Orientations
The study of Japan is often a difficult undertaking, though the reasons for this difficulty may not be apparent at first glance. Of course, there is a vast quantity of information with which to deal, but this point is hardly peculiar to Japan. The main difficulty seems to be psycho-cultural: deeply-rooted images of Japan—rarely accurate—that inhabit our minds. Furthermore, centuries-old ways of thinking about modernity, the "Orient," nations, cultures, and other related topics contribute to our mental baggage and hinder the academic study of Japan. Like parasites in our minds, these images and ways of thinking tend to block or filter out key information about and interpretations of Japan that scholars have provided in recent decades. It is essential, therefore, that we begin by examining some of these images and ways of thinking and that, throughout our study of Japan, we work hard to question them critically.
It would be unusual to hear the expression "the Americans" come up regularly in a course on the history or culture of the United States. Even without formal study, most residents of the United States are well aware of the diverse groups of people and cultures residing within that country's present-day boundaries. Even within the so-called "dominant" culture, disputes over political, economic, and social affairs have been and are the norm, and much of any study of U.S. history focuses on those disputes. An expression like "the Americans" sounds so general as to be meaningless or positively misleading. It suggests that "Americans" are and were a monolithic entity. "Which Americans?" would be an appropriate query upon hearing talk of "the Americans." Which Americans?—urban dwellers, rural dwellers, north, south, west, big business, populists, recent immigrants, men, women, free traders, protectionists, fundamentalist Christians, native Americans, suburbanites, black, white, and so forth. U.S. history textbooks now routinely feature differing points of view, alternative narratives, and critical analysis.
Why, then, should Japan be different? Why do students of modern Japan routinely speak of "the Japanese," and, often, vigorously resist efforts to cast this term aside? Even many textbooks and some academic monographs on Japan written for U.S. audiences speak of "the Japanese," perhaps as a concession to popular usage. But why, in our manner of speaking, should we deny Japan its diversity, its multiple points of views, its political, economic, social, and intellectual disputes? Why might someone feel uneasy about saying "the Americans" but readily talk of "the Japanese" (or "the Chinese," or "the Arabs," etc.)? This chapter attempts to explore some of the reasons for this imbalance.
To begin, however, try to train yourself not to say "the Japanese." For some of you, casting aside this phrase will be easy; for others it will be nearly impossible. In either case, whenever you find yourself about to say "the Japanese," ask yourself the question "Which Japanese?" and then answer it. Even if your answer is still a broad generalization (after all, we must speak in generalizations)—"Japanese women," "well-educated Japanese," or even "most Japanese"—you are on the right track. Such habits of speech are not merely semantic pedantry or superficial "political correctness," but an important exercise in training the mind. In any case, it will be essential in this course to understand some of the major divisions within Japanese society at different times. The mental laziness that underlies talk of "the Japanese" will only be a hindrance in accomplishing this understanding.
The Second World War was not only a major event in U.S. and world history, it remains a potent and increasingly contested symbol in the United States. When I began college teaching in the early 90s, I was surprised to see the intense emotions this event brought forth in students born, typically, in the 1970s. "Didn't the war end in 1945?" I thought. For a variety of reasons, however, the war did not end in 1945. It is vigorously alive in the cultural memory of many Americans of all age groups, even while its meaning and significance is undergoing change. Because Japan was one of the two major opponents of the United States in that war, many stereotypical images of Japan current today derive, at least in part, from *wartime imagery* (which itself was based on older stereotypes about Japan and "the Orient" as we will see).
In wartime images, among other things, Japanese are depicted generically. Whether as people, *spiders,* or *rats,* we find no hint of individuality. Contrast this monolithic portrayal with that of Hitler ("the Germans?"—no, at broadest, specific Germans, i.e., Nazis) and Mussolini ("the Italians?"—no, at broadest, specific Italians, i.e., fascists). Although it is possible to find wartime images of Japan's emperor or prime minister, such depictions were rare.
