In honor of the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the US at Pearl Harbor, the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations has published a series of essays on the event and historical memory issues; HNN has reprinted it (with a useful index post). John Gripentrog’s “The Road to War” is a solid discussion of the political and ideological differences which put the US and Japan on a collision course. HNN’s supplemental piece, by Rupert Colley, tracks how the attack brought the US into the European conflict. And Emily Rosenberg discusses how iconic attacks like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and their rhetorical and cultural resonances.

Those are fine, but the articles I find most interesting are the other two. Greg Robinson writes about the effect of the Pearl Harbor attack on Japanese Americans at that time and the way in which it becomes part of the rhetoric of race and bias in the decades to come.¹ Finally, Yujin Yaguchi describes an intercultural teachers’ seminar which brought together Japanese and American teachers with time to explore their biases, perspectives, and to encounter new ones. The historiographical issues aren’t terribly new to academic historians, but for teachers working in a national curriculum context, it was quite enlightening.

Update: This article by Jonathan Parshall and J. Michael Wenger is the first interesting new scholarship I’ve seen on Pearl Harbor in years. Mostly it’s about the development of the Japanese aircraft carrier group as an operational unit, an unforseen shift in naval tactics.

1. The twitter chatter as the disaster this spring unfolded frequently, shockingly, referenced Pearl Harbor with a vicious karmic glee

The ninja question came up last week in my Samurai class — we were talking about possible writing projects — so I had to do my ninja spiel, which has become a bit of a set piece. The history of ninja in three stages: Sneaky samurai, literary device, and school.

The first stage covers the history up through the Warring States, possibly including the early Tokugawa, and it’s the age when, as Karl Friday put it, ““ninja” denotes a function, not a special kind of warrior–ninja WERE samurai … performing “ninja” work.” Turnbull describes this period in some detail, and it’s fairly clear from his collected episodes that there may have been some warriors who were especially sneaky, but not a continual tradition. There are a variety of figures that are credited as “the first ninja”: I’m partial to the yamabushi theory, just because it does highlight the warrior-priest tradition, and because it attributes to the ninja magical powers and ethical principles which are clearly absurd. Ignoring, though, the origins snipe-hunt, there clearly was a place for stealth, surprise and spycraft in the free-for-all conflicts of Japan’s warrior ages, when samurai honor was based more on “victory or death” than battlefield procedure.¹ So some warriors did that.

As the Hideyoshi-Tokugawa peace takes hold, and Samurai become a more cohesive class with an interest in Confucian ethics, a more rule-oriented value system,² they become ashamed of the sneaky successes of their predecessors, and also start to become more specialized and formalized with regard to combat styles. Most schools of martial arts have both public and secret teachings, so the idea of a separate class of stealth specialists with secret traditions is entirely consistent with the Tokugawa-era samurai tradition. This is where the second stage begins: the cultural ninja.

Ninja were a lively part of the Tokugawa entertainment industrial complex: plays, fun houses, books, and visual art all explored the idea of the secret warrior, turning him in to a mighty, nearly mystical, foe, a haunting presence which could only be beaten through preparedness and righteousness by the mightiest samurai.³ Ninja become Robin Hood/Jesse James type outlaws, a friend to the common man — sometimes said to be of peasant origin themselves — and a blight on the establishment. By being a kind of anti-hero, occupying a rhetorical tactical space that the samurai could not, the ninja helped to legitimate the samurai as ethical warriors, as well as providing a kind of outlet for anti-samurai frustration and fantasy. This version of the ninja enters the western literary tradition through, among others, Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.⁴ This stage is still very much in existence, of course, as the literary/cinematic tradition persists, even adding new themes like environmental consciousness.

