Commonplace with Dr Christopher Harding, Broadcaster and Historian of Japan

Katie Marshall: Hi Chris, welcome to Common Place. It's lovely lovely tubby here.
Chris: Hello, yeah, thank you for having me on.
Katie Marshall: I think we'll discuss quite a few different aspects across your work in this podcast. So do you want to just introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your work?
Chris: yeah, so I'm Christopher Harding. I'm an Asian historian at the University of Edinburgh, mainly Japan, mainly modern Japan, but also a splash of India and colonialism in there as well. So I do a bit of both. And I suppose the most recent book I've done is a short history of Japan. That's the most recent one.
Katie Marshall: Great, thank you. Well, I was sort of explaining to you a bit before we went, sort of started recording that I normally sort of do early modern British history, but I did have a sort of a a jumped into Japanese history in my my Cambridge degree, so I was really excited to sort of learn about your work and that kind of outreach you're doing, especially for for people to understand this culture 'cause it is so different, isn't it, from what we understand in the West.
Chris: Do you know what i it is and at the same time so many people now seem to want to go there for a holiday. Almost everybody I know either wants to go or they've been or something. So it feels like it's picking up, doesn't it, interest in Japan.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So where did your interest specifically in in Japanese history come from?
Chris: you know, it's ages, it seems like ages ago now. It was ages ago, maybe about 30 years ago. I was into all sorts of different things, and they all ended up, or most of them all ended up coming from Japan once I realized what was what. So Nintendo back in the day, one of the really old kind of boxy consoles where you would stick a plastic cartridge in it, depending on how old your your viewers are. Some people will remember that. there was that, there was Zen. Buddhism, I was really interested in because I was brought up as a Catholic and it was quite a doctrine, you know, heavy way of getting at the world. And Zen, or the way I was presented with it, seemed to be this sort of sit down and shut up as the title of a book that I used to really like. Had it. It was kind of the polar opposite as a way of seeing the world. So I love that. some of the Japanese prints, Ukiyoe prints, you know, people like Hoksai, Great Wave, etc., I love that art. And then the last thing was I did a summer job while I was at university where we had Japanese university students who came over to the UK. Best job I ever had for a month. We taught them English, toured them around the UK, and then toured them around Europe. And they were honestly some of the loveliest people I'd ever met. You know, sweet, funny, sincere. And I thought, I just want to know more about the culture that shaped you. You know, where do you come from? and so all those things seemed to come together and pointed at Japan.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, how interesting. Yeah, it's been but I can sort of relate to that because a lot of things sort of popped up for me. I remember we did a tour of the the UL rare collection of books and we were shown sort of some of the first books that came to England via the Bishop of Ely who collected Japanese books and yeah, when I was younger I my brother used to sort of make covers of of Japanese sort of anime films for me and things. So there's that sort of yeah, it it's there with that and it if you pick up on it really, it's sort of quite fascinating, isn't it?
Chris: Wow, good for him.
Katie Marshall: So, 'cause I sort of mainly look at the early modern period, I thought it'd really interesting to have a direct comparison of a period in Japanese history called the Edo period, which I think sort of vaguely runs parallel, sort of between the sixteen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds. But I think what sets it apart is the fact that Japan's at peace and it's cut off from the rest of the world, isn't it, during this? So we see this real sort of rich time of cultural development. So do you want to tell us bit about why this is so significant in Japanese history?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I always think it's Interesting, and it you may have a view on this from a European point of view, but which periods of a country's history people tend to gravitate towards in terms of novels, plays, music, anything else. And for a lot of Japanese people, the Edo period, like you say, 1600-ish, all the way through to the middle of the 1800s, lots of people think that was kind of Japan's heyday. And it's quite revealing because it's sandwiched between two periods of interaction with the West. So for almost a hundred years before the early 1600s, there were Portuguese traders, Portuguese Spanish missionaries, etc., who caused a certain amount of trouble in Japan and Japan eventually booted them out and more or less closed its borders to the Western world. Only the Dutch, and we can maybe talk about why in a minute, were allowed to still trade with Japan. and then the second part, of course, is middle of the eighteen hundreds, again the modern West comes knocking Americans, French, British, Russians, etc., plunging Japan into this period where it has to modernize and westernize at the same time. And there are all kinds of dilemmas that come with that. You know, what does it mean to be Japanese in the modern world? So the Edo period in the middle is kind of relative peace and quiet, as far as some people sort of think about it, centered on what is now Tokyo, used to be called Edo, and it's this fairly s at the beginning of the period, it's this fairly small castle town. Even the castle isn't very good, you know, it's got like leaky roof and it's half built over a swamp. But it gets developed to the point where this city, maybe around seventeen hundred, has about a million people living in it. It's probably one of the biggest cities on earth, maybe rivaling somewhere like Paris, I think. And it becomes the center, maybe alongside Kyoto and Osaka, of a culture that people in Japan now really celebrate. So you've got kabuki theatre gets going, you've got geisha, tea ceremony, you've got this amazing development of woodblock art. So lots of people will know Hokusai, for example. But all sorts of other artists get going, and you can have a woodblock print for the price of a bowl of noodles. So you know you haven't got to be wealthy To get hold of this culture. And given how into anime and manga I think we all are now, that visual debt that we have now to the Edo era, I think is extraordinary. So for lots of people, I think that's that's beautiful in cultural terms. And you kind of hinted at, maybe I'll say one more thing, the political side, the fact that Japan is more or less at peace for the entire time, and you'll know much better than me. just how much that isn't the case in Europe, right? And the one thing that really reveals it for us historians of Japan is when the West comes knocking again in the middle of the 1850s, lots of samurai rush out to try and meet these American ships that have just come off kind of off the coast of Edo Bay. And lots of the samurai who are there are holding these muskets that back in Europe or the US would be in a museum or up in someone's attic because they haven't had much warfare. There hasn't been a need or an attempt to develop technology at all. So this is a a kind of peaceful culture and this lovely symbol of having been at peace that their weapons technology is kind of a couple of centuries behind everybody else in the Western world. So I think for those cultural and political reasons people absolutely love Edo.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, it's it's a fascinating period. As you say, it's so interesting that they also see it as a golden period, but for such different reasons to the West. I think that the golden period of sort of the early modern is seen because of that sort of colonial sort of outreach and and an and interest in abroad, but actually because Japan's interest in their golden period is because it's so insular and they're they're really shaping their own identity in that period, aren't they?
Chris: Yes. I think they are. And what's what's interesting is that some of the things that the West achieves in that early modern period. I'm thinking about perhaps the the birth of science, right, as as we as we know it now and and the early early moves in technology. When the Japanese became aware of that in the mid-19th century, you know, they didn't have something like steam technology, for example, until until the Americans turned up. Some people in Japan said, my goodness, we've wasted this time. Why is Europe and the United States so far ahead of us on these things? But other Other people said, you know, it's nice to have nice to have those inventions, but as one advisor said to the Japanese emperor of Europeans, he said their only values are fact gathering and technique. I.e. that they have, you know, warships advanced cannon, guns, etc. and they can manipulate the natural world in a way that we haven't learned to yet. But it's kind it sounds like a cliche, but this is what people were saying. It's kind of been done at the cost of their souls. You know, that they don't have that closeness to nature anymore, that intuitive connection with the world around them. You know, and weirdly, we talked about Zen Buddhism at the beginning. One of the reasons everyone's heard of Zen in the West, but they haven't heard of lots of other kinds of Japanese Buddhism. Is that in the early 19th century, sorry, the early 20th century, lots of or at least a handful anyway, of Japanese Zen Buddhists kind of marketed Zen to the West and said, look, you lot have achieved a huge amount, colonialism, science, tech, etc. At the same time, you're in need of a religion that really works for you, and you know, have this. And lots of Westerners, I think, kind of understood that, that they did feel a bit alienated actually from nature, and that for a while at least the fantasy was that the Japanese have maintained that connection and that we can learn. From them. I think that was a big part of the Western image of Japan in the late 19th, early 20th century.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, it's a it's seeing that sort of later on only that that price that both sides have paid for their different approaches to to modernisation, I suppose. Yeah. Hmm.
