The Taishō period (大正時代), "period of great righteousness"), or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen (or genrō) to the Diet of Japan and the democratic parties. Thus, the era is considered the time of the liberal movement known as the "Taishō democracy" in Japan; it is usually distinguished from the preceding chaotic Meiji period and the following militarism-driven first half of the Shōwa period. taken from Wikipedia
During this time, Japanese society and the Japanese political system were significantly more open than they were either before or after. The period has often been called the period of "Taishô democracy." One explanation is that, until World War I, Japan enjoyed record breaking economic prosperity.
During these years Japan saw the emergence of a "mass society" very similar to the "Roaring 20s" in the United States. During these years also, the Japanese people began to demand universal manhood suffrage which they won in 1925. Political parties increased their influence, becoming powerful enough to appoint their own prime ministers between 1918 and 1931.
At the end of World War I, however, Japan entered a severe economic depression. The bright, optimistic atmosphere of the Taishô period gradually disappeared. Political party government was marred by corruption. The government and military, consequently, grew stronger, the parliament weaker. The advanced industrial sector became increasingly controlled by a few giant businesses, the zaibatsu. Moreover, Japan's international relations were disrupted by trade tensions and by growing international disapproval of Japan's activities in China. But success in competing with the European powers in East Asia strengthened the idea that Japan could, and should, further expand its influence on the Asian mainland by military force.
Japan's need for natural resources and the repeated rebuffs from the West to Japan's attempts to expand its power in Asia paved the way for militarists to rise to power. Insecurity in international relations allowed a right-wing militaristic faction to control first foreign, then domestic, policy. With the military greatly influencing the government, Japan began an aggressive military campaign throughout Asia, and then, in 1941, bombed Pearl Harbor.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Ideology of Meiji Restoration
In an effort to unite the Japanese nation in response to the Western challenge, the Meiji leaders created a civic ideology centered around the emperor. Although the emperor wielded no political power, he had long been viewed as a symbol of Japanese culture and historical continuity. He was the head of the Shintô religion, Japan's native religion. Among other beliefs, Shintô holds that the emperor is descended from the sun goddess and the gods who created Japan and therefore is semidivine. Westerners of that time knew him primarily as a ceremonial figure. The Meiji reformers brought the emperor and Shintô to national prominence, replacing Buddhism as the national religion, for political and ideological reasons. By associating Shintô with the imperial line, which reached back into legendary times, Japan had not only the oldest ruling house in the world, but a powerful symbol of age-old national unity.
The people seldom saw the emperor, yet they were to carry out his orders without question, in honor to him and to the unity of the Japanese people, which he represented. In fact, the emperor did not rule. It was his "advisers," the small group of men who exercised political control, that devised and carried out the reform program in the name of the emperor.
The people seldom saw the emperor, yet they were to carry out his orders without question, in honor to him and to the unity of the Japanese people, which he represented. In fact, the emperor did not rule. It was his "advisers," the small group of men who exercised political control, that devised and carried out the reform program in the name of the emperor.
Meiji Restoration
Reform-minded samurai, reflecting the enormous changes that have taken place in the preceding Tokugawa period, effect political change. They launch the reform movement under the guise of restoring the emperor to power, thereby eliminating the power of the shogun, or military ruler, of the Tokugawa period. The emperor's reign name is Meiji; hence the title, "Meiji Restoration" of 1868.
Economic, political, and social changes that have taken place during the preceding 250 years of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) lay the basis for the rapid transformation of Japan into a modern industrial power, with a constitution, a parliament, a national, compulsory education system, a modern army and navy, roads, trains, and telegraph — in less than 50 years.
The emperor's effective power remains the same, but the reformers use the imperial symbol to rally public support and national sentiment for rapid modernization. In China, where a foreign power, the Manchus, holds imperial power from 1644-1911 (Qing dynasty), the similar use of imperial legitimacy — to mobilize popular support for social and political transformation to meet the challenge of the West — is not possible.
Japan's successful transformation into a modern, military power is demonstrated first in 1894-95 and then in 1905-6. Japan defeats China, long the preeminent power in East Asia, in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 over influence in the Korean peninsula. Japan defeats Russia, a major Western power, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905-06 over rights in Manchuria and Korea. Chinese reformers and revolutionaries base themselves in Japan; Western nations take note of Japan's new power.
In 1931, Japan takes control of Manchuria and establishes the puppet state of "Manchukuo"; in 1937, Japan invades the rest of China.
By July 1869 the feudal lords had been requested to give up their domains, and in 1871 these domains were abolished and transformed into prefectures of a unified central state.
The feudal lords and the samurai class were offered a yearly stipend, which was later changed to a one-time payment in government bonds. The samurai lost their class privileges, when the government declared all classes to be equal. By 1876 the government banned the wearing of the samurai's swords; the former samurai cut off their top knots in favor of Western-style haircuts and took up jobs in business and the professions.
The armies of each domain were disbanded, and a national army based on universal conscription was created in 1872, requiring three years' military service from all men, samurai and commoner alike.
In the 1877 Satsuma rebellion, when the government's newly drafted army, trained in European infantry techniques and armed with modern Western guns, defeated the last resistance of the traditional samurai warriors.
The 1889 constitution was "given" to the people by the emperor, and only he (or his advisers) could change it. A parliament was elected beginning in 1890, but only the wealthiest 1 percent of the population could vote in elections. In 1925 this was changed to allow all men (but not yet women) to vote.
Some of the samurai and merchants who built these industries established major corporate conglomerates called zaibatsu, which controlled much of Japan's modern industrial sector.
Economic, political, and social changes that have taken place during the preceding 250 years of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) lay the basis for the rapid transformation of Japan into a modern industrial power, with a constitution, a parliament, a national, compulsory education system, a modern army and navy, roads, trains, and telegraph — in less than 50 years.
The emperor's effective power remains the same, but the reformers use the imperial symbol to rally public support and national sentiment for rapid modernization. In China, where a foreign power, the Manchus, holds imperial power from 1644-1911 (Qing dynasty), the similar use of imperial legitimacy — to mobilize popular support for social and political transformation to meet the challenge of the West — is not possible.
Japan's successful transformation into a modern, military power is demonstrated first in 1894-95 and then in 1905-6. Japan defeats China, long the preeminent power in East Asia, in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 over influence in the Korean peninsula. Japan defeats Russia, a major Western power, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905-06 over rights in Manchuria and Korea. Chinese reformers and revolutionaries base themselves in Japan; Western nations take note of Japan's new power.
In 1931, Japan takes control of Manchuria and establishes the puppet state of "Manchukuo"; in 1937, Japan invades the rest of China.
By July 1869 the feudal lords had been requested to give up their domains, and in 1871 these domains were abolished and transformed into prefectures of a unified central state.
The feudal lords and the samurai class were offered a yearly stipend, which was later changed to a one-time payment in government bonds. The samurai lost their class privileges, when the government declared all classes to be equal. By 1876 the government banned the wearing of the samurai's swords; the former samurai cut off their top knots in favor of Western-style haircuts and took up jobs in business and the professions.
The armies of each domain were disbanded, and a national army based on universal conscription was created in 1872, requiring three years' military service from all men, samurai and commoner alike.
In the 1877 Satsuma rebellion, when the government's newly drafted army, trained in European infantry techniques and armed with modern Western guns, defeated the last resistance of the traditional samurai warriors.
The 1889 constitution was "given" to the people by the emperor, and only he (or his advisers) could change it. A parliament was elected beginning in 1890, but only the wealthiest 1 percent of the population could vote in elections. In 1925 this was changed to allow all men (but not yet women) to vote.
Some of the samurai and merchants who built these industries established major corporate conglomerates called zaibatsu, which controlled much of Japan's modern industrial sector.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Japan's Modern History
Modern Japanese history can be divided into four periods:
1600-1868: The period of the Tokugawa shôguns; feudal political order with economic and social change occurring in a gradual manner. This period saw growing urbanization, the spread of popular education and the rise of the merchant class.
1868-1890: The early Meiji period; rapid modernization and dramatic change of political, social, and economic institutions; meeting the challenge of the West by following its model.
1890-1945: Imperial Japan; constitutional policy with the emperor as reigning monarch; industrialization, urbanization, and an increasingly mobile society; drive for international status and world power, including imperialism in Asia and finally war with the United States.
1945-present: Contemporary Japan; democratic reform under Allied occupation; stable political democracy, high economic growth in the sixties and seventies followed by political instability and recession in the early nineties.
Background to the Meiji Restoration: By the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan's ruling Shogunate was a weak, feudal order, unable to control all its own domains, much less defend the nation against a threat from the Western powers. This threat materialized in 1853 with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and a squadron of the U.S. Navy demanding that Japan open commerce with the West. The result was a series of "unequal" treaties in which Japan was forced to concede special economic and legal privileges to the Western powers. Beside Japan lay China--weak and humiliated, an example of what could befall a great Asian nation unable to defend itself against Western imperialism. Determined that Japan should not share China's fate, and convinced that modernization depended on abolishing the feudal order, a group of middle-ranking samurai overthrew the military government of the Shôgun in 1868 and set Japan peaceably on a course of radical modernization perhaps unparalleled in history. Carried out in the name of restoring rule to the emperor, who then took the reign name "Meiji" meaning "enlightened rule," the Meiji Restoration was in many ways a profound revolution.
The Meiji Restoration and Modernization (1868-1890)
The new leaders studied the political, economic, and social institutions of the Western powers and selectively adopted those suited to their purpose. In 1889 a constitution was promulgated which established a parliamentary government but left it accountable to the emperor rather than to the people. Administrative power was centralized in a national bureaucracy which also ruled in the name of the emperor. The classes were declared equal, so that samurai and their lords lost their feudal privileges, while the role of merchants--formerly despised as profit hungry--began to be respected.
The enthusiastic adoption of new Western technologies caused an explosion of industrial productivity and diversification. A national military and universal conscription were established. Compulsory public education was introduced both to teach the skills needed for the new nation and to inculcate values of citizenship in all Japanese.
Imperial Japan: Industrialization and Expansion (1890-1930)
This period was a time of social and economic change within the constitutional monarchy established in 1890. As the original architects of the Restoration died, the various branches of the government began competing for power. An oligarchy bound closely by its members' shared conception of national purpose was replaced by an aggregate of interest groups--the Parliament, civil bureaucracy, military, and Imperial Household--all vying for the ear of the Emperor in whose name they administered the government.
Japanese industry expanded, both in light export industries like textiles, which were necessary to pay for the raw materials needed from abroad, and also in heavy industries like steel and shipbuilding. Cities grew, as more Japanese moved from farming into jobs in factories and offices. In the countryside larger landlords came to own more and more land, and the number of poor tenants increased. Always dependent on foreign trade, Japan was hard hit by the world depression that began in 1929. The farmers who had grown the silk that was exported to the United States found no market for their product once the roaring twenties and the craze for silk stockings collapsed with the stock market crash. Japan's dramatic economic growth slowed, and social problems increased, especially in the countryside.
At the same time that the leaders of imperial Japan pursued modernization and economic growth, they continued to address the issue of Japan's unequal status in the international order. In 1894, more than forty years after Commodore Perry pried Japan open to the outside world, Japan finally succeeded in revising the unequal treaties so that it regained its legal parity with the Western powers. Japan fought a war against China in 1894-95 over the control of Korea and gained Taiwan, Japan's first colony. In 1902, Japan signed an alliance with Great Britain, which signified a dramatic increase in international status, and in 1904-5, Japan won a war against Russia, one of the major Western powers. In the process Japan expanded its empire, annexing Korea in 1910. Japan was allied with the United States and Britain in World War I, and expected territorial gains at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. Instead Japan met with strong opposition from the United States, and again learned the lesson that the West regarded imperialism very differently if it was the imperialism of an Asian rather than a European power. The failure of the Japanese to get a clause on racial equality inserted into the covenant of the League of Nations was an insult that was compounded in 1924 when the United States barred all Japanese from immigration.
The setbacks and insults from abroad, against a background of economic depression, sowed public frustration with the political leadership at home. Even more, military units under the field commands in Manchuria grew impatient with the politicians' apparent inability to translate any of their military victories into political gains. Increasingly, Japanese were persuaded by the militarists' contention that Japan's security lay in consolidating her access to markets and resources in Asia.
Japan's Quest for Power and World War II in Asia
The impatience of field commanders in Manchuria finally showed in 1931, when they used a local provocation as an excuse to put all the Japanese territory in Manchuria under control of the military. The move presented Japan's civilian government at home with an accomplishment that it could not afford to ignore. The military-industrial machine went into high gear, pulling Japan out of its depression as it continued to expand Japanese hegemony across the Far East. As Holland, France, and Germany were enveloped in turmoil in Europe, Japan looked to replace them in Asia. Japanese troops invaded China in 1937, and French Indochina in 1940, setting up puppet governments to administer areas too vast to be controlled by the Japanese armies.
Alarmed by Japan's increasing usurpation of Western prerogatives in the Far East--and disregard for the rights of the local populations--the United States delivered an ultimatum to Japan: steel and oil exports to Japan would be cut off unless Japan got out of China. In the context of rapidly worsening relations, Japan decided to make a daring surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in August 1941, where 90 percent of the U.S. Navy was deployed. The preemptive strike bought Japan time--it took the United States, many times its superior in industrial strength, a full year to gain the offensive on Japan. Japan's string of early successes--the Philippines, Hong Kong, British Malaya and Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies--left its navy scattered across the Pacific while its army was bogged down in China. When the United States recovered its forces lost in Pearl Harbor, its navy and army were able to conduct an "island-hopping strategy" of cutting off the Japanese commands one by one from their supply routes.
By 1945, the U.S. forces were close enough to launch damaging bombing attacks from nearby islands against Japan itself. Its cities devastated by fire bombing, its economy barely functioning and its people on the brink of starvation, the Japanese government still held out hope that with the assistance of the Russians, Swiss, or Swedes they would be able to negotiate an end to the war. Unaware of the secret agreement among Allies at Yalta, Japan was shocked when Russia too entered the war against Japan. Two days earlier, the United States had dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a medium-size industrial city. The day after the Russian declaration of war, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the port city where Japan had first opened itself to Westerners. Japan agreed to unconditional surrender and the emperor himself went on the radio to make the announcement of surrender to the Japanese people.
Postwar Japan (1945-1989)
For the next seven years, Allied powers occupied Japan. After Japan's military forces were demobilized and repatriated, the Occupation, led by General Douglas MacArthur of the U.S. army, turned to the problem of making Japan democratic with the hope that its people would never again be led to fight a war of aggression. To that end, in 1947 a new constitution was adopted with two key provisions: sovereignty was transferred from the emperor to the people, and Japan as a nation renounced war and the right to build a military force.
Under land reform, tenant farmers were given the land they worked and industrial workers were allowed to form trade unions. "Zaibatsu" or large business-combines which had been part of the military-industrial machine were partially dismantled. Democracy was popularized in the media and schools, and the "moral training" that had fostered extreme nationalism was abolished.
Most of the reforms made under the Occupation have been retained by Japan. The United States changed some of the more liberal provisions it had encouraged early in the Occupation as it grew more fearful of Communism in the Cold War. With American support, Japan rebuilt many of its wartime industries to supply U.S. forces in the Korean War and entered into a security treaty with the United States which established Japan in an important role in America's Asian defense strategy. In 1952, the U.S. Occupation of Japan ended and by 1955 the Japanese economy had regained its highest prewar production levels. A stable political system was also established with the conservative and pro-American Liberal Democratic Party's control of the government.
From the sixties through the mid-eighties domestic politics were stable; the Liberal Democratic Party maintained a solid majority in the Diet (parliament) and emphasized close relations with the United States. Japan also achieved record economic growth--averaging 10 percent a year until the seventies. Its economy grew from one less productive than Italy to the third largest in the world, behind only the United States and the Soviet Union. Growth was especially strong in heavy industry, such as steel, chemicals and machinery, and in advanced technology. Almost totally dependent on imports for food and energy, Japan began to face increasing protectionism abroad and serious pollution problems at home. Although Japan has brought pollution under control, trade frictions continued. As one of the most advanced post industrial societies in the world, the Japanese people enjoyed prosperity and the benefits of a thriving middle-class society.
1989 to present*
"In 1989, in an entirely accidental coincidence, the Shôwa emperor, Hirohito, died, and the Berlin Wall fell, both in the same year. The death of the emperor, who had come to the throne in 1926, meant the end in Japan of the long era that had included the war, the transwar, and the postwar as well. And the close of the Cold War in the West meant the end of the global geopolitical system that had provided Japan international shelter within the American imperium. Two years later the economic "bubble" burst, and Japan went into a lengthy recession. Another two years passed, and the Liberal Democratic Party "fell," much the way the Shogunate had collapsed so many years ago, without a revolution. Six prime ministers held office between 1989 and 1996, an orderly turnover that was nonetheless routinely described as political "chaos." Japanese society was aging rapidly, its elderly increasing, and its birthrate dropping. The "1.57 shock" of 1990 brought fertility well below the level required for demographic replacement. Even more shocking to some was the increasing number of younger urban women who were refusing to marry or choosing not to bear children. The Gulf War of 1991 administered an international shock to Japan's Constitution, raising the post-Cold-War question of sending uniformed troops to participate in peacekeeping operations abroad and challenging the customary practices of postwar pacifism. And the nations of Asia, now increasingly important to Japan's economic and geopolitical relations, made ever more insistent demands on the Japanese to acknowledge and apologize for their earlier acts of colonialism and wartime aggression.
. . . The years following 1989 will one day be viewed, no doubt, as another historical conjuncture of global import, not simply because the Cold War ended, but because so many other things were happening at the same time."
* This section has been taken from "Japan's Modernities, 1850's-1990's," by Carol Gluck in Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching, eds. Ainslie T. Embree and Carol Gluck, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997
1600-1868: The period of the Tokugawa shôguns; feudal political order with economic and social change occurring in a gradual manner. This period saw growing urbanization, the spread of popular education and the rise of the merchant class.
1868-1890: The early Meiji period; rapid modernization and dramatic change of political, social, and economic institutions; meeting the challenge of the West by following its model.
1890-1945: Imperial Japan; constitutional policy with the emperor as reigning monarch; industrialization, urbanization, and an increasingly mobile society; drive for international status and world power, including imperialism in Asia and finally war with the United States.
1945-present: Contemporary Japan; democratic reform under Allied occupation; stable political democracy, high economic growth in the sixties and seventies followed by political instability and recession in the early nineties.
Background to the Meiji Restoration: By the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan's ruling Shogunate was a weak, feudal order, unable to control all its own domains, much less defend the nation against a threat from the Western powers. This threat materialized in 1853 with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and a squadron of the U.S. Navy demanding that Japan open commerce with the West. The result was a series of "unequal" treaties in which Japan was forced to concede special economic and legal privileges to the Western powers. Beside Japan lay China--weak and humiliated, an example of what could befall a great Asian nation unable to defend itself against Western imperialism. Determined that Japan should not share China's fate, and convinced that modernization depended on abolishing the feudal order, a group of middle-ranking samurai overthrew the military government of the Shôgun in 1868 and set Japan peaceably on a course of radical modernization perhaps unparalleled in history. Carried out in the name of restoring rule to the emperor, who then took the reign name "Meiji" meaning "enlightened rule," the Meiji Restoration was in many ways a profound revolution.
