The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy: Essays in Honour of J. A. A. Stockwin (review)

The title seems to say it all. This is a festschrift of essays produced by former students and colleagues of Arthur Stockwin and held together by a thematic focus on the Japanese left, in keeping with the thrust of much of his own work. A festschrift is an awkward genre to produce and also to review. The volume is a gift to one person. Scholars contribute to it because they want to express their gratitude to their mentor; the editors accept contributions and add their own in the same spirit, which may constrain editorial decisions. The reviewer, on the other hand, must evaluate the book's general contribution to scholarship regardless of its value to the person it honors, while not diminishing the gift by meanspirited criticism. The problem then becomes the criteria by which such an endeavor ought to be judged. To hold it to the usual standards of an edited volume of scholarly work and completely ignore the fact that it is a festschrift would not be fair; yet to treat it only as a festschrift would be a disservice to readers.

Let us dispense first with the volume's "festschrift-ness." The two editors have divided up the task of introducing the volume. Rikki Kersten begins with a fond introduction to Arthur Stockwin as teacher and scholar that gives the reader a sense of the personal contributions he has made to the lives of his students, while also offering a brief overview of his scholarly achievements. The footnote references do not begin to provide a full bib-liography, but they do lead the reader to some of Stockwin's major works. Kersten paints a familiar and credible picture for those who know the honoree and a warm introduction for those who do not. She does it with a light touch and avoids syrupy fawning. Festschrift Task 1 passes with high marks.

Task 2, explaining the volume's range and organization, was left to coeditor David Williams. After first offering a rather dubious psychological interpretation based on the presumed tension between a teacher imposing his own perspective and the student's urge to rebel and challenge orthodoxy, he tries valiantly to find some intellectual coherence in the disparate array of essays. In the end, the volume only achieves a modicum of order by pushing its rebellious cats into separate cages: part I includes three intellectual history essays whose title, "Left-wing Thought from the Russian Revolution to the War on Terrorism," reveals the basic problem; part II groups three much more congenial empirical analyses under the title "The Metamorphosis of the Left in Postwar Japan"; and part III clusters the final three essays uncomfortably under the title "Settling Accounts: Globalization, American Empire and History's Judgment." The section titles hint that the volume has some trouble focusing on its advertised purview of Japan Studies, let alone on the left in the shaping of Japanese democracy. As will be apparent when we examine the content of the essays, the most difficult cat to herd was Williams himself.

The presentation in this second introduction is straightforward enough; the problem is with the nature of a festschrift collection and the way the editors chose to order it. Few academic publishers will accept an edited volume of essays these days, and the standards have become steadily higher. The expectation is that the individual essays will display a fairly high degree of coherence and intellectual interaction. This is achieved with a strong problem statement and careful selection of participants, and then nurtured through face-to-face conference participation, critical readers' comments, and a strong editorial hand. It is difficult for a festschrift to meet these standards, especially if the honoree has had a wide range of students who want to participate. It seems unfair to hold this volume to such a high standard of overall...