Archaism and Actuality

“In a masterful discourse about historical time, Harry Harootunian brings to light the ways in which the past attends the present, producing uneven temporalities in three seminal moments: the Meiji Restoration, fascism, and the postwar. This book changed my understanding of modern Japanese history and indeed of history itself.” - Carol Gluck, Columbia University

“Harry Harootunian’s analysis is rooted in the history of modern Japan, but the interest of this book extends well beyond. From that ground he is able to launch a series of fascinating arguments regarding capitalist modernity’s uses of the past and its temporal heterogeneity. Particularly timely and valuable is his investigation of how the invocation of an archaic past serves as a primary trope of twentieth- and twenty-first-century fascisms.” - Michael Hardt, author of The Subversive Seventies

"Archaism and Actuality is the culmination of more than half a century of work seeking to understand global capitalism and its transformation of the world from early to now late capitalism. The great achievement of this work is that in understanding the development of capitalism in Japan it is able to systematically unravel the ideologem of the worship of the Emperor and the State’s supposed divine origin in that development, and to show similarities and uniqueness to the other nation-states rapidly being reshaped by capital and its ethos." - R. Kwan Laurel, Journal of Contemporary Asia

"Harootunian’s Archaism and Actuality is a masterful exploration of the intersections of archaism, capitalism, and fascism in Japan’s modern history. The book’s theoretical rigor and perspectives on history make it an important contribution for both Japanese history and the broader examination of fascism and capitalist modernity." - Simon Avenell, Pacific Affairs

"A sophisticated engagement with the history of ideas that renounces both the celebrative (Nietzsche’s monumental history) and the fetishistic (Nietzsche’s antiquarian mode) styles in order to attempt a critical confrontation aimed at understanding not only the past, but the present itself." - Federico Marcon, Journal of Japanese Studies