Director ＆ Collaborators' Essey
Japan’s Three “Openings” and Its Political History: The Vision of Ōkuma Shigenobu, by Toyomi ASANO (in Japanese)
Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University Professor
On August 6, 2016, Professor Toyomi Asano delivered an introductory lecture entitled “Japan’s Three ‘Openings’ and Its Political History: The Vision of Ōkuma Shigenobu” at Waseda University’s Open Campus. Addressing an audience composed primarily of high school students, Asano explored the significance of studying history at Waseda in the present age of Japan’s “fourth opening,” drawing on the career and thought of the university’s founder, Ōkuma Shigenobu, who rose to prominence during its “second opening.”
Defining “opening” in terms of external pressures and the transformation of the domestic order, the lecture distinguished three such periods in Japanese history. The first occurred in the latter half of the sixteenth century, when firearms and Christianity entered Japan. During this period, external pressures that remained within the scope of domestic control were harnessed to advance political unification. The second extended from Commodore Perry’s arrival to the Meiji Restoration. With reference to Ōkuma’s The Harmonization of Eastern and Western Civilizations, Asano examined how Japan’s domestic order was transformed in response to external pressures beyond its control. The third was the U.S.-led occupation following the Second World War, a period that shaped a range of issues that persist to this day.
The present era of globalization constitutes a fourth opening, unfolding from this historical trajectory. Unlike earlier periods, however, the external pressures confronting Japan today are themselves shifting and increasingly ambiguous. What is required, therefore, is not merely a response to those pressures, but active participation in shaping the international society from which they arise. Asano emphasized the importance of studying history as a means of developing an informed position in the contemporary world without being swept along by emotionally charged disputes.
At the outset, the lecture introduced “concepts” as terms through which complex phenomena and extensive bodies of knowledge can be organized and understood. The lecture itself exemplified this approach: taking “opening” as its organizing concept, it reconsidered events across different periods through the relationship between external pressures and domestic transformation. It brought foreign affairs and domestic politics into a single analytical frame, treating them as inseparable dimensions of historical change, and connected an understanding of the past with the task of finding one’s place in the present. In demonstrating this mode of historical inquiry, the lecture offered prospective Waseda students a compelling account of the value of studying history.