The Meiji Restoration and Modernization (1868-1890)
The new leaders studied the political, economic, and social institutions of the Western powers and selectively adopted those suited to their purpose. In 1889 a constitution was promulgated which established a parliamentary government but left it accountable to the emperor rather than to the people. Administrative power was centralized in a national bureaucracy which also ruled in the name of the emperor. The classes were declared equal, so that samurai and their lords lost their feudal privileges, while the role of merchants--formerly despised as profit hungry--began to be respected.
The enthusiastic adoption of new Western technologies caused an explosion of industrial productivity and diversification. A national military and universal conscription were established. Compulsory public education was introduced both to teach the skills needed for the new nation and to inculcate values of citizenship in all Japanese.
Imperial Japan: Industrialization and Expansion (1890-1930)
This period was a time of social and economic change within the constitutional monarchy established in 1890. As the original architects of the Restoration died, the various branches of the government began competing for power. An oligarchy bound closely by its members' shared conception of national purpose was replaced by an aggregate of interest groups--the Parliament, civil bureaucracy, military, and Imperial Household--all vying for the ear of the Emperor in whose name they administered the government.
Japanese industry expanded, both in light export industries like textiles, which were necessary to pay for the raw materials needed from abroad, and also in heavy industries like steel and shipbuilding. Cities grew, as more Japanese moved from farming into jobs in factories and offices. In the countryside larger landlords came to own more and more land, and the number of poor tenants increased. Always dependent on foreign trade, Japan was hard hit by the world depression that began in 1929. The farmers who had grown the silk that was exported to the United States found no market for their product once the roaring twenties and the craze for silk stockings collapsed with the stock market crash. Japan's dramatic economic growth slowed, and social problems increased, especially in the countryside.
At the same time that the leaders of imperial Japan pursued modernization and economic growth, they continued to address the issue of Japan's unequal status in the international order. In 1894, more than forty years after Commodore Perry pried Japan open to the outside world, Japan finally succeeded in revising the unequal treaties so that it regained its legal parity with the Western powers. Japan fought a war against China in 1894-95 over the control of Korea and gained Taiwan, Japan's first colony. In 1902, Japan signed an alliance with Great Britain, which signified a dramatic increase in international status, and in 1904-5, Japan won a war against Russia, one of the major Western powers. In the process Japan expanded its empire, annexing Korea in 1910. Japan was allied with the United States and Britain in World War I, and expected territorial gains at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. Instead Japan met with strong opposition from the United States, and again learned the lesson that the West regarded imperialism very differently if it was the imperialism of an Asian rather than a European power. The failure of the Japanese to get a clause on racial equality inserted into the covenant of the League of Nations was an insult that was compounded in 1924 when the United States barred all Japanese from immigration.
The setbacks and insults from abroad, against a background of economic depression, sowed public frustration with the political leadership at home. Even more, military units under the field commands in Manchuria grew impatient with the politicians' apparent inability to translate any of their military victories into political gains. Increasingly, Japanese were persuaded by the militarists' contention that Japan's security lay in consolidating her access to markets and resources in Asia.
Japan's Quest for Power and World War II in Asia
The impatience of field commanders in Manchuria finally showed in 1931, when they used a local provocation as an excuse to put all the Japanese territory in Manchuria under control of the military. The move presented Japan's civilian government at home with an accomplishment that it could not afford to ignore. The military-industrial machine went into high gear, pulling Japan out of its depression as it continued to expand Japanese hegemony across the Far East. As Holland, France, and Germany were enveloped in turmoil in Europe, Japan looked to replace them in Asia. Japanese troops invaded China in 1937, and French Indochina in 1940, setting up puppet governments to administer areas too vast to be controlled by the Japanese armies.
Alarmed by Japan's increasing usurpation of Western prerogatives in the Far East--and disregard for the rights of the local populations--the United States delivered an ultimatum to Japan: steel and oil exports to Japan would be cut off unless Japan got out of China. In the context of rapidly worsening relations, Japan decided to make a daring surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in August 1941, where 90 percent of the U.S. Navy was deployed. The preemptive strike bought Japan time--it took the United States, many times its superior in industrial strength, a full year to gain the offensive on Japan. Japan's string of early successes--the Philippines, Hong Kong, British Malaya and Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies--left its navy scattered across the Pacific while its army was bogged down in China. When the United States recovered its forces lost in Pearl Harbor, its navy and army were able to conduct an "island-hopping strategy" of cutting off the Japanese commands one by one from their supply routes.
By 1945, the U.S. forces were close enough to launch damaging bombing attacks from nearby islands against Japan itself. Its cities devastated by fire bombing, its economy barely functioning and its people on the brink of starvation, the Japanese government still held out hope that with the assistance of the Russians, Swiss, or Swedes they would be able to negotiate an end to the war. Unaware of the secret agreement among Allies at Yalta, Japan was shocked when Russia too entered the war against Japan. Two days earlier, the United States had dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a medium-size industrial city. The day after the Russian declaration of war, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the port city where Japan had first opened itself to Westerners. Japan agreed to unconditional surrender and the emperor himself went on the radio to make the announcement of surrender to the Japanese people.
Postwar Japan (1945-1989)
For the next seven years, Allied powers occupied Japan. After Japan's military forces were demobilized and repatriated, the Occupation, led by General Douglas MacArthur of the U.S. army, turned to the problem of making Japan democratic with the hope that its people would never again be led to fight a war of aggression. To that end, in 1947 a new constitution was adopted with two key provisions: sovereignty was transferred from the emperor to the people, and Japan as a nation renounced war and the right to build a military force.
Under land reform, tenant farmers were given the land they worked and industrial workers were allowed to form trade unions. "Zaibatsu" or large business-combines which had been part of the military-industrial machine were partially dismantled. Democracy was popularized in the media and schools, and the "moral training" that had fostered extreme nationalism was abolished.
Most of the reforms made under the Occupation have been retained by Japan. The United States changed some of the more liberal provisions it had encouraged early in the Occupation as it grew more fearful of Communism in the Cold War. With American support, Japan rebuilt many of its wartime industries to supply U.S. forces in the Korean War and entered into a security treaty with the United States which established Japan in an important role in America's Asian defense strategy. In 1952, the U.S. Occupation of Japan ended and by 1955 the Japanese economy had regained its highest prewar production levels. A stable political system was also established with the conservative and pro-American Liberal Democratic Party's control of the government.
From the sixties through the mid-eighties domestic politics were stable; the Liberal Democratic Party maintained a solid majority in the Diet (parliament) and emphasized close relations with the United States. Japan also achieved record economic growth--averaging 10 percent a year until the seventies. Its economy grew from one less productive than Italy to the third largest in the world, behind only the United States and the Soviet Union. Growth was especially strong in heavy industry, such as steel, chemicals and machinery, and in advanced technology. Almost totally dependent on imports for food and energy, Japan began to face increasing protectionism abroad and serious pollution problems at home. Although Japan has brought pollution under control, trade frictions continued. As one of the most advanced post industrial societies in the world, the Japanese people enjoyed prosperity and the benefits of a thriving middle-class society.
1989 to present*
"In 1989, in an entirely accidental coincidence, the Shôwa emperor, Hirohito, died, and the Berlin Wall fell, both in the same year. The death of the emperor, who had come to the throne in 1926, meant the end in Japan of the long era that had included the war, the transwar, and the postwar as well. And the close of the Cold War in the West meant the end of the global geopolitical system that had provided Japan international shelter within the American imperium. Two years later the economic "bubble" burst, and Japan went into a lengthy recession. Another two years passed, and the Liberal Democratic Party "fell," much the way the Shogunate had collapsed so many years ago, without a revolution. Six prime ministers held office between 1989 and 1996, an orderly turnover that was nonetheless routinely described as political "chaos." Japanese society was aging rapidly, its elderly increasing, and its birthrate dropping. The "1.57 shock" of 1990 brought fertility well below the level required for demographic replacement. Even more shocking to some was the increasing number of younger urban women who were refusing to marry or choosing not to bear children. The Gulf War of 1991 administered an international shock to Japan's Constitution, raising the post-Cold-War question of sending uniformed troops to participate in peacekeeping operations abroad and challenging the customary practices of postwar pacifism. And the nations of Asia, now increasingly important to Japan's economic and geopolitical relations, made ever more insistent demands on the Japanese to acknowledge and apologize for their earlier acts of colonialism and wartime aggression.
. . . The years following 1989 will one day be viewed, no doubt, as another historical conjuncture of global import, not simply because the Cold War ended, but because so many other things were happening at the same time."
* This section has been taken from "Japan's Modernities, 1850's-1990's," by Carol Gluck in Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching, eds. Ainslie T. Embree and Carol Gluck, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997
Kana Syllabary system invented in the early tenth century
The Japanese, in addition to mastering the reading and writing of Chinese, also adapted Chinese as the basis of their own language. Prior to this time, Japanese was only a spoken language.
Then the Japanese began using Chinese characters to transliterate their own spoken tongue. Eventually they adapted Chinese written characters to create a set of syllables, called kana, that would fit the Japanese language.
And so, once again, a fundamental aspect of Japanese culture has foreign roots but a uniquely Japanese expression.
The Japanese always spoke in Japanese. But they didn't have a writing system and the writing system that they drew on was Chinese. Chinese became the public writing system, the public language, the language that men had to use as part of their education and in everyday public service and it's not until the late ninth, the early tenth century that kana, that is to say the Japanese syllabary, emerges and the Japanese can start writing their own language
For those of us, like me, interested in Japanese cultural history, the Chinese written characters are an extraordinary repository of taste and cultural, ethical values even, received from Chinese civilization
Fujiwara Family and culture during the classical period
But in addition to very skillfully engaging in marriage politics and that being the basis of their power, the Fujiwara were also the models in terms of court culture and the arts and of course court society during this time, during the time of Michinaga, around the year one thousand and around the time of the writing of the Tale of Genji the court reached its zenith of brilliance as a cultural entity. Classical aesthetics, classical tastes, classical literature were at their peak at this time and the Fujiwara were patrons of that art and culture. So that we have the image of them as very successful politicians in marriage politics and also as patrons of the arts.
Then the Japanese began using Chinese characters to transliterate their own spoken tongue. Eventually they adapted Chinese written characters to create a set of syllables, called kana, that would fit the Japanese language.
And so, once again, a fundamental aspect of Japanese culture has foreign roots but a uniquely Japanese expression.
The Japanese always spoke in Japanese. But they didn't have a writing system and the writing system that they drew on was Chinese. Chinese became the public writing system, the public language, the language that men had to use as part of their education and in everyday public service and it's not until the late ninth, the early tenth century that kana, that is to say the Japanese syllabary, emerges and the Japanese can start writing their own language
For those of us, like me, interested in Japanese cultural history, the Chinese written characters are an extraordinary repository of taste and cultural, ethical values even, received from Chinese civilization
Fujiwara Family and culture during the classical period
But in addition to very skillfully engaging in marriage politics and that being the basis of their power, the Fujiwara were also the models in terms of court culture and the arts and of course court society during this time, during the time of Michinaga, around the year one thousand and around the time of the writing of the Tale of Genji the court reached its zenith of brilliance as a cultural entity. Classical aesthetics, classical tastes, classical literature were at their peak at this time and the Fujiwara were patrons of that art and culture. So that we have the image of them as very successful politicians in marriage politics and also as patrons of the arts.
Shinto in ancient time and its origin
When Buddhism was introduced to Japan during this period of cultural borrowing from the late sixth century that we've been talking about, the amalgam of native religious beliefs was labeled, or called, Shintô. In other words, the word "Shintô" was created. It's a Chinese type of word, it's written with two characters that mean, "the way of the kami," kami being the Japanese word for deities.
In Shintô, the Japanese look at nature, in particular the natural beauties of the Japanese islands and they have a great love for this. And their art and their aesthetics, to a large extent, centers on this love of nature. And nature is inherently good because the kami--the deities--live in nature. Shintô has largely been concerned with life and the life processes and passages.
Well, Buddhism comes into the country during the reform period. One might imagine that Buddhism would just obliterate Shintô, but that wasn't the case. In fact the Japanese continued to believe both in Shintô and Buddhism.
In Shintô, the Japanese look at nature, in particular the natural beauties of the Japanese islands and they have a great love for this. And their art and their aesthetics, to a large extent, centers on this love of nature. And nature is inherently good because the kami--the deities--live in nature. Shintô has largely been concerned with life and the life processes and passages.
Well, Buddhism comes into the country during the reform period. One might imagine that Buddhism would just obliterate Shintô, but that wasn't the case. In fact the Japanese continued to believe both in Shintô and Buddhism.
Classical Japan & Medieval Period
Japan's classical period spanned the sixth to the twelfth centuries. Unfortunately, this period is often neglected in world history textbooks. In time it falls after the classical eras of Greece, China, and India. lt precedes the quite distinctive medieval period in Japan, famous for its samurai warriors, that began in the twelfth century.
But here in the classical period, we see a pattern that often recurs-the Japanese consciously and deliberately borrow, in this instance from China, then they create a cultural synthesis which is uniquely Japanese.
The classical period gave birth to a refined court culture in which many of the prominent figures were women. One of them, Murasaki Shikibu, wrote what is today considered by many to be the world's first novel, the Tale of Genji.
This classical culture laid the basis for later Japanese civilization.
Japan now comes into the sphere of Chinese civilization. This is an Asian civilization in which China is, if you like, the mother country, Central Kingdom would be a more appropriate reference, and it's a great civilization. And it has different variants in countries like Japan, Korea, what is now present-day Vietnam and each of these countries borrows and adapts immediately. And so this is the Japanese version, the Japanese variant of East Asian or Sinic, Chinese civilization.
The Nara period in Japanese history is the period of what the Japanese call the first great reform, the first of three. And that signifies the first period of cultural borrowing form China and the establishment for the first time of an imperial state on the Chinese model, the first unification, the first justification of the Japanese emperor and the economic underlying principles of the realm. So, this is the beginning of Japanese history as a unified state on the Chinese model.
The Nara period refers to the time when the imperial capital was located in Nara, 710-794.
Four Important Elements Borrowed from China
The Japanese borrowed and adapted four important elements of Chinese civilization at this time: Buddhism; a centralized, imperial state; Confucian ethical and political thought; and the Chinese writing system.
It is crucially important to understand that what the Japanese borrowed, they also adapted and made Japanese.
For example, in establishing a centralized, bureaucratic state headed by an emperor, the Japanese did not adopt the Chinese notion that the Emperor rules by virtue of a "Mandate of Heaven" that can be withdrawn. Instead, and it's a major difference, the Japanese drew on their own mythological traditions which supported the eternal rule of one imperial family
In 710 the Japanese established their first capital at Nara, moving it to Heian (now Kyoto) in 794--so historians speak of two great Classical periods, the "Nara period" and the "Heian Period."
The Japanese had, previous to the great influence of Chinese culture, they probably lived in small towns, villages. And it was only with the introduction of Chinese culture, especially Buddhism, that the Japanese were induced to build a permanent capital, not a capital that shifted with each new reign.
The new capital at Nara was planned as a perfect square, facing exactly south, just on the model of the Chinese Tang Dynasty capital at Changan (which is Xian today).
Confucianism
If you borrow from China as the Japanese did, you automatically get Confucianism. Confucianism is fundamental to Chinese civilization, much more so than Buddhism. It is essentially a socio-political creed. Basically, Confucianism is concerned about the development of ethical behavior, starting with individuals and then the individuals using this developed ethical behavior in the public arena, serving as ministers of the state. In the central thinking of Confucianism it is not enough to develop your own ethical qualities. You are then duty bound to try to use these in the service of the state, and the state in Confucian terms ought to be a state that is run by ethical men.
Constitution of Prince Shôtoku
The Prince Imperial Shôtoku in person prepared laws for the first time. There are seventeen clauses as follows.
But here in the classical period, we see a pattern that often recurs-the Japanese consciously and deliberately borrow, in this instance from China, then they create a cultural synthesis which is uniquely Japanese.
The classical period gave birth to a refined court culture in which many of the prominent figures were women. One of them, Murasaki Shikibu, wrote what is today considered by many to be the world's first novel, the Tale of Genji.
This classical culture laid the basis for later Japanese civilization.
Japan now comes into the sphere of Chinese civilization. This is an Asian civilization in which China is, if you like, the mother country, Central Kingdom would be a more appropriate reference, and it's a great civilization. And it has different variants in countries like Japan, Korea, what is now present-day Vietnam and each of these countries borrows and adapts immediately. And so this is the Japanese version, the Japanese variant of East Asian or Sinic, Chinese civilization.
The Nara period in Japanese history is the period of what the Japanese call the first great reform, the first of three. And that signifies the first period of cultural borrowing form China and the establishment for the first time of an imperial state on the Chinese model, the first unification, the first justification of the Japanese emperor and the economic underlying principles of the realm. So, this is the beginning of Japanese history as a unified state on the Chinese model.
The Nara period refers to the time when the imperial capital was located in Nara, 710-794.
Four Important Elements Borrowed from China
The Japanese borrowed and adapted four important elements of Chinese civilization at this time: Buddhism; a centralized, imperial state; Confucian ethical and political thought; and the Chinese writing system.
It is crucially important to understand that what the Japanese borrowed, they also adapted and made Japanese.
For example, in establishing a centralized, bureaucratic state headed by an emperor, the Japanese did not adopt the Chinese notion that the Emperor rules by virtue of a "Mandate of Heaven" that can be withdrawn. Instead, and it's a major difference, the Japanese drew on their own mythological traditions which supported the eternal rule of one imperial family
In 710 the Japanese established their first capital at Nara, moving it to Heian (now Kyoto) in 794--so historians speak of two great Classical periods, the "Nara period" and the "Heian Period."
The Japanese had, previous to the great influence of Chinese culture, they probably lived in small towns, villages. And it was only with the introduction of Chinese culture, especially Buddhism, that the Japanese were induced to build a permanent capital, not a capital that shifted with each new reign.
The new capital at Nara was planned as a perfect square, facing exactly south, just on the model of the Chinese Tang Dynasty capital at Changan (which is Xian today).
Confucianism
If you borrow from China as the Japanese did, you automatically get Confucianism. Confucianism is fundamental to Chinese civilization, much more so than Buddhism. It is essentially a socio-political creed. Basically, Confucianism is concerned about the development of ethical behavior, starting with individuals and then the individuals using this developed ethical behavior in the public arena, serving as ministers of the state. In the central thinking of Confucianism it is not enough to develop your own ethical qualities. You are then duty bound to try to use these in the service of the state, and the state in Confucian terms ought to be a state that is run by ethical men.
Constitution of Prince Shôtoku
The Prince Imperial Shôtoku in person prepared laws for the first time. There are seventeen clauses as follows.
Economy in addition to Order and Change
A third area in which one talks about the importance of the Tokugawa changes, these hidden changes that are going on even when they're not supposed to, is in the economic realm.
Tremendous commercialization. The penetration of the money economy. The urbanization, and towns are so important to commerce. The what some scholars now like to call proto-industrialization protocapitalism.
The capital of Edo, later Tokyo, swelled to almost a million in the eighteenth century and was quite possibly the largest city in the world at the time.
Ukiyo (浮世 "Floating World")
With the rise of a merchant class came the expansion of entertainment districts. These pleasure quarters were called ukiyo, the floating world. The floating world also provided a whole new source of subject matter for popular culture and art. Fresh trends in drama, literature, and poetry thrived on the economic and social changes of the time.
And so, people of this time were proud of being up to date which was a rather unusual attitude for the Japanese. They also enjoyed going to the theater and seeing people like themselves. Not only the heros of the past, or people who appeared in the Tale of Genji, but their neighbors, people they knew about.
Scandal sheets were circulated, people would sell these broad sheets and people would know about who killed whom, or what couple committed love suicide together. Any of these activities would be quickly reported. People would buy them and then some dramatist was as likely as not to make a play about it.
Tremendous commercialization. The penetration of the money economy. The urbanization, and towns are so important to commerce. The what some scholars now like to call proto-industrialization protocapitalism.
The capital of Edo, later Tokyo, swelled to almost a million in the eighteenth century and was quite possibly the largest city in the world at the time.
Ukiyo (浮世 "Floating World")
With the rise of a merchant class came the expansion of entertainment districts. These pleasure quarters were called ukiyo, the floating world. The floating world also provided a whole new source of subject matter for popular culture and art. Fresh trends in drama, literature, and poetry thrived on the economic and social changes of the time.
And so, people of this time were proud of being up to date which was a rather unusual attitude for the Japanese. They also enjoyed going to the theater and seeing people like themselves. Not only the heros of the past, or people who appeared in the Tale of Genji, but their neighbors, people they knew about.
Scandal sheets were circulated, people would sell these broad sheets and people would know about who killed whom, or what couple committed love suicide together. Any of these activities would be quickly reported. People would buy them and then some dramatist was as likely as not to make a play about it.
The Samurai Class
During the Tokugawa years, the samurai evolved from a body of warriors to an urbanized class of educated bureaucrats. So if at the top of the Chinese Confucian social hierarchy was the scholar-bureaucrat, then in Japan the top was occupied by the warrior-bureaucrat...because of the success of the establishment of the Tokugawa regime.
The primal samurai mentality was that he should be able to sacrifice his life at any time. In times of peace this was transmuted through Confucian influence into a sense that a samurai should always be prepared to sacrifice himself for the good of the larger society and increasingly for the nation as a whole.
Samuraization of modern Japan
That is, whether they were villagers, or whether they were merchants, everybody wanted essentially to aspire to the same high moral and cultural code that the samurai proposed. This sort of aping of one's betters is something that is by no means unique to Japan, but was particularly at work in the Tokugawa period.
The merchants would say that we are the merchants of the realm, we serve the realm in our own way, and they developed an ethic of that service that was called "the way of the merchant. "
So, you have a movement upward and downward of social values in the Tokugawa period where each of the statuses develops an ethos, or a morality, or a self-identity which both asserts its values the paddy fields of the realm for the peasants, the buying and selling, the profit, for the merchant, the governance and rule for the samurai using a shared common language, which is very important.
It doesn't mean that the peasants stopped farming. It means that they described their farming in terms of social utility, or social value. That drew from the samurai value which was, at the beginning of the Tokugawa period, limited only to the samurai.
The primal samurai mentality was that he should be able to sacrifice his life at any time. In times of peace this was transmuted through Confucian influence into a sense that a samurai should always be prepared to sacrifice himself for the good of the larger society and increasingly for the nation as a whole.
Samuraization of modern Japan
That is, whether they were villagers, or whether they were merchants, everybody wanted essentially to aspire to the same high moral and cultural code that the samurai proposed. This sort of aping of one's betters is something that is by no means unique to Japan, but was particularly at work in the Tokugawa period.
The merchants would say that we are the merchants of the realm, we serve the realm in our own way, and they developed an ethic of that service that was called "the way of the merchant. "
So, you have a movement upward and downward of social values in the Tokugawa period where each of the statuses develops an ethos, or a morality, or a self-identity which both asserts its values the paddy fields of the realm for the peasants, the buying and selling, the profit, for the merchant, the governance and rule for the samurai using a shared common language, which is very important.
It doesn't mean that the peasants stopped farming. It means that they described their farming in terms of social utility, or social value. That drew from the samurai value which was, at the beginning of the Tokugawa period, limited only to the samurai.
Tokugawa Bakufu, Foreign Relations: Isolation from the West
The third dimension of the Tokugawa obsession with order, in addition to politics and society, was in international relations. They sought a new approach by closing Japanese borders to Western nations and by seeking a reordering of relations with other East Asian countries.
Isolation was not complete. Dutch traders were allowed to keep a small port at Nagasaki and Japanese trade continued with Chinese and Koreans. While people-to-people contact remained limited, there was an active exchange in material goods and in culture.
It's often forgotten that throughout this period Japanese contact with China was very frequent in cultural terms. Intellectually it was a period of the revival or really the institution of Confucianism, or rather the form of Confucianism known as neo-Confucianism, as an official reigning intellectual discourse in Japan.
It was also a period in which Chinese imports in the form of books, in the form of paintings, exercised a very important influence within Japan
Even though Japan was the "closed-off country" and cut off from the West for over two hundred years, in fact, knowledge of the West, became an increasingly important product, if you like, of the samurai class. By the time you get to the mid-nineteenth century and the beginnings of modem Japan, these samurai knew all about parliaments, they knew all about philanthropic institutions, they had been reading all these books, primarily Dutch books, translations, things like that. They knew about the sun and the moon and the stars, and they said Japan lies under the same sun, moon, and stars as the Western countries.
Content drawn from Asia for Educators website published by Columbia University, which includes excerpts from scholarly works of a number of scholars
Isolation was not complete. Dutch traders were allowed to keep a small port at Nagasaki and Japanese trade continued with Chinese and Koreans. While people-to-people contact remained limited, there was an active exchange in material goods and in culture.
It's often forgotten that throughout this period Japanese contact with China was very frequent in cultural terms. Intellectually it was a period of the revival or really the institution of Confucianism, or rather the form of Confucianism known as neo-Confucianism, as an official reigning intellectual discourse in Japan.
It was also a period in which Chinese imports in the form of books, in the form of paintings, exercised a very important influence within Japan
Even though Japan was the "closed-off country" and cut off from the West for over two hundred years, in fact, knowledge of the West, became an increasingly important product, if you like, of the samurai class. By the time you get to the mid-nineteenth century and the beginnings of modem Japan, these samurai knew all about parliaments, they knew all about philanthropic institutions, they had been reading all these books, primarily Dutch books, translations, things like that. They knew about the sun and the moon and the stars, and they said Japan lies under the same sun, moon, and stars as the Western countries.
Content drawn from Asia for Educators website published by Columbia University, which includes excerpts from scholarly works of a number of scholars
Confucian Social Values during the Tokugawa Bakufu or Shogunate
Tokkaido 東海道
Confucianism had been studied and adapted by the Japanese as far back as the seventh century.
The Tokugawa shogunate in the seventeenth century and the samurai elite sought to redefine and reconceive this new system, this new order in the realm, using the latest thought available to them, which in this case was a neo-Confucian thought borrowed from China.
This is the second period in which the Japanese borrow a Chinese thought system, in this case, neo-Confucianism, and conceived their political, social, and economic world in those terms.
lthough earlier Japanese elites, first the courtiers and then the feudal military figures, often studied Confucian texts, Confucianism never became a full state ideology until the Tokugawa period. Under the Tokugawa, Confucian schools were established in the daimyo domains and the Confucian emphasis on order, loyalty, hard work, and education extended below the warrior class into other parts of Japanese society.
securing of the social order its social values and political values, its values for governing and values for social order
Content drawn from Asia for Educators website published by Columbia University, which includes excerpts from scholarly works of a number of scholars
Confucianism had been studied and adapted by the Japanese as far back as the seventh century.
The Tokugawa shogunate in the seventeenth century and the samurai elite sought to redefine and reconceive this new system, this new order in the realm, using the latest thought available to them, which in this case was a neo-Confucian thought borrowed from China.
This is the second period in which the Japanese borrow a Chinese thought system, in this case, neo-Confucianism, and conceived their political, social, and economic world in those terms.
lthough earlier Japanese elites, first the courtiers and then the feudal military figures, often studied Confucian texts, Confucianism never became a full state ideology until the Tokugawa period. Under the Tokugawa, Confucian schools were established in the daimyo domains and the Confucian emphasis on order, loyalty, hard work, and education extended below the warrior class into other parts of Japanese society.
securing of the social order its social values and political values, its values for governing and values for social order
Content drawn from Asia for Educators website published by Columbia University, which includes excerpts from scholarly works of a number of scholars
Tokugawa bakufu or shogunate, a centralized feudalism
The Tokugawa period, which in Japan begins in 1600 and ends in 1868, is important for what happens before it and what happens after it. Before the Tokugawa period, Japan was a country of warring states, it was not unified, it was medieval, as we call it, medieval Japan.
So that the first importance of Tokugawa has to do with the creation of a centralized state, a national system.
And the second importance of it has to do with what followed the Tokugawa and that is the modern period which began in 1868 and so we need to think about what happened during the Tokugawa period that relates to modern Japan. So, it is between the medieval and the modern, it is early modern Japan. And we think of it in the same terms as we do early modern Europe. Which is to say we think of it from the point of view of the modern.
The Alternative Attendance System
It simply meant that every daimyo from every one of these two-hundred sixty odd domains had to live every other year in the capital city of Edo and to leave permanently his main life and his heir, that is the future daimyo, living permanently in the city. This had immense implications for the long course of Tokugawa history.
It meant, for example, that every daimyo after, say, the year 1700, was born and bred in Edo and felt himself to be a native of the city. It also meant that huge numbers of local samurai in Japan commuted, in effect, some of them every other year from their domains to the capital city.
Also huge transfers of wealth were involved in all of this. The daimyo had to broker their rice. Typically those from the prosperous areas of west Japan in the city of Osaka in order to gain cash to pay the expenses of the trip. In this way wealth circulated throughout the country. It is not too different from the case of Europe where, for example, in France under the Bourbon regime we find various of the provincial lords regularly assembling at Versailles, the palace of the king.
So this kind of circulation of elites is characteristic of many early modem societies. Japan simply carried it to an extreme and, particularly, in its formalized provisions. But it was extremely important in holding together a society which may seem as somewhat prone to dispersal otherwise.
There was more fighting in Japan during the sixteenth century than anywhere else in the world. The rulers of the Tokugawa were determined that that would not happen again.
The three daimyo who unified Japan were Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Three famous daimyo spearheaded the unification in the late sixteenth century--and then, after the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, one man took control of all Japan. He was Tokugawa Ieyasu who became shogun in 1603.
While the Tokugawa period is well known as a long era of peace, perhaps we better understand these 250 years by focusing on two themes: order and change. Both sides of the Tokugawa years were crucial to the later making of modern Japan.
The Tokugawa period in itself, if I were to sum it up, would be characterized first by the word "order" and stability. The Tokugawa system had a penchant for order.
The central thought in the minds of the Tokugawa rulers was to prevent the country from lapsing into the kind of conflict that had existed.
a Four Class Structure
a four-status system with the samurai at the top; next the peasants because they were the producing agriculturists, they were the root of the nation; followed by the artisans and the merchants at the bottom.
Now this idealized system was supported, as the political order was, with a whole slew of regulations. What kind of clothes you could wear if you were a merchant; that you couldn't drink tea if you were a peasant; that you weren't allowed to ride in palanquins, etc. These are the so called sumptuary laws. So the idea was that society would be ordered so that there wouldn't be any of this kind of rising up from the bottom, which had happened in the medieval period.
And so, the second theme is change.
And what one has to look for are the changes that take place. Because it is the changes in this system that have to account, or help us to account, for the form that modernization took in Japan and for, indeed, the contents of political, social, economic, and international relations in the period that followed, which is to say modern Japan. So you have a theme of order, constantly reemphasized and constant change, but change within the institutional structure which says it is not changing.
Content drawn from Asia for Educators website published by Columbia University, which includes excerpts from scholarly works of a number of scholars
So that the first importance of Tokugawa has to do with the creation of a centralized state, a national system.
And the second importance of it has to do with what followed the Tokugawa and that is the modern period which began in 1868 and so we need to think about what happened during the Tokugawa period that relates to modern Japan. So, it is between the medieval and the modern, it is early modern Japan. And we think of it in the same terms as we do early modern Europe. Which is to say we think of it from the point of view of the modern.
The Alternative Attendance System
It simply meant that every daimyo from every one of these two-hundred sixty odd domains had to live every other year in the capital city of Edo and to leave permanently his main life and his heir, that is the future daimyo, living permanently in the city. This had immense implications for the long course of Tokugawa history.
It meant, for example, that every daimyo after, say, the year 1700, was born and bred in Edo and felt himself to be a native of the city. It also meant that huge numbers of local samurai in Japan commuted, in effect, some of them every other year from their domains to the capital city.
Also huge transfers of wealth were involved in all of this. The daimyo had to broker their rice. Typically those from the prosperous areas of west Japan in the city of Osaka in order to gain cash to pay the expenses of the trip. In this way wealth circulated throughout the country. It is not too different from the case of Europe where, for example, in France under the Bourbon regime we find various of the provincial lords regularly assembling at Versailles, the palace of the king.
So this kind of circulation of elites is characteristic of many early modem societies. Japan simply carried it to an extreme and, particularly, in its formalized provisions. But it was extremely important in holding together a society which may seem as somewhat prone to dispersal otherwise.
There was more fighting in Japan during the sixteenth century than anywhere else in the world. The rulers of the Tokugawa were determined that that would not happen again.
The three daimyo who unified Japan were Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Three famous daimyo spearheaded the unification in the late sixteenth century--and then, after the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, one man took control of all Japan. He was Tokugawa Ieyasu who became shogun in 1603.
While the Tokugawa period is well known as a long era of peace, perhaps we better understand these 250 years by focusing on two themes: order and change. Both sides of the Tokugawa years were crucial to the later making of modern Japan.
The Tokugawa period in itself, if I were to sum it up, would be characterized first by the word "order" and stability. The Tokugawa system had a penchant for order.
The central thought in the minds of the Tokugawa rulers was to prevent the country from lapsing into the kind of conflict that had existed.
a Four Class Structure
a four-status system with the samurai at the top; next the peasants because they were the producing agriculturists, they were the root of the nation; followed by the artisans and the merchants at the bottom.
Now this idealized system was supported, as the political order was, with a whole slew of regulations. What kind of clothes you could wear if you were a merchant; that you couldn't drink tea if you were a peasant; that you weren't allowed to ride in palanquins, etc. These are the so called sumptuary laws. So the idea was that society would be ordered so that there wouldn't be any of this kind of rising up from the bottom, which had happened in the medieval period.
And so, the second theme is change.
And what one has to look for are the changes that take place. Because it is the changes in this system that have to account, or help us to account, for the form that modernization took in Japan and for, indeed, the contents of political, social, economic, and international relations in the period that followed, which is to say modern Japan. So you have a theme of order, constantly reemphasized and constant change, but change within the institutional structure which says it is not changing.
Content drawn from Asia for Educators website published by Columbia University, which includes excerpts from scholarly works of a number of scholars
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The structural transformation of the public sphere
Representative public sphere - Feudal society, no distinction between the public and private sphere; only King was public
Economic change - emergence of reading public
They also needed information about trade that occurred in distance.
Magazine, newspaper, periodicals
Basically bourgeois.
Coffee house
Eighteen century England and on
Literary public sphere
Reading Public
literary public sphere : discussion of art and literature became possible for the first time
the role of the public sphere as a way for civil society to articulate its interests
What is "public opinion"?
The bourgeois public sphere eventually eroded because of economic and structural changes...The key feature of the public sphere - rational-critical debate - was replaced by leisure, and private people no longer existed as a public of property owners.
The boundaries between state and society blurred, leading to what Habermas calls the refeudalization of society.
Mass Media - do not deliberate and are cheap. And they manufacture consent. It seem to make a type of public, which is not real public
Bourgeois constitutional state
Habermas borrows the term "civil society" from Hegel
In the past, the political public sphere represented a critical voice that analysed and often opposed government action, and prevented domination by the powerful state. In its modern form, however, the public sphere is no more than a manipulative form of publicity, as politicians, advertising agents and public relations experts try to create and manipulate a false public.
Refeudalization - A process that Habermas identifies in modern social-democratic states. Refeudalization involves a merging of the state and society, public and private that approximates to conditions in the feudal state, and a return of elements of representative publicity. Habermas does not believe that modern states are returning to the Middle Ages, merely that certain feudal elements are returning
The division between polis and oikos, or city and household, is the oldest form of public/private distinction
*summary and excerps drawn from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/public/context.html
Economic change - emergence of reading public
They also needed information about trade that occurred in distance.
Magazine, newspaper, periodicals
Basically bourgeois.
Coffee house
Eighteen century England and on
Literary public sphere
Reading Public
literary public sphere : discussion of art and literature became possible for the first time
the role of the public sphere as a way for civil society to articulate its interests
What is "public opinion"?
The bourgeois public sphere eventually eroded because of economic and structural changes...The key feature of the public sphere - rational-critical debate - was replaced by leisure, and private people no longer existed as a public of property owners.
The boundaries between state and society blurred, leading to what Habermas calls the refeudalization of society.
Mass Media - do not deliberate and are cheap. And they manufacture consent. It seem to make a type of public, which is not real public
Bourgeois constitutional state
Habermas borrows the term "civil society" from Hegel
In the past, the political public sphere represented a critical voice that analysed and often opposed government action, and prevented domination by the powerful state. In its modern form, however, the public sphere is no more than a manipulative form of publicity, as politicians, advertising agents and public relations experts try to create and manipulate a false public.
Refeudalization - A process that Habermas identifies in modern social-democratic states. Refeudalization involves a merging of the state and society, public and private that approximates to conditions in the feudal state, and a return of elements of representative publicity. Habermas does not believe that modern states are returning to the Middle Ages, merely that certain feudal elements are returning
The division between polis and oikos, or city and household, is the oldest form of public/private distinction
*summary and excerps drawn from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/public/context.html
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Rethinking the Public Sphere - Nancy Fraser
Habermas's idea of the public sphere is indispensable to critical social theory and democratic practice (p. 111)
liberal model of the bourgeois public sphere
publicity in the sense of critical scrutiny of the state gave way to public relations, mass-mediated staged displays and the manufacture and manipulation of public opinion (p. 113).
public - pubic
testimony - testicle
How about nonliberal, bonbourgeois, competing public sphere
Therefore, Eley draws a Gramscian moral from the story: the official bourgeois public sphere is the institutional vehicle for major historical transformation in the nature of political domination (pp. 116-117).
Or should we conclude rather that the public sphere was a good idea that unfortunately was not realized in practice but retains some emancipatory force? (p. 117).
Deliberation can serve as a mask for domination
social inequalities can infect deliberation, even in the absence of any formal exclusions (p. 119).
Misplaced faith in the efficacy of bracketing
It is a measure of the eventual success of this bourgeois project that these norms later became hegemonic, sometimes imposed on, sometimes embrace by, broader segments of society (p. 115).
