"How Historians Think"

2024/12/24

There are many introductory books on historical science and its methodology. If I were to highlight a feature of this book among them, it would be the attempt to explain "what historians are doing" based on actual examples of their work.

For example, in a paper, a historian quotes historical materials and explains the information gleaned from them to modern readers. At this point, what tense do the historian's sentences take? Looking closely, historians surprisingly use the present tense. They use phrases like "...it is understood that" or "...it can be seen that." Historians do not always speak about the past in the past tense; they write papers in a mode of "here is this material, and this is what can be read from it"—in other words, a way of proceeding while sharing a specific text with the reader.

By the way, although there is no direct connection, I started writing tanka poetry right around the same time I was writing this book. In the creation of tanka, the "utakai" (poetry gathering) is considered very important (though not all poets like them). At an utakai, multiple people offer comments (critiques) on a single poem for anywhere from several to tens of minutes. When I first participated in an utakai, I immediately noticed that "this is similar to the way a historian looks at historical materials." Since the language of tanka is the language of poetry, the way tanka is constructed differs from the way everyday language is used, but that doesn't mean one can critique it regardless of the words written in the poem. In other words, a critique must have some basis within the poem itself. Even if the language is used differently from everyday language, the participants of the utakai think about how it differs while sharing that single poem.

The reason I am writing this is that I thought the work I attempted in this book might be interesting even to those who are not historians or have no interest in history. Opportunities to say something while sharing certain words exist everywhere in our lives, and performing that properly likely leads to communicating with each other decently (or enjoyably).

How Historians Think

Yusaku Matsuzawa

Chikuma Shinsho

288 pages, 1,034 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.