In 2009, after half a century of nearly unbroken rule, the Liberal Democratic party was finally drummed out of office by a new force in Japanese politics. The Democratic Party of Japan, led by Yukio Hatoyama, promised a new contract with the Japanese public and a new relationship between elected officials and the powerful bureaucracy. Yet when Hatoyama went to Washington the following April, he was shunned.在幾乎未曾間斷地執(zhí)政半個(gè)世紀(jì)后，自民黨(LDP)最終在2009年被日本政壇的新力量趕下臺(tái)。由鳩山由紀(jì)夫(Yukio Hatoyama)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的日本民主黨(DPJ)，承諾與日本民眾簽訂新契約，并在民選官員和勢(shì)力強(qiáng)大的官僚體系之間建立新的關(guān)系。然而，當(dāng)翌年4月鳩山訪問華盛頓時(shí)，他遭遇了冷遇。The ostensible reason was that Hatoyama had displeased Washington by reneging on a deal to build a new US Marine base on Okinawa. However, according to R Taggart Murphy, professor of international political economy at Tokyo’s Tsukuba university, Hatoyama was attempting much more than that: he wanted to regain the sovereignty that Japan had lost when it became a virtual “protectorate” of the US after 1945. “Japan cannot be an ally of the United States — or anyone else — until it is first a sovereign state,” Taggart Murphy writes. In this view, one shared by many on both the Japanese right and the left, Japan remains essentially an occupied nation, subject to a US-written constitution and honeycombed by US military bases. Rather like Hatoyama, he recommends Japan taking responsibility for its own defence and seeking a new accommodation with China.表面上的原因是，鳩山拒絕履行沖繩美國海軍基地新建協(xié)議，觸怒了華盛頓。然而，東京筑波大學(xué)(University of Tsukuba)國際政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)教授塔R塔格特墨菲(R Taggart Murphy)認(rèn)為，鳩山想要的比這多得多：他想收回日本1945年后成為美國事實(shí)上的“保護(hù)國”時(shí)所喪失的主權(quán)。墨菲寫到：“在首先成為一個(gè)主權(quán)國家之前，日本無法做美國（或任何其他國家）的盟國。”這種觀點(diǎn)（得到日本右翼和左翼的很多人認(rèn)同）認(rèn)為：日本本質(zhì)上仍是一個(gè)被占領(lǐng)國，要遵守一部由美國制定的憲法，本土遍布美國軍事基地。跟鳩山的觀點(diǎn)相像，墨菲建議日本自己擔(dān)負(fù)國防責(zé)任，并尋求與中國取得新的和解。

Taggart Murphy knows his Japanese history. His theories about Japan’s political economy — of which more later — shed interesting light on the country. They can, however, be taken to extreme. In the case of Hatoyama, the author contends that he was brought down by Washington. Certainly, the US was disturbed by Hatoyama, who casually announced in an essay that he wanted to recast Japan’s relationship with the US and China, omitting to mention this sea-change in foreign policy to his allies in the US. But while US diplomats may have schemed against him, to lay his demise squarely at Washington’s door is too much. (To be fair, as well as the Pentagon and Japan-handlers in Washington, the author also blames the LDP, the Japanese bureaucracy, Beijing, Pyongyang and the 2011 earthquake. Only the kitchen sink, it seems, was not in on the conspiracy.)墨菲了解日本歷史。他關(guān)于日本（當(dāng)代）政治經(jīng)濟(jì)史的理論提供了一些有意思的觀點(diǎn)，有助于我們了解這個(gè)國家。但是，有些觀點(diǎn)可能有些過頭。就鳩山來說，作者認(rèn)為他是被華盛頓搞下臺(tái)的。當(dāng)然，美國被鳩山弄得心神不寧——他在一篇文章中漫不經(jīng)心地地宣布，要重塑日本與美國以及中國的關(guān)系，但卻沒有向他在美國的盟友事先提及這一外交政策突變。雖然美國外交官可能曾密謀對(duì)付鳩山，但把他的下臺(tái)完全歸咎于華盛頓有點(diǎn)太過了。（平心而論，除五角大樓以及華盛頓負(fù)責(zé)處理日本事務(wù)者之外，作者還指責(zé)自民黨、日本官僚體系、中國政府、朝鮮政府以及2011年那場(chǎng)地震應(yīng)該為鳩山下臺(tái)負(fù)責(zé)。看起來只有廚房里的水槽沒有參與這場(chǎng)陰謀。）