Chris: Yes, absolutely. There's it's more nuanced, there's more of a balance than we might perhaps have appreciated even as historians fifty years ago when we had a a sense of global history in terms of the rise of Europe and the dissemination of these great ideas around the world. As you say, the price that actually gets paid for that, it's worth holding on to, isn't it?
Katie Marshall: Do you think that we see something similar in Japan also in this period to what Linda Collie says, that it's the formation of British identity in this period, you know, because of religion, because of exploration of the world and all these small things that come together to form what it is to be a Briton. Do you think we see a similar thing, sort of maybe just as sort of the main honshoe island of what it means to be Japanese coming through in this period?
Chris: Yeah, I I think we really do. So The period just before Edo begins, so for about sort of twenty or thirty years, you had the climax of a civil war in Japan. And after it's finally unified, there is money and there is time and there's space to rebuild old temples, to look again at old Japanese texts, whether they are Buddhist or or Confucian or Shinto, you know, so Japan's indigenous religion, people start to go on pilgrimages to places like Mount Fuji, for example, arts and crafts. To get going again. Japan has a wonderfully networked society. So physical roads and waterways connecting different regions of Japan. So you'll get different food products, etc., from say northern Honshu or or far southwestern Honshu circulating. And in someone like Edo, you can go to a market and you'll be able to buy produce from all over the country. So I think in all those sorts of ways, plus there's storytelling, there's the publication of everything from fiction to cookery books to the kind of ukio. Ukiyoe prince we were talking about. In all those sorts of ways, yeah, there is the kind of breathing space for a culture to develop and and come together. And I think a lot of Japanese would look back and think that that's part of the value of that period. And it was quote unquote Japanese in quite an uncomplicated way, as far as they were concerned. We don't have to think, but what about this American influence or what about this kind of British fashion? Or they used that after that they got worried about American pop culture, songs and films infecting Japan. None of this was going on. So I think for kind of cultural purists in Japan, yeah, that's one of the reasons they enjoy Edo in retrospect.
Katie Marshall: Yes, 'cause they're sort of so physically, as well as mentally closed off from the rest of the world so you can't really accuse anything of coming in and yeah.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. For people who dream of tightly conclosed the tightly enclosed borders, I think Edo was probably as close as you get to the fantasy. You know, there's very little other than the Dutch a tiny bit of trade, but they weren't really allowed to go anywhere in Japan. China and Korea limited trade. But other than that, yeah, more or less closed. Hmm.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, so so interesting. if we'd like to just look at a couple of sort of cultural sort of figures and groups in Japan that I think people have an imagined sort of conception in their mind of and maybe we can do a bit of fact checking there. but I think the f the first one I think people have this very strong image in their mind of the red the red lip, the pale skin, the silk kimonos of the the geisha. so
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yes.
Katie Marshall: I and I was really interested to learn that sort of linguistically the term actually means sort of art person or person of sort of a accomplishment. So, could you talk a little bit about the significance of this tradition and who were they and what role did they play?
Chris: Yes, yes. So I think they're significant in ways that maybe we don't always appreciate, but it's hinted at exactly in that that little translation of what they do. I think what perhaps happened was after the Second World War, when Japan was occupied by mainly by the United States, the Allies generally, but principally the United States, The image of the geisha kind of got mixed up with old style courtesans, also with sex workers, and obviously fetishized as well, I think, in a way that everyone probably, you know, kind of realizes now. whereas originally, and particularly in the Edo period, the geisha were women who were talented in all kinds of ways. So they would be able to play an instrument like the Shamisen really well. They would many of them be able to do a really good tea ceremony, they would be able Able to engage in educated and witty repartee with their clients. And depending on how good you were at all that, there'd be this enormous hierarchy. So, you know, towards the bottom of the geisha hierarchy, it might be girls whose families had sold them into it because they couldn't make ends meet, and girls weren't sufficiently economically productive. You know, the best thing you could do was probably reluctantly, but nevertheless, sell them off to one of these geisha houses. but the higher-up ones could become extraordinary. Extraordinarily powerful, and access to them in what we're called the pleasure quarters of a place like Edo or Osaka was really tightly controlled. And men would get really nervous about hanging out with a geisha. So, you know, we were talking about that publication boom earlier on. one of the things you could buy, say you were a kind of young samurai, maybe not terribly well educated, but a little bit young and naive, you could buy a book that would give you a guide to how to speak to a geisha, how to go to a geisha party and not completely. embarrass yourself. So you get the kind of sense of the kind of gender power dynamic to some degree there. Maybe the other thing I'd say just briefly about them so as not to overly romanticize them is that the way the geisha houses worked, for quite a few of these women, they were on fairly tight contracts. The extent of their independence probably shouldn't be overstated. it could be quite a sort of a grim and limiting position to be in. But I would definitely want to send people away with the image of a woman who was probably amongst amongst the great artists of her time across a range of instruments. A friend of mine, Leslie Downer, who's written a lot about women in Japanese history, she the way she puts it, which I find really helpful, if the These if these women were whatever art form they were in, they were kind of off the level of the Bolshoi Ballet or the or the Royal the Royal Opera House, whichever particular thing they did, they were right up there at the top of it, hugely trained and hugely in demand, and a million miles away from some of the kind of grim and fetishized imagery that sometimes does the rounds.
Katie Marshall: Mm. Definitely, yeah. I think people have this image of them being sort of covent garden esque in their sort of existence. But yeah, it's it's really interesting the fact that they were so accomplished in and you know, rhetoric and almost like making the person they're with feel like the most important person while they're with them. I suppose that that was the maybe what people gain from it.
Chris: Mm. That's yeah. Yeah, I think I think that's a really lovely way of putting it. Yes, exactly. Make you feel like you're the only person in the room. You're the only person who matters. And you can see why often it would be merchants treating a really important client to a party like that. Soften them up with a geisha party, make them feel exactly, you know, as you just said, and then close the deal later. It makes makes a great deal of sense, doesn't it?
Katie Marshall: Yes. It's so interesting that i it was only in seventeen eighty that women began to sort of dominate this profession. Well wasn't it primarily men before that?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And as a funny sort of parallel there as well with something like kabuki theatre in Japan, that early on, it was almost the other way around, a lot of the early kabuki artists were women. But because in the case of kabuki there was a powerful element, I think, of romantic sexual attraction between people who go and watch the theatre and people performing on stage, to the point where some of the women performing on stage would sort of offer if you like, kind of services after the performance and the kind of chaos that that could lead to, with kind of jealousy and rivalries, etcetera. So women end up not being allowed to do kabuki and it becomes all about men doing it, in including these famous men who would specialise in playing women's part. And then yeah, geisha the other way around. You've got men do it and then of course women are now by far and away more famously associated, aren't they, with that?
Katie Marshall: So they almost professionalized a a sort of issue that that was that was was being made there
Chris: I think so. And th they were definitely some of the big celebrities. You know, kabuki artists, geisha, sumo wrestlers, these are the sorts of people who if you had the money in Edo or at one of the other big cities in Japan in this time, you could buy yourself a a picture of, a wood block print of and sort of have it up at home somewhere, that very special person. So it's kind of the birth of celebrity culture in Japan, I think.
