Re-understanding Japan: Chinese Perspectives, 1895-1945 (review)

On seeing the title, I imagined that this book would offer new Chinese perspectives on what happened between China and Japan during that tumultuous fifty-year period from 1895 to 1945. With guarded optimism, I had hopes that, at last, young Chinese scholars are now endeavoring to re-understand the Japan of the tragic first half of the twentieth century, and I quickly agreed to review the book without knowing its contents. When the review copy arrived, however, my hopes faded as I saw the photographs of some very familiar old faces. Yes, it turned out that the book is simply a collective biography of four Chinese men, Jiang Baili (1882-1938), Zhou Zuoren (1886-1967), Dai Jitao (1891-1949), and Guo Moruo (1892-1979), who were all well known for their Japan connections.

But this turned out to be a well-written and absorbing book nonetheless.

What the author means by "re-understanding Japan" is the Chinese rediscovery of Japan in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Only after China's defeat, she notes, did the Chinese take a new look at Japan, which they had previously dismissed for over a millennium as a mere "little island country," and begin to view it as a model for China's own modernization.

The four men discussed in this book were outstanding examples of Japan-educated professionals who achieved prominence in the military, political, and literary circles of early twentieth-century China. The author selected them to study for her Ph. D. dissertation at Cornell University, from which this book evolved, because they were all distinguished by an intellectual, physical, and emotional engagement with Japan that was deeper than that of any of their contemporaries. Moreover, unlike many others who had substantial involvements with Japan, they left a considerable body of writings that have become available to historians. These four men, according to the author's assessment, took the lead in reshaping the Chinese understanding of Japan in the early twentieth century through their successful efforts as publicists. Yet she cautions readers that the views of these four should not be taken as archetypes of the Chinese understanding of Japan. They were rather "particular and prominent" cases, and their interpretations were often at odds with the mainstream Chinese sentiment (pp. 6-7).

This is a thoroughly researched study. Its greatest strength is that it brings to life individuals whose names are already familiar to students of history. By bringing out the most telling information in their own writings as well as more recently available materials, Lu Yan presents a convincing narrative of the circumstances that sent the four young men to Japan, the scenes of everyday life that they encountered in the Japanese cities, and their situations in wartime China.

A recurring theme in this book is the Chinese ambivalence toward Japan. During the half century before 1945, Japan was not only a source of inspiration but also the primary threat to China. Each of the men presented in this book found something very attractive and admirable in Japanese life and culture, and yet their feelings toward Japan were complex. One of their common reactions to Japan was indignation over its ingratitude to China by forgetting its cultural debt to the China of ancient times. Zhou Zuoren "could not but feel contempt for Japan's turning against one's teacher and benefactor" (p. 228). Guo Moruo depicted Japan not only as a predator but as an ungrateful villain. While "China had helped Japan leave the primitive state and enter the garden of civilization,... shielded Japan from Western invasion and offered its resources so that Japan was able to successfully adopt Western civilization," Japan's response was to wage war on China (p. 191 ).

In the end, because of the political realties in imperial Japan and in revolutionary...