 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. So I lie somewhere between them. That's John David and he's a history professor at HBU. And he's getting very excited in the run-up here. Thanks for coming on the show, John. Yeah, you're welcome, Jake. Good to be back. Good to be back, yeah. History Lens, we're going to talk today about his book, The Limits of Westernization. The new season of History Lens. We've taken some time off. I should be rested. I'm not, but that's okay. Can you hear that? You've been writing, that's why. Yes, I've been writing a lot, actually. And you can see, well, here's the fruits of some of my writing, and then I've started another book. But back on, History Lens is back on. Let's do it. Yes, right on. Well, you know, it's the Sentiana thing, and I think it's more poignant now than it ever was. And we really can't forget. It's like history is compressed these days. Yeah. It's like you have to remember, not what happened in the 19th century, you have to remember what happened last month. Right. Because it moved the fickle finger, moved so fast. The fickle finger. That you have to remember everything because people, there are people, I don't want to name names, who would like to distract you. Absolutely, no, no. Donald Trump is the distractor in chief. I mean, he's really, he's very good at that. I mean, it's one of the few things that he's very good at. Oh, they're calling him the... Pardon my entry into politics, but... It's okay. They're calling him the chief inheritor now. Yeah. Inheritor and chief. Yeah, right. Well, anyway, let's talk about this book. Right. Let's talk about this whole notion of westernization. Right. And let's talk about the limits of westernization. Ah, okay, good, good. Yeah, that's... That's a little bit iconoclastic, isn't it? It is, actually. We went into this century thinking that the westernization, the western culture was going to be ubiquitous everywhere. Right, right, good. So, yeah, you know, I think about some of the work that I've done, and I usually don't think about my kind of my genre, my uvra as iconoclasm, but I suppose I am a bit of an iconoclast. Yes, you are, in my opinion. Kind of picking at the paradigms and trying to not just deconstruct them, but re-examine them and make sure that we're... We've got the right facts historically on these paradigms. So, yeah, I mean... So, I started this book because I was traveling to East Asia a lot in the last several years. Really, the last eight years. To find East Asia. China, Japan, really. And in fact, I'll be back in Japan again in December. And... So, traveling there and... I mean, I had been to Japan and I saw the tremendous achievements of the post-World War II Japanese economy in society rebuilding Japan, making Japan the number two economic superpower in the world for a long time. And then, of course, now the number three economic powerhouse. And that was always very impressive to me and it always made me wonder, well, can we attribute this success solely to westernization? Is this actually what happened to Japan? Meaning, acceptance of western modes of thinking, acceptance of western capitalist economy, acceptance of, well, actually in the pre-war period it would have included Christianity as part of westernization. Can I throw a nugget at you and see if you think of it? There's a book by the name of Pacific by Simon Winchester. Yes, I know the book. In his early chapter, the chapter about various stories in the Pacific, his chapter on Sony tells you so much about this. These guys were, they were a partnership during the war. They made war material of some kind. And after the war they decided they'd better get into something more sexy. So they had heard that in Canada, I want to say Winnipeg somewhere, some outback place in the middle of Canada, somebody was playing with something called a transistor. So the company sent two young fellows who had some kind of technological interest to Canada to find out everything they could find by hook or crook, whatever, about the transistor. And they brought the transistor back, hence the Sony transistor radio. Query, would Japan have entered the technological age without that, maybe not. It was not indigenous. It was from Canada. No, that's right. The transistor is very important actually. But the way that the Japanese implement or use the transistor in building their economy is very Japanese, actually. So they build transistor radios, but they don't build them for Japanese. Those first radios that they build, they're for American, for export to the American market. They've even, they've measured the size of the shirt pocket and the transistor radio can fit in the shirt pocket. The walkman. That's right. So I'm not, again, I'm not saying that Westernization does not exist. But what I'm trying to do is pull back on the idea that what Asia looks like today, and can we bring up a picture of Tokyo today? Just a spy. So that's Tokyo today and there's a Mount Fuji in the background. I mean, look at it. 35 million people and they have a subway which, on which about 20 million of that 35 million people travel every day. And when I go there, it's astonishing because there is not a scrap of garbage on that platform for the subway or inside the subway cars. It's astonishing what they've achieved. And so it's, look, I think it's conceit and hubris to assume that the West created this. This is a Japanese creation. See a lot of homeless in Tokyo? Not so much anymore, actually. When I was there in 2005, I saw more homeless because, of course, the Japanese were still recovering from that economic collapse they had in 1990 in which they had a full decade of flat zero economic growth. So there were actually more homeless. And no, I didn't see hardly any homeless when I was there a couple of years ago. So a westernization and its limits. So the other thing that I did is I traveled to