Liu Shifu was a revolutionary and anarchist who rose to prominence during a time of great political upheaval in China. The combined failures of the First Sino-Japanese War (1895) and Boxer Rebellion (1900) had sent shock waves through Chinese society, exposing vulnerabilities in the old Confucian-Imperial order. During his lifetime, Shifu would become the central figure in Guangzhou Anarchism, defining an ideology which would have far-reaching impacts within his native China.
In Japan (where Shifu had been exposed to much of his revolutionary thinking), Deguchi Onisaburō was hard at work elevating the Oomoto faith to national renown. He, too, had become disillusioned with the march of history in his native country. Industrialization had alienated many in Japan, and while the nation was undoubtedly at the height of its power, some felt a degree of social cohesion had been sacrificed.
Both the revolutionary Shifu and the religious Onisaburō felt that communal living was the path to civilizational progress and world peace. Both were raised in times of political turmoil and social alienation, which informed and focused their ideologies into practical manuals for the salvation of humankind. In researching the readings from Week 4 (Shifu) and Week 8 (Oomoto & Onisaburō), I will draw parallels as well as distinctions between their separate proposals for communal living.
Shifu was heavily influenced by the work of “National Essence” writers, who glorified early China as a pristine anarchist society. They taught that Confucians had failed China by tolerating the Manchu (Qing) invaders, sacrificing morality for power and self-enrichment. Buddhism was also a major source of inspiration, as it preached equality between the sexes and various ethnic groups. Nonetheless, Shifu disavowed organized religion, politics, and capitalism in favor of ‘humanity’ (renge), which he felt had been deprived by exploitative forces. Communal living, collective ownership of property, and total adherence to a twelve-point lifestyle pledge were the keys to China’s salvation. Several Guangzhou-based organizations, such as the Conscience Society and Cock-Crow Society, actively sought to bring about these changes through printing anarchist material and establishing utopian communes .
Shifu’s conception of communal life centered around social equality and collectivized property, housing, education, and childcare. He hoped to emulate the intensive enterprises described by Kropotkin in his Fields, Factories, and Workshops – that is to say, efficient, limited projects capable of combining agriculture and industry1 . To preserve cleanliness, meals would be served Western-style (in individual portions, contrary to the typical Chinese use of common serving bowls). Knives and forks would be used, as well as a tablecloth and napkins2 . The twelve-point pledge of the Conscience Society forbade the consumption of meat, liquor, or tobacco, which were all known to be harmful to health. Shifu wrote that “those who would improve society must treat their own bodies in accordance with these scientific findings… their behavior is also part of the moral example they must provide”3 . All of these prescriptive regulations would improve one’s renge, thereby assisting the progress of society and mankind as a whole.
By 1913, Shifu and his followers in the Cock-Crow Society had selected an ideal spot for their commune at Red Lichee Bay, on the eastern shore of the Pearl River Delta. Unfortunately, political revolution intervened and Shifu’s utopian project was never fully realized. Had they succeeded in their mission, their anarchism may have “developed a rural orientation and eventually fostered a peasant-based revolution.”4
Deguchi Onisaburō shared Shifu’s romanticization of the ‘ancient way’, which he felt could be replicated through a communal, agricultural lifestyle dominated by hard work and worship. His philosophy was influenced by 19th-century Nativism (kokugaku), which rejected Chinese formalism and rationality in favor of Japanese emotion, beauty, and poetry. Much like European Socialism and Communism, Onisaburō’s Kōdō program advocated revolutionary action to rid society of evil and inequality. The program nonetheless remained true to its Nativist roots, preaching that Japan was uniquely endowed with a special place in the world (from where it could leading a sort of world-family in governance and peace).
At the center of Onisaburō’s ideology was a return to the land. Agrarianism (nōhonshugi) celebrated the economic and social merits of rural life, and was especially strong in Japan from the 1900s to the 1930s5 . Onisaburō himself described how farmers of his youth “gathered firewood from the mountains, brewed homemade soy sauce, and recycled straw into useful craft items for sale”6 . In their attachment to rural living, popular religions like Oomoto tended to valorize human endeavor, rice production, and daily morality over established religious or state authority7 .
Onisaburō was generally suspicious of Western influence, which he felt had inspired Japanese farmers to prioritize profit and maximize their yields (often at the expense of tradition). Yet he was no enemy of innovation. His call for a rural, communal lifestyle may have emphasized thrift and hard work, but Onisaburoō also supported the development of new crop strains, increased access to modern transportation, specilized education, and media reforms8 . His goal continued to be revolutionary economic and social leveling.
Onisaburō’s rural communalism shared a number of features with the anarchist projects of Liu Shifu. Both were staunchly anti-authoritarian, preferring self-reliance and local autonomy over established hierarchies of power. They shared a concern for social welfare and equality among subjects, which inclined them toward collectivism and trans-national projects like Esperanto.
Onisaburō, who taught that “humans were charged with the divine task of stewardship over nature”, certainly elevated spirituality to a more central role than did Shifu9 . His assertion of a traditional agricultural lifestyle, grounded in spirituality, was perhaps more conservative than Shifu’s anarchist internationalism, but this did not make him anti-progressive. Onisaburō’s Japan was in many ways a contrasting model to Shifu’s China: a modern state which had recently joined the ranks of the world powers. Nostalgic agrarianism seemed an appropriate response to the alienating effects of industry and global capital. China’s humiliating treatment by the West demanded a more revolutionary re-awakening, and Shifu did not shy from emulating Western science or praising radical European thinkers. In their respective countries, Shifu and Onisaburō would be remembered as visionaries who spoke truth to power and stood up for the disaffected in society. Their assertion of communalism, though its origins were ancient, represented a radical break from an oppressive social order, and continues to inspire their countrymen today.
Bibliography
Krebs, Edward S. Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
Stalker, Nancy K. Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburō, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008.
- Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 117. [↩]
- Ibid, 114. [↩]
- Ibid, 103. [↩]
- Ibid, 117. [↩]
- Nancy K. Stalker, Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburō, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), 65. [↩]
- Ibid, 66-67. [↩]
- Ibid, 65. [↩]
- Ibid, 66. [↩]
- Ibid, 67. [↩]