Katie Marshall: Yes, yeah, many ways, yeah. I think that it's sort of an another equivalent of this sort of celebrity in Western imagination is the samurai. we'd imagine sort of the honour and the dress and the especially the swords and the martial arts skills. But could you talk a bit about sort of who they were as as people and what they represent past that sort of image? 'Cause I think that they were quite almost like an intellectual class, weren't they, as well? so what what was expected of them?
Chris: Yes. Yeah. I think an intellectual class is quite a nice way putting it actually. So they they sort of started out as bodyguards. This we're thinking back in the 10th, 11th centuries. So in that period, you know, Japan is more or less ruled by the Emperor in Kyoto and this aristocracy around him in a kind of yeah, in a kind of court environment that maybe wouldn't have been hugely foreign to some European courts of that time, or maybe at least sort of three or four centuries later. and some of these aristocrats had enemies, so they would employ samuraies, these kind of arms. Armed trained men to look after them. But what's fascinating in Japan is that from the late 12th century, for hundreds of years, the samurai actually displaced the aristocrats as the people who are really running Japan. You know, famously you have shoguns on and off in this period. But the samurai were always, I think, conscious of The idea that the aristocrats might be more educated and more refined and more sophisticated than they were. So they were sort of social climbers at the beginning. They'd make all this effort to understand art and poetry and, you know, know theatre, that masked theatre in Japan, and all these other kind of high points of culture, so that they would be the equals of the aristocrats on these things. And I think the ethos was always, certainly in the Edo period, that to be a true samurai. You need to master the pen and the sword, meaning that you know, you need to be trained in the martial arts, but also you need to be able to paint, understand the Buddhist sutras, all these sorts of things. The only thing I would say is a kind of caution to readers is what we think about the samurai now partly comes from these warrior codes that were written about how a true samurai should behave, how a you a samurai boy might get brought up. But there were also standards for samurai women as well. But lots of these got written in the Edo period. And disseminated in the Edo period, which is, as we've been saying, a period of peace, right? While Japan was actually at war in the previous decades, you wouldn't have seen much by way of samurai values. You know, on the battlefield Any tactic would do. At the end of it, you would take your enemy's head off and kind of tie it to your horse and ride off with it, maybe even a whole kind of bunch of heads, take them off somewhere, have them counted and work out who was who out of who you'd killed so that you get your just rewards. Sometimes you cut noses off rather than heads off. So, yes, the samurai have this amazingly refined reputation, particularly from the Edo period onwards, but at the same time, their roots are also quite bloody. I think that's what makes. so fascinating actually is that they're both. You can be both at the same time, which I think sometimes I don't know what you think. Now and again we tend to think it must be one or the other. I suppose you have chivalry don't you in the European tradition? Is that both about blood and sophistication?
Katie Marshall: Yeah, I'd say I'd say so. I think it's also been romanticized obviously in in literature and Chaucer and that sort of thing. But it yeah, it's really interesting to hear that that I you think, you know, first you think, is it decorative defence? Did they not really do very much? You know, was it all about looking like you could defend? But it obviously they had a a real brutality to them as well that sort of probably throws out the window any sort of idea of of chivalry and and sort of polite ways of doing things, doesn't it?
Chris: Yes. yeah. Abs I I think that especially in the Civil War period so the last part of the sixteenth century. I also find it useful because you can you can learn a lot from Japan about sort of elsewhere in the world and it always makes me think about Japan That it well, I think we're gonna come onto this later when we get to the modern era, but it like it like a lot of other countries, it passes in and out of periods of desperation and brutality, and the way that a culture can end up celebrating or at least justifying certain levels of violence as kind of natural. whereas in a later period the same society would regard that with complete horror. Japan's an interesting case study, I think, in moving in and out of finding violence to be natural and even praiseworthy. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. There's always that ideal I think that if you know, they'd always want to come back to of of keeping that sort of well, that's always spirituality and keeping, you know, poetry, calligraphy, all of their arts really alive through everything that they do at all parts of society. I've sort of gauged from from even in you know, in a sort of warrior class as well, which is quite unusual.
Chris: think yeah I think you can the my favourite example of how you can actually do both was probably Japan's mo Japan's most famous samurai. Actually in Japanese polls Japan's Japanese people's favourite historical figure, Oda Nobunaga, who was around in sort of most of the second half of the 1500s, working to try and get over the civil war, trying to unify the country. Before one famous battle, which he won against all the odds, he himself actually danced a few steps from a play from Noah Theatre for the amusement So the fact that you can do that and then more or less minutes later be in the thick of a battle, I think is it tells you something about how samurai could genuinely blend both, I suppose.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. It's true sort of the duality of the entire culture almost, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: So talking of of duality, I suppose, should we get on to sort of talking about Japanese religion a bit? 'cause there's this really interesting concept. You talked about how different it is from Catholicism, but there's this idea almost I've heard it called religious double glazing of you've got the indigenous Shinto, which is, you know, doesn't rely on text, it's very naturalistic and always, I suppose, from our point of view, pagan in its worship of of natural spirits and things. but then you've got the
Chris: Mm. Mm. Yeah. Mm, mm.
Katie Marshall: Buddhist religion which is inherited from China and we have completely different belief systems, but somehow they find a way to to blend them both together and to use ideas from both sides. So could you talk a little bit about this this really unique blend
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a It's a remarkable achievement, I think, in Japan. And funnily enough, you know, we were saying a moment ago the Edo period is sandwiched between these two periods of encounter with the West. I suppose in the earlier period, made famous by the novel Silence made into a Martin Scorsese film about these European Jesuits in Japan. One of the things that Europeans found remarkable about the Japanese is how they did go in for that kind of syncretism. And the other way around, of course, the Japanese felt that the Jesuits, or indeed any religion that claims exclusivism. That requires it from its adherents has something potentially dangerous and cultish about it. So these this first meeting of of of Westerners with Japanese founded, got into trouble largely on the very question I think that you were asking. So how do they achieve it in Japan? At the beginning, when Buddhism came in, as you say, from India via China and also via Korea, I suppose, at first people did worry. They thought, well, we're talking about sort of the sixth, seventh centuries here. They thought that perhaps the indigenous gods in Japan would not like it, would be worried. You know, you've got these migrants coming in to take their jobs essentially. And now and again, when you'd have a natural disaster of some kind, you'd find people taking a Buddhist statue and throwing it into the river as a way of saying sorry, you know, to the Shinto deities. But over time they developed, it feels like quite a simple idea, but quite a very useful one, which is Shinto deities and Buddhist deities were essentially the same entities, showing different faces. And in some cases, they would actually go to all the trouble of saying this or that particular Shinto deity and Buddhist deity are one and the same. and so then there was no need to worry. And for many, many centuries, really I think until the nineteenth century, a lot of sacred places in Japan would have combined a Buddhist temple with a Shinto shrine. They would literally share the same plot of land. And lots of people, if you'd asked them, wouldn't have been able to tell you what really was the difference between Buddhism and Shinto. So I think it was remarkably successful. And the other reason I think it was probably quite successful is they do slightly different things. Broadly speaking, Shinto is a religion of life. So they imagine a life force sort of coursing through the landscape. People who are fans of Studio Ghibli anime, something like Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away, draws on Shinto in a huge way. That you have life forces going through the landscape in mountains, waterfalls, etc., and occasionally having personalities as well as being this kind of pure force. Buddhism, on the other hand, has a lot more to say about death and the afterlife. It has a lot to say about morality, you know, karma, the importance of compassion. So the two traditions really seem to contribute quite a lot. They actually complemented one another really well. And the Buddhists in Japan always said it's our job to look after the security of Japan. You know, you were talking about spiritual double glazing. That works for the individual. For a lot of people in Japan it also worked for the state. So if you've got an emperor communing with the the gods, the Shinto gods, and you've got all these Buddhist temples performing prayers, chanting sutra readings, also for the good of the state, then you know Japan is is doubly protected. So I think it did really it did really well. And then I suppose really briefly we should throw in Confucianism, Chinese Confucianism, perhaps Perhaps not a religion in the way that some people would say, but certainly an ethical system. That in the Edo period that we're talking about was absolutely at the foundation of how people should behave. And I suppose it really comes down to the sense that there are all sorts of different relationships in society, but in most of them there will be a superior party and an inferior party. So you might have a father and his child, a husband and his wife, a boss and their employee, ruler and ruled, and that in one direction downwards as it were goes authority. and in the other direction should go a a sense of duty. So this kind of binds people together. But if you're on the lower end of that, you are owed a kind of benevolence by the people in power. So it's not a an ethic of complete submission, but if people are treating you badly as a peasant in the Edo era, I wonder what the Christian justification might be in the early modern period, but from a Japanese point of view, if your local landowner is being unreasonable, You've a bad harvest and he's asking for too much tax, you'd be within your rights to rebel against him. You know, to literally take up arms against him because he's failed in his duty of of benevolence. So you have that kind of three way syncretism which seems to have worked really well for a couple of centuries in Japan. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: interesting also that y you know, in the West we're during that sort of the equivalent of the Edo period, we're sort of squabbling over the smallest thing like where the communion table is put and people go to war over, you know, the difference between Catholics and Protestants and but there was never that idea that you could you could blend the two, you know, so easily without any friction at all. It's quite so interesting, yeah.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I I think that that syncretism, my sense is that it it appeals to a modern sensibility. I think a lot of Westerners have gone either literally or sort of in their reading to somewhere like Japan or somewhere like India and they found this idea that you know, the world or the cosmos is bigger than probably any single religion could properly encompass. But to be honest, you know, some of the some of the best sorts of Christian theology always acknowledge that, that any kind of writing about God is gesturing at something. It's not really trying to completely encompass something in human language or thought. So there's a risk of us or me anyway being unfair probably about European Christianity. But but in Japan that sense of it's all beyond us and if these gods can at at all help us out then the more the merrier. That's that's quite an attractive approach, I think, isn't it?
Katie Marshall: Multiple ways. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, and as you say that that idea of the Shinto religion especially has such a a a long sort of afterlife in the the Hayao Miyazaki films and you know, so you see that don't you in spirited away and nature being really alive and and interactive with the people. Yeah, it's so magical. Yeah.
Chris: Yes. Yeah, which I really I I love that. I love that element of it. I think it's popular in Japan. They've been quite mostly they've been quite good as a for their eco movement, their environmental their environmentalist movement, so the idea of I suppose we have it in Christianity with the idea of creation. That's our responsibility as well as under our control. but in Shinto it's an amazing resource for environmentalists.
Katie Marshall: Yes, yeah, definitely. So shall we just go back to sort of poetry in Japanese culture? 'Cause it seems to come up a lot in different areas. So could you just describe a few of the forms that it takes and how it's evolved over time?
Chris: Yeah. Mm. Yeah, so this is one of I think quite a few areas where Japan owes a lot to China. Other areas briefly before we get to poetry, things like food, architecture, the law, fashion, some proto-scientific techniques for sort of metalworking, etc., although Korea has been really important as well. So, you know, Japan, China, and Korea have for most of the last thousand years or more, have been, if not quite a single cultural unit, then at least very, very close. And so poetry is definitely one of those things that is there under the influence of China. So some of Japan's first poets would be working in Chinese or with inherited Chinese forms. And in terms of themes for early Japanese poetry, and we're thinking about maybe 9th, 10th century, so really a very long time ago, sort of on the cusp of the samurai coming to power, but not quite, when it's more of an aristocratic culture. Big themes were nature, I think. That's huge in Japanese poetry. This Japan, depending on what which part you live in, it has really distinct seasons, both in terms of what happens in the climate, what sorts of foods are available, what kind of wildlife is going to be around and about, what kind of flora you might see. So the shifting of the seasons is a real poetic inspiration. But it also goes into what I think the Japanese would say is a particularly Japanese cultural value. which perhaps differentiates it from China. Some in Japan would want to argue this, called mono no aware, which means a sense of the pathos at things passing away. So nature is great if you want to get this sense of any particular precious moment or person in life being transient. Here today, gone tomorrow. You know, we have the same kind of thing, I think, in our own culture. Classic one in Japan is probably the cherry blossoms, which everyone's gonna know, you know, they flower in March or April. amazing for a few days and then they're on the ground being trampled, then they rot and disappear. capturing that sense of things passing away in nature, both for its own sake and as a metaphor for life, for loved ones. I think there's quite a Buddhist sensibility in there. Buddhism is all about things being transient, nothing being permanent or having its own independent existence. So I think Japanese poetry's gone quite large on that. There's romantic poetry for sure. In the Edo Era, you get a couple of particular interesting forms of poetry really briefly. One is what they call linked verse poetry. And I love this idea. I've never had, I've never been to a linked verse party, I'd love to get invited to one, where you sort of sit around with your friends and you have a few drinks, and someone will start things off and they will offer a few lines of poetry. Then the person who's next has to pick up where they've left off and carry on the theme, and you go round and round and round, ad-libbing this wonderful poetry. So that's linked verse poetry. Which is great. And then the one ever, interesting. So there are parallels, right, in in European tradition?
Katie Marshall: Sounds quite Homeric. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's that you know how they like it's sort of in sort of oral culture. a lot of poetry, I mean the Odyssey's very current now, isn't it? That probably would have been changed and shared with people and people adding to it. Was Homer an actual person or was he a sort of concept of several people adding to this epic poem? Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Yes. It gets you into really interesting questions, doesn't it? We're gonna go and see that film in the next few days. Quite looking forward to seeing what they've done with it. it's lovely to hear that there's that parallel. That makes sense, doesn't it? and I suppose there are things, you know, going on now in in in music. I suppose American rap, I don't know whether they do it anymore, but they used to have these rap battles where you basically constantly have a go at each other, adlibbing it. So that kind of tradition's alive and well, I suppose. and the other one in in Japan in the Edo period was haiku. Which I suppose everybody's heard of. And I don't really need to say much about Haiku because everyone knows what it is, but one of the things maybe worth pointing out about it that from people in Japan's point of view anyway, is there is A slight sense that Europeans, perhaps British people, Americans in particular, I don't know, but Westerners in general, some people would say, are unnecessarily verbose sometimes. They say too much. And when someone says too much or they're really good at speaking, you think, I'm not sure whether I believe you or not. Are you a kind of salesperson? So my wife is from Okayama in Japan and now and again if I'm talking too much she gets a sense I'm trying to persuade her of something and that I'm hiding something, you know.
Katie Marshall: Fasting too much.
