JAPANESE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE FROM 1868 TO 1945

The written History is called historiography (made by historians), and we have different points of view and approaches from people of all over the world. Imperial Japan (the period from the Meiji Restoration to Second World War) is just a proof of the variety of historiography that exists since the first historian of west (Herodotus). But there is a tendency in Imperial Japanese History, in which the most of the events have a negative connotation. Is this the best way to understand it? Or should we just study it from different visions?

As I’ve mentioned before, history is written by someone, implying views from particular cultures and ideologies. Every country, and even since the five original civilization[1], have had their own social, economical and political structure and plans to survive in front of others on different historical times. Then, the events during Imperial Japan can be understood from different approaches.

On one hand we have some of the events that are aforementioned often: the Manchuria incident, the taking of Korea, the expulsion of Japan from The League of Nations, the annexation in the Axis Powers (…). By the other hand the technological advance, the attempt of social inclusion of the woman since the beginning of the Meiji Period[2], and the development of factories. Later, protests for less hour of working time and the gradually assistance of more children to the school instead of be helping in the house and jobs. The Japanese empire has unveiled totalizing aspects of imperial colonialism that not only called into service the nation’s human and economic resources but also involved the production of knowledge and culture (Azuma, 2008).

As contemporary readers of Modern History, we don’t have to forget that events in the past were inside a specific context. With that in mind, it’s clearer to try to understand what was happening and why. For example, one strong ideology was the interpretation of Social Darwinism, theory of the survival of the fittest to justify a social philosophy of utterly brutal individualism in which ruthless, unremitting struggle to economic existence was held to be both the natural and the ideal state of human affair (Durant, 1982). It was not until after Second World War that these kind of interpretations were discarded[3].

There are different ways to approach Japanese history between Meiji period and the second World War, and these depends on which side of facts historians have analyzed them through the time and the diverse historiography. It is convenient to study History not only by one side, but also through all the possible views that can show us the facts. Every point of view discovers distinct images of Imperial Japan or any other topic.

Final reflection

At the end of the day, economical systems have provoked wars since the original civilizations. Modernity tended to dehumanize, creating huge industries with people working too many hours and giving priority to the earnings. How did we arrive at this point? It looks like science, technology and industry that used to work for the human, made more difficult and misery the life on 19th century, part of 20th century and even nowadays.

[1] China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and Greece.

[2] Including them in the education system for example (remembering that in Europe and America, having this social model since events as the French Revolution [1799], they took a really long time to include woman).

[3] Other extremist concept was the classification of humans by race.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Earl H. Kinmonth. Pacific Affairs 57, no. 3 (1984): 504-05. doi:10.2307/2759088.

• Azuma, Eiichiro. <<"Pioneers of Overseas Japanese Development": Japanese American History and the Making of Expansionist Orthodoxy in Imperial Japan.>> The Journal of Asian Studies 67, no. 4 (2008): 1187-226. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20203483

• Durant, John R. The British Journal for the History of Science 15, no. 1 (1982): 76-77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4025927.

• Photo from: http://www.library.metro.tokyo.jp/portals/0/edo/tokyo_library/english/modal/index.html?d=53

Special dedication to my History teachers.