New Times in Modern Japan

238 Pages·2004·0.73 MB·English

by  Stefan Tanaka

New Times in Modern Japan
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New Times in Modern Japan
Stefan Tanaka
princeton university press
princeton and oxford
Copyright © 2004 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tanaka, Stefan.
New times in modern Japan / Stefan Tanaka.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-11774-8 (cl : alk. paper)
1. Japan—History—Meiji period, 1868–1912. I. Title.
DS882.T336 2004
952.03'1—dc22 2003066411
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Electra
Printed on acid-free paper.
pup.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For Kyoko
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Prelude: Time, Pasts, History 1
Chapter1. Discovery of Pasts 27
Discovery One: Pasts prior to History 30
Discovery Two: Loss of Function 31
Discovery Three: The Archipelago Has a Past 39
Elevation of Time over Space 48
Chapter2. “Nothing Is the Way It Should Be” 54
Space of Experience: Shuten Doji 55
Nature as a Machine 60
(An)Other View: Durability of the Imprinted Form 65
“Secrets of the Human World”: Meiji Ghosts 69
Stories, Tales, History 76
Denigration of Experience 82
Chapter3. Naturalization of Nation: Essential Time 85
The Externalization of Nature 89
Like a Dragonfly: The Instability of Being Other 92
Spirituality from a Dead Past 101
Nature and Nation 108
Chapter4. Naturalization of Nation: Chronological Time 111
History as Histoire 114
Chronology: An Alibi of Time 118
Specters of History: National Literature and Art History 126
From Ghosts to Children: The Idea of Childhood 133
Conceptual Map 137
Chapter5. Socialization of Society 144
The “Social Problem” 147
A Cry for Experience as Experience 151
Contestation of Wills 160
The Socialization of a National Society 164
viii CONTENTS
Chapter6. Socialization of Nature: Museumification 168
Frames 170
Nostalgia 177
Childhood 179
The Tutelary Complex 182
Ghostly Remnants? 190
Epilogue 193
Works Cited 203
Index 219
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing the acknowledgments,a sort of biography of this book, is one of the true
pleasures of the final stages of preparing a manuscript. It is one of those rituals
that gives me a sense—no doubt mythical—that completion is near. In our dis-
cipline such senses of completion are rare at best and, at times like this, fleeting.
(Books are not completed, they are moments along an intellectual journey.)
Thus it is a chance to review the long process that has led to this book; it is a re-
minder of one of the best parts of history, the serendipity of following data and
ideas whose import, as well as “mere” interest, are often unanticipated.
This project began long ago after what seemed then as an odd request. In talk-
ing to John Gillis about a paper for a conference on memory, he asked that I
come up with a topic that dealt with something tangible. My work on art history
began; more important, it directed me more toward an inquiry into what I now
see as the materiality of ideas. Two other conferences were especially and unex-
pectedly pivotal, again turning this project away from what I thought it was
going to be. I am thankful to Sally Humphreys for stimulating what has become
my work on childhood. Another unexpected turn arose when Kevin Doak re-
fused my initial suggestion for a paper. A paper on the Horyuji came out of what
at the time, I thought, was a throwaway line. The ideas in this book developed
through contact with many colleagues who invited me to present my preliminary
work at the University of Chicago, Washington University, the German Histori-
cal Institute, Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, University
of California at Los Angeles, and the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
This project was supported by many institutions. A research fellowship from
the National Endowment for the Humanities was very important in getting it off
the ground. An Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at the University of
Southern California gave me some conceptual room to allow for reading and
thinking. I thank Clark University and the University of California, San Diego,
both of which provided research support. An International and Area Studies Fel-
lowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Re-
search Council, and National Endowment for the Humanities in 2000 allowed
me to spend a year pulling all the parts together.
This book is a reformulation of some previously published materials, the re-
sult of conferences that stimulated me to explore new issues. I am thankful to
the publishers for allowing me to use the following essays: “Imaging History: In-
scribing Belief in the Nation,” Journal of Asian Studies 53 (1994): 24–44;
“Childhood: the Naturalization of Development into a Japanese Space,” in
S.C. Humphreys, ed., Cultures of Scholarship(Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
gan Press, 1997); “Discoveries of the Horyuji,” in Kai-wing Chow, Kevin M.