The book’s intellectual foundations owe much to Karel van Wolferen, whose classic The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989) revolutionised the way people thought about Japan. In Taggart Murphy’s hands, the crux of the theory is that power relations have not properly evolved from the quasi-feudal system that operated for more than 250 years when Japan was an isolated shogunate. Then the nominal head of state was the emperor, though in reality he was little more than a figurehead. The Meiji Restoration of 1868, which overthrew the existing order in order to protect Japan from encroaching colonialism, supposedly restored the emperor to his rightful position. Unlike in Europe, this was not a bourgeois revolution mounted from below, but a putsch organised by a clique of samurai. Japan, in other words, has never properly destroyed the old order, a state of affairs perpetuated when the US occupation ducked its chance to topple the emperor.這本書的知識(shí)基礎(chǔ)大大得益于卡雷爾范沃爾夫倫(Karel Van Wolferen)，后者關(guān)于日本的經(jīng)典著作《日本：權(quán)力結(jié)構(gòu)之謎》(The Enigma of Japanese Power,1989）徹底改變了人們對(duì)日本的認(rèn)識(shí)。在墨菲筆下，這一理論的核心是，權(quán)力關(guān)系還沒有真正超越半封建體制，這一體制在日本還是個(gè)孤立的幕府國家期間運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)了超過250年。那時(shí)，名義上的國家元首是天皇，盡管實(shí)際上他不過是一個(gè)傀儡。1868年的明治維新 (Meiji Restoration)為保護(hù)日本免受殖民主義入侵而推翻了原有秩序，據(jù)信恢復(fù)了天皇應(yīng)有的地位。與歐洲不同，這不是一場(chǎng)自下而上的資產(chǎn)階級(jí)革命，而是由武士集團(tuán)組織的一場(chǎng)政變。換句話說，日本從來沒有完全摧毀其舊秩序，而美國在占領(lǐng)期間放棄廢除天皇的機(jī)會(huì)，使這一狀態(tài)得以永久化。There is much useful rumination here. The section on the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) is particularly well done, and there are also many colourful, often acerbic, observations about modern Japan — a foreigner working for a Japanese company, for example, is likened to a rap artist joining a string quartet. The tragedy of Japan, says the author, stems from the fact it merely grafted the trappings of a modern state on to its existing system. To this day, he contends, there continues to be a “yawning gap between the political reality in Japan and the fictions with which that reality” is understood.本書中有很多有益的思考。關(guān)于德川幕府時(shí)代(Tokugawa shogunate,1600-1868)的章節(jié)寫得格外好，書中對(duì)現(xiàn)代日本也有許多生動(dòng)（往往也很尖刻）的評(píng)論——例如，書中將一個(gè)效力于日本企業(yè)的外國人比作加入了弦樂四重奏的說唱歌手。作者說，日本的悲劇源于它只是把現(xiàn)代國家的外表嫁接到了原有的體制之上。他說，時(shí)至今日，“日本政治現(xiàn)實(shí)與人們對(duì)這種現(xiàn)實(shí)的臆想之間仍存在巨大差距”。For the author, this gap explains more or less everything. It is why, for example, there are endless debates in parliament about matters that have long been decided upon behind closed doors. It is why it took a foreigner, unfamiliar with honour codes, to blow the whistle on the fictional accounts at Olympus. It is also why the salaryman can believe he is “a soldier for a cause” but can also recognise that ultimately he is an “exploited cog in a faceless, industrial machine”.在作者看來，這種差距幾乎可以解釋一切。例如，它解釋了為什么議會(huì)要對(duì)早已秘密決定的事情進(jìn)行無休止的辯論。它也解釋了為什么舉報(bào)奧林巴斯(Olympus)賬目造假的是一個(gè)不熟悉日本榮譽(yù)守則的外國人，以及為什么一個(gè)工薪族既可以相信自己是“獻(xiàn)身事業(yè)的士兵”，也可以承認(rèn)自己最終是“千篇一律的工業(yè)機(jī)器上一顆被剝削的螺絲釘”。This latter example reveals the author’s propensity to see in every facet of modern Japan the ghosts of an unreconstructed past. The alienation of labour he describes could apply equally to almost anywhere. Similarly, many other features of the country, from teenage fashion to sexual relations, are shoehorned into an overarching theory with sometimes illuminating or far-fetched consequences.