After Attending the Funeral of My History Mentor
My mentor for Japanese history during my junior high and high school years passed away suddenly, and I attended his farewell ceremony. Both his passing and the wake took place at the end of last month.
I confirmed it with him personally, but he and Professor Ryuichi Narita, whom I interviewed that same month, were classmates in graduate school and were acquainted. Knowing that he didn't get to see the article by just a few days makes me feel even more regret.
He had attended our class reunion last summer as our former homeroom teacher, but our last in-depth conversation was in February 2023. I remember it was a meal with three of us, including another mentor from the social studies department, and that Tokyo had an unusually heavy snowfall.
At that time, the topic came up: "Why has the concept of geopolitics made such a casual comeback?" In the mid-1990s, when I was a high school student, geopolitics had the nuance of being a "forbidden, politically incorrect" field of study, and that was how it was referred to in class.
Back then, the image of geopolitics was that of a "bad debt from the past" from the imperialist era, used to justify territorial expansion and colonial rule based on geographical determinism centered on climate and topography.
So, when I went on to university (and graduate school), I was surprised that the term geopolitics even appeared at all in the writings of active scholars. However, until the early 2000s, I think it was used in a certain way.
It was the last era when the myth remained that
having an article published in it was equivalent to three peer-reviewed papers.
In short, it was used to call the ruthless mechanisms that drive global politics and economics "geopolitics," and to encourage us to re-examine the ground beneath our feet as we are exposed to them. The term was used as a metaphor to focus on what limits our own standing—or, to put it academically, existential constraint.
The comeback of literal geopolitics—in a more mundane sense, where learning it helps you understand international politics and find the "strongest position"—likely happened in the latter half of the 2000s. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find vulgar books in convenience stores and kiosks titled something like "An Introduction to Geopolitics That Lets You Do X."
At the time, China's GDP was rapidly catching up to Japan's, and it would overtake it in 2010. Looking back, it feels strange that the usage of geopolitics shifted from "something that constrains us" to "something we can master" during a period when Japan's room to influence the world was actually becoming scarce. It might be a kind of illusion of control.
The 90s through the 2000s were also the season of the familiar history textbook controversy. It was a time when the term "historical revisionism" became established as a synonym for absolute evil, almost synonymous with far-right or neo-Nazi, but naturally, revising historical theories themselves should not be a bad practice.
The problem lies in the attitude of treating history not as something that constrains and limits us in the present, but as an object of free control that can be cut and pasted to suit current convenience. A typical example is erasing episodes from the past that might be politically disadvantageous from the records.
But is it really a good thing that the range of what can be (considered) controlled is expanding? Is it fun, or does it benefit us?
When COVID-19 spread from 2020, the result of frantically trying to "control" it is that Japan is the only country where service industry workers all still wear masks. In the Ukraine war that began in 2022, Japan's range of "controllability" was narrow due to various postwar factors, but as a result, we might actually be in a relatively good position now.
I have been thinking for the past few years about whether it would be okay if history "disappeared," but perhaps what would be problematic if it disappeared is the sense that there are things that cannot be controlled, rather than history itself. I feel that is about where my conclusion is heading.
There is a famous saying by Yukichi Fukuzawa about living two lives in one, but of course, biologically, one can only live one life. The reason he said "living two lives" is that he meant we experienced two types of "ways of the era" that surround and constrain us—namely, the Edo and Meiji periods.
The postwar and post-postwar, Showa and Heisei eras, also have such significant differences that they are close to "living two lives," and since it is now called the post-post-Cold War, I don't know if our generation might end up "living three lives."
Or rather, in my case personally, I feel like I am arbitrarily living two lives, before and after my illness, so this is quite a significant thing.
The sudden passing of my mentor, who was not yet at the age to pass away, is deeply regrettable, but I am at least fortunate that I had the opportunity to speak with him in both of my personal "two lives." There is no time like the present to feel the importance of meeting the people you should meet when you can.
(Header photo from "The End of Summer")