Tradition and Change in Japan:
Morris, I. I.
Tradition and Change in Japan Japan. Sir Esler Dening. Praeger. 257 pp. $5.85. Reviewed by I. I. Morris Assistant professor of history, Columbia University; author, "Nationalism and the Right...
...One cannot imagine that the reverse would have been the case, had the Japanese militarists been the final victors...
...Our present ally in the Far East is a very different country from that which met its nemesis in 1945...
...The truth is that parliamentary democracy is not yet in the Japanese bloodstream, and that is where it ultimately must be if it is to succeed...
...As a result, major topics sometimes receive only a few lines...
...Referring to Japan's "divine mission," Sir Esler says: ". . in the subsequent performance of that mission during the Second World War, the qualities most apparent to the outside world, far from being divine, were vanity, arrogance, greed and brutality...
...The danger is that the system will be prematurely condemned before those who operate it can eliminate its early weaknesses, and demonstrate to the nation that Japan can flourish more under a democracy than it could under authoritarian government...
...Like so many surveys of this kind, Sir Esler's book tries to cover far too much territory...
...Japan is also free, for the most part, from the factual inaccuracies that make certain popular introductions to the country a constant irritation for the specialist...
...Sir Esler's approach is eminently lucid and sensible...
...But we do both ourselves and the Japanese a disservice if we pretend that the past never occurred, or that the Japanese militarists were a unique species...
...This would allow the author to devote more space to developing the main themes, which are probably all that most readers retain in the end...
...To stress [national] difference is to create a barrier," he says, "and both the Japanese themselves, and commentators from the outside world, have fallen into this error...
...It starts with a breathless 70-page gallop through some 1,700 years of Japanese history and mythology, in a determined effort to see that nothing—from changes in the educational system to the decline in modern lacquerware —is left out...
...And the following observation is worth pondering: "It is curious that, after the war, persons so devoid of pity should not only have expected pity, but also have received it...
...It would be interesting to calculate how many fallacies are either stated or implied in this single sentence...
...He writes with the authority that comes from years of first-hand experience and wide reading...
...the vast field of Japanese literature, for example, is covered in a perfunctory two pages...
...At the same time, we are given details of a kind that would be more appropriate in a specialized study...
...The Japanese are shown to be motivated by no more mysterious rules than other people...
...One refreshing aspect of the book (perhaps surprising when one remembers that the author is a career diplomat) is the refusal to gloss over Japan's wartime behavior...
...Yet Sir Esler, despite his awareness of the pitfalls of generalization, slips into the same trap in permitting himself to make observations like the following: "That the Japanese people in general are possessed of a high degree of intelligence is amply demonstrated by the extent of their achievements during the past century...
...It would be better in general books to jettison the innumerable subjects and details that cannot be properly presented and to refer to other available sources (Sir Esler, incidentally, includes a good appendix on English books about Japan...
...On the whole, the author avoids the dangerous generalizations, based on supposed national characteristics, which are so popular in general studies about Japan...
...The real value of the present book lies in its well-written, concise, yet carefully balanced survey of Japan's present political and international position...
...On the perennial question of the future of democracy, for instance, he offers the following conclusion: "The possibility exists that many Japanese will become impatient at the apparent ineffectiveness of parliamentary democracy, and arrive at the erroneous conclusion that something more authoritarian, which at the same time is more in keeping with Japanese tradition, must be created to take its place...
...Now we have a book with the strong, unequivocal title, Japan...
...author, "Nationalism and the Right Wing in Japan" During the past century few places in the world have inspired more foreigners to put words to paper than Japan...
...Most writing on Japan is concerned with some specific aspect of the country, but during the past few years there has also been a spate of books for the general reader: Living Japan, Introduction to Japan, The New Japan, Meeting with Japan, to mention only a few...
...Especially since 1945 there has been a plethora of scholarly, semi-scholarly and some very unscholarly hooks and articles about these once-remote islands...
...Does the general reader really need to know, for instance, that Japan ranks fifth in the world in the production of dye-stuffs from coal tar, or that 12,912 whales were caught by Japanese fishermen in 1955-56...
...The author, Sir Esler Dening, is a diplomat who was born in Japan and who has spent a good part of his life there, most recently as British Ambassador...
...the latter probably because Japan was a comparatively new discovery to the West, and the Japanese because their isolation had encouraged them to believe themselves unique...
...Mercifully, we are spared the "inscrutable Orient" approach which is still current in many quarters...
Vol. 44 • July 1961 • No. 29
