A History of Japan

It may strike you as improbable that your old Curmudgeon has traveled to Japan. I’m pretty sure it strikes the Japanese that way…they’re far too polite to say anything, but I have the impression that my visits are one of their more dubious pleasures.

In an effort to reduce my part of the confusion, I picked up A History of Japan by R.H.P. Mason and J.G. Caiger, our subject tome today. It is, as one composer put it, “a short ride in a fast machine,” taking in the entire history of Japan - all of it - in some 373 pages. And if covering the country’s entire political history in a relatively brief volume isn’t enough, the authors give more than a passing nod to the country’s social and religious life along the way. The resultant work is, as we shall see, one of the Curmudgeon’s more conditional recommendations.

Fair warning: if you have any background in Japanese history or even Asian studies generally, then this book and thereby this review are not for you…we’re covering just the basics here. And sadly, nothing specifically gay. The authors are flying so high and fast with this book that they only mention a very few of the very most famous names, let alone speculate on who was sleeping with whom.

Yeah, I know…bummer. But the intellectual rewards of the book are many, especially in clearing up some misconceptions.

Starting with the Two Thousand Year Chrysanthemum Throne. First of all, it’s not as old as you’d think: legend has Japan’s founding on a specific date, February 11, 660 B.C. That is the date on which the Emperor Jimmu was supposed to have ascended to the throne, in a ceremony that involved tea with the sun goddess Amaterasu…in the nude according to some, which I guess solves the problem of how you dress to impress a goddess. Our authors omit the tea and nudity, mention the legend, but then tell the real history of the nation. Japan had been inhabited by humans for thousands of years, but as a chain of islands, remained largely isolated from other civilizations. The first beginnings of a centralized government coalesced in Yamato, near the center of modern-day Japan, somewhere around A.D. 300. So not quite two thousand years, but seventeen centuries is still a pretty good run.

And it is (nominally, at least) an unbroken run: once the Imperial family ascended to the throne, they stayed there. Unlike Western empires, where a ruling family might reign for a few decades or a few centuries before dying out or being overthrown, the Japanese imperial family has remained in power. A pretty good trick, and they did it with the simplest of methods: by sidestepping power itself.

During the first period of the imperial state, the Nara period, the emperors did exercise real economic and military authority. A thing called the Taika Reform, proclaimed on New Year’s Day 646, transferred significant control from local powers to the imperial government. A bad experience with a female emperor and a conniving, overly powerful monk led the court to move its capital a couple of times, landing in Kyoto in the late eighth century. By 850 a powerful family, the Fujiwara, had seized effective control of the country from the emperor and his court.

What the imperial family did in response was brilliant in its way: they did nothing. Those of us versed in Western history would have expected a civil war at minimum, likely with several cousins raising armies and claiming superior rights to the throne. Didn’t happen in Japan: the imperial family stepped aside from real day-to-day power, serving instead as figureheads for the government and intervening on rare occasions when sufficiently large, noble families became involved in sufficiently large land disputes between themselves. That approach may sound suspiciously familiar…it’s pretty much the formula that the British monarchs hit upon in the 20th century and still execute today. The Japanese emperors were aware that they were held in a kind of glorious house arrest, allowed to leave the palace only on rare occasions; but I’m guessing in their minds they were already staying in the best rooms and eating the best food, so why make a fuss and leave? In reality we have to assume there was a lot more imperial give-and-take than Mason and Caiger have time to address here, and the question of the emperor’s role would re-emerge in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Fujiwara held power in the emperor’s name for a couple hundred years, until 1068 or so. But their power began to fray. Over time a Japanese form of feudalism developed, the country entered a period of rule by military families, and then, finally, endured a century of disorganized civil war.

Enter, in 1600 or so, the Tokugawa family, a bunch who knew how to find a gap and fill it.

The civil war period was concluded under two strong military leaders, Oda Nobunaga and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi. They managed to bring the feudal lords together to begin a reunification of the country. Their successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, completed the reunification, and the Tokugawa ruled Japan in the emperor’s name until 1868. Lucky for all concerned, the Tokugawa were efficient administrators and the era was largely peaceful and prosperous. It was also the period in which Japan was “closed” to the West…basically the Catholics (Jesuits, mainly) honked off the Japanese by attempting to proselytize the locals, so the Tokugawa closed the country to Catholic nations. Protestants, however, were held in higher regard. They were apparently less zealous and more commercial, so Protestant nations – in practice, the Dutch – were allowed to continue to trade through the port of Nagasaki. Hence the Sondheim line, “Don’t forget the Dutch/Like to stay in touch.”

And they did.

Although the Tokugawa period allowed the country to grow and prosper internally, technology suffered. Through trade and other contact with the West, Japan became increasingly aware that it was falling behind in science and industry. One of the authors’ more telling comments is that in 1600 Japan and the West were on fairly equal footing technologically; by 1850, the technical gap was enormous. The last of the Tokugawa, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, formally and publicly resigned. In a beautifully-written letter, he cites the rise of foreign trade as a driving force for Japan, and posits that should the emperor be restored to real power the nation would be better positioned to negotiate with the West: “…then the empire will be able to maintain its rank and dignity among the nations of the earth – it is, I believe, my highest duty to realize this ideal by giving up entirely my rule over this land,” Yoshinobu wrote.

A magnificent gesture and a noble letter. Trouble is, nobody cleared it with the Emperor, who was expected to take charge. Oops.

Emperor Meiji, newly restored to power his family had not held for a thousand years, had to ask the Tokugawa to stay on for a couple of years while he figured out just how to seize the levers of government. The relationship that was formed left the military with a great deal of power, and that relationship, along with Meiji’s efforts to introduce modern technology to Japan, shaped much of the 20th century.

Unfortunately for the reader, A History of Japan comes into its own with the Meiji period, and not necessarily in a good way. Up until that point the authors deal with history at its highest levels, reporting “just the facts,” which are fascinating on their own. Beginning with the Meiji, however, the authors have Opinions, shadowboxing with prejudices that either have mercifully died out, or which are unknown to those of us who didn’t grow up in the Pacific region – our authors are Australian, one Japanese by birth. And to this curmudgeon’s tired old eyes, the book suffers from their editorializing.

In the end, I definitely recommend knowing the history of Japan, or at least knowing more of it than I did going in. And I conditionally recommend The History of Japan, although I promise not to rat you out if you read Mason and Caiger up to the Meiji Restoration and then find other sources for modern history. The material is engrossing, although in all honesty I can’t say if the book will really help me get around Tokyo, or make the programming on NHK World any less strange.

But when you start out naked with a sun goddess, maybe “strange” is the point.