Herbert Bix | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1938 (age 87–88) Boston,Massachusetts, United States |
| Education | University of Massachusetts Amherst Harvard University (PhD) |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Notable work | Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (2001) |
Herbert P. Bix (born 1938)[1] is an American historian known for his scholarship and teaching on modernJapanese history andimperialism. His bookHirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, a biography of theJapanese Emperor, won thePulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2001, and was praised forrevisionist arguments over the emperor's role in theSecond Sino-Japanese War.
Bix was born in Boston and attended theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst as an undergraduate.[1] After serving in theUnited States Navy and served a tour of duty inJapan, he earned thePhD in History and Far Eastern Languages fromHarvard University during the American involvement in theVietnam War, and, along with classmates such asJohn Dower, was a founding member of theCommittee of Concerned Asian Scholars.[2][3]
For several decades, he has explored modern and contemporary Japanese history in the United States and Japan. He has taught at many universities, includingHosei University in Japan in the years 1986 through 1990,[4] andHitotsubashi University in 2001.[1] As of 2013, he became Professor Emeritus in History and Sociology atBinghamton University.[5]
The historical sociologistJack Goldstone wrote in the journalTheory and Society that "Marxist history can be a stultifying maze of definitions and faceless classes," but Bix'sPeasant Protest in Japan, 1590–1884 was "a superior Marxist history," that is, "a sensitive rendering of the actions of great masses of people, with attention to both the motives of exceptional individuals, and the context in which they act."[6]
His second book,Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan won the 2001Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction. The Committee said the work was a "groundbreaking Biography" of the Japanese emperorHirohito, who reigned in Japan from 1926 until his death in 1989. The Committee went on that, "supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents,Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage." Bix was especially commended for his research on the Emperor's role in theSecond Sino-Japanese War. Where a conventional view had seen the emperor as reluctant or passive, the Committee said Bix showed "Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority." Bix argues that the Emperor played a "strong decisive role" in all decisions, thatafter the war, when many called for abolition of the monarchy,General Douglas MacArthur justified its retention by "whitewashing" Hirohito's wartime role and used him as a "figurehead" to help convert Japan to a democracy.[7] The 2000 General Nonfiction award had gone toJohn Dower, Bix's Harvard graduate school classmate, for hisEmbracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, a study of theOccupation of Japan.[8]
Critics, however, found fault with certain aspects. George Akita, for instance, a professor at the University of Hawa'ii, in a talk to theAsiatic Society of Japan said that the emperor's personal writings were almost non-existent, so Bix went beyond the documentary record to "imagine what the emperor could have thought, said, or meant". He used "guilt by association" to link Hirohito to Japanese fascism, but did not use sources that would support other conclusions. Further, Bix did not understand that primary sources could be untrustworthy or themselves intended to evade the truth. Akita conceded that the emperor was formally in charge, but that in practice he was not able to say "no" when his subordinates had come to a decision.[9]
Akita and Bix had earlier clashed over the contributions ofE.H. Norman, the Canadian scholar and diplomat whose study,Japan's Emergence as a Modern State: Political Problems of the Meiji Period, saw the merchant class as helping to bring about theMeiji Restoration. Akita criticizedJohn Dower and others, for championng Norman, writing that his work was "based on hasty scholarship as well as on distoriation of sources.".[10] Bix replied that Akita's charges were "emotional, extremely hostile to and contemptuous of its subject," and charges are "unwarranted or false in nearly every instance." He felt that Akita's "real target" was "critics of modernization theory."[11] Akita went on to include Bix and John Dower in his study of modern Japan historiography, contending that their works "start with fixed premises and reach conclusions by deductions that a substantiated by the selective use of sources."[12]
In 2003, Bix reviewed a conference volume dealing with theNanjing Massacre[13] in which the sinologist-historianJoshua Fogel found what he said were errors and exaggerations. He remarked that the problem "only opens progressive people everywhere to assault by rightwing revisionists who trawl about waiting for errors of this sort as a means of dismissing entire arguments altogether."[14]
