The ‘standard of civilization’ in international law: Intellectual perspectives from pre-war Japan

Abstract

This article establishes the normative connection between Japan’s responses to regional hegemonic order prior to the nineteenth century and its subsequent engagement with the European standard of civilization. I argue that the Japanese understanding of the ‘standard of civilization’ in the nineteenth century was informed by the historical pattern of its responses to hegemony and the discourse on cultural superiority in the Far East that shifted from Sinocentrism to the unbroken Imperial lineage to the national-spirit. Although Japanese scholars accepted and engaged with the European standard of civilization after the forced opening up of Japan to the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, they did so for instrumental purposes and soon translated ‘civilization’ into a language of imperialism to reassert supremacy in the region. Through intellectual historiography, this narrative contextualizes Japan’s engagement with the European standard of civilization, and offers an analytical framework not only to go beyond Eurocentrism but also to identify various other loci of hegemony, which are connected through the same language of power.

Turntablism in the History of International Law

“…Turntablism can also be found in those works that seek to emphasise non-European perspectives,37 for many of them re-centre non-Western locations and perspectives within a very Eurocentric history, and through European markers, periodisation, and causal sequencing.38 When they do not seek a re-centring of non-Western locations and perspectives within a very Eurocentric history, these studies continue to treat non-Western contexts as 'peripheral' ,39 or as a response to (or an encounter with) European or Western international law. 40 What is more, some of these histories, whilst rightly lamenting the resilience of the colonial project and the mirage of universality, still pursue the project of a universal international law according to a very European idea of universality.41 By the same token, many of these histories, notwithstanding their very valuable disruptive insights, continue to rely on markers, periodisation, and causal sequencing of histories of international law built around, for instance, roman law, the scholastic, the droit public de l'Europe, the reformation, the Peace of Westphalia, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the encounter with European imperialism,etc.42 This being said, it would be simplistic to claim that international lawyers' engagement with history has been saturated by turntablism. Occasional critical histories that actually do away with Eurocentric markers, periodisation and causal sequencing have been witnessed.43 Among the few actual departures from Eurocentric markers, periodisation and causal sequencing of dominant histories,44 mention can be made, among others, of the recent Luis Eslava,Michael Fakhri,and Vasuki Nesiah's Bandung,Global History and International Law.…”