井の中の蛙

I’m teaching my Japan Since 1700 course next semester for the first time. I’ve taught Japan since 1800 and 1868; I’ve taught Japan 1600-1900 and 20c Japan. I have two issues which are bugging me as I put in my (late, I know) book orders: Textbook and the 18th century:

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I’m pleased to announce the publication by Shinsensha of the translated version of Japanese Diasporas, ｼﾞｬﾊﾟﾆｰｽﾞﾃﾞｲｱｽﾎﾟﾗ, 足立伸子 （編著), including my article “一八八五～九四年の移住者への訓示.” ¹ I learned, in the process of writing this post, that my article (in the English language edition) is actually cited and used correctly on the Wikipedia Japanese Diaspora page: “The Japanese Government was keen on keeping Japanese emigrants well-mannered while abroad in order to show the West that Japan was a dignified society, worthy of respect.” I may have to revise my opinion of wikipedia, after all.

In other news, Manan Ahmed sent me this Japanese Robot video, and while watching it I was struck by the realization that the early modern Japanese robots are based on a much older Japanese technology: Bunraku puppets. In this video, for example, you can see a demonstration of how the facial features are manipulated.

1. Professional Question: Is the translation listed as a separate publication on the c.v.? If so, do you note that it is a translation of an earlier publication? If not, do you just list it under the original publication: “published in translation as….”? [↩]

Keene includes several extended reminiscences of Meiji published immediately after his death. Unfortunately, some are included in the original French (pp. 707 and 709). Many thanks to Nathanael Robinson, who generously and meticulously translated these from the 19c formal French. I’ve appended these to the chapter guide for future reference.

Ito Hirobumi:

Whatever might be the causes which helped Japan in its progress, and whatever part we might have had in its success over the years, all that is insignificant when compared with what the country needs from his majesty, the emperor. The imperial will has always been the light that guides the nation. Whatever could be the contributions of those, like myself, who are trying to help his enlightened government, it would have been impossible to obtain such remarkable results had it not been for his great, wise and progressive support that is always behind every new reform.

Suematsu Kencho:

His Majesty provides the steadiest attention to each area of the affairs of the state. Every day, from the early morning till the late hours, he works with his cabinet on public affairs. He knows what matters concern each department, above all that which affects the army and navy. . . . Sometimes he astonishes [us] with his knowledge of events among his people. He takes a keen interest in everything that happens in the major countries of the world, his only desire being to learn from other nations.

The comment of the French editorialist was astute:

The emperor was able, at certain times, to influence the policy of his ministers, because his ability to act and his intelligence were not in doubt. But his main work, which he achieved with remarkable wisdom, was to be the head of state, the living symbol of national life and the public interest . . . . The great kings are not those who, like Philip II, want to manage the affairs of state by themselves, but those who, having placed their trust in great ministers, support them with all the prestige of the monarchy.

Reporter for The Journal (G. de Banzemont)

Mutsu-hito was not only one of the most celebrated emperors of Japan, but also one of the greatest monarchs of the modern world. One need only recall the anguish that gripped the Japanese nation at the first news of the sovereign’s illness. Over several days, the tearful crowd marched, without concern for the torrid heat, under the windows of the imperial palace. On their knees, their foreheads covered in dust, in a common voice, they pleaded with the gods. And as soon as a dull lamp, illuminating the room of the deceased, announced that the monarch passed away in agony, there came the most violent explosion of sorrow that can be imagined.

Ito’s comment seems somewhat noncommittal — “support” and “guides” aren’t specific — but emphasizes the “progressive” modernizing elements of the regime.¹ Suematsu, on the other hand, who served as an ambassador and Home minister, is effusive and clear. The “astute” French editorialist presents what could well be a summary of Keene’s own views.² de Banzemont’s narrative is echoed, but not quite confirmed, by Japanese sources Keene cites, and seems a bit excessive.³

1. Keene, in footnotes, says that the date of this statement “is not clear” but doesn’t explicitly remind the reader that Ito’s been dead for three years. [↩]
2. That’s what “astute” means: agrees with me [↩]
3. At some point, when I have more time, I want to go back to Japanese newspapers of the time. [↩]

Much of my Meiji Japan course is taken up with Donald Keene’s Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his World, 1852-1912. It’s been a pretty good experience, but I probably won’t do it again. I’ve enjoyed reading it¹ and my students do seem to be getting a great deal out of it, but it is too long and really fails to answer some of its own critical questions. My students are in the process of writing about it now, and I thought it was time to share some of my own reactions.

