Posted at 2014.03.24 Category : 未分類
FEATURE
Why Is Japan So … Different?
A brief history of leaving China, becoming the other, and turning Japanese.
BY DAVID PILLING MARCH 17, 2014
フォーリンポリシーのサイトにフィナンシャルタイムズのアジア編集長であるDAVID PILLINGさんが日本特殊論について歴史的に考察してくれています。書き出しは福沢諭吉の脱亜入欧からで、徳川自体の国学や戦後の日本人論、最近の藤原正彦の提言など幅広く考察しています。とてもよくまとまった記事で勉強になります。
On March 16, 1885, an editorial entitled "Leaving Asia" was published in the Japanese newspaper Jiji Shimpo. Now widely believed to have been written by Yukichi Fukuzawa, the intellectual giant of the 19th-century modernization movement that culminated in the Meiji Restoration, it argued that Japan could simply not afford to be held back by "feudalistic" China and Korea, and should therefore "leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with the civilized nations of the West."
Japan's break with China, a country it subsequently invaded and humiliated, is a story of sharp relevance today. Tensions between the two nations are extremely high. Chinese and Japanese ships and planes circle disputed islands in the East China Sea, with the ever-present danger of an accident or willful escalation. Leaders in both countries have started to compare the present with 1914 and 1939, when the world stood on the brink of war.
日本特殊論の歴史をひも解く前に、中国が日本に与えた影響の大きさを確認することからはじめています。
China was once considered the fount of all knowledge for Japan, an isolated archipelago of islands sitting like an apostrophic afterthought off the eastern edge of the vast Eurasian landmass. Kyoto, founded in the 8th century and Japan's imperial capital for a thousand years, was a replica of the Tang Dynasty capital Chang'an. Serious Japanese poets wrote in Chinese. Only women used the phonetic kana script -- a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court composed the 11th-century Tale of Genji, considered the world's first novel. For men, to be learned meant to be learned in Chinese.
But in subsequent centuries, the prestige of Chinese civilization began to slowly erode; it fell sharply in 1644 when the Ming Dynasty crumpled and the Han Chinese came under foreign control. This coincided with the early days of Japan's Tokugawa period (1600-1868), when the ruling shoguns sought to protect the state, and themselves, from foreign influence, including Chinese. Intent on preserving its monopoly and wary of competing ideologies, the shogunate banned the Japanese, on pain of death, from leaving the country and returning. Traders from China were mostly restricted to a Chinese quarter in the city of Nagasaki.
現在日本人的と考えられているものは中国との関係が断たれてからできたもののようです。Much of Japan's supposed uniqueness, in other words, was propaganda; a political exercise in nation building and establishing Japan's credentials as a standalone culture distinct from China.と明治国家成立時に作られたプロパガンダと書いています。
Much of what we today consider quintessentially Japanese originated from this period of breaking with China. Ian Buruma, a brilliant scholar of China and Japan told me, "As knowledge of the world grew, the Japanese began to realize that China was not the center of world, and to recognize the weakness of China. So they thought, ‘We better start repositioning ourselves.'"
Similarly, much of Japan's supposed exceptionalism was a modern construct, said Buruma. "The reason the Japanese nativists describe their own culture as completely different from China was a form of defensiveness." From the 1880s, after the overthrow of the shogun and the establishment of a modern state in the name of the emperor, history books were rewritten to begin not with the Stone Age, but with Japan's own creation myth, tracing a supposedly unbroken imperial line from the sun goddess Amatarasu to the present day. Japanese Shintoism, an animist set of folkloric beliefs mixed with ancestor worship, was elevated to a state religion with the divine emperor at its center. Much of Japan's supposed uniqueness, in other words, was propaganda; a political exercise in nation building and establishing Japan's credentials as a standalone culture distinct from China.
また、和や情緒を重視する日本人と論理的で狩猟民族の西洋人というありがちな構図は戦後の日本人論で作られた構図であると説明しています。こちらも"What they believed to be ancient tradition," he writes, "was quintessentially modern ideology."というオーストラリアの教授の言葉を引きながら手厳しく論じています。
Some foreign observers have been as enthusiastic about promoting Japan's alleged uniqueness as the Japanese themselves. Of course, all nations are unique, but in Japan this truism became a fetish. The Japanese developed a form, which dates back to the Tokugawa era but which flourished in the post-World War II period, of quasi-philosophical writing called Nihonjinron, or "essays on the essence of Japaneseness." Written by both Japanese and foreigners, these tracts sought to explain what made the Japanese unique and how they differed from foreigners, who were, all too often, lumped into one homogeneous category. Such lines of inquiry often settled on a description of the Japanese as cooperative, sedentary rice farmers who use instinct and heart rather than cold, Western logic. Unlike Western hunter-gatherers, the Japanese were seen as having a unique sensitivity to nature, an ability to communicate without language through a sort of social telepathy, and a rarefied artistic awareness.
In 1946, U.S. anthropologist Ruth Benedict made it respectable to see the Japanese as a race apart with the publication of her classic study of Japanese culture, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She described a highly codified society operating with conventions all-but-incomprehensible to outsiders. Her work paved the way for shelf after shelf of Nihonjinron texts by Japanese authors. These multiplied with Japan's post-war economic success, which the Japanese and foreigners alike began to attribute to the country's supposedly unique organizational and social structures. Gavan McCormack, an Australian academic, describes Benedict's book as "one of the greatest propaganda coups of the century." In stoking Japan's own sense of its own uniqueness, he argues, the book helped sever Japan's psychological ties with its Asian neighbors. "What they believed to be ancient tradition," he writes, "was quintessentially modern ideology."
最後に中国が隣国としてあるのだから、中国との関係を無視して成り立たないことを指摘して締めています。
But Japan is not in Europe. It lies next door to China, the fount of much of its civilization, and a country that Japan invaded when China was weak. It must now watch in alarm as China, which has neither forgotten nor forgiven, grows stronger.
2月にピリング氏は以下のようなエッセイを書いています。現在は、中国との関係をどうするかを考えることは、米国との関係をどうするかということでもあるようです。
[FT]待望した安倍首相を今は悔やむ米政府
2014/2/21 7:00
日本経済新聞 電子版
米にしがみつくか、離れるか
ワシントンで見られる安倍氏への嫌悪感は、決して普遍的ではない。ある意味、安倍氏はまさに医師、メンターとしての米国が命じた日本の首相そのものだ。安倍氏は日本経済を浮揚させる計画を持っているし、沖縄の米海兵隊基地の問題を解決する望みを多少なりとももたらした、数年ぶりの指導者でもある。長年、日本は国防費に国内総生産（ＧＤＰ）比１％という上限を自ら課してきたが、安倍氏は国防費を増額する意思を持っている。
だが、これらの政策には代償が伴う。ワシントンの多くの人が不快に感じる修正主義的なナショナリズムである。
「中国が成長するにつれ、日本が中国の力に不安を感じる理由はますます増え、日本を守る米国の意思への信頼はますます薄れていく」とホワイト氏は言う。同氏いわく、米国は日本の中核利益を守ることを確約するか、さもなくば日本が「1945年以降に放棄した戦略的な独立性」を取り戻すのを助けなければならない。このジレンマに対して日本が持つ答えは、一層強く米国にしがみつくか、米国から離れるか――に行き着く。
日本文化を語れるようにならなければと素朴に考えている英語学習者には特に一読をすすめたい記事です。
Why Is Japan So … Different?
A brief history of leaving China, becoming the other, and turning Japanese.
BY DAVID PILLING MARCH 17, 2014
フォーリンポリシーのサイトにフィナンシャルタイムズのアジア編集長であるDAVID PILLINGさんが日本特殊論について歴史的に考察してくれています。書き出しは福沢諭吉の脱亜入欧からで、徳川自体の国学や戦後の日本人論、最近の藤原正彦の提言など幅広く考察しています。とてもよくまとまった記事で勉強になります。
On March 16, 1885, an editorial entitled "Leaving Asia" was published in the Japanese newspaper Jiji Shimpo. Now widely believed to have been written by Yukichi Fukuzawa, the intellectual giant of the 19th-century modernization movement that culminated in the Meiji Restoration, it argued that Japan could simply not afford to be held back by "feudalistic" China and Korea, and should therefore "leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with the civilized nations of the West."
Japan's break with China, a country it subsequently invaded and humiliated, is a story of sharp relevance today. Tensions between the two nations are extremely high. Chinese and Japanese ships and planes circle disputed islands in the East China Sea, with the ever-present danger of an accident or willful escalation. Leaders in both countries have started to compare the present with 1914 and 1939, when the world stood on the brink of war.
日本特殊論の歴史をひも解く前に、中国が日本に与えた影響の大きさを確認することからはじめています。
China was once considered the fount of all knowledge for Japan, an isolated archipelago of islands sitting like an apostrophic afterthought off the eastern edge of the vast Eurasian landmass. Kyoto, founded in the 8th century and Japan's imperial capital for a thousand years, was a replica of the Tang Dynasty capital Chang'an. Serious Japanese poets wrote in Chinese. Only women used the phonetic kana script -- a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court composed the 11th-century Tale of Genji, considered the world's first novel. For men, to be learned meant to be learned in Chinese.
But in subsequent centuries, the prestige of Chinese civilization began to slowly erode; it fell sharply in 1644 when the Ming Dynasty crumpled and the Han Chinese came under foreign control. This coincided with the early days of Japan's Tokugawa period (1600-1868), when the ruling shoguns sought to protect the state, and themselves, from foreign influence, including Chinese. Intent on preserving its monopoly and wary of competing ideologies, the shogunate banned the Japanese, on pain of death, from leaving the country and returning. Traders from China were mostly restricted to a Chinese quarter in the city of Nagasaki.
