Harvard East Asian Monographs. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2022. xiv, 428 pp. (Graphs, illustrations.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 9780674270978.
Simon Avenell’s Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity is an extraordinary work of intellectual history. Relying almost entirely on the author’s reading of primary texts, of which there are nearly a thousand cited, the book traces the evolution of how progressives in Japan—primarily intellectuals, but also political leaders and civic activists—have thought about Asia and its relationship to Japan’s past, present, and future. At a time when much of the media and academia’s focus has been on right wing movements, this close reading of the evolution of progressive thought in Japan offers a very different perspective on the process of national identity formation and re-formation in a contemporary democracy.
Asia and Postwar Japan can be read in at least three different ways. For scholars of Japanese history, politics, and society, the book is a treasure trove of original insights into many long-standing questions in the field as well as a guide to the thinking of prominent Japanese intellectuals. Scholars can read the book in its entirety, hone in on particular moments in time—e.g., The Komatsugawa Incident in 1958 or the Gwon Hui-ro Incident of 1968—or read it for insights into specific issues such as war responsibility or the evolution of a multi-ethnic national identity. Whatever the reader’s own specialty, they will find new insights and a multitude of new sources related to their topic of interest.
For Asian Studies scholars whose primary focus lies outside Japan, the book draws back the curtain on what can be a baffling set of seemingly contradictory policies and behaviours coming from the country. Through his extraordinarily detailed investigation into the debates among the different people and groups within the progressive community as well as between progressives and conservatives, Avenell helps make sense of the complexity of Japanese political thought even for those who may not recognize any of the names.
For intellectual historians who do not usually study Asia, or for political theorists and those interested in progressive political thought without a background in Japan, Asia and Postwar Japan will give them access into a whole new world. Very few of the sources cited in the book are available in English, and many of the concepts discussed do not have ready equivalents outside of Asia. And yet, Avenell’s prose is so clear, he is not only able to make the foreign texts and ideas legible to a non-specialist, he is also able to place Japan’s intimate wrestling with self-identity in a context that is relatable to readers no matter what their background is. Japan has been both oppressor and victim, isolated and connected, weak and strong. Its progressive thinkers have been the ignored, radical voices in the wilderness as well at the most powerful people in the country. As a result, readers across a very wide range of national and political contexts will be able to find themselves in the text. They will leave the book not only with a richer and more nuanced understanding of Japan but also, likely, with a new understanding of themselves and their own political context.
The book explores the evolution of progressive thinking about Asia across the postwar period. Employing the concept of “deimperialization” from Kuang-Hsing Chen’s Asia as a Method (2010), Avenell traces the evolution of Japanese progressive thought across six time periods. In the early postwar period, Japan was de-Asianized, denouncing the ultra-nationalism of the war period and embracing Western ideas of democracy (and socialism and communism). During this period, Asia was seen as backward and stagnant, even as some parts of the progressive movement admired the communist revolutionaries in China and the anticolonial movements in Korea and Southeast Asia.
The late 1960s and early 1970s, “marked the first embryonic attempts by some Japanese progressives to rethink Asia in the context of colonial empire, militarism, and war responsibility” (77). By the late 1970s, students and antiwar activists were brought into the progressive movement as more Japanese engaged in deeper self-reflection about their responsibility for wartime atrocities as well as how Asian immigrants should be treated inside Japan.
In the fourth period, which begins in the late 1960s and spans the 1970s, Japanese activists began forming more grassroots connections and solidarity movements with their Asian counterparts. Anti-pollution activists protesting pollution caused by Japanese companies at home connected with those protesting pollution caused by the same corporations in Asia. Democracy activists supported the pro-democracy movement in South Korea, with Christians “linking their campaign for South Korean democratization to unresolved transgressions of Japanese Christians against Asia. [They] argued that Japanese colonization and push for high-speed growth paved the way for political oppression under Park” (234).
By the 1980s, pro-business conservatives and political elites were buzzing with “internationalization,” and progressives took the opportunity to foster grassroots efforts to “introduce the potent perspectives of human rights and social and economic justice into the issue of war responsibility, the meaning of Asia for Japan, and the process of genuine relations of equality and reciprocity with people of the region” (248). In 1990, with the end of the Cold War, the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble, the economic ascent of the Asian Tigers, and intermittent trade wars with the United States, Japanese progressives were poised for a breakthrough, emphasizing “historical interconnection and shared destiny in their blueprints for Japan’s future for the region” (340).
In sum, Asia and Postwar Japan is an extraordinary book that documents the complex evolution of how Japanese progressives viewed their relationship with Asia. Specialists can mine the footnotes for well known and unknown Japanese thinkers alike. Non-specialists can gain insights into how progressive movements evolve, with hints for how to reconcile moral responsibility for historical wrongs with hopes for a future of shared peace and prosperity.
Mary Alice Haddad
Wesleyan University, Middletown