Chris: So yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. one of the examples people sometimes give in Japan, doing it for decades, is Even something fairly simple, like the expression I love you in English, they would say, Well, if you really love someone, you'll do something for them, or you will notice something, whatever. Simply saying it can be lazy or an excuse or trying to get yourself out of a hole or something. and the beauty of haiku is that it is brief and it gestures and it allows you space as the as the appreciator of that poem to do lots of the work yourself. rather than kind of hammering you with the imagery or going on and on, circling around and around something. So I think haiku is quite important as part of its tradition. Maybe the one last thing I'll add really quickly just for a minute, the final, there are all sorts of others, but one other element of poetry for modern Japan, because I know we're going to get there in a minute, is protest poetry. 'Cause y you know, we ha some of us have an image of of modern Japan as being quite a consensus society, perhaps where people know their place and they have to behave themselves, etc., etcetera. actually Japan had quite an important protest poetry tradition. Things like the Russo-Japanese War early in the twentieth century. There's a wonderful poem called Brother something like Brother, do not give your life. a really famous female poet whose brother was off fighting in the war she wrote this poem that later got turned into a song, controversially saying things like The Emperor's not gonna go and fight, so why should you, you know, and give your life for this pointless conflict? So yes, the nature and the romance is great, but Japan does also do politics, I suppose, is what I want to get across.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Yeah, that's so interesting hearing poetry's such an active thing for the Japanese. I mean, you know, from from love is a verb to to sitting round and making poetry something that's, you know, collaborative and active. It's not just one poet and, you know, Will you all listen to my poem? It's it sounds, you know, like it all comes full circle like that. It's lovely.
Chris: Yeah, and it's part of at least a thousand years ago, probably the one Piece of writing everyone's heard of from Japan, The Tale of Genji, a Thousand Years Old, as this insight into aristocratic life. If you wanted to get anywhere in your romantic endeavours, whether as a man or a woman, to be able to craft a wonderful poem and to then write it on beautifully scented paper with gorgeous handwriting and pass poems between each other, that was kind of an essential life skill for a young person in Japan. I'm not quite sure that's how relationships are formed in the 21st century in Japan. But it's kind of lovely, isn't it, that that was once how people got things done.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean you just mentioned it here, but can we touch sort of briefly on on the tale of Genji? 'cause it is it's compared almost to to the works of Shakespeare and how, you know, influential it is, even though it's written six centuries before. So what do we know about the the tale of Genji and also about Murozaki Shikibu because it was written by a woman, wasn't it? So what do we know about her?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, so written around the year one thousand, we think. as you say, Morisaki Shikabu, she was a lady in waiting at the Imperial Court in Kyoto. So she seems to have been someone who really had a sometimes a sympathetic, sometimes quite a satirical eye on what life was like, how people dressed, how they treated one another, sort of what they aspired to. It's this some people think about it as maybe the world's first psychological novel. And her protagonist, for people who haven't read it, there won't be any spoilers, Prince Genji, the Shining Prince, it's about his sort of rise, his love life, how he sees the world, what happens to him in later life. You know, you have that sense we were talking earlier on about everything passing away. So covering him aging and to some extent losing his power. is part of the pathos, I think, of that book. My tip would be for anyone who reads it It's long. I enjoyed it. It's I didn't find it a page turner, but I really did enjoy reading it. My tip for reading it would be read it alongside the other book, sort was a diary, which Murasaki Shikibubi wrote. she wrote a basically a diary of her life as a lady in waiting. So you get this direct nonfiction critical sense of what life was like at the Japanese court. And then you read the tale of Genji sort of with that in mind. I think it it helps you understand That world and appreciate that world that she's talking about. I suppose the other brief thing people say which might be of interest about the tale of Genji is we don't know how it was potentially supposed to end. So there's a never-ending controversy of whether the final chapters were actually written by Murasaki Shikabu or not. And how it seems to end rather abruptly. I won't say more in case people want to read it. But there's a sense of mystery around where that story I think was supposed to go. But I think Even people only get as far as sort of halfway through, you get this flavor of life at court, including what we were just talking about, you know, the use of poetry, how refined romance could be. I suppose how people felt, you know, as a historian, documents or books or whatever it is that gives us a a direct insight to people's emotional patterns, especially from a thousand years ago. They're so precious to have though, so definitely worth a little look if people have time.
Katie Marshall: Absolutely, and that tip to to to looking at sort of her memoir, I suppose, alongside's really great because it is all about, you know, getting access to private scenes and seeing it as a historical document as well as a a novel we can enjoy, isn't it? 'Cause it has more than four hundred characters or something, doesn't it? So you really get a broad spectrum of c culture there. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd really love to sort of chat quickly of about sort of
Chris: Yes. You do. It's quite hard to keep track of who's who in that book, but it's well worth at least dipping into for sure. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: the more modern aspects of of Japanese culture and maybe how these ideas we've talked about feed into that. I think since the Second World War there's been quite a a history problem with with how to present Japanese history and rewriting it, especially sort of in the eighties and onwards. so you you've got kind of this dual legacy, I think, since the Second World War of of the aggression of of the Japanese with with, you know, labour camps
Chris: Mm. Yeah. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: But you've also got the sort of victimization that's sort of unprecedented with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So I'd be really interested 'cause I know that you've also touched on Japanese psychology. So what do you think the role of this sort of generational collective memory has played in the formation of of Japanese identity?
Chris: Yeah. That's a great question. I mean that's probably kind of a an hour's conversation in its own right, but we can we can boil it down a little bit. I think the connection actually briefly with the Edo period is quite quick to make and people might find it useful. You know, we were saying a lot of Japanese remember the Edo period as this uncomplicated period of relative isolation. The flip side of that is things get complicated, right, in the middle of the 19th century onwards. And what's remarkable is at the Tokyo war crimes trials after the war ended in the summer of 1945, when they were starting to put that together and get witnesses on the stand, one of them, or even a couple of them, I think, referred back to this era, the mid 19th century, as being the start point of the Second World War. Because the panel, you know, it's panel of judges drawn from the victorious countries from that conflict. It mirrored the Nuremberg process. And they wanted to start the trials around the I think the early mid-1920s, because that's when they thought the militarist plots in Japan began that led to the war with China and then with the rest of much of the rest of the world. But they said no, actually if you go back to the mid-19th century, you get the Opium Wars, you get British and other European colonial interference in East Asia, and In the shadow of that, Japan was struggling to modify itself, to secure itself, to make sure it could survive in quite a rough neighborhood. And that rough neighborhood was partly the product of modern imperialism, whether it's power or trading relationships or the world economy that Japan was forced to become a part of. So they wanted to trace it back that far. I'm not saying at all that you can justify the events of the mid-20th century on that basis. But it's interesting that many in Japan made that link and thought that they could to some extent excuse what had happened in Japan on that basis. So I think from the Japanese point of view, for many anyway, there isn't a single Japanese point of view, but for people who would want to take a sympathetic view of what happened, they would say Japan was struggling under all sorts of different sorts of different kinds of Western pressure, latterly American pressure in particular. I think that's how they would put it. I think another view in Japan Is that probably from the late 19th century until about perhaps the mid-1920s, Japan was building actually quite an effective democracy. It wasn't perfect, still had the emperor at its head, who had ultimate ultimate power. But nevertheless, it was doing okay. And then it goes through, not dissimilar to somewhere like Germany, it goes through a phase of militarism, authoritarianism, and in particular the Imperial Japanese Army, once these wars begin on the Chinese mainland and elsewhere. It becomes very dirty and very grim. and there are plenty of people in Japan who wouldn't try and, you know, sort of sweep that under the carpet. I think where the difficulty is for people in Japan in the decades since, you know, thinking about memory is when does apology and the taking of responsibility reach its natural conclusion. When does it become enough for people in China, Korea and elsewhere? So some in Japan would say, look, Prime Ministers, Emperors, etc., we have apologized. We have acknowledged whether it's the Second World War or even before then, the period of colonialism in Korea, for example, we have apologized for that. The difficulty is in Japan, whenever someone apologizes, you know, someone in the government apologizes, there will be other politicians who'll go to a newspaper and say, yeah, but I don't think this particular Devastating battle was really as bad as people say, or the so-called comfort women of the sexual enslavement of Korean, Chinese and other women. I don't think it really happened, or it wasn't quite like these other people claim. I think what they're partly doing there, partly they're trying to ignore history, but I think they're also wanting to say Japan needs. To be given the chance to reinvent itself, to begin again properly after the end of that conflict, and not constantly be judged on the basis of what happened in the 1930s and the 1940s. They suspect that whenever a Korean politician is in trouble for popularity at home, or perhaps the same in China, that's a really easy stick you can pick up and beat Japan with, and everyone back at home in Korea and China says, hooray, we all hate the Japanese. They I think they object to that being done. Done as regularly as it is. So it's difficult. I think for me, those are the two sides of it. Maybe the last thing I'd say from my own experience of being in Japan on and off for a long time is that even now they're very difficult conversations to have. I don't know what the parallel might be like in Germany, who about which most people say it's history, there's been a more successful process of atonement and reflection compared with Japan. I don't know enough about Germany to say. For sure. But if you go to Japan now, yes, I've only ever got into those conversations with people in Japan after quite a few drinks, when people start to relax, and they'll tell you what they feel, and we'll all agree that in that period it was pretty grim on all sides and might get into the details a bit. But I had a teacher who taught in Japanese high school, and he would say when they do world history or even Japanese history in particular, he would always slow the progress of the teaching, the curriculum, so that by the time you got to the 1930s, when these controversial special episodes begin, you'd have reached the end of the school year and you didn't have to teach it. So I think it's still fairly touchy now in Japan and that would be my take on how the two sides feel.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, I think it's so difficult for us to to understand. You can you can really understand why there's that lack of consensus. And I think it becomes from sort of how unprecedented the situation was for Japan. I mean I mean you see that sort of physical manifestation in the evolution of of the Hiroshima Peace Park, don't you? Because you've got the strong first of all messages of peace with the sort of you know, the the memorial to Sudeiko, you the child who's sort of this Anne Frank figure, isn't she, of of the victimization, and then over time you get this more sort of reluctant recognition of, you know, the atrocity.
