(no subject)
Irokawa Daikichi, The Culture of the Meiji Period, translation ed. Marius B. Jansen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
A rich book, but probably more telling about Japanese intellectuals of the post-war period (originally published in Japanese in '69) than Meiji history 'proper,' as Irokawa is unabashedly coming from an exceptionalist framework: the first sentence of the book is "Japan is a peculiar country" (3). Homesickness is described as a particularly Japanese trait (!), for example. The book is loaded with these sort of examples - why Japan is special.
Irokawa is looking at "popular" thoughts and conceptions and ... class consciousness? The great usefulness is that he gets beyond the urban intellectuals and down go 'down to the village' in many senses - we see both rural intellectuals and 'inarticulate' peasants. It's very successful in parts, not so successful in others, but one must realize it's coming from Japanese schools of academia & thus reads *very* differently than contemporaneous American counterparts (and that's OK). The translation, though done by several people, is extremely consistent and well edited.
Sort of a response to Maruyama et al., and it's certainly a celebration of the 'common person' - overly enthusiastically so in some cases, the excitement and vigor practically leaps off the page - and their agency.
I think Irokawa was quite successful in defining various strata of people - the differentiation between, say, 'lettered' village headmen and their 'unlettered' villagers, or that group as a whole versus the government and so on. Useful because a vibrant picture emerges - drawn from some little-used sources - of people who are so often rolled over in more common histories. I'm not entirely convinced by his argument(s), but a lovely translation & important to checking out the 'popular history' school of Japanese history. Overall, it is successful in pulling in the 'everyday' of average village dwellers, and that is probably the most important part.
A rich book, but probably more telling about Japanese intellectuals of the post-war period (originally published in Japanese in '69) than Meiji history 'proper,' as Irokawa is unabashedly coming from an exceptionalist framework: the first sentence of the book is "Japan is a peculiar country" (3). Homesickness is described as a particularly Japanese trait (!), for example. The book is loaded with these sort of examples - why Japan is special.
Irokawa is looking at "popular" thoughts and conceptions and ... class consciousness? The great usefulness is that he gets beyond the urban intellectuals and down go 'down to the village' in many senses - we see both rural intellectuals and 'inarticulate' peasants. It's very successful in parts, not so successful in others, but one must realize it's coming from Japanese schools of academia & thus reads *very* differently than contemporaneous American counterparts (and that's OK). The translation, though done by several people, is extremely consistent and well edited.
Sort of a response to Maruyama et al., and it's certainly a celebration of the 'common person' - overly enthusiastically so in some cases, the excitement and vigor practically leaps off the page - and their agency.
I think Irokawa was quite successful in defining various strata of people - the differentiation between, say, 'lettered' village headmen and their 'unlettered' villagers, or that group as a whole versus the government and so on. Useful because a vibrant picture emerges - drawn from some little-used sources - of people who are so often rolled over in more common histories. I'm not entirely convinced by his argument(s), but a lovely translation & important to checking out the 'popular history' school of Japanese history. Overall, it is successful in pulling in the 'everyday' of average village dwellers, and that is probably the most important part.