Frank Capra was a film maker who oversaw the production of the popular Why We Fight series of wartime films. His Know Your Enemy: Japan portrayed "the Japanese" as "photographic prints off the same negative."1 Such images, with a positive spin of course, were also part of Japanese self-congratulatory propaganda (more on this point in a the later chapter, "Theories of Japaneseness"). In any case, wartime stress on Japanese sameness "did violence to a complex people and society" in the words of historian John W. Dower.2 *See Cartoon.* Of course, the crude facial caricatures of the war days have become unacceptable in today's society, which remains highly sensitive about certain aspects of physical appearance. Still, the "violence" of which Dower writes continues to be perpetuated whenever we seek simple answers and theories to explain "the" Japanese. Like other modern societies, Japan is, and has been, a complex and diverse society. It is a goal of this course to analyze and appreciate some of this complexity.
We commonly speak of "the modern world" and think of ourselves as living in the modern age (or, for some, the post-modern age). But what does such talk and such thinking mean? In other words, what is modernity? What does it mean to be modern? Pause now and try to define this term. You will soon discover that coming up with an adequate definition is nearly impossible. Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the vagueness of the concept of modernity, it has exercised a powerful hold on the minds of many Americans and Europeans during the 19th and 20th centuries. "We" are modern, goes the typical line of thought, and those other people in "third world" countries lack modernity. Indeed, alleged possession of modernity served as a powerful justification for imperialism over the past two centuries. After all, the typical argument went, it is only natural and proper that Britain should rule India or that the United States should rule the Philippines, because such rule would bring the benefits of modernity to otherwise "primitive" people—and what could be wrong with that? What do you think? Remember, it would be hard to find any two people, today or in times past, who would agree on just exactly what modernity is. But whatever it is, it is important and "we" have it—or so the typical thinking goes.
Modernity and Christianity both supported and opposed each other. It was common in the United States and parts of Europe during the nineteenth century to regard Christianity as inextricably linked with modernity. In this way of thinking, Christianity was "rational," "progressive," and "uplifting." For many Americans and Europeans, Christianity was part of a whole package of "modern" things that included democratic (or allegedly democratic) government, material prosperity, technological advances, medicine, education, and more. On the other hand, this link between modernity and Christianity was often problematic, since science, another component of modernity, sometimes clashed with religion (see the cartoon at the start of this chapter, for example—and notice the words "science falsely so-called"). Still, the mental association linking Christianity and modernity was common in past centuries and even lingers on in today's world. Consider, for example, the case of Dr. Arthur B. Stout, a physician. In 1862, he published a report entitled, Chinese Immigration and the Physiological Causes of the Decay of a Nation. Stuart Creighton Miller explains Stout's findings as follows:
Stout was never really clear on the mechanics of the threat, but insisted, unabashed, that the introduction of Chinese and Negroes into America would be like "a cancer" in "the biological, social, religious, and political systems." There was nothing to be gained by such an infusion and everything to be lost. Improvements on the "Divine excellence" of the Anglo-Saxons seemed unlikely. "Until Islamism and Paganism alike sink into oblivion, and Christianity enters, like sunlight into chaos, to illuminate and revivify this ancient world [China] . . . we cannot permit Asiatics to enter," he concluded.3
Incidentally, Dr. Stout's report was well received, and in 1871 the California Board of Health hired him to report on "the evils likely to result from the combined intermixture of races and the introduction of habits and customs of a sensual and depraved people [Chinese immigrants] in our midst . . . with hereditary vices and engrafted peculiarities." It is important to note that Dr. Stout represented the cutting edge of modernity in his day. He was a medical doctor who applied science to shed light on a major political and social issue of his day, Chinese immigration. Notice especially how his conclusion stands firmly on religion. In his report, Christianity stood for health, progress and prosperity; "Islamism" and "Paganism" stood for a world of filth, disease, and stagnation. Religion, science, the idea of progress, and modernity have long been intertwined in the ordinary thinking of many residents of the "Western" world—as well as its doctors, scientists, philosophers, political leaders, and other social elites. One other point worth noting here is that most of us tend think of science as being particularly "objective," and thus free from political considerations. But like all other human practices, science has never been free from the biases and political concerns that affect our thoughts and deeds. I say this not to criticize science, but to criticize the way we often think about science.
