Japan and the Shackles of the Past
By R. Taggart Murphy
Oxford University Press, New York
2014, 472 pages
ISBN 978-0-19-984598-9
Review by Richard Coxford
In Japan and the Shackles of the Past, Tsukuba University Professor for the MBA program Richard Taggart Murphy brings to bear a customarily wide-ranging and charismatic argument to the conundrum of modern Japanese History. Murphy’s emotional investment is on par with any author on Japan, having first visited Japan around 1967-8, drawing on both his vast business (and more recently teaching) experience, alongside reflections from a father who served in the Pacific theatre and ultimately reconciled with Japan. Where he perhaps errs is in writing too explicitly for an American audience who he hopes would be mostly ignorant of Japan, and going beyond his strong economic back-catalogue to attempt catch-all History.
The chronology traverses from before the Heian era (794-1185) to the present day. Those cramped ‘pre-Edo’ and Nineteenth Century chapters are all over the place structurally but gamely illustrate the author’s views on Japanese national character by criss-crossing Buddhism, Christianity, Chinese cultural appropriation, early (extant) literature, the Emperor, Feudalism, Europe’s appearance, and Shunga. Further thrown in are some culinary, linguistic, and musical history tidbits. Problems abound, but glaring ones include the exclusion of Westerners besides the VOC (Dutch East India Company) meaning total Japanese ignorance of the world, either eschewing or unaware of the annual questionnaires the VOC answered on the outside world. One which is equally entrenched in the American literature on which he relies is the minimisation of Britain’s impact. Crediting Perry with the “scramble” for Japan, he cites the 1776 and 1789 revolutions, Russian incursions, the Opium Wars and internal unrest for the Bakufu’s fall, but belittles Britain’s significant contributions. Where Britain pushed back Russian entry to a number of outlying islands, British trading communities galvanised the push to negotiate with Japan, and the Royal Navy catalysed the Satsuma-Choshu rebellion and its ultimate success with the 1863 Anglo-Satsuma war, in this narrative Britain is relegated to at best an incidental actor. Murphy concedes that this grew out of a ‘quick and dirty general survey’ and the lack of bibliography shows it has not evolved much since. Further compromising its validity and displaying the lack of academic depth is the fact even the ‘recommended reading’ is insanely brief for anyone trying to write a History of Japan that goes beyond tourist vacation fodder. Historical oversimplifications seem to be derived from synthesising just some of the prevailing American literature rather than delving further afield, so more pedantic readers might be pained by the historical brevity adopted. As a rejoinder to this book’s overwhelming preponderance of American debates, and for sustenance beyond the Index’s cursory summaries of Meiji era (1868-1912) figures in particular, I recommend Ian Nish, Par Kristoffer Cassel, Peter Lowe and Ishii Takashi.
Tracts of his economic and gender history however could be repackaged into excellent articles. They are held captive within the shaky generalisation of a Japanese national narrative, but Murphy ranges with ease over the economic “miracle”, employment practices, the growing tax intake problem in restructuring Japan, and most interestingly gender economy. An explicit discussion of career routes historically available to Japanese women conforms to the book’s sensationalism by overemphasizing a paucity of options outside the hostess or sex trade; but he takes a good stab at analysing gender affairs. Murphy is very subtle in describing present circumstances not as ‘Japanese feminism’ but a broadening of possibilities where much remains to be done. Namely, backing up buzzwords like “Womenomics” with mechanisms for (for one) women to get fair treatment after marriage and childbirth. Murphy delights in reeling off economic-political scandals, sustaining that Japanese businesses’ opacity undermines their being a ‘proper’ capitalist economy, and questioning Abenomics as a poor stopgap solution to the growing clarion call for a ‘revolution in Japanese internal business practices’. Clearly a sublime business analyst, his diatribe on current Japanese politics misses the mark by unfortunately pandering to the lowest common denominator of contradictory Japanese pacifism, condemning collective self-defence as unconstitutional backwards steps to pre-war Japan, while simultaneously awaiting the removal of US bases and the demise of the present American alliance.
