japansociety
Japan Book Review

Volume 1 No. 5 September 2006

Editor: Sean Curtin
Managing Editor: Clare Barclay

Contents

eptember 2006 will be remembered as a historic month for Japan
with the birth of the first male heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne
in 41 years and the election of a new prime minister to replace theflamboyant Junichiro Koizumi. The focus of this issue of Japan Book
Review also has a strong historic flavour with an excellent selection of newreviews. War diaries and memoirs form this issue's main theme, with several new books offering deep insights into people's wartime thinking andreasoning while powerfully chronicling the terrible human suffering of
ordinary individuals during the period. We also review two books thatanalyze the propaganda and philosophy that underpinned the wartime
military regime. As usually, we also have a stimulating selection of reviews
covering a broad spectrum of topics, this time ranging from Japan's rapidly expanding telecommunications sector to noteworthy Samurai battles,
plus our new theatre review feature of major Japanese productions staged
in the UK. All of this is only a fraction of what you will find available on
our website, which contains many more new reviews.
Sean Curtin

S

New reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/reviews.html
Archive reviews: http://www.japansociety.org.uk/reviews_archive.html

Kamikaze
Diaries:
Reflections of JapaneseStudent Soldiers,
by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney,
University of Chicago Press, 2006, 246
pages, ISBN 0-226-61950-8 (available
via internet from Blackwells in Oxford
for £16 plus postage).
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Many myths have grown up about the young Japanese men
who were forced to carry out suicidal attacks on allied ships in
the final stages of the Pacific War. They were for the most partnot volunteers in the real sense of the word. They wereordered to 'volunteer' and knew that they were in any casedestined to die. Many of them, as these diaries reveal weresensitive and educated young men, who were among thebrightest of their generation. Their diaries and letters maketragic reading.
The nationalists of today, who speak of these youngsters as
heroes and quote their sacrifice as beacons for theregeneration of modern Japan, and the Yasukuni shrine andthe Yushukan museum, which glory in their deaths, delude
themselves and the Japanese people. They died totally(1) Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of JapaneseStudent Soldiers(2) The Thought War: Japanese Imperial
Propaganda(3) Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies:
Selections from the Wartime Diaries ofOrdinary Japanese(4) In the Faraway Mountains and Rivers:More Voices From A Lost Generation ofJapanese Students(5) Japanese Telecommunications: Market
and Policy in Transition(6) The Opening of Japan 1853-1855(7) Rondon nikki, 1936-7(8) Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by
Watanabe Kazan 1793-1841(9)Defending Japan's Pacific War: The Kyoto
School Philosophers and Post-White Power(10) Japanese Samurai and battles up to 1603
(11) The Chichibu Mikado(12)The Japanese Mission to Europe, 15821590: The Journey of Four Samurai Boys
through Portugal, Spain and Italy

unnecessarily and without delaying Japan's inevitable defeat.
They were not as Japanese propagandists would have us
believe martyrs for the Emperor and for Japan. Hayashi
Tadao, one of those whose writings are quoted in this volume
in 1945, foresaw what Japan faced. He wrote a poem whichreads as follows:
The End of Imperial Japan
Ruining and crumbling
Decadence
Nothing will be left
The end of all; All will crumble
Japan will meet its finale
That taboo
Catastrophe
It is also a myth that these young men were martyrs to becompared with the suicide bombers who attacked the twin
towers and the London underground. They did not become
kamikaze out of a religious fervour whether for the Emperor
or for Japan. They did not attack civilian targets and were notterrorists.
This book is a reminder not only of the brainwashing of theyoung carried out by the pre-war Japanese military but also of
the brutal treatment of anyone thought to be an intellectual.
"Kasuga Takeo never recovered from the innumerable
beatings he received on the base. His superiors told him that
corporal punishment would instil a 'soldier's fighting spirit' injapansociety

Japan Book Review: September 2006

him. They were supposed to die. From the time they received
their assignment they no longer belonged to the world. They
could not return even if they could not locate the enemy. Ifthey came back safely they were liable to be shot." Death as akamikaze was perhaps more bearable than dying from being
beaten or shot by superior officers. It is noteworthy that:"When the operation was instituted in October 1944, not asingle officer who had been trained at the military academies
volunteered to sortie as a pilot; all knew too well that it was ameaningless mission ending in death."
It is hard to read the accounts of the loneliness and anguishof the final meetings and moments of these young men
sentenced to die for an Emperor and a country which did notknow or care about this tragic loss of life.
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's selections from the diaries andletters of six of the tokkotai pilots, who never came back, givean interesting picture of education in Japan in the years
leading up to Japan's defeat in 1945. Despite the efforts to
indoctrinate the young, many managed to read widely, anddespite the anti-intellectual ethos of the military and thethought police, these young men tried to think for themselves.
Understandably they wanted to justify to themselves their
deaths.
The book also contains some interesting observations on theway Japan's love of nature was turned into a justification for
patriotism. The cherry blossom symbol with its brilliant but
short period of flowering and the dissipation of the petals on
the winds was turned from a representation of the Buddhist
concept of the impermanence of all living things into ajustification for a war which might well have ended in the total
destruction of Japan, if the inevitability of defeat had not been
finally accepted in August 1945.
It is a pity and rather strange that the author of this bookdoes not seem to have read (or if she has she does not say so as
the book is not mentioned in the bibliography) the essay on"The Kamikaze fighters" in Ivan Morris's The Nobility of Failure:
Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan published in 1975. Ivan
Morris gives a rather different picture. He asserts that "there
seems little doubt that during the early stage of kamikaze
operations in the Philippines and Taiwan, the pilots were allvolunteers in the full meaning of that word." But the evidence
for this statement strikes me as weak. Ivan Morris was a friendof the ultra-nationalist Mishima Yukio, who probably believed
Japanese war-time propaganda and who committed suicide ina bizarre ultra-nationalist incident. Morris recorded theambiguous reaction of the Emperor to hearing that kamikaze
aircraft had damaged some American escort carriers: "Was it
necessary to go to this extreme? But they have certainly donea good job." Morris concluded that the kamkaze strategy byarousing American fury may well have been a factor behindthe decision to launch the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
Kamikaze Diaries should be read by Japan's nationalist
politicians, but I fear that they would not get the message thatthe time for the glorification of Japanese war dead is long past.
The war dead, civilian as well as military, deserve to beremembered as people whose lives were sacrificed largely as aresult of the crimes of Japan's leaders.

2

Thought Warriors, Diarists, and Fallen
Students(A different version of this article appeared in Monumenta
Nipponica, summer 2006)
The Pacific War was the most traumatic event in themodern histories of Japan, China, the United States, and manyother nations. No wonder that more than sixty years after it
ended it still attracts attention and stirs debate. In the various
writings about the war, the former black and whitestereotypes have given way to more shaded presentations, inwhich heroes and villains are not always distinguishable. The
three interesting books under review here open a window
through which we can see how the war was presented andperceived in Japan. Reading them together helps us
understand the atmosphere in which the Japanese lived inthose turbulent years.