Closely connected with visions of modernity was the idea of linear upward progress. "We" in "the West," the thinking goes, are a modern, progressive people. And the proof is on the accomplishments of science and technology. It was common in the United States and Europe to view "Asia," "the East," "the Orient," and other vaguely-defined regions "out there" as being stagnant, having never changed for thousands of years. This alleged stagnation became a powerful argument for imperial conquest. For example, in a lecture before the House of Commons in 1910 on "the problems with which we have to deal in Egypt," Arthur James Balfour stated:
First of all, look at the facts of the case. Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the beginnings of those capacities for self-government . . . You may look through the whole history of the Orientals in what is called, broadly speaking, the East, and you never find traces of self-government. All their great centuries—and they have been very great—have been passed under despotisms, under absolute government. All their great contributions to civilisation—and they have been great—have been made under that form of government.4
Balfour's basic argument here and elsewhere in his lecture is that "Oriental" societies have remained stagnant for centuries, saddled by an outmoded form of government, namely, "despotism." Britain and "Western nations," by contrast, have the capacity for "self-government," whatever that may mean, which has evolved in such a way as to bring prosperity, wealth, and power to the countries thus endowed. And what is Balfour's conclusion? It is best for all concerned that Britain rule over Egypt:
Is it a good thing for these great nations. . . that this absolute government be exercised by us? I think it is a good thing. I think that experience shows that they have got under it far better government than in the whole history of the world they ever had before, and which not only is a benefit to them, but is undoubtedly a benefit to the whole of the civilised West. . . . We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are their for their sake; we are there also for the sake of Europe at large.5
To state this view in a nutshell, the world benefits from modern nations exercising ruler over (allegedly) backward ones (notice also the expression "civilised West"). Modernity is and was much more than a bunch of airplanes, skyscrapers, automobiles, computers, and antibiotics. It was also a complex and contradictory political ideology. *See diagram of modernity.*
Contemporary Americans are no better at defining modernity than those of past generations, but urban life, science, high-tech industry, and, of course, the products of such industry are common images of modernity in the present. But does all this talk of modernity have anything to do with Japan and its history? Yes, very much so. Despite its vagueness (or perhaps in part because of its vagueness), modernity is and has been a major filter through which many in the United States and other parts of the "Western world" have viewed Japan. Interest in Japan's degree of modernity goes back well before the U.S. encounter with Japan as a wartime adversary in the middle twentieth century.
There is a strong tendency in the United States and elsewhere to see Japan and its people as a mystery, puzzle, or paradox. Indeed, every television documentary on Japan I have sever seen has taken this approach, as does the recent educational video The Japanese Version, ostensibly intended to get away from tired old stereotypes. This puzzlement over Japan reflects the legacy of certain modes of Orientalist thinking (more on Orientalism below) that are still deeply rooted in the general culture of the industrialized "West." Consider, for example, the following statement about China from a high-ranking official in the Eisenhower administration, made as part of a 1958 survey of American attitudes toward China:
I was brought up to think the Chinese couldn't handle a machine. Now, suddenly, the Chinese are flying jets! The American idea was that Asiatics are nonmechanical, except the Japanese, and the Japanese were freaks, not really mechanical, just copied what others did. In practically everything one ever read . . . the Asiatic is always plowing with his fingernails and the European is handling the machine. Now the Chinese is flying a jet! Disturbing, especially since you have several hundred million of them teamed up with the USSR. I always thought the Yellow Peril business was nonsense . . . Now I can visualize that Asiatics teamed up with the Slavs could indeed conquer the world!6
This passage reflects a number of influences, including, most obviously, Cold War hysteria. What is of interest for our purposes here is this official's view of "Asiatics" in general as "nonmechanical" and "the Japanese" as "freaks" who copied but did not "really" understand the principles behind the "mechanical" world of Europeans. Although we would probably like to think that we are more sophisticated now than back in the ancient days of 1958, the basic idea that the large-scale mastery of high technology and other aspects of "modern" life by "Asiatics" is somehow unusual or even vaguely unnatural and thus improper remains well entrenched in today's world.
