The history of the modern and westernized Japan has been written, revised and re-written for many years. In the early 1980s, Mark Peattie and Ramon Myers edited a volume by William Beasley dedicated to examining the Japanese colonial empire. Andre Schmid wrote a review article on the historiography of modern Japan in his work “Colonialism and the ‘Korea Problem’ in the Historiography of Modern Japan: A Review Article”.In this work, Schmid “asks whether the history of modern Japan, especially the Meiji period, can be rightly isolated as ‘island history’ or whether it should be contextualized within Japan’s deepening colonial engagements”.
Schmid points out that older scholarship, like Peattie’s Introduction, approached the study of Japan as an imperial power in a very metro-centered manner, as it completely ignored its relations to Korea and only narrates through the perspective of Japan.This paper will explore Schmid’s points of contention, how Peattie and Myers respond to his criticisms, whether or not there are methodological or theoretical differences in approach between the historians, and if there is a fundamental difference in approach. Schmid expressed his contention with the many fallacies he found in this nation-centered history. He believes that this kind of history splits the narrative of modern Japan into two—a domestic history untainted by interactions with the continent and a history of the colonies penetrated by the forces of Japan.In other words, he believes that it is impossible to write a story of the modernization of Japan without also talking about what was going on in Korea as well as how the ideas, practices, news and the like of the expanding empire became a part of the modern scene. There was no middle ground used to connect the fact that both countries were mutually constitutive, as nation-making and empire-building were happening.
Schmid believes that in order for the writings of history to be most accurate, historians would need to contextualize all countries involved and study their perspective as well.For example, Schmid argues that while Duus agrees that there is a problem with the lack of Korean perspectives found in the writings of history of modern Japan, Duus also points out that he cannot read Korean and translating hundreds of languages is close to impossible. In other words, the idea of putting history into a larger context sounds perfect in theory, but is impossible in practice and Schmid finds this problematic because it leads to historians, like Duus, to “accept claims made about Korean society and politics as unproblematic truths”.It is not only applicable to Korea, but to every country.
Perceptions and opinion will vary from country-to-country, so relying on just one country to evaluate history will always be misleading. It must be balanced by other perceptions and opinions. Schmid points to Peattie and Myers’ work when he mentions “nation-centered sources” and labels The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 as an “unqualified representation of Japan as once modern internally and modernizing externally… His choice of adjectives alone reveals the contrast.Korea, ‘that unhappy country’ with an ‘obdurate’ government, is seen as a society with a ‘derelict nature’”. These assumptions, Schmid states, make it hard for Peattie to show the truest depiction of resistance to Japanese policy in the colonies and “present the harshness of Japanese colonial role—the kicking and dragging—as somehow superficial, an epheremal by-product of colonialism that should not detract from the larger modernizing project”. This effectively illustrates the differences in theory between the historians.
Schmid makes a valid point when he says that there is a material and mental world that is created through the rhetoric and word-choice in the earlier sources of Modern Japanese history; however, in 2001, Peattie and Myers respond to Schmid’s article and accuse Schmid’s arguments as being “oddly obtuse” and has a lack of understanding with the fact historiography is an evolutionary process and that their work is in now way considered the final word.He also states that the focus of their work is obviously Japan-centered because “at the time that it was written there was no other single work addressed the issues, problems, and functions of the formal Japanese empire”. They then move on to factual misunderstandings—specifically with the year 1931 as a turning point. Peattie clarifies and states that “we do not justify the Japanese subjugation of the 1930s and the Pacific War as ‘reckless adventurism.’The Japanese extinction of Korean independence in 1910 was brutal, deceitful and unjustified, but it certainly wasn’t ‘reckless,’ as the acquiescence of the other imperialist powers to the Japanese annexation of the peninsula quickly demonstrated”.
Peattie asserts that many of these exaggerations and distortions are found in Schmid’ critique. In addition to adding distortions and exaggerations, Peattie also said that Schmid omitted a lot of information found in their study like how their appraisal to the formal empire before 1931 was a comparison to the modern empire after 1931.In other words, the distinction was made to paint an a positive or negative view on the Japanese colonial empire but rather to highlight the “polarities of exploitation and development”. Schmid also responds to Peattie and Myers, listing all of the things that they agree on: “…their work was an important early study of the Japanese Empire… its orientation was metrocentric.
.. it offered a unidirectional vision of history with little attention to the centripetal forces of empire… in the future a transnational, multilingual approach to empire would be ideal… and [Schmid] can be ‘oddly obtuse’”.After that, however, Schmid returns to his main point that research and writing of history is done so in a nation-centered manner and lacks the larger, regional picture of context.
This is the biggest methodological difference that can be found between Peattie/Myers and Schmid.The question comes down to whether or not these differences in their approaches are fundamental or if they simple like the sound of their own voices. Based on the observation that Schmid proposes to take an omniscient view and argues how all other approaches are ineffective and misleading, yet refuses to do the research himself, it is plausible to conclude that Schmid simply likes the sound of his own voice.
