Misrecognizing the Modern: Japan and the Failure of Social Theory

Modern social theory rests on a series of misconceptions, the most important of which are ethnocentrism and presentism. That is, classical social theorists equated the modern with the west (and particular parts of the West at that) and with their contemporaneous reality. In so doing, as important as they are, their theorizing systematically misrecognized the nature of the modern. Yet "modernizing" Japan, and especially its social theorists, used the culture-bound and time-bound notions and in so doing not only misunderstood the nature of the West but also of the non-West, including most importantly Japan itself. Furthermore, the Japanese misunderstanding would in turn be absorbed by Western writers who were seeking precisely to overcome the limitations of classical social theory and its legacy. Needless to say, I am aware of disparate and divergent strands in social theories both in the West and in Japan but I wish to focus on the leading writers - most importantly, Marx and Weber - and consider the genealogy of misrecognition that continues to hobble the task of social theory today.