The Cultural Dimension of Sino-Japanese Relations: Essays on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (review)

FEATURES Joshua A. Fogel. The Cultural Dimension ofSino-Japanese Relations: Essays on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Armonie, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. vii, 216 pp. Hardcover $49.95. Paperback $18.95. An often-found flaw of East Asian scholarship is its ultimately nationalistic orientation . This flaw, however, is not infrequently mistaken as a virtue. Conventional wisdom thus suggests that respectable, serious scholars can be identified as either China, Japan, or Korea specialists while those lacking the linguistic and research skills to focus on the sources of one country become general practitioners of Asian studies. But the real giants in the jungle ofAsian studies belie such facile wisdom: Edwin Reischauer, for example, studied Ennin PJt (793-864), a Japanese monk famous for the diary ofhis pilgrimage to late-Tang )H (618-907) China; Ryusaku Tsunoda and Carrington Goodrich pioneered research in Chinese historiography on Japan; Marius Jansen repeatedly researched points ofintersection between China and Japan; Arthur Waley and Burton Watson have translated classics from both the Chinese and Japanese literary traditions; Wm. Theodore de Bary has contributed monumental anthologies and monographs exploring the various incarnations ofNeo-Confucianism in China, Korea, and Japan; Akira Iriye has written widely on East Asian diplomatic relations; and Conrad Schirokauer has offered historical studies ofthe civilizations of China and Japan. It has been just over a decade since Josh Fogel joined these luminaries with the publication ofhis Politics and Sinology: The Case ofNaitö Konan, 1866-1934 (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984). In addition to numerous publications in the most reputable journals ofeach field, Fogel has distinguished himselfand his field, that ofSino-Japanese scholarship, by founding Sino-Japanese Studies, a journal devoted to specialized research pertaining jointly to China and Japan. As a result, the still young Fogel is increasingly recognized, as one ofhis colleagues recently put it, as "the leading American authority on the history ofSino-Japanese relations." His latest contribution, The Cultural Dimension ofSino-Japanese Rehtions, is a one-man anthology composed ofa well-selected sampling ofthe fascinating essays that Fogel has produced in© 1995 by University the last decade. A meta-lesson to be learned from this volume is that respectable ofHawai'i Pressscholarship on either Japan or China cannot rely exclusively on the scholarship produced by researchers in the country that one is studying. If one hopes to research either Chinese or Japanese topics exhaustively and authoritatively, one 346 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 must be conversant with the scholarship ofthe other country (China on Japan and/or Japan on China) on the same topic. This lesson is common sense for serious China scholars; after all, many of the most crucial resources pertaining to Chinese history exist only in Japan, and some ofthe most advanced modern studies ofChina have been produced by Japanese scholars. The lesson may seem more debatable to those Japan specialists who more often quote European methodological ideologues than they cite Chinese scholars who have publications related to their areas of research. This reviewer, whose specialty is Tokugawa íü'Jtl (1603-1867) Neo-Confucianism and who therefore well realizes the centrality of Chinese texts and analytic studies for understanding Japanese intellectual history, thoroughly agrees with the methodological agenda which Fogel seeks to advance. And I think that the value ofthe latter will gain greater recognition in the decades to come. Fogel's angle is not a fad, nor are the essays in his book merely slick and fashionable. Fogel divides The Cultural Dimension into two parts, "China in Japan" and "Japan in China," presenting four essays in each. Since many ofthese erudite essays have appeared previously in either journals or anthologies, it might be helpful to identify their previous manifestations and to summarize their main points. The first essay, one in comparative sinology, is titled "On the 'Rediscovery' ofthe Chinese Past: Cui Shu and Related Cases," and is a revised version ofits precursor in Perspectives on a Changing China: Essays in Honor ofProfessor C. Martin Wilbur on the Occasion ofHis Retirement, edited by Joshua Fogel and William T. Rowe (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979). It recounts how the historiographical theories of Cui Shu ÎË5È (Jpn: Sai Jutsu, 1740-1816) were variously "rediscovered...