壬午 – Rethinking the World in East Asia 1850s-1990s

Kita Ikki and the Contradictions of Utopianism

The seminal events which China and Japan faced from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century catalysed many utopian ideas in public discourse, which imagined how their societies might be reorganised for modernity. Within these utopias, however, the interplay between indigenous and Western ideals produced systems of thoughts which have embedded contradictions between the two forces at play.

Examples of this contradictory utopianism could be seen in many utopian thinkers and activists both throughout the late 19th to early 20th century. Ishiwara Kanji, who in the immediate post WW2 era was an ardent advocate of world federation, was in the 1930s a general, instrumental in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.¹ Late Qing thinker Kang Youwei’s idea of Datong contains, within its critique of the existing world, contradictions between the substance and the origins of its thoughts. Kang, in his proposals for women and for the public raising of children, implicitly critiques the traditional notions of family and filial piety, as burdening mothers with responsibility for raising the child, and burdening children with responsibility for requiting their parent’s care.² Yet Datong finds its original utopian expression in the Confucian classic Book of Rites (Liji).³ The conflict between Kang’s critique of the traditional institution of family and filial piety, and the provenance of his utopianism is unresolved.

In the utopian ideas of Kita Ikki’s An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan, it is unsurprising to find contradictions in his conception of an East Asian utopianism. The premise of Kita’s thoughts are based on situating Japan at the forefront of an ‘Eastern Republic’ with an indigenous ideology.⁴ Thus central to Kita’s thoughts is the need for a supra-regional entity by which to challenge Western hegemony, formed on the basis of universality of his revolutionary ideology.⁵ Yet in constructing the ideology, Kita maintained particularist elements, such as the contribution of Nichiren Buddhism, to his ideology.⁶ Equally Kita argued against the import and imposition of democracy in Japan as being insensitive to its ahistoricism in a Japanese context, yet saw no contradiction in suggesting the imposition of his ideology beyond a Japanese context. Likewise, Kita’s conception of male suffrage as being part of a citizen’s duty to the nation stood in contrast to his contempt and his lack of belief in the ability of common people for transformation as historical agents.⁷ Most damning is his conception of Koreans as lacking sufficient self-awareness for self-determination, even as he expounds equality of citizens under the emperor.⁸

How could we account for this tendency towards contradiction? The desire to construct a utopian imaginary based on native, rather than Western, ideals, meant that such utopian works drew from traditions which may otherwise have been critiqued as part of its utopian narrative. For Kang, the Confucian concept of ren and the innate goodness of Man underpinned his belief in the perfectibility of humanity, which is the basis of his utopianism.⁹ For Kita, Nichiren Buddhism provided the common basis by which Japan and China, for example, can fraternalise and bind.¹⁰ That there are internal contradictions in these utopias are unlikely to themselves be indictments of those ideas, but these nonetheless represent an unresolved tension at the heart of many utopian ideological projects in East Asia.

Konrad Lawson, ‘Reimagining the Postwar International Order: The World Federalism of Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko’, in Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley (eds), The institution of international order: from the League of Nations to the United Nations (New York, 2018), pp. 185, 188. [↩]
K’ang Yu-wei, ‘Ta T’ung Shu’, in Laurence G. Thompson (ed.), Ta T’ung Shu: The One-World Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei (London, 1958), pp. 38-39. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 27-29. [↩]
Brij Tankha, Kita Ikki and the making of modern Japan: a vision of empire (Kent, 2006), pp. 129-130. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 159-160. [↩]
Ibid., p. 159. [↩]
Kita Ikki, ‘An Outline Plan for the Reorganisation of Japan’, in William Theodore De Bary, Carol Gluck, Arthur E. Tiedemann, Andrew Barshey, and William M. Bodiford (eds), Sources of Japanese Tradition: Vol. 2: 1600 to 2000 (New York, 2010), pp. 964-965. Tankha, Kita Ikki, p. 158. [↩]
Tankha, Kita Ikki, pp. 136-138. [↩]
K’ang, ‘Ta T’ung Shu’, in Thompson (ed.), Ta T’ung Shu, pp. 42-44, 46-47. [↩]
Kita, ‘An Outline Plan’, in De Bary et al. (eds), Sources, p. 159. [↩]

Can intellectuals avoid totalitarian instrumentalisation? Nishida’s thought and Japanese imperialism

Can an intellectual avoid instrumentalisation of their thought under totalitarianism? That is the problem faced by intellectuals in an environment of totalitarianism, whose options are few and trying: to join or be co-opted by the totalitarian project, to retreat in the face of power, or resist and risk persecution. For Nishida Kitarō, and for the philosophers associated with the Kyoto School, this was the prospect faced under Imperial Japan. As an examination of the activities of the philosophers and their period writings show, many were co-opted into providing an intellectual basis for Japanese imperialism, and for Nishida, who intellectually resisted the procession of totalitarianism and ultranationalism of the period, still found his resistance to be ineffectual, and his thoughts ignored or co-opted in service of justifying Japan’s imperial project.