As part of the reading process, I created a page of short chapter highlights: one of Keene’s quirks is that the book’s sixty-three chapters are neither titled nor listed in a table of contents. The book is arranged almost entirely chronologically, so it’s not too hard to find what you’re looking for if you know when it is, and it has an index (with definitions of Japanese language terms, so it doubles as a glossary), but it still seems deliberately perverse — or perhaps novelistic — to have such fine-grained divisions without explanation.²

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1. I read through it last year along with my directed study students, but I was doing the directed study on top of a four-course, four-prep semester, so it was a perfunctory read. [↩]
2. Another moment of perverse traditionalism comes from the pages of untranslated French on p. 707 recording thoughts on Meiji’s reign by the late Itō Hirobumi, Suematsu Kenchō and an “astute” French journalist and p. 709 recording “the sorrow of the Japanese people.” I will add translations of those to the summary page when I have them. [↩]

Like most teachers, I have a tense relationship with textbooks: too much of one thing, not enough of another; too old, or updated annually; too hard to read, or too simplistic; boring or sensationalistic or, worse, trying to be student-friendly and failing; etc. Still, they are pedagogically useful, as long as they’re not actually harmful. In most of my classes, I use a survey text: ideally, it provides a foundation of basic information, frees me from having to explain everything in lecture. Basic stuff.

But in my Japanese history classes, I’ve been getting away from them. When I offered my Early Japan to 1600 course in 2003, I used Hane’s Premodern Japan. I didn’t like it, though: I’ve always thought Hane’s coverage of issues was quirky, and his politics a bit obvious. When I offered it again in 2004, I dispensed with Hane and used the Encyclopedia Britannica Online for basic narrative background. Maybe it was too early: students just didn’t spend enough time online, or something, and very few of them kept up with it or could make connections between that and the readings. In 2007, I gave up on that, too, and went textbook-free, though I was using Lu’s Japan: A Documentary History which had a lot of good background in it. Mostly, though, I focused on the sources, using the questions raised by the readings to direct my lectures. I thought it was a neat bit of modern pedagogy, almost constructivist: students hated it.¹

So I’m reconsidering the Early Japan course now. First of all, I’m shifting the chronology a bit: going up to 1700.² I still like Lu’s documents, supplemented with literature, for the main event readings.³ But I think a good textbook might be worthwhile. That’s the problem: a good textbook.

• Hane: see above on coverage and tone.
• Conrad Totman’s Japan Before Perry: just reissued. Not updated, mind you, and it was assigned to me when I was an undergrad (and I don’t remember it making much of an impression). Anyone used it recently and want to comment on how creaky it is?
• John Whitney Hall’s Government and Local Power is out of print, for sure, or I’d use it in a heartbeat.
• I could use a text which covers all of Japanese history, and keep using it for the second half of the course. I used Varley’s Japanese Culture many years ago, and it was updated in 2000. There’s also Walthall’s Japan: A Cultural, Social And Political History, the replacement for the venerable Reischauer/Craig. Varley has the advantage of better context for the literary readings, but Walthall’s likely to be better on the political and economic stuff. Not having seen it, though, I’m a bit nervous.

At the moment, I think I’m actually leaning towards the last option — Varley or Walthall — but I’m curious to know if anyone out there has any thoughts.

1. The same method actually worked quite well in my Japanese Women’s History course. More than once. Go figure. [↩]
2. I’m actually giving up on the three-course sequence. I like it, and it makes great historiographical sense. But students never seemed to figure out what was going on in the middle course (Qing or Tokugawa-Meiji) and I think you really need a much larger student body than I’m ever going to have to work with for these courses to actually draw enough audience. I’m not going to the 19c contact=modernity model, though. I don’t think I could stomach it at this point. [↩]
3. McCullough’s Genji/Heike again, probably, but I need some later literature. Something on drama, with both Noh and Kabuki? [↩]

As I mentioned here and here, I had some great discussions about the question of diaspora at ASPAC. The dividing line between Asian studies and Asian American studies is starting to blur, and I think that’s going to be very productive.

That was actually one of the main points of Jane H. Yamashiro’s lively talk on “The Japanese Diaspora?: Rethinking connections between people of Japanese ancestry”: that disciplinary boundary-crossing is productive, but that the very different origins, political and disciplinary stances of Asian Studies and Asian American Studies raise problems. Fundamentally, each views the question from a very different place, with a center of focus that affects the kind of issues which are possible to study and discuss. One example of the problem is in terminology: are people of Japanese ancestry who go to Japan “return migrants” or “foreigners” or “going to the homeland”? This is precisely what Yamashiro studies: the experience of Japanese Americans constructing a new identity as they live long-term in Japan, but the very naming of such an experience prefigures some of the answer: how can a first-time visit be a “return” unless identity is more ancestral than individual? And she explicitly rejects the term “diaspora” because, she argues, it fixes the center of the Japanese American experience in Japan instead of in America.

