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It is difficult to imagine that anyone can argue, based upon objective evidence, that during the 20 th
Century, no individual even came close to having the positive impact of Edwin O. Reischauer (1910-1990) on American understanding of Japan, and most probably, US-Japan relations as well. Harvard professor, ambassador, advisor to the federal government, scholar, successful and effective popularizer, and media spokesperson, Reischauer made it his life’s mission to battle ignorance on both sides of the Pacific. George Packard’s well-written and insightful biography of this influential figure in the development of Asian studies in the US also conveys another clear message about his subject; at least it did to this reviewer. Reischauer deserves to be remembered, perhaps first and foremost, as an outstanding teacher; perhaps one of the best this country has very produced. George Packard, currently President of the United States-Japan
Foundation and Reischauer’s assistant during his tenure as ambassador, manages to write a biography that is sympathetic yet, at times, critical.
Born in Japan in 1910 of Presbyterian missionary parents, young Edwin developed an early love for Japan. His father arrived in Japan with no deep interest in its culture, but relatively quickly August Karl Reischauer became immersed in the culture’s history, philosophy, and religion and went on to learn classical Japanese and Chinese, translate religious tracts, lecture on comparative religion in the US, teach ethics and philosophy at Meiji Gakuin, and develop a deep understanding of the Japan of his time.
Reischauer’s father and his mother Helen, went on to found the first school for deaf and mute children in Japan and a women’s Christian college, now Tokyo Women’s Christian
University. Although Edwin Reischauer was never a religious man, his self-description of his life work of explaining Japan consistently included such phrases as “missionary zeal.”
Young Reischauer came to the US and entered Oberlin College in 1927, graduated in history, and entered Harvard where, Serge Eliseeff, the prominent Russian scholar who was a visiting professor, exerted a profound influence on Reischauer helping him plan a course of study that included two years in Paris, three in Japan and China, and an eventual teaching position at Harvard. One of Reischauer’s outstanding talents as a scholar, teacher, and writer was his broad understanding of history and his ability to contextualize Japan within East Asia and comparatively with the West; undoubtedly a result of systematic study in both the Occident and Asia.

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When World War II began, Reischauer helped train Japanese language instructors for the Army Signal Corps, was part of the team that deciphered Japanese code in the famous MAGIC project, and, after the war, was one of a small group of scholars that influenced Douglas MacArthur to retain the Showa emperor. Reischauer, with one possible later notable exception, was not reticent about forthrightly asserting his often prescient views about East Asia. When he worked briefly for the State Department as a summer consultant before the war, Reischauer argued against the 1941 oil embargo, not because he was sympathetic to the Japanese government but out of concerns that it would increase the odds an unprepared US would be prematurely thrust into war. Reischauer also was shunned by the State Department after the war because, again from a realpolitik perspective, he argued for recognition of the Chinese communist government.
During the 1950s Reischauer began the work, in a marvelously effective partnership with John King Fairbank, that probably did more than any other venture to establish East Asian studies in the US. Their efforts included the famous Harvard “Rice
Paddies” course that gave many students who would go on to influential positions in academia, government, business, and the media, their first understanding of East Asia, the development of Harvard’s own graduate program, the coauthorship of the famous
East Asian Traditions texts, and for Reischauer in particular, publications in an amazing variety of publications ranging from The Reader’s Digest to Foreign Affairs and academic journals.
Although never one to actively court political leaders, Reischauer, in large part due to the efforts of one of his former students, attracted the attention of the incoming
Kennedy administration in 1961 and was selected and confirmed as US Ambassador to
Japan, despite resistance from a few members of the US Senate because of his advocacy of recognition of the PRC Government. Reischauer, especially in the first three years of his tenure, was an outstanding ambassador who worked assiduously and effectively to enlighten both Americans and Japanese about each other. Reischauer, an optimist without being a syncopate about Japan, emphasized common US-Japan values such as democracy, reached out to alienated Japanese Marxists to better educate them about viable liberal alternatives to so-called “scientific socialism,” helped American elites understand the importance of Japan as a strategic partner, assisted in laying the ground work for the eventual transfer of Okinawa back to Japan and, in his self-described most important contribution, assisted in the re-establishment of relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea.
