I read this history slowly and it took in all about a week to get through its 400-odd pages. I had a bit of trouble with the author’s decision to use the Japanese traditional way of writing names (with the family name first) and another issue was the lack of commentary when talking about people who had earlier appeared in the narrative. But overall the quality of this book is very good and Harding gives the reader a detailed but engaging portrait of modern Japan.
Going by the way Harding deals with the most recent times it is reasonable to say that he is fair and balanced throughout the entire length of the book. I had nothing to compare his history with for the early years covered in the scope of the work, but for the postwar era I had experience having spent almost a decade living in the country myself. So I can vouch to prospective readers that this is a quality production.
Japan’s main problem since the middle of the 19th century seems to have been how to organise itself and associated with this problem was how to understand itself. Coming from feudalism straight into modernity without anything in between – there had been no Renaissance and no scientific revolution, while there had been these things in Europe – it was no wonder there were teething problems. The Meiji settlement, that came about in the years after the new emperor came into power in 1868, allowed a small minority of males (limited according to income) to vote for representatives in the legislature’s lower house but the upper house was appointed by the emperor. Even after 1925 when universal male suffrage was introduced, women were not allowed to vote and the upper house was still appointed by the monarch. Civil society had nowhere to grow in the absence of a middle class.
Under this kind of system of government, with a very limited franchise, it was unsurprising that weird things happened. Alongside the lack of accountability was a distrust on the part of the government of any kind of popular sovereignty at all. Poverty made the country in its early days fertile ground for such ideas as socialism but the government worked with business to control the masses and to use their labour to progress national goals such as colonialism and war. Once the Americans got involved – getting, for the writing of a new Constitution, a woman with a Jewish father and a Japanese mother – things turned around as power was spread more evenly across the whole community and as a country Japan eventually turned into a success.
What this book does do well is to show how hard it can be to arrive at modernity in the absence of a working civil society and a middle class to run it. In this regard, the example of China comes to mind. There, an autocratic class (much like Japan’s in the early years, from 1850), refuses to share power and causes an endless series of problems for its neighbours. What Japan does show, on the other hand, is that, even with a multi-party system and universal suffrage, people might prefer to stick with the same group of people whenever they are asked to choose between the options on offer. It’s hard, in the light of this example, to see what the CCP is worried about. Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party is firmly in power and has been for most of the time since WWII.
The other thing the book does is to show how Japanese people have been looking, for a long time, for ways to understand their place in the world. A lot of what happened in its history since 1850 – and there is plenty of time spent focusing in the book on culture, and not just on politics or economics – is driven by a search for authenticity.
In relation to the West, which has been, for all of the period under review in this work, so manifestly different from Japan, how are the Japanese people to see themselves? What do they represent? What are their values? What are their beliefs? Who, at the end of the day, are they? Part of the answer to such questions is reached by looking at how Westerners see Japanese people and Japan as a nation. But this is never enough for Japanese people themselves. They need to know, on their own terms, what they are all about.
A national history is always going to form a contested space but I feel that this one deserves to be widely read. The author uses colourful vignettes, especially at the beginning of the different sections that make up the book, to draw representative portraits of individuals who somehow embody something important about the collective. This was great fun to read and I recommend it highly.
Going by the way Harding deals with the most recent times it is reasonable to say that he is fair and balanced throughout the entire length of the book. I had nothing to compare his history with for the early years covered in the scope of the work, but for the postwar era I had experience having spent almost a decade living in the country myself. So I can vouch to prospective readers that this is a quality production.
Japan’s main problem since the middle of the 19th century seems to have been how to organise itself and associated with this problem was how to understand itself. Coming from feudalism straight into modernity without anything in between – there had been no Renaissance and no scientific revolution, while there had been these things in Europe – it was no wonder there were teething problems. The Meiji settlement, that came about in the years after the new emperor came into power in 1868, allowed a small minority of males (limited according to income) to vote for representatives in the legislature’s lower house but the upper house was appointed by the emperor. Even after 1925 when universal male suffrage was introduced, women were not allowed to vote and the upper house was still appointed by the monarch. Civil society had nowhere to grow in the absence of a middle class.
Under this kind of system of government, with a very limited franchise, it was unsurprising that weird things happened. Alongside the lack of accountability was a distrust on the part of the government of any kind of popular sovereignty at all. Poverty made the country in its early days fertile ground for such ideas as socialism but the government worked with business to control the masses and to use their labour to progress national goals such as colonialism and war. Once the Americans got involved – getting, for the writing of a new Constitution, a woman with a Jewish father and a Japanese mother – things turned around as power was spread more evenly across the whole community and as a country Japan eventually turned into a success.
What this book does do well is to show how hard it can be to arrive at modernity in the absence of a working civil society and a middle class to run it. In this regard, the example of China comes to mind. There, an autocratic class (much like Japan’s in the early years, from 1850), refuses to share power and causes an endless series of problems for its neighbours. What Japan does show, on the other hand, is that, even with a multi-party system and universal suffrage, people might prefer to stick with the same group of people whenever they are asked to choose between the options on offer. It’s hard, in the light of this example, to see what the CCP is worried about. Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party is firmly in power and has been for most of the time since WWII.
The other thing the book does is to show how Japanese people have been looking, for a long time, for ways to understand their place in the world. A lot of what happened in its history since 1850 – and there is plenty of time spent focusing in the book on culture, and not just on politics or economics – is driven by a search for authenticity.
In relation to the West, which has been, for all of the period under review in this work, so manifestly different from Japan, how are the Japanese people to see themselves? What do they represent? What are their values? What are their beliefs? Who, at the end of the day, are they? Part of the answer to such questions is reached by looking at how Westerners see Japanese people and Japan as a nation. But this is never enough for Japanese people themselves. They need to know, on their own terms, what they are all about.
A national history is always going to form a contested space but I feel that this one deserves to be widely read. The author uses colourful vignettes, especially at the beginning of the different sections that make up the book, to draw representative portraits of individuals who somehow embody something important about the collective. This was great fun to read and I recommend it highly.
No comments:
Post a Comment