ahorbinski: A snakes & ladders board.  (struggle & stagger)
Bibliographic Data: Waswo, Ann. “The Transformation of Rural Society, 1900-1950.” In The Cambridge History of Japan vol. 6, ed. Peter Duus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: 541-605.

Main Argument: Land reform during the occupation, "though certainly important, was the culmination of slow, evolutionary processes that date from the late nineteenth century" (542). The origins of that process lie in four early Meiji policies: the land tax reform, the reform of local administration, compulsory elementary education and universal military conscription.

Transformation of rural society )

Bibliographic Data: Peattie, Mark R. “The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945.” In The Cambridge History of Japan vol. 6, ed. Peter Duus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: 217-70.

Main Argument: "Japanese imperialism was more situational than deliberate in origin. The aggressive movement of Japanese forces into Korea, China, and Micronesia was as much due to the absence of effective power to resist it as it was to specific Japanese policies and planning" (223). Also, "the inner logic of Japan's strategic doctrine thus committed the empire to ever-expanding and ever-receding security goals, each colonial acquisition being seen as a 'base' or 'outpost' from which the empire could, in some way, control a sphere of influence over more distant areas" (220).

The colonial empire )
Bibliographic Data: Najita, Tetsuo and Harry Harootunian. "Japanese Revolt Against the West: Political and Cultural Criticism in the Twentieth Century." In The Cambridge History of Japan vol. 6, ed. Peter Duus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: 711-74.

Main Argument:
Many believed that by realizing the best of East and West, Japan had achieved a new cosmopolitan culture. The recognition of having achieved this unprecedented synthesis validated the subsequent belief that Japan was uniquely qualified to assume leadership in Asia, although much of the rhetoric that the writers used referred to the world at large. Whereas an earlier cosmopolitanism promoted the ideal of cultural diversity and equivalence based on the principle of a common humanity, which served also to restrain excessive claims to exceptionalism, the new culturalism of the 1930s proposed that Japan was appointed to lead the world to a higher level of cultural synthesis that surpassed Western modernism itself. (712)
Fascism in Japan )
ahorbinski: A snakes & ladders board.  (struggle & stagger)
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.
ahorbinski: shelves stuffed with books (Default)
Bibliographic Data: Najita, Tetsuo. Ordinary Economies in Japan: A Historical Perspective, 1750-1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Main Argument: Najita argues for a kind of deep persistence of a hidden history of commoner cooperative organizations (kô) from the early modern period into the modern period--although he does not say as much, it is clear that the kô played a vital role in alleviating the rural misery associated with the late Tokugawa and early imperial periods, and thus a key role in Japan's successful transition to industrial modernity. Moreover, albeit in somewhat changed forms, many kô still exist in Japan to blunt the effects of state indifference, a kind of silent citizens' movement.

Historiographical Engagement: In his own words, Robert Bellah, Irwin Scheiner, Thomas C. Smith, Anne Walthall, Sakurai Tokutarô, Irokawa Daikichi, Mori Kahei, and Mori Shizurô

Hidden and fragmented )

Critical assessment: This is definitely a final book in that it is much more meditative and much more associative than more tightly written books by younger scholars, but it is also illuminating of a history that has been not so much suppressed as ignored, because hiding in plain sight. I've joined cooperatives in Japan and in the States, and Najita's arguments about the persistence of kô make a lot of sense.

That said, I find Najita's sweeping references to "commoners" to be more obfuscatory than helpful. The four official social orders were status groups, not classes, and some merchants, officially commoners, were far richer than many samurai by the middle of the Tokugawa period if not earlier. By the end of the period, there was a great deal of status mixing at elite levels, and I find that Najita's flattening of those class-based distinctions blunts his analysis, and especially its potential comparability.

Further reading: Najita, Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan; Hitomi Tonomura, Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan

Meta notes: At this point I should put my cards on the table and say that I really like comparability.

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Andrea J. Horbinski

August 2017

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