Japan's Modern Myths

by Carol Gluck

Ideology played a momentous role in modern Japanese history. Not only did the elite of imperial Japan (1890-1945) work hard to influence the people to "yield as the grasses before the wind," but historians of modern Japan later identified these efforts as one of the underlying pathologies of World War II. Available for the first time in paperback, this study examines how this ideology evolved. Carol Gluck argues that the process of formulating and communicating new national values was less consistent than is usually supposed. By immersing the reader in the talk and thought of the late Meiji period, Professor Gluck recreates the diversity of ideological discourse experienced by Japanese of the time. The result is a new interpretation of the views of politics and the nation in imperial Japan.

Genres: Japan, History, Japanese History, Nonfiction, Politics, Japanese Literature, School

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

from wikipedia: Carol Gluck is an American academic and Japanologist. She is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University and served as the president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1996. Gluck received her B.A. from Wellesley in 1962 and was awarded her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1977.

She has been a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, the University of Venice, Harvard University, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Gluck directs the East Asian Studies program within the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. She was president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1996.

Reviews

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gluck's 'Japan's Modern Myths' is packed with historical details, and while I didn't find it written in "luminous prose" (as described by Marius Janeson, a blurb author on the back cover), I did find it an engaging read.
Carol Gluck is a phenomenal academic. To describe the various sources--from bureaucrats to minkan (journalists, intellectuals, public figures), from Shintō shrines to the emperor--from which the ideologies of citizenship, education, morals and occupation are made in such clean linear lines requires a prowess I have not yet achieved. I give credit where credit is due. In the end she distills the various, and often competing, sources for ideology into a grammar, describing the creation shared of ideological meaning as:

Three kinds of interactions can be identified in the process that produced a universe of shared significance from diverse ideological formulations. The first emerged from the stressed parts of ideological speech, what is here called the ‘middle of the message’; the second from the unstressed elements that often appeared as the ‘dependent clauses’ of ideological utterance; and the third from the unarticulated elements, identified here as the ‘deep social meanings’ that made ideological discourse comprehensible to those who participated in it. These interactions, like a grammar of ideology, characterized the process by which the common ideological language was continuously produced (249).

My favorite discussion of the book was, of course, her descriptions of social foundations in chapter six. The worry over inappropriate reading materials--a consequence of growing literacy in the 1900s--is intriguing... as were the impacts of education on desirable traits for women:

Young woman who insisted on too much education and attended women’s higher schools were described as less marriageable, less prepared for their role as ‘good wife, wise mother,’ and in general as ‘females not suited to the countryside’ (168).

Japan's Modern Myths requires a dedicated reader, one who enjoys the intellectual work required by complex analytical presentation. What's nice about this is that the text makes the time and effort worth it.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to preface this review by saying that I should probably re-read it at some point in the near future, and then read it again. Gluck's text can be quite dense, which is one reason I lowered it to four stars instead of the five it deserves. She outlines some of her central theory and then backs it up with a plethora of research supported by a vast amount of primary sources. This is a very good thing, showing excellent historiography, yet it can sometimes be a little daunting or overwhelming for someone like me, who has currently settled down after only obtaining a BA. The other reason I gave it four stars is because, while I can't say her book is "outdated," as I wholeheartedly agree with her central thesis and I haven't read anything that seriously contests it, it is an older text so her ideas aren't exactly "revolutionary" by now. Any serious student of Japanese History should be able to understand the central concepts without much surprise.

Now, on to the book itself: Gluck's central premise is that ideology is more of a "process" than a "thing." While ideology began to emerge in the late-Meiji Period, it did not appear ex-nihilo, nor did it end with the death of the Emperor. Ideology had been continuously evolving and adapting throughout the late-Meiji Period in response to material realities. Gluck exemplifies this by demonstrating that the efforts of ideologues were debated and challenged by the reality of time. Some notable examples include the failed attempt to separate politics from the public, the eventual merging of the 'kan' and 'min' classes, and incomplete moves to instill national mores within education. Much of it, the parts that made sense to the public, were nationally adopted, but many ideological maneuvers failed and thus adapted to different circumstances. Therefore, ideology was not so much a product of a confederacy of ideologues; rather, it was the result of a complicated network of governmental application and social reality. In this sense, Gluck rejects the "Great-Man" interpretation of history by coalescing intellectual history with a more Marxist-leaning materialist approach.

I read this book as a commentary of the rise of Japanese militarism and ultra-nationalist ideology. Gluck explains in the introduction, that an innumerable amount of scholars in the Post-War commented on 'tennōsei' and 'kokutai' as the downfall of Japan, accepting them as a conspiracy. Rather, as the author concludes in the epilogue, war time authoritarianism was the result of ideological inadaptibility in the face of changing times. Agrarian mythology makes sense in the presence of industrialization, urbanization, and modern anomie, so it was readily adopted in the late-Meiji Period. Yet, they did not make as much sense to common people as the course of time changed. Thus, they had to be forced by an increasingly militaristic government which had overstayed its welcome by August 15, 1945. Of course, the baby wasn't thrown out with the bath water—in the Post-War, many ideological tenets originating in the late-Meiji had been maintained if they made sense to the general public, or were altered with the newfound freedoms in "liberated" Japan. Thus, Gluck's book certainly makes sense as a guide to better understanding ideology during The War. After all, it's a process, and by creating a cartography of it roots and developments, we can understand later developments.

Overall, I'd recommend this book for anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the development of the Japanese "national psyche" that lead to war and ruin, as well as those who are interested in a solid example of the development of ideology. Hobsbawm and Ranger may have coined the term "invented traditions," but if we think of inventions, whether scientific or cultural, there is always a process involved. Ideology, like an invention, never simply appears from the abyss—it is the result of constant change.

[Brumaire Bodbyl-Mast · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing if somewhat dull and unyieldly read, Gluck’s history of later Meiji period ideology demonstrates the way in which an ideological project is ultimately doomed to unique interpretation and cynical application. While the Meiji project was certainly imposed with less force than than of the Showa period (at least for the mainland) it was also working with a virtual tabula rasa, coming from a feudal period without European-style absolutism or centralization. This meant that much of the construction of the Meiji state, while calculated in its planning, especially after contact with the west became more extensive, was often a bit mixed in practice. Gluck gives particular focus to education, the rural vs urban divide, and the conflicting interests of different departments of the Meiji state. While education may have been theoretically uniform, its execution left much to be desired from an orthodox view. The different departments of government too, due to conflicting material interests- such as the question of whether rural children should work the land or go to school, added to the confusion. The rural urban divide, ironically tended to come out in favor of the rural, as the drain away from the home villages to the metropolitan center meant fears of decline of agriculture, and traditional Japanese culture (as well as class conflict in the Marxian sense). Not much is discussed extensively about the ideology in particular, especially towards the end, moreso the focus is on the results of its application and the disputes around legal reform. Discussion of life in the colonies and how Meiji ideology was applied there is lacking, though hints of the chauvinism that would come to define the Showa period are present throughout.

[Yalin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent work by Carol Gluck, which maps out the development of official state ideology in Meiji era Japan. The clear attention to detail and the way in which individual chapters are structured, make this both an illuminating and accessible book. I would highly recommend it as a key source on understanding the ideological development of early modern Japan.

[Shelby · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

fucking brilliant. what can i say? carol gluck is my personal goddess/guru of the way history should be, and the way to live your life. i am waiting on pins and needles for her book on history and memory, which is hung up on illustration copyrights.

i guarantee you'll learn more about japan, past and present, just by reading this one book. which, japan is so important in twentieth-century american history, everyone should read this.

[Chelsea Szendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

How dare I give this book less than five stars. It's brilliant, it's path-breaking, life-changing, and epoch-making. But: I reserve a star just to point out that it is only the beginning of any exploration of the processes that made Meiji Japan into modern Japan. To complete your list, please look into the rich bibliography produced by Gluck's students.

That said, the premise is elegant in its simplicity - a constitutional order is as mythical as any other - and full of lively detail.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and groundbreaking look at the way a 'usable' Japanese past and symbolic vocbulary was constructed during the Meiji years, at the way the institution of the emperor was re-cast and renovated, and at the way that local cults and rituals were assimilated into a Shinto that could be a focus of being Japanese. A key work in understanding what the 'national imaginary' in post-1868 Japan became.