Chris: Yeah.
Katie Marshall: of the Japanese, including the movement of the Korean memorial only in sort of the late nineteen nineties into the park itself. So it's really s it's something that's really sort of changed so much and quite slowly over time.
Chris: Yes. I th I think it has. And I think early on the Americans in particular during the occupation, they wanted any recollection in Japanese writing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or one or the other, to always include something about what the Japanese had done during the war. So one particular book they made the Japanese publisher include something about the sacking of Manila, which is a very violent episode involving the Imperial Japanese Army in Manila, as though you've got to have kind of a balancing out like that. Whereas I think most historians now we don't sort of think in those terms. And to their credit, I don't know what you think as someone who studied the Hiroshima moral When I first went there, and I was there again last year, I was struck by the relative lack of indictment of the Americans for the use of that weapon. They seem to include or think about atomic weapons in the abstract as something that by whomever should never be used, ideally never even developed or tested. But was that your yeah, was that your take, or is it maybe a bit more nuanced?
Katie Marshall: Universal. Yeah. Yeah. I think there was definitely a sort of universalization of it over time. It was seen as a a sort of an example to the world really of what shouldn't be done to to humanity, really, hasn't it? But I think you see that as as well in the the speech that was made by the Emperor at this sort of the surrender. He said that I you know, I'm surrendering because it's to save humanity, didn't he? Not just the Japanese. But yeah.
Chris: Yes. Yes. Yeah, yes, exactly. And that that's actually on that, just quickly, I've just been reviewing a book that's coming out, people might be interested in, called Hiroshima eight fifteen. It's a a memoir of someone who was in Hiroshima at the time, which has been lost in an archive for many decades. and it's coming out, I think, in August, if people are interested. Well worth a look to give you a a fresh and and quite horrifying sense of of what that was like.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, of course the anniversary, who you heard, you know, the voices of of survivors are so lucky to to record that, aren't we? Of you know, if you you forget when you're you're studying it as history how how how it's affected people throughout their lives.
Chris: Yes. And they're running out, aren't they, of of survivors. They have I forget what they're calling, is it the children of Hiroshima or something? Where they're trying to get the next generation, aren't they, to be advocates? Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Yes, yeah. So I sort of mentioned the Emperor, but could you c talk sort of briefly about Japan sort of can claim to have the longest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, which I think is something that we forget in the West, don't we? So could you talk a bit about what role the Emperor has played through history and how that's shifting right now?
Chris: Mm. Mm. Yeah, so I think for people who are still deeply in favor of Japan's monarchy, the Emperor is almost I suppose the most extreme position, which I find really romantic, is the Emperor is the source of Japan. The Imperial Family is the source of Japan. So in Japanese Mythology, you know, the emperor, the imperial family is descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu. They have not just ruled Japan but constantly nourished Japan, you know, down the centuries. So that would be, I think, the the the most extreme and I think rather romantic view of it. I suppose in practice this imperial family, almost always based in Kyoto, really up until the modern period, have been ruling Japan in concert with their aristocrats, probably up until about the late twelfth century. And then after that, taking nothing away from them, but they've really suffered long centuries of being almost political puppets. So their real role is to perform rituals for the good of the nation. They've been poets, been great poets, some of the emperors, serving in that ritual way, of often in a fairly secluded sense. And anyone who wants to take power in Japan, you know, an up and coming warlord or in the modern era civilian politicians have to somehow lean on the mystique of the imperial family for their legitimacy. You know, even the word shogun people Some people perhaps know means something or the original longer word means something like barbarian crushing generalissimo. The idea that the shogun their role, his role is to take care of business, the grubby business of politics, while the emperor takes care of ritual, poetry, looking after the country in that more sort of sophisticated and sedate way, not worrying the emperor with these sort of day-to-day business of politics. So I think even built into a title like Shogun is the sense that the Emperor or the Imperial family sort of stands above everything. And I just think it's in the last few decades that that's becoming a little bit endangered, not unlike somewhere in the UK and I suppose other parts of Europe. Younger people wondering what the monarchy is actually four. I think that's the challenge Japan is facing.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, definitely. And you talked a bit about the the Western influence and the fear that this is going to disrupt, you know, centuries of Japanese tradition. I think one of the the main debates that sort of flared up in the in the past week actually is is whether they can have a female emperor. So could could you sort of talk a bit about what it is in Japanese culture that makes people so opposed to this idea?
Chris: Mm. I think advocates for not having I mean it should be said they've had eight female emperors in the past, so there's a kind of precedent there and people who are in favour will point to those precedents. I think the argument in favour of not having any more, people would say it's about tradition, that for the most part this has always been this way. It goes right back to quite old ideas about bodily purity and how some of the rituals that an emperor needs to perform couldn't be performed by a woman or ideally wouldn't be. Then there were Confucian ideas about the natural role of men versus women. Even in the modern era, for the first few decades of modern Japan, women were considered to be legally incompetent, couldn't become politicians, etc. So it seemed to people to sit awkwardly that you could have a woman, as it were, with the very top job. Whereas in the rest of society you had quite a gendered approach, you know, to who naturally ought to be doing what. So I think all those, for all those reasons, it sat awkwardly. I think the thing. That people worry about most now is if you have a female emperor, then what happens if that female emperor were to be married to a commoner and then they had children? The child would only become emperor on the basis of matrilineal descent, right? Descent through the mother rather than descent through the father. And the argument is made that for 1500 years, at least some people would say more, descent has always been through the male bloodline. There are one or two instances where it looks like it's come through the mother, but in fact it was the mother and the father who both had imperial blood. But say, for example, the daughter. Of the current emperor and empress, Princess Aiko, really popular figure in Japan. She works for the Red Cross, she's been abroad, people love her. They think if she can represent Japan for the Red Cross abroad, why can't she represent Japan as as as a female emperor? But if she were to marry a commoner and have children, that would be potentially the end of 1500 years of kind of passing it down that way. So I think that's the real that's the real sticking point, and it's part of a bigger sense in Japan of Of The worry about westernizing Japan's traditions, because lots of other European monarchies have moved to something which looks a bit more equal. but why should Japan do that under Western pressure? And is it all part of this steady loss of what makes Japan special? I think people worry about that. And Japanese politics tends to be quite conservative for the last 70 odd years. And so, although ordinary Japanese people, by far on away, would like a female emperor, the kind of center ground, as it were, of Japanese politics is still, I think, quite. Reluctant to make that move. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Sort of that that that that that tension and as you say the two opinions fighting against each other seems to be a recurring theme, doesn't it, of what pop po people popularly want in Japan, but also that that anxiety I think that's been increased since the Second World War is that Western pressure to to lose some things that they see as inherently Japanese.