現在日本人的と考えられているものは中国との関係が断たれてからできたもののようです。Much of Japan's supposed uniqueness, in other words, was propaganda; a political exercise in nation building and establishing Japan's credentials as a standalone culture distinct from China.と明治国家成立時に作られたプロパガンダと書いています。
Much of what we today consider quintessentially Japanese originated from this period of breaking with China. Ian Buruma, a brilliant scholar of China and Japan told me, "As knowledge of the world grew, the Japanese began to realize that China was not the center of world, and to recognize the weakness of China. So they thought, ‘We better start repositioning ourselves.'"
Similarly, much of Japan's supposed exceptionalism was a modern construct, said Buruma. "The reason the Japanese nativists describe their own culture as completely different from China was a form of defensiveness." From the 1880s, after the overthrow of the shogun and the establishment of a modern state in the name of the emperor, history books were rewritten to begin not with the Stone Age, but with Japan's own creation myth, tracing a supposedly unbroken imperial line from the sun goddess Amatarasu to the present day. Japanese Shintoism, an animist set of folkloric beliefs mixed with ancestor worship, was elevated to a state religion with the divine emperor at its center. Much of Japan's supposed uniqueness, in other words, was propaganda; a political exercise in nation building and establishing Japan's credentials as a standalone culture distinct from China.
また、和や情緒を重視する日本人と論理的で狩猟民族の西洋人というありがちな構図は戦後の日本人論で作られた構図であると説明しています。こちらも"What they believed to be ancient tradition," he writes, "was quintessentially modern ideology."というオーストラリアの教授の言葉を引きながら手厳しく論じています。
Some foreign observers have been as enthusiastic about promoting Japan's alleged uniqueness as the Japanese themselves. Of course, all nations are unique, but in Japan this truism became a fetish. The Japanese developed a form, which dates back to the Tokugawa era but which flourished in the post-World War II period, of quasi-philosophical writing called Nihonjinron, or "essays on the essence of Japaneseness." Written by both Japanese and foreigners, these tracts sought to explain what made the Japanese unique and how they differed from foreigners, who were, all too often, lumped into one homogeneous category. Such lines of inquiry often settled on a description of the Japanese as cooperative, sedentary rice farmers who use instinct and heart rather than cold, Western logic. Unlike Western hunter-gatherers, the Japanese were seen as having a unique sensitivity to nature, an ability to communicate without language through a sort of social telepathy, and a rarefied artistic awareness.
In 1946, U.S. anthropologist Ruth Benedict made it respectable to see the Japanese as a race apart with the publication of her classic study of Japanese culture, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She described a highly codified society operating with conventions all-but-incomprehensible to outsiders. Her work paved the way for shelf after shelf of Nihonjinron texts by Japanese authors. These multiplied with Japan's post-war economic success, which the Japanese and foreigners alike began to attribute to the country's supposedly unique organizational and social structures. Gavan McCormack, an Australian academic, describes Benedict's book as "one of the greatest propaganda coups of the century." In stoking Japan's own sense of its own uniqueness, he argues, the book helped sever Japan's psychological ties with its Asian neighbors. "What they believed to be ancient tradition," he writes, "was quintessentially modern ideology."
最後に中国が隣国としてあるのだから、中国との関係を無視して成り立たないことを指摘して締めています。
But Japan is not in Europe. It lies next door to China, the fount of much of its civilization, and a country that Japan invaded when China was weak. It must now watch in alarm as China, which has neither forgotten nor forgiven, grows stronger.
2月にピリング氏は以下のようなエッセイを書いています。現在は、中国との関係をどうするかを考えることは、米国との関係をどうするかということでもあるようです。
[FT]待望した安倍首相を今は悔やむ米政府
2014/2/21 7:00
日本経済新聞 電子版
米にしがみつくか、離れるか
ワシントンで見られる安倍氏への嫌悪感は、決して普遍的ではない。ある意味、安倍氏はまさに医師、メンターとしての米国が命じた日本の首相そのものだ。安倍氏は日本経済を浮揚させる計画を持っているし、沖縄の米海兵隊基地の問題を解決する望みを多少なりとももたらした、数年ぶりの指導者でもある。長年、日本は国防費に国内総生産（ＧＤＰ）比１％という上限を自ら課してきたが、安倍氏は国防費を増額する意思を持っている。
だが、これらの政策には代償が伴う。ワシントンの多くの人が不快に感じる修正主義的なナショナリズムである。
「中国が成長するにつれ、日本が中国の力に不安を感じる理由はますます増え、日本を守る米国の意思への信頼はますます薄れていく」とホワイト氏は言う。同氏いわく、米国は日本の中核利益を守ることを確約するか、さもなくば日本が「1945年以降に放棄した戦略的な独立性」を取り戻すのを助けなければならない。このジレンマに対して日本が持つ答えは、一層強く米国にしがみつくか、米国から離れるか――に行き着く。
日本文化を語れるようにならなければと素朴に考えている英語学習者には特に一読をすすめたい記事です。
スポンサーサイト
Tracback
この記事にトラックバックする(FC2ブログユーザー)