后面那個(gè)例子顯示出，作者傾向于認(rèn)為，那段未得到重建的歷史的幽靈存在于現(xiàn)代日本的方方面面。他所描述的勞動(dòng)異化(alienation of labour)可能同樣適用于幾乎任何地方。類似地，這個(gè)國家的許多其他特征（從青少年時(shí)尚到兩性關(guān)系）都被硬塞進(jìn)一個(gè)包羅一切的理論中，得出的結(jié)論有時(shí)發(fā)人深省，有時(shí)有些牽強(qiáng)。Shinzo Abe, the nationalist prime minister, becomes yet another throwback — one of the “vampires” from the darkest period of Japan’s history, in Taggart Murphy’s description. For this sorry state of affairs, the author concludes, Washington has only itself to blame. It “cavalierly” destroyed Japan’s best hope of revamping its political system and of repairing poisonous relations with China. Yet this is to credit the Democratic Party of Japan with a revolutionary agenda that it simply did not possess. It is also to depict modern Japan, for all its many faults, in too unrelentingly gloomy a light.日本的民族主義首相安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)則成為另一大倒退的象征——用墨菲的話來說，他是來自日本歷史中最黑暗時(shí)期的“吸血鬼”之一。對(duì)于這種糟糕的狀態(tài)，作者認(rèn)為，華盛頓只能怪它自己：美國“傲慢地”摧毀了日本改造其政治體制以及修復(fù)糟糕的日中關(guān)系的最好機(jī)會(huì)。然而，作者這樣說相當(dāng)于認(rèn)為日本民主黨有一份革命議程，但實(shí)際上它根本沒有。此外，盡管現(xiàn)代日本存在種種缺陷，但作者這樣說也未免過于無情和悲觀，沒有公允地反映現(xiàn)代日本的真實(shí)面貌。Japan and the Shackles of the Past, by R Taggart, Murphy OUP USA RRP20/RRP$29.95, 472 pages《日本及其歷史枷鎖》(Japan and the Shackles of the Past)，R塔格特墨菲著，牛津大學(xué)出版社美國部(OUP USA)出版，建議零售價(jià)20英鎊或29.95美元，472頁David Pilling is the FT’s Asia editor and author of ‘Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival’ (Allen Lane)注：戴維皮林(David Pilling)是英國《金融時(shí)報(bào)》亞洲版主編，著有《彎折逆境：日本與生存藝術(shù)》(Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival)，由艾倫萊恩出版社(Allen Lane)出版。

In 2009, after half a century of nearly unbroken rule, the Liberal Democratic party was finally drummed out of office by a new force in Japanese politics. The Democratic Party of Japan, led by Yukio Hatoyama, promised a new contract with the Japanese public and a new relationship between elected officials and the powerful bureaucracy. Yet when Hatoyama went to Washington the following April, he was shunned.在幾乎未曾間斷地執(zhí)政半個(gè)世紀(jì)后，自民黨(LDP)最終在2009年被日本政壇的新力量趕下臺(tái)。由鳩山由紀(jì)夫(Yukio Hatoyama)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的日本民主黨(DPJ)，承諾與日本民眾簽訂新契約，并在民選官員和勢(shì)力強(qiáng)大的官僚體系之間建立新的關(guān)系。然而，當(dāng)翌年4月鳩山訪問華盛頓時(shí)，他遭遇了冷遇。The ostensible reason was that Hatoyama had displeased Washington by reneging on a deal to build a new US Marine base on Okinawa. However, according to R Taggart Murphy, professor of international political economy at Tokyo’s Tsukuba university, Hatoyama was attempting much more than that: he wanted to regain the sovereignty that Japan had lost when it became a virtual “protectorate” of the US after 1945. “Japan cannot be an ally of the United States — or anyone else — until it is first a sovereign state,” Taggart Murphy writes. In this view, one shared by many on both the Japanese right and the left, Japan remains essentially an occupied nation, subject to a US-written constitution and honeycombed by US military bases. Rather like Hatoyama, he recommends Japan taking responsibility for its own defence and seeking a new accommodation with China.表面上的原因是，鳩山拒絕履行沖繩美國海軍基地新建協(xié)議，觸怒了華盛頓。然而，東京筑波大學(xué)(University of Tsukuba)國際政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)教授塔R塔格特墨菲(R Taggart Murphy)認(rèn)為，鳩山想要的比這多得多：他想收回日本1945年后成為美國事實(shí)上的“保護(hù)國”時(shí)所喪失的主權(quán)。墨菲寫到：“在首先成為一個(gè)主權(quán)國家之前，日本無法做美國（或任何其他國家）的盟國。”這種觀點(diǎn)（得到日本右翼和左翼的很多人認(rèn)同）認(rèn)為：日本本質(zhì)上仍是一個(gè)被占領(lǐng)國，要遵守一部由美國制定的憲法，本土遍布美國軍事基地。跟鳩山的觀點(diǎn)相像，墨菲建議日本自己擔(dān)負(fù)國防責(zé)任，并尋求與中國取得新的和解。