The third stage overlaps the second — a common problem for historians attempting stage theories; perhaps ‘state’ or ‘thread’ would be a better unit — from the early modern to the modern. At some point in the Tokugawa or Meiji eras, depending on the form and who you believe, styles of martial arts became formalized more or less at the same time that they become largely irrelevant. As noted above, most have some form of “secret teaching” for advanced adepts, and a “hidden history” as well tracing back to a noteworthy ancestor-teacher, and most of them also have well-established rivalries with related schools. In that regard, Ninja as a modern “warrior way” isn’t distinguishable from other Japanese or Chinese martial practices. In the modern age, when combat techniques are as much a matter of market forces and fashions as military necessities, the secret traditions have largely become routinized; the mythology of the ninja requires an overlay of mystery, which is maintained both by the continuing use of ninja legends as entertainment⁵ and a passionate defense of the narrative of ninja as a secret, continuing tradition which has emerged into the light with modernity.

These three phases of the ninja tradition help separate out the fact from the fiction, clarify how and why ninja might be a substantial historical topic, and why the entertainment tradition has strayed so far from anything resembling reality.

1. see Conlan, State of War, which we’ll be reading in a few weeks.
2. see Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai, which we’re reading now
3. Friday and Turnbull both address this
4. There’s a whole history yet to be written on the relationship between US military presences in East Asia, kung fu movies and the rise of Japanese martial arts in the US. But nobody’s written it yet.
5. From children’s literature to Mito Komon….

Stephen Turnbull, one of the most prolific and controversial writers on Japanese military history, has written a book on the 47 Samurai incident. The Samurai Archives review is quite positive, though Turnbull’s involvement as historical consultant on the upcoming Keanu Reeves version does raise concerns.

It’s nice to see Turnbull stepping up his game a bit, using front-line scholarship and taking a critical approach, rather than the mish-mash of his earlier books. It seems unlikely to me, though, that the debunking scholarship which has advanced over the last decade or so will have a significant impact on popular versions of the incident. It’s possible, I suppose, that Turnbull’s involvement in the new movie means that it will be a thoroughly revisionist statement¹ but the entrenched romantic version is going to remain authoritative until the revisionist history starts to get traction in Japan.

Even then, there’s the Shakespeare problem. We know that his portrayals of English kings and other historical moments were partisan and/or heavily fictionalized, but they remain some of the most enduring images and themes in historical fiction and movies, so that historians are still forced to routinely debunk these myths.² Chushingura and its ilk created a solid mythology by the dawn of the modern age, and the imperialist valorization of the Ako Roshi and other self-destructive samurai tendencies reinforced a vision of the samurai as abstemious, effective, principled, selfless and frequently violent. It would take a dramatic cultural shift to wipe out this tradition, one that seems unlikely given Japan’s rightward tendencies these days.³

I was screening movies for my Samurai course and came across recommendations (on twitter, I think) for The Twilight Samurai. I was very impressed: the portrayal of samurai poverty, bureaucracy, domainal politics, bakumatsu confusion, and the diversity (and, generally speaking, irrelevance) of fighting styles (and illegality of dueling) was very nicely done. The romantic side was a little over-generous, perhaps, but more realistic that an awful lot of other historical pieces. If you’re looking for a solid historical movie, one that will educate more than it will obscure, it’s very good.

1. assuming that all the pre-release publicity is wrong
2. It doesn’t help that “most historically accurate portrayal ever” in movie advertising usually means precisely the opposite, as the most recent Robin Hood versions demonstrate
3. more likely you’d see something like the American transformation of cowboy films: more internal focus and diversity, and an obscuring of the historically undeniable negative sides (i.e., Dances with Wolves and the death of the cowboy-and-indian film) with perhaps some culturally acceptable complications. Frankly, a good Brokeback Mountain treatment would go a long way, plus being historically credible.

The Asia/Pacific Journal, aka Japan Focus, has a fascinating interview with Heinrich Reinfried, Senior Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University St. Gallen, Switzerland, conducted by a Swiss weekly. “Sushi and Samurai: Western Stereotypes and the (Mis)Understanding of Post-Tsunami Japan” begins and ends with a credible historical and thematic deconstruction of some of the less helpful stereotypes of Japan: Japan as samurai state, kamikaze, zen masters. I particularly liked the short bit on Herrigel

Nazi Germany made use of the samurai ideal of one who obeys orders unconditionally, who sacrifices himself on orders from above, who although not a Christian has a noble soul. This is the ideological basis of Zen in the Art of Archery by the Nazi Eugen Herrigel, a book which has exerted a powerful influence over the years. Some Swiss still today regard this book as the open sesame to Japan. It is amusing to hear of Europeans with an anti-authoritarian upbringing who go to Japan to let a Zen master hit them should they doze off during meditation.

