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WINNER OF THE 2002 FAIRBANK PRIZE FOR BEST BOOK IN EAST ASIAN HISTORY, AWARDED BY THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Julia Adeney Thomas turns the concept of nature into a powerful analytical lens through which to view Japanese modernity, bringing the study of both Japanese history and political modernity to a new level of clarity. She shows that nature necessarily functions as a political concept and that changing ideas of nature's political authority were central during Japan's transformation from a semifeudal world to an industrializing colonial empire. In political documents from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century, nature was redefined, moving from the universal, spatial concept of the Tokugawa period, through temporal, social Darwinian ideas of inevitable progress and competitive struggle, to a celebration of Japan as a nation uniquely in harmony with nature. The so-called traditional "Japanese love of nature" masks modern state power. Thomas's theoretically sophisticated study rejects the supposition that modernity is the ideological antithesis of nature, overcoming the determinism of the physical environment through technology and liberating denatured subjects from the chains of biology and tradition. In making "nature" available as a critical term for political analysis, this book yields new insights into prewar Japan's failure to achieve liberal democracy, as well as an alternative means of understanding modernity and the position of non-Western nations within it.
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Reconfiguring Modernity twentieth-century japan: the emergence of a world power Irwin Scheiner, Editor 1. Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan, by Andrew Gordon 2. Complicit Fictions: The Subject in the Modern Japanese Prose Narrative, by James A. Fujii 3. The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920, by Kären Wigen 4. The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910, by Peter Duus 5. Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan, by Leslie Pincus 6. Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan, by T. Fujitani 7. Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan, by Helen Hardacre 8. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, by Louise Young 9. Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, edited by Stephen Vlastos 10. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory, by Lisa Yoneyama 11. MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905–1931, by Gennifer Weisenfeld 12. Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology, by Julia Adeney Thomas 13. The City as Subject: Seki Hajime and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka, by Jeffrey E. Hanes Reconfiguring Modernity Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology Julia Adeney Thomas UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · London University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2001 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Julia Adeney, 1958– Reconfiguring modernity : concepts of nature in Japanese political ideology / Julia Adeney Thomas. p. cm.—(Twentieth-century Japan ; 12) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-520-22854-5 (Cloth : alk. paper) 1. Japan—Politics and government—1868– 1912. 2. Nature—Effect of human beings on—Japan. I. Title. II. Series. DS882 .T48 2002 304.2'0952—dc21 2001005374 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 10 09 08 07 9 8 7 6 06 05 04 03 5 4 3 2 1 02 01 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).8 For Alan Contents Preface Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration 1. Introductio