Taggart Murphy knows his Japanese history. His theories about Japan’s political economy — of which more later — shed interesting light on the country. They can, however, be taken to extreme. In the case of Hatoyama, the author contends that he was brought down by Washington. Certainly, the US was disturbed by Hatoyama, who casually announced in an essay that he wanted to recast Japan’s relationship with the US and China, omitting to mention this sea-change in foreign policy to his allies in the US. But while US diplomats may have schemed against him, to lay his demise squarely at Washington’s door is too much. (To be fair, as well as the Pentagon and Japan-handlers in Washington, the author also blames the LDP, the Japanese bureaucracy, Beijing, Pyongyang and the 2011 earthquake. Only the kitchen sink, it seems, was not in on the conspiracy.)墨菲了解日本歷史。他關(guān)于日本（當(dāng)代）政治經(jīng)濟(jì)史的理論提供了一些有意思的觀點(diǎn)，有助于我們了解這個(gè)國家。但是，有些觀點(diǎn)可能有些過頭。就鳩山來說，作者認(rèn)為他是被華盛頓搞下臺(tái)的。當(dāng)然，美國被鳩山弄得心神不寧——他在一篇文章中漫不經(jīng)心地地宣布，要重塑日本與美國以及中國的關(guān)系，但卻沒有向他在美國的盟友事先提及這一外交政策突變。雖然美國外交官可能曾密謀對(duì)付鳩山，但把他的下臺(tái)完全歸咎于華盛頓有點(diǎn)太過了。（平心而論，除五角大樓以及華盛頓負(fù)責(zé)處理日本事務(wù)者之外，作者還指責(zé)自民黨、日本官僚體系、中國政府、朝鮮政府以及2011年那場(chǎng)地震應(yīng)該為鳩山下臺(tái)負(fù)責(zé)。看起來只有廚房里的水槽沒有參與這場(chǎng)陰謀。）The book’s intellectual foundations owe much to Karel van Wolferen, whose classic The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989) revolutionised the way people thought about Japan. In Taggart Murphy’s hands, the crux of the theory is that power relations have not properly evolved from the quasi-feudal system that operated for more than 250 years when Japan was an isolated shogunate. Then the nominal head of state was the emperor, though in reality he was little more than a figurehead. The Meiji Restoration of 1868, which overthrew the existing order in order to protect Japan from encroaching colonialism, supposedly restored the emperor to his rightful position. Unlike in Europe, this was not a bourgeois revolution mounted from below, but a putsch organised by a clique of samurai. Japan, in other words, has never properly destroyed the old order, a state of affairs perpetuated when the US occupation ducked its chance to topple the emperor.這本書的知識(shí)基礎(chǔ)大大得益于卡雷爾范沃爾夫倫(Karel Van Wolferen)，后者關(guān)于日本的經(jīng)典著作《日本：權(quán)力結(jié)構(gòu)之謎》(The Enigma of Japanese Power,1989）徹底改變了人們對(duì)日本的認(rèn)識(shí)。在墨菲筆下，這一理論的核心是，權(quán)力關(guān)系還沒有真正超越半封建體制，這一體制在日本還是個(gè)孤立的幕府國家期間運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)了超過250年。那時(shí)，名義上的國家元首是天皇，盡管實(shí)際上他不過是一個(gè)傀儡。1868年的明治維新 (Meiji Restoration)為保護(hù)日本免受殖民主義入侵而推翻了原有秩序，據(jù)信恢復(fù)了天皇應(yīng)有的地位。與歐洲不同，這不是一場(chǎng)自下而上的資產(chǎn)階級(jí)革命，而是由武士集團(tuán)組織的一場(chǎng)政變。換句話說，日本從來沒有完全摧毀其舊秩序，而美國在占領(lǐng)期間放棄廢除天皇的機(jī)會(huì)，使這一狀態(tài)得以永久化。