Eiji Oguma Book Review

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440 Journal of Japanese Studies 30:2 (2004)

“the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East,” seen as an intermediary re-gion “between the Orient and the Occident” (p. 124). It is worth noting thatin this context, he makes a point that the interminable denunciations of “Ori-entalism” have done more to obscure than to clarify: Western notions of theOrient are vitiated by a basic asymmetry (a tendency to construct an “other”as a negation of the Occident) and an unreflected amalgamation of the NearEast with regions and civilizations encountered at later stages (p. 94). As forthe definition of the “Mediant,” Umesao’s impressions and reflections aresomewhat lacking in focus, but, once again, he was clearly on to something.The “Mediant,” as a historical product rather than a geographical given, wasthe multicivilizational region par excellence: Islamic expansion led to thecreation of an Indo-Islamic world, without ever coming close to absorbingthe Indian civilizational domain as a whole.

Other qualifications of the basic scheme include a brief comparison ofEastern Europe (west of Russia) and Southeast Asia (east of India) as re-gions similarly external to the main division into zones and marked by civ-ilizational crosscurrents. In short, the wide range of Umesao’s observationson problems and perspectives to be explored shows that his framework foran “ecological view” was conceived as a research program open to furtherdevelopments. In that regard, it suggests both connections and confronta-tions with current approaches to civilizational analysis. It certainly meritsmore detailed discussion than the present review could attempt.

A Genealogy of “Japanese” Self-images. By Eiji Oguma; translated byDavid Askew. Trans Pacific Press Pty. Ltd., Rosanna, 2002. xxxvi, 435pages. $69.95, cloth; $29.95, paper.

Reviewed byWALTER EDWARDS

Tenri University

The title of this English translation is taken from the subtitle of Oguma Eiji’sJapanese original: Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen: “Nihonjin” no jigazono keifu (Origin of the myth of the homogenous nation: A genealogy of“Japanese” self-images) (Shinyosha, 1995). While Oguma specificallynames this myth of homogeneity as the claim found in much of Nihonjinronliterature, his intent is not to examine Nihonjinron discourse per se, butrather to trace out a “genealogy of the consciousness of identity” of the Jap-anese from the start of the modern era, up through the Pacific War and intothe early postwar years. The result is a sweeping intellectual history, exam-ining the views held by anthropologists, historians, linguists, legal scholars,

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government officials, and other writers from the Edo period through the firsthalf of the twentieth century on the nature of Japanese ethnic identity. Incontrast to assertions of homogeneity, which indeed characterize Nihonjin-ron writings of the 1970s in particular, Oguma documents the broad diver-sity of perspectives held in prewar Japan on the nature of the Japanese andtheir origins.

Oguma points out two distinct currents emerging early in theories ofJapanese origins and serving to summarize the majority of positions takenup to the annexation of Korea in 1910. At one extreme were interpretationsrooted in Edo-period nativist traditions and developed by late nineteenth-century National Polity (kokutai) theorists such as Hozumi Yatsuka and Ino-ue Tetsujiro, who hewed close to a literal reading of ancient mythology. Thenotion proposed by these figures of Japan as a Family State, a cornerstoneof Meiji ideology, took the entire nation as descended from the imperialline, hence of “pure blood” and as having inhabited the Japanese homelandfrom great antiquity. Equally prevalent, however, were those who regardedthe Japanese as a mixture of races, with a significant portion of the ancestralpopulation entering the archipelago recently, certainly later than the Ainu.Proponents of this view included modern academic figures such as anthro-pologist Tsuboi Shogoro and historians Hoshino Hisashi and Kume Kuni-take, as well as Christian intellectuals.

The annexation of Korea served as occasion for the mixed nation viewto attain a position of dominance, notes Oguma, with the majority of opin-ions expressed at the time drawing on its imagery to justify the move. Someargued that governance and assimilation would be easy because of the com-mon ancestry and racial similarities of the two nations. Others took past suc-cesses in assimilating indigenous peoples (such as the Kumaso, Hayato, andEmishi) and immigrant Koreans and Chinese as indicating the superiority ofthe Japanese, thus justifying expansion beyond the archipelago. But thechange in status to empire, with Taiwan and Korea now representing a largepercentage of its population, also prompted National Polity thinkers to re-vise their theories. The image of Japan as a Family State could be main-tained as valid ideology, it turned out, by any of three solutions proposed tothe question of how to treat alien peoples, varying in their attitude to thethreat of alien blood. At one extreme was Kanokogi Kazunobu, a realpoli-tik proponent who argued for continual expansion through rule by force,with no assimilation of foreign populations. Another singular view, pro-posed by Tanaka Chigaku and elaborated by his son Satomi Kishio, took theJapanese kokutai as a universal ethic destined to extend to all peoples re-gardless of racial identity. By contrast, more orthodox National Polity the-orists like Hozumi shifted the Family State metaphor to include fictive kin-ship relations, asserting the priority of a sense of identity as Japanese overactual blood ties. Watari Shozaburo elaborated this position in 1928 by ar-

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guing that ancestor worship has historically been an “open blood-family or-ganization,” allowing in-marrying spouses and adopted children to becomefamily members by venerating a common ancestor. Outsiders have alwaysbeen welcome to join the family, in other words, as long as they gave defer-ence to its central core.

In this manner, Oguma shows how the mixed nation theory merged withthe dominant ideology, remaining prominent until the end of the PacificWar, with even state-produced textbooks lauding the Yamato race’s abilityto absorb alien peoples and noting the contributions of immigrants in an-cient times. Two trends obliquely challenging this view, visible in the finaldecades of the prewar period, are also introduced. One came with the emer-gence of a Japanese school of eugenics. Unno Kotoku, a pioneer figure inthis field, applied the concept of heterosis as early as 1910 to argue thatsome new genetic input can produce superior qualities, though mixture withradically different strains may be disastrous. Unno thus asserted that inter-marriage with Koreans would be mutually beneficial, a view endorsing as-similationist policies. But the question of miscegenation, even with fellowAsians, was to prove nettlesome. The argument for British racial superior-ity as stemming from an initial mixing of stock, thereafter maintained in rel-atively pure form, was applied by Togo Minoru (then with the Government-General of Taiwan) in calling for racial segregation in the colonies, lestintermarriage erode the precious character the Japanese had preservedthrough two thousand years of isolation. More general arguments againstracial mixing were put forth from the 1930s by members of the Japanese Eu-genics Association, whose views were particularly influential with the Min-istry of Health and Welfare. A secret document produced by its ResearchCenter in 1943, “An Examination of Global Policy Centered on the YamatoNation,” thus proposed segregation of Japanese in the colonies as a measureagainst the deleterious effects of intermarriage. It may be questioned howwidely these views were shared, however; the Government-General of Ko-rea criticized pure blood policy as the product of “German mania.”

Oguma links the second challenge to the mixed nation view with a va-riety of intellectuals who focused on Japan’s long history and its traditions.In face of increasing international isolation from the 1920s, folklorist Ya-nagita Kunio stressed the unity of the Japanese as an island nation sharing aunique common culture. Anthropologist Shiratori Kurakichi also empha-sized the unity of island peoples, asserting that ancestors of the Japanese hadreached the archipelago in time immemorial and were not related to Kore-ans. Historian Tsuda Sokichi shared this perspective in making a critical ap-praisal of the ancient myths. Often cited as evidence for the conquest and as-similation of different peoples in antiquity, Tsuda dismissed the myths as“wild fantasies” and moreover downplayed the role of immigration in laterhistory. Philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro, who also saw the ancient Japanese as

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formed from a racial mixture prior to the compilation of the founding myths,stressed the role of climate in molding that mixture into a homogenous, nat-ural community. Finally, evidence from physical anthropology was used byKiyono Kenji and Hasebe Kotondo from the 1930s to argue that contempo-rary Japanese had evolved directly from their Jomon ancestors, with verylittle mixture of blood from the outside.

