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Bibliographic Data: Conrad, Sebastian. The Quest for the Lost Nation: Writing History in Germany and Japan in the American Century. Trans. Alan Nothnagle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
Main Argument: Sebastian Conrad's important and innovative study places postwar historiography in (West) Germany and Japan in a comparative and transnational framework, arguing that "all pleas for European, universal, or world history notwithstanding, the nation in both countries continued to function as the frequently unacknowledged center of gravity of historical interpretation" (2). Furthermore, Conrad argues, despite common mythology, the critique of the recent past was much more sharply developed and articulated in Japan than in Germany. Methodologically, Conrad's overarching point is that "limiting the development of historiography to the history of its methodology is reductionist at best" (7).
Historiographical Engagement: As a review of the first fifteen years of postwar history writing in both Germany and Japan, the book is focused around this historiography as its sources. Conrad is also arguing against people like Ian Buruma and his claims in The Wages of Guilt, and engaging with, in particular, Franziska Seraphim's War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005.
( Entangled (fraught) histories )
Critical assessment: This is a really, really good and hugely important book with a strong, persuasive argument and larger vision. I can only hope that the fact that it's half about postwar Germany will give it play beyond Japan studies, if only for the fact that I think Conrad does a great job of skewering modernization theory and all the things that are wrong with it (disclaimer: I hate modernization theory), though there's much, much more here that's worth reading about, particular Conrad's arguments about methodological approaches. There were a few points on which I could quibble (in particular, the Frankfurt School and its reconstitution in Los Angeles exile form something of a third term to the German half of the story, as does East Germany at times), but in general I found Conrad's embedding these parallel stories within their global context to be a provoking, fascinating read.
Further reading: Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005
Meta notes: I think Conrad is right both in his diagnosis (history hasn't been transnational enough) and in his prescription (more transnational history), though I agree with Barshay's comment that Conrad follows his subjects' vision out and above and beyond the nation rather than looking in, under, below it, and that this too is a fruitful avenue of possible inquiry.
I also came away with a new appreciation for the U.S. sub-discipline of Holocaust studies and the fact that there's a Holocaust Museum on the national mall - after reading about the pervasive denial of the reality of the Shoah and the Nazi extermination programs in Germany, well into the 1960s and even 1970s, I can't help but feel that, from an ethical standpoint, these are good things. Someone needed to undertake them, and for all the manifold problems with the way they are taught in U.S. schools and portrayed in popular culture (and oh I could go on about these problems), I am newly convinced that these things are better, on the whole, than not.
Main Argument: Sebastian Conrad's important and innovative study places postwar historiography in (West) Germany and Japan in a comparative and transnational framework, arguing that "all pleas for European, universal, or world history notwithstanding, the nation in both countries continued to function as the frequently unacknowledged center of gravity of historical interpretation" (2). Furthermore, Conrad argues, despite common mythology, the critique of the recent past was much more sharply developed and articulated in Japan than in Germany. Methodologically, Conrad's overarching point is that "limiting the development of historiography to the history of its methodology is reductionist at best" (7).
Historiographical Engagement: As a review of the first fifteen years of postwar history writing in both Germany and Japan, the book is focused around this historiography as its sources. Conrad is also arguing against people like Ian Buruma and his claims in The Wages of Guilt, and engaging with, in particular, Franziska Seraphim's War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005.
( Entangled (fraught) histories )
Critical assessment: This is a really, really good and hugely important book with a strong, persuasive argument and larger vision. I can only hope that the fact that it's half about postwar Germany will give it play beyond Japan studies, if only for the fact that I think Conrad does a great job of skewering modernization theory and all the things that are wrong with it (disclaimer: I hate modernization theory), though there's much, much more here that's worth reading about, particular Conrad's arguments about methodological approaches. There were a few points on which I could quibble (in particular, the Frankfurt School and its reconstitution in Los Angeles exile form something of a third term to the German half of the story, as does East Germany at times), but in general I found Conrad's embedding these parallel stories within their global context to be a provoking, fascinating read.
Further reading: Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005
Meta notes: I think Conrad is right both in his diagnosis (history hasn't been transnational enough) and in his prescription (more transnational history), though I agree with Barshay's comment that Conrad follows his subjects' vision out and above and beyond the nation rather than looking in, under, below it, and that this too is a fruitful avenue of possible inquiry.
I also came away with a new appreciation for the U.S. sub-discipline of Holocaust studies and the fact that there's a Holocaust Museum on the national mall - after reading about the pervasive denial of the reality of the Shoah and the Nazi extermination programs in Germany, well into the 1960s and even 1970s, I can't help but feel that, from an ethical standpoint, these are good things. Someone needed to undertake them, and for all the manifold problems with the way they are taught in U.S. schools and portrayed in popular culture (and oh I could go on about these problems), I am newly convinced that these things are better, on the whole, than not.
