Facing history with a sense of awe: an interview with Professor Mizoguchi Yuzo

Abstract

In this wide-ranging interview and discussion with Kuan-Hsing Chen and Sun Ge, Mizoguchi Yuzo describes the origins of his interest in China studies and the process through which he developed his perspective on China, Japan, and the world. Mizoguchi details his break with both old-style Japanese Sinology and Western-influenced scholarship, which assumes Japanese superiority over China and takes Euro-American society and concepts as its standard. Mizoguchi suggests that historians can and should cultivate a new subjectivity for themselves and understanding of the history of the world as a whole through an approach to China that attempts to understand China\'s own internal historical processes rather than assuming the universality of Western processes. He discusses his efforts to help reform the institutional structure of China studies in Japan, and further touches on the part played by Japan in China\'s modern history as well as its historical relations with Taiwan and Korea.