The Thought War:Japanese
Imperial
Propaganda,
by Barak Kushner,
The University of Hawai'i Press, 2006.
ix+242 pages.
Review by Ben-Ami Shillony
Barak Kushner's illuminatingbook examines Japan's wartime propaganda, as it was formed
and manipulated by the government and other agencies
working with it. He finds that despite the absence of a single,
central organ of information and public guidance, as it existed
in Germany, the wartime propaganda of Japan was very
successful. Kushner rejects the image of the Japanese people
blindly obeying their leaders. As he shows, pronouncementsfrom above met a willingness from below to listen andcomply. The people identified with the war aims and wereready to endure hardships. "To westerners the wartime
Japanese behaved like docile sheep, blindly worshipping theemperor, soldiers shouting his name on the battlefield with
their dying gasp. In contrast to this image held by the west, theJapanese… discriminated. They listened to some propaganda
messages, ignored others" (p. 32). Government controls andrestrictions existed, but they were effective because theyencountered public support. "Censorship and terror alone did
not characterize the war years. In actuality the people were not
duped, nor were they passive. The masses understood thesituation not only because the government explained it, butalso because the population itself helped create thepropaganda environment" (p. 24).
Wartime propaganda reached the people in many ways,
from high-brow culture to low-brow amusements.
Advertisement, in the form of posters, pamphlets, glossy
magazines, travel brochures, and slogans, played a significant
role in bolstering public morale. Commercial advertisers
discovered the business opportunities in working for thegovernment and for the war effort. "Consumer appetites
supported the nation's imperial quest by making commerce
and war a significant part of popular culture" (p. 68). A special
chapter of the book, titled A Funny Thing Happened to Me on thejapansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

Way to the Front, describes the important role of entertainment
in mobilizing the population for war. Comedians, rakugo story
tellers, and drama troups performed all the time, not stopping
even when the bombs were falling.
Kushner discovers that, contrary to what is usually believed,
Japan's wartime propaganda was rational, depicting Japan as amodern state. It was effective because it appealed to reason
rather than to mystical nationalism or to the cult of the emperor.
It presented Japan as a progressive, scientific and hygienic
country, "the harbinger of civilization that Asia should strive toemulate" (p. 11). As such, Japan shouldered the obligation toliberate and lead its less fortunate neighbors. This message had
a great appeal to intellectuals, who supported the war as a
campaign to liberate Asia. "Members of Japan's cosmopolitan
elite did not distance themselves from wartime propaganda;
they embraced it and involved themselves in its creation.
Intellectuals were not misled; they actively helped convinceothers because they believed in Japan's war in Asia" (p. 38).

Kushner, like some Japanese historians, calls it "Japan's Fifteen
Year War" (p. 4), but the period from the Manchurian Incident
until Japan's surrender lasted less than fourteen years. In
another place he refers to those years as "World War Two" (p.
2), but beginning that war in 1931 stretches its name beyond its
normal usage.

Leaves from an
Autumn of
Emergencies:
Selections from theWartime Diaries ofOrdinary Japanese,by Samuel Hideo Yamashita,
The University of Hawai'i Press,
2005, xi+330 pages.

As Kushner points out, Japan's wartime propaganda waspart of a long tradition of didactic exhortations from above.
This practice was already evident in the Confucian injunctionsin the Edo period which called for diligence and filial piety, andin the public admonitions in the Meiji period which advocatedmodernity and enlightenment. Wartime propaganda employedsimilar moralistic arguments in its calls for unity and sacrifice.
Yet, as Kushner reveals, that practice did not end with Japan's
surrender. It continued in the postwar era, when the authorities
used similar arguments to persuade the people to accept defeat,to collaborate with the allied occupation, and to embracemonumental reforms. He asks: "How were the Americans able
to occupy the country so quickly and with a minimum amountof civic disturbance?" (p. 156); and he answers: "The same
Japanese agencies that only weeks earlier had touted their
spiritual fortitude to repel the barbarians quickly switched overto mandating new public behavior and ordering Japaneseimperial subjects to accept the occupation so that Japan could
rise again" (p. 157). Kushner claims that "postwar Japanese
reappraisal of western democracy was not spontaneous but
emanated from an official policy to reorient society so that theoccupation would proceed smoothly and Japan could rebuild"(pp. 172-73). The book's conclusion is that propaganda "helped
unite Japan in its bid to modernize in the prewar era, and theimportance of such activity did not fade after the surrender.
Japan lost the war, but through determination and careful
application of propaganda it did not lose the nation" (p. 190).

To find out how successful the wartime propaganda was,one may look at what the people of that time confided to theirdiaries. Samuel Hideo Yamashita, in his moving book,collected eight wartime diaries, which he translated. To
present a wide view, he chose diaries of men and women ofdifferent ages and occupations, and from different localities.
The diarists are: a seventy-five-year-old proprietor of a billiard
parlor in Kyoto, a middle-aged doctor's wife from Tokyo, ayoung woman secretary, a naval pilot who joined the kamikaze
corps, a straggling soldier on Okinawa, a teenage girlmobilized for work on an air base in Kyushu, an eleven-yearold boy evacuated to Fukushima Prefecture, and a nine-yearold girl evacuated to Toyama Prefecture. Writing diaries wasan old Japanese tradition. During the war, diaries of soldiersand pupils were inspected by their officers and teachers.
Nevertheless, as Yamashita points out, the writers of these
diaries were not afraid to reveal their feelings even when theseclashed with the official line. Does that prove the bravery ofthe diarists? More probably, the wartime regime in Japan wasless totalitarian than we assume, and people felt safe to
divulge their thoughts in their diaries. A similar frankness indiaries in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia would have put
their writers in front of a firing squad.

To what extent were these achievements the result of
calculated propaganda and to what extent were they due tomere rational behavior on the part of the Japanese? Kushner
admits that the word propaganda has acquired a negative
connotation in the west, because of its abuse by the Nazis andthe Soviets. But he claims that in Japan, where propaganda
possessed deep historical roots, it had a positive significance.
But, as he himself admits, definitions are murky, and theJapanese word senden can mean both propaganda andadvertisement. So why call it propaganda? Wouldn't it be betterto call it education? The title of the book, The Thought War,suggests that Japan was waging an ideological war, in which
propaganda was the weapon. But if the Japanese at that time, as
Kushner himself has shown, shared the vision of modernity
with the west, and even wished to introduce modernity into
other parts of Asia, then why regard it as an ideological war?
The term thought war, which the government used, might havebeen just a propaganda catchword. Another question is how tocall the period 1931-1945, which is the focus of this book.

As the writers had been subjected for some years togovernment propaganda, it is interesting to see how they
related to the wartime circumstances. The pilot Itabashi Yasuo
espoused the official line. As late as January 1945, he wrote,
perhaps with an eye to his superiors who would inspect hisdiary: "…we are not defeated. We're winning. We aredefinitely winning the war" (p. 66). But the other diarists weremore pessimistic. As early as June 1943, Takahashi Aiko, thedoctor's wife from Tokyo, wrote: "Our clothes are in tatters,
and it's almost as though we've been defeated… what is goingon? It is an unimaginable psychological situation for Japanese
to be in" (p. 170). A year later, in July 1944, she wrote: "Having
heard about our troops' gyokusai on Saipan makes us angry. We
should have the courage, come hell or high water, to give up
the fight" (p. 174). That month, Tamura Tsunejiro, the oldbusinessman from Kyoto, wrote in his diary: "The world has
become too repulsive. Enemy aircraft, come quickly andattack! Please end this awful situation" (p. 86). In January 1945,
Yoshizawa Hisako, the young secretary from Tokyo, wrote injapansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

