Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan

"Hoston's work is a major study in comparative political ideology. It will become the main source in English for understanding the controversy over Japanese capitalism." George M, Wilson. Indiana University This study, the first of its kind in English, is a comprehensive analysis of the Marxist debate in Japan over how capitalism developed in that country. Germaine A. Hoston clearly demonstrates the originality of Japanese Marxist scholars and political leaders and the importance of their thought to the Marxist and non-Marxist discourse on political development. How did Japan develop industrial capitalism so rapidly while maintaining significant vestiges of agrarian and political "backwardness"? Did Japan's late development mandate a delay of socialist revolution? In full detail the author describes the innovative and influential Marxist intellectual system produced, beginning in the 1920s, from attempts to answer these questions. In 1927 the R60-ha seceded from the Japanese Communist Party, opposing the JCP-Comintern view that Japan needed a bourgeois revolution before the final revolution of the proletariat. From this basic dispute emerged richly documented interpretations of the successes and limitations of Japanese economic and political development from the Meiji Restoration through the 1930s. Interrupted by official repression in 1935, the debate revived during the postwar era and continues to define Japanese Marxist scholarship and the rivalry of Japan's Socialist and Communist parties. "This book is a long overdue contribution not just to Japanese studies but to the study of comparative Marxism, comparative political economy, and comparative modernization. The author places the Japanese Communist movement in proper perspective and rightly implies that Marxist scholarship has been more important to Japan than the Communist movement or Party."
-David A. Titus, Wesleyan University Germaine A. Hoston is Associate Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University.