Vol. 12 No. 11 · 14 June 1990
pages 20-21 | 2344 words
Japanese Power
Richard Bowring
- God’s Dust: A Modern Asian Journey by Ian Buruma
Cape, 267 pp, £12.95, October 1989, ISBN 0 02 240249 7
- The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol V: The 19th Century edited by Marius Jansen
Cambridge, 828 pp, £60.00, October 1989, ISBN 0 521 22356 3
- The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol. VI: The 20th Century edited by Peter Duus
Cambridge, 866 pp, £60.00, June 1989, ISBN 0 521 22357 1
At the last triennial meeting of the European Association for Japanese Studies in late September 1988 the major talking-point was the extraordinary outburst of anti-Japanese feeling which in parts of the British press greeted the news of Emperor Hirohito’s final illness. Later in the new year, as the gruesome saga of the Emperor’s coma continued, we heard that the journalist Edward Behr had just finished a BBC documentary which promised, with exquisite timing, to blow the lid off the ‘Hirohito myth’. Behr had apparently discovered some incriminating evidence which historians had hitherto either missed or wilfully ignored. One waited in apprehension, but the supposedly key passages from ‘newly-discovered’ diaries turned out to be the same old tired mistranslations from long-published sources that Bergamini had tried to pass off as history in the early Seventies. Yet again, it seemed that the overwhelming desire for a scapegoat was being linked to the notion that Hirohito had been a Japanese version of Hitler. Much easier to assume that the whole world operates as ‘we’ do than to inquire into the nature of the imperial institution in Japanese history. It was as if in 1952, on the death of King George VI, the German press had offered up fervent prayers that the Firebomber of Dresden would go to his just reward in Hell, or as if the Argentinians were to hold the Queen personally responsible for the Belgrano.
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Letters
Vol. 12 No. 16 · 30 August 1990
From J.S. Malikail
Richard Bowring writes (LRB, 14 June) that a ‘chance remark’ by his history teacher at school about the significance of the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War made him interested in studying Japanese. Two cheers for Bowring’s teacher! Bowring goes on to state that ‘it was the first time a non-European power had so comprehensively beaten a European power.’ Macaulay’s schoolboy could tell him that the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was done quite ‘comprehensively’. The boy would probably know also that the Battle of Hattin, where in 1187 Saladin defeated the Crusaders, had devastating consequences for a Western adventure.
Unless the West can rid itself of deeply ingrained illusions of natural superiority, there is very little hope of a mutual understanding between the West and the older civilisations of the East, now resurgent. One way to understanding is objective historical knowledge, to which scholars can contribute. Such knowledge may help to induce the intellectual humility to accept that Western economic and technological superiority has been, historically, brief. One cannot but wonder at the persistence of misrepresentations even in serious media and some ‘scholarly’ writings, e.g. of the Greco-Persian wars and of Arab civilisation, including its historical tolerance of Jews (in striking contrast to the treatment of Jews in Europe). Is it possible that the newly proposed history curriculum for schools will reinforce the pervasive ignorance of non-European civilisations?
J.S. Malikail
Saskatchewan, Canada
Richard Bowring writes: The comments on Tsushima were made in the context of the ‘modern era’, but nevertheless I take the point. I am a little more uncomfortable, however, when it comes to the possibility of ‘objective historical knowledge’ coming to our aid; and the usefulness of a West/East dichotomy can be very short-lived when one gets into the detail. The study of Japan in Asia quickly shows us that we are not the only ones to be guilty of cultural arrogance. But then we all need to study more European history too – even, apparently, members of the British Cabinet.
