DisOriented

Research in Asian studies for the past few decades has addressed the problem of referents and centrality in local/world cultures and history.  I suggest reading Edward Said’s Orientalism, Andre Gunder Frank’s ReOrient, and Kenneth Pomeranz’ The Great Divergence to understand how academia has analyzed East Asia vis-à-vis the Western world.  On a smaller scale, James McClain, David Pollack, Naoki Sakai, and others have generated much admiration and debate in their works dealing with Japan’s uniqueness versus the West.  Miyajima Hiroshi, the author of the article I presented last week, argues for the development of new paradigms in understanding East Asian modernity.  Too much emphasis, he writes, has been placed on a Western/East Asian scheme, but not enough attention has been given to “unique,” modern continuities in the East Asian region.  

I feel that Miyajima’s work, while not addressing what factors or qualities belong within rubric of “modernization,” exemplifies contemporary trends in Japanese academic circles.  That is, Japanese academics recognize the need to view Japan through a much more regional lens than it has since post-World War II.  Yet, this develops into a paradox of sorts.  Sakai’s argument about the universal versus the particular—where Japan’s particularities are embedded within a view of Western universality— and Pollack’s binary construction—Japanese culture has evolved through a dialectic where borrowed characteristics are transformed into new “Japanese” ones—remain even when the referents change.  This all essentially reiterates the Confucian “frog in the well” perspective (also mentioned in Sakai’s text).

Does it bother me that academia over here has slighted the Western perspective in favor of East Asian ones?  It does a little bit on a personal level where all the research and material I have read since beginning East Asian Studies as an undergraduate in 1993 seemingly has been dropped in favor of Korean and Chinese viewpoints.  On a scholastic level, I can’t say it’s a bad thing that this transition has taken place.  I do feel, though, that it is highly doubtful that this Asian-centric trend will sustain itself in the decades to come—much as I find it hardly believable that Japan will continue to fawn over Korean popular culture as induced by the actor Bae Yong Joon’s performance in “April Snow.”  Somewhere down the road, academics (and movie enthusiasts) both in Japan and in the West will embrace a broader selection of material in understanding human society and history.