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HISTORY AT STAKE IN EAST ASIA edited by Rosa Caroli and Pierre-François Souyri History at Stake in East Asia / Rosa Caroli and Pierre-François Souyri (eds.) © 2012 Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina ISBN 978-88-7543-318-5 This book was published thanks to the support of The Toshiba International Foundation, the University of Geneva and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice Cover: A Japanese World Map (1792) © Corbis Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina srl Dorsoduro 3259, 30123 Venezia www.cafoscarina.it All rights reserved First edition July 2012 CONTENTS Rosa CAROLI, Pierre-François SOUYRI Foreword vii Thinking Modernity in East Asia Brij TANKHA Religion and Modernity in Meiji Japan: Strengthening the People 3 Kent G. DENG Role of the State and State-building in Modern China: Review and New Insight 21 Rosa CAROLI Bearers of Modernity: The West, Japan and Its Peripheries 53 Writing History Pierre-François SOUYRI Representations of the “History of Japan” During the Meiji Era: Future at Stake 73 Arnaud NANTA The Japanese Colonial Historiography in Korea (1905-1945) 83 Laurent NESPOULOUS Memories from Beyond the Past. Grasping Prehistoric Times in Japan: The Birth and Evolution of an “Archaeological Consciousness” (Seventeenth to Twentieth Centuries) 107 vi HISTORY AT STAKE IN EAST ASIA Guido SAMARANI Recent Trends in Chinese Historiography and the Debate on the 1911 Revolution 119 Nationalising History Samuel GUEX Overcoming the Frame of National History in South Korea 131 Laura DE GIORGI Learning History in Globalizing China: An Overview of Chinese High-school History Textbooks 155 Globalising History Patrick Karl O’BRIEN The Debate on Economic Divergence Between the Occident and the Orient. An Essay in Bibliography and Criticism 173 List of Contributors 197 Abstracts 199 FOREWORD Instead of applying one-size-fits-all theories to the diverse shapes of modern experience, we might equally well begin from that diversity in order to build a more expansive definition of what it means to be modern. This is what I mean by moving from history to theory. Carol Gluck This book was born as a consequence of the international conference “Historiography on Japan and East Asia: State, Trends and Perspectives” which was held in Venice in November 2010. The main purpose of the conference was to evaluate the present state and trends of historical research on East Asia. History at stake in East Asia deals mainly with relevant issues concerning East Asian history by adopting an inside perspective and comparing different views now prevailing in Japan, China and Korea. Actually, in the last decades many scholars explored some crucial phenomena of the historical process in Japan, China and Korea, acquiring a new methodology in investigating East Asia history and carrying out fresh research which changed the framework of traditional approaches. A deeper understanding of significant historical issues in these countries is highly important in improving the comprehension of the cultural and political interactions among the countries of a region which has strategic importance in the global geopolitical equilibrium as well as in its change. We should also rethink the interaction between the ‘universal’ and the ‘local’ by overcoming the traditional view of East Asian history which prevails in the so-called Orientalism, and that is still prevalent in the Eurocentric historical narrative. Actually, an analysis of the real significance of the histories and micro histories of East Asia for global history is essential in overturning the conventional approach moving from the ‘universal’ to the ‘local’. In fact, by travelling in the opposite direction (i.e. from the ‘local’ to the ‘universal’) it would also be possible to highlight the various meanings and historical inflections that some global phenomena have in national, local or transnational space of East Asia. The analysis of the interaction between East Asian histories and global history from this perspective could also be helpful in examining processes of encounters, connections, integrations and assimilations as well as historicising globalization. viii HISTORY AT STAKE IN EAST ASIA We express our sincere gratitude to Ca’ Foscari University and Geneva University for helping us produce this volume. And to the Toshiba International Foundation for its generous support. The editors HISTORY AT STAKE IN EAST ASIA RELIGION AND MODERNITY IN MEIJI JAPAN: STRENGTHENING THE PEOPLE Brij Tankha* Introduction The transformation of Buddhism under the impact of Christianity and the opening of Japan to Western influence frames the role of religious ideas and groups in a simple binary. It places a calcified Buddhism tied to Tokugawa power and divorced from the needs of the people and this moribund Buddhism is transformed by the liberating power of western ideas. This marginalizes, or rather compartmentalizes, the role of religion in social and