by Ian Buruma
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Product Description
In a single short book as elegant as it is wise, Ian Buruma makes sense of the most fateful span of Japan’s history, the period that saw as dramatic a transformation as any country has ever known. In the course of little more than a hundred years from the day Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in his black ships, this insular, preindustrial realm mutated into an expansive military dictatorship that essentially supplanted the British, French, Dutch, and American empires in Asia before plunging to utter ruin, eventually emerging under American tutelage as a pseudo-Western-style democracy and economic dynamo.
What explains the seismic changes that thrust this small island nation so violently onto the world stage? In part, Ian Buruma argues, the story is one of a newly united nation that felt it must play catch-up to the established Western powers, just as Germany and Italy did, a process that involved, in addition to outward colonial expansion, internal cultural consolidation and the manufacturing of a shared heritage. But Japan has always been both particularly open to the importation of good ideas and particularly prickly about keeping their influence quarantined, a bipolar disorder that would have dramatic consequences and that continues to this day. If one book is to be read in order to understand why the Japanese seem so impossibly strange to many Americans, Inventing Japan is surely it.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A good read, but hardly unbiased, 2008-07-18
I agree whole-heartedly with Hitoshi's previous comments.
While Baruma's book was a very interesting introduction it suffers from the monolithic painting of the Japanese nation and people that mark many deficient history lessons. The standards that Baruma appears to demand of the Japanese (but seemingly would not apply to Western powers) seem heavily skewed and the almost childish writing at some points give the appearance of a shallow reading of Japanese history and the powers that moulded it.
It is a shame, but I couldn't help but feel I was getting a distorted picture of Japan as I read. If you wish to believe Japanese success is the result of a backwards nation emulating Western ideals and that there is little inate in Japan that has led to its success, you will find this agreeable. But if the Japanese you know do not conform to the stereotype of war-denying reactionaries you may find the content a little hard to consume. Still worthy of a couple of stars but read this book with a critical eye to what Baruma's own views are.
Japan-philes, academics focussing on Japan and ex-pats over time seem to go one of three ways - a continued positive attitude and love of the country, a healthy indifference, or an eventual sense of tiredness and feeling of Japanese inferiority. Baruma appears to have become the later.
If it is worth considering, a number of our Japan historians I spoke to about the book were very critical of its lack of academic depth and generalised views.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A Starting Point, 2006-12-20
This introduction to modern Japanese history -- from Com. Perry's 1853 naval mission to the 1964 Olympics -- is perfectly fine as just that, an introduction for those who have neither the time nor inclination to read an in-depth 500-800 page work. Of course, as is to be expected from such a gloss, the author skims lightly across major topics, and without the context of further reading or background knowledge, it's difficult for the average reader to know what to make of Buruma's interpretations, emphases, and omissions.
Certainly the span of time is well chosen, although as the book is clear to point out, the arrival of Perry's "black ships" to force Japan to trade with the U.S. was hardly the first significant contact with the West. For quite some time, Japan had contacts with the Netherlands, and a segment of Japanese intelligentsia pursued "Dutch learning." Still, it's a good starting point, as the American arrival heralded the end of the feudal era and the start of the Meiji Restoration. Aside from little snippets here and there (a section on 1920s Japan made me curious to read more about the era), much of the early part of the book revolves around Japan's military muscle-flexing.
The 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, which Buruma describes as a brutal dress rehearsal for World War I, starts the century off on an ominous note, as the Japanese taste of victory against a European power sparks delusions of grandeur. These delusions mount as the century moves forward, taking the form of expeditions into Manchuria and China (Rape of Nanking anyone?), and finally the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese militarism is portrayed as an outgrowth of a strange blend of overconfidence, inferiority complex, and sentiments of racial and national superiority. Such sweeping generalization of national character are bound to raise some readers' hackles, but to Buruma's credit, he doesn't dance around them.
Less familiar than Japan's military adventurism is the overview of the U.S. occupation and influence in the postwar years, and the crafting of a new constitution by low-level American bureaucrats. Another relatively less well-known area Burma sketches is the postwar Japanese domestic scene. This comes across as a relatively cozy balance of power between politicians and bureaucrats, with plenty of corruption to go around. One comes out of it with the dispiriting sense that Japan's democracy is a rather hollow one, mired in entrenched interests and overly dependent on the U.S. The narrative ends with the staging of the 1964 Olympics, an event that marks Japan's complete reassimiliation into the world community.
