Author: b24

Inoue Tetsujirō: The Confucian Revival and Fascism in Japan

Beginning in 1868, the Meiji Restoration was a state-led effort to modernize Japan. As the Tokugawa government was abolished, the Confucian backbone of the state was viciously attacked. Religious persecution grew as the Meiji sought the establishment of Shinto as Japan’s national religion, an idea influenced by the centrality of Christianity for European states. By the late 1880s, Confucian institutions (like schools) and religious practices nearly vanished from Japanese Society.1 The state viewed Confucianism as backward, “the antithesis of Western Modernity,” but this is exactly what led to its revival.

Inoue Tetsujirō (1855-1944) led the Confucian revival in the 1890s. Inoue was a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University and a political commentator in major public debates of the late Meiji Period. His experience studying in Europe for six years (1884-1890) was formative, taking inspiration from the strength of German nationalism through its centrality of Christianity.2  With a long anti-Christian tradition and the Meiji era’s emphasis on Shinto in ‘National Learning’, Christianity could not be replicated in Japan.3. Instead, Inoue would try to replicate Germany’s model by positioning Confucianism as central.

Although the revival of Confucianism was a traditionalist movement, the ‘religion’ was transformed to fit the modern context. Tetsujirō would adapt Confucianism from a religion to a Philosophy. He argued Confucianism was an “ethical system” that would foster “National Morality” while being “scientific” because it does not undermine the modern emphasis on secular education.4  This uniquely Japanese rebrand of the old religion builds on Western ideas and borrows traditional concepts. He argues Confucianism’s secularity and rationalism (through the hierarchical structures of Confucianism akin to Western ideas like Social Darwinism) make it superior to the West’s Christianity.5 The national exceptionalism foundational to Inoue conception made it a uniquely ‘Japanese Confucianism’.

As critical discourse grew in response to the Meiji policy of Westernization (seen in the debates on Overcoming Modernity) traditionalists saw the Confucian Revival as a way to bridge the modern and the idealistic past. Although Confucian Academies never completely recovered from the pre-Meiji times, the state increasingly absorbed the philosophy. Inoue’s influence can be seen through his advisory role in the “official interpretation of the Imperial Rescript on Education” which adapted the 1890 order to teach Confucian values.6 Confucianism grew closer to the state over time and embedded itself as a core ideology alongside Shinto. This can be seen through state, rituals and ceremonies, common in the late 1920s, which were often Confucian or Shinto.7 As the state came to dominate Confucianism, it became susceptible to adoption into the fascist imperial doctrine of the 30s and 40s. The ‘Kingly Way’ became the ‘Imperial Way’

Insoue’s ideas became problematic during the 15 Years War between the Manchuria Invasion and WW2. The revival of Confucianism in Japan justified imperialism in China as defending East Asian values against the Communists (CCP) and Chinese Republicans (KMT) who saw it as the antithesis of their mission.8 The Japanese saw themselves as defending the East from the Western powers. Korea, a nation that was centrally Confucian under the Choson state, was forced to adopt Japanese last names after 1937, going against the values of Filial Piety. This demonstrates the inability of the Japanese to maintain the Eastern Tradition in the way they had justified it previously.9

In the post-war years, Insoue’s ideas became taboo. Confucianism became akin to fascism. The author states the philosophy “was best forgotten”.10 However, it may be time to reconsider the legacy of Confucianism and fascism. Many pre-war figures, like those from the Kyoto School, were rethought and reconsidered in ‘modern’ contexts. A similar attempt should be made with Inoue Tetsujirō and Japanese Confucianism.

  1. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Facism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 144 [↩]
  2. Davis, Winston. “The Civil Theology of Inoue Tetsujirō.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 3, no. 1 (1976): 7. https://doi.org/10.2307/3023095. [↩]
  3. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Fascism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 155 [↩]
  4. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Facism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 150. [↩]
  5. Davis, Winston. “The Civil Theology of Inoue Tetsujirō.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 3, no. 1 (1976):7. https://doi.org/10.2307/3023095. [↩]
  6. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Facism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 152 [↩]
  7. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Fascism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 156 [↩]
  8. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Fascism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 159 [↩]
  9. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Fascism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 165 [↩]
  10. Paramore, Kiri. “Confucianism as Fascism (1868-1945).” Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2016: 166 [↩]

American Films in Japan: A Dilemma for ‘Overcoming Modernity’

Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attacks in 1941, leading Japanese academics and writers assembled at a round table to discuss “Overcoming Modernity”. This symposium demonstrates the daunting, impossible, and often paradoxical attempts to counter and move beyond Westernization to retrieve the lost Japanese cultural identity. However, these discussions occurred when Western culture was firmly entrenched in Japanese society, long after the Meiji era’s Bunmei Kaika (Civilization and Enlightenment) policy ‘modernized’ the nation.1

On day 2 of the discussions, the scholars criticize the Americanization of Japan through film. The global cultural power of the United States’ cinema industry reveals the complex and paradoxical nature of overcoming modernity: They reject film as a Western technology that has corrupted their culture, while also advocating for film in Japan to foster a return to tradition or ‘True Japanese Identity’.

The roundtable suggests that Western technology, like the camera and film, has corrupted Japanese culture and identity. Nishitani, a prominent Kyoto school member, opens the discussion by calling on Tsemura, a well-known film critic. Tsemura views Japan as a superior culture, lamenting the popularity of ignorant, low-brow American media. He detests the Western “machine society” that values quantity over quality and suggests the lack of historical tradition and multiracial makeup in the US as a reason for its films’ “global universality.”2 Tsemura views Americanization and Western technology as a poison to their traditional culture.

There is likewise a conservative desire to return to an idyllic, pure Japanese origin. The panelists suggest this can be accomplished through the spread of traditional representations, like the Japanese classics. However, the symposia acknowledges that the classics are unappealing to Japan’s young generation – the same “modern boys” and “modern girls” shaped by their appeal to the “optimism, speed, and eroticism” of American cinema.3 American film’s widespread appeal and the public’s general disinterest in the classics represent a core dilemma for the roundtable.

Recognizing the need to overcome the spread of Americanization through the medium of film, Tsumura surprisingly suggests that film could be adapted to instill the Japanese Spirit.  Tsumura cites the Newsreels on the Greater East Asian War and its use in medical schools as evidence of the educational importance of film for Japanese society.4 He argues that film cannot be rejected because it emerged from the US; Like many technologies, it is ubiquitous and embedded into everyday life – “undeniable”.5 Instead, film must be adapted to promote a “higher culture” in Japan.6 Thus, to return culture to its idyllic past, away from the poisonous influence of the West, Japan must use popular Western technology (film) to instill a traditional, ‘True Japanese Identity’ in modern boys and girls.

This, of course, is paradoxical. However, it does reveal the complexity of the roundtable’s dilemma. For the Kyoto School, ‘Overcoming Modernity’ was accomplished through “passing through modernity” – neither turning back to an idyllic past nor embracing Westernization, but moving forward by embracing both.7 Cinema represents one Western medium that the panel rejects and embraces to overcome modernity. However, living through a time of ‘world-historical importance,’ the symposium offers no clear solution to Japan’s predicament.

 

  1. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.8 [↩]
  2. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.201 [↩]
  3. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.200  [↩]
  4. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.202 [↩]
  5. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.203 [↩]
  6. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.203 [↩]
  7. Davis, Bret W. “The Kyoto School.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/. [↩]

Imperial Internationalism in Japan: The Bahai Faith Meets the Concordia Movement

The Bahai faith originated in Iran in the mid-19th century led by its living prophet Baha’u’llah. His teachings called for the unification of the world’s religions, viewing all faiths as different manifestations of God.1 The eldest son of Baha’u’llah, Abdu’l-Baha, succeeded his father and led a campaign to spread the teachings of Bahai to the United States and Europe. Agnes Baldwin Alexander, a young American woman from Hawaii, would spread the religion in Japan in the 20th century. The faith’s humanist, internationalist doctrine fit neatly within the nation’s imperial ideology.

