The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960

FAIN: FT-53744-05

Eiko Maruko Siniawer
Presidents and Trustees of Williams College (Williamstown, MA 01267-2600)

The project examines violence in the practice of everyday politics in modern Japan, to explore the dynamics of the relationship between private, organized, political violence and the modern Japanese state. This inquiry focuses on “professional providers of political violence”: those who received compensation for performing acts of political violence, or those with a reputation for violence who used or threatened violence in the political sphere. Through an exploration of the professionally violent, the project deals with three issues: the role of political violence in the formative years of the modern nation-state; the relationship between violence and democracy, and violence and fascism; and the ways in which violence shaped modern Japan’s ideological landscape.

Associated Products

Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960 (Book)
Title: Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960
Author: Siniawer, Eiko Maruko
Abstract: Violence and democracy may seem fundamentally incompatible, but the two have often been intimately and inextricably linked. In this book, Siniawer argues that violence has been embedded in the practice of modern Japanese politics from the very inception of the country's experiment with democracy. As soon as the parliament opened its doors in 1890, brawls, fistfights, vandalism, threats, and intimidation quickly became a fixture in Japanese politics, from campaigns and elections to legislative debates. Most of this physical force was wielded by what Siniawer calls "violence specialists": ruffians and yakuza. Their systemic and enduring political violence--in the streets, in the halls of parliament, during popular protests, and amid labor strife-ultimately compromised party politics in Japan and contributed to the rise of militarism in the 1930s. For the postwar years, Siniawer illustrates how the Japanese developed a preference for money over violence as a political tool of choice.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/ruffians-yakuza-nationalists-the-violent-politics-of-modern-japan-1860-1960/oclc/228371893&referer=brief_results
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0801447208

Liberalism Undone: Discourses on Political Violence in Interwar Japan (Article)
Title: Liberalism Undone: Discourses on Political Violence in Interwar Japan
Author: Siniawer, Eiko Maruko
Abstract: During the 1920s, liberal intellectuals in Japan took up their pens to express concerns about the proliferation of violence in political life. Political violence, they feared, was eroding Japanese civilization and culture, degrading constitutional government, and fomenting disorder and instability. Such anxieties encouraged ‘statism’ in their thinking, as a number of liberals called upon the state to provide order and security, without considering who was to police the state. This paper argues that Liberalism was undermined by this trust and authority endowed to the state and was undone, not just by state oppression, but by liberals themselves at the level of democratic practice.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8285977&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0026749X09000067
Secondary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/liberalism-undone-discourses-on-political-violence-in-interwar-japan/oclc/733292167&referer=brief_results
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Modern Asian Studies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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