Via my old friend Scott Eric Kaufman I learned that President Obama’s visit to Japan was drawing criticism from the American right (I also learned that President Eisenhower bowed in public to a number of heads of state) due to Obama’s bowed greeting to Emperor Akihito.

Most of the commentary (this is an excellent roundup) hinges on whether it’s inappropriate for an American Head of State to bow to another Head of State. This is, of course, why Kaufman was noting Eisenhower’s bows, none of which were, apparently, mutual; other commenters have noted Clinton’s bow fifteen years earlier, and Nixon’s bow/handshake greeting with Emperor Hirohito. Some of the criticism is nuanced enough to note that mutual bows are appropriate greetings in Japan, but suggests that Obama’s bow was inappropriately deep and therefore servile and inappropriate.

Part of the problem in discussing this is the assumption that there is a stable protocol: Japan’s modern Imperial institution is younger than the American Republic, and interactions with other heads of state have always been somewhat improvisational. Before the Meiji Restoration, the Emperor didn’t meet heads of state. For centuries, the Emperor basically met nobody who wasn’t a member of the court aristocracy or high officials of the shogunal state: there was no public protocol except for a vague tradition that required the Emperor be above the gaze of anyone, not to be looked down upon. That tradition was revived in the Imperial era, but it wasn’t much guidance in dealing with modern crowds, photography, diplomatic visits. Even Meiji’s coronation ceremony was an innovation, purged of Chinese elements and enhanced with Shinto rituals. (See Keene, ch. 18) The first head of state to visit was Hawaiian King Kalakaua, but he was actually preceeded by a visit from former President U.S. Grant who greeted the Emperor with handshakes. Every time an aristocrat or diplomat met the Emperor, protocol had to be negotiated in advance, and it shifted over time: when and how much to bow, whether handshakes would be permitted, whether foreign women could enter the Emperor’s presence with their diplomat husbands, etc. But this wasn’t yet the great age of state visits: that doesn’t come until the 20th century, and the rise of air travel.

Before the next America presidential visit with a Japanese emperor, though, WWII intervened: the Japanese Emperor was demoted from sacred and inviolable to the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people. More importantly, perhaps, Japan became a neo-colonial extension of American power for a time (when that time ends is a matter of debate, of course) so that Presidential courtesies like Nixon’s bow were harmless to American power. By the time of Clinton’s gesture, though, Japan’s economic power was a threat to American dominance (well, with the 90s recession, not really, but pundits had spent a good portion of the ’80s talking up the Japanese threat, and the impression stuck), and the Imperial transition of 1989 took away the American sense that the Emperor was someone who had been defeated and disarmed. Even Clinton’s gesture towards a bow was too much for some, apparently: the very concept of monarchy raised spectres of pre-Revolutionary attitudes, though bowing is not necessarily a subservient act when done between equals (or by a superior) in the Japanese tradition.

Obama’s bow is a very formal one — formality and hierarchy are two different things — and in the context of a handshake. It doesn’t change the nature of the US-Japan relationship as much as the election of Japan’s new non-LDP PM, as much as the rising nationalistic culture, as much as the ongoing shifts in the economic relationship between two of the largest — and most obviously struggling — economies in the world.

I just learned of the Japanese Emperor and Empress’ visit to Hawai’i [via]. It’s not the first time that a member of the Japanese Imperial family has visited the islands, though you would hardly know it from the gushing “historic” reports of the media. Though this is the first visit by Akihito as Emperor, Akihito has visited the islands before, as have other members of Japan’s now-symbolic dynasty. In addition to the Advertiser’s photo gallery, there are some excellent shots on Flickr by “731photo” and “onecardshort”, as well as one picture from the US Pacific Command.¹

The continuing connection between the Hawai’i Japanese immigrant community and Japan was a matter of strategic concern from the beginning: The Kingdom of Hawai’i wanted to use Japan as a counterweight against US power; the Republic of Hawai’i used the threat of Japan — which was actively concerned about the treatment of Japanese in Hawai’i — to support the annexation of the islands by the US; in the Territorial era, disputes about immigration and about labor organization often involved the Japanese consulate.² And it’s also true that the Japanese government considered Japanese emigrants to be an extension of the nation³ , and tried, in a fairly blunt fashion, to influence foreign opinion through the overseas communities. By the 1910s and 20s, discussion in the media and halls of power of the Hawaiian Japanese community as a potential “fifth column” was pretty common, and that view was also common on the mainland. It took an immigration ban, a war, Japan’s crushing defeat and entry into the US security system, and the “blood sacrifice” of Nikkei serving with distinction in the US military to overcome those fears, and transform the Japanese immigrant community and their descendants into simply “ethnic” Americans. So, a little over twenty years past the end of WWII, fifteen past the end of the US occupation, the centennial of Japanese immigration into Hawai’i could be celebrated with public monuments, publications and events.