He mentions early 20th century ideas about national character, and Saidian othering

we use Japan as a negative role model incorporating the opposite of the positive qualities we attribute to ourselves.

And he talks about the Cold War re-exoticisation of Japan as a land of Geisha and gardens, class-less capitalism. I’m not sure Henry Luce is as much to blame as Reinfried, nor am I terribly convinced by his analysis of Japan’s response/role in the process:

Reinfried: Japanese are quick to realize what others see in them. They are eager to incorporate foreign images into their self-image, above all, of course, those which are self-aggrandizing. This is what happened during the Cold War when Japanese adapted and subsequently internalized the positive image that the Western world had propagated in order to mark Japan off from communist China. This self-perception enabled the country to reach the goal it had envisaged since the Meiji-Period, namely to “catch up to and go beyond“ the West. It made Japan unique but also nurtured its own brand of nationalism.

DM: There are those who maintain that Japanese just love playing the exotic role assigned to them by foreigners.

Reinfried: To some extent every country puts on a show for others. That is part of the success story of many nations. We Swiss, too, like to pretend that we are cowherds addicted to cheese. It is only when disaster occurs that we take note of the fact that we all live in one and the same world. Exceptionalist claims regarding culture then immediately fade into irrelevance.

There’s an argument to be made there, I suppose, but there’s too much going on here which glosses over complications: tourism, nationalism, the extent to which Japan’s self-image created or was created by foreign discourses, and the China-Japan cultural tension which was over a half-century old before the Cold War started.

This is typical, though, of the middle section of the interview, in which Reinfried engages in substantial myth-making and othering of his own. Aside from a well-earned swipe at foreign journalists shallow reportage, there’s a whole litany of chestnuts, conventional images of Japan, highly questionable generalizations presented as nearly-universal truths about all Japanese, without a hint of the critical perspective of the rest of the article. Most of them are about Japan as a collective, connected society. For example:

• “In Japan, even a disaster is handled in an organized manner. Japan is generally characterized by a very high degree of organization. This also applies to disaster management. Japanese rely heavily on organization, simply because they do not see any real alternative to getting themselves organized.”
• “People in the Western world basically believe in their capability to live on their own, whereas Japanese tend to see themselves as part of a system. They do not see themselves as being capable of existing without an external system such as the state.”
• “In Japan, man and nature are not in contradiction, since in their view man was not blessed by God with a mind and then placed in Nature. In Japan, man and what we call Nature together form a unity. This realm can be either orderly or chaotic, bestowing blessings at times, at other times demonstrating that its might cannot be controlled, such as when it produces huge tsunami or rattles the earth. At the same time, the conviction that man can keep the dangers of Nature at bay with the help of technology is being nurtured. Scientists refer to a disaster as an “occurrence.“ A disaster is the result of the fact that man settled in places he is not intended to settle.”
• “Religious beliefs are a strictly private concern. There is, however, a strong link with one’s ancestors, to whom Japanese feel very close. Religious feelings do exist in the form of gratefulness towards them as well as towards fellow human beings in general. The notion is widely accepted that in a society based on division of labor, one’s existence depends precariously on one’s fellow citizens doing their jobs properly. This, in essence, is the least common denominator in Japanese religion.”
• “In Japan there is the view that man is neither good nor bad, but malleable: Just as water assumes the form of the vessel it is contained in, man must always be embedded in a vessel, be it family, community or company.”
• “In Japan, public discourse constitutes mainly an exchange of factual information, not of worldviews or personal convictions. … Japanese public debates on TV generally run in orderly fashion. In Japan, differences of opinion are attributed to differences in the level of information and not to ideological differences. We have behind us a long tradition of disputes between believers and non-believers. In Japan, there are only those who know and those who do not. In case of disagreement, people do not raise their voices to outshout each other but go home to recheck the vital facts. Saying this, I don’t in any way want to suggest that Japanese are unable to raise their voices in a quarrel if they feel the need.”
• “Japanese are not successful because they are ready to die for their company. Japanese are successful because they think in terms of systems. The individual is of little importance in this dimension of strategic thinking, so these handbooks are misleading. In Japan, everything is conceived as a system. Individuals and their achievements are of secondary importance.”

