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仅供参考：The history of JapanTokyo rose Jul 10th 2003 | from the print edition ON FEBRUARY 11th 1889, the Meiji emperor, dressed for the occasion in a European field-marshal's uniform, took his seat on a Prussian armchair in a European-looking throne-room in the palace of his new capital, Tokyo. There, he announced the enactment of a new constitution, providing for Japan's first parliamentary elections. Japan, it was hoped, was taking its place among the world's great modern nations. 5 k- {1 U" {/ E& X
The granting of the constitution was meant to cap a turbulent period of 36 years since Commodore Perry's unopposed arrival, in his black naval ships, had graphically brought home to the Japanese how badly they had fallen behind. Now, with the shogunate abolished, the emperor restored to his supposed ancient authority, and an exhaustive programme of learning from the West (rather than, as in the past, from decrepit China) well under way, it was meant to be, as the term Meiji denotes, an Age of Brightness.! O' x5 m3 E2 q, @ W
And so it was, for a time. In 1905, Japan defeated Russia, to the astonishment of the world. Tokyo and other Japanese cities became thoroughly modern places, complete with cinemas, dance-halls and liberated young people. From the outset, though, there was a dark side. The constitution, like the throne, was largely Germanic, and played with deadly effect in a land already conditioned to Confucian worship of authority. The democracy it imported was largely a chimera—the franchise extremely restricted, the ministers appointed by the emperor, not parliament. Unfortunately, the militaristic element it brought was not. Between 1932 and 1945, Japan was to have 14 prime ministers, only four of them civilians. The war into which these soldiers led Japan left the country devastated, but it also gave it a chance to learn a new set of lessons from the West.0 B G/ |. B" [+ x
Ian Buruma's excellent new book charts the process of Japan's engagement with the western world from Perry's arrival to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, at which point Japan might fairly be said to have arrived as a respectable member of the world community, having put firmly behind it the shame of the second world war and the ensuing American occupation. It is, of course, an arbitrary cut-off point, as the author himself agrees. Meaty questions remained then and still remain, not least the perennial debate over whether Japan should continue to shelter under America's military umbrella indefinitely, or develop a fully-functional military capability of its own. But Mr Buruma's chosen period, spanning just over a century, encapsulates neatly Japan's struggle to get out of China's shadow without falling completely under America's.; [. E2 V$ [9 ^* \ _& u/ E) G
It makes for a compelling read. A striking aspect of the tale is the extraordinarily savage nature of Japan's political process during that time; the number of assassinations, and the bitterly factional nature of every institution from the court to the army are all powerfully depicted. Squeezed between right and left, as in Weimar Germany, Japanese democracy never had much of a chance.
- o' O+ D6 ]: A( Z! u3 L9 \There are good discussions, too, of how Japan could have come to commit an atrocity as grotesque as the Rape of Nanking (in which an estimated 250,000 people were killed during just six weeks in the winter of 1937), and of Douglas MacArthur's occupation—a time when censorship, carried out in the name of democratisation, was so extreme that one was forbidden to refer to the fact that there was any censorship. One disappointment is that Mr Buruma avoids giving a clear judgment on the central question of the extent of Emperor Hirohito's war guilt, and whether he should have been tried as a war criminal, rather than being allowed to remain on the throne., s: E3 _2 E$ `" u/ a
Despite that, this slender volume packs in more information than you would be lucky to find in a book twice its size. It is beautifully produced, too. These are the hallmarks of Modern Library Chronicles, a new series which includes Richard Pipes on Communism, Bernard Lewis on the Holy Land and Chinua Achebe on Africa. If they are all as good as this, the books will be well worth collecting.& u; G1 U4 U, Y2 x0 x! L$ G
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发表于 2013-1-14 16:01:43
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