Senses of private which often function ideologically to delimit the boundaries of the pubic sphere in ways that disadvantage subordinate social groups (p. 131).
If questions of workplace democracy are labeled "economic" or "managerial" problems and if discourse about these questions is shunted into specialized institutions associated with, say, "industrial relations" sociology, labor law, and "management science,: then this serves to perpetuate class (and usually also gender and race) dominance and subordination (p. 132).
The public sphere, in short, is not the state; it is rather the informally mobilized body of nongovernmental discursive opinion that can serve as a counterweight to the state (p. 134).
Strong Publics
Moreover, sovereign parliaments are what I shall call strong publics, publics whose discourse encompasses both opinion formation and decision making. As a locus of public deliberation culminating in legally binding decisions (or laws), parliament was to be the site for the discursive authorization of the use of state power. With the achievement of parliamentary sovereignty, therefore, the line separating (associational) civil society and the state in blurred (p. 134).
[A]ny conception of public sphere that requires a sharp separation between (associational) civil society and the state will be unable to imagine the forms of self-management, interpublic coordination, and political accountability that are essential to a democratic and egalitarian society (p. 136).
Multiplicity of public sphere
liberal model of the bourgeois public sphere
publicity in the sense of critical scrutiny of the state gave way to public relations, mass-mediated staged displays and the manufacture and manipulation of public opinion (p. 113).
public - pubic
testimony - testicle
How about nonliberal, bonbourgeois, competing public sphere
Therefore, Eley draws a Gramscian moral from the story: the official bourgeois public sphere is the institutional vehicle for major historical transformation in the nature of political domination (pp. 116-117).
Or should we conclude rather that the public sphere was a good idea that unfortunately was not realized in practice but retains some emancipatory force? (p. 117).
Deliberation can serve as a mask for domination
social inequalities can infect deliberation, even in the absence of any formal exclusions (p. 119).
Misplaced faith in the efficacy of bracketing
It is a measure of the eventual success of this bourgeois project that these norms later became hegemonic, sometimes imposed on, sometimes embrace by, broader segments of society (p. 115).
Senses of private which often function ideologically to delimit the boundaries of the pubic sphere in ways that disadvantage subordinate social groups (p. 131).
If questions of workplace democracy are labeled "economic" or "managerial" problems and if discourse about these questions is shunted into specialized institutions associated with, say, "industrial relations" sociology, labor law, and "management science,: then this serves to perpetuate class (and usually also gender and race) dominance and subordination (p. 132).
The public sphere, in short, is not the state; it is rather the informally mobilized body of nongovernmental discursive opinion that can serve as a counterweight to the state (p. 134).
Strong Publics
Moreover, sovereign parliaments are what I shall call strong publics, publics whose discourse encompasses both opinion formation and decision making. As a locus of public deliberation culminating in legally binding decisions (or laws), parliament was to be the site for the discursive authorization of the use of state power. With the achievement of parliamentary sovereignty, therefore, the line separating (associational) civil society and the state in blurred (p. 134).
[A]ny conception of public sphere that requires a sharp separation between (associational) civil society and the state will be unable to imagine the forms of self-management, interpublic coordination, and political accountability that are essential to a democratic and egalitarian society (p. 136).
Multiplicity of public sphere
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Pacific War and the Private Sphere
erasing private sphere was prevalent and taken for granted
war was an imminent national project and they were told their country was threatened
There was unresistible force of patriarchy inherent from the traditional culture; it can be described as Confucianism culture
In fact, private and public were not separated. Or, at least people were not told there were such distinction.
war was an imminent national project and they were told their country was threatened
There was unresistible force of patriarchy inherent from the traditional culture; it can be described as Confucianism culture
In fact, private and public were not separated. Or, at least people were not told there were such distinction.
College Prep Schools
At Elite Prep Schools, College-Size Endowments
NYTimes
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
Published: January 26, 2008
When Curtis Thomas, a 14-year-old from a poor family living in St. Rose, La., arrived here two years ago to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, he brought little more than a pair of jeans and two shirts. That would hardly do at a 227-year-old prep school where ties are still required for boys in class...
Despite Exeter’s expanding commitments, which include a new promise to pay the full cost for any student whose family income is less than $75,000, the school’s endowment keeps growing. Last year — fueled by gifts from wealthy alumni and its own successful investments — it crossed the $1 billion mark, up from just over $500 million in 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/business/26prep.html
NYTimes
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
Published: January 26, 2008
When Curtis Thomas, a 14-year-old from a poor family living in St. Rose, La., arrived here two years ago to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, he brought little more than a pair of jeans and two shirts. That would hardly do at a 227-year-old prep school where ties are still required for boys in class...
Despite Exeter’s expanding commitments, which include a new promise to pay the full cost for any student whose family income is less than $75,000, the school’s endowment keeps growing. Last year — fueled by gifts from wealthy alumni and its own successful investments — it crossed the $1 billion mark, up from just over $500 million in 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/business/26prep.html
Friday, August 22, 2008
Interview of Seyla Benhabib
History knocks at your door if you were thoughtful and reflective person. - Seyla Benhabib.
Her central and existential question has been
How to reconcile universalistic principles of human rights, autonomy and freedom with our concrete and particular identities as members of certain concrete human communities divided by language by ethnicity and by religion.
Hegel was the first systematic thinkers in modernity "philosophy of light"
morality: common ground
regality: system of rights
ethical life: family and civil society
Phenomenon of political
fundamentally constitutive of our lives of humans
Animal that is capable of reason and speech which means we are capable of persuading others.
We are together and capable of forming a system of values and principles
In that sense political and fundamental of human condition
We live in a moment of decline of political
personalization of political and public
political is misinterpreted as a battle for gain
We are in the process of collective cultural reflection
close to cultural criticism
significance of de political
as opposed to
What counts as politics everyday
politics became a pejorative term but it is main issue
history of political thought
passion about politics
attendancy to work beyond everyday news
What we are doing
involves training, passion and vocation
iterations are complicate praxis
visible in certain domain such as regal interpretation
liberal democracy - reiteration
body of doctrine
creative rearticulation
We are story-telling animal
moments of reiteration and emergence of new forms
Issue of women in academics
level of representation
virtues of private sphere which is traditionally different from women's world and their responsibility
women have been outsided and marginal
reflective upon their marginalization
Universal norms that can be applied over the borders between cultures and countries
that transcends the nation states
after the war, learning process, have to respect a minimum set of norms
international human rights regime
international conventions
against gender-based discrimination, civil rights,...
numbers of treaties and conventions
revolution of international community
international law based on treaties?
emergence of cosmopolitan moment
when a number of international jurisdiction and treaties are set up to support such as anti-discrimination...
treaties and norms are more and more accepted
at the same time
they recede these norms : signatories and are constrained by those norms
cosmopolitan norms
determination
Reason to go back to Kant and Arendt
say Kant
towards an perpetual peace - kant
norms nations must respect for perpetual peace
universal hospitality to seek each others presence - ultimate human right
signatories
You can't send a refugee back without an examination
Arendt
right to have rights would be guaranteed?
she did not think nation state wasn't a solution as we have seen the case of Israel
unprecedented mobility of human beings
We navigate
trying to problematize this situation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfQqPdcAG60
Her central and existential question has been
How to reconcile universalistic principles of human rights, autonomy and freedom with our concrete and particular identities as members of certain concrete human communities divided by language by ethnicity and by religion.
Hegel was the first systematic thinkers in modernity "philosophy of light"
morality: common ground
regality: system of rights
ethical life: family and civil society
Phenomenon of political
fundamentally constitutive of our lives of humans
Animal that is capable of reason and speech which means we are capable of persuading others.
We are together and capable of forming a system of values and principles
In that sense political and fundamental of human condition
We live in a moment of decline of political
personalization of political and public
political is misinterpreted as a battle for gain
We are in the process of collective cultural reflection
close to cultural criticism
significance of de political
as opposed to
What counts as politics everyday
politics became a pejorative term but it is main issue
history of political thought
passion about politics
attendancy to work beyond everyday news
What we are doing
involves training, passion and vocation
iterations are complicate praxis
visible in certain domain such as regal interpretation
liberal democracy - reiteration
body of doctrine
creative rearticulation
We are story-telling animal
moments of reiteration and emergence of new forms
Issue of women in academics
level of representation
virtues of private sphere which is traditionally different from women's world and their responsibility
women have been outsided and marginal
reflective upon their marginalization
Universal norms that can be applied over the borders between cultures and countries
that transcends the nation states
after the war, learning process, have to respect a minimum set of norms
international human rights regime
international conventions
against gender-based discrimination, civil rights,...
numbers of treaties and conventions
revolution of international community
international law based on treaties?
emergence of cosmopolitan moment
when a number of international jurisdiction and treaties are set up to support such as anti-discrimination...
treaties and norms are more and more accepted
at the same time
they recede these norms : signatories and are constrained by those norms
cosmopolitan norms
determination
Reason to go back to Kant and Arendt
say Kant
towards an perpetual peace - kant
norms nations must respect for perpetual peace
universal hospitality to seek each others presence - ultimate human right
signatories
You can't send a refugee back without an examination
Arendt
right to have rights would be guaranteed?
she did not think nation state wasn't a solution as we have seen the case of Israel
unprecedented mobility of human beings
We navigate
trying to problematize this situation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfQqPdcAG60
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Discursive construction of memory
Discursive construction of memory
Journalism and online discourses on shrine visit
Discursive Construction of Memory: The Wehrmacht's War of Extermination
http://www.amazon.com/Discursive-Construction-Memory-Wehrmachts-Extermination/dp/0230013236
Journalism and online discourses on shrine visit
Discursive Construction of Memory: The Wehrmacht's War of Extermination
http://www.amazon.com/Discursive-Construction-Memory-Wehrmachts-Extermination/dp/0230013236
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Models of public space
The larger sense of public space in this context, my discussion is restricted from the outset to normative political theory. The larger sense of the term "Öffentlichkeit," which would include a literary, artistic, and scientific public, will not be of concern here; for whatever other applications and resonances they might have, the terms "public," "public space,"res publica" will never lose their intimate rootedness in the domain of political life (pp. 73-74).
Public space in communication and political theory
1. Hannah Arendt and the agonistic concept of public space
By "the rise of the social" Arendt means the institutional differentiation of modern societies into the narrowly political realm on the one hand and the economic market and the family on the other. As a result of these transformations, economic processes that had hitherto been confined to the "shadowy realm of the household" emancipate themselves and become public matters. The same historical process that brought forth the modern constitutional state also brings forth "society," that realm of social interaction that interpose itself between the household on the one hand and the political state on the other...
The expansion of this sphere meant the disappearance of the universal, of the common concern for the political association, for the res publica, from the hearts and minds of men. Arendt sees in this process the occluding of the political by the social and the transformation of the public space of politics into a pseudospace of interaction in which individuals no longer "act" but "merely behave" as economic producers, consumers, and urban city dwellers.
Is the 'recovery of the public space" under conditions of modernity necessarily an elitist and antidemocratic project that can hardly be reconciled with the demand for universal political emancipation and the universal extension of citizenship rights that have accompanied modernity since the American and French Revolution? (p. 75).
We must learn to identity those moments of rupture, displacement, and dislocation in history (p. 76).
The distinction between the agonistic and the associational models corresponds to the Greek versus the modern experience of politics. The agonistic space of the polis was made possible by a morally homogenous and politically egalitarian but exclusive community in which action could also be a revelation of the self to others...
But for moderns, public space is essentially porous; neither access to it nor its agenda of debate can be predefined by criteria of moral and political homogeneity...
The struggle over what gets included in the public agenda is itself a struggle for justice and freedom. The distinction between the social and the political makes no sense in the modern world, not because the economy has become the quintessential public, as Hannah Arendt thought, but primarily because the struggle to make something public is a struggle for justice. (pp. 78-79).
Arendt, by contrast, relegated certain types of activity like work and labor, and by extension all issues of economics and technology, to the private realm alone, ignoring the fact that these activities and relations too, insofar as they are based on power relations, could become matters of public dispute.
From the standpoint of this procedural model, neither the distinction between the social and the political nor the distinction among work, labor, and action are that relevant. At stake are the reflexive questioning of issues by all those affected by their foreseeable consequences and the recognition of their right to do so.
When compared to Hannah Arendt's reflections on these issues, the advantage of the liberal concept of public space is that the advantage of the link between power, legitimacy, and public discourse is made most explicit by it. Yet this model is also more sterile than the Arendtian one in that it conceives of politics too closely on the analogy of juridical relations, thereby losing that emphasis on spontaneity, imagination, participation, and empowerment that Arendt saw to be the mark of authentic politics whenever and wherever it occured (p. 81).
2. The Liberal model of public space as public dialogue
"Whenever anybody questions the legitimacy of another's power, the power holder must respond not by suppressing the questioner but by giving a reason that explains why he is more entitled to the resource than the questioner is"...
Ackerman understands liberalism as a way of talking about power, as a political culture of public dialogue based on certain kinds of conversational constraints.
The most significant conversational constraint in liberalism is neutrality, which rules that no reason advanced within a discourse of legitimation can be a good reason if it requires the power holder to assert that his conception is better than that asserted by his fellow citizens, or that regardless of his conception of the good, he is intrinsically superior to one or more of his fellow citizens (p. 81).
Bruce Ackerman' question is how different primary groups, about whom we only know that they do not share the same conception of the good, can "resolve the problem of mutual coexistence in a reasonable way.
The liberal theorist of conversational restraint assumes that the primary groups to the conversation already know what their deepest disagreements are even before they have engaged in the conversation (p. 82).
Citizens must indeed feel free to introduce, in Bruce Ackerman's words, "any all moral arguments into the conversational field," Fir it is only after the dialogue has been opened in this radical fashion that we can be sure that we have come to agree upon a mutually acceptable definition of the problem rather than reaching some compromise consensus that will silence the concerns of some (p. 83).
The liberal principle of dialogic neutrality, while it expresses one of the main principles of the modern legal system, is too restrictive and frozen in application to the dynamics of power struggles in actual political processes. A public life conducted according to the principle of liberal dialogic neutrality would not only lack the agonistic dimension of politics, in Arendtian terms, but perhaps more severe, it would also restrict the scope of public conversation in a way that would be inimical to the interest of oppressed groups.
There is little room in the liberal model of neutrality for thinking about the logic of such struggles (p. 84).
3. The Discursive Model of Public Space
The defense of modernity in light of the principle of public participation has been an essential aspect of Habermas's work since the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere"
habermas has emphasized the extent to which modernity not only signifies differentiation, individualization, and bifurcation. The emergence of an autonomous public sphere of political reasoning and discussion is also central to the project of the moderns (p. 85).
AUTONOMOUS PUBLIC SPHERE
Privacy, privacy rights, and the private sphere, as invoked by the modern tradition, have included at least three distinct dimension.
First and foremost, privacy has been understood as the sphere of moral and religious conscience...
a second set of privacy rights accompany the eventual establishment of the liberal separation of church and state...
The final meaning of privacy and privacy rights is that of the intimate sphere. This is the domain of the household, of meeting the daily needs of life, of sexuality and reproduction, and of care for the young, this sick, and the elderly (p. 91).
Rather, my goal is to point to an area of conceptual unclarity and political contestation in contemporary debates. Any theory of the public, public sphere, and publicity presupposes a distinction between the public and the private. These are the terms of a binary opposition... [T]raditional modes of drawing this distinction have been part of a discourse of domination that legitimizes women's oppression and exploitation in the private realm (p. 93).
The autonomous citizen, whose reasoned judgement and participation was the sine qua non of the public sphere, has been transformed into the "citizen consumer" of packaged images and messages or the "electronic mail target" of large lobbying groups and organizations (p. 93).
Arendt's agonistic model is at odds with the sociological reality of modernity, as well as with modern political struggles for justice. The liberal model of public space transforms the political dialogue of empowerment far too quickly into a juridical discourse about the right. The discourse model os the only one that is compatible both with the general social trends of our societies and with the emancipatory aspirations of new social movements, like the the woman's movement. The radical procedualism of this model is a powerful criterion for demystifying discourses of power and their implicit agendas. However, in a society where reproduction is going public, practical discourse will have to be "feminized." Such feminization of practical discourse will mean first and foremost challenging, from the standpoint of their gender context and subtext, unexamined normative dualism as those of justice and the good life, norms and values, interests and needs (p. 95).
Discussion with Seyla Benhabib
Public space in communication and political theory
1. Hannah Arendt and the agonistic concept of public space
By "the rise of the social" Arendt means the institutional differentiation of modern societies into the narrowly political realm on the one hand and the economic market and the family on the other. As a result of these transformations, economic processes that had hitherto been confined to the "shadowy realm of the household" emancipate themselves and become public matters. The same historical process that brought forth the modern constitutional state also brings forth "society," that realm of social interaction that interpose itself between the household on the one hand and the political state on the other...
The expansion of this sphere meant the disappearance of the universal, of the common concern for the political association, for the res publica, from the hearts and minds of men. Arendt sees in this process the occluding of the political by the social and the transformation of the public space of politics into a pseudospace of interaction in which individuals no longer "act" but "merely behave" as economic producers, consumers, and urban city dwellers.
Is the 'recovery of the public space" under conditions of modernity necessarily an elitist and antidemocratic project that can hardly be reconciled with the demand for universal political emancipation and the universal extension of citizenship rights that have accompanied modernity since the American and French Revolution? (p. 75).
We must learn to identity those moments of rupture, displacement, and dislocation in history (p. 76).
The distinction between the agonistic and the associational models corresponds to the Greek versus the modern experience of politics. The agonistic space of the polis was made possible by a morally homogenous and politically egalitarian but exclusive community in which action could also be a revelation of the self to others...
But for moderns, public space is essentially porous; neither access to it nor its agenda of debate can be predefined by criteria of moral and political homogeneity...
The struggle over what gets included in the public agenda is itself a struggle for justice and freedom. The distinction between the social and the political makes no sense in the modern world, not because the economy has become the quintessential public, as Hannah Arendt thought, but primarily because the struggle to make something public is a struggle for justice. (pp. 78-79).
Arendt, by contrast, relegated certain types of activity like work and labor, and by extension all issues of economics and technology, to the private realm alone, ignoring the fact that these activities and relations too, insofar as they are based on power relations, could become matters of public dispute.
From the standpoint of this procedural model, neither the distinction between the social and the political nor the distinction among work, labor, and action are that relevant. At stake are the reflexive questioning of issues by all those affected by their foreseeable consequences and the recognition of their right to do so.
When compared to Hannah Arendt's reflections on these issues, the advantage of the liberal concept of public space is that the advantage of the link between power, legitimacy, and public discourse is made most explicit by it. Yet this model is also more sterile than the Arendtian one in that it conceives of politics too closely on the analogy of juridical relations, thereby losing that emphasis on spontaneity, imagination, participation, and empowerment that Arendt saw to be the mark of authentic politics whenever and wherever it occured (p. 81).
2. The Liberal model of public space as public dialogue
"Whenever anybody questions the legitimacy of another's power, the power holder must respond not by suppressing the questioner but by giving a reason that explains why he is more entitled to the resource than the questioner is"...
Ackerman understands liberalism as a way of talking about power, as a political culture of public dialogue based on certain kinds of conversational constraints.