China and if we could bring up the picture of Shanghai, I mean, this is, I was blown away by China. So this is the Po River and this is Shanghai, modern day Shanghai. And look at it, it's all big towers and it's incredibly wealthy. And so China has also developed in the post-war period in a way that I think no one anticipated. And we can pretty well be assured that it wasn't the West because the West cut off relations with China in the 1940s because of the Civil War and the victory of the Chinese Communist Party. There's nobody to relate to. That's right. I mean, there wasn't much influence coming from the West because the Chinese and the West were at loggerheads. So these two things, as I was thinking about the book, there were some other sources of generating thoughts of it. But as I was thinking about the book, I thought how is it that we still today ascribe to East Asian modernity, this thing that they built and modernization of westernization that the West was responsible for all of this. That was my departure point. That was my point of inquiry. If it ever existed, if there was ever a significant Western influence on East Asia anyway, that's not the case anymore. You go there and you go to either Tokyo or Shanghai, especially, the vitality is palpable. There's so much energy going on, it blows you away. The speed at which things move is so much faster than any American city. I was in Beijing first and then in Shanghai. What surprised me the most about the Chinese is they were all trying to sell me something. I thought, what happened to the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s? High noble ideas. You know, the capitalist rotors. Now they're all capitalist trying to sell something. So that was astonishing to me, and that was part of it. So that was the way the book started. Now, of course, when you write a book like this, you have to give some papers at conferences. This is also interesting. So in 2014, I was in Savannah, Georgia, giving a paper at a World History Conference. So a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, steps up to me and he says, oh, I saw your title of your paper. I was giving a paper on John Dewey in China. John Dewey in China? Yes, the great educational philosopher John Dewey. He was born in early 20th century. Spent two years in China from 1919 to 1921. He was planning on going for six weeks and he canceled his return and decided to stay because he was so excited about China, about the energy of China. I mean, part of his excitement was at that moment the May 4th movement, which was this movement of intellectuals who were critical of western imperialism in China and trying to create a new China had emerged. John Dewey arrives on May 1st and the May 4th movement, of course, starts on May 4th, three days later. It's quite a time to be in China. So I'm talking to this colleague and he says, well, John Dewey had all this influence in China and the paper was about just the opposite. So when we look at John Dewey's influence in China during and after his two years there, Dewey went and he gave a lot of speeches and there was big crowds. About education. Yeah, about all kinds of things actually, really about national development and nationalism, all kinds of different topics including education. And so Dewey, it was assumed by scholars because he had these big crowds that he had tremendous influence in China. But when you read more carefully into how the Chinese responded to Dewey, for about the first year in 1919 into early 1920, he did have some influence. And in the second year, he hardly had any influence. They were having an influence on him. They were having, in fact, that's also true, is that Dewey becomes very enamored of Chinese Confucianism and later refers indirectly to Chinese Confucianism in a book about democracy in the chapter of the title is The Great Community. And this is a pretty clear reference to the Confucian ideal of the family in the community. So can you help me with understanding what happened in the early part of the 20th century in China with the spheres of influence in Shanghai, with the fall of the emperor. And then essentially the decline of China as a power that influenced others and as a power that became subject to influence, and then ultimately here we are. So the context there, the context of John Dewey's trip is that China is under the influence of spheres of what we call spheres of influence, where the main Western powers, the French, the British, the Japanese, formerly the Germans, but then the Germans had to withdraw and forced to withdraw during World War I. The Americans all have areas of China where they are strong and influential. They all have their own military forces in China. And they all have advisors to the Chinese government in this time period. So it's a time period. The Chinese refer to this as a century of humiliation. Starting in... Foreign forces on your own side. That's right, starting in 1842 at the end of the Opium Wars when China was forced by the British to sign an unequal treaty, which was very severe. It was very favorable to the British and very severe for the Chinese. So, yeah, so the Chinese think about this time period and their decline in this time period as a humiliation by the West. I'm reminded of a neighborhood in Shanghai called, are you ready? Chinatown. There was also Germantown in the U.S. This is the thing about Shanghai. There was a big international settlement in Shanghai. So all of the major powers had... They had military personnel, they had diplomats, they had schools in the international settlement, missionaries. So the West had a very big... They had a very big presence in China. And that was still true in 1919 when John Dewey went to China. And... Emperor had been deposed by then? Well, yeah, the emperor steps down in... There's a coup in 1911. So eight years earlier, the emperor is kicked out and China