In 1914, Nakeae Ushikichi (1889-1942), gifted son of the famous Nakae Chōmin (1847-1901) and graduate of Tokyo University's Faculty of Law, left behind the opportunities open to him in Japan and went to China. He worked briefly for the South Manchurian Railway and then in the Yüan Shih-k'ai government, but a personal crisis in 1919 turned him suddenly to a life of rigorous scholarship and social criticism. He spent most of his adult life in Peking, published little, deeply influenced a few key compatriots, and became a posthumous hero to a generation of postwar Japanese intellectuals.
In the first full-length study in English of the life and thought of Nakae Ushikichi, Joshua A. Fogel tells the strange story of this cocky, indolent carouser who became a disciplined scholar and passionate advocate of the worth of all humanity. Fogel examines Nakae's Sinological work in the context of his wide reading in German philosophy, Western historiography, and classical Chinese sources. He also translates Nakae's wartime diary.
Naito Konan's periodization of Chinese history is responsible for shaping the twentieth-century Western view of China. Naito was a journalist in the vibrant Meiji press for twenty years, during which he became recognized as Japan's leading Sinologist. He then assumed a chair in China Studies at Kyoto University, where he taught for twenty years, remaining all the while a prolific writer on public affairs. Joshua Fogel's biography treats Naito holistically, pointing up the intricate connections between his Sinological and political interests.
As a part of an ongoing tradition based in jitsugaku (concern with the practical applications of knowledge), Naito focused on what he took to be Japan's mission, after its own Meiji reforms, to help China implement comparable reforms. His emphasis on Chinese history and culture as the central influence in East Asia strengthened his Pan-Asian political convictions.
Fogel's study offers a penetrating look at a scholar-journalist whose influence, fifty years after his death, is still powerful.
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