The Japan Society Review

Review by Ben-Ami Shillony This book puts forward a revisionist view of Japanese wartime thinking. It seeks to explore why Japanese intellectuals, historians and philosophers of the time insisted that Japan had to turn its back on the West and attack the United States and the British Empire. Based on a close reading of the texts written by members of the highly influential Kyoto School, and revisiting the dialogue between the Kyoto School and the German philosopher Heidegger, it argues that the work of Kyoto thinkers cannot be dismissed as mere fascist propaganda, and that this work, in which race is a key theme, constitutes a reasoned case for a post-White world. The author also argues that this theme is increasingly relevant at present, as demographic changes are set to transform the political and social landscape of North America and Western Europe over the next fifty years.

Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi Frog in the Well is a vivid and revealing account of Watanabe Kazan, one of the most important intellectuals of the late Tokugawa period. From his impoverished upbringing to his tragic suicide in exile, Kazan's life and work reflected a turbulent period in Japan's history. He was a famous artist, a Confucian scholar, a student of Western culture, a samurai, and a critic of the shogunate who, nevertheless, felt compelled to kill himself for fear that he had caused his lord anxiety.

Reviews by Ben-Ami Shillony The Pacific War was the most traumatic event in the modern histories of Japan, China, the United States, and many other nations. No wonder that more than sixty years after it ended it still attracts attention and stirs debate. In the various writings about the war, the former black and white stereotypes have given way to more shaded presentations, in which heroes and villains are not always distinguishable. The three interesting books under review here open a window through which we can see how the war was presented and perceived in Japan. Reading them together helps us understand the atmosphere in which the Japanese lived in those turbulent years.

By Samuel Hideo Yamashita The Pacific War was the most traumatic event in the modern histories of Japan, China, the United States, and many other nations. No wonder that more than sixty years after it ended it still attracts attention and stirs debate. In the various writings about the war, the former black and white stereotypes have given way to more shaded presentations, in which heroes and villains are not always distinguishable. The three interesting books under review here open a window through which we can see how the war was presented and perceived in Japan. Reading them together helps us understand the atmosphere in which the Japanese lived in those turbulent years. Reviews by Ben-Ami Shillony

By Barak Kushner The Pacific War was the most traumatic event in the modern histories of Japan, China, the United States, and many other nations. No wonder that more than sixty years after it ended it still attracts attention and stirs debate. In the various writings about the war, the former black and white stereotypes have given way to more shaded presentations, in which heroes and villains are not always distinguishable. The three interesting books under review here open a window through which we can see how the war was presented and perceived in Japan. Reading them together helps us understand the atmosphere in which the Japanese lived in those turbulent years. Reviews by Ben-Ami Shillony

By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi

By Oka Yoshitake, edited by Shinohara Hajime and Mitani Taiichiro (Japanese) Readers may like to receive a brief notice (rather belatedly, I fear) of an interesting and insightful work. It is the London Diary of the Japanese academic, Oka Yoshitake (1902-1990) who became after the war one of the most eminent professors of Japanese political history at the University of Tokyo. As an assistant at that university, he spent the years 1936-7 on sabbatical in Britain, based in London. He wrote substantial diary entries daily and these were dutifully assembled by two of his successors after his death. Review by Ian Nish

By Tadashi Yamamoto and Charles Morrison, et. al. This book assesses the importance of enhanced ASEAN-Japan cooperation as a step toward a greater East Asian regional community. Fifteen international relations experts from ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries and Japan, as well as China, South Korea, and the United States, review the history and current status of this bilateral relationship and propose how it can be strengthened. Review by Tomohiko Taniguchi

By Sadao Asada Drawing on previously unused Japanese records from the three naval conferences of the 1920s—the Washington Conference of 1921-22, the Geneva Conference of 1927, and the London Conference of 1930—the author examines the strategic dilemma facing the Japanese navy during the 1920s and 1930s against the background of advancing weapon technology and increasing doubt about the relevance of battleships. He also analyzes the decisions that led to war with the United States—namely, the 1936 withdrawal from naval treaties, the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, and the armed advance into south Indochina in July 1941—in the context of bureaucratic struggles between the army and navy to gain supremacy. Review by Ian Nish

By Sukehiro Hirakawa Professor Hirakawa in a postscript (page 544) emphasises the importance "for Westerners to study not only the life and thought of the Orient but also to study those of the Occident from the Oriental points of view." This book is a significant contribution to this task. It is written in good clear English and demonstrates the width of the author's knowledge and cultural understanding. For anyone interested in Japanese literature and Japan's relations with the rest of the world this book contains much of interest as well as insights into a wide range of historical as well as cultural issues. Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi