Japan’s ‘Moral Re-Armament’ Movement: Continuity from World War to Cold War

After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, many Japanese politicians and public figures revitalized militaristic language for the formation of a world federation to bring about global peace and for the defeat of Communism. This was the Moral Re-armament Movement and it was led by figures like Kagawa Toyohiko, the vice president of the League for the Establishment of World Federation (later called the World Federation Movement).1 Although Kawaga redeploys militaristic metaphors of war-time Japan, his domestic analogies were aimed for a spiritual (rather than literal) battle against communism. Through this anti-communist framing, he was able to avoid censorship from the US occupied force.2 His speech to an audience in Kobe was published in the local newspaper Kobe Shinbun despite being ripe with Showa Era imperial messaging.

‘If Japan disarms… it will perhaps shame the United States into abandoning its own weapons. Japan can lead the world, spark a moral movement, achieve the dream of a Greater East Asia, and bring all eight corners of the world under a single roof’ (Kagawa Toyohiko 1945).3

After seeing the devastation of war and the horror of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese thinkers increasingly embraced pacifism, disarmament, decolonization, and nuclear deproliferation. They also recognized the unique capacity Japan would have in bringing about international peace through the formation of a World Federation. Fascinatingly, this utopian vision echoes the pre-war universalism, manifested in Pan-Asianism, which justified the imperial expansion of Japan and its Greater East Asia C0-Prosperity Sphere for world peace.4

Although there are countless examples of Japanese thinkers (including Kagawa) across a range of political spectrums, adapting their universalist messaging for Japan’s Imperialism, none are as unique as Kita Ikki. Kita was a writer who is considered a core influence in the creation of Japanese fascism.5 Western historians often consider him ‘right wing’ but he doesn’t necessarily fit into these traditional categories.6 Ikki espoused ‘Social Democratic’ principles like social reforms, democracy, enfranchisement, and gender equality while also stressing the need for Japan, led by its emperor, to expand and protect these universalist ideals abroad, through force, especially in China.7

However this militaristic language for Japan’s expansion was also anti-imperialistic, criticizing the Western colonialists like Britain and the Meiji Restoration for replicating it.8 Kita Ikki’s Pan-Asianism stresses the unique capacity of Japan to protect Asia from the West through a Japanese led “Asian Monroe Doctrine”, allowing nations to come to their own ‘national awakening’, or revolution, without Western pressure.9 In this way Japan could progress world history by bringing world peace and prosperity to Asia through expansion – this being the nation’s “moral destiny”10.

This utopian vision, ripe with militaristic language and humanist idealism, emphasizes the complexity of the Japanese imperial ideology. Unlike other writers of the time, Kita stressed the reality of his ideals; Force and blood were needed to form an Asian Federation, however this would eventually create peace and prosperity.11

The legacy of Japanese militarism and its ‘moral’ role in the international community would persist post WW2. Kagawa would draw on the power of the Japanese national morality or ‘Kokutai’. However, just as the meaning of Kokutai changed to fit a war time expansionist agenda, Kagawa would use it for a demilitarized Japan and its Moral Re-armament.  The World Federation Movement, during the Cold War’s ideological ‘fight’ against communism, represents the adaptability of Japanese thought to fit new political contexts.

  1. Lawson, Konrad. ‘Reimagining the Postwar International Order: The World Federalism of Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko’ (2014):9 [↩]
  2. ibid., p. 12 [↩]
  3.   ibid., p.11 [↩]
  4. ibid., p.2 [↩]
  5. Wilson, George M. ‘Kita Ikki’s Theory of Revolution.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 26, no.1 (1966):89. [↩]
  6. ibid [↩]
  7. Tanka Brij, ‘Kita Ikki and the Making of Modern Japan.’ Global Oriental (2006) [↩]
  8. Tanka Brij, ‘Kita Ikki and the Making of Modern Japan.’ Global Oriental (2006): 200. [↩]
  9. ibid., p. 87. [↩]
  10. ibid., p. 212 [↩]
  11. Wilson, George M. ‘Kita Ikki’s Theory of Revolution.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 26, no.1 (1966):95 [↩]