초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This study focuses on reexamining modern history of Japan from the viewpoint of total war system theory. A variety of theories exist over how to define the Japanese modern history especially spanning from 1930 through 1940. Such theories may largely be divided into two viewpoints: fascism and wartime militarism. Their viewpoints depend on modernization theory conceptualized by Edwin Oldfather Reischauer and Walt Whitman Rostow. By reflecting the Japanese modern history into the world history, however, the modernization theory commonly see the Japanese modern history as unreasonable and totalitarian Fascism (Germany, Italy) in the context of 2nd World War and thereby define it as something opposite to reasonable and democratic New deal System (America, England and France). But the problem is that the theories overlook the fact that prewar Japan already experienced social change and contradictions resulting from capitalistic industrialism and modernization. Like this, the modernization theory developed in the U.S. ignores the fact that Japan already was in the process of modernization as well as the self-contradictory aspects and limitations. Given this, the study introduced concept of total war system to re-examine modernization theory and shed light on Japan’s nationalistic traits in the time of war and other countries’.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
modern Japanese history, modernization theory, civil society school, total war system theory, democracy
