Beyond the Western Liberal Order

Yanaihara Tadao and Empire as Society

Ryoko Nakano

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781137290519
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Politik

This book introduces the political thought of Yanaihara Tadao (1893-1961), the most prominent Japanese social scientist working on empire, population migration and colonial policy, and uses it as a platform which to examine the global challenges faced by the U.S. hegemonic world order today, or what is often described as the Western liberal order.

CHAPTER 1

What Is “Society”?

This chapter describes Yanaihara’s concept of society (shakai) as a point of departure for the understanding of his study of empire and international relations. As a social scientist, Yanaihara perceived society as a central unit of political, economic, and social interactions. The fluidity and complexity of society determines the transformability of both international and domestic orders. As later chapters will discuss, with the application of “scientific” (kagakuteki) approaches such as Marxism, he analyzed the structural problems of socioeconomic issues. Yet he never separated social issues from the qualities and attitudes of human agents. At the center of his study there was a philosophical and social recognition that the current form of society reflected the quality of individual personality and moral ethics. The goal of this chapter is to present the fundamental social values that he developed and maintained despite the dramatic change of the Japanese political system after 1945. For the analysis of the predominant focus and interest of his study, I will use his academic and nonacademic writings.

This chapter starts with the intellectual background of Yanaihara’s youth, especially, what I call the “humanist tradition” of Japanese political thought in the late Meiji (1869–1912) and early Taisho (1912–1926) periods. His perspective of society, nation, and the state largely derives from the ideas of Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933), Uchimura Kanzō (1861–1930), and Yoshino Sakuzō (1878–1933). Although Yanaihara was writing during the Taisho era, the influence of Meiji intellectuals on his thoughts was enormous, as Yanaihara himself later admitted. The second section moves onto his philosophical account of society. In this section, I will articulate his ideal society of harmony and cooperation for which social justice is an indispensable prerequisite. From a Christian perspective, he suggested that any social reform of the government could not guide the individual to take a selfless action that was required for the attainment of social justice. The third section shows that Yanaihara took the political position of neither laissez-faire liberalism nor Marxism to guarantee social justice because he primarily relied on the moral compass of society’s members to achieve social justice. The fourth section argues that his humanist perspective of society persisted despite the dramatic changes of the Japanese political system and social climate after the defeat of Japan in 1945.

The Humanist Tradition in Imperial Japan

In the early Meiji era, the Japanese translation of the European concept of society was not fixed to shakai. Without a sense of national community and the political apparatus of a unified independent state, society was translated into various terms such as “to associate,” “to assemble,” “companions,” “association,” “company,” “intercourse,” and “troupe.” Only from about 1875, shakai was accepted as the translation of the Western concept of society.¹ However, in the emergence of a modern nation-state in Japan, society itself did not capture the center of attention. Rather, it was understood as part and parcel of a national community. Aligned to the governmental aim of creating a modern nation-state in Japan, Tokyo Imperial University, a newly established state-sponsored academic institution, took German Staatwissenschaft (literally, the study of the state) as a model to study how to establish state institutions and to govern the people in Japan. Japan’s Association for the Study of Social Policy [Shakai Seisaku Gakkai], established in 1896, also followed the example of Germany’s Verein für Sozialpolitik, whose aim was to solve social problems by state intervention.² As the Meiji constitution declared the emperor as the sovereign of the nation, the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University was dominated by the state-centric approach with an emphasis on emperor sovereignty, initiated by Hozumi Yatsuka (1860–1912) and Uesugi Shinkichi (1878–1929). Based on Hozumi’s presupposition on emperor sovereignty, Uesugi developed “the study of the state” (kokugaku) in which the constitution refused to undermine the supremacy and transcendentalism of the emperor by any means, and it was an unquestionable obligation for the Japanese nation to obey Imperial commands.³

However, not all intellectuals and academic scholars endorsed a strict understanding of the supremacy of the state, or even of the emperor, over the Japanese nation. During the Meiji and Taisho eras, some liberal and socialist thinkers focused on the importance of human agents as public citizens and developed a civil society perspective in which individuals voluntarily engage in sociopolitical relationships and cooperate for the benefit of the whole. In this vision, the concept of the state or the emperor was not totally idealized as a supreme entity. When Japanese politicians and intellectuals found the need to discuss “social problems” (shakai mondai), such as a growing domestic economic disparity and the disastrous consequences of the mismanagement of the Ashio copper mine pollution, the term “society” entered the Japanese intellectual vocabulary. Although the High Treason Incident [Taigyaku Jiken] of 1910⁴ temporarily silenced the voice of socialists who criticized the oligarchic politics in the Meiji government, the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Rice Riots of 1918 revived the public and academic interests in socialism, anarchism, and Marxism.⁵ In this process, the image of society was constituted as a challenge to the state-centric view in Japan. These intellectuals recognized the importance of a state apparatus for society, but they were not hesitant in considering the meaning of society rather than the state, or to extend the political rights of nationals as the citizens of imperial Japan. Since their aim was to revitalize the potential power of human agents, not for the state but for themselves and society, the innate characteristic of this attitude can be called “humanist.”

The three figures that deeply inspired Yanaihara in his youth belonged to this humanist tradition. The first was Nitobe Inazō, who was often described as a Japanese internationalist due to his public service as the under-secretary-general of the League of Nations. Nitobe’s importance to Yanaihara was primarily as the principal of the First Higher School [Tokyo Dai’ichi Gakkō]. After Yanaihara entered the school in 1910, he eagerly attended Nitobe’s extracurricular lectures on ethics (dōtoku), learning about “freedom, human dignity and the responsibility of the individual.”⁶ The second was Uchimura Kanzō, the founder of nonchurch Christianity in Japan. Yanaihara became a dedicated and outspoken Christian after he joined Uchimura’s Bible study group in 1911. These two figures were what Yanaihara described as the founders of the “vertical and horizontal threads” of his own personality.⁷ The third figure was Yoshino Sakuzō, the architect of the Taisho democratic movement. Yanaihara was inspired by Yoshino’s lectures on politics and civic movement at the Faculty of Law, Tokyo Imperial University, in which Yanaihara studied from 1913 to 1917.⁸ Let us briefly look at each profile with a focus on the time that these figures encountered and interacted with Yanaihara.

Nitobe Inazō

Nitobe Inazō was a Japanese liberal internationalist renowned for his contribution as educator, cultural interpreter, civil servant, and the under-secretary general to the League of Nations. He went to the Sapporo Agricultural College in which most classes were conducted in English.⁹ Soon after he entered Tokyo Imperial University, he was disappointed by the level of research and decided to study Economics and Political Science in Johns Hopkins University. While Nitobe became a Quaker and married Mary Patterson Elkington, he wrote a number of important books, including Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1905), an English-written work in which he aimed to explain to Westerners that the Japanese developed their own ethical codes. After Nitobe served as an official advisor on the development of Japanese agricultural policy in Taiwan (1901–1903) and taught colonial studies in Kyoto Imperial University, he became the principal of the First Higher School and later a professor on Colonial Policy in Tokyo Imperial University. His international experience and open-minded, liberal outlook gave him the opportunity to work for the League of Nations from 1920 to 1927.

As the principal of the First Higher School, Nitobe aimed to maintain a liberal atmosphere at the school in which students could freely cultivate themselves and pursue their own discipline. In contrast to the dominance of individualism that emerged in the late Meiji and early Taisho eras, Nitobe suggested that individuals should nurture their personality based on sociability and internationalism on the one hand and individual moral values on the other.¹⁰ Despite public criticism that he was committed too much to secular activities outside of his educational work, Nitobe frequently published magazine articles on Japanese business and economy in Jitsugyō no Nihon [Business Japan] in which he held the position of editorial advisor. His unconventional character was also found in his invitation to Tokutomi Roka (1863–1957) for a public lecture at school. Since Tokutomi was the defender of Kōtoku Shūsui (1871–1911), who was executed for the crime of High Treason in 1911, Nitobe was also accused by students of “disloyalty” to the emperor.