Review by Ben-Ami Shillony3

her diary: "Most people no longer believe in victory… Even
rural folk believe that if we are as deadlocked as this and still
fall short of our goals, there's no reason to think we can win"(p.195). Yamashita points out that as the bombing raids
intensified, "anxiety and fatigue gave way to depression,outrage, and real terror" (p. 30). He observes: "As the Japaneselost faith in their leaders and their morale sagged, social
conflict and tension… surfaced in their diaries" (p.32). This
was not exactly the mood that the authorities wished to foster.
There is little jingoism in these diaries and little reverence
for the leaders. Tamura wrote in July 1944 that Tojo "has acted
like a coward and betrayed our hopes. We believed in him butwere misled. With a small fry like him, there won't be military
victories or a solution" (p. 86). The emperor is not criticized,
but does he evoke veneration either. The soldier Nomura Seiki,stranded on Okinawa, wrote on 10 August 1945: "I have fought
not for the emperor but for the homeland… Even now mythoughts about the emperor haven't changed. Nor was thisview mine alone" (p. 135). The teenage girl mobilized for workand the two evacuated children show interest in everythingthat is happening around them. They try their best to fulfill
their duties, but they do not sound more militaristic thanchildren in other countries. The nine-year-old Nakane Mihoko
wrote in her diary on 8 May 1945: "Today was Imperial
Rescript Observance Day. When I went to school in themorning, the beautiful rising-sun flags on each house were
fluttering in the morning breeze. There was a ceremony atschool… After we returned to our classroom, we wrote lettersto sailors… I tried as hard as I could to write letters that would
make them happy" (p. 278).
Is there anything uniquely Japanese in these diaries?
Perhaps it is the aesthetic approach, reminiscent of the old war
ballads, to gruesome war circumstances. Tamura Tsunejiro
laments the "autumn of emergencies, when the life or death of
the state is at issue" (p. 101). This phrase, which also appears
in the diary of the pilot Itabashi Yasuo (p. 66), has provided the
poetic title of the book (where it meshes with the beautiful
cover design by April Leidig-Higgins of maple leaves inautumn). Can air raids look beautiful to their victims? The
secretary Yoshizawa Hisako admires the "glittering, white,and beautiful bodies" of the American bombers, "which
seemed to be pulling the moving patterns of flying clouds" (p.
193). She reveals that "when there's an air-raid warning, I feellike singing a song. I thought it was just me, but when I
inquired at the company and elsewhere, it seems everyone has
these feelings" (p. 196). Maeda Shoko, who saw the kamikaze
pilots leaving for their missions, recounts how one of them,
before takeoff, got upset when he noticed that his suicide
plane was dirty. The sortie had to wait until the plane wascleaned (p. 226).

In
theFaraway
Mountains and Rivers:More Voices From A
Lost Generation ofJapanese Students,
Translated by. Joseph L. Quinn,
S.J., and Midori Yamanouchi,
The University of Scranton Press,
2005. xviii+162 pages

It is widely assumed that when a young person chooses tosacrifice his life for a national cause he must have beenbrainwashed. This assumption was wrong in the case ofwartime Japan, as it may be wrong in the case of othercountries today. That becomes clear when we read the letters,
poems, and diary entries of fallen students and graduates ofTokyo University, carrying the elegiac name In the Faraway
Mountains and Rivers. It was published in Japan in 1947 under
the name Harukanaru sanga-ni. Two years later it was followedby the larger anthology Kike wadatsumi no koe, which contained
poems, letters and diary entries of fallen students from several
universities and which became a bestseller. Joseph L. Quinn
and Midori Yamanouchi have translated both books into
English, but in the opposite order. The latter one waspublished in 2000 under the name Listen to the Voices of the Sea,
while the former came out in 2005. Both books were publishedby the University of Scranton Press.
The student soldiers who speak to us from the pages of thislittle book do not reiterate the wartime propaganda. They
admire European literature and philosophy, are skeptical of
the authorities, express criticism of military life, and show
concern for their families. They know that their country is indanger and believe that by sacrificing themselves they may
save it. Having made that decision they proceed cheerfully
with their military tasks. Oi Hidemitsu, who died in China,
wrote to his mother in 1940: "It must seem truly astonishingthat a person such as myself, who in the past so truly hated
and feared anything connected with war, can now concentrate
so fully… on learning anything there is to learn about
preparing for war" (p. 7). Gaikaku Yasuhiko, who died in
Okinawa, wrote in the will which he addressed to his mother:"I had always had the utmost disdain and contempt for the socalled military spirit… with a peaceful heart, I am simply
going to disappear from this world" (p. 127). Iwata Yuzuru,
who died in Burma, noted in his diary in April 1943: "…it isquite impossible to find words to describe the corruption,
under General Tojo, of the military officialdom responsible forpointing out the correct course of action" (p.20). However,Japan was in danger and his duty was to save it: "I shall simply
go to war and face death for the sake of my country" (p. 21).
Was the death of the student soldiers nobler than the deathof ordinary soldiers? Their university teachers, the compilersof the anthology, and the translators thought that it was. In his
memorial address to the fallen students in 1946, which appears
at the beginning of the book, Tokyo University President
Nanbara Shigeru said: "I know for certain that you are quite
different from the ordinary soldiers of limited vision andexperience. You were warriors and students at the same time.
You did not fight with a dogmatic and fanatic 'unfailing beliefin victory.' I know that you hoped for the victory of justice andtruth above all… Unfortunately, however, justice and truth
were not for us to enjoy" (p. xii). The translator Midori
Yamanouchi, in her acknowledgments, recalls how deeply she
was moved when she first read the book: "it deepened mysorrow over how those fine, able men from the University ofTokyo had to die in the war that they could not control and did
not want" (p. ix). The other translator, Joseph L. Quinn, in his
preface admits that although we cannot avoid judging thefallen students as ignorant or misled, "neither can we avoid
recognizing a certain magnificence about such willingness tothrow away their still very young lives. - However grudgingly,
the recognition might just breed some admiration not only forthe young men themselves, but also for the culture that
produced them" (p. viii).

Review by Ben-Ami Shillony

4japansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

Is such elitism justified? It is evident that the drafted
students and the university graduates were better educatedand were more eloquent than ordinary soldiers, but were theyalso less militaristic and more moral, as the praises for them
imply? They served on all fronts and participated in a varietyof military and naval operations. Their diaries and lettersexpress idealism and anguish, but (probably because of thecensorship) they do not mention the horrors that they were
inflicting on others. Did some of them participate in the "rapeof Nanking," or in other atrocities? Did they enjoy the servicesof the "comfort women"? A poem by Fukazawa Tsuneo, who
was killed in the Philippines, discloses something. It says: "The
comfort ladies, who are playing around and blowing water on
the factory workers, are also a thousand ri away from home"(p. 115). If one wonders to whom he was referring, the original
Japanese says clearly ianfu ("comfort women", i.e. military
prostitutes. Showa senso bungaku zenshu, vol. 15: Shisha no koe.
Tokyo: Shueisha, 1965, p. 180).
The genre of letters of fallen students did not originate inJapan. After World War I, an anthology of "war letters" ofstudents who had died in the Great War appeared in Germany(Philipp Witkop, ed., Kriegsbriefe gefallener Studenten. Leipzig
and Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1918). The book was translated into
Japanese by Takahashi Kenji and published by Iwanami.
Nakamura Tokoro, a Tokyo University student killed in thePhilippines, was reading it shortly before his death in 1944. He
was very moved, as he recorded in his diary: "Once again I
read Doitsu senbotsu gakusei no tegami. The book continues to be
rewarding no matter how many times you read it, and it isespecially impressive to read here. These writers are sincerity
itself, and happy were they who, in a trench and under thelight of a candle, read the Bible, read Goethe, cited
Hoelderlin's poetry, and longed to listen to Wagner's music"(p. 102). Little did he know that what he was writing at thatmoment would be included in an anthology of letters anddiaries by fallen Japanese students.

