Harvard East Asian Monographs, 358. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; Harvard University Press [distributor], 2013. viii, 225 pp. (Maps, figures.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-72670-3.
In his 1951 farewell address to Congress, Douglas MacArthur famously remarked that “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” As Michael Wert’s Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan shows, the same could not be said of many of the men who fought on the side of the doomed Tokugawa shogunate during the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Like Oguri Tadamasa, the shogunal official at the centre of this study, many Tokugawa loyalists both died—often quite brutally—and faded from popular attention. Whether and on what terms the resurrection of their memories took place often depended on the interplay of politics, historical writing and local activism particular to each case.
Wert’s book follows the narrative fortunes of “Meiji Restoration losers” from the earliest accounts of the Restoration, written in the 1870s, through to twenty-first-century manga. Although Wert touches upon the tumultuous legacies of several of the erstwhile villains of Bakumatsu history, including Ii Naosuke, the Shinsengumi and the northeastern domain of Aizu, the primary focus of this study is the “tortured posthumous history” (1) of Oguri. By choosing a lesser-known figure than Katsu Kaishū or Ii Naosuke, Wert is able to turn Oguri’s relative obscurity into an advantage by using him as the point of entry for a new appraisal of the commemoration of the Meiji Restoration.
Meiji Restoration Losers argues that “local commemorative efforts by memory activists have, over time, changed regional … and national interpretations of the Meiji Restoration” (4). Wert is not merely aiming at the reclamation of a particular silenced memory, but rather at the middle ground of memory, where national narratives and local efforts to commemorate the past shape one another. The analysis is carefully grounded in both scholarship on the Restoration era as well as the wider scholarly literature on memory studies. Wert’s treatment of his primary sources is also impressive, drawing on a wide range of materials that includes documentary sources, histories and biographies, local publications and popular media. His close readings of both the historical and fictionalized narratives of Oguri’s life—such as Ibuse Masuji’s The Priest of Fumon’in Temple (114–118)—are among the book’s highlights.
Wert’s first chapter provides historical background on Oguri’s life, with two main aims: to underline the moments in his career that became reference points for later commentators; and to elucidate Oguri’s relationship with the villagers on his lands, some of whom—inhabitants of Gonda village and their descendants—would go on to become the memory activists behind efforts to rehabilitate his legacy. Chapter 2 explores the treatment of Oguri in the years immediately following the Restoration. Here, Wert focuses on two levels of memory: the national historical discourse, in which critics of the new regime challenged official narratives of the Restoration that painted Oguri as a villain; and in rural Gunma, where Oguri existed primarily in the realm of rumour, and not at all as an object of veneration. The next chapter, which examines commemorations of Oguri between the 1890s and 1940s, is the strongest in the book. Here, Wert shows how efforts to rehabilitate Oguri and other Tokugawa loyalists (particularly Ii Naosuke) required the coordination of a variety of actors. He focuses his analysis on two commemorations: the erection of a bust of Oguri at the Yokosuka Naval Yard—which he had helped build—and the ultimately failed effort to elevate Oguri to court rank. Both of these efforts involved the combined intervention of local activists, local and national politicians, and senior military officers. It is in the detailed accounts of these initiatives that one gets the clearest sense of Wert’s argument in action. Chapter 4 shows how the changed political environment of postwar Japan created new possibilities for the makers of memory to shape narratives of the Meiji Restoration. Here, Wert’s analysis of Marxist historiography, historical fiction (especially the novels of Shiba Ryōtarō), and period films (jidaigeki) is of tremendous value in understanding the roots of many enduring popular narratives of the Restoration era. The final chapter focuses on Oguri’s modest apotheosis in the Heisei (1989–present) era, when he and other Tokugawa loyalists gained a measure of rehabilitation.
Meiji Restoration Losers achieves its aim of revealing the complex processes of commemoration behind the enduring narratives of the Restoration era. Wert makes good use of his primary sources and his analysis is firmly grounded in the relevant scholarship. One minor shortcoming stems from Wert’s decision to structure his analysis around Oguri and incorporate the cases of other Tokugawa loyalists—such as Ii, the Shinsengumi, and the warriors of Aizu—in supplementary fashion. Although this scalpel-sharp focus on a single figure leads to penetrating insights into the way that the processes of commemoration work on the ground, a more sustained treatment of the other “losers” might have given readers a better sense of whether the trajectory of Oguri’s legacy was representative or exceptional. But this rather minor issue does nothing to detract from an otherwise excellent book. Meiji Restoration Losers is essential reading for historians of the Bakumatsu or Restoration eras, and highly recommended for any scholars with an interest in modern Japanese historiography.
D. Colin Jaundrill
Providence College, Providence, USA