Cool, informed historical primer from journalist-novelist Buruma
(The Missionary and the Libertine, 2000, etc.), tracing Japan from
its opening to the West in 1853 through its transformation into a
militaristic state to its reemergence as a peaceful, pacifistic
host of the 1964 Olympics. From start to finish, this concise
narrative unfolds in dense ironies. In the 19th century, Commodore
Matthew Perry's interpreter observed that the Americans hoped to
disturb Japan's "apathy and long ignorance," unaware that his
reluctant hosts knew a good deal about American politics,
geography, and science. In the 20th, Douglas MacArthur, supreme
commander of the Allied forces in Japan following WWII, compared
its citizens to children. In turn, according to Buruma, the
Japanese have exhibited seesawing "overconfidence, fanaticism, a
shrill sense of inferiority, and a sometimes obsessive
preoccupation with national status." After the shogunate collapsed
in the 1860s, Emperor Mitsushito began a regime that blended
ancient Japanese myths with German authoritarianism and racism,
transforming Shinto into an imperial faith, eviscerating
intellectual dissent, and producing mass conscription. Buruma is
particularly incisive in discussing the fateful period from 1931 to
1945, when 14 different prime ministers thrashed amid a scorpion's
den of courtiers, the military, and bureaucrats. With nobody
accountable, right-wing junior officers egged on the government to
escalate tensions with China and the US; later, they paralyzed its
ability to change course. (Even after Nagasaki, no consensus on
surrender was reached until Emperor Hirohito broke the deadlock.)
While acknowledging the nation's remarkable postwar conversion to a
parliamentary government, Buruma bemoans "an intellectual culture
stunted by dogmas of the Left and the Right," which has left
unexamined national war guilt and an economic engine sputtering
after 40 years of governmental corruption. A highly nuanced
explanation of how a hybrid national polity and culture was
created. (Kirkus Reviews)
The story of modern Japan, from first 'opening' to the West with
Admiral Perry's Black Ships in 1853, through World War II, to
Japan's emergence as a Western-style democracy and economic power
at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
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