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Matt over at No-Sword has listed and linked to a few Japanese authors who, due to the life+50 years copyright rule, now have all of their works released into the public domain:

Public Domain Day: Japan

Also take a look at a list of many other authors whose works are now in the public domain at Copyright Watch.

Matt links to the author entries at Auzora Bunko, where you can read various full texts of authors. It is also where I first heard about a movement to oppose a lengthening of the copyright term in Japan to life+70. I must admit I was ignorant that there was an attempt to extend the copyright protection in the works. I don’t know how far it has come but I find it deeply troubling. Already the life+50 rule has kept out of the public domain a great many out-of-print, rare, and historically valuable materials that would never see the light of a computer screen, let alone publication which could be easily shared and appreciated much more widely. Some works, such as the writings and recorded musical performances of my favorite traitor, Kawashima Yoshiko, are only in the public domain because she was executed at a young age in the early postwar, and even then it is really hard to get out of the restrictive licenses of archives that contain her now, ostensibly, public domain works.

As has been the case in the United States, which has a ridiculously long, complex, and stifling copyright regime, the main benefactor of any extension would be large corporations. In other cases, I am personally completely unconvinced that the benefits of providing the mere possibility of royalties for several generations of descendants can come close to outweighing the benefit to society as a whole of releasing works into the public domain in a timely manner.

You can read more about the movement against the extension here. They even have their own icon:

You can read more in the Japanese news about the attempt to extent the law here. I personally liked this quote in the article:

著作の多くをフリーで公開することで知られている評論家・翻訳家の山形浩生さんは、保護期間延長に反対の立場だ。「私が2050年に死ぬとして、2100年まで守られていた著作権が2120年まで延びると言われても、『すばらしい！　これで安心して創作活動できる！』などと思うわけがない」(山形さん)

In this quote an author by the name of Yamagata Hirô, who is active in the free culture movement says, “If I were to die in 2050 and my copyrights, which are currently protected until 2100, were extended to 2120, I would hardly say, ‘Great! I can now put my mind at ease and be creative!’”

Some more links on the topic:
Wikipedia: 著作権の保護期間
「著作権保護期間の延長を」——権利者団体が要望書　ネット時代も意識
著作権関連16団体、著作権の保護期間を「死後70年」に延長を求める共同声明
著作権保護期間、死後50年から70年への延長を巡って賛成・反対両派が議論
Authors By Year of Death Index

Or perhaps more to the point, what books are given the chance to sell? The other day I was in a local chain bookstore and took the following photo of the “World history” shelf ostensibly dedicated to China (and thus also Japan). I wanted to look in more detail at the books that are given shelf space in places like Borders and Barnes and Noble. (more…)

A book I’ve been waiting for for a long time is finally almost out [PDF]. Adam Kern, an old friend from graduate school, has been working on Edo-period humor, especially kibyoshi visual humor:

Curious, he brought some of the books to his literature professor, who offered no comment because, he said, kibyoshi were really art. So Kern brought the books to his art professor, who also offered no comment because, he said, kibyoshi were really literature.

This is one of those cases, obviously, where the old disciplinary boundaries have created gaps in our knowledge that didn’t need to exist. No more. There have been books on the history of Japanese humor before, but I’ve never felt that they captured any of the actual fun being had by the authors of haikai, senryu, satirical enga or kyogen. It’s a cliche that the best way to kill humor is to analyze it, and I don’t think it’s entirely true, but that’s certainly been the model to date. Adam, however, is a genuinely funny, and very smart, guy and I look forward to seeing the results.

At the other end of the Charles (I say that, but of course neither MIT nor Harvard is anywhere near an “end” of the Charles, except in the solopsistic Cantabridgian sense), Prof. Peter Perdue has offered another review of the MIT Visualizing Cultures controversy. Most interesting is his differentiation between the censorial rage of “Chinese Students and Scholars Association, a student group comprised of graduate students from the People’s Republic of China,” and the “Chinese alumni of MIT [CAMIT]“:

