Issue 78 Volume 13 Number 6 (December 2018)
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The Japan Society Review 78 Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review Issue 78 Volume 13 Number 6 (December 2018) Welcome to the final issue of The Japan Society Review in 2018. love and fascination with Japanese culture, focusing on his This year has provided wonderful opportunities to read and experiences as a photojournalist and his first hand contact with learn about Japan through publications, films and events and radical filmmaking and avant-garde theatre. in the Review we have covered 29 of them, from art exhibitions With references to Japanese linguistics, art and modern to academic books, literature, and theatre. The Japan Society is popular culture, Ninja: Unmasking the Myth is an entertaining extremely grateful to all of its reviewers for giving up their time and and informative study of one of the most celebrated figures of expertise. They transmit their knowledge and passion about Japan Japanese imaginary, the ninja or shinobi. The author, Stephen in their reviews and this issue is especially dedicated to them. Turnbull, exposes the myths surrounding these figures and The issue opens with a review of British Foreign Secretaries provides ninja enthusiasts and novices with a clear and thought- and Japan 1850-1990, a volume published by Renaissance Books provoking introduction to its elusive history. and the Japan Society that was presented at our Annual Meeting in For those readers thinking of travelling to Japan soon, July 2018. Compiled and edited by Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Professor the new guide book Japan – 100 Hidden Towns can enhance Antony Best, this book is the latest addition to the Japan Society’s your journey via side trips to places off the beaten track. Well series devoted to aspects of Anglo-Japanese relations which researched and organised, this guide contains information about includes ten volumes of Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits as nature spots, festivals, museums, food and drink, and contains well as British Envoys in Japan. The essays included in this work beautiful, photographs and useful phrases in Japanese. show us “how the Anglo-Japanese relationship played out in We conclude this issue with a review of the film Shoplifters, Whitehall through the careers of the successive foreign secretaries”. the latest work of Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu. Awarded Also dealing with international relations but from a with the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival in 2018, Shoplifters is very different, individual perspective, A Tokyo Romance is the a heart-warming and unusual story of human affection which also autobiographical account by American writer and historian Ian provides a powerful critique of Japanese contemporary society. Buruma of his time spent in Japan through the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Buruma explores the beginning of his life-long Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández Contents 1) British Foreign Secretaries and Japan 1850-1990 compiled Editor and edited by Antony Best and Hugh Cortazzi Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández 2) A Tokyo Romance by Ian Buruma Reviewers 3) Ninja: Unmasking the Myth by Stephen Turnbull Morgane Chinal-Dargent, Peter Kornicki, Susan Meehan, George 4) Japan – 100 Hidden Towns edited by Anthony Gardner Mullins and Beau Waycott. 5) Shoplifters directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu Image: © Thunderbird Releasing British Foreign Secretaries most part, therefore, matters were left to the Minister and Japan 1850-1990: (from 1905 Ambassador) on the spot, even after it Aspects of the Evolution of became possible, in the 1870s, to communicate rapidly British Foreign Policy by telegraph. Foreign policy towards Japan, then, was mainly pragmatic and took the form of reaction to compiled and edited by Antony Best and Hugh Cortazzi events. Two phrases that occur in this book, ‘cautious inactivity’ and ‘benign neglect’ seem to encapsulate Renaissance Books (2018) the approach of successive foreign secretaries in the ISBN-13: 978-1898823735 nineteenth century, few of whom seem to have taken Review by Peter Kornicki any particular interest in Japan. In the late nineteenth century there were a International travel, G8 and G7 summits, video number of issues in the Anglo-Japanese relationship conference calls and the internet have brought that very much exercised the Japanese government, immediacy and personal chemistry into play in foreign however, particularly the unequal treaties and the relations in recent years, and it is very easy to take them question of extraterritoriality. It was only in the final for granted. In the middle of the nineteenth century, decade of the nineteenth century, however, that Japan however, communication was by sea-borne mail, began to impinge on the consciousness of successive which took two to three months from Japan to Britain foreign secretaries. In 1894 negotiations for the revision and vice versa. Japan was not only on the other side of of