In terms of teaching, I actually try to reverse the polarity of the argument in World History: it’s not that Japan and China are vaguely European, but that Europe finally caught up with the economic, cultural and technological positions held by China and India for centuries. I don’t really have the time to talk about developmental theories that much, though. In my Japan classes, I tried to break things up so that I cross those boundaries: I like to walk my students through the transitions, rather than give them a false sense of stability and no guidance on change. I don’t find the idea “that Japan is somehow oddly European” all that worrying because there’s a lot of ways in which it’s actually true and a useful way of illuminating both histories; it’s American exceptionalism that I find considerably harder to work with and around.

I’m not familiar with the literature Richard was citing (I have read only a little Japanese scholarship on periodization, and that focused on medieval Japan) but I think the key points here are that 1) “kinsei” was invented as a period in Japan BEFORE historians of Europe started talking about the early modern as a distinct stage on the road to (Western) modernity; and 2) that the champions of a distinct Japanese “kinsei” do not see the overlapping dates as indicating overlapping trends.

I’d rather break the periods down than build them up, though of course I use them in my teaching. Two regular classes are titled “early modern Japan” and “modern Japan.” They are convenient and of course fit in well with the idea (which many students have already absorbed) that Japan is somehow oddly European in its development. You don’t find that to be slightly worrying?

Similarly, using my definition of early modern, there are places which pass from feudal/medieval agro-economies straight to industrialization without ever passing through the Early Modern state. (Russia comes to mind, in particular) Of course, I long ago gave up on the developmental stage fallacy, which assumes that all societies must work through the same process and achieve the same result, but a lot of Western historians haven’t.

I forgot to mention that one interesting paper at the symposium by Richard von Glahn from UCLA made the point that the term “kinsei” (literally “recent times”) was coined in Japan well before Europeanists started using “early modern,” and furthermore that many Japanese historians insist that “kinsei” is not the same as “early modern” (though this leads us inexorably toward the Japanese escape from Asia . . . ).

World History is actually what makes the Early Modern period worthwhile for me. It’s a terrible, makeshift term, for sure, but if you define it reasonably, then it makes some comparisons possible. When I use the term I actually explain to my students how it was effectively invented to cover the pre-industrial, post-medieval, neither-fish-nor-fowl centuries which lay the foundation for modernity (and I openly admit to the problematics of that term as well). I characterize it as an age of centralizing states with increasingly regularized administrations, of substantial and growing urban economies with flourishing entertainment culture, historically high rates of literacy (roughly 25% and up), proto-industrial (aka “putting out”) production of some commodities, globalization of trade. Japan, by this definition, becomes early modern right when you expect it: around the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate. But, by this standard, I explain to them, China entered the Early Modern phase in the Tang dynasty (Song at the latest), and everyplace else in the world spends the next 500-1000 years playing catch-up. It also helps to put the end of Early Modern in perspective: When Japan enters the industrial age, it’s less than a century behind Great Britain, less than a half-century behind France, right on the heels of the US, and functionally ahead of Russia and the Ottomans. When China loses the Opium War, it’s because of a half-century of dramatic industrialization in Great Britain, not because of some deep cultural vein, etc, etc.