J a p a n e s e
Telecommunications:Market and Policy inTransition,
by Ruth Taplin, and Masako Wakui(Eds),
Routledge, 2006, 288 pages, ISBN:
0415368030
Review by Sean Curtin
Anyone who has visited Japan in recent years just cannot
fail to notice how advanced Japanese mobile phone technology and services are in comparison to their European counterparts. Not surprisingly, Japan is becoming a global leader insome sectors of this fast-moving field. The amazing nationwide penetration of Japanese broadband to the remotest
regions of the country is also another a striking feature. Yet,despite impressive achievements little is actually known outside Japan about these developments or their potential impactof the dynamic global telecommunications sector. To rectify
this situation, Ruth Taplin and Masako Wakui have produced
a comprehensive and much needed book spotlighting thejapansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

Japanese telecommunications industry.
It's an edited volume that bringing together several
renowned Japanese and European specialists in the telecommunications field, who use their insights to put recent
Japanese developments in perspective. This timely publication
covers most of the major new developments including theamazingly buoyant broadband market, the country's uniquesatellite systems, its spectrum policy, network policy and thepolitical forces shaping the entire process.
Taplin and Wakui begin the analysis by providing a stimulating overview of the telecommunications sector. After the
introduction there are eight individual chapters which cover
specific areas in considerable detail. In the first chapter,"Changes in the Interface and Industry Structure," Sumiko
Asai looks at the shifts in the regulation and technology ofJapanese telecommunications using the concepts of "modularity" and "interface." This is followed by an informative pieceby Takanori Ida entitled "The Broadband Market in Japan" inwhich he explains Japan's meteoric rise to global broadband
trend-setter status and how the current situation is likely todevelop.
Facts and figures pack chapter three by Jeffrey L. Funk whoputs the Japanese mobile phone industry under the global
microscope. He makes some interesting observations about
the broader implications that deregulation, globalisation, andtechnological change has made on the sector as well as looking
at the wider impact on the Japanese economy. This is followed
by "Changing Satellite Systems in Japan within a Global
Context" in which Ruth Taplin examines the sometimes
unique approach Japan has taken to developing its own satellite systems and how this process contrasts with theapproaches of other countries, especially the US and EU.
In Chapter five Hajime Oniki provides a detailed account of
the Japanese spectrum allocation system along with its history
and background. The next study is an in-depth analysis by
Masako Wakui entitled "R&D and Intellectual Property in a
Changing Telecommunication Market." He discusses how
technological development has been conducted in the sector,
how IP has been owned, utilized and the types of changes thathave been and are occurring.
The penultimate and final chapters by Kenji Suzuki and
Motohiro Tsuchiya respectively cover "Policy network for network policy in Japan" and "The Difficult Role of the Japanese
Negotiator in the Access Charge Negotiations with the UnitedStates."
While some chapters are fairly specialized, taken as a whole
this book is an extremely useful reference work which illuminates an increasingly important part of the Japanese economy
and its impact on the global market. It is not only comprehensive, but its Japanese and European contributors cover the
topic from a broad spectrum of perspectives, conceptual
frameworks and viewpoints. Overall this work makes a major
contribution to our understanding of the evolving Japanese
telecommunications industry and is certainly worth reading.

5

Treaties of 1858 were built. These later treaties opened
Japanese ports to trade from 1859 and established the systemof extraterritoriality which only ended in 1899 when revised
treaties came into force.

The Opening of Japan 1853-1855: A
Comprehensive Study of the American,
British, Dutch and Russian Naval
Expeditions to Compel the Tokugawa
Shogunate to Conclude Treaties andOpen Ports to Their Ships,
by William McOmie,
Global Oriental, Folkestone, 2006, 505 pages including bibliography
and index, £65, ISBN 1-901903-76-1
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
The assertion that Commodore Perry of the US Navy andhis 'Black Ships' opened Japan in the middle of the nineteenth
century is widely accepted as the historical truth but 'belongs
more to the realm of historical myth'(p.xi). Professor McOmie
notes that although 'Perry was the first to actually sign a treaty
with the Japanese government' 'What Perry did was not somuch to open the door, as to unlock the door, and force in athin wedge to prevent it being bolted again'(page 462). The
author reminds us that Japan was never quite as 'closed' as
popularly believed and that the 'opening' of Japan continues
to this day. The pressures for greater contacts with the outside
world than that provided through the Dutch outpost at
Deshima in Nagasaki bay had been building up for decades,
not least from the Russians and could not be resisted frommuch longer. Perry just got there first and McOmie's detailed
narrative outlines the roles played not only by the Americans
but also by British and Dutch and more significantly by the
Russians.
Professor McOmie's book, which is meticulously
researched, provides a full account of the various expeditions
to Japan and of the different sets of negotiations which resulted in the first treaties signed with Japan by the United States,
Britain, Russia and the Netherlands in 1854/55. The Japanese
did all they could to delay concessions and to play on themutual suspicions between the foreign powers. As a result thefour treaties concluded contained significant differences. In
Chapter 13 the author provides an interesting analysis andcomparison of the four treaties. None of them were true commercial treaties although the Dutch Treaty of January 1856 wascalled a Treaty of Commerce. The Treaties which were essentially arrangements for shipping needing to take on supplies
in Japan, however, provided the basis on which the 'unequal'

6

Inevitably Professor McOmie devotes a major part of his
book to an account of the US expeditions of 1853 and 1854. He
has drawn on a large number of sources and gives a graphic
picture of the events and personalities involved. He does not
gloss over Commodore Perry's arrogance, his prejudiceagainst the Dutch and his suspicions of the 'duplicitous'
Japanese. He notes that Perry in his determination to get atreaty may well have used threats which went beyond his
instructions (page 242). Perry may have been right in his insistence on status and protocol when dealing with the officials of
the Bakufu who were conservative and rigid, but it seems ultrapompous if not farcical to us today. So too do the intricatearrangements made by the visitors and by the Japanese forexchanges of gifts where the value and nature of the gift had
to be carefully graded to accord with the ranks of the recipients and of the givers.
McOmie in his account of the Japanese response to the foreign expeditions stresses the problems caused by interpretation between Japanese and Dutch and then into English. The
vocabulary of the interpreters was 'archaic and lacking inpolitical, economic and diplomatic terms' (page 330). Thisremained a problem in relations with Japan throughout the1850s and was only gradually overcome in the 1860s as
increasing numbers of Japanese took up the study of English
and a few foreigners such as Ernest Satow managed to masterJapanese.
His account of the British negotiations is largely based on
the work done by Professor Beasley. Of greater interest andless well known is his summary of the Dutch negotiations andof the Dutch involvement with the other foreign powers, but
the most interesting and significant part of this book is theauthor's detailed account of the Russian expeditions and negotiations with the Japanese. He also gives a valuable summaryof earlier Russian contacts with Japan, going back to the lateseventeenth century, drawing on his own work incorporated
in his book Foreign Images of Japan Volume 1 First Century AD 1841, Global Oriental, 2005. McOmie has made extensive useof Russian archives, which have not been published in English
translations and have therefore not been easily available toAmerican historians. He points out the more conciliatory attitude adopted by Admiral Putiatin, the Russian negotiator, incontrast to that of Commodore Perry, and he notes the friendly treatment accorded by the Japanese authorities after theRussian ship Diana foundered as a result of an earthquake andtidal wave at Shimoda in 1854. The Russians in Japan at thistime faced particular difficulties because of the Crimean War.
This meant that British and French ships sought to intercept
them. McOmie gives a fascinating account not only of the way
in which the Russian sailors with help from Japanese craftsmen built a schooner at Heda in the Izu peninsular as a partial
replacement of the Diana but also of their attempts to chartera couple of foreign vessels which called at Shimoda to takemembers of the Diana's crew back to Russia. Some did getback but others were taken prisoner by British ships.
This book is essential reading for all students of the historyof Japan's foreign relations and copies should be in all relevant
libraries.

japansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

Rondon nikki,
1936-7[London Diary
1936-7] ,by Oka Yoshitake, andEdited by Shinohara Hajime
andMitaniTaiichiro(Japanese),
Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 1997,
359 pages, ISBN 4-00-022357-7
Review by Ian Nish

Readers may like to receive a brief notice (rather belatedly,
I fear) of an interesting and insightful work. It is the London
Diary of the Japanese academic, Oka Yoshitake (1902-1990)
who became after the war one of the most eminent professorsof Japanese political history at the University of Tokyo. As an
assistant at that university, he spent the years 1936-7 onsabbatical in Britain, based in London. He wrote substantial
diary entries daily and these were dutifully assembled by twoof his successors after his death.
He arrived in London by the Hakusan-maru in May 1936
with an encouraging message from Minobe Tatsukichi. As a
graduate student he appears to have spent his time between
Student Movement House, the Public Record Office, theLondon School of Economics and the Albert Hall (because he
had a deep interest in western music). As a political scientist hewere immersed in the study of fascism, National Socialism andcommunism and moved in circles close to the Fabian
movement. He could not fail to be fascinated by the abdicationof King Edward VIII, the political crisis that ensued and thegeneral vitality of political life. He moved beyond Britain andexamined the progress of an independent Ireland.
The volume ends with an article written by Professor Oka
in 1938 about students at the LSE and analyses by the two
editors of the effects of this overseas immersion on Oka's
political philosophy. He left Europe before the crisis erupted in
East Asia in July; but he was much affected by the sinistermovements in continental Europe. So far as Britain wasconcerned, he seems to have had a benign respect for thecountry but he makes some judicious criticisms of its policies.
It is salutary for a Briton to read these contemporaryreflections by a Japanese intellectual, which were probably
never intended for publication.

Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by
Watanabe Kazan 1793-1841,
by Donald Keene,
Columbia University Press, New York, 2006, 290pp including
endnotes, bibliography, index, and 38 colour illustrations,ISBN 0-231-13826-1, £16
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Watanabe Kazan is nowhere near as well known in westerncountries as his contemporary Hokusai, whose works had
such a huge influence on western art. But Watanabe Kazan, asjapansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

Keene's new biography demonstrates, deserves to be studied
not only as an artist who produced works of the highest quality but also as a samurai who was both a student of
Confucianism and of Rangaku (Dutch i.e. foreign learning) and
who warned the bakufu of the dangers it faced from abroad.
Donald Keene has produced a fascinating and readable
study of a remarkable figure of the late Tokugawa era. As wewould expect from someone of Keene's outstanding scholarship the book is based on thorough research.
Watanabe Kazan was a samurai from the Tahara domain
who spent much of his life in Edo. He might have become a
Confucian scholar if he had not had to earn money to relieve
his family's poverty. He accordingly took up painting to earna living. He wanted to know more about the world outside
Japan and studied books which had been translated from theDutch. This led him in due course to write Shinkiron(Exercising Restraint over Auguries) in which he praised elements of western regimes and pointed out that the British
could, for instance, argue that ships might need help in emergencies. He stigmatised the attitude of the Japanese authorities as being like that of "the frog in the well" (seia) who could
not see what was going on around them. It was this sort of criticism of the government which led eventually to his imprisonment and finally to his suicide when he feared that his criticisms of the government might lead to trouble for his feudal
lord. Kazan remained faithful to the end to the samurai traditions in which he had grown up despite his interest in foreign
learning.
Keene draws an interesting picture of Japan during Kazan's
life and of the intellectual currents of the time. One of the mostenjoyable chapters deals with Kazan's travels in Japan; in thishe brings to life many scenes which help the reader to appreciate what life was like in those days.
Above all, however, Kazan's fame rests on his abilities as apainter. He belonged to what has been termed the literati
school (Bunjinga). The Bunjin were "gentlemen of culture andleisure who were devoted to all aspects of Chinese culture."
Some of his landscapes in this style are fine works of art.
Among these I particularly liked Tiger in a Storm from 1838
(page 140). Kazan also produced genre paintings which standcomparison with works by Hokusai. Among the series ofpaintings in Kazan's Isso Byakutai I was impressed by the realism and humour of one showing a terakoya (temple school)(pp56/57) where "three pupils sit in front of their teacher andintone something from the
Chinese classics while all theother boys are fighting,screaming, and doing everything but practising the calligraphy lesson on the desks
before them." But Kazan
stands out as a portrait
painter.
Portrait painting in Japan
before Kazan had tended to
be stylised and individuality
at best glossed over. Kazan
brought a new realism to theart. One of his most striking
portraits is that of Sato Issai(1821) (page 61), produced
before Kazan had studied

Portrait of Sato Issai (1821)7

western painting techniques in so far as information about
them was available to him.
Keene also introduces many other effective portraits including a fine one of Takami Senseki (page 119) in the Tokyo
National Museum which has been designated a National
Treasure.
Anyone interested in the history of the Tokugawa era and ofJapanese art will find this book fascinating.

Defending Japan's
Pacific War: The
Kyoto
SchoolPhilosophers andPost-White Power,
By David Williams,
RoutledgeCurzon,
London,2004. xxvi, 238 pages, ISBN 0203-38715-5
Review by Ben-Ami Shillony(This review originally appeared in the summer 2006 issue of
The Journal of Japanese Studies)David Williams may be right. We should reexamine, assome of us have already done, the image of Japan in theSecond World War. The conventional picture of a fascist andaggressive state is only partially correct. The other side of thecoin is the idealistic streak that accompanied Japanese conquests, according to which Japan was liberating Asia fromwestern imperialism. This alleged goal was dismissed by postwar historians as propaganda, but many Japanese at the time
believed in it. Moreover, that propaganda, which camouflaged
aggressive intentions, was not different from the wartime declarations of the allied powers, which asserted that they were
liberating Asia while they were trying to regain their prewar
colonial possessions.
The book focuses on the Kyoto-school philosophers, whowere disciples of the "father of Japanese philosophy" Nishida
Kitaro at Kyoto University. They included Tanabe Hajime,
Koyama Iwao, Suzuki Shigetaka, Kosaka Masaaki, andNishitani Keiji. In a series of symposia in the monthly magazine Chuo Koron in the years 1941-1942, they hailed the Great
East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere as a historical achievement, inwhich Asia had been transformed from an object of western
greed into a subject of its own will. After the war, thesephilosophers were condemned and discredited. Ienaga Saburo
called them shallow opportunists1. Tetsuo Najita and H.D.
Harootunian described them as definers of the philosophic
contours of Japanese fascism2.
Williams admits that the Kyoto-school philosophers were
nationalists, but claims that they were neither fascists nor
ultra-nationalists. Like their counterparts in the west, they
were patriots who defended their country's cause. They werehonest intellectuals and their defense of the war was "coherent,
rational and credible." (p. 17). They wanted Japan to expand,in order to "exercise a prudent and progressive leadership role8