the treaties got underway and although they did the world, but it was also largely out of mind. Indeed, it not reach a conclusion for many years the atmosphere wasn’t until 1962 that a British foreign secretary visited had definitely changed. This was partly because of Japan, and 1972 that a British prime minister travelled growing suspicion of Russian intentions in East Asia to Japan. and partly, of course, a reaction to Japan’s success in The essays in this book, written by the two the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95, which made Japan editors and by others including Ian Nish and Thomas the dominant power in East Asia. Sir Edward Grey went Otte, show us how the Anglo-Japanese relationship so far as to say in retrospect that, ‘We had made up played out in Whitehall through the careers of the our minds that the time had come when dealings successive foreign secretaries, starting with Lords John with Japan must be put on the same equal terms as Russell, Clarendon and Granville and ending with Sir exist between nations of European origin’. These fine Geoffrey Howe. In addition, the late Hugh Cortazzi sentiments were slow to be put into action, but the provides accounts of the policies of Edward Heath and formation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902 Margaret Thatcher, the first two prime ministers to visit inaugurated a period in which Japan required more Japan. As Antony Best reminds us in his wise and wide- than ‘benign neglect’ from foreign secretaries. ranging introduction to this volume, between the mid Lord Curzon, who served as foreign secretary nineteenth century and the years of Mrs Thatcher as from 1919 to 1924, was the first to have already taken prime minister, the relationship between Britain and a serious interest in Asia. In 1892 he had visited Japan Japan had not only gone through ups and downs as an MP and met a number of senior members of the but had also been fundamentally transformed. In the Japanese government including Ito Hirobumi, the 1850s Britain and the British Empire were thriving and prime minister. In 1894 he had published Problems of enjoyed enormous power that covered the globe the Far East: Japan-Korea-China, and he had drawn on while Japan was a newcomer on the international his knowledge of Japan’s military strength to predict a stage. By the 1970s Britain had lost its empire and Japanese victory in the Sino-Japanese war. His period was in economic decline, while Japan was enjoying a in office coincided with the end of the Anglo-Japanese period of high-speed growth and was very clearly on alliance in 1923, but Curzon had in fact been in favour the rise. of extending it for a further period. For most of the nineteenth century it is difficult to Curzon’s successors lacked both his first-hand identify anything that could be called a policy towards knowledge of Japan and his interest in East Asia but Japan in the Foreign Office. For Britain the promotion they also had to deal with far more serious problems of trade was the prime interest, even though Lord John as Anglo-Japanese relations deteriorated in the 1930s. Russell, for example, was unimpressed by the arrogant Ernest Bevin as foreign secretary in the post-war behaviour of some British merchants in Japan. For the Labour government had to deal with the occupation 2 Issue 78, Volume 13, Number 6 (December 2018) of Japan and the conclusion of a peace treaty, but going on in London while successive ambassadors over subsequent decades, as the Japanese economy were reporting on events in Japan. The essays are entered a period of sustained growth, relations with uniformly well researched and they manage to locate Japan entered a new phase. Increasingly trade issues, changing policy towards Japan in the context of a fluid such as access to the Japanese market and Japanese international situation in which Japan usually did not investment in Britain, became the focus of British figure prominently in British political considerations. policy, but there was also growing recognition of Few Japanese political leaders have been Japan’s growing role on the world stage, for when comfortable in English, it is true, but on the other the G6 was formed in 1975 Japan was one of the hand no British foreign secretary has yet been able original members. Whether they were interested or to display much knowledge of Japanese. For this not, foreign secretaries found that Japan took up more reason, interpreters have had a crucial but invisible of their time and attention, and Japan has continued role to play in Anglo-Japanese relations, as have British figure prominently in the formation of British foreign diplomatic representatives in Japan. This book carries policy. More recent developments, however, such as on its cover a picture of the imposing British Embassy responses to the transformation of China into a global building in Tokyo, and perhaps there is in that just economic and political power are not covered in this a suggestion that foreign policy may be made in book, for the obvious reason that under the 30-year Whitehall but would be at sea without the acumen of rule the relevant papers have not yet been released.