intellectual debates and accepts the reading of those who sought to develop Japanese modernity on the assumption that religion never played a major role in Japan. In fact religion has always been important and was an integral element in shaping the debates in the late Tokugawa and post Meiji period as well. Religion, as part of a larger cultural system with a long history deeply imbedded in the social and political structure, shaped this discourse. The Meiji Restoration (ishin) and the changes that followed were made within this system. In contrast to Europe, religious wars had ended by the sixteenth century and the Tokugawa enforced sectarian boundaries. Thus, rivalries were muted, which perhaps helps to explain the relative ease with which Buddhists sects came together after the Meiji period. This is in contrast to the continued sectarian rivalries within Christianity or Islam. * I would like to thank professor Rosa Caroli and professor Pierre Souyri, the organisers of the conference “Historiography on Japan and East Asia: State, Trends and Perspectives”, for inviting me to participate in what was a very intellectually stimulating and friendly environment. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a seminar organised by professor Iwasaki Minoru and professor Narita Ryūichi under the Workshop in Critical Theory (WINC), Tōkyō July 31, 2010. I would like to thank them and professor Shimazono Susumu, who was the discussant, for their very helpful comments and suggestions. 4 BRIJ TANKHA There was also a marked movement of priests leaving their sects and becoming “lay preachers”, to expand their ministry beyond their sects’ members and address issues of wider social concern. They were moving beyond the individual and family to see their constituency as the emerging nation. Their ideas provided the theoretical foundation for the institutions and practices that were created. In this essay I take the life of the Nishi Honganji monk Kitabatake Dōryū (1820-1907) to demonstrate the importance of religion in social and political debates, the expanding role of the clergy and to argue that there was a diversity of opinion among these groups. Religious groups did not all work to support the Meiji project of an “emperor system” nation-state. Kitabatake’s life demonstrates one way that Buddhists responded to the challenges of rethinking the role of the clergy, the place of religion and the nature of the state. Kitabatake’s public activities also point to the role of domains (han) such as Kii in the Meiji ishin, a role that has been largely obscured by the focus on Satsuma and Chōshū. Finally, I would suggest that these new developments, first at the han level and then later at the national level, were not driven only by the initiative of enlightened elites but rather it by the demands and pressures from below, by those excluded in a way or another, that forced those in power to change and adapt to ensure their own survival. The Question of Religion Religion, long denied a place within the modernist framework, has come to be acknowledged as a major force that shaped nationalism and inspired social and political thinkers across a range of intellectual positions. The old dichotomies of Western secularism and Eastern spirituality have given way to recognition that religion and religious movements have come to play an even greater role in shaping the public and private spheres of the modern world. The modern state and its relationship with religious groups and their exclusion from public affairs are questions now being thought afresh. Talal Asad has questioned the universal definition of religion and secularism and shown many varieties of secularism within the Western world. 1 He has argued that religion, as it is generally defined, is a modern Western invention, and so, underlined the need to rethink the religious-secular dichotomy. He argues that secularism is not just when human life emancipates itself from religion. Rather, in early modern Europe, it was a political strategy to build a 1 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 1993. RELIGION AND MODERNITY IN MEIJI JAPAN: STRENGTHENING THE PEOPLE 5 particular conception of the world which was used to control the mobile poor, govern hostile sects and regulate colonial expansion.2 David Bell, on the other hand has argued that it was the religious debates in Europe that created the intellectual conditions for the events that led to the French revolution and the “modern” world. He argues that it was the notion of the hidden god which placed the onus of responsibility and action on people who undermined the existing hierarchies of power.3 Martin Riesebrodt addresses this question through the notion of “referential legitimation” as a way of defining a common ground of shared premises that make dialogue and debate possible. 4 Following these attempts to re-define religion, the question of the relationship between the “secular” and the “religious” world has been opened to exploration and explanation in a variety of ways.