In the context of Japan from the 1920s onwards, this totalitarianism appeared in the form of rising ultranationalism that policed the boundaries of acceptable public discourse, and thus the limits and language within which academic philosophy, as practised by Kyoto School philosophers, must reside. A number of events marked the rise of nationalism and its intrusion into the academic space. The 1925 Peace Preservation Law, the establishment of the Superior Special Police Force and the Research Centre for National Spiritual Culture, as well as the Takikawa Incident and Minobe Incident, saw the gradual tightening of the bounds of acceptable discourse in academia.¹ This was the effective prohibition of support for liberalism and questioning of the Emperor’s divine authority. The publishing of the Fundamentals of the National Polity set most explicitly the lines and language of political orthodoxy, effectively within which academia must preside.² It is within this context which Nishida and other Kyoto School intellectuals operated, and in which their response to totalitarianism should be understood.

One consideration may be whether the weaponization of the Kyoto School’s thoughts was deliberate, either by Nishida himself or by other intellectuals associated with his philosophical thoughts. For Nishida, who had fundamental disagreements with the political orthodoxy, participation in politics implied much resistance and persuasion within the acceptable discursive language, though resistance was ineffectual and co-option still pervasive. The case of the Principles of the New World Order is a pertinent case. Written in 1943 with the prospect of influencing the Tōjō government, Nishida’s initial essay was rejected on grounds of being too difficult to understand, and on revision by Tanabe Juri, an associate, was submitted to the government’s audience. Nishida would be disappointed by Tōjō’s understanding of his writing.³ Accounting for Nishida’s indifference towards Tanabe’s draft, Principles stand as a case of the inability of intellectuals to resist and effect change in a totalitarian environment. Both because of its rewriting and the need to follow the language of political orthodoxy, such as Nishida’s use of hakkō ichiu, in its subversion leaves open the space for misinterpretation in support for Japanese imperialism.

For other philosophers of the Kyoto School, their divergent treatment of Nishida’s thoughts is emblematic of the different approaches to working in a totalitarian context. Miki Kiyoshi, a student of Nishida, argued for a theory of cosmopolitanism based on Nishida’s thoughts that privileged Japan’s position as a leader of Asian countries as a product of its unique good qualities.⁴ For Tanabe Hajime, who drew on Nishida’s concepts of negation, the dialectic between state and individual, particularly one’s absolute rejection in death, could be construed to advocate for the sacrifice of individuals in service of the state.⁵ In both such cases the co-opting of philosophy in service of totalitarianism was deliberate, as Nishida’s thoughts are taken beyond the control of its originator. Thus is the limit of an intellectual’s ability to avoid instrumentalisation in totalitarianism.

Christopher S. Goto-Jones, Political philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and co-prosperity (New York, 2005), pp. 73-75. [↩]
Ibid., p. 77. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 79-81. [↩]
John Namjun Kim, ‘The Temporality of Empire: The Imperial Cosmopolitanism of Miki Kiyoshi and Tanabe Hajime’, in Sven Saaler, J. Victor Koschmann (eds), Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, regionalism and borders (London, 2007), pp. 156-160. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 163-166. [↩]

Making sense of pro- and anti-Japanese behaviour in Tonghak

The Tonghak Rebellion is a popular anti-foreign rebellion in Korea in 1894, led by followers of the Tonghak religion, with Chŏn Pongjun, a local Tonghak leader, at its head. The imposition of Japanese influence at the head of the Korean government following the first rebellion ignited a second rebellion directed at the Japanese, which eventually crushed the rebellion at Kongju.¹ With the failure of the Tonghak Rebellion and the crackdown on Tonghak by the Korean government, ideas of political reform gained currency in the now-underground Tonghak, as well as the prospect of Japanese intervention in modernisation.² Later, the Chinbohoe was formed in 1904 on the basis of Tonghak’s religious organisation with the aim of reforming the Korean government by limited monarchical and local elites’ power, as well as to support the Japanese war effort during the Russo-Japanese war.³ In its advocacy for the Korean people’s rights and reform, Chinbohoe and Ilchinhoe, a political organisation also with the goal of political reform, merged in 1904 under the latter’s name.⁴

The lineage of Tonghak involvement in both the anti-foreign, anti-Japanese Tonghak rebellion, and the pro-Japanese intervention Ilchinhoe, is curious, and at first glance, contradictory. Yet in both the Tonghak Rebellion and in the later grassroot reform efforts by the Inchinhoe, these did not represent the totality of their aims and motivations, and some similarities can be found in their other stated aims. One such aim rests in a concern for the economic injustices inflicted on their grassroot supporters by the Korean government.

Commonly cited as being the demands of the Tonghak Rebellion, a list of twelve demands for reform promulgated during the middle part of the rebellion seems to suggest an overtly egalitarian and radical program for the benefit of the masses. Its authenticity is disputed, however, originating as it did from a historical novel authored by a writer sympathetic to the Tonghak cause, within a social milieu of strong socialist influences.⁵ Instead, a list of 14 reform demands submitted to the government during the first rebellion can be considered.⁶ While the overt egalitarianism that later historiography would attribute to the rebellion’s radicalism would be absent in this list of demands, the demands listed reflected a primary concern with “corrupt” local officials, and more significantly with taxes that were the concerns of its supporters. The underlying motive of the first rebellion lies separate to the anti-Japanese sentiment of the second rebellion.

