A New World Arising: Culture and Politics in Japan, China, India, and Islam

By Bill Kelly

From Western Cultural Domination to a Dialogue of Civilizations

 

This unique book offers an in-depth look at the four civilizations that will play a pivotal role in shaping the next few decades – Japanese, Chinese, Indian and Islamic civilizations.

 

Bill Kelly, a retired lecturer in communication studies at UCLA, displays his remarkable writing skills as he introduces us to leading cultural and political figures of this expansive region, ranging from Chinese social and political thinkers and Islamic poets to Indian spiritual visionaries and Japanese writers, philosophers, and artists.

 

Kelly combines high-level scholarship with first-hand experience. He spent over two decades in Asia, which comes through in these pages. In a time of fleeting social media and incessant sound bites, Kelly reminds us of the joys of spending the evening with a compelling read that broadens our perspective of the world and shows us the vital cultural and political contributions that Asian peoples can make to our common future.

 

"This book incorporates sweeping research, complex integrative thinking, and an eye toward learning from the past to navigate the future. Dr. Kelly's in-depth examination invokes an abundance of questions as it invites readers to re-think the confluence of civilizational cultures in the 21st century." — Dr. Kathryn Sorrells, Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies, California States University, Northridge author of Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice.

 

"Each of the four civilizations Dr. Kelly spotlights in A New World Arising have been traumatized in different ways by their encounters with the West. How each reacted, and how these responses were and are informed by their distinct heritages is the subject of this book. As Kelly adroitly explains, each of these civilizations is in the process of engaging in two contrasting projects: dealing with the negative impact of Western imperialism, while forging alternative paths to confronting the global challenges. Their responses to these projects have meaning for all of us. While the jury is still out, it's Kelly's belief that each of these civilizations possesses traditional sources of wisdom that can help us address the interrelated crises of peace, economic inequality and environmental decay. This book masterly synthesizes Indian, Chinese, Islamic and Japanese history while bringing to our awareness largely unrecognized perspectives of scholars from each of these traditions." — Angelo John Lewis, director of the Sacred Inclusion Network, originator of the Dialogue Circle Method, and author of Notes for a New Age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DCO Books
• Release date: Mar 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9786164560666

Book preview

Preface

I am offering you a chance to rethink what you may have heard and absorbed about four non-Western civilizations: Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic. This book is an invitation to go further in the understanding of these four peoples, their histories and ways of being and doing that contain both the brilliant and subdued colors of life. I have picked out the past and present events and texts that open up these different worlds to help us to see these four civilizations as the people have seen themselves. As their visions come into clearer focus, we see both similarities and differences, a common humanity expressed in a variety of ways. And it is the differences that can enrich us as we move away from global homogeneity to a planetary culture.

There is no way I can do justice to the complexity of the subject; the goal is to evoke interest in finding out more. That means going to the texts themselves. I have written short bibliographical essays at the end of each chapter where I refer to the works that I have relied upon. This is not a comprehensive list since difficult circumstances prevented me from accessing sources that were necessary to thoroughly research the subjects.

I am giving a general overview and orientation that is more comprehensive than well-defined, focusing on the forest, not the trees. My goal is to suggest perspectives that stretch the mind and imagination. In popularizing more sophisticated treatments of the modern experience and future possibilities of four civilizations, the challenge has been to make simplicity a virtue while avoiding distortion.

While living in Japan during the 1980s, I got the insight from which this book departs. Trying to make sense of the way Japanese people related to me and to Americans and Europeans more generally, I delved into modern history. The Japanese encounter with the West and the defeat in World War II went a long way in explaining what I was observing in the present. The traumas of these events had not been satisfactorily resolved. I then began to see that this insight could be generalized to provide a context for the contemporary experience of Islamic and Asian civilizations as well.

In writing this book, I have not relied on a master narrative of history. As I moved forward slowly, one step at a time, I followed my intuition while bringing more coherence to the project. Motivated by a wish to find hints as to where the world may be headed, I looked for promising new directions in the texts of local writers that make up the archives of the four civilizations. As they renew their civilizations, they can create new versions of themselves that will enrich us all.

Why have I chosen these four civilizations and not other important players on the world scene such as Africans, Latin Americans, and indigenous peoples? The most important reason is that in the short term, these four civilizations and that of the West are likely to have the greatest impact upon the planetary culture that is coming into being. In the more distant future, however, indigenous peoples, including those of Africa and the Americas, are well situated to take the lead in correcting the imbalances of what we call civilization.

