Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. viii, 440 pp. (Figures, maps, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-520-28777-8.
Many of us teach survey histories or introductions to Japanese culture. Many have switched textbooks multiple times, hoping to find one that works. This one just might.
Textbook success depends on various factors, including the institution and course aims. Reading the book oneself never answers the most important question, which only comes through field-testing. That question, “Will students read it?” surpasses all others. I often fail to predict enthusiasm for a general history. Texts that I prize for generous illustrations or principled argument languish under-read, while those whose simplifications seem patronizing win thumbs-up from undergraduates. Meanwhile I refuse to teach with histories that lack macrons or reasonable prices. The present volume, with 80 illustrations and nine maps, checks all my scholarly boxes. Nancy Stalker invokes as a guiding theme areas that “most fully engage students” (viii). Her long classroom experience commands our trust, because while students are changing rapidly, they are more than ever interested in Japan, and we more than ever have a responsibility to deliver the benefits of a humanities education. The author wisely lingers over what students want to know or find fascinating. Take Bunraku puppetry: she clarifies that the chanter does all the voices, and notes that female puppets have no legs (195). Her prose is relaxed and assured. If your students enjoy reading (there are 400 pages, after all), and you want them to have a model of clear and concise writing, this is a winner.
Chapter titles reveal a main narrative of Japan’s premodern past that does not diverge much from what you learned as an undergrad. The opening chapter uses the word “nation” three times in the first paragraph, casting the archipelago’s relationship to the continent in terms of the modern nation-state. Chapter 3’s title, “The Rule of Taste: Lives of Heian Aristocrats (794–1185),” acknowledges 400 years filtered through the lens of elite literature. There is little culture shock going from here to such staples of Japanology as Ivan Morris. This is not necessarily problematic. A critique of the standard-issue story can founder on two fronts: students do not know the account we are attempting to undercut, and so are merely confused at our passionate calls for anti-essentialism or our distaste for rampant aestheticism; or we undercut the attraction that mustered students in the first place. There is something to be said for communicating the story of Japan, even the normative one, with affection. This author’s love (in the best sense) of the subject buoys the next four chapters on medieval and early modern times.
This history does not, as some have, dispense with the premodern in 60 pages before unspooling twice as much on the last 150 years. Just under half of the book covers Meiji through today—and masterful coverage it is. These Japanese ride trains and eat, work, and protest. Each of three chapters on modernity starts with “political and social developments,” fully observes culture, in material and other forms, gives religion its due, and has a section or close consideration on “changing gender norms.” Stalker recounts a range of novels, from the expected Sōseki to native Taiwanese writer Yang Kui and Korean colonial author Yi Kwangsu, probing the delicate issues surrounding their hybrid identities. Stalker’s account of war tragedies perpetrated by and visited on the Japanese in their pursuit of empire illuminates how Japanese colonialism differed from that of Western powers. A lengthy chapter on “Defeat and Reconstruction” is stimulating for its case that the “economic miracle” brought not-so-miraculous compromises.
Stalker presents the post-industrial challenges of the 1980s and 1990s, detailing the ways Japan diverges from stereotypes that our students still harbour of the homogeneous, safe, group-oriented land of the cute and contented. She analyzes everything from homelessness to Brazilian Nikkei immigrant workers, from Crunchyroll anime to Superflat art. Stalker incorporates the fruits of recent English-language scholarship, with a few exceptions such as disability studies and robotics. Any such history has its exclusions, and it is easy enough to supplement the missing (but not entirely missed) Nakasone Yasuhiro, Abe Shinzō, or Yasukuni Shrine. At the end of each chapter, the author lists further reading as well as films that might extend or capitalize on students’ curiosity; more importantly, she peppers references to filmic treatments of subjects throughout the narrative.
The survey cannot be faulted for coverage. Whether you want your students to have a handy list of the six schools of Nara Buddhism, read a cogent explanation of shōen estates and shiki, distinguish kibyōshi from sharebon, learn about Rengatei (if this does not ring a bell, see chapter 9), or confront atomic literature, you are in luck. You will never find yourself wondering where all the women are. Everyone from Kōmyō to the shirabyōshi Hotoke, from Tanizaki’s Naomi to Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, appears as integral parts of the story. Contemporary women’s scholarship is amply cited. Literary works feature often, either in excerpted translations of varying vintage, or in summary. Every reader of a comprehensive history will find something hard to forgive; for me it is the term “ideographs” (43) where Sinographs or logographs are preferred. There were only a dozen errors in long vowels or other proofing misses.
One question remains for Stalker (besides how did you convince yourself to make this sacrifice to the field?): What is the meaning of “classical” in the subtitle “from Classical to Cool”? The cover designer assembled a distinctly un-classical ukiyo-e image of a samurai (Yashima Gakutei’s Kusunoki Masatsura, c. 1821) and a cool manga-style fem-swashbuckler, identified in ultrafine print as a ninja—and correctly dismissed in the text as “historically rather insignificant” (147). Deconstructing this image could be a great beginning for a course. (Or it could simply tell students that the pedantic instructor objects to fun.) Great fun for me would have been an extended discussion of how Stalker changes our picture of Japan. Perhaps this is the greatest saving grace for students, who can just jump into the most complete, and completely readable, story of Japan in print.
Linda H. Chance
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia