Irish Jesuit Province

A Case History of Japan by Francis J. HornerReview by: M. BodkinThe Irish Monthly, Vol. 76, No. 900 (Jun., 1948), pp. 285-286Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515825 .

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SOME RECENT BOOKS REPORT ON JAPAN

A Case History of Japan. Francis J. Horner. Sheed and Ward.

10/6. As the name implies, this book about Japan is in the nature of a

psychologist's report. It is assumed that Japan, the patient, has con

ducted itself in such an abnormal fashion that an explanation of its

behaviour is a necessary prehminary to any remedial treatment. An

iffort is then made to examine very briefly the significant factors in

Japanese history and the institutions it has developed. This (the

first half of the book) seems to be very well and conscientiously done.

The author is well aware of the difficulties of anyone attempting the

study of an entire nation. Ought the observer to have spent a life

tune there (he has only one lifetime and such a course must interfere

with his powers of comparison), how far can he rely on the necessary

limited contacts he personally can make, what use may he have for

similar studies by others, native or foreigners, how far can he draw

conclusions at second-hand from literature and legend, these are

questions the author has clearly asked himself, and his findings are

suitably tentative. There are one or two inaccuracies. In the 600

years which elapsed between the establishment of the Shogunate and

the Restoration the military power was resident only for a long genera tion at Kamakura, and then shifted first to be a next-door neighbour of the Emperor in the Castle of Kyoto, and then to Yedo. There are

also possibly errors of omission. Admirable as is the swift sketch of

Japan's three remarkable renaissance rulers, and their relations with

Christianity, their strength is possibly not appreciable without some

hint of the international supremacy of their military organisation. It is

of real value to know that the Japanese alone were able to face and

defeat the Tartar Horde. That this fact had lasting influence is

indicated even by such a significant detail as the naming of the "

suicide "

planes "

Kame-kase "

after that divine wind which enabled

Hideyoshi, warrior persecutor and isolationist, to beat back the

invaders of his country. Japan in point of fact enjoyed before the

present war an immunity from invasion or defeat of such long-stand 285

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IRISH MONTHLY

ing as to make Great Britain's record, remarkable as it is, look

comparatively modern.

It is the second half of the book which makes this omission worth

recording, for in it with great skill and some ingenuity the complexes which have produced war-time Japan are analysed and sometimes resolved. The reader will be glad to note with what coolness and

clarity this is done, despite an occasional tendency to overwork a

technical term (" impact "

is a case in point), or to accept a fashion able notion without proof. Possibly much might have been gained by using the comparative historical method. After all, the case is one of advanced paganism and is seen as such by the writer. It is not the first time the sickness has been observed and diagnosed.

Many of the symptoms recorded are closely paralleled in the case history of Rome and Sparta. The relation of Japan and China, for example, is strikingly similar to that of Rome and Greece. Pro vided that such similarities were not exaggerated, they must have thrown much light on the author's problem, and supnorted his

"treatment"?the conversion of Japan to Christianity. On the

prospects of this being carried out the author is not very enlightening, and one is tempted to think that here the book is already a little out

of date. It is to the point to cite Mac Arthur's conviction that

Christianity is just what Japan needs, but it is also desirable that a

reader should know how well the small Japanese Christian population

acquitted itself during the war. The facts that the first post-war

Japanese Cabinet contained three Christians (Presbyterian) and that

the ancient University of Kyoto has just founded a chair of Thomistic

philosophy are details which should fill in the final columns of an

up-to-the-minute Case History of Japan. M. Bodkin

NEW IRELAND

Ireland Among the Nations. By Basil Clancy. .Crown 8vo., 116 pp. The Kerryman.

Irish Man?Irish Nation. Lectures delivered before the Columban

League, Maynooth College, during 1946. " Where there is no vision the people perish

" is a saying applicable

to Irish, as to all, national life. Basil Clancy wishes to stimulate

such vision so that Ireland may take her rightful place in the new

worid which, men tell us, is to rise from the ashes of an era fast

286

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