the specter of Japanese History

REFLECTIONS A Specter Is Still Haunting: The Specter of World History Masao Nishikawa Historical research and writing using “modern” methods began in Japan after the so-called Meiji Restoration (1868) under European and American influences. Historical scholarship broke down into three divisions: “National” history, which was based on the traditional discipline of Japanology; “Eastern” history, a successor to Sinology; and “Western” history, which was something altogether new. The history of the West offered the Japanese a model to aspire to, while the East, the history of China, was looked down on. This tripartite division became fixed in history teaching according to the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education in 1894.1 However, around the time of the Sino-Japanese war of 1894– 95, an ideological shift positioning Japan as the leader of Asia began to displace earlier assumptions about the superiority of the West, which in turn shaped the tone of history textbooks. From the 1930s on, an ultranationalistic interpretation of Japanese history, the so-called emperor-centered historiography, gained a strong position, going hand in hand with expansionist governments. Kiyoshi Hiraizumi, a professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo, emerged as one of the leaders of this school, and a textbook of national history compiled by the state in 1941 faithfully reflected the ultranationalist perspective. Even the name of the Tokugawa shogunate, which actually ruled Japan for two and a half centuries until 1868, disappeared from the official textbook’s table of contents. The contemporary atmosphere at the universities, however, differed somewhat. To use Masao Maruyama’s term, the ultranationalistic credo was “exoteric.”2 At Radical History Review Issue 91 (Winter 2005): 110–16 Copyright 2005 by MARHO: The Radical Historians’ Organization, Inc. 110 Nishikawa | The Specter of World History 111 the universities, serious research continued as an “esoteric” practice, drawing heavily on European scholarship, especially the work of Karl Marx and Max Weber. According to the survey of the English historian Geoffrey Barraclough in 1978,3 the historical knowledge produced by Japanese historians was much closer to that of Euro-Americans than other Asian historians. It might be added here that the faculty of economics at the Imperial Universities constituted a stronghold of Marxists until they were purged during the 1930s. This seems ironic, since there were few Marxist professors at European and American universities at that time. After the collapse of the Japanese Empire in August 1945, the American occupation authority forced or suggested many reforms, including changes to the curriculum offered at Japanese schools. Teachers now had to teach “world history” within the wider subject of social studies. They found themselves at quite a loss. Teruhiko Onabe, who chaired a special meeting of historians to discuss this problem, stated that “a specter appeared suddenly in Japan in 1949. The specter of world history in social studies.”4 As a response to the reforms, the publication of new textbooks of world history began, but the contents simply combined older Eastern and Western histories. On average, 40 percent of the narration of the world history textbooks concerned itself with Chinese history, while another 40 percent focused on Western Europe. In addition, world history included the histories of foreign countries without any relation to Japan. At the same time, “national history” had been renamed “Japanese history” to deemphasize the nationalist political bent of the traditional curriculum, although it remained a history of Japan, with few references to other areas. Onabe observed that in Japan, historical models rooted in either “ultranationalist” or “diffusionist” theories were losing ground to theoretical frameworks emphasizing the more or less Marxist “stages of development.”5 As I have noted, Marxist influences had been strong in Japan. It was no wonder that they ascended to the fore in a political climate determined to rid Japan of its premodern elements in order to create a new, modern society. Even non-Marxists in Japan could be called socialists, in a way similar to the sense of Sir Harcourt’s utterance at the end of the nineteenth century, “We are all socialists now.”6 Early in the 1960s, W. W. Rostow’s famous book on modernization challenged the traditional Marxist stages of development. In his model of economic growth, Rostow praised Japan in comparison to China for reaching economic maturity sooner.7 Of course, Japanese Marxists disagreed with Rostow’s alternative historical stages of development. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, one must admit that the Marxist/socialist model of historical change had its limits, but so did Rostow’s theory. Yet despite these limitations, it was Japanese Marxists and leftists who first grappled with Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with or mas- 112 Radical History Review tering the past) immediately after the war, whereas European and American intellectuals did not begin this process until after the revolt of 1968. More changes in the traditional tripartite structure of history teaching would first appeared in the 1980s, as historians began to pose the question as to when “Japan” as a coherent geo-historical concept came into being. The new model of Japanese history did not assume or take for granted the existence of a Japan since the most ancient of times. After all, at least until the eighth century, the people living in the modern boundaries of the Japanese nation-state came from China and Korea, and many different groups lived and continue to live on the Japanese islands. Textbooks used in Japanese schools had long been compiled by the state. Although this practice was abolished after the war, the Ministry of Education still successfully retained its control and power. A long saga of fights between the writers of textbooks (mostly university professors) and the ministry backed by the ruling conservative party (the Liberal Democratic Party) started to unfold. While the authors of the textbooks might have written the phrase “Japanese aggression against China,” the ministry ordered the professors to rewrite the text as “Japan’s advance into China.” The most symbolic confrontation between academics and the Ministry of Education was the Iyenaga trial. Professor Saburo Iyenaga (1913 – 2002), one of the textbook authors, in 1965 brought a charge against the state for violating his freedom of thought and speech, guaranteed by the constitution. Thousands of historians and teachers supported Iyenaga, and the trial lasted more than thirty years until the final judgment of the Supreme Court in 1997 recognized part of the professor’s claims as warranted. This conflict above all concerned Iyenaga’s interpretations of the Nangking massacre of 1937 and Unit 731 of the Imperial Army, which conducted germ warfare experiments on Chinese prisoners.8 Despite these internal changes, however, the governments and mass media of Asian countries raised sharp critical voices against Japanese history textbooks in 1982, pointing out that these texts obscured Japan’s aggression and colonial policy from the 1930s onward (from the Korean view, since 1910). Japanese textbook authors did cast the blame on the Ministry of Education, but they also started to write new, better textbooks. One of the important deficiencies they now recognized in their writing of history was that they had considered themselves victims of both the imperial government’s aggressive and coercive policies and of the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs, killing tens of thousands of citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The anti–nuclear bomb movement had been widespread in Japan, but its mentality had been that of victim. However, some textbook authors learned that the dropping of the atomic bombs had been welcomed by people living in areas occupied and ruled by the Japanese military, for it meant Japan’s defeat and their liberation from Japanese rule. From their perspective, the Japanese were the perpetrators, not the victims, which Japanese authors of textbooks had to admit. Equally shocking, Nishikawa | The Specter of World History 113 the textbook authors began to uncover and report that Japanese troops attacked Kotabaru in Sumatra before Pearl Harbor. In 1982, I, along with other colleagues, organized a workshop called “Comparative History and History Education,” designed to reevaluate the writing of history. We owed much to the experiences of a series of German-Polish textbook conferences that began in 1972 as an initiative sponsored by UNESCO.9 The workshop held an international conference with Korean and Chinese historians in 1984. The second was held in 1989, inviting North Korean historians, too. In 1991, we visited South Korea. A certain leading South Korean historian, who attended our 1989 conference, took us to Kanghwado, an island close to Seoul and a former citadel where the Japanese military forced Korea to open its ports. Shortly after, in 1910, Japan colonized Korea. During our tour of Kanghwado, the Korean historian who guided us, and who had personally experienced Japanese rule, told us that it was not only the Japanese authorities but also ordinary Japanese people who treated the Koreans brutally. We could not answer his claims, for the responsibility of ordinary people for war crimes is a complicated and delicate problem. But we did continue our conversations with Korean, Chinese, and later also with Taiwanese and Vietnamese historians. When historians from various Asian countries came together, it gradually became clear that nationalism in each country had to be restrained. Furthermore, it seems that historians from nations that were formerly perpetrators had the most to learn at such conferences.10 Our group reached the following conclusions: 1. We should not reduce the problem of different views of history among nations to just the wording in the history textbooks. 