Esperanto and the Non-War Movement – Japan’s view on the globe

The first global concept of cosmopolitanism begat in classical Greece, with their view of cultural idealism that would transcend the constraints of traditional locales. But without a institutionalized organizational frame, their beliefs were just that – an ideal.¹ It would only be from the mid-nineteenth century onwards that a more institutionalized frame would form, one of the cognitive orientation – the language Esperanto.² Instead of imagining a world which transcended national boundaries like the Greeks, nineteenth century cosmopolitans envisioned a common language that would promote global citizenship. Common language would give individuals attachment to a concept of world society and rid the world of problems such as miscommunication.³

 

In the case of the use of Esperanto in Japan, it would significantly develop in particular after the Russo-Japanese war, 1904-05. When introduced, it quickly begat a trend with the Japanese annual assessment of leading trends newspaper, the ‘Asahi shinbun’, enthusiastically following, themselves proclaimed, biggest craze of 1906.⁴ The idea of Esperanto would spread through the studies and discussion of elites and nonelites in noninstitutional spaces such as coffee shops and rural homes.⁵ It would be in these out of state influence hidden pockets that individuals would start to practice their imagination of world order and peace.

 

 

 

Indeed, Esperanto would challenge the image of the foreigner [gaijin] and enemy. During the Russo-Japanese war, 1904-1905, the notion of ‘worldism’ became distinct from the nation-state centered notion of world order and international relations.⁵ Esperanto began to be referred as a “world language” [sekaigo] in post Russo-Japanese war.⁶ This change came hand-in-hand with the invention of “the people”, an imagination of “heimen”, an idea of a people without the state as the subject. Unlike the Marxist proletarian masses of class struggle, this notion was birthed from the significant Non-War movement in Japan.⁶ And it is this Non-War movement, with its use of Esperanto, that would challenge the vision of the dehumanized version of the enemy.

 

 

 

The Non-War movement revolved greatly around the language and imagery of ‘heimen’, with ‘hei’ meaning ‘plains/ level or horizon’ and ‘min’ – ‘people’. ‘Heimen’ became a term embracing ‘everyone’.⁷ Non-War supporters viewed war as representing a retrogression of human progress and civilization. Instead, with the use of ‘heimen’, the notion could serve to replace the national, social and ethnic hierarchy with a concretized notion of humanity that extended beyond the territory of the nation-state.⁷

 

 

 

The Russian common people, as portrayed by one of the leading Japanese papers ‘Shiikan heim’, began to be drawn as instruments of exploitative elites and the government in Russia.⁸ Japanese readers would now discover that the demonized enemy was, in fact, an exploited people under the social and political elites, who were too much similar to their own national Japanese.

 

 

 

For Kotoku Shusui, one of the leading figures of the Non-War movement, empathy was a naturally occurring sentiments in all human beings and thus was the most natural foundation for the conduct of international relations. ‘Sokuin dojo’ – ‘happens to you’.⁷ He envisioned a more ethical transnational community based on the idea of the empathetic nature of human beings.⁷ He saw that patriotism and nationalism, the ‘othering’ of others, artificially bound and territorialized ethics.⁷

 

 

 

Overall, both the Non-War movement and the rise of Esperanto in Japan led to a change in perception of the foreign world which was out to get you. Both were important to reintroduce the factor of humanity in the minds of a people who were heavily militarized and alienated from global society. The world was not the enemy – language and empathy was the new language to communicate in, to understand one another and bring an end to war and strife. If only most Japanese leadership thought so too.

 

 

 

Biblgiography:

 

KONISHI, SHO. “Translingual World Order: Language without Culture in Post-Russo-Japanese War Japan.” The Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 1 (2013): 91–114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23357508.

 

John Boli and George M. Thomas, Constructing World Culture, “Constructing a Global Identity: The Role of Esperanto”, Stanford University Press, California (1999)