An introduction to the history of modern Japan as interpreted in twentieth-century Japanese historywriting and public memory, with emphasis on the ways in which different versions of the past have been affected by changes in the present, from the 1880s to the present.
The course is divided into two interrelated halves. The first half, Master Narratives, treats four approaches in Japanese historical scholarship (marxist, modernist, empiricist, and people's history) and a fifth from public memory and popular culture.
Each perspective is first set in its initial historical context (e.g., the 1920s for the marxists) and then followed by the story of modern Japanese history as told from that particular point of view.
The second half, Epochal Moments, examines the main topics that appear in every version, although differently interpreted and debated one against the other. The changes in the interpretations of these historiographical landmarks (e.g., the Meiji Restoration, the postwar project) are related to changes in the contemporary historical context.
The subject of the course is thus both modern Japanese history and twentieth-century
historical consciousness