I’m starting a new series here.
The title is “A World History Free from Both Eurocentrism and Orientalism”
The source text is “In Search of Lost Modernity” by Akio KAWATO.
The English edition of this book (originally written in Japanese) is on
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hiRK7kjbX0Hxd2NOxPqtQlVWgjDHgKCr/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MB0Me9P5Lpa2HGceuJUdMqqQ2CRHQSxa/edit
(The copyright belongs to the author, Akio Kawato).
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Today is the first installment. Let’s start with a basic understanding of the contemporary world ,
where modern values are being trampled upon.
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In Search of Lost Modernity
Introduction
Right before our eyes, modern civilization is wearing away. In the United States, the rise of President Trump has replaced the principles of liberty and democracy with the raw pursuit of power and self-interest. In Western Europe—the birthplace of modern civilization—economic growth has stalled, and people, demanding more redistribution, have turned to populist politicians for solutions.
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It was not supposed to be this way. Since the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, living standards improved for countless people, who then gained the right to vote and established parliamentary democracy. The path was not always straight, but by the second half of the twentieth century, even Japan had joined this process, creating a free society with relatively little inequality. Industry, by generating massive added value, was expected to deliver what Jeremy Bentham once called “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”—a positive-sum advance for all.
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Yet inequality has only deepened in advanced countries. Across the globe, developing nations and former socialist states—unable to generate self-sustaining cycles of growth—have grown increasingly resentful. Why has this happened? Why are we destroying the very civilization we ourselves created?
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The root of the problem comes down to one thing: a failure of distribution. In the United States, shareholders, executives, and even union leaders take oversized shares of the pie, while ordinary employees are treated like expendable objects, discarded in waves of layoffs. In Western Europe, the problem is reversed: workers’ rights are so strong that they obstruct fiscal discipline and the rational management of enterprises. In Japan, meanwhile, companies boosted exports through a weak yen but failed to pass the gains along in the form of higher wages. As a result, real incomes have fallen, and consumer spending has stagnated.
What is needed is a fairer mechanism of distribution—both domestically and globally. Imagine, for instance, that once a country’s per-capita income reaches a certain level, it would devote a set percentage of any increase in tax revenue to programs designed to narrow income gaps at home and abroad.
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But Is “Modernity” Worth Defending?
Still, one might ask: is the “modernity” we speak of here—its values of liberty and democracy, and its principle of a market economy free from direct state intervention—truly genuine? Or is it merely a cloak for hypocrisy and self-interest?
In many cases, the people who champion “freedom” are either elites or intellectual dissidents. For elites, “freedom” often functions as a mantra to protect their position and wealth from the have-nots. For dissidents, the meaning of “freedom” is more authentic, but even they are often too absorbed in their own struggles to think about the broader public.
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Democracy, for its part, gives rights to the many who lack privilege. But the masses, in turn, can empower populist leaders, who use their authority to plunder the wealth of the better-off. Democracy can thus slide into dictatorship.
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Be it as it may, liberty and democracy are rooted in human nature itself. Even a puppy resists being held back on a leash.
And when free human beings gather to make decisions, only democratic methods allow them to function effectively. That is why, instead of using lofty words like “liberty and democracy”—which often carry a whiff of hypocrisy—it may be better to use plainer language such as “protecting our rights and our way of life.” Such words are easier to understand and would resonate around the world. They capture the essence of John Locke’s “liberty” and Bentham’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number,” simplified into a form people can grasp intuitively.
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The East and the West: Are They Irreconciable?
Recently, Western intellectuals have grown self-critical, even excessively so. Writers like Andre Gunder Frank, in his ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, argue that modern civilization was built on Western exploitation of Asia, and that before the nineteenth century the world economy was dominated by China and India.
Exploitation certainly occurred—Japan itself became an exploiter in the twentieth century—but it would be wrong to dismiss Western modernity as mere plunder. The West’s values of individualism and rationalism were essential for improving human life. Because Asia lacked those values, it could not make the leap into an industrial society.
Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” But the difference between East and West is not destiny. Neither side is inherently superior, nor must the world wholly submit to one or the other.
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The Flow of This Book
This book, written over the course of nearly three years of the COVID-19 pandemics, follows a coherent thread. It does not focus on the tedious succession of monarchs, but on changes in mechanisms of governance, shifts in economies and societies, and on religion not as doctrine but as a struggle for institutional power. It avoids both Eurocentric perspectives and the shallow romanticizing of Eastern mysticism.
The main themes are as follows.
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Greece, Rome, and the Chaos after Rome’s Fall
The Orient and Islam
Medieval Western Europe
The Black Death and the End of Feudalism
Mediterranean cities like Venice and Florence
Early Modern Period, the Netherlands
The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of Modernity
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Volume II
China’s Development Model—Was it Viable?
The Rise of European Modern States
Industrial Revolution
Spread of Industrial Revolution
Mutation of Modernity
Human Physical Modification
Modernity is not a Monopoly of the West
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This book does not claim to offer prescriptions for the future of the world. Instead, it seeks to reexamine the values of modernity—liberty, democracy, sovereignty—and strip away our wrong assumptions and biases, leaving behind a purified set of materials from which new prescriptions might be built.
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