My hope is that as more people recognize our planetary interdependence, they will seek to better understand those whose cooperation is essential for getting through the interrelated crises we are now facing: ecological breakdown, increasing threat of nuclear war, and the loss of meaning that underlies the other crises. A grasp of the histories and cultures, the economic and political structures, and the worldviews of these four civilizations will facilitate the communication we badly need so that our differences will benefit rather than divide us. It is hard to get along with those who are different from ourselves when we are not adept at interpreting their words and actions.

I am also reaching out to those who have had the same rewarding encounter with Eastern civilizations as mine. In the course of many moments of meeting, I have learned to see those who appear, think, and act in unaccustomed ways as fellow humans with the same fears and longings but positioned differently due to the circumstances of history. They are coming out from under, while I am coming off a long stay at the top of the world status game.

As Western civilization loses its place of privilege and a world of plural centers of power emerges in this historical moment, we struggle to keep our balance in the new world that is arising. This book is an effort to understand some of the important changes already taking place.

Introduction: Four Eastern Civilizations

A World of Civilizations

This book describes the journeys of four civilizations that will have a large say in deciding humanity’s future: Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations. As shorthand, they can be called Eastern in the sense that they have been part of what the West called the East, a mysterious region of despotic rulers, superstitious beliefs, and earthly pleasures. These Eastern civilizations share an engagement with Western imperialism, an encounter that has marked them deeply, and they are in the process of creating new civilizational identities that distinguish them from the West.

My focus is on how these four civilizations have interacted with and challenged the West, the effects of such interaction on their outlooks and mentalities, and the contributions of their leading intellectuals to the understanding of civilizational pasts and possible futures.

A main thesis of this book is that the traumatic encounter with the West deeply marked these civilizations. They are still trying to deal with its negative effects. At present, the attempt to pursue wealth and power in order to neutralize the West and recover civilizational pride and dignity prevents them from sufficient engagement with the global crisis of modernity. But they have traditional sources of wisdom that can greatly contribute to effectively addressing the interrelated crises of peace, environment, and meaning for the benefit of us all.

It is important to get clear about what a civilization is and how it is different from a nation on the one hand and a culture on the other. A civilization is both older and larger than either an empire or nation-state, although it may include them. It is a social order that brings people together to promote social stability and prevent the use of violence. The civilizing process is often based on networks, carried out through kinship and neighborhood ties, and teaches people self-control. The rules of civility are found in the society’s code of acceptable conduct.

An example is Chinese civilization before modern times. This social order had a Confucian center which defined the vital relations between the social and heavenly (cosmic) realms. The ruler was the connecting link between these two realms, and the society was organized around hierarchical ideas of family relations and obligations. The role of the elite was to guide social life in accordance with these moral ideals. This type of social organization helped Chinese civilization to be remarkably stable and enduring, despite dynastic changes.

A World History

Civilizations have grown and developed as they interact with each other. They are part of world history; ideas and technologies, once invented or discovered, became the common property of all in Afro-Eurasia, contributing to overall prosperity and creative development, material and cultural enrichment. The macrohistorian Oswald Spengler’s notion that civilizations are like organisms which go through a life cycle from birth to death, independent of significant input from outside, makes little sense. For example, European culture was deeply affected by Islamic influences that led to the Renaissance. Think of the Latin translation of the works of Ibn Rushd, the 12th century Islamic philosopher, which led to the European rediscovery of Aristotle and the rebirth of Western civilization stimulated by ancient Greek knowledge.

There was also the mutual enrichment of Chinese and Indian civilizations through trade of material goods from China to India and the arrival of Indian Buddhist monks in China about 2000 years ago. Wealthy Indians held Chinese silks in great esteem and the material culture was further enriched by Chinese products like camphor, fennel, vermillion, high-quality leather goods, and peaches and pears. Indian monks and scholars brought with them Sanskrit texts and Buddhist relics to China.

We find interactions between civilizations in which the patterns shift over time. Japanese and Chinese civilizations have similar ideas of the leadership role of the state and the importance of hierarchies based on education, merit, seniority, and gender. They place more emphasis on group identities rather than individual ones and value networks for facilitating smooth government and business cooperation as well as harmony within organizations and departments.

If we explain such similarities in terms of shared Confucian values such as the self as a center of relationships, then the influence was clearly from China to Japan, since Japanese Confucianism came from China. In the late 19th century, though, the arrow of influence shifted from China to Japan, due to Japan’s rapid economic development and increased national power which indicated there was much to be learned from its successful modernization. Japan’s integration of Confucian and modern Western influences gave Chinese something to ponder, and many Chinese intellectuals in the early 20th century went to Japan to study.

Since civilizations contain diverse cultural streams, individuals will make different choices. In India, the cosmopolitan elites fluent in English highly value freedom of expression and religious tolerance. Among middle- and lower-class Indians who have felt marginalized by the elites, a nationalist outlook based on an exclusive religious identity often prevails.

Japan stands out as a civilization for its self-consciousness and strong belief in its own uniqueness. There is a relatively close fit between nation and civilization, since regional, linguistic, and class diversity has been minimized and the government has promoted homogeneity as a source of social cohesion. Japan has tended to orient itself to leading civilizations from which it can import ideas and institutions that, after suitable modification, will strengthen Japan. Periods of heavy engagement with the outside world have alternated with periods of isolation. Despite its long affiliation with the East Asian world centered around China, it cannot be considered part of Chinese civilization. Its characteristics are distinctive.

The Characteristics of Civilizations

An advantage of a civilizational approach in today’s world is that it directs our attention away from the nation-state, often identified with political and economic systems. Instead, civilization directs us toward culture, our values and ideals. Still, we need to keep in mind that culture exists in relation to political economy, since we interpret our lives and what we experience in a context where political and economic interests influence how we think and feel. The role of advertising in capitalist economies and censorship in authoritarian regimes demonstrates the close relation between culture and political economy.

A focus on civilizations also allows for a historical perspective because we view the present as the outcome of transformations. However, those who invoke the moral and spiritual authority that a civilization provides may assume a continuity between past and present that does not exist. There have been breaks and ruptures, from the inside in the form of revolutions and from the outside such as wars and invasions.

At the present time of increasing ethnic nationalism, leaders seeking political gain uphold the need for cultural purity. They assert that they must root out the foreign influences that are the cause of their current difficulties. This tactic is used to create social solidarity against designated enemies ranging from other nations to minorities within one’s nation. In this regard, Narendra Modi’s campaign against Muslims and Pakistan under the banner of Hindu nationalism stands out. Yet all civilizations are hybrids; Japan, despite its relative distinctiveness due to largely isolating itself for two long periods, is an example, having undergone two major cultural transformations based on the import of systems and institutions, first from China more than one thousand years ago and then from the West in the late 19th century.

In this book, I am treating civilizations as if they were separate because this is how people see themselves today. In spite of being part of a larger world history, they compete with each other for power as if they were distinct entities, not existing in relation to each other. Nationalism is the key source of identity in the modern world, a Western import, even though it was first used by non-Western civilizations to build the unity needed to defend themselves against Western imperialism. When a group of people living in a particular territory see themselves as unique and define themselves in opposition to other groups, this has momentous consequences. It divides the world into competing centers of power, a huge obstacle to human unity and world peace. It doesn’t matter that this outlook is based on a fundamental lie.

What holds a civilization together over time is that its members communicate about how they understand themselves: their shared social lives, relationships, expectations, and the basic rules they live by. For example, modern Western self-understanding contains the ideal that society should be organized for mutual benefit through individual action. This notion of moral order contrasts with the premodern one based on fixed status and a hierarchical arrangement of different social orders that complemented each other.

Nation-states may use the ideas and symbols as well as the institutions of an ancient civilization in ways that diverge from the original model. Mainland Confucians tend to interpret the sage’s teachings as supporting authoritarian rule. Their politicized version is closer to legalist philosophy than the teachings of Confucius.

It is important to see civilizations as diverse and loosely integrated in addition to their interactions with other civilizations under conditions of unequal power. A revealing instance of such interaction is Islam’s spread throughout much of Afro-Eurasia. Although partially the result of military conquest, its culture was also highly attractive: a cosmopolitan and egalitarian outlook that superseded traditions while not suppressing local ways of life, a sophisticated awareness, and flexible political structures.

History and the Open Future

For each civilization I give the historical background as a context for understanding the people and events described later on. Making this history transparent allows us to connect with the past in the present, opening up possibilities that have always been there but often missed.

With Japanese, Chinese, and Indian civilizations, I start the history in modern times, although I skim lightly over the era of British colonialism in the case of India. My historical account of Islam, however, goes back to its origins. Islam was Europe’s adversary almost from the start, challenging Christendom’s perception of itself. But Islam is often viewed in popular accounts as a religion that has produced mostly negative cultural traits among the peoples that have adopted it: intolerance, literalism, mistreatment of women, authoritarian politics. So a more accurate grasp of premodern Islamic civilization and its contributions to world history makes our image of Islam more complex and nuanced, leading to greater insight.

All latecomers to modernity faced a dilemma. To protect their independence they had to import science and technology from the Western powers; hoping to maintain their society’s equilibrium, they were determined to rely on indigenous wisdom for spiritual guidance. In practice, though, this proved too difficult to carry out.

In Japan, the fastest and most efficient modernizer, the adoption of Western political, economic, legal, and educational systems stopped the flow of its history, undercutting social equilibrium and causing psychological disorientation. There was a continuing search for ways to integrate Japanese spirit and Western knowledge, punctuated by a time of ultranationalist ideology that powered militarism and war.

A similar pattern can be seen in China. The urgent need to address the Western challenge led to the nationalist Chinese Revolution of 1911 and then large-scale acceptance of Western ideas by Chinese intellectuals. The result was inner mental conflict as well as social division between those with a more Confucian outlook and Western-influenced liberals, socialists, and communists. Maoist China attempted to develop a Chinese version of communist ideology that would narrow the division without notable success.

In India, the coming of Western secular notions during British colonial rule disrupted a heavily religious society. One response was the reform of Hinduism to make it conform more with Western notions of rational religion which meant eliminating superstitious elements. In the early 20th century, an Indian compromise between Western science and Indian wisdom was proposed: India could develop its economy by adopting Western science and technology while preserving its exemplary spiritual traditions. And Hindu nationalist ideology was developed in the 1920s to reconcile the nation state with the requirements of a unified Indian culture that could restore the continuity with the past that British colonial rule had broken.

Challenges to the West

In each of the four sections I discuss the ways in which the responses of the four civilizations to the West constituted a challenge to the West. The challenges on the part of Islamic and Indian civilizations to the West have been oriented more toward religion than those of Chinese and Japanese civilizations, although Hindu nationalism and Islamism are less religious movements than cultural ones. Nevertheless, the first major challenge to the West in modern times, that of the Japanese empire, had an important religious aspect centered around the notion of Japanese spirit and the divine emperor, and many of its most enthusiastic supporters were part of the religious establishment.

However, in all modern civilizations, religion has been on the defensive, fighting a rear-guard action to hold on to whatever social and political authority remains against the attempts of the nation-state to monopolize such power and consign religion to the private domain.

Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations have all challenged the West. Islam’s challenge in premodern times was its very existence as a powerful and splendid civilization bordering on Europe. This challenge was enormous, since Christendom understood itself in relation to Islam, viewing it as the enemy. The reach and breadth of its civilization, level of social harmony, cosmopolitan and egalitarian values, splendor of its visual arts, and creative achievements in the sciences, philosophy, and literature were difficult for Europeans to accept. Since Christians believed their religion was the one true faith and they were the center of the universe, Islam’s success could not be explained.

The other modern challenges to the West came in response to Western intrusions into their lands and cultural space. By selectively taking what they needed from the West to strengthen themselves and then integrating Western influences with their own traditional cultures, these civilizations came up with new civilizational narratives that offer alternatives to Western modernity, a process that has not yet realized its full potential. This process is sometimes labeled as the creation of multiple modernities. People from other countries attending the Beijing Olympics in 2008 often felt that they got a glimpse of an ultramodern future. No longer can modernity be identified with the West, even though it was its first promoter and advocate.

The challenges to the West over the past hundred years share an unyielding opposition to the prevailing assumption that all civilizations are going to modernize along Western lines. Since the Western powers often saw little difference between modernization and westernization, they believed that the cultures of late developers would be preserved mostly in museums, a belief that now commands far less allegiance. Yet, such arguments over the future direction of the world go back to the late 18th century when German thinkers denied the universality of French civilization, celebrated their own distinctive national soul, and idealized their indigenous roots.

