Rhetoric in Modern Japan: Western Influences on the Development of Narrative and Oratorical Style (review)

Massimiliano Tomasi has written a useful and illuminating study that explores an aspect of Japanese literary history heretofore largely overlooked in English-language scholarship. Tomasi's primary aim is to trace the impact of Western theories and practices of rhetoric, which is broadly defined as either the art of persuasive speaking and elegant composition, or the art of effective expression, on the gradual development of a standard vernacular style for both spoken and written Japanese. Because he avoids overreaching conclusions about the influence of Western conceptions of rhetoric, Tomasi succeeds in making a persuasive case for the instrumental effects of those conceptions. The result is a literary history that extends our understanding of the material and cultural milieu in which key elements of modern literary style and narrative form emerged.

Rhetoric in Modern Japan is organized around three main lines of inquiry. In the opening section of the book, Tomasi provides a survey of the history of rhetoric in the West from classical antiquity down to the nineteenth century and in Japan. The author is careful to acknowledge that his account runs the risk of oversimplifying the subject. Yet his decision to set out a general history is helpful in that it gives a sense of how Western rhetoricians, especially those in the nineteenth century, interpreted that history and their own position within it, thus providing some insight into the assumptions they brought to their methodologies. If there is any shortcoming to the author's approach, it is that he focuses primarily on establishing the widespread importance the study of rhetoric had assumed in the West by the nineteenth century without fully exploring the underlying ideological grounds on which that importance was justified. The author does discuss a number of the ideological sources of the fascination rhetoric held for Meiji intellectuals, educators, politicians, and artists later in the book, but he does not establish a firm connection between the ideological uses of rhetoric in the West and those in Meiji Japan. That connection seems to have been taken as a given, but the historical implications are significant enough that this is an issue that warrants further examination.

The author also takes the existence of a native rhetorical tradition in pre-Meiji Japan to be axiomatic, though he provides a concise and cogent survey of practices prior to Japan's full-scale encounter with Western ideas about rhetoric. Tomasi's discussion ranges from treatises on Heian poetics to the performance arts that grew out of the traditions of Buddhist sermons and popular storytelling forms. His purpose, as he tells us, is not so much to provide a history of pre-Meiji rhetoric and the modalities of its development as to set the stage for the main subject, which is to look at the impact of the West. By providing an overview of pre-Meiji practices, the author helps to contextualize the state of Japanese discourse on rhetoric at the moment when Western conceptions began to exert their influence. However, by viewing the pre-Meiji tradition as beyond the scope of his book, the author has set aside the question of how ideological assumptions about language from at least the eighteenth century on may have determined the reception of Western rhetoric. He also sets aside the question of how the problem of political legitimization confronted by the Meiji state may have contributed to a disregard of earlier rhetorical practices as part of a general dismissal of the culture of the Tokugawa regime. Once again, the historical implications of these assumptions are such that I hope the author will continue to pursue this topic in greater depth.

The second section of the book is devoted to a history of rhetoric in the Meiji and Taisho periods. Western rhetoric, Tomasi argues, had its initial impact in Japan on the art of speechmaking. This marked a genuine break, a moment of cultural discontinuity in...