Nitobe’s unconventional and open-minded attitude symbolized the transitional nature of the late Meiji period in which public concerns shifted from the state to the individual. According to Harry Harootunian, the men of Meiji were characterized by shūgyō (education), committed to discipline and practical education, to contribute to the public good and the wealth of the nation, whereas the men of Taisho focused on personal self-cultivation and refinement (kyōyō; cultivation) to serve only themselves.¹¹ After Meiji, Japan achieved the status of a modern nation-state and developed a system of mass consumption and consumerism—individual hedonism, indulgence, and decadence became more dominant than the public devotion to the state. Nitobe had both characteristics of shūgyō and kyōyō, which aimed at the development of human quality and personality through self-discipline and cultivation. His impact on the emerging middle class cannot be underestimated because many students who received a family education without political connections learned from Nitobe the importance of self-cultivation for contributing to the public and the wealth of the nation.¹² In his leading role in promoting humanism at school, Nitobe laid an important basis for the Taisho democratic movement by defending spiritual and cultural values for individuals.

Uchimura Kanzō

The founder of the nonchurch (mukyōkai) Christian movement, Uchimura Kanzō, had a unique impact on a limited number of Japanese youngsters. Like Nitobe, he studied at the Sapporo Agricultural College and later went to Amherst College in Massachusetts at which he acquired the Puritan sense of Christian faith from the works by Cromwell, Milton, and Luther. Soon after he worked as a teacher in Tokyo from 1890, he became a controversial figure because he did not make a deep, formal bow to a copy of the Imperial Rescript of Education [Kyōiku Chokugo], promulgated as the emperor’s divine commentary to the Japanese people as his subjects. Although the wording of the rescript was skillfully designed to avoid contradicting the provision of freedom of conscience enshrined in the Meiji constitution, Uchimura thought that, if the act of bowing was meant to be in worship of the emperor, it would offend his Christian conscience. Although he later reconsidered that bowing was just a mark of respect to the emperor and not worship, public criticism of his act as “disloyal” conduct had already been fierce. The senior professors of Tokyo Imperial University, Inoue Tetsujirō (1855–1944) and Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916), emphasized the gap between Christianity and national polity: the Buddhist journals portrayed the image of a disloyal Uchimura. As a result, Uchimura left his teaching position in 1919.

Becoming a target of public criticism as a traitor was painful for Uchimura; and yet, this experience contributed to the development of his identity as a Japanese Christian. Although his hesitation to make a formal bow to the Imperial Rescript of Education clearly showed his rejection of idolatry, it did not mean that he had no respect for the emperor. On the contrary, Uchimura believed that Japanese traditional morality could be integrated into Christianity, as discussed in his English-written book, Japan and the Japanese (1894). For Uchimura, the right attitude of a Christian patriot was to adopt a critical attitude to nationalist ideology that postulated the primacy of the state over individual desires. His attitude was in contrast to that of Ebina Danjō (1856–1937), the pastor of the Union Church. Whilst Ebina was averse to challenging the Japanese imperial system and was a strong supporter of the Russo-Japanese War, Uchimura’s attitude was more subversive in the sense that he regarded individual conscience as more valuable than the imperial institution and did not refrain from raising his voice against it.

With the conviction that blind worship was not a patriotic act, Uchimura as a senior columnist for popular newspaper Yorozu Chōhō [Morning News] severely criticized the oligarchic Meiji government as well as the emerging “capitalist” class. With socialists such as Kōtoku Shūsui and Sakai Toshihiko (1871–1933), he attacked the elevation of a small privileged minority at the expense of workers and farmers in the Ashio copper mine incident in 1901. Uchimura adopted a pacifist line after the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and objected to the predatory nature of the Japanese approach to the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Although these critici...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Japanese Names and Publications
• Introduction
• 1.  What Is “Society”?
• 2.  A World of Migration
• 3.  Development and Dependency
• 4.  Autonomy under Imperial Rule
• 5.  Asianism versus Internationalism?
• Conclusion. The Contemporary Relevance of Yanaihara’s Work
• Appendix 1  List of Japanese Words
• Appendix 2  Yanaihara Tadao: A Brief Chronology of His Life and Major Works, 1893–1965
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index