now has a Republican government, although it's a very unstable government. So, yeah, so at this conference, back to... Savannah, Georgia, at this conference, I had to say to this guy, actually that's not true at all. John Dewey didn't have that much influence in China. And when we look back at Dewey's influence after he went back to the United States, then really most scholars dismissed him. There were a few educational scholars who embraced his ideas. The radicals in China denounced him completely. In fact, after World War II, there were a number of radicals who were former Dewey scholars who were forced to recant and denounce Dewey as a capitalist rotor and his ideas as, you know, as anti-communist and dangerous ideas. Intellectual conversation. That was the sign of the times. Ultimately leading to the revolution. That's right, right. So John Dewey's influence is not as great as we thought it was. That's part of the theme of the book. We're going to go on to the rest of the book in one minute after we take this short break. That's John Dewey. History Letters. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread and kissed them all soundly and put them to bed. Hunger is a story we can end. End it at feedingamerica.org We're back. We're live. It's so nice to see Yukari Kunisui. She's one of our hosts. So John, we talked about, you know, the need to write papers, present them at various historic history conferences around the country. That's right. It's a sort of a rant. We talked about the need to write papers, present them at various historic conferences around the country. It's a sort of a ramp-up for the book. Were there others? So I'm talking to this guy in Savannah and I really felt like I wanted to push him over the stairs or over the railing. But I didn't, fortunately. It's like, okay, this is what I'm fighting against. Two years later I give a paper in Boston at a World History Conference. This time there's a scholar who's European. She's Danish from China. She teaches at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. And we were talking about my book because I was working on it and we were talking about China and she said, well, everything stays the same in China. And it just kind of blew me away because this is a terrible western stereotype about Chinese history is that during the time period of the Emperor then everything stayed the same. Nothing changed in China. It was actually and I probably had drunk a little too much and I challenged her quite vociferously at that point. But so, the point here is that it's not just me saying that we assume that westernization is the narrative. It's actually other scholars who have confirmed this that their belief is that westernization is powerful and this idea of western stereotypes about so, I wanted to break through that and so I decided that the best way to do that was to do three different things. The first thing is go back and look at East Asians. Try to uncover what their stories were and the book is about intellectuals so I'm really focusing on intellectuals. So I did that, the first couple chapters. Then I turned to Americans as we were talking about with John Dewey I turned to Americans to look at how Americans were interacting in East Asia and how much influence they really had because we have also ascribed to Americans who went to East Asia a great deal of influence and so I looked at that as well and was able to find quite a bit of evidence that we've overstated the influence of people like John Dewey, Charles Beard, etc. And then the third part of this is I wanted to look at the scholarship during and after World War II to try to figure out how we came to this paradigm of westernization. And I think I uncovered the answer is that the paradigm of westernization started with a couple of very important scholars John K. Fairbank who was a China specialist Edwin O. Reichauer who was a Japan specialist who became the most important scholars in the field of East Asian studies Edwin O. Reichauer became ambassador to China in the 1960s so he became very powerful politically in addition to his academic power so their line was that especially Reichauer's arguing that the United States modernized Japan he makes no bones about it in the first three books that he writes after World War II that this is the case I was kind of blown away by it but there it was it was very clear evidence of westernization it's not that they invented it but it received a very big boost by these very important scholars and entered the mainstream of American thought well post war we were on a path of greatness the greatest generation the whole notion that America had saved the world this is all consistent with that that's right what Reichauer does is he projects this backward into the late 19th century and he makes some very careless arguments without much evidence so I go back and I trace back those arguments and then I refute those arguments with evidence and yeah so the United States did have influence this is why the book is called the limits of westernization not westernization never happened let's be real yeah that's right as I said I was at this conference in Istanbul this summer where I presented a version of the book and the younger scholars said well let's just get rid of the word westernization and I said back look westernization is real it actually happened and part the west was at various times was quite powerful so we can't eliminate that as an analytical framework we've overstated it well as time goes by seems to me the notion of westernization in the context of East Asia is less so right they found their niche, they found their groove they don't care much about following us we should be following them in so many ways we could be looking at the 21st century as the Asian century let's see how it plays out but quite honestly China looks a lot stronger in some areas than the United States