2. There are different views of history among historians belonging to different nations, especially between the former ruler and the former ruled. It is important to discuss the different views openly so that both sides can deepen their understanding of history. 3. Many people, whether Korean or Japanese, think that conflicting views of history would disappear if a common history textbook were to be published. We are of the opinion that we should not aim at such a common textbook because there are different perspectives even within a single nation. On top of that, a standardized textbook would work as the standard for censorship, especially when governments support such a project. This does not, however, exclude attempts by similar-minded scholars of different nations to compile common teaching materials. 114 Radical History Review 4. The conversations among historians from different countries should be held by independent civil organizations because history education must be free from any political power (whether rightist or leftist). Another task for historians and teachers was to overcome the Eurocentricism of history texts produced in Japan.11 Edward Said’s suggestions have played an enormous role in this endeavor.12 It was not an easy task because Orientalism widely permeated Japanese historiography in the long process of learning from occidental scholarship. This was also the case in other Asian countries. I have already noted the tremendous influence on Japan made by Karl Marx and Max Weber, both now criticized for their Orientalist tendencies. While these tendencies are certainly true, I do not simply want to condemn them. More important is to understand that even they were the children of their times and could not help sharing in the ideas current during their lives. Still, in the past twenty years, the content of Japanese history textbooks has clearly improved. For example, textbooks on Japanese history have made greater reference to Japan’s broader context within world history, and world history textbooks pay more attention to all corners of the globe.13 I would say that Japanese textbooks on world history remain thin, due to the government’s regulation, but on average they still surpass those of many other countries in their treatment of world history. For instance, one German student told me that it would have been nice to have had a textbook on world history similar to the ones currently produced in Japan. But positive change in the content of history textbooks has not gone unchallenged. Because textbooks in Japan are still predominately written by leftist historians, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the so-called cheerful school of teachers have condemned them.14 Schools mostly rejected textbooks produced by the cheerful school, so its practitioners are now trying to seek their “revenge,” to use their own wording. These people not only want to revise Japanese history textbooks but the future of Japan itself. Thus Japanese troops have been sent to Iraq, and the revision of the constitutional provisions denying the use of forces in international conflicts is now on the political agenda. This political situation has become very serious, especially after September 11. My own academic training and scholarship continues the project of placing history written in Japan by Japanese scholars into a broader, transnational context. In the late 1950s, I had a chance to study in the United States under Dr. George W. F. Hallgarten, himself an outsider known as a foremost expert in the study of imperialism.15 I have been studying the history of labor and socialist movements before and after World War I, and through my research I have tried to build connections with experts from various nations. In addition, I was long responsible for the Japanese National Committee of the International Congress of Historical Sciences (Comité International des Sciences Historiques, or CISH). The next CISH congress will be Nishikawa | The Specter of World History 115 held in Sydney in 2005, where I will organize a session on textbooks. I hope this will provide a place for me to continue my transregional intellectual collaboration with other scholars. Notes S. G. Goodrich, Parley’s Common School History of the World (Philadelphia: E. H. Butler, 1838) was translated into Japanese in 1876, and the Euro-American part of the official history textbook owed much to it. Ludwig Riess, a disciple of Leopold von Ranke, was invited in 1887 to the Imperial University of Tokyo. See Michitaka Matsumoto’s survey, written in Japanese, in Ekkyo suru bunka to kokumin togo (Minority Cultures and National Integration), ed. Hideki Masutani and Sadayoshi Ito (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1998), 185–203. 