The most significant conversational constraint in liberalism is neutrality, which rules that no reason advanced within a discourse of legitimation can be a good reason if it requires the power holder to assert that his conception is better than that asserted by his fellow citizens, or that regardless of his conception of the good, he is intrinsically superior to one or more of his fellow citizens (p. 81).
Bruce Ackerman' question is how different primary groups, about whom we only know that they do not share the same conception of the good, can "resolve the problem of mutual coexistence in a reasonable way.
The liberal theorist of conversational restraint assumes that the primary groups to the conversation already know what their deepest disagreements are even before they have engaged in the conversation (p. 82).
Citizens must indeed feel free to introduce, in Bruce Ackerman's words, "any all moral arguments into the conversational field," Fir it is only after the dialogue has been opened in this radical fashion that we can be sure that we have come to agree upon a mutually acceptable definition of the problem rather than reaching some compromise consensus that will silence the concerns of some (p. 83).
The liberal principle of dialogic neutrality, while it expresses one of the main principles of the modern legal system, is too restrictive and frozen in application to the dynamics of power struggles in actual political processes. A public life conducted according to the principle of liberal dialogic neutrality would not only lack the agonistic dimension of politics, in Arendtian terms, but perhaps more severe, it would also restrict the scope of public conversation in a way that would be inimical to the interest of oppressed groups.
There is little room in the liberal model of neutrality for thinking about the logic of such struggles (p. 84).
3. The Discursive Model of Public Space
The defense of modernity in light of the principle of public participation has been an essential aspect of Habermas's work since the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere"
habermas has emphasized the extent to which modernity not only signifies differentiation, individualization, and bifurcation. The emergence of an autonomous public sphere of political reasoning and discussion is also central to the project of the moderns (p. 85).
AUTONOMOUS PUBLIC SPHERE
Privacy, privacy rights, and the private sphere, as invoked by the modern tradition, have included at least three distinct dimension.
First and foremost, privacy has been understood as the sphere of moral and religious conscience...
a second set of privacy rights accompany the eventual establishment of the liberal separation of church and state...
The final meaning of privacy and privacy rights is that of the intimate sphere. This is the domain of the household, of meeting the daily needs of life, of sexuality and reproduction, and of care for the young, this sick, and the elderly (p. 91).
Rather, my goal is to point to an area of conceptual unclarity and political contestation in contemporary debates. Any theory of the public, public sphere, and publicity presupposes a distinction between the public and the private. These are the terms of a binary opposition... [T]raditional modes of drawing this distinction have been part of a discourse of domination that legitimizes women's oppression and exploitation in the private realm (p. 93).
The autonomous citizen, whose reasoned judgement and participation was the sine qua non of the public sphere, has been transformed into the "citizen consumer" of packaged images and messages or the "electronic mail target" of large lobbying groups and organizations (p. 93).
Arendt's agonistic model is at odds with the sociological reality of modernity, as well as with modern political struggles for justice. The liberal model of public space transforms the political dialogue of empowerment far too quickly into a juridical discourse about the right. The discourse model os the only one that is compatible both with the general social trends of our societies and with the emancipatory aspirations of new social movements, like the the woman's movement. The radical procedualism of this model is a powerful criterion for demystifying discourses of power and their implicit agendas. However, in a society where reproduction is going public, practical discourse will have to be "feminized." Such feminization of practical discourse will mean first and foremost challenging, from the standpoint of their gender context and subtext, unexamined normative dualism as those of justice and the good life, norms and values, interests and needs (p. 95).
Discussion with Seyla Benhabib
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Habermas and Foucault - Flyvbjerg
Habermas
develop a universal rational foundation for democratic institutions
communicative rationality
homo democraticus
Habermas must be seen as utopian.
ideal speech situation
universal validity claims
theory of communicative action
Participation is discursive participation
(1) no party affected by what is being discussed should be excluded from the discourse (the requirement of generality);
(2) all participants should have equal possibility to present and criticize validity claims in the process of discourse (autonomy);
(3) participants must be willing and able to empathize with each other's validity claims (ideal role taking);
(4) existing power differences between participants must be neutralized such that these differences have no effect on the creation ofconsensus (power neutrality); and (5) participants must openly explain their goals and intentions and in this connection desist from strategic action (transparence) (Habermas 1993: 31,
1990: 65-6, Kettner 1993).
Finally, given the implications of the first five requirements, we could add a sixth: unlimited time (p. 213).
universalization principle
discourse ethics
'the better argument'
Even Habermas's most sympathetic interpreters, such as Seyla Benhabib and Alessandro Ferrara, have begun to criticize Habermas for his formalism, idealism and insensitivity to context. They are trying to provide a corrective to Habermas's thinking on precisely these weak points and to introduce an element of phronesis into critical theory (Ferrara 1989).8 I would argue that critical theory and Habermas's work also need to bring in the element of power. In his Between Facts and Norms and other recent work, Habermas (l996a, b; 1995) has attempted to deal with power, and he has, at the same time, developed a deeper analysis of civil society (Carleheden and Rene 1996). Despite these efforts, however, Habermas's approach remains strongly normative and procedural, paying scant attention to the preconditions of actual discourse, to substantive ethical values and to the problem of how communicative rationality gets a foothold in society in the face of massive non-communicative forces. Habermas also continues to disregard the particular problems relating to identity and cultural divisions as well as the non-discursive ways of safeguarding reason that are being developed by so-called minority groups and new social movements (p. 218).
Enlightenment rationalism has little to offer in understanding power and in understanding the related discrepancy between formal rationality and Realrationalitat (real rationality) in modem democracies (p. 219).
Foucault
'analytics of power'
'[I] f the Kantian question was
that of knowing what limits knowledge has to renounce transgressing', says Foucault (1984b: 45), 'it seems to me that the critical question today has to be turned back into a positive one ... The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression' (p. 220).
relativism vs. foundationalism
'Nothing is fundamental', says Foucault (1984a: 247).
For Foucault the socially and historically conditioned context, and not fictive universals, constitutes the most effective bulwark against relativism and nihilism, and the best basis for action. Our sociality and history, according to Foucault, is the only foundation we have, the only solid ground under our feet. And this sociohistorical foundation is fully adequate (p. 222).
On the contrary, history has demonstrated - says Foucault - horrifying examples that it is precisely those social systems which have turned freedom into theoretical formulas and treated practice as social engineering, i.e., as an epistemically derived techne, that become most repressive (p. 222).
Foucault (1984c: 375-6), 'I am attempting, to the contrary, apart from any totalisation-which would be at once abstract and limiting- to open up problems that are as concrete and general as possible' (emphasis in original) (p. 223).
Foucault's thinking as concerns laws, constitutions and democracy focuses more on how existing constitutions and their associated institutions can be utilized more democratically, whereas Habermas's project is to establish more democratic constitutions and institutions as such, where 'democracy' is defined by Habermas's discourse ethics (p. 223).
Foucault is thus oriented towards phronesis, whereas Habermas's orientation is towards episteme.
genealogy
genealogical studies
genealogy of power
historiography of power and power institution
In a Foucauldian interpretation, suppressing conflict is suppressing freedom, because the privilege to engage in conflict is part of freedom (p. 229).
ref) Hegel influenced writers of widely varying positions, including both his admirers (Bauer, Marx, Bradley, Sartre, Küng), and his detractors (Schelling, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Russell). His influential conceptions are of speculative logic or "dialectic," "absolute idealism," "Spirit," negativity, sublation (Aufhebung in German), the "Master/Slave" dialectic, "ethical life," and the importance of history.
develop a universal rational foundation for democratic institutions
communicative rationality
homo democraticus
Habermas must be seen as utopian.
ideal speech situation
universal validity claims
theory of communicative action
Participation is discursive participation
(1) no party affected by what is being discussed should be excluded from the discourse (the requirement of generality);
(2) all participants should have equal possibility to present and criticize validity claims in the process of discourse (autonomy);
(3) participants must be willing and able to empathize with each other's validity claims (ideal role taking);
(4) existing power differences between participants must be neutralized such that these differences have no effect on the creation ofconsensus (power neutrality); and (5) participants must openly explain their goals and intentions and in this connection desist from strategic action (transparence) (Habermas 1993: 31,
1990: 65-6, Kettner 1993).
Finally, given the implications of the first five requirements, we could add a sixth: unlimited time (p. 213).
universalization principle
discourse ethics
'the better argument'
Even Habermas's most sympathetic interpreters, such as Seyla Benhabib and Alessandro Ferrara, have begun to criticize Habermas for his formalism, idealism and insensitivity to context. They are trying to provide a corrective to Habermas's thinking on precisely these weak points and to introduce an element of phronesis into critical theory (Ferrara 1989).8 I would argue that critical theory and Habermas's work also need to bring in the element of power. In his Between Facts and Norms and other recent work, Habermas (l996a, b; 1995) has attempted to deal with power, and he has, at the same time, developed a deeper analysis of civil society (Carleheden and Rene 1996). Despite these efforts, however, Habermas's approach remains strongly normative and procedural, paying scant attention to the preconditions of actual discourse, to substantive ethical values and to the problem of how communicative rationality gets a foothold in society in the face of massive non-communicative forces. Habermas also continues to disregard the particular problems relating to identity and cultural divisions as well as the non-discursive ways of safeguarding reason that are being developed by so-called minority groups and new social movements (p. 218).
Enlightenment rationalism has little to offer in understanding power and in understanding the related discrepancy between formal rationality and Realrationalitat (real rationality) in modem democracies (p. 219).
Foucault
'analytics of power'
'[I] f the Kantian question was
that of knowing what limits knowledge has to renounce transgressing', says Foucault (1984b: 45), 'it seems to me that the critical question today has to be turned back into a positive one ... The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression' (p. 220).
relativism vs. foundationalism
'Nothing is fundamental', says Foucault (1984a: 247).
For Foucault the socially and historically conditioned context, and not fictive universals, constitutes the most effective bulwark against relativism and nihilism, and the best basis for action. Our sociality and history, according to Foucault, is the only foundation we have, the only solid ground under our feet. And this sociohistorical foundation is fully adequate (p. 222).
On the contrary, history has demonstrated - says Foucault - horrifying examples that it is precisely those social systems which have turned freedom into theoretical formulas and treated practice as social engineering, i.e., as an epistemically derived techne, that become most repressive (p. 222).
Foucault (1984c: 375-6), 'I am attempting, to the contrary, apart from any totalisation-which would be at once abstract and limiting- to open up problems that are as concrete and general as possible' (emphasis in original) (p. 223).
Foucault's thinking as concerns laws, constitutions and democracy focuses more on how existing constitutions and their associated institutions can be utilized more democratically, whereas Habermas's project is to establish more democratic constitutions and institutions as such, where 'democracy' is defined by Habermas's discourse ethics (p. 223).
Foucault is thus oriented towards phronesis, whereas Habermas's orientation is towards episteme.
genealogy
genealogical studies
genealogy of power
historiography of power and power institution
In a Foucauldian interpretation, suppressing conflict is suppressing freedom, because the privilege to engage in conflict is part of freedom (p. 229).
ref) Hegel influenced writers of widely varying positions, including both his admirers (Bauer, Marx, Bradley, Sartre, Küng), and his detractors (Schelling, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Russell). His influential conceptions are of speculative logic or "dialectic," "absolute idealism," "Spirit," negativity, sublation (Aufhebung in German), the "Master/Slave" dialectic, "ethical life," and the importance of history.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Comfort Women _Yoshimi
Between 1932 and 1945, untold thousands of women, euphemistically known as "comfort women," were systematically rounded up and imprisoned in "comfort stations," brothels where they were repeatedly raped and abused by Japanese military personnel (p. 1).
It is also a struggle over history and memories. Victims of Japan's war crimes have challenged Japanese accounts of the war and sparked intense conflicts over how Japanese history should be written and taught (p. 2).
Similar revisionist groups sparing up outside government circles, such as the "Free History" advocates led by University of Tokyo education professor Fujioka Nobukatsu, and echoed the claims that there is little historical proof of many Japanese war crimes and no need to apologize (p. 4).
Yoshimi challenged portrayals of average Japanese citizens as merely innocent victims of an expansionist military (p. 6).
Grassroots Fascism
While it (Japanese Government) acknowledged that the Japanese military set up or constructed comfort stations, conducted medical examinations of the women, and oversaw the management of comfort facilities, it still maintained that comfort women were rounded up primarily by civilian procurers, who were responsible for transporting them (p. 7).
Military Comfort Women is both a participant in and a product of this struggle. It refutes government and anti-apology arguments and illuminates such broader issues as the social institutions and attitudes that fostered the comfort station system, many of which persist in Japan today. This activist agenda informs the book's main arguments; i) that the enslavement of comfort women was a systematic, orchestrated policy emanating from the highest reaches of the Japanese state; 2) that this policy violated international law and the women's human rights and therefore constitutes a war crime for which the nation is responsible; 3) that the coercion inherent in the system took many forms and must be understood in the context of gender, ethnic, colonial, and class oppression; 4) that Japan's crimes against comfort women did not end with the war and the dissolution of the comfort station system but continue today in the form of Japanese denials and evasion of responsibility; and 5) that Japanese responsibility does not rest only the government or military but also extends to Japanese citizens who condoned imperialism and the sexual exploitation of women.
Yoshimi's account demonstrates how the comfort station system came to be regarded by the military elite as necessary to the war effort. The comfort stations were in fact an attempt on the part of the military high command to prevent rapes committed by Japanese soldiers in occupied territories and the spread of sexually transmitted disease among the troops. The comfort women station system institutionalized sexual violence against comfort women in an attempts to curb unauthorized sexual violence. This strategy, however, failed miserably, based as it was on a simplistic conception of male sexuality (namely, that male sexual energy will build up and drive men to rape if it is not periodically released in sexual intercourse with women) and a deliberate ignorance about the nature of rape and the functions it serves in war. Yoshimi points out that rape came to be seen among the troops as one of the few "benefits" of military life, which was otherwise characterized by unrelenting surveillance, brutal discipline, meager provisions, and the constant specter of death from combat or disease (pp. 9-10).
Anti-apology activists' denials that coercion was used by the Japanese military to round up women rest on a negative assertion of historical positivism: if there are no written documents proving that force was used by Japanese police or military personnel, then there is no irrefutable evidence that force was used and no need for Japanese people to accept survivors' claims (p. 12).
This privileging of written documents works to exclude from history and discussions of history the voices of the kind of people comfort women represent - the female, the impoverished, the colonized, the illiterate, and the recially and ethnically oppressed. These people have left few written records of their experiences, and therefore are denied a place in history and discussions of it by positivist gatekeepers (pp. 12-13).
THE COMFORT WOMEN ISSUE AND THE STRUGGLE OVER NATIONAL HISTORY
In many ways, conflict over the comfort women issue is a struggle among competing claims to victimhood and the right to represent the past.
According to this logic (conservatives), Japan's post-war prosperity retroactively absolves older Japanese of any responsibility for crimes committed in the service of (their own) country and family (p. 16).
excerpts from an online news interview with Kim, Dae-sil, a film maker who produced a documentary film entitled 침묵의 소리(Silence Broken)
- 문제가 공론화되는 데 왜 이렇게 오랜 시간이 걸렸습니까?
"거의 50년에 걸친 '침묵'은 피해자들이 수치심 때문에 증언하기를 꺼렸기 때문이라고들 생각하는 이들이 많지만 사실이 아닙니다. 피해자 중 많은 분들이 저를 붙들고 "우리는 창피할 것 없다"고 분명히 말했습니다. 할머니들은 진실을 알려야겠다는 일념으로 살아오신 분들입니다. '위안부' 문제를 공론화하지 못한 데는 일본 정부에 일차적인 책임이 있고, 일본의 전쟁 범죄를 제대로 심판하지 않는 미국 정부에도 책임이 있습니다."
- 미국 의회에서 작년에 '위안부' 결의안을 통과시킨 것은 어떤 의미가 있습니까?
"결의안이 상정된 것은 작년이 처음이 아닙니다. 적어도 세 번 이상 일본의 공식 사과를 촉구하는 결의안이 나왔으나 한 번도 통과되지 못했습니다. 작년엔 시기가 잘 맞아 떨어져 재미 교포 사회 및 여러 단체의 지지를 받았고 전세계적 운동으로 발전해 결실을 본 셈입니다. <뉴욕타임스>를 비롯한 미국 언론은 결의안 통과에 대해 미국 정부를 칭찬하는 논조 일색이었습니다. 미국 정부가 50년간 이 문제를 무시해 왔다는 것은 언급하지 않았어요. 얼마나 많은 이들이 노력하며 기다렸는데…. '늦었지만 환영한다'고 했어야지요."
- 피해 여성 중 살아남아서 고향에 돌아온 사람은 몇 명입니까?
"'위안부'로 동원된 여성은 20만 명으로 추정하는데 그중 80%가 한국인이었습니다. 전쟁이 끝난 후까지 살아남은 사람이 몇 명인지 정확한 통계는 없지만 대략 25%정도가 살아남았을 것으로 추정합니다. 75%가 가혹한 상황을 견디지 못하고 이미 사망했다는 이야기입니다. 생존자 중 고향에 돌아온 사람은 극히 일부일 것이라고 생각합니다."
- 영화에서 할머니들께서 하기 어려운 이야기들을 다 털어놓으시는데 어떻게 신뢰감을 쌓을 수 있었습니까?
"같은 한국여자고 마음이 통했기에 신뢰를 얻기는 어렵지 않았어요. 제가 진심으로 이야기를 듣고 싶어 하는 걸 알고 나서는 이야기가 술술 쏟아졌어요. 그분들에겐 이야기를 들려주려는 강한 욕구가 있어요. 할머니들이 과거의 일을 수치스럽게 여겨 오랜 세월 동안 침묵했다고 생각하는데 제가 만나본 분들은 전혀 그렇지 않았어요. 몇 분은 "우리는 수치스럽지 않아요. 나라가 없어서 끌려갔을 뿐인데 왜 창피해해야 합니까?"라고 분명히 이야기했습니다. 죽음보다 참혹한 경험을 견뎌내고 살아올 수 있었던 것 자체가 자신의 경험을 전해야겠다는 결심 때문이었어요. 그분들은 자신들이 겪은 이야기를 털어놓았지만 가족, 이웃, 국가가 듣고 싶어 하지 않았던 것입니다."
- 저도 일본의 식민지 근대화론은 근대와 서구를 동일시하는 인종주의적 서구중심주의를 재포장한 것에 불과하다고 생각합니다. 그런데 일본 페미니스트들은 한국 정부도 책임이 있다며 '위안부' 문제를 가부장적 국가주의 문제로 묶어서 보려는 경향이 있습니다.
"한국 정부가 일제의 만행에 대해 직접 책임이 있다고 할 수는 없지만 전쟁 범죄 피해자였던 할머니들을 돌봐드리지 못한 책임은 분명히 있습니다. '위안부' 문제를 공적으로 거론하지 않고 피해자들을 침묵시킨 데는 일본, 한국, 미국 세 정부에 모두 책임이 있습니다. 그런데 제 경험에 의하면 일본 페미니스트들은 다른 아시아인 페미니스트들을 은근히 깔보는 경향이 있습니다. 서구 페미니스트들이 제3세계 여성들을 얕잡아 보는 것과 비슷합니다. 그런 모습엔 정말 분노가 치밀지요."
