Yamaji Aizan and His Time: Nationalism and Debating Japanese History (review)

Yamaji Aizan (1864–1917) was a historian, literary critic, and political commentator who rose to prominence in the 1890s as a writer for Tokutomi Sohō’s publishing house, Min’yûsha. Many of his articles appeared in the pages of Kokumin no tomo as well as in other leading journals of the day. He also published a large number of books on historical topics but is regarded as a “popular” historian because he did not pursue an academic career. A member of the first generation to grow up after the Meiji Restoration, in his writings Yamaji provides many useful insights into the rapidly changing world in which he lived. In the opening chapters of this new study, Yushi Ito gives a brief outline of Yamaji’s early life and presents an account of his well-known debate with Kitamura Tōkoku concerning the social function of literature. In the rest of the book, Ito argues, firstly, that Yamaji’s research in the area of Japanese social history has been unreasonably neglected and, secondly, that Yamaji’s political thought was much more liberal than his reputation as an “imperialist” would suggest.

As the author indicates at the outset, this study is based on a book originally published in Japanese in 2005. Ito draws heavily on both primary and secondary sources to make his arguments, and in this regard the book makes an important contribution to the field. Its origins as an English-language version of a Japanese book is the source of a number of problems, however. At a superficial level, the text contains many grammatical errors, clumsy sentences, and unnecessarily repetitive expressions that more careful proofreading and editing should have corrected. At a deeper level, the author devotes considerable space to issues that would be of interest principally to a Japanese-reading audience. Ito is keen to rehabilitate Yamaji’s reputation, and to do this he frequently argues either that Yamaji’s ideas have been misunderstood or that he expressed good ideas that were later taken up or popularized by others. These points relate almost exclusively to issues in the Japanese-language historiography and are not particularly useful in a book aimed at an English-reading audience. In contrast, Ito pays relatively little attention to relevant English-language research and has not made much attempt to integrate his findings into the existing English-language historiography. This is to be regretted, as the material he discusses is extremely important and should be of great interest to anyone concerned with modern Japanese history. For example, throughout the text Ito compares and contrasts Yamaji’s ideas with those of Inoue Tetsujirō, a professor of philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University. This is a useful way of understanding Yamaji’s thought, for Inoue can be regarded as Yamaji’s lifelong opponent. Ito, however, fails to bring out the full significance of the conflict between the two, for this was not simply a personal disagreement between individuals (as was Yamaji’s dispute with Kitamura), but was symbolic of a much broader process going on in Japanese society at the time.

In the 1880s, many within the ruling elite became concerned about what they regarded as the excessive influence of Western ideas in Japan. People also feared that lack of a sufficient sense of national unity would result in the country falling victim to Western imperialism. To counter this, considerable effort was put into creating an ideology that stressed the historic, ethnic, and spiritual unity of the Japanese people, and this was disseminated to the population through the education system. As with other aspects of government policy, the ruling elite disputed bitterly over ideology, and the outcome of these various disputes shaped the form state-sponsored civic morality came to take. In this process, the power and influence of the various protagonists outweighed free competition between rival ideas. As a professor at the Imperial University, Inoue was part of the state apparatus; moreover, some of his most...