There is much useful rumination here. The section on the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) is particularly well done, and there are also many colourful, often acerbic, observations about modern Japan — a foreigner working for a Japanese company, for example, is likened to a rap artist joining a string quartet. The tragedy of Japan, says the author, stems from the fact it merely grafted the trappings of a modern state on to its existing system. To this day, he contends, there continues to be a “yawning gap between the political reality in Japan and the fictions with which that reality” is understood.本書中有很多有益的思考。關(guān)于德川幕府時(shí)代(Tokugawa shogunate,1600-1868)的章節(jié)寫得格外好，書中對(duì)現(xiàn)代日本也有許多生動(dòng)（往往也很尖刻）的評(píng)論——例如，書中將一個(gè)效力于日本企業(yè)的外國人比作加入了弦樂四重奏的說唱歌手。作者說，日本的悲劇源于它只是把現(xiàn)代國家的外表嫁接到了原有的體制之上。他說，時(shí)至今日，“日本政治現(xiàn)實(shí)與人們對(duì)這種現(xiàn)實(shí)的臆想之間仍存在巨大差距”。For the author, this gap explains more or less everything. It is why, for example, there are endless debates in parliament about matters that have long been decided upon behind closed doors. It is why it took a foreigner, unfamiliar with honour codes, to blow the whistle on the fictional accounts at Olympus. It is also why the salaryman can believe he is “a soldier for a cause” but can also recognise that ultimately he is an “exploited cog in a faceless, industrial machine”.在作者看來，這種差距幾乎可以解釋一切。例如，它解釋了為什么議會(huì)要對(duì)早已秘密決定的事情進(jìn)行無休止的辯論。它也解釋了為什么舉報(bào)奧林巴斯(Olympus)賬目造假的是一個(gè)不熟悉日本榮譽(yù)守則的外國人，以及為什么一個(gè)工薪族既可以相信自己是“獻(xiàn)身事業(yè)的士兵”，也可以承認(rèn)自己最終是“千篇一律的工業(yè)機(jī)器上一顆被剝削的螺絲釘”。This latter example reveals the author’s propensity to see in every facet of modern Japan the ghosts of an unreconstructed past. The alienation of labour he describes could apply equally to almost anywhere. Similarly, many other features of the country, from teenage fashion to sexual relations, are shoehorned into an overarching theory with sometimes illuminating or far-fetched consequences.后面那個(gè)例子顯示出，作者傾向于認(rèn)為，那段未得到重建的歷史的幽靈存在于現(xiàn)代日本的方方面面。他所描述的勞動(dòng)異化(alienation of labour)可能同樣適用于幾乎任何地方。類似地，這個(gè)國家的許多其他特征（從青少年時(shí)尚到兩性關(guān)系）都被硬塞進(jìn)一個(gè)包羅一切的理論中，得出的結(jié)論有時(shí)發(fā)人深省，有時(shí)有些牽強(qiáng)。Shinzo Abe, the nationalist prime minister, becomes yet another throwback — one of the “vampires” from the darkest period of Japan’s history, in Taggart Murphy’s description. For this sorry state of affairs, the author concludes, Washington has only itself to blame. It “cavalierly” destroyed Japan’s best hope of revamping its political system and of repairing poisonous relations with China. Yet this is to credit the Democratic Party of Japan with a revolutionary agenda that it simply did not possess. It is also to depict modern Japan, for all its many faults, in too unrelentingly gloomy a light.日本的民族主義首相安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)則成為另一大倒退的象征——用墨菲的話來說，他是來自日本歷史中最黑暗時(shí)期的“吸血鬼”之一。對(duì)于這種糟糕的狀態(tài)，作者認(rèn)為，華盛頓只能怪它自己：美國“傲慢地”摧毀了日本改造其政治體制以及修復(fù)糟糕的日中關(guān)系的最好機(jī)會(huì)。然而，作者這樣說相當(dāng)于認(rèn)為日本民主黨有一份革命議程，但實(shí)際上它根本沒有。此外，盡管現(xiàn)代日本存在種種缺陷，但作者這樣說也未免過于無情和悲觀，沒有公允地反映現(xiàn)代日本的真實(shí)面貌。Japan and the Shackles of the Past, by R Taggart, Murphy OUP USA RRP20/RRP$29.95, 472 pages《日本及其歷史枷鎖》(Japan and the Shackles of the Past)，R塔格特墨菲著，牛津大學(xué)出版社美國部(OUP USA)出版，建議零售價(jià)20英鎊或29.95美元，472頁David Pilling is the FT’s Asia editor and author of ‘Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival’ (Allen Lane)注：戴維皮林(David Pilling)是英國《金融時(shí)報(bào)》亞洲版主編，著有《彎折逆境：日本與生存藝術(shù)》(Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival)，由艾倫萊恩出版社(Allen Lane)出版。