During the 1910s and 1920s, the Japanese historian Naitō Konan (1866-1934) published a number of books and articles in which he argued that the “modern age” in East Asia began in the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE). The resulting notion of a structural divide between the “medieval” Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) and the “modern” Song dynasty—the so-called “Tang-Song transition”—became foundational to the historiography of the Tang and Song dynasties in Europe and the United States after the Second World War, even though few agreed that “modern” was an apt designation for the Song period. As the outline of Naitō’s ideas gained acceptance, however, the political context of their origin was forgotten. A re-examination of Naitō’s scholarly and journalistic writings shows that his core concepts and arguments derived less from the primary sources than from debates about the legacy of the Meiji Restoration during the 1910s and debates about the future of Japanese imperialism during the 1920s.

Christian de Pee is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. His books and articles analyze the relationship between text and space, whether in wedding ritual, tombs, cities, literary genres, or historiography. His latest book, "Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800-1100" (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022) and his latest article, “Marco Polo’s Baggage: Manuscripts, Doubts, and a Mongol Lady’s Headdress” (Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 53 [2024]) are both freely available through Open Access.