‘근대의 표상’으로부터의 이탈과 다원화 ―일본 역사학계에서 영국사상(像)의 변천―

Abstract

This paper aims to trace those changes that has occurred in the Japanese modern historiography in relation to the perception of the characteristics of British history from 1945 until today. In Japanese academic circle there exists a tradition in which the British state and British history were seen as ‘the symbol of modernity’. Especially Ōtsuka Hisao(大塚久雄) and his school, the ‘After War historiography(Sengo Sigaku, 戦後史学)’ in succession to Fukuzawa Yukichi(福沢諭吉)'s vision of ‘the symbol of civilization’, saw Britain as a model which Japan would have to imitate in her pursuit of modernization. Consequently the study of the British history occupied a certain privileged status in the Ōtsuka school because its students thought the historical research in Japan must serve to construct modern democratic society after the defeat of World War Ⅱ. For the Ōtsuka school the study of British history essentially required to transcend the so called Japan's ‘distorted modernity’ and to attain ‘normal modernity’ which they believed were embodied in the British history. However, if we historicize the ‘Sengo Sigaku’ from the post-modern perspective, Ōtsuka's special interests in the British history was nothing but an effort to find out the modern democratic subjects who would voluntarily devote their body and soul to the cause of nation state. In the 1970s a revisionist school, called ‘Re-appraisal Group(Saigento-ha, 再検討派)’ began to attack the Ōtsuka school on the ground that its understanding of world history followed the universal historical law. The group broke up with the Ōtsuka school, saying that the essence of historical knowledge lies not in universality but in particularity. Since the emergence of the group, the position of the British history in Japan changed from ‘a criterion history’ into ‘a history of a region’. Kawakita Minou(川北稔), one of the leading historians among the group, focused on gentlemen as ruling elites in the British society, instead of independent yeomanry who were considered as the pivotal class in charge of capitalization within the Ōtsuka school. There was a remarkable increase in the number of articles and books published in the field of British history since 1990. The imperial history project made by ‘the Japanese Association for the Study of British Imperial and Commonwealth History(イギリス帝国史研究会)’ is especially worth mentioning. The reason for the fruitfulness of imperial history lies in the fact that the British empire held a hegemonic position in the world capitalist system from the end of 18th century till the early 20th century. In a certain sense, the rise of imperial history and global history means the return of the Ōtsuka school's perspective towards the world history, even though not exactly the same. The global history perspective today tries to deconstruct national boundaries and reconstruct them into trans-national history. Thus, the image of Britain is deviated from ‘the symbol of modernity’ and turns to diversity in the studies of social history and imperial history. The paper tries to draw attention to the recent developments as such in Japanese historiography now under way.