State and Civil Society in Japan during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5

This project broadly examines the social and cultural history of modern Japan. It is an ambitious project, combining methodologies used in social and cultural history, in order to develop a coherent analytical study of Japanese society at war. Its originality lies in the use of hitherto under-explored primary source materials, such as personal sources of the lower ranking soldiers, local history archives, as well as primary sources of visual and material culture, all of which contribute to the reconstruction of Japanese society in 1904-5 which is more complex and pluralistic than hitherto assumed in much of the existing historiography.This study situates Japan within a comparative framework of modern societies in the twentieth century. On the one hand, it is a social and cultural history of modern Japan, but on the other, it contributes to the history of modern societies at war. At the time, Japan attracted substantial international interest as a non-western model of national efficiency in the early 1900s. Substantively, this research is a study of the relationship between state and civil society during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. Mainstream orthodoxy claims that the Japanese had won the war because of the successful programme of modernisation, which included national education that inculcated the patriotic spirit of what it meant to be a 'national subject' (kokumin). So the argument goes, modern Japanese society had an enviable level of 'national unity' (kyokoku itchi) in comparison with other national societies.However, this study questions critically these basic assumptions. In so doing, it offers a new perspective by privileging the voices of the lower ranking soldiers and the local elite who acted as zealous agents of local patriotism. It explores their attitudes to the state, by focusing on the war and their understanding of nationalism. Through these agencies, we witness a more sophisticated interrelationship between state and civil society, one in which civil society often initiated social and cultural changes to which the state responded. This is demonstrated through a variety of contexts, such as civil society's responses to the war, its approach to the commemoration of the war dead, and its later collaboration with the state in constructing cultural reproductions of the war which sought to influence popular memory in post-1905 Japan.The proposed research will result in a single-authored monograph which will be completed by the end of the leave. It will be the first comprehensive social and cultural history of Japanese society at war in 1904-5 either in English or Japanese.