The key to his overarching argument is the leitmotif of Japan as a well-worn tragic tale. Since the Bakumatsu period (1854-68) Japan is an exploited, culturally usurped nation and not much has changed because the tribal system of patronage is called ‘feudal’. On which note, if repetition easily sways you, then you will also acquire some slang. One phrase used unashamedly often undercuts the significance of even his finer political points, as he describes PM Abe as “KY” (kuki ga yomenai = can’t read the mood). Peculiar, often pop culture analogies meanwhile run the gamut from Lord of the Rings to Islamic extremism. Murphy’s argument can be enthralling, but he has an alarmist, even conspiracy theorist tendency to adopt overly succinct teleological interpretations and to exaggerate his case to this reader’s amusement. One sentence certainties proclaim that Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Korea campaign caused the overextension and collapse of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), that Japanese short-sightedness is to blame for Mao winning the Chinese Civil War, and that all Japanese foreign policy since the occupation has been trying to keep up with and desperately understand America’s wishes. The lattermost point is quite pernicious, because it overplays the truth of Japan’s understandably important American alliance into a character assassination of post-war Japan. Murphy unknowingly reinstates what Michael Auslin dispelled about 19th Century Japanese diplomacy, that Japan is essentially a weaker power doing whatever it can to appease and survive its superiors. There is no small irony in the way Murphy says Westerners still invent Japans to suit their own purposes when he himself invents this feudalistic vassal of America. It is actually surprising he does not cite the unannounced movements of American nuclear material into Japanese territory that occurred sporadically in the Cold War, given it fits his style and method of denigrating America and Japan simultaneously. US basing is an appropriate source of ire, as the average servicemen of any nation find it hard living up to the diplomatic billing of the country they represent, but to an extent he lets his scorn for the treatment of Okinawa (a “sacrificial offering” from Tokyo) poison his whole argument. The American-Japanese relationship is far from perfect, but even the fact Japan gets the entire umbrella of American support without any reciprocal obligations to defend America is portrayed as servitude, somehow. In light of the fact he describes Japanese schoolchildren cleaning their own school in the past tense and as evidence of “Spartan schools” created by GHQ/SCAP, and cites as historical evidence works by the great writer Mishima Yukio without acknowledging that brilliant writer’s political extremity and self-wrought demise, it can be hard to trust his judgement.
The more current affairs in his polemic cover the modern Japanese diaspora, Japan’s self-defence forces, the American security relationship, and a four page mini-essay on how Japanese baseball defines the mental world of the salaryman. From World War Two onwards his book is all about America, with no time for EEC/EU or British relations. Murphy juxtaposes the good nature and ethics of the Japanese people, and the Japanese political leaderships that manifest, while arguing those leaders have gradually declined in intelligence and competence to the point of PM Abe. He produces a very spirited and thought-provoking defence of the DPJ’s 2009-12 time in office, cursing the treatment of Hatoyama Yukio by American civil servants with institutional linkages to the LDP, and puffs up former leader Ozawa Ichiro into the political maneuverer who could have saved Japan. America allegedly “destroyed” the best Japanese government that wasn’t, by pushing the DPJ out of power, as PM Abe drags Japan backwards to the ‘kokutai’ (national body politics, even Imperial devotion). His argument comes down in favour of a rigid interpretation of Article 9, claiming the military is unconstitutional, yet mocks the passive and indeed compromising position of Japanese peacekeepers, where in Iraq they were only allowed to defend themselves and only if fired on. Murphy sees no problem in simultaneously querying the existence, and the efficacy of Japan’s strained self-defence forces. Plus, he seems unaware of lesser-announced non-combat operations successfully executed by Japan to support her international allies, from the minesweeping of Japan before the peace treaty aboard USS Missouri and Korea 1950-3, to efforts assisting counter-piracy. Overall Murphy might wish to expand his reading material before pontificating on security in future. Although he perennially overplays the idea that Japan is a mere extension of America operating under some illusion of independence, one good analytical point is that unlike other close US allies there is no Japanese-American pressure group motivating caution in American treatment of Japan.
This is the wrong book for anyone wanting to nourish their love of Japanese history, just as readers of the Japan Society Review are the wrong audience. Shackles of the Past is decidedly aimed at Americans with little knowledge of Japan. In spite of this, readers could sift out the economic chapters covering the miracle, the high-speed growth, employment practices, working hours and so forth, and gain some standout economic history. Reading cover to cover will just serve to show how an argument’s strength can be buried underneath the weight of history, if history is not managed diligently.