Who declares the early modern transition in Japan? Language and subject in a historiographical literature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17680487 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eiji Okawa (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-20 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Japan Forum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0955-5803 • E-ISSN: 1469-932X |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09555803.2026.2664457 |
| OpenAlex | W7160275694 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
The story of Japan’s early modern transition is well known. “Separation of the warriors and peasants” (heinō bunri) is one of the handful of cardinal propositions that lay at the heart of the narrative. Canonised in post-war Japan, these sayings contrive a break in chronology and establish the medieval and the early modern as separate domains of discourse and research activity. Yet we do not see this form of expression in the sources from the time. Who utters these, and why do they hold sway? This study offers a critique of the regime of knowing underlying these sayings by foregrounding the status of the narrator and the transformative or creative capacity of language. Drawing on selective works on early modern Japan as well as on the transition from the medieval to the early modern, it examines not so much the findings they posit but the way in which the past is framed. The thesis is that the narrator, produced in language, controls the past, takes over historical subjects, and binds time and literary outputs with a linear epistemology by way of a modern speech act. This effect derives from the enactment of the generic modern self that the standard discursive form seems to trigger. To relativise this effect, I offer an alternative by considering how we may use historical sources differently and rethink the idea of change.
Conceptual history · Historiography · Subject (documents) · Subject matter · Transition (genetics) · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History, Culture, and Diplomacy · Japanese History and Culture
Senses of the Subject
The sixteenth-century unification
Figural Realism
Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan
The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto
Beyond History and Memory
Tokugawa Ieyasu's Regulations for the Court
Public Peace and Private Attachment
Revising the Past / Revisiting the Present
The People in History
Hiroshima and the Place of the Narrator
The Evidence of Experience
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |