E.H. Norman

• Born: 1909
• Died: 1957

E.H. Norman was a historian of Japan, and Canadian diplomat, known in particular for his 1940 book Japan's Emergence as a Modern State, and 1943 essay Soldier and Peasant in Japan: The Origins of Conscription. These works were both prominent and influential, if not seminal, elements of the scholarship on modern Japan (and the Meiji period in particular) into the late 20th century.

Norman grew up in Nagano prefecture, the son of missionary parents, being therefore fluent in both English and Japanese. He left Japan in his mid-teens, and studied at Victoria College in Toronto and Trinity College in Cambridge, where he focused chiefly on ancient and medieval European history before turning to Japanese history and earning his PhD in that field at Harvard University. He also studied briefly at Columbia University, and read Latin, Greek, French, and German, as well as, to some extent, Italian and Chinese.

Japan's Emergence as a Modern State was first published in 1940, when Norman was 31 years of age. John Dower writes that this publication established him, at that time, as the pre-eminent scholar of modern Japan in the West. A Japanese translation of the text was published in 1947. Soldier and Peasant in Japan, published originally in 1943, and then in Japanese in 1948, is said to have been even more influential in Japan than in the West. His 1949 study of 18th century intellectual Andô Shôeki, similarly, has attracted very little attention in the West, but has been seen by Japanese scholars as possessing originality and importance.

Norman served as a diplomat for the Canadian government simultaneously, throughout this period of his scholarly output. In 1947-49, he served as a private tutor for Prince Mikasa, one of the Shôwa Emperor's younger brothers.

In 1951-52, the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), one of the preeminent international organizations devoted to East Asian Studies at that time, became a target of anti-Communist investigations in the United States led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Norman became implicated within these investigations after Karl August Wittfogel, a historian of China, former Marxist and now fierce anti-Communist, gave testimony on August 7, 1951, that he knew Norman to have been actively a Communist in 1938. In total, 46 individuals associated with the IPR were implicated in this manner.

He served his country in that role during the Suez Crisis of 1956-57. Norman committed suicide in Cairo shortly afterwards, in 1957; his persecution by the team of US Senator Joseph McCarthy, who accused Norman of Communist sympathies, is said to have contributed significantly to Norman's decision to end his life.

Most of his writings, including several unfinished or otherwise previously unpublished, are collected in a volume entitled Origins of the Modern Japanese State, published in 1975.

Writings

• 1940 - Japan's Emergence as a Modern State
• 1943 - Soldier and Peasant in Japan: The Origins of Conscription
• 1945 - Feudal Background of Japanese Politics
• 1947 - Japanese translation of Japan's Emergence as a Modern State
• 1948 - Japanese translation of Soldier and Peasant in Japan: The Origins of Conscription
• 1949 - Andô Shôeki and the Anatomy of Japanese Feudalism
• 1949 - Japanese translation of Andô Shôeki and the Anatomy of Japanese Feudalism
• 1956 - Kurio no Kao ("The Face of Clio") - a collection of general historiographical essays published in Japanese scholarly journals in the years prior.

References

• John Dower, "E.H. Norman, Japan and the Uses of History," in Dower (ed.), Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E.H. Norman, New York: Pantheon Books (1975), 3-101.