in East Asia." (p. 153). They believed that Japan would respect
the sovereignty of the peoples that it had liberated. The author
quotes Tanabe's essay in which he wrote that the CoProsperity Sphere should be based on the equality of its member states. The Kyoto-school philosophers did not limit themselves to the political sphere. They believed that the war
would produce a spiritual revolution, which they called "theovercoming of modernity" (kindai no chokoku). By this term,
which was the title of their symposia, they meant the replacement of modern materialistic civilization, based on individualism and avarice, by a spiritual culture based on the moral
values of the east and the scientific achievements of the west.
There was a similarity between the Kyoto school philosophers who supported the war and Martin Heidegger inGermany who supported the Nazi regime. Williams defends
both cases and rejects the accusations that Heidegger and the
Kyoto school philosophers were fascists. He describes
Heidegger, who assumed the rectorship of a German university when Jewish professors were being dismissed, as "the greatest philosopher of our time" (p. 129). He quotes Heidegger's
claim that the murder of the Jews by the Nazis was not basically different from the murder of East German civilians bySoviet troops at the end of the war (p. 123). According toWilliams, no one has the right to condemn these scholars: "…
who would play God here? Who has the right to judge
Heidegger, or, for that matter, to censure Nishida, Tanabe andNishitani? Who wears the white gloves?" (p. 163).
Had Williams stopped here, advising us to listen carefully
to the philosophic voices in Japan which defended the PacificWar, the book might have contributed to a more balanced
understanding of that period. But he goes much further,
destroying what he himself has constructed. Having convinced us to discard the orthodox black and white view of thewar, in which the United States was right and Japan was
wrong, he produces his own black and white picture, in which
Japan was right and the United States was wrong. The objective historian, who wanted to understand both sides, reverts tothe extreme opposite of justifying one party, Japan, and condemning the other one, the United States. This fantastic phenomenon, of a left-wing American historian justifying Japan's
position in the Pacific War, derives from the new left ideology
which centers today on anti-Americanism. According to that
ideology, the United States has been the permanent villain ofmodern history. Taking that dialectic one step further, all those
who fought America, from imperial Japan to fundamentalist
al-Qaeda, were right.
The front page of the book describes Williams as "one ofEurope's leading thinkers on modern Japan." He received his
doctorate from Oxford, taught at Sheffield and Cardiff, andworked for twelve years as an editorial writer for the Japan
Times. In the Acknowledgments, the author presents his ideological credentials, defining himself as "an American tenko-ka",
who has made the "unanticipated journey from right to left",finding himself "within shouting distance" from Noam
Chomsky (p.xx). As befitting a neophyte, he embraces his newconvictions with enthusiasm and carries them to extremes.
Williams loathes the United States. He asserts that America"butchered its way across an entire continent in an orgy of ethnic cleansing" (p. 139). Having accomplished that, it embarked
on the subjugation of the rest of the world. He sees a directconnection between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the attackof '9/11'. In the introduction ("The book in brief")," he explains:"The reaction of the administration of George W. Bush to theevents of 11 September 2001 destroyed the last of my child-japansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

hood illusions about the use and abuse of American power inthe modern world. One insight seems irresistible: "The road to'9/11' began with the Pacific War" (p. xvi). Both cases wereright forms of "resistance to American imperial hegemony" (p.
10). In Pearl Harbor, "one billion colored people struck back"at America (p. 80). In '9/11,' Asia responded once again to
American aggression against the non-European world. The
wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, were stages in"America's blood-dimmed crusade for global mastery" (pp. 36).
The evil White Republic, as Williams calls the UnitedStates, instead of understanding the message of Pearl Harbor,
reverted to its cruel practices: "from the fall of Saipan in July
1944 to the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…
[it] descended into democratic barbarism by sustaining a onesided racial massacre on a huge scale" (p. 138). Williams
admits that Japan too committed war crimes, but asserts that
"nothing the Japanese did to America justified this one-sided
massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians" (pp. 16-17).
Defending Japan in the war makes him regard favorably
Japan's occupation practices. He condemns the massacre in
Nanjing, but puts it in the same category as the bombings ofDresden and Hiroshima (p. 15). He praises the Japanese colonial administration in Taiwan and the Pacific islands (pp. 174175), and says that even in China "it was in the interest of theChinese government to provoke Japan into further aggression" (p. 39).
Williams has a problem with Tojo. As a left-wing historian,he cannot extol him too much, but as a supporter of the war
he has to regard him as a hero. The result is a strange ambivalence. He condemns the "militarist clique that surrounded
Tojo" and praises the Kyoto-school philosophers as "enlightened heroes of the Japanese wartime resistance" (pp. 20-21, 6970), because they supported the navy's machinations against
Tojo. But, he admits that Tojo "prepared the way, on more than
one front, for the decline and fall of Roosevelt's White
Republic" (p. 173). Moreover, he regards Tojo as the avenger ofthe American Indians: "After three centuries of almost unbroken aggression against the non-White world, WhiteAmericans had finally met a non-European foe capable of serious resistance. In the Japanese, the American Indian had
found their [sic] unlikely avengers. Sitting Bull would havesaluted Tojo's boldness" (p. 174). So, out of an ideologicalhatred of the United States, this left-wing American historiansounds exactly like the militarist leaders of wartime Japan. He
is justifying the war in terms that even a right-wing Japanese
historian would not dare to use today.
Williams rebukes the Asia specialists in the west, who provide the "scholarly servicing of America's global hegemony"(p. 33). Contrary to the claims of revisionist historians, thatscholarly writings have been too lenient towards Japan, he
accuses the Japanologists of being too critical. He complains:"Japan studies displays [sic] a rooted hostility to Japan… withthe exception of Middle East Studies, no branch of area
research displays more resentment towards its object thandoes Japanology" (p. 168). Unlike the other revisionists, heviews present-day Japan favorably, as "a restraint on the arbitrary exercise of American power" and as a "building block…
in the new post-White order that is the planet's destiny" (p.
171). According to Williams, the threat to peace in Asia does
not come from Japanese nationalism and "the symbolic visits
by Japanese prime ministers to Yasukuni Shrine", but from theAmerican doctrine of pre-emptive strikes (p. 35).

