The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan

Contemporary Review, Sept, 1999 by Raymond Lamont-Brown

W. G. Beasley. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. [pounds]20.00. 299 pages. ISBN 0-297-64308-8.

When I first began my own field studies of Japan, as an undergraduate in the late 1960s, I encountered a society that was more nishi no ho no (western) than its pure Chinese roots would have led the enquirer to expect. Yet a scratch or two beneath the surface of Japanese society showed, and still shows, how Japan has been influenced by concepts and customs, books and culture which came largely from its huge neighbour, via Korea.

Japan remains a country little touched by immigration, or emigration - for a long time it was a capital offence to quit Japan - and is largely homogenous. It was never conquered nor occupied in historic eras until the Allied Occupation of 1945-51 and retains an imperial monarchy which is the longest reigning in the world.

The Japanese have always prided themselves on their Kodoshugisha (Japan's Imperial Way - of doing things) policy. Though that brought them disaster during World War II, they still retain its spirit. The revealing of this, and what makes the Japanese Japanese, is the main theme of Professor Beasley's book.

As the Japanese did not have a serial chronology until modern times, W. G. Beasley, who was the Professor of the History of the Far East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in the University of London from 1954 to 1983, has divided his history, as in western practice, into fourteen sections which can be easily digested separately or as a continuous read.

Professor Beasley begins with the earliest accounts of Japan's history as reflected in the legends expounded by the eighth-century chronicles, the Kojiki ('Record of Ancient Things') and the Nihon Shoki (bynamed Nihongi, 'The early Days of Japan'), to the arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century.

We see here how Japan developed from a primitive kingdom into a Chinese-based society, from culture to politics, although Beasley shows how the influence of China was thin outside the ancient capital (for a thousand years) of Kyoto.

From the eleventh century Chinese influence waned and the country began a protracted feudal period of historical eras wherein there were two rulers, a tenno (emperor) largely playing as puppet to the Sei-i-tai-shogun ('barbarian-subduing generalissimo'). Professor Beasley leads the reader through the beginning of Japanese feudalism, with its central administration of Japan under the Shoguns, the Bakufu, to the medieval culture 1200-1450, to the coming of the gaijin (foreigners) and the 'closing' of Japan 1500-1700, to the country's 'opening' to the West and the revolution known as the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The latter led to Japan's development as a world power, which was hijacked by militarists and led to the destruction of Dai Nippon Teikokku (Empire of Great Japan), which the politicians had intended would be the centre of the world.

Professor Beasley resists the temptation of closing his history with the surrender of the Japanese Imperial State aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 1 September 1945. Instead he takes a brief look at postwar Japan to show how the country emerged from the horrors of war into decades of 'economic miracle'.

In a volume such as this, where a 'once over lightly' approach is almost expected, Professor Beasley, has avoided the main traps of such a treatment and has provided an examination of a thousand years of Japanese history which is easy to absorb and handle. The text is supplemented with a glossary, a bibliography and guide to future reading, maps, and albeit humdrum plates. It is a volume to have alongside the plethora of books on the modern aspects of Japanese society as it helps to put the country within an international historical context.

RAYMOND LAMONT-BROWN