Why Do I Turn to History?

There are two reasons why I am so committed to history and the methodology of historiography.

※This article is an English translation of the following Japanese article.
なぜ私は歴史を志向するのか／ Why Do I Turn to History?: 本に溺れたい

The first is the defeat of the Japanese Empire in 1945. Why did so many Japanese and foreigners have to die? Why did my grandmother, uncles, and aunts have to be burned alive by American flamethrowers? And then, there was the disgraceful agony of the Imperial Army and Navy in their final days. From 1868 to 1945, these military forces had exercised overwhelming power over the imperial subjects, yet in the final stages of the war, their internal order collapsed, and numerous units disintegrated to the point that they no longer functioned as military organizations.

Reference 1: Reading Hiroshi Yoshida’s "The Japanese Soldier" (2017) – or: On Historical Modes of Thinking (1), Hon ni Oboretai
Reference 2: "That the leaders of the Imperial Army and Navy were held accountable by foreign powers in the Tokyo Trials is something fundamentally different from being held responsible to the imperial subjects." → 'Some Equivocations in the Notion of Responsibility'(2), Hon ni Oboretai

The second reason is this: Was the state of modern civilization truly inevitable? Why has contemporary petroleum-based civilization consistently left chronic environmental degradation unaddressed? Even after the peak of oil production, we continue producing "nuclear waste" from nuclear power plants—absurdly so. And once the cheap (that is, easy-to-access) oil is exhausted, we will no longer have the very resources needed to process that waste.

Had the Japanese—or humanity as a whole—taken a different course at some point, or had we corrected our trajectory, could we have avoided these outcomes? What could have enabled an alternative to the present—a “better,” more bearable reality? This is what I want to understand.

To do so, we must reject not only historical determinism, but also the pretense of a godlike, transcendent perspective. Such a vantage point cannot teach us how to apply the past to our present actions. We humans are not being propelled by some unknowable divine plan or external law. But to assume the opposite—that human beings can always, everywhere, instantly realize their intentions without effort or hesitation—is, if anything, inhuman. Even amid anguish and hardship, there is human potential. A view of history that squarely faces this reality of human life, and a historical narrative that follows such a view—that is what I hope for.

The methodology that enables such an inquiry is the complex systems approach, and what concretely applies this approach to historical processes is the Theory of Historical Resources. In a world of infinite diversity and scope, there are limits to what human beings can rationally pursue—this is known as bounded rationality. Accordingly, when people think or attempt to act, they inevitably require resources that assist, support, or supplement them in some way. These resources include tangible things and people immediately around us. They also include the traditions we inherit from the past: institutions, customs, ideas, thought systems, and practices that people of previous generations devised, built, and tested.

Thus, tradition is not something that binds us. Rather, it supports us—especially in the face of the complexity and diversity of the world, where our limited capabilities may otherwise lead us to hesitation or inaction—and can in fact become a source of freedom in thought and action.

See also: “Bricolage and the Theory of Resources,” Hon ni Oboretai

When we look at the achievements of those who have truly renewed tradition and opened up new dimensions for humanity, we find without exception that, although they may have wrestled with tradition and taken many twists and turns, they ultimately overcame it by standing upon it. Human innovation is often thought to be something that can only be accomplished by severing ties with tradition. That, we are told, is what creativity and originality mean—a creation of something out of nothing. Many of us today are under this impression. But that is a grave illusion born of the ideology of historical progress. Political “resetism” and the cult of innovation are pathological symptoms of this illusion.

In this way, it becomes possible to narrate the human condition in a proportionate, realistic way—neither as a train running automatically on a course predetermined by its environment, nor as a divine rationality arrogantly selecting the best path from above.

When I reflect on the Japanese archipelago and its history—the place and time into which I was born and in which I live—I return to the two questions I posed at the beginning. In order to unravel them, I have chosen to examine the relationship between Tokugawa Japan’s 270 years and Meiji Japan’s 100 years. Change and changing, continuity and continuing—reassessing the movements, confusions, and trajectories of the people who lived upon these islands with cool heads but warm hearts (Alfred Marshall, 1885). That is my current aspiration.