A new factor emerging over the past 50 years casts a very different light on prevailing Western narratives of civilization. In the 19th century, the pioneering anthropologists Edward Tylor and Lewis Morgan created stage theories in which societies moved up the evolutionary ladder as defined by the level of technological development. Since white Europeans were the vanguard of progress, they devised a civilizing mission to justify colonial rule. More recently, though, civilization no longer appears in an unambiguously positive light, since unrelenting technological development threatens human survival due to weapons of mass destruction and ecological breakdown. This leaves space for inquiries into less noticed streams of thought in non-Western cultures that offer alternatives to the world’s present course.

The New World

The four Eastern civilizations that have challenged the West in important ways are now prepared to have an increasingly large impact on the wider world. Their rise to positions of power and influence are what I mean by the new world that we are encountering. However, there is one exception, Japanese civilization, whose impact in the realm of political economy is no longer of great consequence. It has already gone through two cycles of posing political/military and economic challenges to the West that are valuable archives for comparative study. Still, its cultural footprint has been increasing, and it has much to offer the world in this regard which I discuss in chapter four.

I introduce the ideas of some leading intellectuals in the Eastern world that have responded to Western imperialism and to continued Western domination. My focus is on those whose intimations of something new and different, arising from the interaction between their traditions (with incipient modern developments) and Western modernity have led them to pursue the renewal of their own civilizations. These thinkers also offer clues concerning the areas in which their civilizations excel and can make valuable contributions to the local/global civilization that will come into being as the modern world experiences exhaustion.

From Japanese experience, the visions of a peaceful world that arose from wartime defeat and the American bombings are especially worthy of our attention. But Japan can only contribute to a peaceful world if nationalism is overcome, and in the postwar era, Masao Abe, inheriting the Kyoto philosophy, came up with a truly universal Buddhism as a vehicle for achieving this goal. The other area where Japan has much to offer is aesthetics with nature as its foundation. Shinto can be a source of inspiration for reversing ecological disruption and restoring natural landscapes. And the premodern culture of ordinary people reveals a distinctive approach to the creation and appreciation of beauty. My focus is on the attempt of Hayao Miyazaki, the director of animated films, to imaginatively revisit and build on what remains of this sensibility.

China has a long and distinguished legacy of social and political thought, and neo-Confucian philosophy is particularly rich in this regard. It is distinguished by its seamless integration of individual and social transformation and local and global orientations as well as its rich exploration of the theme of self-cultivation. Among present-day Chinese thinkers, I have singled out Wang Hui, the new left thinker and activist who has interpreted the history of Chinese thought and investigated its contemporary relevance. The New Confucians are worthy our attention, starting with Liang Shuming and his efforts at rural reconstruction and extending to the Confucian philosophers and scholars of the diaspora. Tu Weiming, born in Taiwan, is their outstanding contemporary representative.

In India, there are leading intellectuals of the older generation who have traveled beyond modernist outlooks to embrace the local and indigenous traditions and an ecological orientation. Gayatri Spivak, in particular, is exemplary in her support of alternative movements led by women, indigenous people, and workers. The postmodern aspect of Mohandas Gandhi’s thought and his opposition to centralization are not alien to leftwing postcolonial thinkers. And there are influential figures from the early 20th century in addition to Gandhi, like Tagore and Aurobindo, who point the way forward to a society that has sufficient room for both spiritual and material concerns.

From premodern Islamic civilization, I have singled out the great philosophers Al-Ghazzali and Ibn Arabi as well as Rumi, a very popular poet in the West, whose Muslim background is usually downplayed. The question of how to arrest Islamic civilization’s decline has been addressed by Khaled Abou El Fadl, the Egyptian scholar of Islamic law, and Ali Allawi, the former economics minister in the Iraqi government. Abou El Fadl’s liberal perspective and the more traditionalist one represented by Allawi are compared and contrasted.

Islamic feminists are an important source of renewal. I present the ideas of Asma Barlas on Western feminism and highlight Saba Mahmood's provocative account of the Egyptian mosque women’s movement that challenged standard liberal interpretations. I single out Muhammad Iqbal, perhaps the greatest Muslim intellectual of the 20th century, for his attempts to universalize Islam and for his critique of Western liberalism. In addition, Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s interpretation of the Islamic tradition and the approach to science and the view of nature are highlighted, since they offer an alternative to dominant Western paradigms that provides inspiration for the future.

The new world toward which these intellectuals are pointing is one in which there is no longer a strong distinction between center and periphery as non-Western civilizations revive their cultural heritages and become equal partners in civilizational dialogue. It is a world in which multiple centers of civilization are coming into being, as people identify with their own civilizations in a pluralist world.

