Experts on Japanese imperialism have long decried the marginalization of the Japanese Empire in non-East Asian scholarship on modern colonialism but, in practice, have often done little to lower the barriers to non-specialists presented by unfamiliar names, events and difficult-to-translate terminology. Going beyond mere appeals for change, in Monster of the Twentieth Century, Robert Tierney has performed an important service to the field of comparative imperial history by making Japanese anti-imperialist leader Kōtoku Shūsui’s seminal work Imperialism: Monster of the Twentieth Century (1901) accessible to a non-Japanese-speaking audience.Footnote ¹ As Tierney demonstrates, Kōtoku’s work both engaged in a transnational dialogue with other important anti-imperialist thinkers of the era and made a significant intellectual contribution from a Japanese perspective. Imperialism draws heavily on J.M. Robertson’s 1899 Patriotism and Empire, but also builds upon on a creative synthesis of Confucian and socialist thought.Footnote ² Its emphasis on the political (as opposed to economic) causes of imperialism distinguishes it from Vladimir Lenin’s later treatise on the subject.Footnote ³ In addition to a skilful English translation of Kōtoku’s seminal book, Monster of the Twentieth Century provides readers with an extensive essay in which Tierney explains the historical context in which Kōtoku wrote, his philosophical influences and other information that is necessary for the non-specialist to get the most out of Kōtoku’s text.

As if this is not enough justification for his book, Tierney explains in the introduction that Japanese Marxist scholarship has tended to dismiss Kōtoku’s anti-imperialism as both misguided (for not adhering to Lenin’s later analysis) and secondary in significance to his socialist and later anarchist writings. Tierney aspires to rehabilitate Imperialism and demonstrate that Kōtoku’s anti-imperialist philosophy should in fact be considered one of his greatest legacies. As becomes apparent throughout Tierney’s essay, socialism and anti-imperialism were inextricably linked in Kōtoku’s thought. Furthermore, according to Tierney, there is surprisingly no overarching study of Japan’s early anti-imperial movement. He attempts to fill this lacuna in the second section of his essay and presents a good summary, although his strong focus on Kōtoku inevitably diverts attention from other strains in the movement such as that led by Uchimura Kanzō.

The first section of Tierney’s essay contextualizes Kōtoku’s anti-imperialist philosophy. In the first chapter, Tierney describes the historical background in which Kōtoku’s thought took form, influenced by the Meiji Restoration, his mentor Nakae Chōmin, his work as a journalist and the international anti-imperial movement. The following chapter does an outstanding job summarizing the very complicated debate in Japan over the nature and desirability of “imperialism” of which Kōtoku was a part. This chapter should be required reading for those seeking to understand why some Japanese self-proclaimed anti-imperialists supported actions that we today would label as imperialist. Throughout this and other sections, Tierney has much praise for Kōtoku’s “prophetic” understanding of geopolitics, but he nonetheless does not overlook Kōtoku’s limitations such as his misogyny and his apparent lack of concern for colonized peoples (his arguments against imperialism mainly centred around its harmful effects on the Japanese common people). Another strength of the book is Tierney’s constant awareness that Kōtoku’s philosophy was in a continual state of change throughout his lifetime. The final chapter of this section covers many topics: Kōtoku’s creative application of Confucian scholarship to the question of imperialism, his apparent respect for the Emperor, and an important explanation of how internationalist Japanese socialists’ distain for nationalist movements in Korea and other colonies foreclosed the possibility of a strong united anti-colonial front.

The second section traces the successive incarnations of Japan’s early twentieth century anti-imperial movement under the leadership of Kōtoku and the newspapers that he wrote for. First, Tierney describes how atrocities committed by Japanese troops during the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion were an important motivation behind Kōtoku’s opposition to imperialism and his formation of the moral and social reformist Band of Idealists (Risōdan). A subsequent chapter describes the anti-war Heimin Movement during the Russo-Japanese War spearheaded by Kōtoku and the Heimin Newspaper. Tierney conducts a fascinating analysis of how Kōtoku strategically mobilized the term heimin (commoners) in opposition to the prevailing, nationalistic understanding of the Japanese people as kokumin (national subjects), while simultaneously distinguishing his term from the Marxist “bourgeoisie”. Although the movement had only a small following in Japan, Tierney demonstrates its deeply transnational character, most spectacularly through his recounting of a dialogue between Kōtoku and Leo Tolstoy conducted through newspaper editorials. The final chapter explores the crucial question of why Japanese anti-imperialists failed to achieve solidarity with nationalist leaders from colonized Asian countries, especially Korea. It also describes how Japan’s first anti-imperialist movement came to an end with a political trial in which Kōtoku and other revolutionaries were sentenced to death on trumped up (and probably invented) charges. After the translation of Kōtoku’s Imperialism, the book concludes with an epilogue in which Tierney uses Kōtoku’s analytic categories of patriotism, militarism and imperialism to critique the United States’ twenty-first century empire.

Although it comes with a fresh perspective, Japan specialists may have limited appreciation for this book, since much of the information that it presents will not be new for them and some parts, like the defining of basic terms like bakufu and the detailed summary of Nakae Chōmin’s famous A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government, may prove tiresome.Footnote ⁴ This is more an observation than a criticism, however, since the book seems to be targeted at a broader academic audience. (There is, in any, case ample material on Kōtoku available in Japanese.) It is nearly impossible to write an English-language book on Japanese history that is both easily accessible to a general scholarly public and interesting to specialists, and I think that it is brave and laudable of Tierney to go against the grain and choose the former. Even so, Tierney might have done a better job explaining his choice of translated terms (especially the problematic jinrui, which is variously translated in this book as “race” and “people”, in the sense of “nation” or “ethnic group”). I think that Tierney’s essay would also have benefitted from a more detailed discussion of how censorship may have affected Kōtoku’s writings (Tierney surprisingly does not consider this as an explanation for Kōtoku’s apparent reverence for the Emperor), but overall the essay provides an excellent overview of a very complex subject. A greater knowledge of the global anti-imperial movement is needed in order to better understand the success of contemporaneous jingoism, and I hope that this ambitious and important volume will have a significant impact on international colonial history.