Ultimately, this appears to be a reasonable overview, perhaps best suited as one of several texts in an undergraduate course on Japanese history. Without some other guidance or supplementary reading, it's simply too full of interpretation to take at face value. Fortunately, Buruma does provide an excellent bibliography for those interested in further reading.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 A quick read and summary, but ultimately confusing, 2006-02-27
A short book can be a great introduction to a topic, or provide a quick overview to something that you do not care to delve further in. Or, it can leave out so much context and nuance, that it is simply confusing. I am a history buff, but not a Japan expert attracted by the topic and timeframe of this book. And I cannot say I did not learn anything or that the book was dry and uninteresting. But it was breathtakingly quick...seeming to jump through the decades, introducing and then throwing away topics and characters and leaving one with far more questions than answers. I cannot comment on the biases others have noted, because I do not have enough knowledge to judge, but there was a certain "flip-ness" to the writing that was irritating, and the overall structure and pace was so flawed I cannot recommend this book regardless of its accuracy or insight.
3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
50% five + 50% zero stars = 2.5 stars., 2005-11-04
This is the only book, I have read about the history of Japan so far. If the analysis can be validated to be true, it is a fascinating brief history of Japan that teaches the fundamentals. However, if it is a biased fantasy then it is very offending to Japanese culture. I have a tendency to believe that most of it is biased. It describes the Japanese people as easily manipulated crowd that can take a person to be their God after an overnight decision by the power elite. It gives a sense that Japanese people in any part of their history were imitating, adopting cultures of others. Reader is pushed to believe that if Japanese culture is left unchecked it has a huge potential to do harm.
I also feel hard to believe that while the elite bureaucrats are imitating the western style of life, the public, especially working class, would swallow such behavior like candy as described in the book.
It is a brief book that is very coherent in its analysis. However, it feels such an analysis may be very biased and not reflecting the truth.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Graceful Losers: The Emergence of Modern Japan, 2005-07-02
Since Mathew Perry's Black Ships reached Japan and broke its self imposed exclusion from the world, the Japanese Experience has been extraordinary. Alone among the non Western nations it has mastered Western science, technology, and economic prowess, and had earned a place among the major world powers in the pre WW2 world. Then it has joined in with Hitler and Mussolini as part of the Axis power, unleashing a gruesome campaign against its weaker Asian neighbors and a suicidal one against the United States. Following its defeat, Japan reemerged as a pacifist democracy and an economic and cultural world leader.
Ian Buruma's fascinating little book about the century between Perry's arrival and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, has to cover a lot of ground in 160 pages (he has about 1.5 pages per year). His book is necessarily frustrating in its gloss of important aspects, but he nonetheless supplies a useful account of Japan's political history throughout the period (and, surprisingly, quite a lot about Japanese culture as well, particularly the Cinema).
It seems redundant to summarize the political developments in Japan; Suffice to say that, rather then a confrontation between traditionalists and modernists; Buruma sees a conflict between modernists of the Liberal and illiberal kind. The latter, drawing upon the German model, transformed Shinto into a state religion celebrating a divine emperor, created a highly militaristic state, and led Japan into a series of Military adventures, from the Sino-Japanese war of 1895, through the war with Russia in 1905, the 'Manchurian incident' in 1931, and finally to Pearl Harbor.
Following Japan's inevitable defeat, The American occupation force purged the hardliner military leaders, but maintained Emperor Hirohito (Buruma is inconclusive as to the level of his culpability in Japan's militarism). It created a new Constitution (dedicated to Pacifism), and partially, but not entirely, reshaped Japan's political culture. After some turbulence, the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party settled to rule Japan fairly effectively, partially betraying and partially fulfilling the Liberal hopes from the Post War era.
As interesting as Japan's political history has been, the extraordinary question of Japanese history is economic: How did Japan manage to twice rise from great disadvantages to a position as a world leader? How did Japan, alone among all non Western nations, manage to Industrialize as early as the 19th century, and how come it is today a leading member in the still almost exclusively Western club of developed countries?
Buruma hardly addressed these questions, and as such his ability to explain the history of Japan suffers greatly. As interesting as the political and ideological history is, that's not where the story of Modern Japan truly is; Japan's triumph, and current difficulties are hardly addressed, and Buruma mostly sees the enrichment of post war Japan as a distraction, "Opium to the Masses", so to speak, allowing the conservatives to shrink from fuller Liberalization of Japan (pp. 166-167).
The best insight Buruma offers to Japan's extraordinary success is in the Prologue, describing the Judo contest in the 1964 Olympics. The Japanese expected their smallish Judo champion, Kaminaga Akio to defeat his six foot six Dutch opponent, Anton Geesink. Such a victory would have signaled the "superiority of Japanese culture, of the Japanese spirit". (p.6)
But in the end, Geesink won. The Dutchman defeated the Japanese: "Once again, Japanese manhood had put to the test against superior Western manhood, and once again it was found wanting". But the humiliation subsided when Geesink showed the proper respect by bowing the traditional bow. "Geesink... would be treated as a hero in Japan forever after... One quality has stood out to serve Japan better than any other: the grace to make the best of defeat".
I think Buruma has hit upon a major element in Japan's success. Unlike many other traditional societies, Japanese were able to accept the victories of the West and to profit from them; I think people around the world have much to benefit by reflecting upon the Japanese capacity of Embracing Defeat.
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