9

The author is engaged in a dual battle. On the one hand, heblasts the liberal historians, followers of Edwin O. Reischauer,
who represent "the Pacific War orthodoxy" and "allied war
propaganda". On the other hand, he attacks the "neoMarxists", followers of E.H. Norman, who ignore the centrality of race. Not surprisingly, the historian whom he admires is
Ernest Nolte, who has taught him how to become a "deep revisionist". That is how he writes about Nolte: "We have talked
only once… but it was one of the most stimulating encountersof my entire life as a writer and a thinker… He encouraged me
to become my own kind of revisionist, and I salute him" (pp.
xix-xx).
Williams is obsessed with race. Like the Nazis, he regards
modern history as a struggle between races, but contrary tothem he sees the white race as the villain and the colored races
as the heroes. He denies that the Kyoto school philosophers
were racists on the German model, but he hails them as warriors in the racial struggle of the non-white peoples against
white hegemony. They appear, like the author, as racists in thegood (i.e. anti-white) sense of the word. Williams is optimistic
about the outcome of the racial struggle. Pearl Harbor and'9/11' have inflicted enormous blows on the white race, fromwhich it will not recover. Within the United States as well as in
the world at large, white people are becoming a minority andthe colored races are taking over. "White West hegemony, theracial imbalance that has defined our global society for half amillennium, seems almost certain to pass away" (p. 91).
The presentation of the Pacific War as a race war is not convincing. As John Dower has pointed out3, there were racist
elements in the wartime propaganda on both sides, but the war
was not about race. Unlike the Nazis, the militarist leaders ofJapan did not justify the war in racial terms. Williams admits(p. 159-160) that the Kyoto-school philosophers did not use theterm race (jinshu), and preferred instead the term nation (minzoku). But he makes the strange claim that when they spoke
about overcoming modernity, they "really" meant the overcoming of whiteness (p. 18). In his diatribe against
Harootunian and the neo-marxists, Williams accuses them ofseeing "fascists under every futon" (p. 55). However, he himself
sees American racists under every bed.
Contrary to the author's claim, none of the major wars ofmodern times was a race war. The Russo-Japanese War, in spiteof the author's assertion, was not a racial struggle. Japan wasthen an ally of Great Britain and its aim was to join the westerncolonial powers and not to liberate its Asian brethren. The FirstWorld War, the Second World War, and the Cold War had allwhite and non-white nations on both sides. To call the Korean,
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars race wars is to overlook
their ideological and geopolitical significance. One can oppose
the foreign policy of the United States, or for that matter of any
other country, without regarding it as racist. The coming racial
revolution, which Williams predicts and hails, may not occur,as race seems to be losing its significance. We may continue tobefriend and fight each other for a long time without doing it
on racial lines.
1.
Ienaga Saburo, The Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books,
1978), pp. 122-123.
2.
Peter Duus, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 6: The
Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.
741-743.
3.
John Dower, War without Mercy (New York: Pantheon Books,
1986).

japansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

Japanese Samurai and battles up to 1603,
a series of recent books, published by
Osprey publishing company, all in softback and copiously illustrated.
Prices vary; obtainable through the internet at a discount.
Reviews by Sir Hugh Cortazzi

it is regarded as one of the three classic sieges of Japan, but it
was the skilful manner in which Oda Nobunaga secured his
victory which has earned Nagashino such a reputation. "Every student of Japanese history will be conscious of theimportance of the battle of Sekigahara and most will be awarethat it was the defection of a significant part of Tokugawa
Ieyasu's opponents which helped him to victory but Anthony
Bryant's account of the battle explains that there was much
more to this battle than treachery. His description of the fighting will interest military historians.

Members of the Society may be interested in the following
publications from Osprey by Stephen Turnbull:
Japanese Fortified Temples and Monasteries AD 710-1602, 2005
Japanese Warrior Monks AD 949-1603, 2003
Japanese Castles 1540-1640, 2003
War in Japan 1467-1515, 2002
Kawanakajima 1553-64, Samurai power struggle, 2003
Nagashino 1575, Slaughter at the barricades, 2000
Samurai Commanders (1) 940-1576, 2005
Samurai Commanders (2) 1577-1638, 2005
Osaka 1615, The last battle of the samurai, 2006
Ninja AD 1460-1650, 2003
Ashigaru 1467-1649, 2001
Samurai Heraldry, 2002
And by Anthony Bryant:
Sekigahara 1600, the final stru9ggle for power, 1995

The two books devoted to samurai commanders are usefulcompendia of biographical information. The books on
Japanese fortified temples and monasteries and on Japanese
castles provide interesting information about defensive architecture. The book on Japanese warrior monks coves not only
their beliefs but also their life, weapons and training. The Ninja
have always fascinated visitors to Japan and Turnbull's
account of these elusive warriors provides a graphic account of
how they acted and appeared. The Ashigaru were the samurai's foot-soldiers and Turnbull describes their weapons, life
and training. Samurai Heraldry provides a useful guide to thebanners and standards of the samurai armies.
I found the black and white illustrations and photographs
illuminating, but thought the colour paintings at best crude.

Foreign students of Japanese history tend to concentrate on
modern Japan after the 'opening of Japan' in the middle of thenineteenth century or on the Tokugawa or Edo period or the
first contact with western countries in the sixteenth century.
Students of Japanese literature, if they are attracted to heroic
stories, will tend to concentrate on the battles which werecommemorated in the Heike Monogatari or the Taiheiki andwhich occurred before the Sengoku (country at war period) inthe sixteenth century.

Stephen Turnbull has made quite a corner for himself inwriting about the samurai, their life and weapons. Altogether
this is a collection of booklets which will be valuable to the student of Japanese military history.

Yet some of the battles about which Stephen Turnbull has
written in these works have become a part of Japanese folklore. Kawanakajima for instance was a series of battles
between the two famous warriors Takeda Shingen and Uesugi
Kenshin who were dominating and ruthless military leadersin the middle of the sixteenth century.
Of the battle of Nagashino in 1575 Turnbull writes: It "holds
a unique place in Japanese history. The siege which preceded

japansociety Japan Book Review: September 200610

confirm their view that Westerners could not distinguishbetween Japan and China. In fact, the light opera caused anumber of headaches over the years for Anglo-Japanese relations. British diplomats did their best to ensure it was either
not performed in Japan or if it was that only a revised production staged with all references to the Emperor deleted. When
Prince Fushimi visited London in 1907, all performances in thecity were temporarily suspended. It was not until after WWII
that it was performed properly in Japan and even then it
received a very cold reception from Japanese audiences.

The Chichibu Mikado,
Conductor and translator Toru Sasakibara, director Kyoko
Fujishiro,

The Mikado is set in the Japanese town of Titipu, which isbelieved to be modern day Chichibu, a mountain city about 75
kilometers northwest of Tokyo. It was the Titipu- Chichibu
link that was the driving force for the real emergence of themusical in Japan. Once Chichibu locals realized that theirhometown was immortalized in the internationally famous
operetta, the urge to highlight this claim to fame became too
irresistible. After several years of effort, in March 2001 the citizens of Chichibu succeeded in staging the opera's firstJapanese language performance to a mainstream audience. It
was a runaway success and since then it has been restaged not
only in Chichibu, but several other venues including
Ikebukuro in Tokyo. Its export to the UK has also been warmly welcomed. The only real criticism of the UK production isthat this amazingly enjoyable and fantastically colourful spectacle was only staged for one single performance.