This history is why I was so disturbed to read about PRC policy which sees overseas Chinese as intelligence and lobbying agents. There’s a reasonable argument to be made — as Ichioka does — that Japanese government policy towards emigrants gave support to anti-immigrant attitudes in the US and elsewhere. It’s true that other governments treat emigres as resources to some extent, and urge their citizens overseas to represent the nation well, but the level of coordination, and open encouragement distinguishes pre-war Japanese policy and current PRC policy from the rest of the pack. I don’t think we’re on the verge of a “Yellow Peril” panic in the US at this point, but there’s no question that this has lead to serious negative consequences for individuals, and could lead to wider problems in the future.

x-posted.

1. That it’s a better shot of the Admiral than of the Emperor is, I suppose, not surprising.
2. See Gary Okihiro, John Stephan, also Morris-Suzuki
3. see also

My copanelists on Saturday were political scientists, and it was a good update for me on what what’s going on with Japan in the last ten years or so. “Normalization” is the name of the game: Japan’s political spectrum and international relations are starting to look a lot less like Yoshida’s vision and a lot more like a pretty normal regional power.

Keiko Hirata from CSU Northridge looked at the basic divisions between political theories at work in Japan. Many political scientists have divided them into four groups: pacifist (isolationists), mercantilists (internationalist), normalists (internationalist) and nationalists (isolationist, sort of). Yoshida’s domestic economic and non-entanglement orientation makes him a mercantilist, but the normalists are the group which seems to be in ascendance at the moment. Though Hirata didn’t talk about this, it seems to me that the nationalists are the group which has made that possible: their extreme views on remilitarization and national identity have made the gradual remilitarization and international engagement of the normalists seem, well, normal.¹ The most interest aspect of the categories as far as I was concerned is that they have widely disparate views of history: The pacifists, of course, emphasize the irresponsibility and horror of WWII; mercantilists emphasize the post-war recovery, seeing the war as a period of national destruction; the normalists take a kind of “dark valley” approach; the nationalists see the early 20th century as a period of healthy growth and cultural pride.

Gaye Christoffersen, one of Soka’s own, presented a surprisingly interesting look at the issue of multilateral maritime security. This has become pretty hot lately, what with the Somali pirate situation, and the multilateral, bottom-up coalition which has been solving the problem out there actually has its roots in the coalition which has taken responsibility for the Malacca Straights. There, the US tried to organize a top-down security system, but failed, while China and Japan led a slower, but more successful, bottom-up group. The punch line to this is that Japan’s Coast Guard has been spearheading things, because it isn’t bound by the Naval SDF’s limitations on the use of force; to equalize things, Japan just last week passed an anti-piracy bill allowing multilateral agreements and the use of force on the high seas. Normalization continues. China’s concerns about Japan’s normalization are a big deal still, but in multilateral/regional situations, they seem to be able to work together.

Hideyuki Sakai talked about “minilateralism,” which apparently is a kind of high-level collusion among a few members used to save multilateral agreements and regimes. Japan, it seems, excels at these kinds of negotiations, especially on environmental issues. Interestingly, in the next session, Tsuneo Akaha talked about international migration and human security issues, and the problem of protecting migrants, especially illegal ones, given legal and economic regimes that criminalize but also exploit their presence. In this case, multi-lateralism is proceeding very slowly, and Japan’s role in the process has not been all that helpful, since it has a very narrow view of migration and migrant rights. That’s not really news, of course, but it does demonstrate something useful about the direction things might still have to go, and the issues on which “bottom-up” and minilateralism aren’t going to be all that effective.

As Tsuneo noted in the discussion period, North Korea was kind of the elephant in the living room through these discussions….

1. I was a little surprised that she didn’t reference the “Overton Window,” but maybe I’ve been reading too much ScienceBlogs lately.

“In retrospect, historians are usually right.” — Der Spiegel interviewer (11-11-08).

This has been a lively month for history blogging, for some obvious reasons — the election, the economic turmoil — and despite the mid-semester doldrums that often strike this time of year. I will, because I can’t leave well enough alone, be decorating this carnival with images from my collection.¹

Hot Topics

Perhaps the first and foremost historical issue on everyone’s (well, every pundit’s) mind is the question of whether we’re in for another Great Depression.² This has sparked a great debate about just what the Great Depression really was and how we got out of it: one of the great front-line battlers in this has been Americanist and Depression-expert Eric Rauchway, whose work has been cited by Paul Krugman, among others. On the other side³ , I’d recommend the Liberty & Power bloggers like Steven Horwitz

The election was, indeed, historic — yes, I hate that use of the word as much as you do, but at least it answered some of our questions. For context, Dmitri Minaev provides Russian and Soviet reporting on the 1908 election and 1933 crisis. Speaking of 1933, Greg Laden has a cautionary tale about FDR and unguarded statements about presidential preferences. Kristan Tetens gives us a look at the painting behind the phrase “audacity of hope.” Speaking of audacity, it’s hard to beat the story of the guy who ran for president from prison, Eugene Debs.

Another popular discussion has been the new Life Magazine collection hosted by Google Images: you can see examples here, here and here, among others. Speaking of photographs, one of the advantages of digital collections is that they might be less prone to accidental disposal⁴

Meanwhile, there is a very serious discussion of historical revisionism and resurgent nationalism going on in Japan, inspired by the case of Japanese Self Defense Force General Tamogami who published — with the collusion of a right wing publisher — an essay arguing for Japan’s fundamental innocence in the initiation of World War Two. In addition to being lousy history, it violates the tradition of political neutrality by the post-war Japanese military and supports the idea of a revitalized pre-war nationalism unrestrained by the pacifist constitution or reality. Roy Berman has been on the case from early on and keeps digging up more great material. This is, for those of you unfamiliar with the Asian debates, roughly equivalent to the “Lost Cause” Civil War narratives which won’t go away, either. For some good WWII Pacific history, Elementaryhistoryteacher has a detailed discussion of the movie Beach Red and the post-battle history of the Battle of Tawara that inspired it.

Women in Histories

The election was also noteworthy for the women who were involved — Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin as candidates and Michelle Obama as the second First Lady with a law degree — and there are some serious political women in this month’s collection.

First, two stories of women running for office. Jennie W presents Helen Gahagan Douglas, who ran against Nixon for a US Senate seat and lost; she presents both pro-Nixon and anti-Nixon recollections of the campaign, which makes for an interesting historiographical exercise! Elizabeth K. Mahon gives us a “scandalous” tale of Presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull, who ran a half-century before women won sufferage in this country! Speaking of scandal, Andrew Amelinckx found a great scam artist.

Perhaps my favorite in this category is Liz Henry’s translation of Alfredo Arteaga’s anti-feminist poem, because she puts it in the context of Argentinian Feminists in the Early 1900s, so you can see that there was something interesting going on.

Going back a bit, this discussion of birth control in Rome is absolutely fascinating, including a menstruation-inducing herb that was so heavily harvested that it is now extinct. There’s a bit of environmental and women’s history that didn’t make it into my current textbook!

Because China’s Big

Alan Baumler reports on an attempt to create a Virtual Forbidden City for teaching purposes, but it’s got limits. Morgan Pitelka visits Second Life to confer with folks exploring new frontiers in New Media and Japanese Studies. Chris Bertram, though, meditated on older Chinese technology and the memories and connections it leaves behind.

History is very much about the recovery of memory. Gina, our newest member at Frog in a Well: China, raises interesting questions about lost stories of the Cultural Revolution and how new texts can bring them to life. Going back further, how many of us teaching World or Western history remember to mention that there were Chinese in the Great War? Thousands and thousands of them, but it wasn’t enough to get Chinese issues a fair hearing afterwards. Shortly after that, Bertrand Russell visited China and wrote some very perceptive things.

I know it’s not China but…. John P. DiMoia raises some fascinating issues in the history of science, and nationalism, looking at a cholera outbreak in South Korea in the early days of the US occupation.

The Atlantic Has Two Sides

There was quite a bit submitted this time around which features trans-Atlantic connections, sometimes unexpectedly. For example, this photoessay of a New York City park features a park named after a British colonial governor, a playground named after an American female entrepreneur, and cobblestones made from ship ballast. This description of procedure in the British House of Commons at the beginning of the previous century notes the degree to which US founders were influenced by British parliamentary practice.

There was some actual travel, or at least legends of actual travel: Eliza Knight gives us St. Brendan, the Celtic priest who may have visited North America before even the Vikings. A blog devoted to 300-word historical fiction vignettes offers Charles Lindbergh’s immigrant ancestor.

And in a more verifiable holiday vein, Hari Balasubramanian revisits Thanksgiving in the light of 1491.

He Who Laughs Last

Fiona Veitch Smith presents Pantomime theatre, a venerable but evolving British tradition featuring cross-dressing, current events satires and much more.

And, one of my favorite posts of the month, Scott Eric Kaufman presents a slice of comic strip history, Charlie Brown v. Dennis the Menace (also here, with more comments). Why is it one of my favorites? I never liked Dennis the Menace….

Looking Ahead

That was fun! Hope the end of your semester is, if not painless, at least crisis-free, and your holidays joyous! The next History Carnival host is Melissa Bellanta at The Vapour Trail. You can submit nominations through The History Carnival website, or with del.icio.us tag or the old Blogcarnival.com page.

1. collected shamelessly for educational purposes from museums (the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City), parks (Fort Scott, Kansas) and private collections (Waikoloa Hilton, Hawai’i). Fair use applies: if you find any of this useful, feel free to use it as appropriate, giving credit where credit is due.
2. Sometimes, I’d rather not be right
3. though it’s not entirely clear how many “sides” there are here
4. if you do regular backups and use good hosting services!

No, I’m not going to show you some cartoon of a spam musubi or a “remove your shoes” sign. This is, apparently, serious stuff: Educators working with the Hawaiian language revitalization and immersion movements have begun to use Kanji — and Japanese language generally — as a teaching tool for the Hawaiian language.

In spite of the fact that this press release came from my own institution, I actually know nothing about this. It’s wild stuff, but it has some very interesting pedagogical and cultural and linguistic foundations. There is a PDF from ‘Aha Pūnana Leo (‘APL) which has a great deal of detail and examples, including the one mentioned in the press release.

The core of the program is that both Hawaiian and Japanese are, phonetically speaking, syllabic languages, and that there are a lot of Japanese in Hawai’i, including relatives and ancestors of students in the Hawaiian program. The teachers who designed the program, aside from instilling respect, understanding and aloha in their students, wanted to use the ideographic characters to emphasize the syllabic nature of Hawaiian, as opposed to the alphabetic system of Roman letters. After assigning basic characters to each of the forty-five syllables of the Hawaiian language, they went on to teach the students more kanji by meaning, as well as conventional Japanese language instruction.¹

I have to admit, it seems like a terribly roundabout way of handling the languages.

There’s an interesting historical side note to this, though. As I wrote in my dissertation²:

Hawaiian King Kalakaua visited Japan in 1881 and made three proposals which, although they were rejected, endeared the Hawaiian monarch to the Japanese authorities. The offer to revise their treaty to eliminate extra-territoriality was rejected so as not to interfere with similar negotiations with the Great Powers. An impulsive offer by King Kalakaua for a marriage alliance between his niece and an Imperial Prince (ages six and fifteen years, respectively) was turned down after a show of due consideration. Finally, a “Union and Federation of Asian Nations and Sovereigns” which would have given Japan a platform to demonstrate leadership and build prestige in the Pacific was rejected as endangering the generally good relationship between Japan and the United States, which had particularly strong interests in Hawai’i.

Hawai’i and Japan might have had a much closer relationship, and there might have been even more Japanese influence on the islands than there already is. There is also considerably more influence the other way than most people realize. There is an extensive Hula halau (school/team) network in Japan, whose members regularly visit Hawai’i to study with local teachers and immerse themselves in the culture.³ The Japanese government has even promoted the Hawaiian shirt (in its Okinawan form, officially) as a cool answer to the problem of work attire, and there are still lots and lots of Japanese who come to Hawai’i for honeymoons and vacations who could do some good for the economy and ecology of both countries by stocking up.

Sheer geography and the history of Japanese migration to Hawai’i has created an interesting — and definitely under-studied — relationship. One that could be shaped anew by a really creative reimagining of language pedagogy. Or it could be a complete dead end.

1. as the press release points out, one of the criticisms of the Hawaiian immersion program is that it seems somewhat limited, in terms of economic potential after graduation. Japanese, of course, is the road to riches. At least that’s what it says in the big print.
2. p. 20. The citation is to Hilary Conroy’s The Japanese Frontier in Hawai’i, pp. 50-52
3. one of the best Hula dancers and Hawaiian singers I’ve seen recently was a Japanese woman who teaches Hula in Japan