Inventing Japan, 1853 - 1964 Return to Book Review Page Return to Home Page

By Ian Buruma

Modern Library, 2003

A country that lost a world war and then produced the world’s second largest economy within half a century is worth learning about. But shouldn’t a book about the fall (in World War II) and subsequent rise of Japan also cover the boom of the 1980s and the collapse of the 1990s and early years of the new century? That is the question that might cause a reader to hesitate before picking up Ian Buruma’s history of Japan. But the book chronicles the construction of the social and political order of Japan prior to these events in such a thorough and logical way that the forces that resulted in the bubble and subsequent bust are known to the reader. There is little need to go into the more recent history of Japan when the book makes clear that the scenario of the 1980s and beyond is virtually inevitable.

The book covers the period from the visit to Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry in his “black ships” in 1853 to the Japan-hosted Olympics in 1964. Although Commodore Perry is normally credited with the “opening” of Japan to the West, Dutch traders are given much of the credit by the author. Much of what is published about twentieth century Japan portrays Emperor Hirohito as an unwitting puppet who allowed the military, along with politicians and industrialists, to pull Japan into World War II. Buruma’s book paints an entirely different picture of the emperor. Hirohito was the only person who could have avoided the blunder of taking on the United States, according to the author, as well as the only one who could have stopped the slaughter of Japanese military personnel and civilians once it became obvious that the war could not be won.

The tendency of Japan to embrace a structure of rigidity brought the nation into the way they had no hope of winning. And a similar deference to structure—this time to self-perpetuating bureaucracies such as the Ministry of Finance and the ill-conceived Ministry of International Trade and Industry—transformed a post-War generation of growth and prosperity into a runaway boom during the 1980s that in turn crashed, resulting in half a generation of deflation and stagnation. In an “afterward” covering the bubble of the late 1980s and the subsequent bust that has run well into the next millennium, the author concludes that what Japan could now use is another uninvited visit by a modern-day Commodore Perry; this time to shake the culture loose from its tendency to embrace social and structural norms until long after they have outlived their usefulness.