Book Review

Comparative/World

In his comparative study of post-World War II Japanese and West German historiography, Sebastian Conrad counters two common misperceptions: namely, that after 1945 Japanese and West Germans repressed discussions of Japanese fascism and National Socialism, and that by the 1960s the Germans did a better job than the Japanese of coming to terms with their violent authoritarian past. Focusing on the years 1945 to 1960, Conrad shows that much controversy existed in Japan, where Marxist historians produced a more critical view of modern Japanese history than did their largely conservative counterparts in West Germany. Conrad is not only interested in the differences between the social historical approaches that dominated Japanese Marxist historiography and the political histories that West German historicists produced. Through careful analysis of historiography as a discursive formation, he also seeks to find common assumptions.

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As the book's title suggests, the nation remained the focal point of historical inquiry in both Japan and West Germany. In both countries, scholars researched the decades from the founding of the modern nation in the nineteenth century to defeat in 1945; the Meiji Restoration in Japan and Bismarckian unification in Germany, the nature of Japanese and German fascism, and the location of Japan and Germany between East and West were historians' main concerns. In all these arenas, interpretations of fascism and the rehabilitation of the nation in the postfascist present were ultimately at stake. In spite of different methods and politics, both Japanese and West German historians concluded that the Japanese and German people were largely victims of fascism and war. Neither the Nanking Massacre nor the Holocaust became the focus of research.

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