I could go on. The idea of Japan as a systematic, organized society has deep roots, and there are ways in which these statements could be construed as true, with caveats, limitations, and an awareness of the way in which these ideas serve the needs of the state and a kind of social order. What’s most odd, I suppose, is the degree to which Reinfried fails to recognize that these are cultural tropes of great power as well as fairly commonplace images of Japan, both within and abroad. There’s a saying I heard once, and can’t find a source for, that man for man, the Chinese can beat the Japanese, but that four Japanese can beat four Chinese because they work together.¹ There have been movies² and books galore on these themes, not to mention a whole cottage industry of debunking scholarship on most of them.

This ended up being a very frustrating article to read, because it started out so well….

1. I’m pretty sure I heard it about economic productivity regarding Japan and the US, too. If anyone can find sources, I’d be interested to see them.
2. Gung Ho, among others

Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series is intended to educate and entertain by taking its protagonists to different times and places, real and mythical. These Scholastic books are mainstays of schools, libraries, and primary curricula, and some of the books have companion “Research Guide” publications for kids who want to know more about the historical, cultural or scientific background. Some of these books are aimed at early readers: the first 28 in the series are short, with short, simple sentences appropriate to 1st or 2nd graders; after that the series shifts into the slightly more fantastical “Merlin Mission” mode, longer stories with more complex writing suitable for 2nd or 3rd grade students; the research guides seem to be aimed at 2nd through 4th graders.¹ In these stories, Jack and Annie are given a book which, combined with the magic of the tree house, takes them to a time and place where they can carry out a mission of some kind, while learning about the site of their adventure. The whole thing is supposed to be an encouragement to learning, so to speak, showing the value of book reading. Twice in the series, Jack and Annie have visited Japanese history: in the earlier, shorter work, we get nature-loving ninja and threatening samurai; in the later adventure, we get the nature-loving poet Basho, a magical dragon, and threatening samurai.²

The text that Jack and Annie work from — more Jack than Annie: he’s the cautious, bookish one, and she’s the impulsive, intuitive one — gives an explicit frame to the story, and the book is never wrong. Because of Annie’s impulsiveness, they never get to read through the book carefully, but look up facts as they become relevant: the facts are short, context-free chunks of information that usually explain what the characters are seeing, and remembering these bits often comes in handy at critical moments. In addition to the books they read, they often get guidance from people they meet: many of the adventures feature a “local informant” who helps them navigate local custom and landscape and often is critical to their larger mission; usually they are supposed to return to the Magic Tree House with a specific item or piece of information.³ As with the books that bring them to these times and places, their local informants are never wrong, either, though sometimes they misjudge Jack or, more often, Annie.⁴

The first Japan adventure is Night of the Ninjas⁵ in which Jack and Annie return to an unidentified moment in Japan’s medieval period. Here’s what their book has to say about it:

• “Very little is known about the shadowy warriors called ninjas. Historians believe that ninjas lived in Japan between the 14th and 17th centuries. Both men and women were ninjas. Sometimes they fought to protect their families. Sometimes warlords hired them to be spies.” (15-16)
• “Sometimes ninjas held meetings in hidden mountain caves to plan secret missions.” (31)
• “Ninjas took orders from a ninja master. The master was a mysterious wise person who knew many secrets of nature.” (31)
• “The samurai were fierce Japanese fighters. They carried two swords to cut down their enemies.” (45)

This is the most authoritative information Jack and Annie have available, and the vast majority of it is entirely incorrect. Ninja — the black-suited nemesis of samurai living an independent existence in the hills, etc. — are a figment of early modern imaginations built on a sliver of truth, reified by modern martial artists’ pseudo-historical self-justifications and entertainment industries more than willing to dramatize and amplify the mythologies for fun and profit.⁶ The myth of hostility between ninja and samurai, though, runs through a lot of Japanese historical fiction.⁷ (38) The idea of the ninja as a kind of eco-warrior seems to be a relatively new addition to the mythology: it’s an interesting way of working “harmony with nature” into this Japanese narrative:

“Remember three things,” said the master…”Use nature. Be nature. Follow nature.” (38)

The nature-ninja turns the samurai into a kind of modernist nightmare.⁸ But samurai, described in the book as “fierce,” are all bark and no bite: their armor is made of “bamboo” (45), they wander around the woods at night with torches looking for ninja (37, 58), and they can be fooled by a kid in a hoodie pretending to be a rock. (48-49)

In Dragon of the Red Dawn⁹ samurai are also a threat, again in a distinctly modernist mode, because of the ban on foreigners. As their guidebook “A Journey to Old Japan” (7)¹⁰ says,

• “The late 1600s in Japan were years of peace and prosperity. Art and culture thrived. But it was a time when the country was completely closed to the outside world. No one was allowed to come in. The citizens of Edo were frequently checked to make sure they had passports.” (15-16)
• “Anyone who did not have a passport was considered a spy and punished severely.” (16)

All samurai, in this version of Genroku Japan, are police agents: the only samurai who are mentioned are either former samurai, like the poet Basho, or some form of patrolling security who are quick to draw their swords and challenge people who are out of place. (21, 42, passim) Basho tells Jack and Annie that “You must remember, seek harmony with your surroundings. … Observe the people of Edo and do as they do. If you do not stand out, you will not be noticed by the samurai.” (25-26) Jack and Annie have to learn how to use chopsticks — while eating makizushi, which it’s a little early for — under the gaze of samurai who are on the lookout for foreigners. (42) Oddly, the samurai they face suspect them because of where they are but not how they look, whereas Basho can tell immediately that they are foreigners; this may be part of the magic of the tree house, which also gives them appropriate clothing and gear and skips right over language issues. (25, etc.) In spite of the fact that Jack and Annie repeatedly come under suspicion of being spies, the samurai questioning them are thrice convinced that they are merely poetry apprentices (22, 48-52, 96-98) who do not need to show their passports, twice by extemporizing poetry.¹¹

In addition to their simple duties and simple-mindedness, samurai are part of a very simple political system. As often happens, Osborne has conflated the past and present, Shogunal and Imperial institutions. Here’s what “A Journey to Old Japan” says:

• “In the 1600s, the Imperial Garden surrounded the Imperial Palace in the capital city of Japan. The city was called Edo (Say EE-doh). In the mid-1800s, its name was changed to Tokyo (Say TOH-kee-oh.)” (14)
• “In the 1600s, the military ruler known as the shogun (say SHOW-gun) lived in the center of the Imperial Garden in a palace that had hundreds of rooms.” (17)
• “Often the shogun’s warriors traveled with him. They were called samurai (Say SAM-uh-rye).” … “Samurai were excellent horsemen well trained in the arts of fighting. The code of the samurai was strict. Samurai did not show their feelings. They had great powers of concentration.” (18)

There’s a pronunciation error, the elimination of daimyo from the political picture, the bushido stoicism and assumption that all samurai are the same, and the confusion engendered by referring to the Shogunal keep by its modern title. Osborne carefully refers to the Shogun as “the military ruler” but doesn’t explain the distinction between the Shogunal and Imperial institutions or note that the castle and grounds were not considered “Imperial” until the 1860s.

But the samurai are just an obstacle: the heart of the story is poetry, fire and magic. Despite their failings, Basho admits “Yes, the samurai greatly honor the art of poetry. Poetry helps focus the mind. The samurai believe a truly brave warrior should be able to compose a poem even in the midst of an earthquake, or while facing an enemy on the battlefield.” (61) Basho instructs the children in the art of haiku¹² and shares the frog pond verse which he wrote just yesterday, even giving Jack the piece of paper on which the world’s most famous haiku is written. (62) The guide book tells us that “Basho is one of Japan’s greatest poets. He wrote short, beautiful poems that speak to people as clearly today as they did during the Edo period of Japan.” (59) Some of them certainly do: Basho has about the same linguistic issues as Shakespeare, namely that he’s one of the writers whose work shaped the early modern language, but idiom and usage have changed over time.

Unlike Night of the Ninjas, this book has a precise historical moment. Or, rather, several precise moments: the frog poem was written in 1686, but the main action of the book focuses on the fire that destroyed Basho’s home in 1682, after which he embarked on his famous travels. Also, the cherry blossoms are blooming. Aren’t they always? Anyway, on their first walk through the city, Basho notes the drought-like conditions and remembers the 1657 Meireki Fire.¹³

“When the weather is very dry, the people of Edo worry about fire. … Twenty-five years ago, during a dry spell, half our city was destroyed by a terrible fire. Thousands died.” (30)

Probably a hundred thousand or more. But there’s an up-side to fires, he says later:

“I suppose that is why the ancients called our fires ‘the flowers of Edo.’ … After something is destroyed by fire, a good new thing often takes its place. Just as after the bleakest winter, beautiful flowers return with the spring.” (89)

This is not, of course, the actual source of the “flowers of Edo” idiom, which is both relatively recent at that time instead of “ancient”, and sarcastic rather than heartening. But Basho himself endured several fires that destroyed his home, and did take the opportunity to travel, producing some of his greatest work (including the above-mentioned poem) as a result.

When the fire breaks out, Jack and Annie join the citizens of Edo fighting the fires – no mention of the competitive firefighting teams, their uniforms or equipment, just people with buckets – and then draw on their magic to invoke the Cloud Dragon, “one of the guardian animals of the four directions. She has the power of flight and commands the rain clouds.” (37) Though a very minor figure in Japanese astrology, the Cloud Dragon answers their call with a drenching rain.

There are a few interesting touches: yo-yos, which are a long-standing Japanese toy; hot towels at meals; sumo wrestling as entertainment, though it’s unlikely that Genroku-era wrestlers would have been 400+ pounds. (38, 39, 46)

But as educational materials, these books represent a huge step backwards, a terribly wasted opportunity. According to the Wikipedia page, these books have been translated, along with most of the series, into Japanese. I can only imagine what the Japanese thought of them.

1. Check the Scholastic web site for official suitability levels. Also if you have any doubt about the fact that these are aimed at an education audience….
2. I could put a spoiler alert here, but how many 2nd-4th graders are reading this blog, who haven’t already moved beyond Jack and Annie adventures? Well, my son wants to read this post when I’m finished with it, but other than him?
3. Missions are part of larger projects: the series is built around four-book units which share a problem and theme. Jack and Annie accumulate skills and credentials over the series. This makes up for the fact that the individual books are very short, and acculturates young readers to longer works. That’s the general idea, anyway.
4. I suspect that most of my readers at this point are either familiar with the series, or have stopped reading. But I want to establish the authority of the voices: readers of the series are acculturated, if they read more than one or two, to accept the authority of the guiding book and teachers.
5. Book 5, published in 1995 by Random House, with illustrations by Sal Murdocca.
6. And, as with most Japanese nouns, the plural of “ninja” is “ninja” not “ninjas”
7. And is almost certainly based on self-serving mythologies of post-pacification samurai
8. The picture on p. 46 is the only time they are depicted visually
9. Book 37, Scholastic, 2007
10. Complete with pseudo-bamboo typography
11. including, I regret to inform you, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” Basho likes it.
12. though without any of that picky stuff like syllables or turning words, or seasonal indicators
13. They also see puppet plays on “a row of stages built along the riverbank” (36)