"'위안부'가 정치 선전이라고? 망할 놈들!"
- 재미 교포를 비롯한 서구 페미니스트나 일부 한국 여성학자들은 이 문제를 군사문화, 기지촌 매춘, 인신매매 등과 같은 맥락에서 이론화하는 경향이 있습니다.
"이 문제를 더 광범위한 맥락에서 분석해야 하며 다른 문제들과도 연관돼 있다고 말하고 싶어 하는 의도 자체가 잘못된 건 아닙니다만, 국가가 체계적으로 동원한 군대 성노예인 '위안부'와 다른 성 착취 문제들 사이의 차이점을 간과해서는 안 됩니다. 그런 의미에서 저는 원래 명칭대로 '위안부', 'comfort women'이라고 씁니다."
- 미국에서 영화를 상영할 때마다 많은 학생이 큰 충격과 감명을 받는다고 들었습니다. 미국인 청중은 어떤 질문을 자주 하나요? 일본계 학생들은 다른지, 한국 학생들과 재미교포 학생들은 어떤 반응을 보이는지도 궁금합니다.
"미국인들은 '전혀 몰랐다'며 충격을 표시하거나 '일본이 벌써 사과한 것으로 아는데? 도대체 몇 번이나 사과해야 되는가?'라는 질문을 하든가 "우리가 할 수 있는 일은 무엇인가?"라고 주로 묻습니다. 재미교포들은 세대에 따라 다른데 노인세대는 이 문제를 잊고 싶어 합니다. 오래된 상처를 왜 건드리느냐는 것이지요. 무관심한 사람들도 있어요. 젊은 세대는 충격 받고, 분노하고, 무엇이든 하고 싶어 하지요. 일본계 미국인의 반응은 크게 두 가지입니다. 하나는 믿지 않으려 하거나, 화를 내거나, 무관심한 사람들이고, 다른 하나는 여성들의 고통에 대해 죄스러워하는 사람들입니다."
- 요즘은 어떤 프로젝트를 하고 계십니까? 2006년 부산국제영화제에서 개봉한 <모국(Motherland)>을 만드신 배경도 말씀해주세요.
"미국에서 실향민 같은 느낌이 강하게 들고, 자본주의의 광풍 속에서 어떻게 살아갈까 하는 의문도 들어 다른 세상을 보려고 2004년 겨울 쿠바에 갔다가 한국계 쿠바인 마르타 림 김을 만났어요. 한국인이 전 세계에 흩어져 살고 있는 것을 보고 깊은 감명을 받았고 디아스포라의 시대임을 실감했어요. 계획을 모두 취소하고 5일간 마르타와 한국계 쿠바인들을 인터뷰했어요.
다시 쿠바를 찾아 더 찍을 예정이었는데, 미국의 대 쿠바 정책이 강경하게 돌아서고, 건강 문제도 있고(기자 주 : 2005년에 위암 수술을 받으셨습니다), 재원 확보가 거의 불가능해서 부족하나마 1차로 찍어둔 영상으로 작업했습니다. 유일한 재정 지원은 뉴욕의 급진적 노동자 단체에서 준 '블로파브 다큐멘터리상(Blaufarb Documentary Award)'이었는데 이 상금으로 쿠바에서 이민 온 마르타 형제들을 인터뷰했어요. 편집하는 동안, 내 일생은 1945년 겨울 온 가족이 38선을 걸어서 넘어 남하한 후 줄곧 '집'을 찾는 여정이었음을 분명히 느꼈습니다. 그래서 이 영화를 냉전 시대 이후 두 이민자 여성이 집을 찾는 이야기로 끌고 갔습니다. <모국>은 올해부터 뉴욕시에 있는 'Women Make Movie'에서 보급하고 있어요. 41분짜리인데, 언젠가 후속 이야기를 보태서 한 시간 정도 분량으로 다시 만들고 싶어요. 그래서 미국 공영방송을 통해 전국에 방송하려고요."
- <모국>을 부산영화제에서 상영했을 때 관객 반응이 미국에서와는 어떻게 달랐습니까?
"부산에서 최초 상영을 했는데 매진됐어요. 대부분 관객은 한국인이었지만 전 세계에서 많은 분들이 영화를 보러 오셨어요. 질의응답 시간이 감동적이었어요. 마르타의 언니가 자본주의에 경도돼 빈부격차에 대한 문제의식이 없는 데 비해 사회주의 국가에서 살고 있는 마르타가 평화로워 보였다고 지적하는 분들이 많았습니다. 많은 분이 제게 계속 영화를, 특히 북한에 대한 영화를 만들어달라고 주문해주셔서 용기를 얻었습니다. 재정, 건강 문제 때문에 <모국>이 마지막 작품이 될 지도 모르겠다고 앞서 얘기했거든요. 그 후 제가 직접 참석했던 아시안 아메리칸 국제영화제(2007년 뉴욕)에서도 부산과 마찬가지로 매진됐지요.
한국인은 마음으로, 미국인은 머리로 반응한다고 할 수 있어요. 미국에서 사는 한국인들은 미국 시민이건 아니건 이민을 온 사람들이고 조상의 나라 또는 자신이 태어난 나라로 생각하는 한국에 대한 각별한 감정과 통일에 대한 염원을 느끼며 반응하지요. 저는 자국에 대한 미국인들의 지나친 소유욕과 애착심에 종종 숨이 막힙니다. 이 영화를 통해 미국인들에게 이민자처럼 살아보라고 말해주고 싶었어요. 미국인은 거의 모두 이민자들이잖아요. 조상들이 바다 건너 먼 땅에서 와서 원주민들을 죄다 죽이고 노예 노동을 착취해 건설한 나라라는 사실을 잊고 살지만요. 모두 나그네라는 동질감을 느끼며 사는 게 좋을 것 같아요. 커트 보너것의 <나라 없는 사람(A man without a country)>에 "산다는 것에 보람을 느낀다면, 내가 사랑하는 음악을 빼면, 살면서 여기저기서 만난 성인 성녀들 때문이다. 성인 성녀란 험악하고 비인간적인 세상에서 사람다운 도리를 지키고 산 사람들을 말한다"라는 구절이 나와요. 공감합니다."
이민자의 후예임을 잊고 사는 미국인들이여, 이민자처럼 살아보라
- 왜 쿠바에 가셨는지 저는 이해합니다. 9.11 이후 미국인들의 애국주의는 타국에 대해 적대적인 정서를 부추기고 있지요. 주는 것 없이 죽도록 미워하는 두 나라가 쿠바와 북한인데, 평균적인 미국인은 이 두 나라를 잘 모르면서도 지나치게 증오하는 경향이 있어요. 남편이신 단 깁슨 박사님과 함께 회고록을 집필중이라고 들었는데 책이 언제 나오나요? 한국에서도 출판하실 예정입니까?
"회고록은 현재 쓰고 있고 올해 말까지는 탈고할 예정입니다. 한국에서 출판할 가능성을 염두에 두고 있지만 우선 좋은 책이 완성될 때까지 좀 기다려봐야지요."
- 한국 독자들, 특히 젊은 세대 독자들에게 하시고 싶은 말씀이 있습니까?
"자기 나라에 대한 헌신과 사랑을 뜻하는 민족주의는 좋은 가치입니다. 한국엔 인종적, 지리적으로 배타적인 민족주의가 아닌 건강한 민족주의가 필요합니다. 건설적 민족주의를 유지하기 위해서는 역사를 돌아봐야 합니다. 역사란 미묘하고 취약한 것입니다. 역사는 의도적인 기억의 집합체인 동시에 의도적인 망각의 집합체이기도 합니다. 과거에는 힘 있는 사람들이 역사쓰기를 주도했습니다. 그래서 역사를 복원하고 재평가하는 작업이 필요합니다. 건설적 민족주의는 방랑자들, 존 버거의 말을 인용하자면, '집을 마음속에 지니고 다니는' 사람들과도 손잡고 가야 합니다.
밀란 쿤데라는 "망각은 개인이 당면하는 큰 문제이다", "죽음은 자아의 상실을 의미한다"라고 했습니다. 쿤데라는 자아는 기억의 총체이며, 인간이 두려워하는 죽음은 미래가 아닌 과거의 상실이라고 봤습니다. 죽음은 망각을 통해 항상 일상에 침범하고 있습니다. 쿤데라는 민족의식에 대해서도 같은 정의를 적용했습니다. 강대국이 약소국의 민족의식을 말소하려 할 때는 늘 망각을 조직적으로 유도했다고 지적했습니다. 일본이 한국을 식민지화할 때에도 똑같은 수법을 썼지요. 과거를 대면하지 않는 민족은 미래는커녕 현재를 살아갈 준비도 돼 있지 않은 민족입니다. 그리고 만인이 본질적으로 평등하다고 믿는다면 역사 쓰기도 그렇게 해야 합니다.
한국 여성은 서구 여성을 모방하는 대신 머리에 물동이를 이고 날랐던 아주머니들, 아기를 등에 업고 밭을 일구고 농사를 짓던 우리 할머니들에게서 한국의 여성성을 찾아야 합니다. '정신대' 할머니들의 강인함과 억압받은 여성들의 고통 속에서도 찾아야 합니다. 상류계층 여성, 엘리트 여성들이 아니라 고생스런 생활 속에서도 인정을 잃지 않았던 이들의 삶에서 희망과 지혜를 찾아야 합니다."
- 배타적이지 않은 민족주의란 다인종, 다문화적인 한국 민족주의, 세계에 널리 퍼져 살고 있는, 선생님 표현대로 마음속에 고향을 지니고 다니는 한인 디아스포라까지 포용하는 민족주의이겠네요. 여러 번 <침묵의 소리>를 봤지만, 이번엔 윤두리 할머니께서 해방 후 한국에 돌아와 처음엔 살아갈 힘이 없었지만 "나라가 없어서 설움을 당했으니 나라도 나서서 일해 나라를 다시 일으켜 세워야겠다"는 생각이 들었다고 말씀하시는 부분이 아주 인상적이었습니다. 말씀하신 대로 신세대 여성들은 긴 역사 속에서 아이를 낳고 가족을 돌보고 나라를 세우고 지켰던 평범한 한국 여성들의 강인함을 배우고 힘을 얻어야 할 것 같습니다.
Ohmynews article which includes the interview except above, written by Dennis Hart, a American correspondent to the online newspaper and a political science professor at the Kent State University Stark Campus, Canton, Ohio
His academic vita
Interview of Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
It is also a struggle over history and memories. Victims of Japan's war crimes have challenged Japanese accounts of the war and sparked intense conflicts over how Japanese history should be written and taught (p. 2).
Similar revisionist groups sparing up outside government circles, such as the "Free History" advocates led by University of Tokyo education professor Fujioka Nobukatsu, and echoed the claims that there is little historical proof of many Japanese war crimes and no need to apologize (p. 4).
Yoshimi challenged portrayals of average Japanese citizens as merely innocent victims of an expansionist military (p. 6).
Grassroots Fascism
While it (Japanese Government) acknowledged that the Japanese military set up or constructed comfort stations, conducted medical examinations of the women, and oversaw the management of comfort facilities, it still maintained that comfort women were rounded up primarily by civilian procurers, who were responsible for transporting them (p. 7).
Military Comfort Women is both a participant in and a product of this struggle. It refutes government and anti-apology arguments and illuminates such broader issues as the social institutions and attitudes that fostered the comfort station system, many of which persist in Japan today. This activist agenda informs the book's main arguments; i) that the enslavement of comfort women was a systematic, orchestrated policy emanating from the highest reaches of the Japanese state; 2) that this policy violated international law and the women's human rights and therefore constitutes a war crime for which the nation is responsible; 3) that the coercion inherent in the system took many forms and must be understood in the context of gender, ethnic, colonial, and class oppression; 4) that Japan's crimes against comfort women did not end with the war and the dissolution of the comfort station system but continue today in the form of Japanese denials and evasion of responsibility; and 5) that Japanese responsibility does not rest only the government or military but also extends to Japanese citizens who condoned imperialism and the sexual exploitation of women.
Yoshimi's account demonstrates how the comfort station system came to be regarded by the military elite as necessary to the war effort. The comfort stations were in fact an attempt on the part of the military high command to prevent rapes committed by Japanese soldiers in occupied territories and the spread of sexually transmitted disease among the troops. The comfort women station system institutionalized sexual violence against comfort women in an attempts to curb unauthorized sexual violence. This strategy, however, failed miserably, based as it was on a simplistic conception of male sexuality (namely, that male sexual energy will build up and drive men to rape if it is not periodically released in sexual intercourse with women) and a deliberate ignorance about the nature of rape and the functions it serves in war. Yoshimi points out that rape came to be seen among the troops as one of the few "benefits" of military life, which was otherwise characterized by unrelenting surveillance, brutal discipline, meager provisions, and the constant specter of death from combat or disease (pp. 9-10).
Anti-apology activists' denials that coercion was used by the Japanese military to round up women rest on a negative assertion of historical positivism: if there are no written documents proving that force was used by Japanese police or military personnel, then there is no irrefutable evidence that force was used and no need for Japanese people to accept survivors' claims (p. 12).
This privileging of written documents works to exclude from history and discussions of history the voices of the kind of people comfort women represent - the female, the impoverished, the colonized, the illiterate, and the recially and ethnically oppressed. These people have left few written records of their experiences, and therefore are denied a place in history and discussions of it by positivist gatekeepers (pp. 12-13).
THE COMFORT WOMEN ISSUE AND THE STRUGGLE OVER NATIONAL HISTORY
In many ways, conflict over the comfort women issue is a struggle among competing claims to victimhood and the right to represent the past.
According to this logic (conservatives), Japan's post-war prosperity retroactively absolves older Japanese of any responsibility for crimes committed in the service of (their own) country and family (p. 16).
excerpts from an online news interview with Kim, Dae-sil, a film maker who produced a documentary film entitled 침묵의 소리(Silence Broken)
- 문제가 공론화되는 데 왜 이렇게 오랜 시간이 걸렸습니까?
"거의 50년에 걸친 '침묵'은 피해자들이 수치심 때문에 증언하기를 꺼렸기 때문이라고들 생각하는 이들이 많지만 사실이 아닙니다. 피해자 중 많은 분들이 저를 붙들고 "우리는 창피할 것 없다"고 분명히 말했습니다. 할머니들은 진실을 알려야겠다는 일념으로 살아오신 분들입니다. '위안부' 문제를 공론화하지 못한 데는 일본 정부에 일차적인 책임이 있고, 일본의 전쟁 범죄를 제대로 심판하지 않는 미국 정부에도 책임이 있습니다."
- 미국 의회에서 작년에 '위안부' 결의안을 통과시킨 것은 어떤 의미가 있습니까?
"결의안이 상정된 것은 작년이 처음이 아닙니다. 적어도 세 번 이상 일본의 공식 사과를 촉구하는 결의안이 나왔으나 한 번도 통과되지 못했습니다. 작년엔 시기가 잘 맞아 떨어져 재미 교포 사회 및 여러 단체의 지지를 받았고 전세계적 운동으로 발전해 결실을 본 셈입니다. <뉴욕타임스>를 비롯한 미국 언론은 결의안 통과에 대해 미국 정부를 칭찬하는 논조 일색이었습니다. 미국 정부가 50년간 이 문제를 무시해 왔다는 것은 언급하지 않았어요. 얼마나 많은 이들이 노력하며 기다렸는데…. '늦었지만 환영한다'고 했어야지요."
- 피해 여성 중 살아남아서 고향에 돌아온 사람은 몇 명입니까?
"'위안부'로 동원된 여성은 20만 명으로 추정하는데 그중 80%가 한국인이었습니다. 전쟁이 끝난 후까지 살아남은 사람이 몇 명인지 정확한 통계는 없지만 대략 25%정도가 살아남았을 것으로 추정합니다. 75%가 가혹한 상황을 견디지 못하고 이미 사망했다는 이야기입니다. 생존자 중 고향에 돌아온 사람은 극히 일부일 것이라고 생각합니다."
- 영화에서 할머니들께서 하기 어려운 이야기들을 다 털어놓으시는데 어떻게 신뢰감을 쌓을 수 있었습니까?
"같은 한국여자고 마음이 통했기에 신뢰를 얻기는 어렵지 않았어요. 제가 진심으로 이야기를 듣고 싶어 하는 걸 알고 나서는 이야기가 술술 쏟아졌어요. 그분들에겐 이야기를 들려주려는 강한 욕구가 있어요. 할머니들이 과거의 일을 수치스럽게 여겨 오랜 세월 동안 침묵했다고 생각하는데 제가 만나본 분들은 전혀 그렇지 않았어요. 몇 분은 "우리는 수치스럽지 않아요. 나라가 없어서 끌려갔을 뿐인데 왜 창피해해야 합니까?"라고 분명히 이야기했습니다. 죽음보다 참혹한 경험을 견뎌내고 살아올 수 있었던 것 자체가 자신의 경험을 전해야겠다는 결심 때문이었어요. 그분들은 자신들이 겪은 이야기를 털어놓았지만 가족, 이웃, 국가가 듣고 싶어 하지 않았던 것입니다."
- 저도 일본의 식민지 근대화론은 근대와 서구를 동일시하는 인종주의적 서구중심주의를 재포장한 것에 불과하다고 생각합니다. 그런데 일본 페미니스트들은 한국 정부도 책임이 있다며 '위안부' 문제를 가부장적 국가주의 문제로 묶어서 보려는 경향이 있습니다.
"한국 정부가 일제의 만행에 대해 직접 책임이 있다고 할 수는 없지만 전쟁 범죄 피해자였던 할머니들을 돌봐드리지 못한 책임은 분명히 있습니다. '위안부' 문제를 공적으로 거론하지 않고 피해자들을 침묵시킨 데는 일본, 한국, 미국 세 정부에 모두 책임이 있습니다. 그런데 제 경험에 의하면 일본 페미니스트들은 다른 아시아인 페미니스트들을 은근히 깔보는 경향이 있습니다. 서구 페미니스트들이 제3세계 여성들을 얕잡아 보는 것과 비슷합니다. 그런 모습엔 정말 분노가 치밀지요."
"'위안부'가 정치 선전이라고? 망할 놈들!"
- 재미 교포를 비롯한 서구 페미니스트나 일부 한국 여성학자들은 이 문제를 군사문화, 기지촌 매춘, 인신매매 등과 같은 맥락에서 이론화하는 경향이 있습니다.
"이 문제를 더 광범위한 맥락에서 분석해야 하며 다른 문제들과도 연관돼 있다고 말하고 싶어 하는 의도 자체가 잘못된 건 아닙니다만, 국가가 체계적으로 동원한 군대 성노예인 '위안부'와 다른 성 착취 문제들 사이의 차이점을 간과해서는 안 됩니다. 그런 의미에서 저는 원래 명칭대로 '위안부', 'comfort women'이라고 씁니다."
- 미국에서 영화를 상영할 때마다 많은 학생이 큰 충격과 감명을 받는다고 들었습니다. 미국인 청중은 어떤 질문을 자주 하나요? 일본계 학생들은 다른지, 한국 학생들과 재미교포 학생들은 어떤 반응을 보이는지도 궁금합니다.
