Japan Institute for National Fundamentals

The Fifth [Kokkiken Japan Study Award]

The works of Recipients of Kokkiken Japan Study Award

Remarks on the selection of award recipients

In 1866, A.B. Mitford (1837-1916), a British aristocrat and foreign service officer, left Beijing for Edo to take up his new post as the number two diplomat, next to Harry Parkes, in the British Legation in Japan. He made exceptionally strenuous efforts to learn Japanese. In the years around the Meiji Restoration, the British Legation was run by a most competent team, comprising Minister Parkes, Mitford and interpreter Ernest Satow, who was six years Mitford’s junior, as well as William Willis, a doctor. Both Parkes and Satow have been quite well known in Japan. As for Mitford, published S. Nagaoka’s two Japanese translations entitled in Japanese as “Eikoku Gaikokan no Mita Bakumatsu Ishin” (The Last Days of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji Restoration as Seen by a British Diplomat) in 1998 and “Mittofodo Nihon Nikki” (The Diaries of Mitford in Japan) in 2001 were published. (Tokyo: Kodansha). In 2017, Professor Robert Morton appeared a remarkable study, “A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State,” which is an excellent English read. Morton’s book is full of an insightful historical analysis.

Mitford left Japan for home after three-years and a half biographical assignment. In 1871, he wrote “Tales of Old Japan,” making the rest of the world known about the Forty-seven Ronins for the first time. Later in his life, he gained a further reputation with his “Memories by Lord Redesdale.” In 1915 The descriptions of the impressions he had of Japan during the early days of his stay around the years preceeding the Meiji Restoration as a young diplomat and those of what he mentioned late in his life in “Memories” differed considerably in many ways. These have been swings A typical case of love-hate relationship with Japan. Professor Morton’s book vividly reveals the depth of Mitford’s love-hate relationship with Japan. I feel throughout his book that Professor Morton empathetically understands what Mitford had in mind to the extent that the professor, too, may have alternating emotions toward Japan.

Mitford was obliged to lead a hard life in Yokohama, Shinagawa and Tozenji and Sengakuji temples in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, exceptronel experiences. The turning point came to him in 1868 when he witnessed a harakiri ceremony in which Taki Zenzaburo killed himself to take responsibility for ordering Japanese troops to fire on foreign diplomats. The event was described in detail, and I could not help remembering Mori Ogai’s historical novel, “Sakai Jiken” (The Sakai Incident). Professor Morton provides a comprehensive biography of Mitford, referring to the diplomat’s later years and his descendants. The book gives us a lot of insight into the British upper society and British diplomacy of Mitford’s age. Professor Morton gives us many incisive comments free from West supremacist and Christian supremacist preconceptions.

In the years following Japan’s defeat, the leftist scholars in Japan praised the Canadian historian and diplomat E.H. Norman’s book, “Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State.” To me, the title of Professor Morton’s book, “A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State,” is very effective as a counteractant. Indeed, Professor Morton’s book gives more real and concrete impressions. Because Mitford forged close relations with Japanese people of various classes. Moreover, in his book, Professor Morton sheds new light on the past from a historical perspective. His intellectual sophistication makes his assessment of the Meiji Restoration intriguingly different from the simple one given by Normans followers such as by historian John Dower and other.

The 2018 Kokkiken Japan Study Award will be presented to Professor Morton in recognition of his excellent humanistic approach to history. He depicts the past Anglo-Japanese relations as seen by an individual. The 2017 award was given to June Teufel Dreyer, professor of political science at the University of Miami. I hope that these selections will help the Kokkiken Japan Study Award gain further prestige, dispel any misunderstanding about the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and have a good impact on foreign professors living in Japan and Japanologists in Japan and elsewhere in the world.

By Sukehiro Hirakawa
Director of the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and
Professor Emeritus pf the University of Tokyo,
Japan Study Award Jury

For many years now, there has been a political debate over what comfort women who provided sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II mean. Needless to say, it is more important to first of all know the actual circumstances surrounding the comfort women than to continue such a political debate without insights into the facts. Memoirs and the like have been released by some former comfort women.

Around 2000, a private museum in South Korea bought a collection of numerous diaries a Korean man had kept, using a mixture of hangul, Chinese and Japanese characters, while working as a comfort station receptionist in Burma (now Myanmar) and Singapore. In August 2013, Professor Emeritus Ahn Byung Jik of Seoul National University published a Korean translation of the diaries. In the same year, a Japanese version, translated from the Korean version, became available on the Internet (http://texas-daddy.com/comortwomendiary.pdf). .

The Korean man randomly used hangul and kanji as well as hiragana and katakana in his diaries. The Korean translation is said to differ somewhat from what had been written in the three types of characters used in the Japanese writing system. Then, Professor Choe Kilsung’s award-winning book came out, culminating his efforts to thoroughly analyze the diaries. He combed through and read them deeply while conducting cultural anthropological research that took him to the locations in Myanmar and Singapore where the author of the diaries had worked.

Professor Choe is also known for his research papers on war and sex, especially during the Korean War. His book on the diaries of the comfort station receptionist is said to be an extension of his research on war and sex.

Professor Choe’s book gives a very objective and fair analysis. It concludes that “The Republic of Korea must not use the issue of comfort women as a political card.”

By Katsuhiko Takaike
Vice President of the Japan Institute for National Foundations,
Japan Study Award Jury

Award Jury

Award Recommendation Committee