When Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked that "there is no history, only biography," he was implying that our annals are really only accounts. Like so much else, history is a construction, a ledger of what we have decided to believe.
It is agendas, not events, that determine what we chronicle. For example, consider the current fracas about the textbook corrected by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the one that was recently approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Here the workings of an agenda are fairly obvious. The members of the textbook-reform group are considered to hold strongly nationalistic views, and 137 revisions were made in a 337-page book. The claims were that the textbook was biased in that it was marked by self-condemnation. Critics say that it distorts history and attempts to justify Japan's wartime atrocities.
Kanji Nishio, head of the society, claims that he and his colleagues have created a "a textbook that will be able to contribute to world peace and prosperity." In contrast, some historians and civil groups have denounced their work as resulting in "the worst textbook in the postwar era." The Asahi Shimbun said that "the issue boils down to how Japan tackles history. . . . the nation needs to come up with a public policy to face up to and overcome its past mistakes. . ."
With everyone waving his or her own agenda, a unified theory of Japanese history seems unlikely. Let us see how the various parties have treated a single subject -- say, the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
The draft of the textbook said: "The Tokyo Tribunal recognized that the Imperial Japanese Army killed more than 200,000 Chinese people . . . but there are many doubts about the incident." The amendment says: "The Tokyo Tribunal recognized that the Imperial Japanese Army killed a large number of Chinese. . . . meanwhile there are documents indicating doubts about the actual . . . incident."
Let us now see how the incident is treated by another Japanese source (the book under review today), one that has no visible political agenda. "The Japanese Army committed a cruel massacre in Nanjing, killing several hundred thousand Chinese soldiers and citizens." Note the difference. There is an emphasis upon those killed. They are soldiers and citizens and not just "Chinese." Note the condemning adjective "cruel." Note, too, the lack of qualifiers that would seek to prove that the massacre was much smaller, or that it did not occur at all.
So, we have here three versions of the event. The textbook draft is concerned to mitigate and the revision to mitigate even further. The role played by the Imperial Japanese Army becomes even more opaque in that both of these accounts quote only the Tokyo Tribunal, which of course had its own agenda.
The third version, that of this new ICG Muse history, is not intended to be used as a textbook; it is in English, not Japanese; and it is nongovernmental and hence more independent. Further, though the supervisor is American (he is there for the grammar), the texts themselves are by Japanese.
Of the three, this version is, I think, the one to believe. At the same time, however, one must remember that any history presupposes choice and this choice is based on predilection.
What Muse gives us is a liberal and pragmatic political and economic history -- one that reflects rational postwar opinion. The role of the Showa Emperor in the war is touched upon ("The extent of Emperor Hirohito's involvement in making the final decision to invade China and wage war against the Allied nations remains a mystery." ) The Occupation's change of direction that so influenced postwar Japan is talked about. (The essential challenge for Japan was to convince the Occupation authorities that Japan was "a country that rejects the use of war as an instrument of national policy." On the other hand these authorities saw "communism as a potential threat . . . and strongly favored keeping Japan at the strategic forefront.")
The attitude regarding earlier history is equally middle-of-the-road liberal. While stopping short of identifying the Jomon people as Ainu and the Yayoi folks as Korean (a more radical historical stance), the Muse authors are open and fair in their assessments of Chinese and Korean influence. While chronicling the destructive excesses of such warlords as Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, these are seen as nonetheless constructive in that they somehow or other unified the country.
The agenda is there, but it is one we all more or less share. We agree, for example, that unification is a good thing -- though we have some examples suggesting that it is not. But such prejudice is common and allows for accepted opinion and useful generality.
This is something this book finds useful since it must cover roughly 2,000 years in only 80 pages. Consequently, the prospect it provides is a very high bird's-eye view: Many details are lost, only the large masses shown. As such, it does a good job of indicating just what the authors think these masses are. There remain, however, many unchosen possibilities.
That is just as Oscar Wilde implied there must be when he wrote, "The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it."
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