If some future social scientist used this correspondence as “data” for a research project, she might conclude: “A content analysis was done of the opinions contained in the complete database of e-mail correspondence, arranging them on the following ordinal scale from 1 to 5: 1. Dower and Miyagawa were completely justified in their project; the students’ actions were ridiculous and embarrassing; 2. The Website contained some unintentionally offensive portions, indicating the need for some clarification, but it should be restored as soon as possible with warnings about the need to view its content carefully; 3. The site was unbalanced, because it leaned too much toward the Japanese perspective; it needed to include Chinese materials and be substantially revised; 4. The Website indicated such bias against the Chinese people and in favor of Japanese militarism that the Website should be suppressed, MIT should apologize, and Profs. Dower and Miyagawa should be fired; 5. Even more violent threats…

“A frequency distribution of the responses would find them arrayed in a normal distribution with its median at about 3.0, with the median response from members of CAMIT lying one or more standard intervals to the left (< =2.5), and the median response from members of CSSA lying one or more standard intervals to the right (>=3.5). There is most likely a significant statistical difference between the two populations, but this subject requires further research.”

This tongue-in-cheek chi-test comes from his own correspondence after he published his first defense of Dower and Miyagawa: the CSSA, though it’s been defended vigorously, if not entirely honestly, on H-Asia, was quite unrestrained in its attacks (the image of a student presenting Iris Chang’s unbalanced book to War Without Mercy author John Dower to “educate him” pretty much says it all) and demands. The MIT alumni were considerably more balanced and nuanced in their approach, and made it possible to find a solution, as Perdue says, pretty much in line with position 2, though he himself is working with Miyagawa and Dower to implement some more Chinese content to supplement.

I have been compiling notes and comparing various narratives of modern Japanese history in preparation for my orals. It is easy to lose touch with the bigger picture when reading lots of books that focus on one issue, period, or question.

I wrote a little about the dearth of information on North Korea in the Enyclopedia of World History (somewhat clunky online version here) over at Frog in a Well - Korea. The book is something of a massive timeline for reference and I just finished going through the Japanese history entries in the work.

In the just over three pages for the postwar period there were a few items that were not included which I saw in most other narratives and timelines of the period. 1) There was no mention of Japan’s entry into the United Nations in 1956. 2) There was no mention of end of the Allied occupation in 1952 (Though there is mention of the peace treaty going into effect). 3) There was no mention of the “Nixon Shocks” of July (US abandonment of the gold standard with its resulting impact on the exchange rate with Japan) and August (Nixon announces a visit to China), 1971. Although they are not events which had Japanese actors involved, they had a strong impact on Japan and always gets at least a mention. I suspect that most Japanese also see the shocks, along with the return of Okinawa and the shock of the oil embargos, as defining moments of the early 1970s.

These were the only items that you find in most works which were missing. There was, however, one event which I had heard about but I have never seen mentioned in other timelines or in surveys of modern Japan:

1964, March 24. U.S. ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer was stabbed by an allegedly deranged young Japanese.

I wondered why this would have made the cut with such limited space? Don’t get me wrong, it is not that I think the stabbing of the US ambassador is a trivial affair. Reischauer is not only an incredibly important historian in our field but was also an important player in US-Japan relations. I am also very grateful for a generous summer fellowship the Reischauer institute awarded me last year.

I then looked at the list of editors for earlier editions and noticed that both John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer are listed. It would seem reasonable to assume Reischauer made the call to include mention of his own stabbing.

In fact, the 1964 stabbing incident must have left a particularly strong impression on Reischauer as its aftermath would continue to affect his health throughout the remainder of his life. An old biography of Reischauer has this description of the event which adds a little context:

On March 24, 1964, as he was leaving his office, Reischauer was attacked and stabbed by a mentally disturbed Japanese youth. He could have gone to a United States Army hospital, but chose instead to go to a Japanese hospital. Unfortunately, a blood transfusion he received there was tainted with hepatitis virus. He suffered irreversible liver damage and felt the ill-effects for the rest of his life. Reischauer was in Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii until July 1 rehabilitating a partially paralyzed leg and recovering from hepatitis. The incident elicited a flood of visits, mail, and gifts from Japanese well-wishers. Upon release from the hospital, he resumed full duties in the Tokyo embassy.

Not only was he stabbed, but was given a tainted blood transfusion! But there is more. In LaFeber’s The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History we find this added detail:

“…[President] Johnson wanted far more [support for U.S. policies on Vietnam and China] from Japan. [Dean] Rusk blamed Reischauer for being too pro-Japanese, for not educating Japan about the great danger, for assuming that the two nations were converging in their interests while, in reality, the Japanese were going off on their own. As Reischauer lay in serious condition after he was stabbed in 1964, neither Johnson nor Rusk sent him a personal note. In mid-1966, Reischauer was finally replaced by the hawkish U. Alexis Johnson.¹

1. LaFeber, Walter The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 343.