Oguma asserts that notions such as these, held by a small minority priorto the Pacific War, were drawn upon in the early postwar period to form theview of the Japanese as a peace-loving, homogenous nation, with agricul-tural roots. The Family State ideology, accommodating the assimilation ofother nations within the empire, had been discredited by the defeat, and theview of Koreans and other non-Japanese still in Japan was that they wouldbest return to their native lands. The small Ainu minority was basically over-looked, and the problem of Okinawan identity would not intrude into main-stream consciousness until after repatriation in 1972. Questions of racialorigins were thus easily glossed over, and an image of unique organic soli-darity, fostering harmony and cultural superiority among the homogenousinhabitants of the archipelago, gained prominence. Egami Namio’s sensa-tional horserider thesis posed a brief challenge, but its rejection by academ-ics was part of an overall downplaying of external forces in Japanese history.The myth of the homogenous nation became widely established by the1960s and celebrated by the burst of Nihonjinron literature in the followingdecade.

In this manner Oguma demonstrates how dominant notions of self-iden-tity expanded and then contracted in tandem with the physical boundariesof the Japanese state, adopting metaphors of mixed origin and a social or-ganization capable of assimilating outsiders when it sought to expand asempire, and turning to images of ethnic homogeneity and cultural unique-ness when reverting to an isolated, island nation. Apart from the importantcontribution of exposing the myth of homogeneity found in Nihonjinron lit-erature as a recent concoction, Oguma also demonstrates the lack of com-plete unity of thought on questions of origin and ethnic identity throughoutJapan’s modern era, with dissenting voices always being raised to whateverviews were dominant at the time.

This English translation is provided with its own brief introduction, andsome additional paragraphs have been inserted at one point at least to equipits audience with more background information, especially on the Edo pe-riod. Translator David Askew also provides an introductory passage ex-plaining his motivations for undertaking the project and discussing in detailsome of the problems encountered and his approaches to them. Despite thestrategy outlined therein for consulting an on-line catalogue of Japaneseuniversity libraries to determine the readings of personal names, there are afew obvious misrenderings: Togo Minoru as “Togo Makoto,” Goto Shuichi

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1. Florian Coulmas, Die Kultur Japans: Tradition und Moderne (Munich: C. H. Beck,2003); Vlasta Winkelhöverová, Japonsko (Prague: Nakladatelstvi Lidové noviny, 1999).

as “Goto Morikazu,” and Tsude Hiroshi as “Tode Hiroshi.” And one mis-take in translation is egregious enough to merit correction here. Oguma de-votes a chapter to the work of Takamure Itsue, who from the 1930s critiquedcontemporary male-dominated social relations by asserting that ancient so-ciety was matrilineal and therefore more open (this led her to see Amaterasuas embracing alien nations, an image used in wartime propaganda). Taka-mure’s assertion was indeed about matriliny, bokeisei, the tracing of descentthrough the maternal line, and Oguma presents it as such throughout hisoriginal text. On nearly every occasion, however, Askew translates this as adifferent term: “matriarchy,” bokensei, the hypothetical condition in whichdominant authority is held by women. Clearly he is unaware of the historyof matriarchy as a concept in social science and all the intellectual baggagethat attends it.

But apart from these and a few other minor complaints, the translationproves to be faithful, accurate, and very readable—a tremendous accom-plishment, considering the scope of the discussion as well as its length.Askew has done us a great service by making this work accessible to anEnglish readership, just as Oguma is to be thanked for condensing a moun-tain of material on debates over racial origins and ethnic identity into asingle volume. This is a milestone achievement, a work that will find its wayonto many a university syllabus and serve as a useful reference for a broadspectrum of researchers on Japan for years to come.

Modern Japanese Culture: The Insider View. By Leith Morton. Oxford Uni-versity Press, South Melbourne, 2003. v, 290 pages. $25.00, paper.

Reviewed byIRMELA HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT

Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien

In this bold project, Leith Morton sets out to give an overview of modernJapanese culture by focusing on those contemporary Japanese thinkers hebelieves have made the greatest significant impact. His approach differsfrom other recent introductions to Japanese culture such as books by FlorianCoulmas, who gives an anthropological overview, and by Vlasta Winkel-höverová, who stresses material aspects of Japanese culture.1

To introduce “The Insider View,” Morton presents “explanations of cul-tural phenomena by people who are writing inside the culture being de-

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Eiji Oguma Book Review