The Teleology of the Modern Nation-state: Japan and China (review)

It has been more than 20 years since the last major "constructivist" wave of studies of nationalism hit the shores with the publication of Benedict Anderson's and Ernest Gellner's major works in 1983. Yet the debates spawned by those works show no sign of abating. It may be worth asking if the new works such as the one under review have succeeded in taking the debate to a new level or are simply applying the findings to a particular region of the world, East Asia? Judging from this volume, it would appear that the answer lies in the inseparability of the two questions: the very application of the problem to East Asia takes us to another level of understanding of the phenomenon that is nationalism.

The title highlights the expression "teleology," but it is not clear how the teleology of the nation is going to be explored. The editor, Joshua Fogel, among others, means by it the attribution of earlier historical developments to the (categories of the) contemporary nation-state. Although other authors in this volume, including Eiko Ikegami, Peter Perdue, William Kirby, and Pamela Crossley, would reject teleological understandings, they point to early modern formations in China and Japan that persisted and shaped the structure of the modern nation-state. In contrast, at least two other authors, Mark Ravina and Luke Roberts, emphasize marked discontinuities between the Tokugawa and Meiji formations.

If the East Asian debate about nationalism gives special insight into the wider phenomenon, it does indeed have to do with the question of its roots in the immediately preceding period. But the question needs considerable sharpening and fine-tuning not only at an empirical, but also at a theoretical level. Empirically, how do we distinguish the necessary or relevant conditions of modern nationhood from the sufficient ones? Ideas of citizenship and "sovereignty of the people" and modern technologies of subject formation applicable to the "people" as a whole are surely relevant here.

Theoretically, to what extent are modern ideas of race, ethnicity, peoplehood, and culture related to the imperatives of nation-formation and not to state-formation per se? Moreover, can we avoid the teleology in the very expression "early modern"? We have tended to think of the presence of early modern categories in precisely such a teleological way—as ultimately enabling the emergence of the modern nation-state. But what if the early modern is a valid global (or partially global) period that does not necessarily eventuate into modernity or the modern nation-state? If so, what is the distinctive trajectory of national formation and industrial capitalism, and in what ways is their impact different in East Asia?

The eight essays in the volume deal equally with China and Japan. It is perhaps worth noting that three of the four essays on China tend to emphasize the continuity between empire and nation-state, whereas only one of the Japan essays, by Ikegami, stresses continuity from the early modern or "proto-modern" period. In her intriguing opening essay, Ikegami points to the formation of an aesthetic civil society, or ways in which Tokugawa society was forming "symbolic planes of commonality that linked its people into imagined communities of discourse" (p. 19). New communicative networks, markets, and the publishing industry brought people out of their localities and status hierarchies to pursue common aesthetic ideals of civility continuous with the performing arts. Although it is not clear why the "civilizing process" emphasized the aesthetic dimension or how it is connected to livelihood and ethics, Ikegami believes it points to an indigenous modernity.

David Howell's piece on civilization and enlightenment represents a fascinating counterpoint. He argues that while the Tokugawa notion of civilization or civilizing process was indeed tied to the status system, this notion was explicitly discredited and replaced by the Western model of bunmei kaika. The earlier notion of civilization emphasized external behavior and appearance (a project dramatized by the early...