"미국인들은 '전혀 몰랐다'며 충격을 표시하거나 '일본이 벌써 사과한 것으로 아는데? 도대체 몇 번이나 사과해야 되는가?'라는 질문을 하든가 "우리가 할 수 있는 일은 무엇인가?"라고 주로 묻습니다. 재미교포들은 세대에 따라 다른데 노인세대는 이 문제를 잊고 싶어 합니다. 오래된 상처를 왜 건드리느냐는 것이지요. 무관심한 사람들도 있어요. 젊은 세대는 충격 받고, 분노하고, 무엇이든 하고 싶어 하지요. 일본계 미국인의 반응은 크게 두 가지입니다. 하나는 믿지 않으려 하거나, 화를 내거나, 무관심한 사람들이고, 다른 하나는 여성들의 고통에 대해 죄스러워하는 사람들입니다."
- 요즘은 어떤 프로젝트를 하고 계십니까? 2006년 부산국제영화제에서 개봉한 <모국(Motherland)>을 만드신 배경도 말씀해주세요.
"미국에서 실향민 같은 느낌이 강하게 들고, 자본주의의 광풍 속에서 어떻게 살아갈까 하는 의문도 들어 다른 세상을 보려고 2004년 겨울 쿠바에 갔다가 한국계 쿠바인 마르타 림 김을 만났어요. 한국인이 전 세계에 흩어져 살고 있는 것을 보고 깊은 감명을 받았고 디아스포라의 시대임을 실감했어요. 계획을 모두 취소하고 5일간 마르타와 한국계 쿠바인들을 인터뷰했어요.
다시 쿠바를 찾아 더 찍을 예정이었는데, 미국의 대 쿠바 정책이 강경하게 돌아서고, 건강 문제도 있고(기자 주 : 2005년에 위암 수술을 받으셨습니다), 재원 확보가 거의 불가능해서 부족하나마 1차로 찍어둔 영상으로 작업했습니다. 유일한 재정 지원은 뉴욕의 급진적 노동자 단체에서 준 '블로파브 다큐멘터리상(Blaufarb Documentary Award)'이었는데 이 상금으로 쿠바에서 이민 온 마르타 형제들을 인터뷰했어요. 편집하는 동안, 내 일생은 1945년 겨울 온 가족이 38선을 걸어서 넘어 남하한 후 줄곧 '집'을 찾는 여정이었음을 분명히 느꼈습니다. 그래서 이 영화를 냉전 시대 이후 두 이민자 여성이 집을 찾는 이야기로 끌고 갔습니다. <모국>은 올해부터 뉴욕시에 있는 'Women Make Movie'에서 보급하고 있어요. 41분짜리인데, 언젠가 후속 이야기를 보태서 한 시간 정도 분량으로 다시 만들고 싶어요. 그래서 미국 공영방송을 통해 전국에 방송하려고요."
- <모국>을 부산영화제에서 상영했을 때 관객 반응이 미국에서와는 어떻게 달랐습니까?
"부산에서 최초 상영을 했는데 매진됐어요. 대부분 관객은 한국인이었지만 전 세계에서 많은 분들이 영화를 보러 오셨어요. 질의응답 시간이 감동적이었어요. 마르타의 언니가 자본주의에 경도돼 빈부격차에 대한 문제의식이 없는 데 비해 사회주의 국가에서 살고 있는 마르타가 평화로워 보였다고 지적하는 분들이 많았습니다. 많은 분이 제게 계속 영화를, 특히 북한에 대한 영화를 만들어달라고 주문해주셔서 용기를 얻었습니다. 재정, 건강 문제 때문에 <모국>이 마지막 작품이 될 지도 모르겠다고 앞서 얘기했거든요. 그 후 제가 직접 참석했던 아시안 아메리칸 국제영화제(2007년 뉴욕)에서도 부산과 마찬가지로 매진됐지요.
한국인은 마음으로, 미국인은 머리로 반응한다고 할 수 있어요. 미국에서 사는 한국인들은 미국 시민이건 아니건 이민을 온 사람들이고 조상의 나라 또는 자신이 태어난 나라로 생각하는 한국에 대한 각별한 감정과 통일에 대한 염원을 느끼며 반응하지요. 저는 자국에 대한 미국인들의 지나친 소유욕과 애착심에 종종 숨이 막힙니다. 이 영화를 통해 미국인들에게 이민자처럼 살아보라고 말해주고 싶었어요. 미국인은 거의 모두 이민자들이잖아요. 조상들이 바다 건너 먼 땅에서 와서 원주민들을 죄다 죽이고 노예 노동을 착취해 건설한 나라라는 사실을 잊고 살지만요. 모두 나그네라는 동질감을 느끼며 사는 게 좋을 것 같아요. 커트 보너것의 <나라 없는 사람(A man without a country)>에 "산다는 것에 보람을 느낀다면, 내가 사랑하는 음악을 빼면, 살면서 여기저기서 만난 성인 성녀들 때문이다. 성인 성녀란 험악하고 비인간적인 세상에서 사람다운 도리를 지키고 산 사람들을 말한다"라는 구절이 나와요. 공감합니다."
이민자의 후예임을 잊고 사는 미국인들이여, 이민자처럼 살아보라
- 왜 쿠바에 가셨는지 저는 이해합니다. 9.11 이후 미국인들의 애국주의는 타국에 대해 적대적인 정서를 부추기고 있지요. 주는 것 없이 죽도록 미워하는 두 나라가 쿠바와 북한인데, 평균적인 미국인은 이 두 나라를 잘 모르면서도 지나치게 증오하는 경향이 있어요. 남편이신 단 깁슨 박사님과 함께 회고록을 집필중이라고 들었는데 책이 언제 나오나요? 한국에서도 출판하실 예정입니까?
"회고록은 현재 쓰고 있고 올해 말까지는 탈고할 예정입니다. 한국에서 출판할 가능성을 염두에 두고 있지만 우선 좋은 책이 완성될 때까지 좀 기다려봐야지요."
- 한국 독자들, 특히 젊은 세대 독자들에게 하시고 싶은 말씀이 있습니까?
"자기 나라에 대한 헌신과 사랑을 뜻하는 민족주의는 좋은 가치입니다. 한국엔 인종적, 지리적으로 배타적인 민족주의가 아닌 건강한 민족주의가 필요합니다. 건설적 민족주의를 유지하기 위해서는 역사를 돌아봐야 합니다. 역사란 미묘하고 취약한 것입니다. 역사는 의도적인 기억의 집합체인 동시에 의도적인 망각의 집합체이기도 합니다. 과거에는 힘 있는 사람들이 역사쓰기를 주도했습니다. 그래서 역사를 복원하고 재평가하는 작업이 필요합니다. 건설적 민족주의는 방랑자들, 존 버거의 말을 인용하자면, '집을 마음속에 지니고 다니는' 사람들과도 손잡고 가야 합니다.
밀란 쿤데라는 "망각은 개인이 당면하는 큰 문제이다", "죽음은 자아의 상실을 의미한다"라고 했습니다. 쿤데라는 자아는 기억의 총체이며, 인간이 두려워하는 죽음은 미래가 아닌 과거의 상실이라고 봤습니다. 죽음은 망각을 통해 항상 일상에 침범하고 있습니다. 쿤데라는 민족의식에 대해서도 같은 정의를 적용했습니다. 강대국이 약소국의 민족의식을 말소하려 할 때는 늘 망각을 조직적으로 유도했다고 지적했습니다. 일본이 한국을 식민지화할 때에도 똑같은 수법을 썼지요. 과거를 대면하지 않는 민족은 미래는커녕 현재를 살아갈 준비도 돼 있지 않은 민족입니다. 그리고 만인이 본질적으로 평등하다고 믿는다면 역사 쓰기도 그렇게 해야 합니다.
한국 여성은 서구 여성을 모방하는 대신 머리에 물동이를 이고 날랐던 아주머니들, 아기를 등에 업고 밭을 일구고 농사를 짓던 우리 할머니들에게서 한국의 여성성을 찾아야 합니다. '정신대' 할머니들의 강인함과 억압받은 여성들의 고통 속에서도 찾아야 합니다. 상류계층 여성, 엘리트 여성들이 아니라 고생스런 생활 속에서도 인정을 잃지 않았던 이들의 삶에서 희망과 지혜를 찾아야 합니다."
- 배타적이지 않은 민족주의란 다인종, 다문화적인 한국 민족주의, 세계에 널리 퍼져 살고 있는, 선생님 표현대로 마음속에 고향을 지니고 다니는 한인 디아스포라까지 포용하는 민족주의이겠네요. 여러 번 <침묵의 소리>를 봤지만, 이번엔 윤두리 할머니께서 해방 후 한국에 돌아와 처음엔 살아갈 힘이 없었지만 "나라가 없어서 설움을 당했으니 나라도 나서서 일해 나라를 다시 일으켜 세워야겠다"는 생각이 들었다고 말씀하시는 부분이 아주 인상적이었습니다. 말씀하신 대로 신세대 여성들은 긴 역사 속에서 아이를 낳고 가족을 돌보고 나라를 세우고 지켰던 평범한 한국 여성들의 강인함을 배우고 힘을 얻어야 할 것 같습니다.
Ohmynews article which includes the interview except above, written by Dennis Hart, a American correspondent to the online newspaper and a political science professor at the Kent State University Stark Campus, Canton, Ohio
His academic vita
Interview of Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Roger Fowler's Critical Linguistics
His position towards news and language
Language and other codes, most importantly language, have a cognitive role; they provide an organized mental representation for our experience (p. 3).
News is a representation of the world in language; because language is a semiotic code, it imposes a structure of values, social and economic in origin, on whatever is represented; and so inevitably news, like every discourse, constructively patterns that of which it speak. News is a representation in this sense of construction; it is not value-free reflection of 'facts' (p. 4).
Bias of representation
New values
Stereotypes
Social and economic factors in news selection
The linguistic background
Anthropological linguistics: Language, culture, and thought
Functional Linguistics: variation, social semiotic
Social semiotic in news discourse
Language and other codes, most importantly language, have a cognitive role; they provide an organized mental representation for our experience (p. 3).
News is a representation of the world in language; because language is a semiotic code, it imposes a structure of values, social and economic in origin, on whatever is represented; and so inevitably news, like every discourse, constructively patterns that of which it speak. News is a representation in this sense of construction; it is not value-free reflection of 'facts' (p. 4).
Bias of representation
New values
Stereotypes
Social and economic factors in news selection
The linguistic background
Anthropological linguistics: Language, culture, and thought
Functional Linguistics: variation, social semiotic
Social semiotic in news discourse
Friday, August 15, 2008
Enduring Identities
Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan by John K. Nelson
At local and regional levels, Kamigamo Shrine's ritual traditions (such as the famous Hollyhock Festival) and the strategies for their perpetuation and implementation provide points of departure for issues that anthropologists, historians, and scholars of religion will recognize as central to their disciplines. These include the formation of social memory, the role of individual agency within institutional politics, religious practice and performance, the shaping of sacred space and place, ethnic versus cultural identity, and the politics of historical representation and cultural nationalism. Nelson links these themes through a detailed ethnography about a significant place and institutions, he shows how a religious tradition's lack of centralized dogma, charismatic leaders, and sacred text promotes rather than hinders a broad-based public participation with a variety of institutional agendas, most of which have very little to do with belief. He concludes that it is this structural flexibility, coupled with ample economic, human, and cultural resources, that nurtures a reworking of multiple identities - all of which resonate with the past, fully engage the present, and with care, will endure well into the future.
Murakami writes convincingly that after the revolution in 1868, which ended centuries of feudal rule, the new Meiji government saw this ancient topomantic tradition as another means to help legitimate its authenticity and further centralize its power (1970: 159). In an effort to systematize widely practiced land divination and land-calming rites, it wrested sect-specific rituals away from Buddhist and Shinto organizations alike. The Meiji social architects were following the lead of Aizawa Yasushi, who (in 1824) proposed in somewhat Machiavellian terms that the best way for the government to clarify the national essence (kokutai, 國體) to the people (and make them respectfully submit without asking why) was to devise government-sponsored religious rituals that played upon their awe of the kami (p. 65).
At local and regional levels, Kamigamo Shrine's ritual traditions (such as the famous Hollyhock Festival) and the strategies for their perpetuation and implementation provide points of departure for issues that anthropologists, historians, and scholars of religion will recognize as central to their disciplines. These include the formation of social memory, the role of individual agency within institutional politics, religious practice and performance, the shaping of sacred space and place, ethnic versus cultural identity, and the politics of historical representation and cultural nationalism. Nelson links these themes through a detailed ethnography about a significant place and institutions, he shows how a religious tradition's lack of centralized dogma, charismatic leaders, and sacred text promotes rather than hinders a broad-based public participation with a variety of institutional agendas, most of which have very little to do with belief. He concludes that it is this structural flexibility, coupled with ample economic, human, and cultural resources, that nurtures a reworking of multiple identities - all of which resonate with the past, fully engage the present, and with care, will endure well into the future.
Murakami writes convincingly that after the revolution in 1868, which ended centuries of feudal rule, the new Meiji government saw this ancient topomantic tradition as another means to help legitimate its authenticity and further centralize its power (1970: 159). In an effort to systematize widely practiced land divination and land-calming rites, it wrested sect-specific rituals away from Buddhist and Shinto organizations alike. The Meiji social architects were following the lead of Aizawa Yasushi, who (in 1824) proposed in somewhat Machiavellian terms that the best way for the government to clarify the national essence (kokutai, 國體) to the people (and make them respectfully submit without asking why) was to devise government-sponsored religious rituals that played upon their awe of the kami (p. 65).
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Shinto and the state
an example of state sponsorship (p. 3)
an invented tradition (p. 3)
The term State Shinto, as used here, designates the relationship of state patronage and advocacy existing between the Japanese state and the religious practice known as Shintō between 1868 and 1945 (p. 4).
Japan before 1868 represented a collectivity of persons whose sense of identity was focused not upon the state but upon local communities. In the process of unification, many of the rites and symbols of Shintō were appropriated, assembled in new forms, and given new meanings. Like European nations, Japan in the period of State Shintō created its first national ceremonial celendar, flag, national anthem, and rites of state accessible to all subjects. The emperor acquired, quite literally, new clothes and began to appear publicly in military uniform rather than the flowing robes of the ancient court; in the twentieth century his new image was circulated for public veneration to all public schools (p. 4).
while all these innovations were the creations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (p. 4)
Instead, the practice of Shintō has existed as mere appendage to Buddhist institutions or as the localized cults of community tutelary deities, with no comprehensive organizational structure to unite the whole.
The meaning attached to Shintō have proved both maddeningly vague to the scholar and conveniently vague to the politician seeking to appeal to tradition, however recently invented.
Shintō's ties with the state before 1868 were obscure and limited for the most part to the rites of the imperial or shogunal courts, always coordinated with, and usually subordinated to, Buddhist ritual (p. 5).
Studies of Shintō
engine of war (p. 6)
State Shintō as a monolithic entity that indoctrinated the people in Shintō ideology
Great Promulgation Campaign of 1870 1884
manipulation and maximized control of the state over individual liberties (p. 8)
political regime's drive for symbolic legitimation
Revival of Shintō symbolism is but one part of a broader campaign to rewrite the past; equally important is the censoring of history texts used in public schools
penumbral illusion of spiritual unity (p. 9).
Shintō in the Tokugawa Era (1600-1868)
Taoism, Confucianism, and the sacred traditions of nonliterate people as well
The sociologist of religions Joachim Wach divided religion into three components: doctrine, rites, and communal observances.
As noted earlier, Shintō has often been called the "indigenous religion of Japan," It is an ancient cult directed to native deities called kami, and included among these are deified emperors and heroes, spirits of nature, and deities of Japanese mythology.
It is primarily a liturgical practice.
Shintō's first layer was contituted by the ritual practice of the imperial court, which maintained a formal schedule of elaborate ritual for both Buddhas and kami (p. 10).
The second layer of Tokugawa Shintō was constituted the practice of those great shrines of the nation large enough to have their own hereditary priesthoods, branch shrines, and extensive landholdings (p.12).
But at the popular level there was no thoroughgoing distinction between the cults of Buddhas and kami.
The third layer of Tokugawa Shintō encompassed by far the greatest number of shrines during the period, the local tutelary shrines of agrarian village... (p. 13).
The influence of national learning (kokugaku; 國學, from p. 16).
Buddhism was attacked as the agency most to blame for Japan's loss of its original way of life. (p. 16)
After Hirata's (Hirata Atsutane) time, National Learning ceased to be type of scholarship and instead acquired the rudiments of a nativist movement.
National learning was able eventually to gain a hearing with those who were to become the leaders of the new Meiji state because at the end of the Tokugawa period it had broad affinities with restorationist ideals and was supported by personal ties to the future leaders of the Restoration (p. 17).
Thus the character of pre-Meiji Shintō was liturgical and closely integrated with social life (p. 18).
Hardacre, H. 1989. Shinto and the state, 1868-1988. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
an invented tradition (p. 3)
The term State Shinto, as used here, designates the relationship of state patronage and advocacy existing between the Japanese state and the religious practice known as Shintō between 1868 and 1945 (p. 4).
Japan before 1868 represented a collectivity of persons whose sense of identity was focused not upon the state but upon local communities. In the process of unification, many of the rites and symbols of Shintō were appropriated, assembled in new forms, and given new meanings. Like European nations, Japan in the period of State Shintō created its first national ceremonial celendar, flag, national anthem, and rites of state accessible to all subjects. The emperor acquired, quite literally, new clothes and began to appear publicly in military uniform rather than the flowing robes of the ancient court; in the twentieth century his new image was circulated for public veneration to all public schools (p. 4).
while all these innovations were the creations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (p. 4)
Instead, the practice of Shintō has existed as mere appendage to Buddhist institutions or as the localized cults of community tutelary deities, with no comprehensive organizational structure to unite the whole.
The meaning attached to Shintō have proved both maddeningly vague to the scholar and conveniently vague to the politician seeking to appeal to tradition, however recently invented.
Shintō's ties with the state before 1868 were obscure and limited for the most part to the rites of the imperial or shogunal courts, always coordinated with, and usually subordinated to, Buddhist ritual (p. 5).
Studies of Shintō
engine of war (p. 6)
State Shintō as a monolithic entity that indoctrinated the people in Shintō ideology
Great Promulgation Campaign of 1870 1884
manipulation and maximized control of the state over individual liberties (p. 8)
political regime's drive for symbolic legitimation
Revival of Shintō symbolism is but one part of a broader campaign to rewrite the past; equally important is the censoring of history texts used in public schools
penumbral illusion of spiritual unity (p. 9).
Shintō in the Tokugawa Era (1600-1868)
Taoism, Confucianism, and the sacred traditions of nonliterate people as well
The sociologist of religions Joachim Wach divided religion into three components: doctrine, rites, and communal observances.
As noted earlier, Shintō has often been called the "indigenous religion of Japan," It is an ancient cult directed to native deities called kami, and included among these are deified emperors and heroes, spirits of nature, and deities of Japanese mythology.
It is primarily a liturgical practice.