Although a civilizational viewpoint has the advantage of being comprehensive, there are very real dangers in the ways it has been applied. When Vladimir Putin experienced NATO coming closer to Russia’s borders, he began to emphasize Russian civilization which he saw as based on Eastern values such as the Orthodox Church, rejection of Western decadence, and an expansive Russian identity whose ancient center was located in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russia’s invasion has led Europe and the United States to draw closer together under the civilizational banner of self-determination and democratic freedoms.

Other moves in a similar direction are Chinese celebrations of Confucian values and the establishment of Confucius Institutes around the world, Turkish visions of extending their nation’s influence to the areas of the old Ottoman Empire, and Indian glorifications of Hindu culture and the Hindu heartland. In many of these cases, the appeal to civilizational values and identities is being used by authoritarian leaders to increase their popularity and as a weapon in their struggles with more cosmopolitan opponents.

The Untold Stories

After retiring from university teaching in 2014, I wanted to make use of my experience and knowledge by writing about the parts of the world that were rising in power to challenge the West and venturing out on their own cultural paths. In particular, I was interested in the ways in which Eastern religious traditions, including Sufism within Islam, might provide the spiritual foundation for a more sustainable earth, peaceful world, and meaningful life. Most of all, I wanted to promote better relations among the most powerful and influential civilizations through historical literacy at a time when they were turning inward.

Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations have all experienced upheavals due to their encounters with the West. Their histories have been disrupted, people traumatized, and their fate joined with that of the West. I want their stories to be told in ways that would reach Western audiences beyond a small number of specialists. The views of non-Western intellectuals need wider circulation so we can learn from their accounts of not just their own civilizations but where the world has been, where it is now, and what lies ahead.

It is understandable that people outside the West know more about the West than the West knows about them. What has happened for centuries in Europe, and in the United States more recently, has had a great effect upon people’s lives elsewhere but the reverse has not been true. When the American government decided to invade Iraq and Afghanistan and impose economic sanctions on Iran, it deeply affected conditions in those countries. The United States also has the economic and political power to spread its ideas and values to other parts of the world. Cultural imperialism has been one result, yet American popular culture has also been welcomed.

Now the power equation is shifting and prevailing Western explanations for the situations in non-Western societies are clearly falling short. Western assumptions and actions are part of the problem and solutions need to be sought through dialogue. Informed commentary from other civilizations and understanding their particular take on events has far greater value than relying on public intellectuals and journalists who tell us what we want to hear within a Western modernist frame.

As this new world comes into being, outlooks calibrated to a world that is passing become anachronistic.

Bibliographical Essay

I have relied on the work of Johann Arnason, especially Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions (2003), as a foundation for grasping the civilizational approach to the study of history. Peter Wagner’s Modernity: Understanding the Present (2012) has been useful for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the civilizational approach. And I appreciate Jeremy Smith’s Debating Civilizations: Interrogating Civilizational Analysis in a Global Age (2016) for its comparisons with other theoretical perspectives, including postcolonial theory, that address the issues surrounding our ways of treating civilizations.

Concerning the challenges to the dominant nation-states of the modern West, I learned much from Theodore Von Laue’s The Worldwide Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth Century in Global Perspective (1987). A valuable account of anti-Western thought that has considerably expanded my knowledge is Cemil Aydin’s The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (2007).

For the view of civilizations as existing in relation to each other, a stance often called world history, I cut my teeth on William McNeill’s A World History (1967) and Marshall Hodgson’s Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History (1993).

A Turbulent Modern Experience

Japan had been isolated for over 200 years when Commodore Perry came to Japan in 1853. On behalf of the US government and backed by superior military force, Perry demanded that Japan open itself to foreign trade. As a result, Japan was forced to become part of the world within a highly competitive environment based on national power. In this harsh wider world, Japanese leaders, mainly lower samurai, mobilized the people to build a rich and powerful nation, one that could flourish and, ultimately, win the recognition of the rest of the world while gaining honor, prestige, and self-esteem.

Japanese Identity

In the heyday of the West's domination of the rest of the world, Japan was one of the few nations that was not colonized by the West. Nevertheless, Japan was forced to deal with the fact of Western leadership in the world. Its leaders felt they had no choice but to carve out a strategy that would not only enable Japan to preserve its independence but also to maintain self-respect and self-confidence as a nation.