The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4)

Author - Peter Duus ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from University of California Press was reviewed on 24-Oct-2008.

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1) Paperback Book The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4) by University of California Press. The reviews for this book here on Amazon are divided, and you can understand both responses, respect and rage.

This volume is what it claims to be: an account of colonization, Japan of Korea from the late 1890s to the early 1920s (but ending before the more brutal culling of the Imperial War Machine in the 30s and 40s).

The first half collects the various arguments made in Japan from the 1860s onward: cultural, racial superiority, expansion and capitalism, contending and competing with the West, in the creation of justifying colonization. Particularly useful if the reader has the basics on the ideology of colonialization, Albert Memmi, Franz Fanon, Edward Said etc. Or the other way around: for the reader who is reading up on colonial writings would find the non-Western discourse on colonialization interesting, the discourse on racial destiny and the Japanese "burden" to enlighten Asia, compared to the "White Man´s burden."

The second half of this book catalogues, with official figures and many personal accounts of Japanese life in Korea, for the middle-class and aspiring middle-class entrepreneurs who sought to take advantage of the colonial government and the expansionist policies of the time. And it is particularly useful as a (scholarly) portrait of people, history written from the bottom up, instead of mainly from governments policy and war.

The book is written by a Japan scholar, from Japanese documents, so the reader must take into account the sources (and sympathies) involved, the author´s lack of current Korean, Korean sources and scholarship, and the text´s (near) absence of Korean agency alongside the efforts at Japanese economic absorption. It offers only a hint (in the occasional phrase) at the tolls of economic policies on "normal" Korean people as people (human beings with lives and names), in its report of the lives of "normal" Japanese. But perhaps that is not this volume´s purpose.

For a volume written 10 years ago, it´s a valuable and readable resource, more useful when read with the collected essays in "Colonial Modernity in Korea" that was published around the same time (Eds. Gi-wook Shin and Michael Robinson, 1998) for a fleshed out view of life in the late 19th century and early 20th.

Hopefully, almost 10 years after this volume, and with the emerging generation of East Asian scholars, trained in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, we´ll find fuller, more nuanced and complex accounts of history.¤

2) Paperback Book The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4) by University of California Press. I wrote a thesis in college about the Japanese seizure of Korea, and my main argument was that there was no nefarious plot to take over Korea; rather, the annexation was the result of conflicting elements within the Japanese government. (The annexation was, of course, a victory for the reactionary elements.)

This book illustrates that there WERE elements within the Japanese government who wanted to help Korea reform. They certainly had ulterior (read: self-centered) motives in doing so, namely economic/financial gain. But there was, at least according to this book, a noted absence of imperialistic/expansionist attitudes by Meiji Japan towards Yi Choson Korea, at least for a time.

It is a challenging examination of that time from the Japanese point of view, and it certainly merits a reading from the serious historian.¤

3) Paperback Book The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4) by University of California Press. Somebody says that it was biased because it was written by Japanese documents. But his remark is questionable because there should be books written by various sources, not only by Korean scholars. On the contrary to his opinion, books based only on Korean information sometimes look distorted because of the Korean governments´ anti-Japan propaganda.
Viewed from both sides, truth can be seen.¤

4) Paperback Book The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4) by University of California Press. This is a scholarly work and not "popular history." I say the book is important because this is really not a covered subject. Aside from being a bit boring and confusing for people not an expert in Japanese political hisotry during Meiji, I found it disturbing that the author cited only Japanese and English sources. And the majority of English sources are old (1960s). In the intro, the author freely admits he neither speaks or reads Korean (!)

So, this is a one sided version of history (from the imperialist side). We will have to wait for some of the very good Korean accounts to be written or translated into English. In the meantime, try Bruce Cumming´s work on Korean modern history.¤

5) Paperback Book The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4) by University of California Press. This is an excellent book. I appreciate the sharp research and insightful interpretation of this period of East Asian History. My only criticism would be that I wish the thesis of Archaic, medieval-millitaristic form of imperialism as practiced by Japan and Russia in their colonial expansion was elaborated upon. Otherwise, I do buy into Professor Duus apologetic of defensive mechanism turned into opportunism (and eventually tyranny and abuse). This is not an easy book to read however, and requires an ability to read history in a objective manner. It is written from a selective point of view, and as Professor Duus explains in the introduction, it is a book wiha an emphasis on the Japanese experience (ie. primarily Japanese documents, testimony, statistics, etc). In my opinion, it makes for interesting reading when a book is relative to an unpopular perspective (another book in that vein would be "Redcoats and Rebels: An English Perspective of The American Revolution")and there should be dissension in interpretation if one is to have a decent historical dialogue. One should remember as one reads the book that the period between the Meiji restoration and Korean annexation was a period in which Japan was in the process of becoming a wester-style imperialist power. What I find facinating is that Japan conscioussly decided to play the European colonial/economic game; but ancient Confucian reverberations unconscioussly dictated how the game was to be played by the Japanese. The "onne-san" idea regarding sibling relationships, (ie. older brother/youger brother), as a basis political and economic relationship that led a struggling-to-become-western Japan to intervene "on behalf" of a reticent-Yangban-entrenched Korea is credible and, if one is familiar with the hierachial nature of Japanese society, logical. Finally, as an asian-american who was brought up despise Japanese imperal expanision in East Asia, (and the cultural smothering, tyranny and brutallity that went with it), it was hard for me too to swallow the possibility that Japan inacted in its expansion as a defense mechanism, but the evidence as disscussed in this book is compelling.¤

6) Paperback Book The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4) by University of California Press. What forces were behind Japan´s emergence as the first non-Western colonial power at the turn of the twentieth century? Peter Duus brings a new perspective to Meiji expansionism in this pathbreaking study of Japan´s acquisition of Korea, the largest of its colonial possessions. He shows how Japan´s drive for empire was part of a larger goal to become the economic, diplomatic, and strategic equal of the Western countries who had imposed a humiliating treaty settlement on the country in the 1850s.
Duus maintains that two separate but interlinked processes, one political/military and the other economic, propelled Japan´s imperialism. Every attempt at increasing Japanese political influence licensed new opportunities for trade, and each new push for Japanese economic interests buttressed, and sometimes justified, further political advances. The sword was the servant of the abacus, the abacus the agent of the sword.
While suggesting that Meiji imperialism shared much with the Western colonial expansion that provided both model and context, Duus also argues that it was "backward imperialism" shaped by a sense of inferiority vis-à-vis the West. Along with his detailed diplomatic and economic history, Duus offers a unique social history that illuminates the motivations and lifestyles of the overseas Japanese of the time, as well as the views that contemporary Japanese had of themselves and their fellow Asians.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 21-Nov-2008, 05202136109780520213616, 990-100-410-450-280-480-910-9X0-8

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