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Hitomi Koyama JAPAN’S HISTORY PROBLEM: AGENCY, VIOLENCE, AND THE LIMITS OF DECOLONIZING HISTORY by Hitomi Koyama A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland October 2015 © 2015 Hitomi Koyama All Rights Reserved Abstract If history-writing and modern forms of colonialism have been complicit with one another, how can we decolonize history-writing? The public appearance of former “comfort” women in 1992 and their demand for apology and acknowledgment have ushered in a new level of urgency in thinking through the relationship between history-writing and decolonization in post-Cold War Japan. Postcolonial critics of history-writing’s relationship to a Eurocentric world order elucidate how history-writing can exclude and thus marginalize and silence the non-European Other. If history-writing, or what Chakrabarty calls historicism, pertains solely to denial of one’s agency, then the antidote would be to assert one’s agency against such denial as a form of resistance. Still, examining modern Japan’s engagement with Western history- writing and its aftermath since 1945, where contentions over proper modes of history- writing persist as a “history problem (rekishi mondai)” between the former empire and its victim states, elucidates the need to rethink the potential and limits of decolonizing history. Through discourse analysis of writings by Yukichi Fukuzawa, Ukichi Taguchi, Kiyoshi Miki, and Norihiro Kato, I identify that historicism as a historiographical concept embodies at least two versions and thus implications. The first is a historicism which denies the agency of those who are deemed as being “backward” in relation to linear progressive history; the second is historicism which affirms agency, individuality, and particularity against Western claims to universality. The first type of historicism appeared ascendant in early Meiji period until 1890s, the second type affirmed and legitimated Japanese imperialism in Asia in the 1930s and 40s in the name of creating an alternative new world order and culture. Taken together, the discourse over how to decolonize ii history since 1945 is bound by two kinds of limits of historicism—the denial of agency is problematic, but so was the assertion of agency in the name of making Japan the subject of history as a sovereign nation among others. Readers: Renee Marlin-Bennett, Jennifer Culbert, P.J. Brendese, Ali Khan, Yulia Frumer iii Kan-san e. iv Acknowledgements A dandelion seed nestles in red soil, sequestered apart from the busy street and is given time. Before long, concrete is poured atop. I want to thank Renee Marlin-Bennett for reminding me that there is an option other than withering, Jennifer Culbert for constant support and encouragement, P.J. Brendese for patiently going through multiple drafts, and Sibagro for having cultivated such a space for a weed to grow at Johns Hopkins. My gratitude also goes to Ali Khan and Yulia Frumer for graciously serving as external readers. My thanks also go to Masaru Tamamoto and Stefan Tanaka whose conversations prior to my study at Johns Hopkins have been crucial in many ways. Writing is communal. I would like to thank Nobutaka Otobe, Juan Wang, Aditi Saraf, Casey McNeill, Chad Shomura, Ben Meiches, Derek Denman, Nate Gies, Tulio Zille, Tim Vasko, Roger Maioli, Dot Kwek, Johannes Schade, Quinn Lester, Kellan Anfinson, Stefanie Fishel, Taesuh Cha, Quynh Pham, Greg Sesek, Andrew Brandel, Nur Kirmizidag, Kaori Iida, Takahito Niikura, and David Leon for being part of many, many conversations over the years. When I was about fourteen, my family moved to Northern California. An elderly Taiwanese woman assumed from my name and accent that I was from Japan and began speaking to me in fluent Japanese. Not having been taught about Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan, I asked her where she had learned the language. I cannot recall in detail what ensued. What stayed with me was the weight of duration. I wanted to convey to her something but could not find the words. The search felt like an eternity condensed into few minutes. I cannot recall her name. I wanted to respond to her. I became a question to myself. This dissertation is but a fragment and beginning of what I wanted to tell you. v Many years later, I learned that my grandfather was raised in Taiwan until the end of the war. What is mentionable and unmentionable about war memory is presumed to be tacitly understood—until one unknowingly oversteps the line. Shortly after, the project I pursued in Tokyo to promote reconciliation among Asian states was effectively gutted. The wound is still raw. From thereon I began to envision the dissertation project as being more akin to Jun Takahashi’s ‘Scab’ (2003) where he explores alternative forms of seeing pain through incessant layering of scabs over the body, than that which promises healing as a final product. I want to thank my family for supporting what is a viscerally unpleasant subject. Finally, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to Mr. Kang. The grace and generosity you extended to my family in Virginia sustained me at moments when the world felt too fraught with hate, thoughtless words, and violence. You were fighting to breathe till the very last moment and left with grace as I was still holding your hand. I wish I could have thanked you in person today. I miss you. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments v Introduction: On the Persistence of the History Problem in East Asia 1 Chapter 1: Was Historicism Always Already Colonial? 23 Chapter 2: 49 The Historical Vision of Meiji Japan: Contending Agency from “Asia” Chapter 3: 77 In the Name of History: Showa Intellectuals’ Interwar Period Debate on Historicism and Japanese Imperialism Chapter 4: 110 On the Impasse Surrounding Japan’s “Postwar Debate on the Subject of History” Conclusion 153 Bibliography 159 vii List of Figures Figure 4.1 Textbook before and after the U.S. Occupation order to delete patriotic passages 110 viii Introduction | On the Persistence of the History Problem in East Asia Most historians of empire speak of the “age of empire” as formally beginning around 1878, with “the scramble for Africa.” A closer look at the cultural actuality reveals a much earlier, more deeply and stubbornly held view about overseas European hegemony; we can locate a coherent, fully mobilized system of ideas near the end of the eighteenth century, and there follows the set of integral developments such as the first great systematic conquests under Napoleon, the rise of nationalism and the European nation-state, the advent of large-scale industrialization, and the consolidation of power in the bourgeoisie. This is also the period in which the novel form and the new historical narrative become pre-eminent, and in which the importance of subjectivity to historical times takes firm hold. —Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism Long before I read Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations, I knew intuitively that people can suffer from historical overdose, complaisant hostages of the pasts they create. We learned that much in many Haitian households at the peak of the Duvaliers’ terror, if only we dared to look outside. —Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past History writing is a political matter: “What has happened” and “what is said to have happened” are not the same.1 Topic, length, tone and vocabulary, intended and unintended omissions, who are portrayed as the actors and who are excluded are all potentially deliberate choices that exercise power over history, and that shape the shared truths and values history expresses. Because these choices are made by those in power, figures such as Howard Zinn consider history writing an exercise of power by the majority over minority, or by the disproportionately influential elites over the masses. For example, Zinn’s work, A People’s History of the United States contends against predominant narratives of the history of the United States that conventionally focus on 1 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1995). 1 the elites by shifting the emphasis to the people as a whole.2 This shift seeks to illustrate that every people exercise agency in the making of history, thereby projecting agentic power in the people instead of reducing the people as objects to be described. What is included and excluded can therefore be read as a reflection of a society’s value of what matters more and what matters less and who the subject of history is. Exclusion or deletion within historical narrative therefore takes on a political implication because such exclusion doubly negates the agency of those omitted. Not being included as actors in history means that one’s fact of existence is negated and one’s sense of having agentic power is also negated. In this sense whether one is included and how one is depicted as being part of history becomes tied to a question of whether one’s dignity and autonomy is recognized. Applying such a lens to the way in which the history of Japan’s war is narrated, Iris Chang equates the use of euphemism or lack of mention of crimes committed by the Japanese military to “a ‘second rape’ of the Chinese people.”3 Not only was there death, but the fact of killing might not be registered in the collective memory of the perpetrator’s society. For Chang, the omission is a double death, a double negation, and this makes what Ian Buruma calls Japan’s “inability to mourn” an unforgivable crime.4 In East Asia, this omission has come to be identified as Japan’s “rekishi mondai [history problem].” The “history problem” in East Asia pertains to disputes among and within East Asian states over how the past—and especially Japanese colonialism and imperialism—is 2 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (Harper & Row, 2003).
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