Marxist Historiography of the French Revolution in Post-war Japan

This article explains the characteristic features of the works of three Japanese historians, (Kohachiro Takahashi, Michio Shibata et Tadami Chizuka), situating them in a specific historical context in Japan. Taking the Marxist point of view of the school of Koza, who had criticized the survival of feudal relations in Japon, Takahashi offered a unique interpretation by considering the total abolition of feudalism achieved by the political Montagnards as its essence. Shibata and Chizuka, despite their criticisms of Takahashi, continued to have two points in common with him. First, they considered until the end of their lives the Revolution as a bourgeois revolution. And second, they continued to accord an importance to comparative history, notably between Meiji-Ishin and the French Revolution, always having in mind the question of what Japanese society should be.