Organizer: Frederick R. Dickinson, University of Pennsylvania

Chair: Richard J. Smethurst, University of Pittsburgh

Discussant: Yoko N. Kato, University of Tokyo, Japan

Sandwiched between the exalted age of empire/nation-building (Meiji) and the tragic road to war (Showa), 1920s Japan remains an era in search of an identity. Tied to an emperor erroneously considered "unimportant in life," the "Taisho" era has been described by some as an "unexciting" interlude "contain(ing) little to be either very proud of or deeply ashamed of." More appropriately, the interwar years emerge as a period of great "irony and paradox." In particular, they are increasingly viewed as the focal point of a "crisis of modernity" in Imperial Japan. The three paper-givers share the long-held belief in a "crisis" in 1920s Japan. But the nebulous notion of "modernity" offers no better clue to the nature of crisis than the perception of "unimportance."

This panel attempts to supplant the murky symbol of "paradox" that interwar Japan remains with a vivid outline of the central concerns of the age. Those concerns had less to do with such ethereal notions as "culture" or "modernity" than with the tangible consequences of real-life events. The papers focus upon three pivotal events: the First World War (Dickinson), the Great Kanto earthquake (Schencking) and the enthronement of the Showa Emperor (Wilson). Each accentuates the 1920s as an era of national reconstruction on a par with the dramatic transformations of Meiji Japan. Japanese subjects in the 1920s dwelt less upon how to be modern than upon how to cope with the colossal consequences of war, natural disaster and flux in the preeminent symbol of the nation.

Frederick R. Dickinson, University of Pennsylvania

Few scholars of European or American history would sketch the twentieth century without reference to the First World War. Surveys of modern Japan, by contrast, barely register the tumult. In pure physical destruction and number of casualties, the Great Kanto earthquake far exceeded the four years of Japanese engagement in the Great War. But Prime Minister Kato Takaaki was not referring to natural disasters when in 1925 he implored his countrymen to build the foundation for a "New Japan."

Kato echoed his European counterparts, who, soon after the conflagration of 1914–1918, had established ministries of reconstruction to deal with the enormous consequences of the war. If in the 1920s the victors of 1919 focused primarily upon physical renovation, ironically Japan, like the Weimar Republic, debated the outline of an entirely new national polity. Meiji Japan had, after all, been modeled after the vanquished Imperial Germany.

The story of post-1945 Japanese memories of the Second World War continues to intrigue scholars and lay persons alike. But the First World War was more than a memory in 1920s Japan. It was the source of a massive political, diplomatic, social, economic and cultural transformation that delighted many and alarmed countless others. This paper highlights the interval between the Versailles Peace and the Manchurian Incident as a decade of conflict over consequences of the Great War. In so doing, it hopes to revisit the lingering "paradox" of Japan’s road to war in the 1930s.

John Charles Schencking, University of Melbourne, Australia

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 created a moment of intense reflection and introspection on the state of the state, society, and the Japanese nation. Like no other event had, or few other events could, the earthquake revealed, brought into focus, and amplified a whole host of preexisting concerns dating from the previous decade about the perceived moral, political, and social regress of Japanese society. More than this, however, the earthquake increased the cacophony of alarmist voices in Japan and provided many of these individuals with material and cosmological evidence to substantiate claims that Japan was in a state of degradation. As a result, many intellectuals, politicians, military leaders, and social commentators reached a shared conclusion: Japan must undergo a period of national reconstruction (kokumin fukko). Many people subsequently viewed the reconstruction of Tokyo as a unique opportunity to lay the groundwork for a physical, economic, political, and spiritual reinvigoration, if not restoration of the state, the nation, and society. In this paper, I will examine the major themes that emerged in post disaster interpretations, interpretations that were colored if not clouded by the past: namely the increased unrest, dislocation, and agitation that Japan experienced following the 'Great War.' I will also examine the themes that wove their way through the many subsequent visions and plans for national reconstruction. I will thus suggest that the earthquake served as a watershed in 1920s elite level discourse not only on the nature of Japan’s past, but also its future trajectory.

Sandra Wilson, Murdoch University, Australia

The enthronement of the Showa Emperor in 1928 was described in a contemporary official publication as "the nation's greatest and most important event." The various rituals associated with the enthronement, some of which were of no great antiquity despite the impression that they had been handed down since time immemorial, numbered as many as twenty-eight. The events stretched over a whole year, and cost almost twenty million yen to stage, at a time when the Kanto region was still recovering from the devastating earthquake of 1923 and the financial world had just survived a series of bank crashes.

The enthronement was undeniably a very substantial affair, both in material and symbolic terms. The highly orchestrated events of 1928 presented the nation as a unified, regionally powerful, cultured entity extending beyond the borders of the home islands – to the colonies certainly, but also to Japanese communities throughout the world. In this paper I argue that the enthronement events not only reveal the official ideology of Japanese nationalism at that point, but also are implicated in its ongoing development. I show that in celebrating the supposedly unchanging essence of Japanese culture, officials sought to counter the image of a divided society. They also dramatized the achievements of modernity, especially its technological aspects. The celebrations of 1928, however, served not only to display the nation to itself and to others, but also in concrete ways to extend the reach of national institutions and further implant the habit of thinking 'nationally.'