Current Trends in Japanese Studies of “Modern and Contemporary Chinese History”

Chinese Republican Studies Newsletter Editor Barry Keenan Denison University Granville, Ohio 43023 Advisory and Contrib.uting Editorial Board Lloyd Eastman, Edward Friedman, john Israel james Sheridan, Lyman VanSlyke Volume IV Number 2 February, 1979 $4.50 annually Issues in October and February ~RRENT TRENDS IN JAPANESE STUDIES OF "MODERN AND CONTEHPO'RAitY CHIRESI HIItoaY" Linda Grove, SoPhia University, Tokyo In recent years many scholars have come to recognize the importance of Japanese scholarship on China and an increasing number of both graduate students and more established scholars have begun to explore the Japanese academic world. Having lived, studied and taught in Japan for eight years, I would like to offer some random notes on contemporary Japanese studies of 19th and 20th century China, and a few suggestions in the way of orientation for foreign scholars who are interested in gaining access to the world of Japanese China studies. There is no direct equivalent in modern Japanese studies for the American field of "Republican studies". Almost all Japanese scholars classify their studies of the 19th and 20th century under one of two categories: kindai i!t. ~"'(, "modern", which covers the period from approximately the Opium War to 1919; and aendai 1ft. ~-"(, "contemporary", from 1919 to the present. These periods are not taken as hard and fast lines of division in research interests and many scholars move from studies of the Qing into both modern and contemporary fields. This division does, however, put a different emphasis on certain major events from the commonly accepted analysis in the American scholarly community. To give just one example, the 1911 revolution has ita locus toward the end of the "modern period" and is considered closely linked to and the direct product of various forces developing out of the late 19th century. Scholars working in modern history have usually benefitted from a rigorous training in the linguistic and methodological skills of traditional Sinological training; as a result , the reader will find that .uch of the scholarship dealing with the late 19th and early 20th centuriea ia rich in the kind of historical documentation that comes froa an exhaustive examination of large nu.bera of traditional sources including a thorough familiarity with the rich collectiona of local historical materials. Before exploring some of the curr..e trends in Japanese reaearch in .adern and contemporary history, a note about the style of argument in the Japan..• academic community seeaa pertiaeat. The chief mode of debate is through the article--usually in the twenty-fifty page range -- rather than the one volume monograph as in the U.S. There are a number of reasons for this preference that are directly related to the structure of university graduate training programs and publiahing,trends in Japan today. Although •oat uuivers1t1•• with major China pro&raas offer ·the Ph.D. degree, in the last 20 years f.v scholara have in fact,,actually received the degr... ,, TABLE OF CONTENTS CURRENT TRENDS IN JAPANESE SnTDIES OF ''MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY CHINESE HISTORY", Linda Grove ••• 1 RECENT JAPANESE RESJWtCB OH UPUBLICAN PERIOD POLITICAL AJD EQONOKIC HISTORY, James H. Cole._ • • • • • • 7 PREWAR JAPANESE STUDIES OF REPUBLICAN CHINA, Joshua Fogel •••••••• 13 2. The normal pattern in graduate training is for a student to finish Ph.D. course work except for the thesis and then to begin to work, teaching in a university or high school, working for a publisher, or the like. The Ph.D. thesis -- the source of so many monographs in the American academic world -- is almost never written at this stage in the academic career. Rather, a young scholar begins to publish individual sections of his research in article form. More mature scholars whose work has been widely recognized often do publish books, but in most cases these are collections of previously published articles. The second thing to note about the structure of Japanese academic life is the large number of "outlets" for article-length research. In addition to the major histo~ical and social science journals which publish considerably more on China than do their American equivalents,.there are a group of publications that specialize on Asian studies in~lud~~~ such well-known journals as Toyoshi kenkyii ' ;Jt. ~ .;ft ~ and Toyo Gakuho .l. *;;~ Many...