2. Masao Maruyama (1914–96) was professor at the University of Tokyo, an utmost expert of Japanese intellectual history and an opinion leader after World War II. See his Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, trans. Ivan Morris (London: Oxford University Press, 1963). 3. Geoffrey Barraclough, Main Trends of Research in the Social and Human Studies, pt. 2, vol. 1 (Paris: UNESCO, 1978). The Japanese edition was titled Rekishigaku no genzai (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1985), 158. 4. See Teruhiko Onabe, ed., Sekaishi no kanosei (Possibilities of World History) (Tokyo: Cooperative Press of the University of Tokyo, 1950), 1; my translation. 5. Ibid., 139–40. 6. Quoted in Edward Hallett Carr, Nationalism and After (London: Macmillan, 1945), 20. 7. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). 8. For more details, see Masao Nishikawa, “Japanese History in the Dock: Victory for a Viewpoint,” Perspectives 35 (1997): 5, 8. 9. West German and Polish representatives from this conference were successful in publishing “Recommendations on History and Geography Textbooks” in 1976. These recommendations proved controversial in both countries. The conference continued even after the great turn in 1989. There are many works on this subject, including mine in Japanese: Masao Nishikawa, ed., Jikokushi o koeta rekishikyoiku (History Education beyond One’s Country’s Boundaries) (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1992), 171–227. Of course, there is much more in German. Please contact the Georg Eckert Institut for International Textbook Research for more details (www.gei.de, accessed July 24, 2004). 10. The third conference was held in 1994, with the topic titles “Teaching the History of the United States” and “The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95.” The topic of the fourth conference, held in 1999, was “Understanding of the Age of Imperialism.” The papers and a summary of discussions at the four conferences—Hikaku-shi, hikaku-rekishikyoiku kenkyukai (Workshop for Comparative History and History Education)—were published together with additional essays in book form in Japanese: Jikokushi to sekaishi— rekishikyoiku no kokusaika o motomete (One’s Country’s History and World History— Seeking Internationalization of History Education) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1985); Kyodo togi: nihon, chugoku, kankoku— Jikokushi to sekaishi (Joint Discussion: Japan, China, South Korea— One’s Country’s History and World History) (Tokyo: Horupu, 1985); Ajia no “kindai” to rekishikyoiku—Zoku jikokushi to sekaishi (“Modernity” in Asia and History 1. 116 Radical History Review 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Education— One’s Country’s History and World History, A Sequel) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1991); Kurofune to nisshin senso— Rekishikyoiku o meguru taiwa (Black Ships and the Sino-Japanese War— Dialogue on History Education) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1996); Teikokushugi no jidai to genzai— higashi ajia no taiwa (The Age of Imperialism and the Present— Dialogue in East Asia) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 2002). For more details see Masao Nishikawa, “Geschichtskultur: Erfahrungen in Ostasien” (“The Culture of History: Experiences in East Asia”), in Internationale Verständigung: 25 Jahre Georg Eckert Institut für Internationale Schulbuch forschung in Braunschweig (International Reconciliation: Twenty-Five Years of the Georg Eckert Institut for International Textbook Research in Brunswick), ed. Ursula A. J. Becher and Rainer Riemenschneider (Hanover: Verlag Hansche Buchhandlung, 2000), 288–93; and Nishikawa, “Le passé est un prologue: Nationalisme et post-nationalisme au Japon” (“What’s Past Is Prologue: Nationalism and Postnationalism in Japan”), in Fictions d’Europe: La guerre au musée (European Fictions: War in the Museum), ed. Sophie Warnich (Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, 2002), 211–21. I use this term instead of Eurocentrism following the notice by the editor of H-World, an online discussion group of those interested in world history, in March 2003. See www.h-net.org./~world/. See also Patrick Manning, Navigating World History (New York: Panglave, 2003), 174–75. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). National Center for History in the Schools, National Standards for World History (Los Angeles: University of California, 1994), was brought to the attention of sensitive teachers. The cheerful school is a nationalistic group that has waged a political campaign with so-called liberal democratic reactionary politicians in Japan. See also Sonni Efron, “Defender of Japan’s War Past,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1997. See George W. F. Hallgarten, Imperialismus vor 1914 (Imperialism before 1914), 2 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1951). A second edition was published in 1963. The first abridged edition appeared in Paris in 1935 after Hallgarten’s emigration from Hitler’s Germany.