Makoto und Aufrichtigkeit: Eine Begriffs- und Diskursgeschichte (review)

Makoto—interpreted variously as sincerity, directness, spontaneity, authenticity, or purity of motive—is often considered a core value of Japanese culture and central to, among other things, Shinto, Japanese poetry, and the ethos of the samurai. In Makoto und Aufrichtigkeit, Gerhard Bierwirth calls this idea into question by examining the multifaceted discourse on makoto that took place in the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, including the framing of this term in relation to the equally complex notion of "sincerity" imported to Japan from the West. He argues that any particular understanding of makoto needs to be seen as historically bound, making it meaningless to speak of the term's "true meaning" or to associate it with any timeless notion of Japanese culture. With this book, Bierwirth offers a critique of a certain view of cultural keywords, one that sees such words as having stable meanings transparently understood by cultural insiders, while at the same time possessing a radical untranslatability that makes them serve as markers of cultural difference. What such a view overlooks, and what Bierwirth's approach brings to the forefront, is how such terms have been actively constructed and contested in the service of a wide range of ideologies in different historical contexts. Seen in this light, terms like makoto appear more as sites of conflict than as expressions of a unified culture.

Before entering into his main discussion of the treatment of makoto in Japan, Bierwirth presents an outline of the discourse on "sincerity" in early modern Europe, which he describes as incorporating two basic paradigms for understanding the meaning of the term. The first, which he labels the "idealistic" variant of this concept, stresses the purification of the inner self through isolation from and renunciation of a corrupt world; in this view, sincerity encompasses simplicity, spontaneity, and immediacy. The second, "pragmatic," paradigm is instead interpersonal in orientation, emphasizing communication and trustworthiness. Despite the conflict between these two versions of sincerity, Bierwirth argues that they should be seen as dialectically related, not merely opposed, as the more one type is emphasized, the greater the demand becomes for the other. The internal contradictions of this dialectical structure are connected, he writes, to a new conception of the individual within a deracinated capitalist society in which there arises a need not only for the defense of an authentic private interiority, but also for the means to reach out to and establish bonds with others who are encountered as strangers.

This discourse on sincerity came to play an important role in the Meiji period, Bierwirth writes, in the development of notions of individualism and national identity, which were framed within narratives of evolution and modernization. Describing how the internal oppositions of the discourse were manifested in ideas concerning Japan's relationship to the West, he writes that "Japan's new openness for Western ideas and values also contained from the very beginning the demand to protect its identity and interiority from the grasp of foreigners and to overcome the confusion that resulted from the contradiction between openness and exclusion" (p. 124). He describes the dialectic of sincerity not only in terms of how Japanese related to the West, but also in terms of the experience of Westerners in Japan. Foreigners, he argues, longed for an interpersonal sincerity that would allow them to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers and connect with the Japanese. When their attempts to achieve this led to artificial role-playing, though, they were drawn to the other, idealistic, pole of sincerity, in which they appealed to nostalgic images of a culturally pure Japan as a lost paradise. Bierwirth examines how relations between Japan and the West are depicted in two works by foreigners who spent time in Japan, "Un bal à Yeddo" (A Ball in Yeddo), by Pierre Loti (1850-1923), and "A Conservative," by Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), as well as two retellings of these stories by Japanese authors, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's (1892-1927) "Butōkai" (The Ball) and Mori Ōgai's (1862-1922) "M...