Reischauer’s last years before he resigned in 1966 and returned to Harvard were dark and turbulent. In March 1964 a deranged Japanese stabbed the Ambassador, almost killed him, and Reischauer never physically completely physically recovered from the attack. As important, even though Reischauer had predicted in his 1955 book, Wanted:
An Asia Policy , that the struggle in Indo China was primarily one of nationalism and that the US should stay out of the conflict, he supported US Viet Nam policy despite his prior stance. He received wide-spread criticism for this position from family, as well as academics on both sides of the Pacific.

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Returning to Harvard in 1966, Reischauer continued his nationally and internationally influential work in educating Americans and Westerners about Japan. His efforts were prodigious and included The Japanese (1977) which was perhaps his most influential book for the general public, as well as other publications, TV documentaries,
“Meet the Press” appearances, and speaking engagements. He battled Japan bashers and made a culture that people in the West overly-exoticized more understandable for millions. Reischauer was severely criticized by Marxist-influenced academics in the latter part of his career; partially because of his stance on Viet Nam but perhaps even more so because, unlike his friend and noted Japan scholar E.H. Norman, Reischauer had a fundamental optimism about the Japanese and their propensity to become a great democracy. Unlike Norman and his academic successors, Reischauer thought the
American Occupation had been a successful foreign policy venture and that Japan had developed into a true liberal democracy. Although it is impossible to know the resolution of this disagreement; history seems to have proven Reischauer correct. This book deserves attention by anyone who wishes to know more about US-Japan relations, the study of East Asia and Japan, or who is interested in the life of a great teacher who successfully battling ignorance on a grand scale.
There is the popular image of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty as beacons to welcome endless droves of European immigrants to the United States in the late 1800s an early 1900s. My own German great-grandfather was very typical of this phenomenon.
He left Hamburg as a young man to escape Bismarck’s mandatory military draft and to embark on a promising banking career on Wall Street. He went through Ellis Island with only a cursory medical exam before being accepted into his new country.
Immigrants from Europe were generally very well received in New York and all were admitted save those with severe medical process. These immigrants spent very little time on Ellis Island, perhaps a few hours or a few days for those requiring more extensive medical tests. Ellis Island thus left a very positive impression on most who passed through its doors -- it was literally the door through which they passed in their quest to experience the American dream.
The Angel Island Immigration Station, located on Angel Island in San Francisco
Bay, processed up to a million people entering or departing the United States between
1910 and 1940. Two-thirds of these folks were from East Asia, mainly Chinese and
Japanese together with a smattering of Koreans, but there were also substantial numbers of South Asians, Filipinos, as well as Mexicans, Russians fleeing the Bolshevik revolution, European Jews, and other refugees.

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Their fascinating history is the subject of Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to
America by historians Erika Lee and Judy Yung, both descendents of Angel Island immigrants, and published on the occasion of the station’s 100 th anniversary. Lee and
Yung have prepared an incredibly detailed and very carefully researched and objective work that includes a kaleidoscope of immigrant portraits and offers a vivid contrast to the image one gets from a review of the history of Ellis Island.
Yung and Lee point out very early in their work that rather than operating as a kind of welcome center for immigrants, a major goal of the Angel Island Immigration
Station was to exclude would-be immigrants from Asia, especially Chinese. The entry of nearly a half-million Chinese into California and neighboring states and British Columbia had set off a wave of racist anti-Chinese hysteria in the American West and led to the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and a very severe immigration law in 1924.
These laws set stiff perimeters as to which Chinese could enter the US: diplomats, ethnic
Chinese born in the US, wives and children of legal immigrants, merchants, and students on short-term visas.
The work of immigration officials was to follow these laws by carefully screening every entrant to determine whether s/he was eligible. Since many immigrants purported to be eligible when in fact they were not, there often ensued a very lengthy interview process that often kept the would-be immigrant imprisoned on Angel Island for many months or for over a year in a few extreme cases. Ultimately, over ninety percent of
Chinese applicants gained admission because they had the backing of Chinese immigration groups and highly trained immigration lawyers who supported them.
Japanese had fewer problems because they had the backing of their highly respected government, but immigrants from British-held lands in South Asia lacked any real support mechanisms and had a rejection-rate of about fifty-percent.
