Book Review: Far East: The Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Author | Phillip L. Thompson |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200157 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
148
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Impe•ialism the
author
takes
up
a
neglected
period
in
the history
of
Far
Eastern
international
relations,
that
extending
roughly
from
the
Washington
Conference
to
the
Manchurian Incident.
The
book's
value
derives
from the
way
it
deals
with
a
number
of
particular
problems
from
the
perspective
afforded
by
the
author's
thorough,
sequential
analysis
of
the
interaction
in
Far
Eastern
affairs during
these
years
of
all the
major
powers:
the
United
States,
Britain, the
Soviet
Union,
Japan,
and
China.
As
for
the
book's
thesis,
it
demonstrates
that
the
major
problem
in
the
Far
East
during
the
1920's
was
the failure
of
the
powers to
devise
and
implement
a
co-operative
system
of
relations
between themselves
and
China;
a
system
such
as
might
have
secured
peace
and
stability
in
East
Asia
and
the
Pacific.
Mr.
Iriye
analyzes
most
of
the major
issues
that
arose
between China
and
the
powers,
showing
how
almost
invariably
lack
of
comprehension,
intransigence,
and
the
existence
of
special
interests
worked
to
inhibit,
and
ultimately
make
meaningless,
the
system
that
had
been proposed
at
the
Washing-
ton
Conference
as
an
alternative
to
the
crumbling
structure
of
19th
century
imperialism.
The
study
is
also
at
least
implicitly
relevant
to
the
contemporary
world
situation.
One is
struck
by
the
fact
that
while
names
and
par-
ticipants
have
changed
slightly
since
the
1920s,
the
fundamental
prob-
lem
has
not.
It
remains
precisely
a
question
of
working
out
a
viable
system
of
international
co-operation
in
the
Far
East.
After
Impermlism
thus
accomplishes
at
least
two
things:
it
unravels
and
makes
integrally
comprehensible
an
exceedingly complex
period
in
the
history
of
modern
international
relations;
and
it
provides
an
object lesson
for
the
world
of
the
1960s.
University
of
Toronto
PHILLIP
L.
THOMPSON
THE
SOCIAL
DEMOCRATIC
MOVEMENT
IN
PREWAR
JAPAN.
By
George
Oakley
Totten,
III.
1966.
(New
Haven:
Yale
University
Press.
Toronto:
McGill
University
Press.
xv,
445pp.
$12.50)
This
is
the
first
of two
volumes
called
Studies
on
Japan's
Soctal
Democratic
Parties.
Volume
H,
Socialist
Parties
in
Postwar
Japan
by
Professor
Totten,
A.
B.
Cole,
and
Cecil
H.
Uyehara
is
forthcoming
and
will
complete
the
most
comprehensive,
exhaustive, and
up-to-date
history
of
Japanese
socialism
available
in
the
English
language.
The
author
regards the present
work
"as
a
pioneer
study
that
will
hopefully
open
the
way
to
a
series
of
more
detailed monographs.
By
this
he
means
that
the
book
"does
not
claim
to
be
all-inclusive,
but
is
an
attempt
to delineate
a
particular
subject
or
dimension
of
modern
Japanese history the
"social
democratic
movement.
This
is
a
fair
enough
description
of
the
book
which,
if
it
is
to
be
judged
on
the
basis
of
author's
intentions,
is
successful.
It
is
a
carefully
researched,
organ-
ized,
and
more
or
less
factually
complete
narrative
history
of
"the
noncommunist
proletarian
parties
that
existed
in
Japan
from
1925
to
1940.
The
book
actually
includes
more
than
this:
it
deals
with
the
origins
of
social
democracy
around
the
turn
of
the
century,
with
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