Because Japan industrialized earlier than the other countries in Asia (and many countries in Europe for that matter) and since the 1960s has been a major economic competitor with the United States, Americans have long been concerned with explaining an alleged "paradox" of Japanese society: the coexistence of "tradition" and "modernity." To put this concern in some perspective, reflect for a moment on England. Does anyone regard the existence of the ruins at Stonehenge, ancient castles, old cathedrals, and the performance of traditional ceremonies such as the changing of the guard to be a "paradox" because England also has factories, automobiles, cellular phones and the other equipage of a modern lifestyle? Of course not. All modern societies contain traditional elements, yet for some reason many Americans have seen this phenomenon in Japan as a puzzle in need of explanation.
At some deep level, there is a desire for Japan to be quaint, traditional, and exotic, like a proper "Asiatic" country. Yet Japan has led the world in high-tech electronics and many other realms of "modern" life for so long that its modernity can not longer be written off as freakish imitation in the manner of the Eisenhower administration official quoted above. Instead of simply regarding Japan as the same as England, France, the United States, Canada, and the many other industrialized countries of the world, however, the fascination about its allegedly "unique" or "paradoxical" status as both traditional and modern continues.
To be sure, this fascination in not completely a product of an American (or "Western") imagination. For reasons we will explore later, modern Japanese have had a tendency to mystify their society as well, often speaking about it in the same terms as American documentary makers ("unique," "puzzling," "paradoxical," etc.). In any event, for these reasons and others, the typical U.S. presentation of Japan in the popular media flashes back and forth between images of quaint or exotic antiquity and images of modern urban life. *Examine these images.* Viewers of TV documentaries are invited to puzzle over the "paradox" of the old coexisting with the new in Japan, even though such a coexistence is evident throughout most of the rest of the world. The introductory portion of the typical documentary teases the viewer, building up the sense of paradox or puzzle and implying that it will all be explained by the end of the hour. It never is, in large part because there is nothing particularly unusual about traditional elements coexisting with modern ones. If such a coexistence is indeed paradoxical, then the United States, England, Italy, Australia, and many other places would be Japan's equal in inscrutability. "But Japan is different!" many an American and many a Japanese might still think. Of course, each country is different in some way from any other, but there is nothing radically different about Japan that sets it off from the rest of the world. This fact, however, does not stop many of us from projecting Orientalist imaginings onto Japan. Think about these matters the next time you see a program on Japan or any other part of Asia.
Thus far, starting with the common expression "the Japanese," we have briefly surveyed some of the sources that have contributed to deep-rooted ways of thinking about Japan in the United States and, to some extent, in the "Western" world in general. Let us continue in this manner a little longer. Closely linked with images and thinking about modernity is a mode of thinking that is now called *"Orientalism."* Indeed, the interest in Orientalism in recent decades has made the very word "Orient" politically incorrect as a geographical or cultural name in certain circles (though it is still common in some realms such as the travel industry). But what exactly was or is "the Orient?" In European literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both "Orient" and "Asia" typically brought forth associations with the general part of the world today commonly called the "Middle East"—places such as present-day Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. As places farther "east" became more readily known in Europe, "the Orient" gradually expanded, reaching all the way to Japan by the nineteenth century. Sometimes Europeans called East Asia "the Far East" to distinguish it from the "near" or "middle" east.
