In this complex and absorbing study, Stefan Tanaka examines the way Japanese historians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created the equivalent of an "Orient" for the newly constituted nation-state of Japan. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan faced the necessity of becoming modern while both avoiding a characterization as "Oriental" and maintaining its own identity. The concept of toyoshi (Oriental studies) made it possible to integrate the changes of the previous century - the decline of China, the arrival of the West with all its technical and cultural baggage, the issue of cultural identity - into a comprehensive ideological system. This system defined Japan's history and its place in the world. Unlike the West's "Orient," the term toyo assumed merely cultural difference, no inherent backwardness. The development of toyoshi thus authorized a particular Japanese view of Europe and Asia as well as Japan. It established modern Japan's equivalence with Europe, and also its distinction from and cultural, intellectual, and structural superiority over China. Whereas other scholars depict the encounter between Japan and the West as a struggle between modernity and tradition, Tanaka argues that the Japanese were, in fact, attempting to use a variety of pasts - Chinese, Indian, and protohistoric Japanese - to construct an identity that was both modern and Asian.

Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History

History

Tanaka, Stefan

Americas

Univ. Of California Pr.

Stefan Tanaka examines how late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japanese historians created the equivalent of an "Orient" for their new nation state. He argues that the Japanese attempted to use a variety of pasts―Chinese, Indian, and proto-historic Japanese―to construct an identity that was both modern and Asian.

University of California Press

New Times in Modern Japan concerns the transformation of time--the reckoning of time--during Japan's Meiji period, specifically from around 1870 to 1900. Time literally changed as the archipelago synchronized with the Western imperialists' reckoning of time. The solar calendar and clock became standard timekeeping devices, and society adapted to the abstractions inherent in modern notions of time. This set off a cascade of changes that completely reconfigured how humans interacted with each other and with their environment--a process whose analysis carries implications for other non-Western societies as well.
 By examining topics ranging from geology, ghosts, childhood, art history, and architecture to nature as a whole, Stefan Tanaka explores how changing conceptions of time destabilized inherited knowledge and practices and ultimately facilitated the reconfiguration of the archipelago's heterogeneous communities into the liberal-capitalist nation-state, Japan. However, this revolutionary transformation--where, in the words of Lewis Mumford, "the clock, not the steam engine," is the key mechanism of the industrial age--has received little more than a footnote in the history of Japan.
 This book's innovative focus on time not only shifts attention away from debates about the failure (or success) of "modernization" toward how individuals interact with the overlay of abstract concepts upon their lives; it also illuminates the roles of history as discourse and as practice in this reconfiguration of society. In doing so, it will influence discussions about modernity well beyond the borders of Japan.

New Times in Modern Japan

Asia

Princeton University Press

Although numerous disciplines recognize multiple ways of conceptualizing time, Stefan Tanaka argues that scholars still overwhelmingly operate on chronological and linear Newtonian or classical time that emerged during the Enlightenment. This short, approachable book implores the humanities and humanistic social sciences to actively embrace the richness of different times that are evident in non-modern societies and have become common in several scientific fields throughout the twentieth century. Tanaka first offers a history of chronology by showing how the social structures built on clocks and calendars gained material expression. Tanaka then proposes that we can move away from this chronology by considering how contemporary scientific understandings of time might be adapted to reconceive the present and pasts. This opens up a conversation that allows for the possibility of other ways to know about and re-present pasts. A multiplicity of times will help us broaden the historical horizon by embracing the heterogeneity of our lives and world via rethinking the complex interaction between stability, repetition, and change. This history without chronology also allows for incorporating the affordances of digital media.

History without Chronology

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Lever Press

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Books by Tanaka, Stefan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Tanaka, Stefan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History

Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History

New Times in Modern Japan

New Times in Modern Japan

History without Chronology