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7 Social History (3) – as a Maritime Nation

s noted in the Introduction, both Yamaji Aizan and Yanagita AKunio shared common interests in the life of the people. The his- torian Kano Masanao has suggested that Yanagita’s folklore research was a criticism of the established study of history.1 In 1961, Yanagita argued that historians should not neglect the role of commoners as unimportant and that ‘it was extraordinary that people were igno- rant of things like seafaring life’.2 While noting the significance of the role of commoners in the creation of culture, Yanagita pointed out the shortcomings of present-day historical studies. First, politi- cal history tended to be a mere collection of biographies of heroes.3 Second, historians who held the class-struggle view of history (kaikyu¯to¯so¯ shikan) regarded the history of farmers simply ‘as a series of riots, direct petitions and natural disasters’.4 Third, the imperial view of history (ko¯ shikan) caused historians to become too enthusiastic about the study of spiritual culture.5 Consequently, Yanagita wanted to establish the study of commoners, instead of political history. He wanted to investigate the life of commoners including maritime people who were neglected in both the imperial view of history and the Marxist view of history. Like Yanagita, Yamaji Aizan devoted his attention to Japan’s waterborne links with other countries, and took a firm stand against the view that Japan was a homogeneous, isolated nation. According to Amino Yoshihiko, the view that the Japanese are homogeneous is related to the idea that Japan is ‘an island country in the Far East’ and in the past was isolated from the rest of the world.6 There are two groups of intellectuals who advocate the view that Japan was an isolated island country. One group rejects the nationalistic spirit of pre-war Japan and considers the Japanese to have been self-righteous and conceited, insisting that the Japanese should repress such an insular spirit (shimaguni konjo¯) that is still characteristic of them. The other group emphasizes the uniqueness and uniformity of Japanese culture on the grounds that Japan is an M869 YAMAJI TEXT M-UP.qxd 18/9/07 12:13 pm Page 110

110 Yamaji Aizan and His Time

isolated island country. In the opinion of this group, because over the centuries the sea has separated and protected Japan from the rest of the world, Japan has absorbed foreign culture and technology without having been invaded and ruled by foreigners. Although taking different points of view, however, these two groups base their arguments on the same assumption that Japan was an isolated island country.7 Amino Yoshihiko has asserted that the view that Japan was an island country was flawed because it ignored the fact that marine trans- portation could have connected peoples on separate islands and con- tinents.8 It would be natural and logical to think that there were waterborne links between Tsushima Island, the Korean Peninsula, the Okinawa Islands and Taiwan, and between Hokkaido¯ and Sakhalin. In Amino’s opinion, the view that Japan was an isolated island country is an ideological ‘fiction’ which is based on the present-day national border.9 The view that there were close links between the Japanese islands and other parts of the world was also expressed in the period. Like Amino Yoshihiko, Yamaji Aizan asserted that Japan was a maritime nation and had waterborne links with neighbouring coun- tries, which was neglected in both the imperial view of history and the unilinear progressive view of history.

WAKO¯, THE ‘JAPANESE’ PIRATES From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the wako¯ (‘Japanese’ pirates) attacked people on the coast of and the Korean Peninsula. For Yamaji, the activities of the wako¯ demonstrated that Japan was a maritime country. In his article entitled ‘Wako¯’ (1916), Yamaji discussed the activities of pirates or merchants in the from the late thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. In his view, the emergence of the wako¯ was related to Japanese sailors’ close waterborne contact with people from its neighbouring regions, including China. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Yamaji asserted that some Japanese were descendants of the Malays, who were excellent naviga- tors and reached Japan through the coast of China and the Korean Peninsula. In his view, Japan was an island country and naturally a maritime country.10 In Japan, there were the deep forests of cedars (sugi)aswell as camphor trees (kusu), whose timber could be used as materials for shipbuilding. Japanese waters were generally dangerous and hard to navigate and, moreover, Japanese shorelines were difficult for ships to reach. Nevertheless, the and the waters near the west coast of Kyu¯shu¯ were calm and suitable for navigation. For this reason, Western Japan had a strong naval tradition from ancient times, and conquered the Emishi people in Eastern Japan by