Significantly, stereotypes formed through European interaction with the Middle East were often extended and applied to East Asia. Above all, bear in mind that "the Orient" in Europe was less a real place with real people and cultures than it was an *imaginary construct.* In other words, it was a vaguely-defined geographical region onto which Europeans often projected their own cultural anxieties, fantasies, and other imaginings. The very fact that a term like "the Orient" can have any coherence at all is because of its imaginary character. The actual peoples inhabiting the world between Turkey and Japan are so diverse in every respect as to have nothing at all in common other than what all humans may have in common. Not all of the classic Orientalist images play a major role in informing present-day American ways of viewing Japan. Nevertheless, the legacy of Orientalism does contribute certain key elements, and we examine a few of them here, first in general in the form of classic Orientalist images and then with specific reference to images of Japan.
The first Orientalist image is *exotic, (and thus) erotic sensuality*. A major function of "the Orient" in "Western" literature was as a place onto which males could project sexual fantasies. Typical textual and visual images in this connection included the harem or other types of secluded women's quarters, baths, plush bedrooms, and slave and marriage markets. Because sexuality and eroticism is largely a social construct, making it more exotic or unusual can greatly enhance its allure. European men typically imagined the Orient as a place in which women existed to satisfy men's sexual desires--or at least those of *wealthy and powerful men.*
Closely connected with this image of compliant women was an image of torpor or languidness. Scenes of the women's quarters, and of the lifestyles of wealthy men, suggest a lack of vigor and energy. Such scenes were often contrasted with those of the backbreaking labor of the poor masses. The overall effect was to reinforce what was perhaps the most common of all the images of the Orient: *an ancient land of no change;* a land in which the vital energy that propels change is somehow lacking; a land where people are content to do things the way they always have for countless generations. Again I stress that these images were and are European mental projections more so than the actual facts of life in the Middle East or any part of Asia. But true or not, they played an important role in the way many Europeans viewed other peoples and interacted with them.
During the nineteenth century, the modern notion of "race" began to play a major role in European and American thought at all levels. The idea of "race"7 has a highly complex history. In modern times, the (now largely discredited) view that human races are clearly definable, biological categories combined with ideas of cultural evolution to produce notions of superior and inferior "races," which, as the thinking went, must not commingle. The "Orient" had long been a place in which people exhibited a wide range of physical features—which had long been an aspect of its exotic character. The sensuality of the Orient, therefore, carried with it the possibility of a sexual mixing of the "races," the ultimate taboo in European and American society during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The elements of Oriental mystery, racial transgression, and sexuality could come together to produce threatening images, especially during times of war. By toning down the sense of immediate threat, however, such images could become titillating as *"unnatural" acts,* the explicitly interracial dimension enhancing the exotic effect of an already mysterious Orient. The classic image of Oriental sensuality merged with a more recent, modern "otherness," namely, the exotic appeal of other "races." During the late 1950s, the interracial dimension of the Orient gradually became less sinister in popular media, while retaining a sense of the exotic. The poster for *the 1957 film, Sayonara,* an early Hollywood attempt to criticize war and racial intolerance, is a good example. Notice that the poster relies heavily on the exotic "otherness" of Japan to pique the viewer's curiosity.
Of course, Oriental exoticness need not be connected with sex. Whether sexual or not, the Orient was a land of mystery and strangeness in most "Western" accounts. Examine the following travel ad, which appeared in a U.S. magazine in 1921. Notice especially the first paragraph, which reads:
The Far East possesses in a superlative degree that distinct individuality which is the joy of travelers. The landscapes of Japan and China—the towering pagodas—the teeming cities and Buddhist temples of India—the picturesque native costumes are the more interesting because they are entirely different from anything in our Western civilization. The very ways of thinking and views of life are strange and inscrutable. (#whole text#)
Now, consider the following excerpt from a 1990s ad from an American travel agency, the title of which is "Cruise to the FAR EAST:"
The Pearl sails with around 450 guests and its smaller size allows her to go where the larger ships cannot such as up to Nanjing, China via the Yangtze River. These exotic ports of call will make a cruise on the Pearl an incredible adventure! They offer nine different itineraries to forbidden palaces and gilded temples; emerald rain forests and misty volcanoes; silks, spices, jewels and jade.
How little some things change! Indeed, this 1990s-vinage ad might as well have been written in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries in terms of its dominant imagery. Orientalist thinking remains alive and well in the present, perhaps most notably in the rhetoric and images of the travel industry.
Although this point has already come up in previous discussions, the view of the Orient as a once-great land that has not changed for centuries became well entrenched in the minds of many Europeans and Americans. Even today, the idea lives on ("The Chinese have not changed for 3,000 years" a student in the 1990s wrote as part of an exam essay in a survey course in East Asian history). Surely nobody would say that Japan has remained static and unchanging, yet for reasons I shall explain below, the idea of an unchanging, stagnant Orient, locked into the ways and rhythms of its ancient past, plays an important role in modern and contemporary images of Japan.
Another important Orientalist image is that of rampant cruelty, and a closely related image is of people so inured to hardship and deprivation that they lack the same feelings and emotions that "we" have. This image has endowed the Orient with a sense of danger and adventure. It has also made it a terrifying place in certain contexts, especially warfare (the Pacific War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the "Cold War," especially with respect to China). Recall, for example, the statement from a high-ranking official in the Eisenhower administration quoted in a previous section. His reference to the "Yellow Peril" refers to a variety of twentieth-century scenarios in both Europe and the United States that envisioned one or more Asian countries taking over the world and *destroying "Christian civilization."* Sax Rhomer, a British novelist, created the character Fu Manchu, a terrifying diabolical genius who combined "Western" science and technology with mysterious Oriental powers which, presumably, he innately possessed. The combination nearly enabled Fu Manchu to take over the world in each of Rhomer's best-selling novels. Hollywood cast Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu in the 1930s, declaring that the character conveyed "menace in every twitch of his finger . . . terror in each split second of his slanted eyes."8
Now let us turn to consider what roles these various Orientalist images play in contemporary American views of Japan. First, it is important to note that different images of Japan come to the forefront depending on historical circumstances. For example, the image of the Orient as a land of cruelty and peril was the predominant image of Japan in U.S. eyes during the *Pacific War,* especially the early part of the war. In the 1950s, "Red" China became the major symbol of peril. In the 1980s, Japan again emerged as a peril to the United States, this time in the form of an *economic competitor.* Japan, in other words, has, at various times, appeared as a threat in the eyes of at least some Americans, the particular form of the threat being contingent on historical circumstances.
At the time of this writing (early 2002), the image of Japan as a threat has receded from its peak of approximately 10-15 years earlier. Its image as an exotic land, however, is still going strong. Whether it be in the early nineteenth century or the late twentieth, many Americans continue to insist that Japan be quaint, exotic, mysterious—a land of difference beneath superficial appearances of similarity with the rest of the industrialized world. And, as mentioned previously, many Japanese also portray Japan in this way. A good example of a Japanese company playing off of the image of the exotic is the simple text of a full-page ad for Kirin Beer that ran in major U.S. magazines in 1985: "EXPERIENCE KIRIN: The Mysteriously Satisfying Beer of the Orient." As an undergraduate taking a course in beginning Japanese, I recall a student in the class becoming upset at the large number of English-derived loan words in contemporary Japanese. Ice cream, for example, is aisu kuriimu, camera is kamera, and elevator is erebeetaa—and there are many other such words. The student expressed the view that somehow this situation must surely be improper. After all, Japanese should in no way resemble English. The common practice in the United States of depicting Japanese businessmen as samurai warriors of old is, of course, one example of Japan viewed as a threat. It is also an example, of the desire to regard Japan as somehow radically unlike other modern societies—and *different in an exotic, mysterious way.* The projection of exoticism onto Japan is a major legacy of the Orientalist tradition, and, interestingly, is a practice that many Japanese also encourage for reasons we will explore later in the course.
