The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan (review)

Reviews 153 There are 173 photographs and illustrations that serve to provide visual images for the introduction and discussion ofeach theme. The vast majority ofthe images have already been used in other works that have dealt with Chinese Americans ; these images consist ofexterior shots in China, Chinatown, and various work sites. The remainder are posed photographic portraits taken in studios. Only five images show the inside ofpeoples' homes or other informal settings, which can be used to give the reader better insight into Chinese American community life. Despite its many limitations, The Chinese American FamilyAlbum still makes a contribution to the emerging field of Chinese American studies. It can be a useful tool in educating the general public about a significant segment ofmultiethnic and multicultural America. Gregory Yee Mark University of Hawai'i IrSI Germaine A. Hoston. The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xii, 628 pp. Hardcover $85.00, isbn 0-691-07873-4. Paperback $24.95, ISBN 0-691-02334-4. According to her preface, Germaine A. Hoston had two intentions in writing this book: (1) to investigate what Marxism came to mean in a non-Western world and (2) to demonstrate what dilemmas were faced by radical leaders during the process of transformation in the modernization of China and Japan. For the author, the philosophical context ofMarxism is the whole background ofhumanity, nature, and society in Western Europe; within this context she applies her method to a China that had always assumed its own culture to be so superior that it would forever be an exporter ofthe "essence of Chineseness," and to a Japan that had never hesitated to borrow from others so as to advance its own condition. The book is mainly concerned with the period preceding the Second World War, but it includes an epilogue that covers postwar China and Japan. First, she gives an overview ofdevelopments in Western Europe, where increasing wealth and involvement in the public sphere made it possible for a new© 1996 by University political person to grow out ofthe existing private and public person. In Western ofHawai'i PressEurope this political person emerged from within society and not as the result of an impetus from above or below. In Russia, on the other hand, Marxism as it was interpreted by the Bolsheviks supported the idea ofa revolution from above. This 154 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 Russian version made it easier for Chinese and Japanese intellectuals to circumvent the bourgeoisie stage in the development ofa classless Marxist society, but it left problems related to state and society unresolved because "the national question ultimately concerned the very survival of the peoples these revolutionaries aspired to liberate by means of a socialist revolution" (p. 402). Chinese and Japanese Marxists first got to know the ideology from the works of Spencer and Huxley, and social Darwinism became the mode ofexplanation. The early Japanese then tried to integrate these ideas into their Neo-Confucian and Shinto traditions, whereas the Chinese attached the new ideology to Mencius' early concept oflegitimate revolt, which allowed the people to rise up and overthrow a bad leader. But on the whole the Chinese made few attempts to combine their own philosophical ideas with Marxism, using it instead simply to smash the existing order. The Japanese, on die other hand, used Marxism to strengthen that order. Clearly the level of self-assurance was somewhat higher among the Japanese than among the Chinese. In addition to the general problem ofaccommodating Marx into an alien culture, East Asian intellectuals had to face the issue that certain ofMarx's philosophical concepts were not fully developed. Even though Lenin had taken Marx's ideas on state and nation and developed them further in his State and Revolution (1917), in which he postulated that the modern state was a "dictatorship ofthe bourgeoisie," this oversimplification merely added to the problems ofbudding Marxists in China and Japan because it left out too many ofMarx's other theories . The practical implications ofa Western philosophical concept applied to China and Japan are experdy dealt with here by Hoston. The treatment ofanarchism and its early role and...