeds on all counts.
Historiographical Engagement: Nimura is mostly working within the Japanese language-scholarship on this issue, although Andrew Gordon, the editor and second-round translator, gets more than a few shoutouts. At several points I was also forcibly reminded of Tom Smith's Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization. And of course, Uncle Karl (Marx).
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples In the prologue, Nimura discusses his arguments and his methodology, and why he chose the Ashio mine riot at his source. In the 1950s while he was working on chapter 2, "the vast majority of labor history research focused on labor movement history" (4, emphasis original), and these works were actually just debates about Marxism. In chapter 1, written in the 1970s and 1980s, Nimura heeded his own call to examine labor disputes in the history of particular corporations and went back to the Ashio archives, now augmented by previously secret files: "To be sure, a study of a single dispute shows us just one tree, but I felt that conventional research at the time remained outside the forest entirely and could not teach us anything about its internal composition. We had to enter the forest and investigate representative trees and shrubs to comprehend the nature of the forest as a whole. Of course, one tree does not grow in isolation…" (10).
( I predict a riot )
Critical assessment: This is an excellent, excellent book, a marvel of methodology and of evidence-based historical scholarship. Although the analysis and the prose is very straightforward, there is much to dig into here, and it is very worthwhile indeed to have this book in English.
Further reading: Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan; Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan; Elyssa Faison, Managing Women; Tom Smith, Political Change and Industrial Development in Japan; Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan
Meta notes: I do love it when scholars straight up quote Marx as an explanation.