Chris: Yes. Yeah, 'cause I think they see it happening elsewhere in Japan, you know, film, television, music, fashion, you name it. I suppose the other thing that briefly interests me about it is people would say, if they're faced with an opinion poll, it says, look, eighty percent, whatever it is, it varies by poll, want this. conservative comeback as it were is well the imperial family is above politics and it's certainly above popular opinion. It doesn't matter what ordinary people want. Which is I don't know whether that's terrible or quite refreshing, but the idea that people sort of you know, that democratic consent is not required for what happens to the Imperial family because they're far and far and away beyond it. It's at least an interesting idea, you know, as a cultural historian whether or not I might agree with it.
Katie Marshall: No, it'd be so interesting to see how it plays out, yeah. so shall we move on to talking a bit about your commonplace book? yeah. so out of the people you studied, whose book would you most like to have as sort of insight into their mind and their way of thinking?
Chris: Yeah. yeah. Yes, sure. Yeah, okay, yeah. Ooh, out of Japanese figures in particular, are we thinking?
Katie Marshall: it could be any, but you.
Chris: I think Probably we mentioned this earlier on when we were thinking about that sixteenth century period, you know, where Europeans arrive in Japan, some of them are missionaries, and they have this for me fascinating culture clash between the two. Probably the Shusaku Endo novel, it's a modern novel called Silence, written about that period. it gets you into that clash of cultures, it gets you into what it's like to be inside a particular missionary's mind to have that mission backed up by a conviction, a deep sense of how the world works, and a world that has a personal God at its foundation, and then to steadily lose that. or find that dropping away. I find that so moving. And for me, the big clash in that period, what's so fascinating about it, it's not just that syncretism, Japanese syncretism versus a Western repudiation of it, something more exclusivist. It's not just that. It's the sense that Talking, I suppose, in big philosophical terms, but reality at its basis for a a a Westerner of that period is fundamentally personal. There is a God there. Whether that God is for you primarily loving or judgmental or whatever, reality is deeply personal. In Japan, for most Japanese anyway, that was not the case. Which for me seems such a fascinating clash between two fundamental assumptions about reality coming together. and that novel. So I think silence that would be my chosen book. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Beautiful, definitely. Yeah, it fits into so many of the things that we've been talking about. so what do you think your book would would look like sort of aesthetically? Would it would it have sort of Japanese wood block prints on it? Would it be more westernized? What what would it look like?
Chris: Yeah. I think it would probably balance quotes. I do love a motivational quote. that sounds very reductive, doesn't it? I shouldn't really put it that way. But a a quote that sort of is it okay, well maybe we'll get to that. I'd so I I I do love that, but also I'm always in danger of being quite a wordy person, you know, by nature of of what I do. and so I think I'd have lots of imagery in there. I'd have landscape imagery. I love I'm not
Katie Marshall: No, th that's the next question. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: particularly expert on art at all, but given that writing for me sort of comes from me sort of pushing outwards, I like the way that art works in the other direction. You know, it draws me out or it asks questions about me. So I don't know, maybe Claude Monet, some landscapes, and probably also I haven't don't know what I would choose, but something with people in it as well. There's something in danger of being a bit solipsistic about only having landscapes in my commonplace book. So I think I'd want people in there one way or another. Balanced out with my quotes. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Yes. Is there a particular quote or philosophy that stands out for you?
Chris: that's quite tricky. I suppose one thing that still speaks to how I first got interested in Japan is we talked a lot about the clash of philosophy between the two places, but there's also overlap as well, and that's what I think made me fall in love with Japan at first. And there are a couple of ways in which Maybe particularly a European Catholic way of seeing the world. Meister Ehrhart, who lots of people have probably heard of, his way of understanding the world and what goes on in Japan. There is a really interesting overlap here. And there are I'll probably have these two quotes side by side. I'm not going to pull them up so I don't get them wrong. I think they go really well together. So the Meister Ehrhart quote, he says, the eye through which I see God. Is the same eye through which God sees me. So it's this sense of not kind of striving and searching and trying to work these things out, but God is already fundamentally at the root of who you will who you are. And there's a remarkably similar quote from this tradition of Japanese Buddhism called Shin Buddhism. Most people haven't heard of it, but it's more like a almost a monotheistic kind of Buddhism, which sounds a bit weird, but it's it's beautiful and it's hugely important in Japan. And the quote there from quite a famous writer in that tradition is the voice with which I call Amida Buddha is the voice with which Amida Buddha calls to me. So it's this same idea of not having to reach out and work things out for yourself. I think people who are kind of interested in religion sometimes they portray it as a search, as an intellectual quest. Actually, funny enough, another quote, I thought was it G. K. Chesterton, he was a Catholic, wasn't he? Talked about elephantine adventures in search of the obvious. You know, you try to work all these things out and you find it's actually more or less where you started. I think both those quotes get to that. And because they come from two completely different places, but they offer the same insight, I think they would sit well together. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Yes, getting lost within the search but really just have to sort of be introspective and step back and and sort of really listen to your to your intuition. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. I think so, which for some people who fancy themselves academics or intellectuals can be quite embarrassing. You think actually, you know, someone with a fraction of my so called education could do just as well or better. but it can be quite healthy to accept that, I think. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, have a different perspective at least, yeah. so what about what sort of role does music play in your life? Is it something you like to listen to for inspiration while you're working, or is there a particular song that stands out as a memory for you?
Chris: Do you know what? I I don't listen to music while I work 'cause I I find I get sort of caught up on the tune and I can't really concentrate on what I'm doing. I wish I could work to music as a way of sort of drowning things out. my music tastes have never evolved probably since I was about fourteen years old, which in a way is quite embarrassing. But I was on a car journey the other day and I normally have podcasts and I thought I'll take a break from words and I put on, I'm gonna show my age, a really old album, Guns N' Roses. This is from the mid-1990s. Use your illusion to it was quite I don't know if any of your listeners are gonna have heard of it, but if they haven't they can look it up, you know. I think probably that album I would go for if I could. And if I had to choose a song, there's a really long, almost symphonic bit of kind of almost prog rocky in a kind of embarrassing dad type way, I suppose, called it Stranged. I'd probably go for that. More into kind of jazz and blues and classical because anything that feels like it's supposed to talk to you at a really raw level, like pop music, guitar music, etc., it just seems like a slightly worse version of what I used to be into, which I know I'm showing my age. My dad used to say that my music just sounded like noise to him when he heard it. So yeah, I appreciate that. That ages me badly. But if you want an honest answer, that's that's what I would give you. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Yeah, I know a lot of people, including me, and in my age group, go back to seventies music a lot. Sort of I think yeah, so I think that well for me that's kind of my favourite type of music, but you hear when you listen to that and you get into that sort of music you do hear echoes of things repeating now and it doesn't sound so fresh. The odd person stands out.
