Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory and the Russo-Japanese War (review)

In her study of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, Naoko Shimazu sets out to answer the question "What did the war mean to the Japanese people and how did they respond to it?" with the aim of "critically reassessing how the war influenced the relationship between state and society" (p. 7). In what is really a series of loosely linked essays, Shimazu considers various aspects of the experience of war, its commemoration in later years, and the versions in which it has survived in popular memory. She seeks primarily to "privilege the voices and actions of the people" rather than of the state (p. 8), concluding, ultimately, that "Japanese society of the Meiji period, even during wartime, exhibited plurality and diversity, which are not usually associated with the authoritarian view of the national culture of the era in much of the existing literature" (p. 284).

In chapter 1, Shimazu presents what she considers to be the chief characteristics of Japanese society during the war. First, she argues, the war was experienced by the Japanese people as culturally "modern," especially in the visual sense, as photography and cinematography made an explicit link between war and technology. Second, the antiwar movement was "a unique social feature of the 1904–5 war, never hitherto or henceforth repeated" (p. 21), and the fact that it endured throughout the war indicates the viability of the public sphere in wartime. Third, radical popular nationalism was evident, both in lantern parades celebrating victories and in the Hibiya Riot in September 1905. A common thread among all three factors is the power of the media; and, further, all three characteristics, for Shimazu, attest to the "precarious" nature of wartime society.

The chapter presents useful information about media reporting of the war and about lantern parades, in which undisciplined dynamism was a matter of considerable concern to the authorities, even though the revelers were by no means opposed to the war. Ultimately, however, the chapter is unconvincing and unsatisfying. Its treatment of the antiwar movement is especially problematic, principally because the scope and influence of the movement are considerably overrated. Shimazu does acknowledge at one point that it was the pro-war activists, including the famous group of Tokyo Imperial University professors agitating for war, who represented the greater threat to government, as they were more influential in elite circles (p. 53). Nevertheless, it is the antiwar movement she considers more significant, for reasons that are not clear.

According to Shimazu, the antiwar movement and its principal journalistic outlet, Heimin shinbun (Commoners' news), "managed to exert a substantial influence on national consciousness" (p. 42). While it is undoubtedly true that the antiwar movement had an influence that was disproportionate to the small number of people involved in it, Shimazu's claim is difficult to accept and no substantial evidence is offered. For one thing, if antiwar feeling was so prominent, it is hard to explain the ferocity of the Hibiya Riot, which was a protest against the peace. Shimazu's estimation of the antiwar movement's influence goes against the view of James Huffman, who states in his book on the media in the Meiji period that "[t]he Heimin view was not popular with the war impassioned public," and also contradicts Marius Jansen's assessment that criticism of the Russo-Japanese War within Japan was unusual, peripheral, and far outweighed by supportive public opinion.¹ In one of many instances in which important existing scholarship is ignored, however, Shimazu fails to mention either Huffman or Jansen.

An underlying problem with this chapter is the type of evidence on which it relies and the conclusions drawn from that evidence. Shimazu seeks to establish, for example, that most of the public was soon war-weary, which is probably true. Her evidence, however, comes almost entirely from contemporary newspapers, with no balancing views from other sources, and her conclusions are rashly drawn. Thus...