does right now there was a talk at the east west center a Tuesday night by a fellow at the Freeman Foundation my name is Christopher Johnson and he spoke about Xi Jinping who was taking this to all kinds of new levels president for life or whatever he is you got one belt, one road you got a big navy squashing all the religions making socialism the state religion in every which way developing more on the economy you name it they are going to new levels geo-political initiatives forcing taking control of what do you call it the South China Sea I mean this is amazing what's happening and it's very quick yes it's happened in relative terms very quickly yeah I mean China has become very powerful and Xi Jinping has kind of established a narrative whereby China is actually the one supporting trade in the world not the United States so they've entered and diplomatically and we'll talk more about this later in another show but China has entered the strategic void that the Trump administration created with its chaotic approach to East Asia in the first two years so China has entered that they've signed agreements with the Philippines about the oil in the South China Sea these are unprecedented actually they're negotiating with Japan about better trade relations so they're working in areas and they're moving into areas diplomatically that the United States has has basically we haven't abandoned but we've really damaged those some of those relationships I mean we're talking about tariffs on Japan now the possibility the best buddy in Asia really the only partner we have left so so this is a problem but let's leave that to to a later we can see how this affects the U.S. and what U.S. can do but not today we'll move to that so when I started thinking about who I should study in terms of intellectuals who are very important then Fukazawa Yukichi is kind of top of my head and so can we bring up the picture Fukazawa there's a couple pictures here very interesting so this is Fukazawa Yukichi he's a young samurai who is traveling with a Japanese embassy to the United States in 1860 and he's actually this photograph he's standing he's sitting next to the daughter of the photographer I don't know how she got in the picture but she got in the picture look at Fukazawa he's very unhappy I mean he looks very unhappy about this defensive insecure this actually is a good kind of description of Japan in that time period in 1860 they were defensive they were insecure now if we bring up the next picture of Fukazawa okay this is Fukazawa as a more mature man more self-confident as somebody who is beginning to write about East Asian about Japan you can see the difference he's really in control he's poised and everything so pictures in this case are worth a thousand words so Fukazawa becomes an intellectual after these trips he returns he starts to write he writes about the West but he also writes books about Japan he writes two very important books in the 1870s in which he's arguing that Japan has to get out of this old system that it's in this is a critical time for Japan this is where they adopted all these western technologies telegram telephone telegraph what else was there street lights all that it was coming that's right and they modernized their economy but they also centralized their government they got rid of the samurai they developed an educational system a mandatory education system so they became a modern nation almost overnight and there was some western influence in that but really it's a Japanese nation and so Fukazawa's contribution to this is to argue that what the Japanese citizenry needs is to be independent they need to think with independence they need to throw off that old what Fukazawa called the old rank system because of course in the old system you had to blindly follow whatever your lord said or else he could execute his feudal that's right this is the feudal Tokugawa system so Fukazawa said hey let's get rid of that and let's think like independent citizens and then if we do that we will have an independent nation which can fight off the threat from the west that was seen as westernization right no I mean really this idea of independence actually is probably more connected to another person that will talk about maybe if we have time we'll talk about Wang Yongming Neo Confucian who argued that that within Confucianism there is the possibility of denying your master denying your lord if it's for the sake of the nation this was a major change and Wang Yongming himself is a very interesting guy so if we have time we'll talk about him so Fukazawa is arguing that the Japanese people as citizens need to be more independent minded this is a major innovation and thought for the Japanese people and it was essential to industrialize entrepreneurial development loyal to the nation yes but to become good citizens they should be independent thinkers and they should be committed to the nation as well yeah hence no trash on the streets of Tokyo that's right that's right yes cohesion and so that's one of so it's interesting Fukazawa's books actually become so popular that peasants in the countryside are joining study groups and his books are being read to them because a lot of these peasants are illiterate but in the 1870s there are study groups in Japanese villages for Fukazawa's books you're talking about Ming, Ming is Chinese right right but this is so okay let me clarify that Wang Yongming is an ancient sage from the 1500s in China but his thought had moved to Japan it's the most interesting time it's a good time to break actually we're out of time I hope we can continue right from this point okay we'll stop on through the turn of that century on through the turn of the next century and where we are today with the United States we will John David and history professor history lends how exciting always we're back we're back yes thanks for doing this