Ian Buruma

This is one of the Modern Library Chronicles series of brief histories, taking us through the history of modern Japan from Commodore Perry to the Tokyo Olympics in not much more than 150 pages, but it's far from being a mere gallop through the facts. As you might expect from Buruma, the stress is on understanding the development of Japanese political thought and exploring how that led to the peculiarities of the Japanese kokutai (polity) as it leapt from feudalism to Meiji authoritarianism, show more Showa militarism, and the postwar LDP machine. And of course, he's not slow to express his opinion of what went wrong with all these different visions of Japaneseness. Buruma looks not only at the roles played by political and military figures, but also at the cultural background to the main currents of Japanese thought during the period - novelists, film-makers, popular journalism, propaganda, etc.

One thing that struck me from Buruma's account was the extent to which Japanese scholars were already aware of (and using) western ideas during the Dutch period - the idea of Japan suddenly being made to open the shutters and discover the modern world for the first time in the 1850s makes a good story, but of course it couldn't really have been quite as sudden as that in real life. Another was the way that the state reacted to the destabilising effects of outside ideas by inventing new "ancient traditions" to reinforce the links between authority, religion and nationalism - not so very different to what was happening in Britain during the industrial revolution or is happening now in many postcolonial states.

Obviously, there has to be a lot of important material that gets missed out or skipped over lightly in a book this size (quite apart from the fact that the book was written 15 years ago and only takes the main story up to 1964 anyway). Buruma is an opinionated writer, albeit one I usually find myself agreeing with, so it's probably best not to take this book in isolation, but it is a good way to get the broad outlines of the story fixed in your mind. It looks like a useful jumping-off point, and it comes with a comprehensive bibliography to facilitate that kind of use. show less

Mohammed Bouyeri was 26 years old when he not only shot Theo van Gogh several times but slashed his throat with a machete as well. He ended his assault by stabbing a note into Van Gogh's lifeless body - however the final insult was kicking the corpse before calmly walking away. The note, oddly enough, wasn't addressed to Van Gogh (rightly so since the dead man couldn't read it) but to anti-Islam politician Hirsi Ali who claimed the Koran was the source of abuse against women. That's not to show more say there weren't plenty of folks in Holland who wished Van Gogh dead. He thrived on being controversial to the point of revolting. Buruma knew Van Gogh in certain circles so I can only imagine what it was like to write about his death as an acquaintance. But, the actual crime is only the centerpiece for the much wider topic of controversies surrounding what happens when nonconformist immigrant populations with differing religions and cultural politics clash against other stringent societies. show less

Sometimes a writer and thinker, such as Buruma, will discover an angle of inquiry that is truly revelatory--bringing into relief assumptions and influences that might otherwise be overlooked. Buruma starts with his own and his family's love affair with England (German Jewish emigrant grandparents) widens his scope to examine the influence of various political thinkers and intellectuals from France (Voltaire being the #1 french anglophile) Italy (Mazzini) and Germany, particularly the views show more of German Jews. I didn't know of the German adoption of Shakespeare, through Schlegel's translation as 'theirs' nor did I know that it was Baron de Coubertin's enthusiasm for British public school sportsmanship that inspired the idea of the modern Olympics. It is very difficult to figure out why Great Britain developed its political system and civil liberties the way it did, and how the system has functioned and persisted as well as it has. He makes it clear too that these emigrants and admirers see their own idealized version of Great Britain, that the 'real' Great Britain is a mysterious entity that shouldn't work but does anyway. He also made me feel the mutually beneficial back and forth between the continent and Great Britain. The Europeans have their own take on what makes Great Britain work which in turn has an effect on how the British see themselves which in turn . . . Buruma writes with tremendous insight: "Once people talk of political freedoms as purely native fruits, you know that freedom is no longer the point. Voltaire and Montesquieu recognized that liberties were protected by laws not values. That is why they admired Britain. The idea that society should be ruled by specific national values was in fact that mark of Continental tyrannies, not of British liberalism." I must confess that I wasn't hugely in the mood for this read, but I kept on with it and it really is a fine book. **** show less

I read this book in honour of VE Day, rather expecting it to focus at least in part on the last few months of the war in Europe leading up to VE Day. Instead it started from the last few weeks of the war and focused thematically on the main trends from then until the end of the year: the exultation of release from concentration camps, combined with the dire state of the survivors; the cycles of revenge that the end of hostilities gave rise to in the occupied countries; the return, or show more attempted return, of huge numbers of displaced persons to their homes; attempts to drain the poison of fascism and militarism from Germany and Japan; and the beginnings of the rebuilding of society in all the devastated countries. The first steps towards rebuilding were combined with a limited but very real sense of optimism at the potential for a new start in individual countries and also, at least initially, internationally with the establishment of the United Nations, hence the title of the book. That said, the author concludes prosaically that:

"the sense one gets from newspapers around the world on the last day of 1945 is that most people were too anxious to get on with their own lives to care much about the global news anymore. During a worldwide war, everywhere matters. In times of peace, people look to home."

and

"If there is anything to be gleaned from these glimpses of the global mood on New Year’s Eve, it is that a certain sense of normality was beginning to seep back into the daily lives of people who were lucky enough to be able to lift their heads from the direst misery of the immediate postwar period."

My only criticism would probably be that the author tries to cover too much ground, in too many countries, and I might have preferred it if all the material on, say, Japan had been in one section, rather than scattered thematically throughout the chapters - though this may just be my personal preference. show less