Shintō's first layer was contituted by the ritual practice of the imperial court, which maintained a formal schedule of elaborate ritual for both Buddhas and kami (p. 10).
The second layer of Tokugawa Shintō was constituted the practice of those great shrines of the nation large enough to have their own hereditary priesthoods, branch shrines, and extensive landholdings (p.12).
But at the popular level there was no thoroughgoing distinction between the cults of Buddhas and kami.
The third layer of Tokugawa Shintō encompassed by far the greatest number of shrines during the period, the local tutelary shrines of agrarian village... (p. 13).
The influence of national learning (kokugaku; 國學, from p. 16).
Buddhism was attacked as the agency most to blame for Japan's loss of its original way of life. (p. 16)
After Hirata's (Hirata Atsutane) time, National Learning ceased to be type of scholarship and instead acquired the rudiments of a nativist movement.
National learning was able eventually to gain a hearing with those who were to become the leaders of the new Meiji state because at the end of the Tokugawa period it had broad affinities with restorationist ideals and was supported by personal ties to the future leaders of the Restoration (p. 17).
Thus the character of pre-Meiji Shintō was liturgical and closely integrated with social life (p. 18).
Hardacre, H. 1989. Shinto and the state, 1868-1988. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Marxist and humanist legacy of Henri Lefebvre
by Liam O'Ruairc
HENRI LEFEBVRE: LOVE AND STRUGGLE--SPATIAL DIALECTICS by Rob Sheilds (London: Routledge, 2000)
Henri Lefebvre (1901-91) was an independent French Marxist theoretician. An original, nonconformist thinker, Lefebvre was a prolific writer; in his lifetime, he published more than 60 books and 300 articles! In spite of his importance, very few studies have been devoted to Lefebvre's thought.
Lefebvre was the first to make accessible to the general public key writings of Marx and Lenin that were unknown outside Russia and Germany. Marx's early writings, such as the 1844 MANUSCRIPTS, were first published in Moscow in 1932. Lefebvre, with Norbert Guterman, published the first foreign language translations in 1934.
In 1938 he was responsible for the first foreign-language translation of Lenin's NOTEBOOKS ON HEGEL AND THE DIALECTIC. Lefebvre also published the same year an anthology of key extracts from Hegel's writings. Until then Hegel's philosophy was virtually unknown in France (Wahl and Kojeve had just begun their Hegel seminar) and Marxists ignored it.
Lefebvre wrote the first major theoretical work to advance a new reconstruction of Marxism on the basis of Marx's early work and Lenin's writings on Hegel and the dialectic: DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM (1939), published the same year as Stalin's DIALECTICAL AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. The contrast couldn't be greater.
His conceptual innovation is to have shown the centrality within Marx's thought of the concepts of "humanism," "alienation," "fetishism," "praxis," "total man." His originality is evident if one compares his methodological understanding of Marx and Lenin on dialectical materialism with the writings of Maurice Cornforth or, for a recent example, John Rees' ALGEBRA OF REVOLUTION.
Two important works by Lefebvre not discussed by Shields are MARXISM (1948) and his 1956 book on Lenin. Alienation and the dialectic were the cornerstone of Lefebvre's reading of Marx. The author notes that by extending alienation into the key concept in an entire critique of modern life, Lefebvre oversimplified Marx's and Engels' different uses of the concept. By extending the scope and meaning of alienation, Lefebvre had somewhat misread Marx. However, it is debatable to say that, for Marx, alienation was specific and restricted to the economic sphere.
It is unfortunate that Shields doesn't discuss some of Lefebvre's contributions in more detail. In 1947, for example, Lefebvre wrote a book called FORMAL LOGIC AND DIALECTICAL LOGIC, a brilliant systematic treatise written from the Marxist viewpoint. His philosophic testament, RETURN OF THE DIALECTIC (1986), is also virtually unknown.
Lefebvre is also significant for being perhaps THE first Marxist to recognize the importance of Nietzsche. His 1939 defense of Nietzsche against appropriation by fascists and vilification by Marxists is perhaps the best Marxist analysis of the thinker that has been written. Shields is right to note that Lefebvre is "an exemplary reader of theory as well as a radical producer of non-systematic theories but key insights and methodologies. In so far as this is true his work remains open-ended: a toolkit for progressive action now."
Lefebvre innovated by extending Marxist analysis to the sphere of "everyday life" and problems of urbanism--questions that had been ignored by the Left. He witnessed after World War II the rapid modernization and urbanization of French life. His critique of the "bureaucratic society of controlled consumption is reminiscent of Marcuse, but suffers from a certain impressionism.
Lefebvre made a more significant contribution by making the city an object for Marxist thought. For Shields, Lefebvre's lasting contribution will be his 1974 book on THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE, which redirected historical materialism towards a spatial problematic. This is the best part of Shields' book. Lefebvre transcoded the dialectic into spatial terms.
"What exactly is the mode of social relationships?" he asked. "The study of space offers an answer according to which the social relations of production have a social existence to the extent that they have a spatial existence; they project themselves into a space, becoming inscribed there, and in the process producing that space itself. Failing this, these relations would remain in the realm of 'pure abstraction,' that is to say in the realm of representations and hence of ideology: the realm of verbalism, verbiage and empty words."
From this Lefebvre develops a rich theory of the development of different systems of spatiality in different historical periods. His history of the different "modes of production of space" completes Marx's analysis of modes of production in urban, attitudinal and environmental terms. This is not just a theoretical question. A communist revolution must not only change the relationship of the proletariat to the means of production, but also create a new spatialization.
His theory provides a bridge from Marxist thought to environmental politics. Lefebvre advocated alternative and revolutionary restructurations of institutionalized discourses of space and new modes of spatial praxis ("differential space"), such as that by squatters or Third World slum dwellers, who fashion a spatial presence and practice outside the prevailing norms of enforced capitalist spatialization ("abstract space"). As a dialectician, Lefebvre understood that space and time were two categories that couldn't be separated. Before his death, he was working on a "rhythmanalysis" to link different rhythms (cyclical, linear, etc.) with different modes of spatiality.
The book doesn't emphasize enough how Lefebvre's thought was always intimately connected to political practice. Although for most of his life he was a university lecturer, he was never an "academic Marxist." Lefebvre always sought to unite thought and action. He was a member of the Communist Party of France from 1928 until he was expelled in 1957 for his heretical ideas. He later associated with a variety of left-wing movements and causes.
His books are echoes of all those struggles. One must read his books on urbanism and the city for example, with the battles between local communities and the planners and speculators regarding "redevelopment" and "slum clearance" in mind. His studies on rural sociology are related to the struggles of peasantry.
Lefebvre recognized the importance of so-called new social movements, like anti-racism or the struggles of oppressed nationalities like the Basques. Shields' book is to be welcomed for defending the contemporary relevance of Henri Lefebvre's contributions.
http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2003/October/Lefebvre%C2%AD_Oct03.htm
HENRI LEFEBVRE: LOVE AND STRUGGLE--SPATIAL DIALECTICS by Rob Sheilds (London: Routledge, 2000)
Henri Lefebvre (1901-91) was an independent French Marxist theoretician. An original, nonconformist thinker, Lefebvre was a prolific writer; in his lifetime, he published more than 60 books and 300 articles! In spite of his importance, very few studies have been devoted to Lefebvre's thought.
Lefebvre was the first to make accessible to the general public key writings of Marx and Lenin that were unknown outside Russia and Germany. Marx's early writings, such as the 1844 MANUSCRIPTS, were first published in Moscow in 1932. Lefebvre, with Norbert Guterman, published the first foreign language translations in 1934.
In 1938 he was responsible for the first foreign-language translation of Lenin's NOTEBOOKS ON HEGEL AND THE DIALECTIC. Lefebvre also published the same year an anthology of key extracts from Hegel's writings. Until then Hegel's philosophy was virtually unknown in France (Wahl and Kojeve had just begun their Hegel seminar) and Marxists ignored it.
Lefebvre wrote the first major theoretical work to advance a new reconstruction of Marxism on the basis of Marx's early work and Lenin's writings on Hegel and the dialectic: DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM (1939), published the same year as Stalin's DIALECTICAL AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. The contrast couldn't be greater.
His conceptual innovation is to have shown the centrality within Marx's thought of the concepts of "humanism," "alienation," "fetishism," "praxis," "total man." His originality is evident if one compares his methodological understanding of Marx and Lenin on dialectical materialism with the writings of Maurice Cornforth or, for a recent example, John Rees' ALGEBRA OF REVOLUTION.
Two important works by Lefebvre not discussed by Shields are MARXISM (1948) and his 1956 book on Lenin. Alienation and the dialectic were the cornerstone of Lefebvre's reading of Marx. The author notes that by extending alienation into the key concept in an entire critique of modern life, Lefebvre oversimplified Marx's and Engels' different uses of the concept. By extending the scope and meaning of alienation, Lefebvre had somewhat misread Marx. However, it is debatable to say that, for Marx, alienation was specific and restricted to the economic sphere.
It is unfortunate that Shields doesn't discuss some of Lefebvre's contributions in more detail. In 1947, for example, Lefebvre wrote a book called FORMAL LOGIC AND DIALECTICAL LOGIC, a brilliant systematic treatise written from the Marxist viewpoint. His philosophic testament, RETURN OF THE DIALECTIC (1986), is also virtually unknown.
Lefebvre is also significant for being perhaps THE first Marxist to recognize the importance of Nietzsche. His 1939 defense of Nietzsche against appropriation by fascists and vilification by Marxists is perhaps the best Marxist analysis of the thinker that has been written. Shields is right to note that Lefebvre is "an exemplary reader of theory as well as a radical producer of non-systematic theories but key insights and methodologies. In so far as this is true his work remains open-ended: a toolkit for progressive action now."
Lefebvre innovated by extending Marxist analysis to the sphere of "everyday life" and problems of urbanism--questions that had been ignored by the Left. He witnessed after World War II the rapid modernization and urbanization of French life. His critique of the "bureaucratic society of controlled consumption is reminiscent of Marcuse, but suffers from a certain impressionism.
Lefebvre made a more significant contribution by making the city an object for Marxist thought. For Shields, Lefebvre's lasting contribution will be his 1974 book on THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE, which redirected historical materialism towards a spatial problematic. This is the best part of Shields' book. Lefebvre transcoded the dialectic into spatial terms.
"What exactly is the mode of social relationships?" he asked. "The study of space offers an answer according to which the social relations of production have a social existence to the extent that they have a spatial existence; they project themselves into a space, becoming inscribed there, and in the process producing that space itself. Failing this, these relations would remain in the realm of 'pure abstraction,' that is to say in the realm of representations and hence of ideology: the realm of verbalism, verbiage and empty words."
From this Lefebvre develops a rich theory of the development of different systems of spatiality in different historical periods. His history of the different "modes of production of space" completes Marx's analysis of modes of production in urban, attitudinal and environmental terms. This is not just a theoretical question. A communist revolution must not only change the relationship of the proletariat to the means of production, but also create a new spatialization.
His theory provides a bridge from Marxist thought to environmental politics. Lefebvre advocated alternative and revolutionary restructurations of institutionalized discourses of space and new modes of spatial praxis ("differential space"), such as that by squatters or Third World slum dwellers, who fashion a spatial presence and practice outside the prevailing norms of enforced capitalist spatialization ("abstract space"). As a dialectician, Lefebvre understood that space and time were two categories that couldn't be separated. Before his death, he was working on a "rhythmanalysis" to link different rhythms (cyclical, linear, etc.) with different modes of spatiality.
The book doesn't emphasize enough how Lefebvre's thought was always intimately connected to political practice. Although for most of his life he was a university lecturer, he was never an "academic Marxist." Lefebvre always sought to unite thought and action. He was a member of the Communist Party of France from 1928 until he was expelled in 1957 for his heretical ideas. He later associated with a variety of left-wing movements and causes.
His books are echoes of all those struggles. One must read his books on urbanism and the city for example, with the battles between local communities and the planners and speculators regarding "redevelopment" and "slum clearance" in mind. His studies on rural sociology are related to the struggles of peasantry.
Lefebvre recognized the importance of so-called new social movements, like anti-racism or the struggles of oppressed nationalities like the Basques. Shields' book is to be welcomed for defending the contemporary relevance of Henri Lefebvre's contributions.
http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2003/October/Lefebvre%C2%AD_Oct03.htm
Yasukuni
Yasukuni as the symbol that represents all the unresolved issues from the Asia-Pacific
War, rather than paying careful attention to its multifaceted and rich, if controversial, histories and the attendant memories both collective and personal.
While scholars in many fields from history, philosophy, international relations
and religious studies, as well as journalists and critics have written prolifically about Yasukuni, few have ventured beyond the framework of “Yasukuni as a political problem.
Constitution that forbade state support of religious institutions in general, and in
particular, in forging a relationship between the state and a former military institution at a time when many of the wartime issues both domestic and international had not been resolved that needs to be resolved.”
First, in 1975, then Prime Minister Miki Takeo visited the shrine on August 15, becoming the first prime minister to visit on the day that Japan commemorates the end of the Asia-Pacific War. By defining his visit as that in a private capacity (shijin toshite), Miki set the precedent for the following prime ministers to clarify the capacity of their visits.
On April 19, 1979, major Japanese newspapers reported that during the enshrinement ritual preceding the 1978 fall festival, Yasukuni had quietly enshrined the fourteen Class A war criminals as Martyrs of Showa.
The attention to the site reached its peak during Nakasone’s tenure, who made his last, and most controversial, visit on August 15, 1985. The international criticism Nakasone’s visit attracted had swayed his successors to refrain from Yasukuni, until 2001 when Koizumi Jun’ichirô started his series of tributes.
Halbwachs, that is, invoked space as the fundamental medium of memory, a medium in
which “the past” takes objectified form in the immediacy of spatial cognition and
experience. For Halbwachs, then, to change space, was to change memory.
Lefebvre, for example, poses space as a social product, and one produced not only materially, but also through representations and social practices.
As Michel Foucault and others have argued, space cannot be inherently instrumental.
Space is created as a result of social practices that take place within. (22 Michel Foucault, “Space, Power and Knowledge,” in Simon During ed., The Cultural Studies
Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 161-169; Lefebvre, The Production of Space)
Central to the existence of Yasukuni is the emperor and the imperial cult.
The shrine was first constructed in 1869 (as Tokyo Shôkonsha) on an order from the
Meiji Emperor to create a site to collectively enshrine all those who died among the
victors in the civil war that brought about the Meiji Restoration.
From its inception, Yasukuni was a site constructed for the governing body to legitimize its political and military actions motivated by their desires for imperial expansion, and moreover, to create the impression that the actions were a result of popular yearning.
By allowing Yasukuni (or the imperial state that controlled it) to be the agent and the coercive force for these wartime activities, the presence of Yasukuni has succeeded in instilling a sense of victimhood to all Japanese – it was because of Yasukuni that all Japanese suffered during the war; it was because of Yasukuni that members of the Japanese military committed such violence at war. Yasukuni justified wartime violence in two ways. First, it gave little value to human life and awarded the status of a noble spirit (eirei) to all war dead – regardless of what kind of acts he (or she, in very limited cases) may have committed. Second, and more importantly, Yasukuni justified all violence conducted in the name of the emperor. Within the framework of a national cult that revered the emperor as god, those who killed for the emperor were considered heroes, those who lost their lives in the process became martyrs.
But as Carol Gluck points out: The victim’s history repeated in the post-Showa retrospectives omitted a painful lesson of World War II since learned around the world: that it is not possible to wage a total war with 28, 280, or even 28,000 people and that the responsibility for war lies far more broadly in society than was earlier believed, or hoped... It takes both states and societies – which is to say the individuals who comprise them – to make a total war(Carol Gluck, “The Idea of Showa,” in Gluck and Stephen R. Graubard eds., Showa: The Japan of Hirohito (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company), 13.).
War, rather than paying careful attention to its multifaceted and rich, if controversial, histories and the attendant memories both collective and personal.
While scholars in many fields from history, philosophy, international relations
and religious studies, as well as journalists and critics have written prolifically about Yasukuni, few have ventured beyond the framework of “Yasukuni as a political problem.
Constitution that forbade state support of religious institutions in general, and in
particular, in forging a relationship between the state and a former military institution at a time when many of the wartime issues both domestic and international had not been resolved that needs to be resolved.”
First, in 1975, then Prime Minister Miki Takeo visited the shrine on August 15, becoming the first prime minister to visit on the day that Japan commemorates the end of the Asia-Pacific War. By defining his visit as that in a private capacity (shijin toshite), Miki set the precedent for the following prime ministers to clarify the capacity of their visits.
On April 19, 1979, major Japanese newspapers reported that during the enshrinement ritual preceding the 1978 fall festival, Yasukuni had quietly enshrined the fourteen Class A war criminals as Martyrs of Showa.
The attention to the site reached its peak during Nakasone’s tenure, who made his last, and most controversial, visit on August 15, 1985. The international criticism Nakasone’s visit attracted had swayed his successors to refrain from Yasukuni, until 2001 when Koizumi Jun’ichirô started his series of tributes.
Halbwachs, that is, invoked space as the fundamental medium of memory, a medium in
which “the past” takes objectified form in the immediacy of spatial cognition and
experience. For Halbwachs, then, to change space, was to change memory.
Lefebvre, for example, poses space as a social product, and one produced not only materially, but also through representations and social practices.
As Michel Foucault and others have argued, space cannot be inherently instrumental.
Space is created as a result of social practices that take place within. (22 Michel Foucault, “Space, Power and Knowledge,” in Simon During ed., The Cultural Studies
Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 161-169; Lefebvre, The Production of Space)
Central to the existence of Yasukuni is the emperor and the imperial cult.
The shrine was first constructed in 1869 (as Tokyo Shôkonsha) on an order from the
Meiji Emperor to create a site to collectively enshrine all those who died among the
victors in the civil war that brought about the Meiji Restoration.
From its inception, Yasukuni was a site constructed for the governing body to legitimize its political and military actions motivated by their desires for imperial expansion, and moreover, to create the impression that the actions were a result of popular yearning.
By allowing Yasukuni (or the imperial state that controlled it) to be the agent and the coercive force for these wartime activities, the presence of Yasukuni has succeeded in instilling a sense of victimhood to all Japanese – it was because of Yasukuni that all Japanese suffered during the war; it was because of Yasukuni that members of the Japanese military committed such violence at war. Yasukuni justified wartime violence in two ways. First, it gave little value to human life and awarded the status of a noble spirit (eirei) to all war dead – regardless of what kind of acts he (or she, in very limited cases) may have committed. Second, and more importantly, Yasukuni justified all violence conducted in the name of the emperor. Within the framework of a national cult that revered the emperor as god, those who killed for the emperor were considered heroes, those who lost their lives in the process became martyrs.
But as Carol Gluck points out: The victim’s history repeated in the post-Showa retrospectives omitted a painful lesson of World War II since learned around the world: that it is not possible to wage a total war with 28, 280, or even 28,000 people and that the responsibility for war lies far more broadly in society than was earlier believed, or hoped... It takes both states and societies – which is to say the individuals who comprise them – to make a total war(Carol Gluck, “The Idea of Showa,” in Gluck and Stephen R. Graubard eds., Showa: The Japan of Hirohito (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company), 13.).
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