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EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2003 Summary of Discussions: The EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2003 Summary of Discussions: 3) to suggest possible directions for future re- search in and development of the field, all con- The State of the Field in Early cerns that lie at the heart of this essay. Modern Japanese Studies Major Cross-cutting Issues ©Philip C. Brown, Ohio State University* 1. Different disciplines in “Early Modern At some point during the Hōei era (1704-1710), (kinsei) Japan” do not share chronological a low-ranking samurai (ashigaru) of Kaga do- bounds and publishing practice can further main, Yamada Jirōemon, edited a collection of exacerbate differences by narrowing discipli- materials that various people had been collecting nary focus considerably. While the terms of since the mid-seventeenth century. The materi- political history often provide the broad frame- als focused largely on the formative years of work for much political, diplomatic, intellectual Kaga domain. In accord with common practice, and socio-economic history, historians typically Yamada gave his work the self-deprecatory title, recognize that within large periods, non-political Mitsubo kikigaki, loosely translated as “Three developments might mark important subdivisions. Jars of Jottings on Hearsay.” In part, the inspi- The Tokugawa era lies at the heart of this period ration for his choice of title may have been his on which our essays focused, giving a nod to the sensitivity to the unoriginal nature of his work. groundwork laid during the late sixteenth century. He was, after all, collecting, editing and transmit- From the historian’s perspective, the designa- ting materials that others had researched or that tion of the period as “early modern” began with they had written based on their own personal ex- the publication of Studies in the Institutional His- perience. tory of Early Modern Japan.1 There is a certain This essay, based on discussions at the confer- irony in the fact that, despite the title, the essay- ence on the state of early modern Japanese stud- ists' conceptual discussions, when they character- ies has some of this same character. I wish to ized the period at all, focused on “feudalism” – stress that this is a summary of the discussions, “early modern” was not directly defined or dis- and eschews any effort to summarize the ten pa- cussed and does not even appear in the index to pers that formed the basis for them. Nonethe- the book.2 (There can be little doubt that the less, a number of the themes noted here also ap- title of the volume reflects the heavy involvement peared in some form in the essays themselves. of the editors and many of its contributors to the Furthermore, the title of Yamada’s collection conceptualization underlying the conferences and suggests a metaphor for the major tasks of the essay collections associated with the Princeton conference: 1) to review recent trends in the series on Japan’s modernization. In this series, scholarship, 2) to discuss methodological and treatment of Tokugawa as an “early modern” pre- theoretical problems of the field at this time and cursor to a modern Meiji extended beyond politi- cal, social and economic history into the realms of cultural history, too.) * I have attempted to draw examples and illus- trations from all of the fields represented at the conference and in the essays EMJ has published 1 Edited by John W. Hall and Marius B. Jansen, since, but I have made no effort to discuss each in Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. relationship to the various points that constitute this 2 The volume’s heavy emphasis on the summary. limitations of characterizing Tokugawa Japan as I would especially like to thank Patricia Graham “feudal” combined with current academic interests for her comments on the manuscript version of this in “pre-modern” precursors to Japan’s late essay. I have also benefited from an extended nineteenth century rapid economic development and discussion with her regarding a number of specific political, social and cultural transformation led most issues touched on in discussions at the conference. scholars in the U.S. to substitute “early modern” for Brett Walker also made helpful comments on an “feudal” as the standard characterization of earlier draft. Tokugawa Japan. 54 EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2003 Historians also widely recognize that if one good sense of what appealed to this foreign audi- takes a broadly social or economic historical per- ence, the tendency was to focus on what was fa- spective, a completely different scheme for peri- miliar to or resonated with "us" rather than to odization might result. Indeed, several alterna- place principal emphasis on understanding Ja- tives were briefly mentioned during the discus- pan's past on its own terms.3 sions, including some that clearly violated the Even if scholars today have an awareness of un- standard schemes of periodization beloved by explored vistas, what is published, especially in political historians. book form, has often remained quite narrowly Yet nothing in this general set of expectations focused. In the field of literature, English lan- could have prepared the historians in our group guage publication is trained heavily on Genroku (and perhaps others) for the arguments made in and largely avoids anything else before or after the fields of art history and literature. For ex- that. The styles of literary expression dominant ample, noting the emphasis in art history on the in the medieval era are treated as though they study of individual artists (despite the emergence continued to dominate literary production through of post-modernist theory as an important element most of the seventeenth century. The period in the field), Patricia Graham argued that in the after Genroku has largely been ignored, Haruo major fields of art history, the period would have Shirane argued, because it seems to have little to begin with the late Muromachi era (mid- connection to the emergence of “modern” forms sixteenth century, with the flourishing of urban of literary expression, notably the novel. From merchant classes) and would not end until well this perspective, “early modern Japan” is, in pub- into the late nineteenth century. This is partly lishing practice, comprised of just a few decades because styles change more gradually, without and the objects of investigation are quite limited. the sharp demarcations based on pivotal events 2. The field is young and relatively small; such as those that are commonly invoked by po- publications in many areas are spotty. A litical historians. common thread running through much of our The different definitions of the period are inevi- discussion, that there are yet big projects or prob- tably linked to the differing definitions of “mod- lems that remain to be undertaken, can in part be ern” applied within disciplines in the U.S. and traced to the fact that the ranks of laborers in the Western Europe. For political history, the key early modern field are still rather thin. Pre- lies in the emergence of more effective, centrally modern Japan’s role as backdrop to Japan’s late controlled state apparatus, largely in the eight- nineteenth- and twentieth-century transformation eenth and nineteenth century. In the field of provided the major justification for the expansion diplomatic relations, the definition is generally of the Japan field into the Tokugawa era in the tied to the emergence of a system of diplomatic United States. The influence of the moderniza- relations based on equality of states as expressed tion problematic – at least in the sense of the To- in treaties and an emerging diplomatic protocol in kugawa–Meiji links in politics, society, econom- the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In ics, literature, religion and thought, if not in the prose literature, the issue is linked to the devel- modernization paradigm of the nineteen fifties opment of the novel. These different definitions and nineteen-sixties – remain influential, even if are further linked to the historical circumstances they may be undergoing transformation. Now, in which the Western intellectual traditions began for example, in political and social history these to think of the “modern” as a distinct historical days, work bridging the Tokugawa-Meiji divide break. is more likely to trace the ill effects of the Toku- These differences of definition have had conse- gawa connection than would once have been the quences that extend back in time, beyond the de- velopment of the field in the latter half of the 3 twentieth century. Given the fact that many of Recall that many Japanese were trying to prove that they were "civilized" and "sophisticated" like the early European and North American scholars the West, and were assiduously striving to re- worked with Japanese intellectual guides who, by fashion themselves to demonstrate the validity of the twentieth century, had developed a pretty that claim. 55 EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2003 case. Links between Tokugawa and Meiji may North America and Western Europe); we also not be chronologically direct but nonetheless, the tend to anticipate that the first studies of political old ties still bind. In art history, ukiyoe prints of history and foreign relations focus on elite poli- the eighteenth century were of particular interest tics. in the West, and associated with the Japonisme The realm of art history, however, introduces and Impressionist movements of the late nine- other powerful forces in deciding what gets stud- teenth century, both reflected the nature of West- ied: the connoisseur, the major art collector, the ern interest in Japanese art. That interest re- consumer. Exhibition catalogs, one of the major mains highly prominent today, to the exclusion of publication venues in the field of art history, are many other styles and art forms. built around the display of exhibitions that often This leaves relatively large areas of research feature the holdings of a single collector.
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