There are times when stirring up a little trouble is exactly what society needs.
Kenneth J. Ruoff, a history professor and director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State, takes this philosophy to heart. His latest book, Imperial Japan at its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire’s 2,600th Anniversary, has recently earned him a spot as a finalist for the prestigious Oregon Book Award in the general nonfiction category.
This honor comes seven years after Ruoff’s prior work, The People’s Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945–1995, received the Osaragi Jiro Prize for Commentary—Japan’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
“Imperial Japan provides a vivid glimpse into the thoughts and feelings of Japanese people in the midst of war,” said Carol Gluck, a history professor at Columbia University. “It is a wonderful work of cultural and political history, and a delight to read.”
Professor Ruoff earned his bachelor’s with honors from Harvard in 1989 and his doctorate from Columbia University in 1997. From 1994–96, he was a research fellow and lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Hokkaido University and became affiliated with Kyoto University in 2004. Imperial Japan at its Zenith is his second book.
“Professor Ruoff is famous for his imaginative history writing, both in the U.S. and in Japan, where his books have been translated to great acclaim,” Gluck said. “His contributions to Japanese studies at PSU are as admirable as his scholarship.”
The book details Japan in 1940: a time of war with China and a 2,600th-anniversary celebration. Ruoff examines the themes of these anniversary festivities, emphasizing that wartime Japan did not reject modernity but embraced it wholeheartedly. Imperial Japan also highlights the role played by the Japanese people in promoting imperial ideology and expansion, and documents the momentous support for the cult of the emperor and new militarism. The controversial messages have earned Ruoff effusive praise.
“Imperial Japan at its Zenith is a brilliant work which analyzes the political system very similar to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy that had been established in the 1930’s and ‘40s,” said Takeshi Hara, one of Japan’s most distinguished historians. “This book’s originality lies in the linkage of the coming of mass consumption society and the establishment of a political system comparable to Nazism and Fascism.”
In an exclusive interview with the Vanguard, Ruoff discussed his finalist status, his attraction to taboo topics in writing and his not-so-free time.
Vanguard: When did you first become interested in Japanese studies? What is it that drew you to Japan?
Ken Ruoff: Before I became interested in Japan, it was actually a course at my high school taught by a retired professor of Chinese history from Cornell University that sparked my interested in East Asia. In retirement, Dr. Knight Biggerstaff taught us high-schoolers as a volunteer. Later, I learned that he is considered one of the founders of Chinese Studies in the nited States. But as an undergraduate at Harvard, I focused more specifically on Japan and began to study Japanese, though my interest in East Asia overall remains strong.
VG: What do you think sets you apart from other authors and researchers?
KR: I am attracted to taboo topics, historical chapters that self-appointed guardians of a glorified national history would like to keep buried. However, I’ve noticed that my books, in terms of the way that the political spectrum in Japan and elsewhere reacts, seem to make no one entirely happy. If I think that the political right in Japan is mythologizing about some topic, I skewer that myth. But at the same time, I am more than willing to take the political left to task for positions that don’t stand up to rigorous empirical investigation and logic—I have the bad habit of doing the same in reference to certain inanities at PSU. I am not trying to make friends with my books, and yet they’ve garnered me respect on both sides of the Pacific and, to my amazement, even a measure of fame in Japan.
VG: What is your favorite part about your job?
KR: Making PSU the sort of intellectually dynamic place that it ought to be for students, staff, faculty and community members alike, far beyond the formal classroom environment. I have no interest in working at PSU or any other university if it is not going to be intellectually engaging. I am quite sure that I could make far more money in business—a tempting proposition at times—so if PSU is going to be no more than a business, then perhaps I shall leave PSU and join the business world at a business-level salary. When people say that PSU should operate like a business, don’t they really have the factory model in mind, with the professors serving as the assembly line workers? I think, in terms of what we try to do with the Center for Japanese Studies, that we are on the right track in reference to acting like a university. And guess what? It turns out that community members have been willing to donate generously to support the programs sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies. The donors value the intellectual content.
VG: Why did you choose PSU? Why do you stay?