Chris: good. That's nice to that's interest that's really nice. that's lovely to hear that. I always find it's it's bad when I started teaching at Edinburgh, been there nearly twenty years, some of my cultural reference points used to make sense to the students and then over the years they drop away and now I don't try because it's just sort of embarrassing myself. Now it's actually my children's cultural reference points that I could more or less use in my students. But yeah, I think trying to connect trying to connect at the level of music's quite hard. But you're giving me cause for optimism there. That some people do go back to classic music. Good for you.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Timeless. where could you choose it could be a postcard you can have from anywhere in the world. I presume it would be in Japan, but maybe it's not, where would that be?
Chris: It's timeless, yeah. Do you know what I would love a postcard from And it sounds a bit odd, maybe. A really lengthy postcard from some out of the way place in China rather than Japan. I f flatter myself that with work and family and travel, I've got a decent sense of how at least a few people in Japan sort of think and feel about the world. I find when it comes to China, which I don't so much study, but China matters a huge amount, obviously for Japan, but I think for us in the West as well. And a lot of our coverage of China is either about. fear of the Communist Party, the state's intentions over the next few decades, or it's about technology, cars, AI, whatever it might be. I'm much more interested in how ordinary Chinese people feel about their country, where it's going, what their aspirations are, what their criticisms, which they would presumably not often dare voice in public, might be of their leadership. I would love an in-depth postcard from China actually for those reasons. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Great. Yeah, that makes sense. so what about a recipe that you can record? It can be a family one or something that you you maybe do you like cooking? Is it something that you enjoy to do doing?
Chris: Yeah. I do. I tried to get into cooking years ago 'cause a friend of mine who was really a really good cook said only boring people like bland food. The the kind of food you appreciate reflects your personality. God, I can't be bland. My philosophy of cooking used to be that if it takes longer to cook it than it does to eat it, you're making a mistake in terms of not using your time well. So I tried to move away from that. And so I do cook. I'm from the generation of I suppose men in particular who were helped by people like Jamie Oliver. You know, he'd say a splash of that, a daub of a dab of that, throw in some of that. and one of his I would take it sounds quite boring, but it's actually a really good recipe. Broccoli and cauliflower cannelone, which is really heavy on cheese and anchovies and is it oregano that flavours it. My family love it. I hate making it 'cause it takes about an hour to make and then it disappears off the plate in about five minutes. You know, which contravenes my old philosophy of cooking. but my family love it so I do cook it and both tasty and for family resonance, I would take that. Yeah.
Katie Marshall: Great. I think any sort of Japanese person might say that it's the the art form takes a long time even if your like the performance lasts an hour or something, so it's you know
Chris: J Yeah. Do you know what that's true? I had a really un Japanese philosophy of cooking, didn't I? That's a very good point.
Katie Marshall: Great. so sort of as the penultimate question. what are you grateful for in your life right now and what's something you hope to achieve by this time next year?
Chris: Yeah. To grateful for and it's a fairly cheesy answer potentially, but my my youngest child has just finished primary school. So she's gonna move into secondary school and so myself and the other parents getting all bleary eyed last week when they finished thinking, God, also as part of the final leavers ceremony you have to choose an old photo of your child. So when she was sort of four or five, so gorgeous. So probably grateful for is my children. And I'm really more and more I don't know how you feel about this because you're a very busy person as well, no doubt. How you spend your time is kind of a moral issue for me now anyway. and grateful for them and wanting to set up a summer when I spend a lot of time with them because a few years' time they might not even take my phone calls. So that's my gratitude. Yeah. I'm hoping that's not gonna happen. I'm not that awful of father. They'll they'll at least call me if they need money or if they've been arrested or something. but yeah, we shall see. so that that's gratitude. Do you know what in terms of what I would hope for, I would love, as some historians have managed to do, to have a crack at writing historical fiction. And I'm really conscious of the warning that writing f nonfiction and writing fiction are completely different skill sets. You know, you've you've got the basic craft, you can put words together, you can maybe structure something. But as a historian, and I don't know if you've tried historical fiction, I'd love to know if you have, but as a historian, you you you know how you want it you how you think it's gone and you you like putting that together. Obviously in fiction you're doing something completely different. You know, you're showing, not telling, you're not talking about how something happened, but you're trying to build a whole world and put characters characters together who have dilemmas and who mean something, who people can connect with. I just think I've been to a few book festivals as a historian. You get a decent crowd, you get some lovely questions, but then go and sit in on a talk being given by a fiction author. And you sense the closeness that readers have with them because they've been part of their world in a really intimate way. so I would love to be able to do that. My big fear is that it's going to take up a huge amount of time and it won't get anywhere. But I sort of think unless I have a go at it, it would be a regret later. So in a year's time, if I've got a working draft of a not too awful historical novel, I'll be a happy person. Even if it never sees the light of day, it's just in a way in a drawer somewhere. That'd be fine.
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Would it be obviously focused around Japan or a particular period of Japan?
Chris: I think it would. I've got a concept which is probably rubbish, but if it's good, I wouldn't want to share it in case it gets stolen. But it's a it yeah, it's it's a because the the book I've just finished writing is not gonna be out for a while, but it was set in the period that we've spent a bit of time talking about, which is that kind of clash of cultures late 16th, early 17th century period. So it's set then and just after, or it would be set. it only exists in my brain at the moment. but I would love to give it a go on those particular lines. I like the idea, and I've seen
Katie Marshall: Yeah. Yeah, it's not something.
Chris: few historians who do this when they shift across into historical fiction. So if if I did write the book, a kind of model for me would be a book I'm reading at the moment, which is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which is about the the kind of conceit is early 19th century and lost tradition of English magic gets rediscovered. And what would that look like? What would the wars against Napoleon look like if you had magicians on the English side? it's just beautiful. So I love the idea that you would take a historical setting that fingers crossed you understand fairly well, drop in a Couple of fictional elements and see what happens. if I could somehow make that work, yes, I'd be a truly happy man this time next year, for sure.
Katie Marshall: Yeah, that sounds brilliant. Yeah, so just one more thing you can add to your commonplace book can be anything, sort of from a pressed flower to a sketch or just an anecdote from a conversation you've had. What what would that be?
Chris: I was thinking about this, I was tidying out my office yesterday and I found, I'm gonna show you, I found this pen. This is you know those blue, are they berrel pens? And again, it's a sort of family thing. My daughter, who's just like I say, finished primary school. This is the first Christmas present she ever bought me. She had no access to shops or online shopping. The only thing the only place she could get something was at pen club or pen shop at her school. And so for Christmas she bought me a pen and wrapped it up. And no one had given her the money for it. I don't know where she got the money for it. no one had suggested it 'cause she's far too young to be thinking about Christmas presents. But she thought about it and she she bought me a pen. So that would be in there. That would take pride of place in my book. Yeah, for sure.
Katie Marshall: beautiful. Yeah. beautiful. What a lovely way to end, Chris. thank you so much for this conversation. I I've really been fascinated. As you say, everything we talked about we could have spent an hour on. So I think we've we covered quite a lot there. thank you so much. I I found it absolutely fascinating. Thank you. Thank you. I I look forward to the new book on the Edo period as well.
Chris: Yeah. Mm-hmm. thank you for having me, it's been fun. Great, real pleasure, thank you. yes. Yeah, and this time next year there'll be something coming out, hopefully. With luck.
Katie Marshall: Great. Thank you so much, Chris. Lovely to have you. Thank you.
Chris: Thank you.