The Journal of Japanese Studies at Forty

With this issue, the Journal of Japanese Studies celebrates its fortieth year of publication. Since its inception, the world and Japan have changed dramatically. The Journal has spanned the years of Japan’s reemergence from the darkest days of its history, the remarkable economic and technological achievements that made it the world’s second-largest economy, the emergence of a vibrant middle class and new mass cultural forms, the formulation of a strategy to ride out the cold war years, the post–cold war travails of economic and political stagnation, and its present path to political and even military assertiveness. JJS has never been inclined to introspection or to indulgence in self-referential ruminations, but it seemed appropriate to the Editorial Board to mark this occasion by reflecting on the history of the Journal, its origins, the evolution of the field within which it operates, and the changes in the nation and its people which it seeks to understand and explain. The board asked me, as the founding editor (1974–86) and as one closely involved in subsequent years, to reflect on the Journal’s history.

Origin and Concept

Shortly after I was appointed chair of Japanese studies at the University of Washington in 1972, I proposed to my colleagues the notion of establishing a journal devoted solely to the study of Japan. At a memorable dinner that summer with Kozo Yamamura and Susan Hanley, several of us made the decision to move ahead.

A confluence of developments gave impetus to the idea. First of all, the academic study of Asia in the United States and elsewhere was taking off and the Journal of Asian Studies was challenged to find space enough to cover the remarkable phenomenon of Japan’s high economic growth and its implications. Monumenta Nipponica was dedicated primarily to cultural topics and did not attempt to cover contemporary developments. We need to remind ourselves now just how stunning was Japan’s rise at this time. The Nobel Prize–winning economist Michael Spence in his recent book, The Next Convergence, has encapsulated the historical and global importance of this phenomenon. He wrote that:

By 1945 [Japan] was a defeated nation with an uncertain future. But it was about to become the first sustained high-growth country in the postwar period—indeed in recorded history. Its growth, and the underlying strategies and policies, became an example that was emulated all over Asia and eventually more broadly. Looking back, one finds it hard to overstate the importance of the example that the Japan case set. Among other things, it grew at unprecedented rates armed with almost no natural resource wealth of the conventional kind, and in so doing upset much of the conventional economic thinking about the sources of wealth and growth in the developing world.¹

Suffice it to say that in the 1970s Japan was becoming internationally a “hot topic” that would justify a journal to explain its civilization.

Second, what I call the first academic generation to study Japan was coming on the scene. Whereas the earlier generation had come to the study of Japan by way of military or missionary service in Japan, ours was a generation that arrived as a result of academic interest and fellowship support from foundations and the government that allowed prolonged study in Japan. Moreover, foundations and government were pouring money into the establishment of academic programs in universities and colleges. The academic field of Japanese studies was rapidly expanding. An SSRC-ACLS report at that time estimated that there were some 500 Japanese specialists at work in 135 colleges and universities in the United States. While the study of Japan was finding acceptance in the disciplines (rather than being segregated in departments of Asian studies and the like), still we felt that:

a strong and justifiable sense of identification among Japanese specialists in many fields has survived; this has been the result not simply of common problems of language study and experience in Japan, but rather of inter-disciplinary interest in a particular people and culture. It is this sense of identification among Japanese specialists that...