In London in 1912, Agnes B. Alexander wrote an account of the meeting between Abdu’l-Baha and Jinzo Naruse, President of Japan’s Women’s College. Naruse was a liberal educator who sought support for Japan’s Concordia Movement, an internationalist project intending to find “Common ground on which all nations could harmonize”.2 Abdu’l voiced his support for Naruse’s movement, positioning the Bahai cause as central to the peace and unity of the human race while stressing the need for a “Divine Power” to put these principles into practice. He signed Naruse’s autograph book with the following prayer:

“O God! The darkness of contention, strife and warfare between the religions, the nations and the people has beclouded the horizon of Reality and hidden the heaven of Truth. The world is in need of the light of Guidance. Therefore, O God, confer Thy favor, so that the Sun of Reality may illumine the East and the West” (December 30, 1912. Translated by Ahmad Sohrab)

Abdu’l’s prayer demonstrates the faith’s capacity to justify Japan’s imperial internationalism. The symbolic power of light for human purification, “The Sun of Reality”, is central to the Bahai teachings. Likewise, the Sun has great symbolic importance in the history of Japan. The Japanese imperial army’s adoption of the ‘Rising Sun Flag’ illustrates the nation’s mission to bring peace, unification, and modernity to Asia. Similarly, the Bahai faith is a humanist religion. Abdu’l-Baha shows his humanist values by denouncing the war and hatred that stems from national differences. In “Bahai World Faith” he argues the spread of Bahai to all nations will birth a unified “heavenly civilization”.3 This utopian vision of world peace and unity aligns with the Concordia Movement. Abdu’l-Baha saw the Japanese as uniquely capable of spreading his faith through its imperial internationalism. However, this reveals an obvious contradiction in the imperial Japanese and Bahai doctrine.

Historians like Mark Linicicome are critical of 20th-century Japanese liberal internationalists like Naruse for the paradox of justifying imperialism on humanist grounds. Lincicome shows how during the Taisho Democracy Era, educators advocated for Japan’s role in promoting world peace through the cultural, political, and economic assimilation (Doka) of weaker Asian nations.4 This internationalism adapted to become hypernationalism after the Manchurian Invasion in 1931. The Concordia Association of Manchuko, originally established to promote left-leaning ideas of Panasiamism and self-determination would become a totalitarian puppet regime after the Japanese Kwantung Army’s occupation in the Second Sino-Japanese War.5 Like Taisho educators, Naruse’s Concordia movement turned away from its liberal values through political pressure and liberal internationalism’s adaptability. Likewise, Abdu’l-Baha viewed Japan as a divine power to bring God’s purifying light for an international utopia. This humanist logic explains Japan’s ability to justify “world war in the name of world peace”.6

Although Jinzo Naruse and Abdu’l-Baha criticize war, nationalism, and militarism, it becomes clear how internationalist rhetoric during Japan’s liberal Taisho Era would quickly be adapted to justify Japan’s hypernationalism, militarism, and imperial expansion in Asia during the Showa Era leading into the Manchrua Invasion and the Second World War.

 

  1. Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Baha’i World Faith’ (1975), pp.254-257  [↩]
  2. Agnes B. Alexander “Abdu’l Baha meets President Naruse of Japan Women’s College.” Bahai Reference Library (1912) p. 113. [↩]
  3.   Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Baha’i World Faith'(1975), pp.254-257 [↩]
  4. Mark Lincicome, “Imperial Subjects As Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism and Education in Japan.” Lexington Books (2009) p. 40 [↩]
  5. Young L., “When Facism met empire in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.” Journal of Global History 12, no.2 (2017) pp.282-283 [↩]
  6. Mark Lincicome, “Imperial Subjects As Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism and Education in Japan.” Lexington Books (2009) p. 104 [↩]