As the British historian, the late A.J.P. Taylor, remarked: "History gets thicker as it approaches recent times." The broad outlines, the major themes, have a way of disappearing under the dross of uncharted daily events and the historian is confronted with a remarkably dense tangle, a mass of time, packed full and indecipherable.
This is particularly true of contemporary Japan since prior historical paradigms (Topsy-turvy Nippon; Japan, Land of Contrasts; Japan as Number One) have become irrelevant and the country has developed in a most unexpected manner. In fact, the transformation of Japan over the past five decades has been headlong, recasting all the earlier social, political, economic and cultural landscapes into scenery strange and seemingly unaccountable.
Yet it is the historian's duty to account. Often, one of the ways this is done is to create a necessary paradigm and then fill it, as in: Japan, its Rise and Fall, or Mature Japan Joins the Family of Nations. Common though such a procedure is, however, it remains historiographically suspicious. And, in any event, the modern historian knows perfectly well that history is choice -- it is whatever remains of the past we have decided to see.
Jeffrey Kingston, professor of history at Temple University Japan, is very much aware of the problem and in this important book solves it honestly and elegantly. As he writes in his introduction, "The human condition conjures up a variety of descriptions, but stasis is not one of them."
Things change (daily, right now in Japan) and one must account for this, a necessity that a comfortable paradigm cannot explain. Nor can the notion of history as a mere collection of names, dates, events account for the processes of history as they work themselves out over time in a cumulative manner.
It is this, the accounting of processes of history, that makes Kingston's chronicle of the period from the conclusion of the American Occupation until yesterday so persuasive. To this end, his account avails itself of the finest tool the historian holds: close and detailed description.
That this often leads to the error of prescription in which the patient is told how to cure his illness (Reischauer, et al.), is something of which Kingston is well aware. Consequently, the book contains many precise and telling descriptions without a panacea in sight.
The problem of how to hold down wriggling reality long enough to examine it is solved by Kingston's dividing his chronicle into sections: the influence of the Occupation; postwar political changes; factors favoring the Economic Miracle; the restructuring of corporate Japan; the events leading up to "the lost decade," and along the way, sections on Japan's relations with Asia, national security, the implication of a rapidly aging society, and the changing situation of women.
These sections are arranged so that one naturally leads to another and the processes of history as they work themselves out over time in a cumulative manner become visible.
Illustrating these thesis are so many telling exemplars that quoting cannot well illustrate the richness. For example, in speaking of the legacy of the Occupation, Kingston notes that received opinion tends "to exonerate the Japanese people from responsibility for Japan's expansionist rage in Asia and overlooks sustained public enthusiasm for such policies." This leads to the question: "Did SCAP remake wartime Japan or, in making common cause with the existing conservative elite, did it accommodate a certain degree of continuity?" In any event, though SCAP may have been nurturing democracy, it deemed itself unaccountable. "The suppression of democracy for the sake of democracy proved to be a lasting paradox of the American interregnum."
Or, another example of describing historical continuities: "The dismal 1990s has been a time akin to the 'bakumatsu' period prior to the Meiji restoration in 1868. Everyone knows (and knew) that it is well past time for change and that the existing system is part of the problem. Everyone wants change and is waiting for it to happen. And everyone wants change that will be minimally disruptive to their lives." Still "the grubby venality of politicians and bureaucrats" remains, the LDP is still in power, and there is a sense "that the elite is merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."
"The vested interests of the status quo have vigilantly and successfully defended their prerogatives and interests, slowing the pace of change and diverting the impetus of reform." Nonetheless, Kingston believes they continue to do so less and less because more and more people chafe under the current system.
Kingston is optimistic about the patient's condition. He sees a slow vanishing of the old "shikataganai" and "akirameru" refuges; he sees them giving way to a greater assertiveness and higher expectations. He finds that with satellite TV, the ubiquitous telephone, the Internet, "the power over disseminating information that has been a key component of the status quo is ebbing . . . that people know more, trust less and are thus less tolerant of the opaque ways of the past." Well, one hopes so.
Not that Kingston asks the reader to take anything on faith alone. His sources are unusually detailed and he devotes the final section of his book to an extremely valuable inclusion of the major documents of his period.
There is the 1947 Constitution; there is the text for the 1995 war apology resolution and right beside it the apology as Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama finally gave it. There is Shintaro Ishihara on Japan's relationship with the U.S. and Masao Miyamoto on bureaucracy and conformity in Japan. In all, there are 31 primary documents.
One finishes this admirable book with not only a deeper understanding of contemporary Japan, but also with a further concept of history's role in revealing and assessing change. One comes to believe, with the English historian E.A. Freeman that: "History is past politics, and politics is present history."
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.