JAPAN: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY - SHELTON WOODS

You might have heard, I’m moving to Japan. My wife just got a good job working in Tokyo so in a few weeks, off we go. As a result, I’ve shifted my reading to be more Japan-focused. The Lawrence public library has a couple of Japan books so I figure I’ll work my way through as many of them as I can before heading over there. Up first is this general history guide, to sort of give myself an overview of Japanese history. Sadly, this book is basically an extended wikipedia article. It does indeed give an overview of Japanese history but it is not very deep on any one point. Also, despite having “illustrated” in the title, it has very few illustrations, all of which are black and white and small. The book makes a handful of cringe-y assessments and errors. At one point he starts talking about mongoloid and caucasoid features. At another point he claims, insanely, that, “historically, it is difficult to find a civilization that treated women more poorly than the Chinese.” Far be it of me to defend imperial China but, my god, a passing understanding of anthropology or women’s history (or ancient Greek history, for that matter) would clear that statement right up. Anyway, irregardless of those errors and the general lack of depth, it was good to spend an evening reading over all of Japanese history at once. Woods doesn’t engage in any big picture speculation so I’ll fill in for him. Coming straight from Africa, with colonialism on the brain, Japan offers a really interesting counterpoint. Along with Siam/Thailand (and to some extent, Ethiopia) Japan is one of the very few places in the world to dodge the horrors of colonialism. It’s really far away from Western Europe, it’s small and doesn’t have many national resources. It was briefly open to Westerners and foreigners of all types (Yasuke, the Black Samurai comes to mind) before they caught wind of what went down in what is now Mexico and decided that these YT devils were up to no good. They closed off the country completely for 300 years before America forced them back open, right after the end of the civil war. At this point, the late 1800’s most of the world was under some form of colonial oppression and Western nations were beginning to industrialize. Japan had to play catch-up, as well as realize that the rest of the world, the YT world, would never view them as equals. They tried to stick a racial equality plank into the Versailles treaty, which was rejected. Lacking natural resources and seeing that the only way to receive respect in the larger world was to head an empire, they began warring with neighbors, first Korea, China and Russia, and seeking to build a trans-Asian empire. At first, some in these countries welcomed them, since the Japanese were kicking out the European/American Imperial powers. I’ve always been fascinated by the  Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, an organization of Blacks in the United States that supported Japan before WWII as a champion of non-YT people around the world. Of course, Japan went on to treat their new colonies just as badly as the Europeans and American ever did (ask Nanjing) since there is no such thing as a benevolent empire. Anyway, something I often think about. The book is also light on post WWII japan, which I’ll have to find another source on. Obviously, the US has been closely involved in general and specifically with supporting Liberal Democratic party, who have basically been in power since WWII and who, despite the name, are conservative and very anti-communist. Anyway, I’ll have to dive deeper into all that. 1945 Japanese Islands