Authors Lee and Yung carefully document the overtly racist attitude of American immigration policy before World War II. When a ship arrived in San Francisco,
Caucasian immigrants from Europe, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere were generally processed and let go while Chinese were automatically taken on the ferry to Angel Island along with other Asians. Chinese and other non-Japanese Asians were herded together in special dormitories and ate together while non-Asians at the stayed in better quarters, were processed much faster, and ate much better food. The gloom felt by the Chinese is reflected in the many poems they carved into the walls complaining about their lonely imprisonment at the Station.
I feel a deeply personal tie to the Immigration Station because my daughter Katie
Metraux was an integral member of a small team of California State Park curators and conservationists who restored the Station for itrs grand reopening in 2010. Katie almost single-handedly restored the main Chinese dormitory at the Station. Anybody visiting
San Francisco should include Angel Island on their itinerary.
And before visiting, or if one is interested in the history of Angel Island, reading
Lee and Yung’s book is a must. It covers not only the history of the Station, but also to

Virginia Review of Asian Studies 186 the history of Asian immigration to the United States before World War II. This work is a very readable and useful addition to any Asian Studies collection.
Even though I have studied, researched and taught modern Japanese history for over four decades, one of the great mysteries I have encountered is the true essence of the fanatical nationalism that appeared in Japan in the late years of the Meiji era and became a major force from the late 1920s to the end of World War II. Numerous scholars have written about various aspects of this nationalism, but it is very difficult hard to find a coherent study that attempts a very in-depth comprehensive view of this phenomenon.
Perhaps the closest more popular study is George Wilson’s seminal work, Radical
Nationalist in Japan: Kita Ikki 1883-1937, but Wilson’s book concentrates almost entirely on the life and thought of just one man. The great benefit of Walter Skyra’s
Japan’s Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism is that while there is a very excellent chapter on Ikki that updates Wilson’s now-outdated book, Skyra looks at the whole panorama of Japanese fascism.
Many Western scholars often carelessly lump Japanese “fascism” with that of
Germany or Italy, but even a superficial study of Japanese nationalism before World War
II reveals vast differences. Walter A. Skyra, a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at
Colby College, asserts that this nationalism evolved from a fundamentalist Shinto movement promoted by a group of writers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This ultranationalism focused on the unique qualities of Japan that made it different from any other nation. They suggested the Emperor of Japan was sacred, absolute and direct and that Japan possessed a divine oneness that made it superior to other states.
Skya finds many parallels between this Shinto-based ultra-nationalism and contemporary Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. The strong reaction of some
Japanese nationalists to their nation’s adoption of many Western ideas such as liberal democracy and socialism is somewhat similar to the ideology of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the subsequent growth of radical Islam. Skyra notes that this “transformation of the ideology of State Shinto in contestation with liberal democracy and socialism strongly suggests that creeping democracy and the secularization of the political order in
Japan in the early twentieth century were the principal factors responsible for breeding terrorism and radicalism, a political trajectory from secularism to religious fundamentalism similar..[to Iran]….and in the broader radicalization of much of the
Islamic world.”
Skyra’s main thesis is that there was a major shift in the thinking and direction of
State Shinto in the Taisho and early Showa eras. “While the fundamental structures of the Meiji state remained largely intact, a hidden revolution in the realm of religious

Virginia Review of Asian Studies 187 thought and state ideology had taken place…..By the end of the 1930s, extreme nationalists had taken over the state by employing radical religious fundamentalist ideas to crush or sublimate the advocates of all competing ideologies.” There were, of course, many Japanese with competing ideologies who tried to contest the moves of the ultranationalists, but by the end of the 1930s these extremists had succeeded in their mission to take over the state and to crush the advocates of competing ideologies.
Part of the blame, Skyra, contends, for this development was in fact the Meiji constitution itself. Its framers refused to put in any balance of power institutions that are found in many Western constitutions. All power was put in the hands of the Emperor, so whichever group dominated the core of the government in effect could dispose of any opposition. The constitution made the office of Prime Minister fairly weak and the military an independent branch subject only to the control of the Emperor. Thus, no government could be formed without the consent of the military which in turn could embark on military adventures without any checks imposed by the Prime Minister or any other branch of government.