What about the sexual dimension of this exoticism? The male image of Japan as a sexual paradise or a place for the fulfillment of fantasies definitely continues. It is not as strong now, however, as it was in the 1950s and 60s, a time when many American men were able to experience a relatively high degree of sexual freedom and power in Japan while being posted there in the military. In recent decades, the image of Japan as a land of Oriental sexuality has faded. Still, exotic sexuality remains one aspect of the way many Americans imagine Japan. Competing with the Orientalist image of compliant women is a newer image derived from Japanese animation of women who are powerful both sexually and otherwise.
One of the most important roles of Orientalist thought in current American images of Japan is as a foil for enhancing Japan's alleged strangeness. In other words, Japan is clearly not "Oriental" in some of the classic senses of term (e.g., it is clearly not a land of no change). Yet it is the farthest "east" of the "Far East." It is, in other words, an Oriental country that does not appear to be Oriental. It is industrialized, urban, and dynamic. Its economy, even given its difficulties in the 1990s, is massive and exerts a major influence on the world. Tokyo competes with Paris as a trend setter in fashion. Japanese popular culture influences much of the world, including the United States. "But," the thinking goes, "Japan is, after all, an Oriental country, so there must be something different, unusual, or strange about it. Its present modernity and post-modernity must be attributable to ancient patterns of thought, behavior, and culture. Japan surely is not modern or post-modern in the same sense that 'we' are. . . ." Notice that this way of thinking is, essentially, a non-threatening version of the Fu Manchu image from the 1920s and 30s.
It is this way of thinking that informs the artificially-created tradition vs. modernity "paradox of Japan" explained in the previous section. Its influence cannot be overestimated as a filter through which many Americans view Japan. Indeed, it is precisely with this sense of "paradox" in mind that many students take a course in modern Japan. What many such students want is for the course to provide a clear, definitive solution to this "paradox," a key for understanding "the Japanese." If you are in search of such a key, however, you will be disappointed here. There is no key, and there is no paradox (at least no more of one than would apply to any other modern or postmodern society). Indeed, this course takes precisely the opposite approach: it attempts to draw out some of the complexity and diversity in Japan that has been obscured by the label "the Japanese" and the associated desire to find simple formulae for explaining "them."
So what does all this mean in practice? First, it is impossible to avoid biases, stereotypes, preconceived notions, and generalizations. Still, we must strive to become aware of them and, at least to some extent, to move beyond them. So try to set aside your preconceived notions of Japan and examine its modern history through fresh eyes.
Avoid the fantasy of searching for a "key" to unlock Japan's "secrets," an approach that is generally termed reductionist because it reduces complex realities into simple categories. There is no single, simple formula or key to understanding Japan or any other country. While we will certainly take note of some of the preferred ways of doing things in Japan—for example, the tendency to exercise power from behind the scenes—we should also be aware that different Japanese at different times, and under different circumstances have done things differently. Literary preferences of the Heian period aristocrats, for example, tell us little or nothing about contemporary Japanese popular culture. However, contemporary Japanese popular culture sometimes makes use of cultural icons from Japan's past for its own purposes. Modern animation characters, for example, are often loosely based on literary or historical figures of the past. In Japan, as in nearly any country, we find a complex mixture of continuity and change. In the case of Japan, we need to resist the Orientalist urge to regard it as fundamentally the same and unchanging.
