Handbook of Confucianism in Modern Japan

In mainstream assessments of Confucianism's modern genealogy there is a Sinocentric bias which is in part the result of a general neglect of modern Japanese Confucianism by political and moral philosophers and intellectual historians during the post-war era. The essays in this volume can be read for the insight they provide into the intellectual and ideological proclivities of reformers, educators and philosophers explicitly reconstructing Confucian thought, or more tacitly influenced by it, during critical phases in Japan’s modernization, imperialist expansionism and post-1945 reconstitution as a liberal democratic polity. They can be read as introductions to the ideas of modern Japanese Confucian thinkers and reformers whose work is little known outside Japan—and sometimes barely remembered inside Japan. They can also be read as a needful corrective to the above-mentioned Sinocentric bias in the 20th century intellectual history of Confucianism. For those Confucian scholars currently exploring how Confucianism is, or can be made compatible with democracy, at least some of the studies in this volume serve as a warning. They enjoin readers to consider how Confucianism was also rendered compatible with the authoritarian ultranationalism and militarism that captured Japan’s political system in the 1930s, and brought war to the Asia-Pacific region.

Thinking Like a State: Policing Dangerous Thought in Imperial Japan, 1900–1945

This article explores the changing ways the Japanese police understood and policed radical politics between 1900 and 1945. Specifically, it traces the process in which the objective of policing transformed from an emphasis on political organizations, their activities, publications, and assemblies in the 1900s to the policing of individuals ostensibly harboring “dangerous ideas” that were deemed threatening to state and capital—what the police came to categorize as “thought crime” by the late 1920s. Once “thought” was identified as an object for policing, Japanese police agencies began to practice a kind of intellectual history—thinking like a state—to distinguish dangerous thought and to understand its origin and its spread during the socioeconomic turbulence of the interwar period. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s theory of police, this article explores how police manuals and other publications categorized certain ideas, texts, enunciations, and slogans and distributed them based on the presumed degree of danger they posed to the imperial polity. It reveals how the expanded classifications and distributions of dangerous thought transformed policing in the 1920s, thereby extending imperial state power into various aspects of social life in interwar Japan.

Moralistic Gods and Social Complexity: A Brief History of the Problem

A cluster of persistent and contentious questions in the scientific study of religion concern when and why so-called “moralistic traditions” developed and how they have shaped human relationships. Is there an association between moralistic gods and the size and/or complexity of the society that might worship them? How cross-culturally ubiquitous are such traditions? Are people more willing to engage in cooperative behavior when they believe their god cares about morality? This chapter focuses on how these questions have arisen and how generations of researchers have struggled to address them. We first briefly examine the intellectual history of the problem, pointing to some of the troubling aspects of early observations of traditional societies and subsequent anthropological positions. We then address how early observations of small-scale peoples have populated cross-cultural resources that have informed and driven contemporary empirical projects. We finish by pointing to ways in which we might go about ensuring that the conversation continues with clarity and consistency.

Printing and Publishing of Music

This article covers the dissemination of musical scores by technical means. The function of both printing and publication is to produce multiple copies of a work or a group of works and to arrange for the distribution of those copies to many purchasers. This requires diverse skills: on the one hand, the ability to print, involving preparing a copy of the music in a form suitable for the printing press, and then producing the copies; on the other, to make marketing decisions, to handle advertising and distribution of copies to individuals or to music shops, and to budget and plan for profits. Since the first printed music produced by Ottaviano Petrucci at the beginning of the 16th century, printing has been developed in Europe on a broad scale. Its technical requirements have changed from movable type to engraving, lithography, and, most recently, the computer. Entries are arranged to cover these activities separately, and then provide an introduction to bibliography, the scholarly study of both activities. Descriptive bibliography and analytic bibliography are recent in the field of music; they have been primarily devoted to the study of the printers and publishers from the 16th to the 18th centuries established in the main centers in Europe, including Venice, Paris, Antwerp, Frankfurt, London, and Vienna. Specific topics have become of increasing interest in recent years, including patterns of distributing copies and reaching markets and music appearing in general cultural periodicals and magazines. In addition, two subjects have risen to importance, the first, the paratext, or matters of design, which is sparsely discussed in connection with music; and the second, the place of music and its editions in cultural and intellectual history. Use of printed music has changed during the 20th century. Employed as a mean for performing and circulating music among musicians, professionals, and amateurs during four centuries, printed music became a support to produce performing rights when audiovisual media became the main access to music. Another important evolution has been the production of different kind of editions. During a long period, publishers sold the music written day by day for the entertainment of specific groups in society and for a specific purpose—liturgy, concert life, house music. Following a growing interest in the music of the past, they began to produce collected works and critical editions that reconcile mass production to the quality of the publishing.

