NEVER THE TWAIN--'
Romer, Samuel
'Never the Twain--' THE WESTERN WORLD AND JAPAN, by G. B. Sansom. Alfred A. Knopf. 504 pp. $6. Reviewed by Samuel Romer THE cold war has warmed up in Southeast Asia. The Asian peoples have...
...But the "veiled East" still remains a mystery...
...George B. Sansom, one of the great interpreters of Japanese social and cultural history, may have provided the answer in a monumental study of the cultural exchange between the East and West...
...His choice of Japan for a detailed study is a logical one—for it was the one nation which consciously admitted its backwardness to the West in material technology and borrowed without restraint...
...No longer can two world powers meet on a neutral battlefield, using, Asia (as a noted Burman has said) "as a shuttlecock between two powerful, hostile camps...
...their glib phrases about the identification of civilization with Christianity cause dismay and chagrin among Asians whose Buddhism bespeaks selflessness and compassion...
...But the unbalance was not limited to the exchange of spices or tin for machinery...
...The Asian peoples have emerged as a dominant force in the world politics of our generation and those to come...
...Yet, there is an important lesson of history in the author's sentence: "A study of the earlier period (until 1900) raises doubts whether any of the chief civilizations of Asia will, even if they voluntarily follow a Western economic pattern, submit to Western precept or example in political, social, or religious life...
...we cannot find it plausible that here is a continent with more than a billion people, civilizations which flowered before the Normans invaded England, intellectuals who regard those of the West as barbarians...
...Even within the councils of the United Nations, usually urbane diplomats betray their ignorance...
...a quick glance at trade figures (either prewar or postwar) proves its validity today...
...it exists as well in the broader fields of culture and sociology...
...Despite this, as Sansom says, Japan did not become Western in the essence of her national character by 1900...
...I.I Sansom, out of his extensive knowledge of Asian and especially Japanese history, has buttressed his thesis with hundreds of details which rebut the superficial "one-worldian...
...It is true that today the Asians are anxious for Western technology and Western materials—but will this transform them into our image...
...This pattern has remained unchanged through the centuries...
...and it is also valid, although Sansom does not extend his study this far, that what was true in 1900 was equally true in 1941 (and in 1950 too...
...That is a sentence which deserves unending consideration in the foreign offices of both Washington and Moscow...
...instead, each side is seeking allies and names like Soekarno, Mao, Ho, Thakin Nu, and Nehru will become as common within the next decade as Churchill, Dimitrov, and Tito were in the last...
...Sansom devotes the first part of his masterwork to the cultural intercourse between the West and Asia until the middle of the 18th Century...
...the beginnings of trade resulted in an unbalance because the East was content and Europe was demanding...
...With the caution of the scholar, he points out that he has not considered the 20th Century pattern by which a dominant nation, using powerful political pressure and highly organized propaganda, attempts to impose forcibly its culture on another (as does the United States in its Japanese occupation or the Soviet Union through the Cominform...
...he then switches over to a more detailed study of Japan's relations with the West, ending his observations around 1900 when Japan took her place at the imperialist dinner table (as an uninvited guest...
...From before the Christian era, he writes, the East has given to Indo-European civilization more than it has taken...
Vol. 14 • June 1950 • No. 6