We need to be especially careful when we study modern Japan. Of course Japan's modern history is unique—as is the modern history of any country or specified group of people. The modern world, however, has been and is closely interconnected. By the late nineteenth century, Japan's history had fully merged with world history. Roughly the same forces of modernity that shaped the United States and Western Europe were at work on Japan as well. Therefore, we can examine Japan's modern experience, and, through it, learn much about the modern experience of many other societies. This approach will inform the later chapters of this book.
Above all, bear in mind that Japan's people reacted in different ways to its modern experience, and many reacted ambivalently. Get used to multiple points of views and a certain lack of closure, particularly in the case of cultural issues. "The Japanese" have never spoken with one, unified voice—and why should they?
Let us examine a concrete instance of the importance of being receptive to the multiple voices of Japanese history. One semester, the following essay question appeared on an exam in a course on modern Japanese history:
During the early Meiji period "bunmei-kaika" ("civilization and enlightenment") was a popular slogan. Describe and analyze the Meiji period obsession with culture. What did "bunmei-kaika" mean in practice? Include mention of the broader political and global context where appropriate, and also be sure to include analysis of the opponents of "bunmei-kaika."
Notice especially the final sentence. It should not really be needed, since a good answer to the previous sentences would include discussion of multiple points of view. My inclusion of the last sentence, therefore, was to make absolutely sure that students answering it would include at least two points of view in their essays. Amazingly, none of the several students who answered the question included any analysis of the opposition to "bunmei kaika." Typical essays stated that "The Japanese attempted to imitate the West in every way during the 1870s and 1880s" or "From this time on, Japan looked to the West as a model of culture." But the situation was much more complex. First of all, some Japanese thought that recent (1870s and 80s) popular and official obsession with Western culture was absurd or outrageous. Even among the many Japanese who did advocate some degree of Japanese adoption of foreign culture, there were differences of opinion with respect to the extent to which such borrowing was appropriate. And the reasons different Japanese advocated cultural borrowing differed as well. Furthermore, there was the issue of what "the West" was anyway. In other words, "the West" was home to several different schools of thought, systems of government, economic theories, schools or art, and so forth. Borrowing and adapting "Western" culture, therefore, was anything but a simple matter in modern Japan.
So it was hardly the case that Japan rushed headlong to imitate "the West" in all aspects of life, and this point was emphasized in class. Still, the model of Japan as "imitator" (another deeply-rooted image of Japan that came to the forefront during the war and during Japan's postwar economic recovery) was so thoroughly entrenched in the minds of some students that it filtered all the complexity out of the issue of "bunmei kaika." And, after all, who better to imitate than "us!" Of course, dealing with multiple points of view is more difficult than reducing history to a singular line of development and a simple formula. But the reductionist approach not only forces us to overlook much of the content of history, it prevents us from contemplating possibilities of what might have happened had different points of view prevailed in a given set of historical circumstances.
Perhaps the greatest present cause of reductionist thinking in our world is the idea of the nation. The word "the" in "the Japanese," for example, almost always results from thinking in the manner of a world divided into nations. The concept of nation is very difficult to grasp, mainly because we still live in the age of nations and thus have difficulty understanding nations as contingent, historical developments, not something obvious or natural. Still, we must work hard at understanding the modern idea of nations, because if there is a key to understanding modern Japan, that is it—a point that will become more clear in the latter part of the course and in the latter chapters in this book.
1. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 19.
2. Ibid., p. 31.
3. Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The
American Image of the Chinese, 1785-1882 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1969), p. 162.
4. Quoted in Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York:
Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 32-33.
5. Ibid., p. 33.
6. Quoted in Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds:
American Views of China and India (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1980
[originally published in 1958]), pp. 226-227.
7. The word "race" appears here and elsewhere in this text in
quotation marks to emphasize the vague, elusive character of the term, and the
ideas for which it stands. Although there are some species of animals that can
be divided into races (sub-species) according to the criteria of present-day
biologists—dogs, for example—humans are not among them. Human "races,"
therefore, are best regarded as social and political constructs, and cannot be
defined with precision.
8. Quoted in Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 158.