Around a decade later, the Ilchinhoe engaged in a campaign of ‘tax resistance’ between 1904-1907.⁷ The underlying motive behind its resistance was the group’s belief in the popular control over taxes and tax administration, in conflict with the Korean monarch’s tax reforms that centralised powers onto the monarchy itself.⁸ The Ilchinhoe advocated for refusing to pay miscellaneous taxes, promulgated recommended changes to taxes, and brought in tax collectors that operated in parallel to the Korean monarch.⁹ All this was framed in the Ilchinhoe’s advocacy for ‘civilised rule’, which in their conception was consistent with their support for Japanese intervention in Korea, as Japan was considered a ‘civilising’ force in Korea.

Thus the contradiction between the anti-Japanese sentiments of the Tonghak Rebellion and the pro-Japanese aims of the Ilchinhoe is not intractable as these purposes did not constitute the totality of their group’s existence. Instead, their attitudes to the Japanese stood alongside other aims subsumed within a larger nexus of ideas and grievances about the structure of rule in Korea.

Peter H. Lee, William Theodore De Bary, Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, Sources of Korean tradition (New York, 1997), pp. 262-263. [↩]
Carl Young, ‘Eastern Learning Divided: The Split in the Tonghak Religion and the Japanese Annexation of Korea, 1904–1910’, in Emily Anderson (ed.), Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (Singapore, 2017), pp. 81-82. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 82-83. [↩]
Yumi Moon, ‘Immoral Rights: Korean Populist Collaborators and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1904—1910’, The American Historical Review, 118: 1 (February 2013), p. 29. [↩]
Young Ick Lew, ‘The Conservative Character of the 1894 Tonghak Peasant Uprising: A Reappraisal with Emphasis on Chŏn Pong-jun’s Background and Motivation’, The Journal of Korean Studies, 7 (1990), pp. 165-167. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 170-171. [↩]
Yumi Moon, ‘Immoral Rights’, p. 33. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 33-35. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 35-37. [↩]

Morality in Anarchism and He-Yin Zhen’s Conception of Female Liberation

He-Yin Zhen is an early Chinese feminist and anarchist, who alongside her husband Liu Shipei, published the journal Natural Justice.¹ Published between 1907-1908, it is in Natural Justice that He-Yin would articulate much of her feminist theories, in articles such as ‘On the Revenge of Women’, and ‘The Feminist Manifesto’. ‘On the Revenge of Women’ is a text which, through analyses of classical texts in Chinese literary canon, etymologies that embed in them the degradation of women, and the role of social institutions in formalising male domination of women, educe the “instruments of male tyrannical rule”.² Examples from throughout Chinese history are used to argue that women had long been deprived of the right to bear arms, to hold political power, to be educated, and that in their hapless deaths they were denied their right to life itself.³ As with much of her other writings, the ultimate goal of the article is to advocate for a social, economic, and feminist revolution to the ends of the abolition of private property and the state, as a means of achieving true equality between men and women in the absence of the imbalance of power and wealth that results in domination and the oppression of women by men.⁴

Much like other Chinese anarchists of the time, He-Yin saw the necessity of a social revolution as a means of bringing an end to the oppression of the state, and to achieve true equality between men and women. The nature of the social revolution — the bounds of acts and acceptability, arguably constitute a standard of morality by which her feminist-anarchism is to be achieved. It is a standard of morality most explicitly articulated in the article ‘The Feminist Manifesto’, echoing ‘The Communist Manifesto’, of which the earliest Chinese translation can also be found in Natural Justice.⁵ The brief and direct nature of the article suggests her intentions towards the writing as a call-to-arms. In it, He-Yin lists seven actionable things which she implores women to carry out, as a means of combating four basic inequalities which she had identified: monogamy, maiden names, valuing daughters equally, raising daughters without discrimination, separation in marriage, rules for remarriage, and the abolish of brothels.⁶

Condemnation of prostitution and concubinage is a recurring point in her articles. Polygamy, too, is rejected even if extended to women, considered a transgression and a succumbing to lust.⁷ In imploring women to strive for the seven goals, He-Yin sees women’s role in rejecting the oppressive social institutions as paramount to achieving universal justice. The emphasis which she places on social revolution carried by women echoes the primacy which Chinese anarchists of her period accorded to social revolution and education in the struggle against the state for equality.

‘Biography’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 51. [↩]
He-Yin Zhen, ‘On the Revenge of Women’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 146. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 147,152. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 107-108 [↩]
‘Introduction: Toward a Transnational Feminist Theory’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), pp. 5-6. [↩]
He-Yin Zhen, ‘The Feminist Manifesto’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), pp. 182-183. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 183-184. [↩]