IMPERIAL AND SOVIET DIMENSIONS OF THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ISSUE IN O. LOTOTSKY’S JOURNALISM

This paper aims at studying O. Lototsky’s journalistic works during the revolutions of 1905-1907, 1917-1921 and the emigration of 1920-1930. The main focus is on the analysis of the position of Ukrainian lands in the imperial era and the Soviet period, as well as the vision of key problems and political prospects proposed in the articles of O. Lototsky. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism and objectivity. Both general scientific and special-historical methods are used in the study, namely: historical and comparative, problematic, research tools of the history of ideas (intellectual history) and biographistics. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by its focus on the analysis of the content of Lototsky’s journalistic works in the context of opportunities to solve the Ukrainian national issue in the conditions of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Conclusions. O. Lototsky’s creative legacy contains a significant amount of journalistic material. Their topics are diverse: from reviews of the economic situation of Ukrainian lands to the analysis of the state of educational institutions in the Russian Empire and the problems of the clergy. Considerable attention in these materials is devoted to the Ukrainian national issue. Due to O. Lototsky’s active social activity from 1906 to 1917, the topics of his essays frequently intertwined with the problems in which he was directly involved (for example, the status of the Ukrainian language and the abolition of bans on its use). The position of the Ukrainian lands as part of the Russian Empire and other states in the specified period was of his particular concern. During the emigrant era, the publicist continued to express his vision of the situation of Ukrainian territories within the USSR. The leading idea expressed in most of O. Lototsky’s materials of that period was that the state policy of both the Russian Empire and the USSR did not provide for the creation of an independent Ukrainian state, let alone support for Ukrainian culture. Given the historical experiences of the Ukrainian lands, O. Lototsky in the 1920s and 1930s was an active supporter of the creation of an independent state. O. Lototsky’s diverse creative legacy, his active social and political activities leave many more aspects for further elaboration, analysis, and determination of the significance of his heritage in the intellectual history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian movement.

Bọlanle Awẹ: The Matriarch of Feminist History

At the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the University of Ibadan, famous historian, Professor Bọlanle Awẹ was conferred with a well-deserved honorary doctorate degree. For both Professor Awẹ and even Nigeria’s premier university, this great honor is a fitting tribute to mark the anniversary of the institution of learning that has been central to the intellectual history of Nigeria. The University of Ibadan has done well to select Professor Awẹ for this honor. Her earnestness and intelligence are beyond doubts. There is no gainsaying disputing her warmth, her magnetism. I have known her since the 1970s—she remains consistent in the exhibition of positive values, in the promotion of Yoruba culture, and the advancement of the scholarly enterprise.

"An Evening at Kantemir’s" (1816)

Konstantin Batiushkov’s “An Evening at Kantemir’s” (Vecher u Kantemira, 1816) is unique as a work of literature, a document of Russian intellectual history, and a cultural and artistic manifesto. The “Evening” takes its cue from the popular Enlightenment genre of “dialogues with the dead,” although Batiushkov brings together people who were contemporaries rather than widely separated historical figures, as was usual. In it, the poet Antiokh Kantemir (1708-44) challenges Montesquieu’s argument from The Spirit of Laws that Russia’s harsh climate has resulted in its alleged lack of civilization. Batiushkov was rewriting history with hindsight, and one of the charming aspects of the work is its slightly humorous and lightly ironic play with anachronism, as Batiushkov presents Kantemir as marvelously prophetic of the later successes of Russian literature. Typical is his interlocutor’s statement that “It is easier to believe that the Russians will storm Paris” than that Russia could produce a Lomonosov. Batiushkov himself was with the troops that took Paris in 1814, and the recent Russian victory was surely on readers’ minds as they read this piece. “An Evening at Kantemir’s” attempted to integrate the “new” Russian literature with the eighteenth-century “classicist” literary and Enlightenment tradition. It also illustrates Batiushkov’s faith in poetry as a fundamental way to advance the cause of national progress.