Original script and music by W.S. Gilbert & A. Sullivan, performedby the Tokyo Theatre Company as part of the 2006 International
Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, 1 August 2006 (one performance only)
at Buxton Opera House
Review by Sean Curtin
For the first time ever a Japanese theatre company came to
the UK to perform the Mikado in Japanese to an enthusiastic
British audience. The lively and brilliantly colourful production was part of the 2006 International Gilbert & Sullivan
Festival in Buxton, Derby. It perfectly blended Japanese andBritish elements to create an astonishingly successful hybrid
which was true to the original, while incorporating some
crowd-pleasing Japanese innovations. The standard musicalnumbers remained essentially the same except for two insertions of Japanese taiko drum pieces between the overture andthe curtain rise and another for the well-received ballet scene
towards the end of Act II.
Despite the fact that the audience was a largely nonJapanese speaking British one, they appeared to really enjoy
the show. Most were Gilbert & Sullivan aficionados, so werefamiliar with the English lyrics and seemed to relish theopportunity of listening to them in a foreign tongue.
Occasionally, the Japanese company broke into English at the
points in the script where the characters discuss the difficultiesof the English and Japanese languages. These scenes got lots oflaughs, while the innovative ballet scene and taiko drum
accompaniments were the highlights for many.
Toru Sasakibara, a veteran director, energetically conducted
and was also the translator of the lyrics into Japanese.
Watching the lively performance you never would have imagined that Gilbert & Sullivan's world famous Mikado was actually banned in Japan shortly after its 1885 premier. It was consider too disrespectful towards the Emperor to be performed
in Japan and Japanese elites who saw it in European capitals
were highly critical of the Chinese sounding names of the leadcharacters and farcical depictions of Japan which seemed to

11

The Japanese Mission to Europe, 15821590: The Journey of Four Samurai Boys
through Portugal, Spain and Italy,
by Michael Cooper, Global Oriental, 2005,
ISBN 1-901903-38-9, 262 pages (plus xix, black and whiteplates, notes, bibliography and index).
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Dr Michael Cooper, the former editor of Monumenta
Nipponica, has contributed significantly to our knowledge of
the Jesuit mission to Japan and its members in the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries. He is a Japanese, Latin andPortuguese scholar. This book which is based on extensive andpainstaking research is an absorbing account of the firstJapanese visitors to Europe.

japansociety Japan Book Review: September 2006

They did not constitute a proper diplomatic mission as they
did not represent the Japanese government and did not conduct any negotiations, but the mission or legation, as Dr
Cooper calls it, was an important development not only for the
Catholic Church in Japan but also for European perceptions ofJapan.
The mission was planned by Alessandro Valignano, theforceful Jesuit Visitor (inspector), who arrived in Japan in 1579.
He believed that "there was a pressing need not only to makeJapan better known in Europe but also to make Europe better
known and appreciated in Japan (page 9)." He also hoped thatas a result of direct contact with young Japanese Christians theJesuits in Japan would be assured of regular supplies of funds
from Europe. Sadly, as Michael Cooper explains, these aims
were only very partially achieved.
Three Christian daimyo (of Bungo, Arima and Omura) wereasked to send representatives, but the choice of delegates had
to be rushed as the Portuguese ship sailing from Nagasaki left
in the spring and could not be delayed. Because of the slowness of communications in Japan, the choice was also limited
to young men living near Nagasaki. Bungo was represented by
Mancio (Ito) and the other two fiefs by Michael (Chijiwa). They
were accompanied by two companions Martin (Hara) andJulian (Nakaura). All four were young teenagers who had beenbrought up in the Christian faith. Their guide and mentor was
Diogo de Mesquita, a young Jesuit who had only been six
years with the Jesuits in Japan.
Valignano, who accompanied the party as far as India, had
hoped to go with them to Europe but was ordered to remain in
India. The journey to Europe in the late seventeenth century
was long, dangerous and hard. The Portuguese carracks wereclumsy and unstable. There were no reliable charts and whilenavigators were able to make a fair calculation of latitude they
were unable to determine longitude at all accurately.
The small ship, in which they travelled, left Nagasaki on 20
February 1582. They did not return until 21 July 1590 over 8
years later, but only spent one year and eight months inEurope. It is hard for us who are used to travelling by air toJapan in about twelve hours to understand how their journey
to Europe in the late sixteenth century took two and a halfyears. The return trip took four years including four and a halfmonths in Mozambique and two years waiting for a ship in
Macao. At sea and in port the four boys were kept at their studies and their devotions. They were given very favourable treatment everywhere but their life must have been tedious anduncomfortable as well as frightening as a result of storms andother natural hazards and disease. Michael Cooper draws avivid picture of these voyages.
Much of the narrative is devoted to an account of the boys'
European tour from Portugal through Spain to Italy and back.
Valignano had wanted the tour to be conducted in a low key,
but this proved impossible to sustain. The boys were received
everywhere by high church dignitaries including Cardinals
and Archbishops. In Madrid they had audiences with King
Philip II and were given a guided tour of the newly built
Escorial. The King even made the unprecedented gesture ofcoming personally to wish them a good journey to Rome.
In Pisa, on the way to Rome, the Archduchess of Tuscany
insisted on dancing with Mancio, but the boys rarely had achance to relax. In Rome they were warmly received by the
dying Pope Gregory XIII, and by his successor Pope Sixtus V

whose coronation they attended. They went on to visit most of
the leading cities in Northern Italy where they often stayed in
palaces and were greeted with pageants and banquets. They
received lavish gifts which they were unable to reciprocate
adequately and were royally entertained to banquets.
The boys seem to have behaved with decorum and piety
throughout. Sadly the records and the portraits, including
sketches by Tintoretto in Venice, reveal nothing of the real personalities behind the masks. The reader longs to know what
their real impressions were of the cathedrals, gorgeous costumes and pomp which greeted them. Were they bored by all
long masses and ceremonies and longing for a frolic or were
they serious youngsters without much imagination and senseof humour who had little difficulty in repressing their youthful passions? We shall never know.
By the time they eventually returned to Japan, the boys had
grown up into young men. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had
become suspicious of the Christians and begun to persecute
them, and whose attitude towards the Jesuits had been one of
the reasons for the delay in their voyage home from Macao toNagasaki, was persuaded to receive Valignano and the boys.
Valignano's appointment as Ambassador from the Portuguese
Viceroy in India provided the necessary opening. Hideyoshi
duly welcomed the returnees who played western music tohim and answered questions about their experiences. But
Valignano's hopes that the visit would lead to a better understanding in Japan of Europe and of the Catholic Church weredisappointed.
The mission had brought back a printing press from Europe
but no attempt was made to produce and circulate any accountby mission members of their experiences. The promises offunding for the Jesuits in Japan were rarely fulfilled.
In an interesting appendix, Dr Cooper explains what happened to the members of the mission. Michael ceased to be a
Catholic, married and had four sons. The other three were all
eventually ordained priests, but had to wait a long time forordination because of the Jesuit reluctance to ordain Japanese.
Mancio died in Nagasaki in 1612. Martin joined other priests
in Macao following the expulsion edict of 1614 and died therein 1639. Julian was eventually martyred in Nagasaki in 1633.
Anyone interested in the period which the late Professor
Boxer, perhaps misleadingly, called Japan's Christian Century,
will find this a fascinating read. The pictures of travel at that
period over the seas and in Europe are particularly vivid.

MORE REVIEWS ARE AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE
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Falling Blossom: A British
Officer's Enduring Love for a
Japanese Woman,
by Peter Pagnamenta and Momoko
Williams,
Century, (Random House Group)
2006, £12.99, ISBN 9781844138203(from Jan 2007) ISBN 1844138208, pp
314, including notes and acknowledgements.
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi

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