Review of An Outline History of Japan (1926)
Herbert Henry Gowen (writer).
Read in 2025.
The pace of this outline is almost linear. That is, Gowen moves monotonically, but not monotonously, through history at an almost even pace of pages to centuries, from prehistoric myth to the time of writing. To achieve this, he peppers the main body of the narrative— which is a political history in the school of Thomas Carlyle—with cultural history, including literature. Early poems are unfortunately translated into rhyme. A few dubious episodes add dramatic charm, like this one about Takano Chōei of the late Tokugawa shōgunate, lifted from Daniel Green’s translation of Osada Kenjirō, where Takano’s personal name is misread as Nagahide:
This distinguished pioneer of the new Japan was born some thirty miles from Sendai in 1804 and fled from the house of his adopted father in 1820 to pursue learning in Yedo. Here he barely saved himself from starving by practising massage at night, after a strenuous day of study at school. After a time he put himself under a student of Dutch medicine and it was while gathering herbs over the countryside that he became impressed with the general poverty and misery of the populace. After periods of hardship during which he had even to sell himself for a time to discharge a debt, Takano was enabled to get to Nagasaki, where the famous Dr. Siebold had but lately arrived. Here he began to work and write for the redemption of his country from disorder and misrule.
Gowen lists a sample of Takano’s writings in 213 volumes, and continues:
But the most important work of all, an epoch-making work in its influence on the reopening of Japan, was the Yume Monogatari (‘The Story of a Dream’) in which the author, who had got wind of the expected coming of the ship Morrison, defended the idea of renewed intercourse. The argument was put into the form of a dream to avert the wrath of the authorities, but in this it did not succeed. From that day to the end, Nagahide led the life of the hunted criminal, imprisoned and escaping (through fire) only to be recaptured eventually through the treachery of one to whom he had played the part of benefactor. When the fugitive, who had burned his face with saltpeter to avoid recognition, knew that the toils of the law were drawn tightly about him, he made the requisite preparations and, with all the old, heroic etiquette, took the way of the samurai out of life.
In the final chapter, tacked on at the dawn of the Shōwa era (1926–1989), Gowen cannot restrain himself from speculating on the future. Less than five years before a fascist Japanese government committed to the unprovoked invasion of Manchuria that would ultimately transition into the Second World War, he finds Japan “increasingly democratic”. He thinks that “militarism is less popular than aforetime”, and that may be true enough, but the predictive value of that observation is sharply negative. Gowen accurately predicts that Japan would be relevant on the world stage, but he fails to foresee the coming war. I think this is because, writing in the Carlyle school, he sees the world through the lens of “great” men, without understanding that they are mostly tyrants. Despite his tribute to rebels like Takano who were moved by “the general poverty and misery of the population”, when Gowen talks about Japanese campaigns against the Ainu, the Koreans, the natives of the Ryukyu Islands etc. etc., he passes over the oppression and the atrocities against civilian populations without a word. He plays along in the contemptuous pretense that the Japanese empire went to Korea with noble motives, to “protect” it. Gowen was the kind of writer who either thought the purpose of the Peace Preservation Law of 1925 was to preserve peace, or else he was too servile to speak the truth.
By the same token, Gowen mindlessly repeats the dogma of pseudoscientific racism. This is a learned writer who still frames his subheadings in the style of Thomas Hobbes, and who was not able to learn the anti-classist lessons of the First World War, despite observing in retrospect how the extreme lethality of the Battle of Mukden (1905) presaged that war. If you can stand that attitude, the book is otherwise impressive for its time. I do not recommend it as an introduction, but its historiography and its attempt to introduce a little-known country to Western readers make for an interesting complement to the better explanations in later work.
References here: Byst av Frans Xavier.