Another of Skyra’s key themes pertains to the worldview of Shinto ultranationalists. Their goal was the establishment of a new world order based on the concept of Japanese imperial rule that was to replace the Wilsonian-inspired world order of
“democratic internationalism” that had been institutionalized through the League of
Nations after World War I. Again, it was this so-called “divine oneness” of the Japanese nation that was an attribute not shared by any other people. China, for example, was not such a nation, but rather a congregation of people who occupied a territory of no sacred significance. Therefore, the rule of the Japanese emperor should be worldwide because no other people could stand on an equal level with the pure Japanese in their sacred land.
Thus, the worldview of these proponents of Shinto ultranationalism was that the war they waged in the Pacific was a civilizational and religious conflict between a divinely governed theocratic Japanese empire and a secular global order created and controlled by the imperialist nations of the West. Here we see also a dose of pure racism where the
Japanese saw themselves as being superior not only to other Asians, especially Chinese, but also the Europeans and Americans. Clearly, the phrase, “Asia for the Asians,” meant an Asia dominated by Japanese. Interestingly, my own research on the Asian writings of
American author Jack London (1876-1916) indicates that he was one of the first Western writers in the very early 1900s who perceived this disturbing trend in the thinking of some Japanese that he met.
Skyra adds that this attitude of the superiority and uniqueness of the Japanese nation made it impossible for Japan to have any true Asian allies during the war. How could they when Japan at the time clearly saw itself as being superior to any of the nations that it was invading and that Japan should be the leader of a new world order which other Asian nations should follow for their own good? “Asia for the Asians” was clearly Asia for the Japanese.

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This work is an in-depth study of the ideology of State Shinto from the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution in February 1889 to the publication of the Kokutai no Hongi (Fundamentals of Our National Polity) and Japan’s intensified invasion of
China in 1937. Skyra notes that “One of the significant discoveries of this study is that a transformation of the internal structure of the ideology of State Shinto did occur from a theory of constitutional monarchy inspired by Imperial Germany, established by Ito
Hirobumi and his colleagues, to a theory of absolute monarchy in the political thought of
Hozumi Yatsuka in the late 1890s, and then to mass-based totalitarian ideologies in the constitutional theories of Uesugi Shinkichi and Kakehi Katsuhiko in the Taisho period.”
Skyra interestingly contends that the ideological transformation of the ideology of
State Shinto came as noted above in a rather dramatic contestation with the proponents of liberal democracy and socialism and that the apparent trends towards democracy and the secularization of the nation’s political order early in the last century were the main factors responsible for breeding the terrorism and radicalism of the early Showa period.
This transformation saw the movement from a quasi-religious or quasi-secular state constructed by the Meiji oligarchs to Hozumi Yatsuka’s traditional conservative theocratic state of the 1890s and later to the more radicalized and militant forms of extreme religious nationalisms in the state theories of Uesugi Shinkichi and Kakehi
Katsuhiko in the 1920s. Skyra sees a clear parallel between these developments and the political trajectory from secularism to fundamentalism in the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and in the broader radicalization of much of the Islamic world since the 1980s.
Skyra clearly demonstrates that despite the uniformity of its main goals, Shinto ultranationalism was really a very diverse movement with many thinkers and no clear leader. The main sections of the book consist of very detailed chapters on some of the ideas of the movement’s main architects including Hozumi Yatsuka, Kita Ikki, Uesugi
Shinkichi and Kakehi Katsuhko. The chapters are especially illuminating because none of these writers and thinkers has received much publicity in the West with the possible exception of Kita Ikki. The same might be said of Japan. I have had many Japanese students in my classes here in the United states and at Doshisha Women’s College in
Kyoto. I have always asked these students if they are familiar with the life and writings of Kita Ikki and I have never had one student say that she is familiar with him. It is as if he never existed. Clearly a Japanese translation of this book is in order.
The careful reader will come away with a very detailed overview of prewar
Japanese fascism. The book is very detailed, very well written, and carefully researched.
Japan’s Holy War
is a classic work that should be on the reading list of any scholar of
Japanese history who wishes to gain some deeper insights into the direction of Japanese politics from the late 1920s through World War II. A Japanese translation of this book should be made as soon as possible. Skyra is to be commended for this major academic achievement.