KR: I have decided to stay at PSU thus far for a variety of reasons and am presently evaluating whether or not PSU, located right in the downtown of one of the great Pacific Rim cities, plans to seize upon the opportunity to be a great center for the study of not only Japan but also of East Asia and Asia overall. So far I have found it fulfilling to try to make PSU ever more intellectually dynamic in Japanese Studies, and I’m increasingly interested in extending that model to other areas of the university. I have the option of moving to another university or into a different career if PSU ceases to be an enjoyable working environment, but PSU’s unfulfilled potential intrigues me.
VG: What do you do in your free time?
KR: Most of my free time is spent serving as chauffeur to three kids who are engaged in multiple activities. I treasure visits to our purposefully internet-free farm on Mt. Hood because that environment always renews me spiritually, and I spend more time than perhaps I should in the summer months searching out the most delicious raspberries, cherries, blueberries, etc., that Oregon has to offer. Recently, a friend and I figured out how to catch Dungeness crabs from shore at Netarts Bay, and crabbing outings with the two families are hilarious and have resulted in memorable feasts.
VG: As for your books: how did winning the Osaragi Prize for Commentary for The People’s Emperor affect you as an author? How did it feel to win such a prestigious prize?
KR: It is undeniable that winning changed my engagement with Japan in certain key ways. I became, to some extent, a sought-after commodity and widely read commentator in Japan thereafter. This spurred me to be especially precise and nuanced with my writings, but it certainly didn’t dissuade me from pointing out idiocies in that country, however much my commentary enrages certain Japanese. But let me tell you a story that helps me keep these sorts of awards in perspective. Don’t get me wrong: I am flattered to be named a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. But that morning in December 2004, when I received this astonishing call from Japan informing me that I had been awarded a hugely prestigious prize, our son, then a baby, had been up most of the night. So when I returned to bed and informed my wife of the news, she just replied, “That’s nice,” and pulled the covers back over her head.
VG: Are you more confident now than you were before your book’s incredible success?
KR: Winning such a prestigious prize in Japan has simultaneous made me more confident and more nervous. Nervous because, if I make a mistake, it will soon be noticed. It’s no exaggeration to say that each and every detail of Imperial Japan at its Zenith—every footnote, every name, every date—was checked and rechecked, first by me and then as part of the translation process by a highly discerning team in Japan. Happily, no one has found a single error thus far, but that’s a ridiculously high standard that I face, don’t you think?
VG: How do you begin writing? What is your main goal?
KR: No romantic story here. I started writing because completing a Ph.D. in history requires that little detail of the dissertation, which later became the book that won the Osaragi Prize. But trust me, the last thing on my mind when I was researching and writing my dissertation was any sort of honors that might come my way. I was just hoping to make it to the finish line and then become employed, which I did, at PSU.
VG: On the topic of the Oregon Book Award, how does it feel to be considered for the prize?
KR: Most authors, including myself, appreciate being recognized for what they do, and I’m both humbled and honored to be recognized in this manner. Also, I think that it speaks positive volumes about the Oregon Book Awards that an academic work of history—albeit a piece of writing that I took great pains to make accessible and enjoyable for non-specialists—was named a finalist. It is indicative of how seriously the Literary Arts organization must carry out the review process.
VG: How would you feel if Imperial Japan at its Zenith won the award?
KR: If it’s named the winner for its category of the Oregon Book Award, of course I will be happy. But my own sense of these matters is that there are many deserving individuals, and lightning only strikes a lucky few.
VG: What is your advice to aspiring authors and historians?
KR: I struggle to offer advice to aspiring authors and historians other than to develop one’s own style. Other than having a strong desire to write historical prose that specialists and non-specialists alike would enjoy reading rather than publishing some odd, jargon-filled equivalent of verbal vomit that only a few specialists would read because it was their job to know the “state of the field,” I did not have a master plan. And yet I am told that I have a certain style. But I guess I could venture the following: For social scientists and journalists alike, isn’t it more useful to focus on precisely those areas of society that make people—especially the powers-that-be—uneasy, even squirm?