20th century – Rethinking the World in East Asia 1850s-1990s

Tanabe Hajime’s Logic of Species Contradiction – Outward Rejection and Inward Support of Ethnic Nationalism

Tanabe Hajime and imperial Japan utilized the Logic of Species argument to criticize and diminish the validity of ethnic nationalism, outwardly supporting individual freedom and the power to negate the nation, but inwardly promoted ethnic nationalism to support their expansionist ambitions.

Modernity made two historically constructed classifications, the nation and ethnicity, appear natural. The ‘territorial nation state’ as the ‘fundamental unit of the modern international world’ conveniently sorted individuals into ‘particular nationalities’.¹ This classification of humanity by nationality thus comes across as the intuitive method to do so, yet Naoki Sakai argues that this ‘vision’ has only existed ‘since the seventeenth century’.² Moreover, individuals are defined primarily by the nation to which they belong, similar to the actual biological classification of humanity, which ‘converge[s] in the topos of the logical algorithm of species and genus’.³ In other words, the classification also appeared natural as it mimicked the actual method of identifying and categorizing living organisms. These perceptions, especially during the 1930s and early 1940s, produced postwar myths and conceptions like tan’itsu minzoku, which stated that ‘Japanese society ha[d] been ethnically homogenous’ since premodernity—whereas the Japanese empire stated it was ‘explicitly created against the principle of ethnic nationalism’.⁴ Therefore, the classification of individuals into nation-states is a modern concept, which Tanabe Hajime argued was unnatural.

In Tanabe’s Logic of Species, his ontology rejects ethnic essentialism, arguing that identity exists only through a dialectic of belonging and negation. In contrast to the natural assumption, Tanabe insisted that the ‘individual’s belonging to the nation…must be “mediated” by his or her freedom’.⁵ In essence, ‘immediately’, individuals belong to no nation, and have the freedom to determine and mediate their nation.⁶ In addition, Tanabe contends that an individual must have their ‘own self-awareness, or jikaku’, prior to any social classification, as they can only be ‘classified into a species’ if they are ‘aware of belonging to’ the species.⁷ He argues that the freedom to ‘negate and disobey’ the requirements ‘imposed by’ the ‘totemic beliefs’ of a species is the true essential prerequisite for having a part within the species; individuals must be able to join and critique the species to make it relevant.⁸ Moreover, he holds that species (shu) is not biological and changeable thereby removing the view that it is natural and lifelasting.⁹ Tanabe uses the notion of genus (rui), which is an ‘essential moment in mediation between the individual and the species’, allowing the individual to exist ‘independent of the species’.¹⁰ If individuals can exist outside of the species through the mediating moment of the genus, then they are not inherently and immediately tied to a nation.

The Japanese imperial state appropriated Tanabe’s philosophy to enforce ethnic nationalism even though the philosophy itself denies the natural basis of nationalism. In his lecture at Kyoto Imperial University on May 19, 1943, he used his philosophies to justify patriotic devotion and wartime mobilization, emphasizing that individuals must be ‘committed to the state’s mission’ like himself.¹¹ However, the Logic of Species, which he references ‘refute[s] and discredit[s]…ethnic nationalism’, and directly contrasts his statements, insisting that the individual must negate the nation.¹² Tanabe’s arguments made ethnic nationalism impossible, yet they were still used to support Japanese nationalism during the war. As such, even though the Japanese imperial government publicly rejected ethnic nationalism, they still practiced it and had various officials supporting ‘total erasure of ethnic differences within the Japanese nation’ and ‘insistence upon racial purity’.¹³ For minority populations, this private embrace of ethnic nationalism through the Logic of Species ‘was nothing but an endorsement of colonial violence’, forcing them to be in the nation, stripping them of the promised freedom of individual choice.¹⁴

Tanabe argued that no individual belonged to a nation immediately or naturally, and that belonging must be achieved through the exercise of one’s freedom, to critique ethnic nationalism in support of Japanese imperialism. However, what imperial Japan required at the time for its military was the opposite: natural, fixed, and unquestionably loyal individuals, which, in contrast to Tanabe’s argument, was ethnic nationalism. The Japanese government used Tanabe and this rhetoric to justify, through philosophical argument, patriotism, militarism, and expansionism, which Tanabe supported even though it contradicted his philosophies.

Naoki Sakai, ‘Ethnicity and Species: On the Philosophy of the Multiethnic State and Japanese Imperialism’, in Viren Murthy, Fabian Schäfer, and Max Ward (eds), Confronting Capital and Empire: Rethinking Kyoto School Philosophy (Leiden, 2017), p. 146. [↩]
Ibid., p. 144. [↩]
Ibid., p. 147. [↩]
Ibid., p. 148. [↩]
Ibid., p. 154. [↩]
Ibid., p. 154. [↩]
Ibid., p. 157. [↩]
Ibid., p. 160. [↩]
Ibid., p. 155. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 163-165. [↩]
Ibid., p. 151. [↩]
Ibid., p. 170. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 147-148. [↩]
Ibid., p. 172. [↩]

The Cold War and Cosmopolitanism

Yan Xishan, former premier for the Republic of China, authored a treatise on the establishment of a Cosmopolitan International government for the purpose of ending war globally. This proposal is titled How to Prevent Warfare and Establish the Foundation of World Unity and was dedicated to the Moral Re-Armament World Assembly. Yan Xishan believed that these American based moral reformists would share his cosmopolitan vision for the betterment of the world. The M.R.A World Assembly maintained a similar world view to Xishan in that they detested communism, but were dissatisfied with the inequality of the capitalist system.¹ This shared belief reflects the broader global political tension at the time of publication in 1952. The context of the Korean War and the escalation of the nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia acts as a backdrop of Yan Xishan’s cosmopolitan solution to the problem of dissatisfaction with both capitalism and communism. When conflict had implications for the globe, a universal solution was necessary.

Yan Xishan’s proposition for a Cosmopolitan Internal system of government echoes the ideas of K’ang Yu-wei, a late Qing scholar who originated the idea of Ta T’ung Shu or the Great Unity. K’ang Yu-wei’s cosmopolitan vision called for the abolition of the nation state, the family, religion, and all divisions which create suffering.² Similar to Xishan, K’ang’s worldview is largely influenced by Confucianism. Both align with Mencius’s idea that human nature is inherently good and can be perfected through the cultivation of the individual.³ This perfection of man serves as the basis for the effective establishment of a cosmopolitan world.

Yan Xishan diverges from K’ang Yu-wei in his reference for establishing his cosmopolitan utopia. Rather than turn towards the United States or Germany as a framework for the unification of states as K’ang does, Xishan turns inwards toward China for a solution. This is likely due to Xishan’s familiarity with American imperial aggression and the destructive consequences of both World Wars. Xishan uses the Golden Mean as the foundation of world unity and rejects American and German models in the process.⁴ This is a direct recollection of foundational Confucian principles, and the use of Chinese intellectual tradition to establish a new world order outside the confines of Western thought.

Yan Xishan’s worldview cites conflicting economic interests as the causes of disorder in the world. His proposal largely focuses on economic solutions for the cessation of suffering and the problem of capitalist and communist conflict. He cites the inability of communists and capitalists to find economic harmony as a source of global conflict.⁵ Yan Xishan’s fear of the spontaneous outbreak of World War III is clearly informed by the proximity and uncertainty of the Korean war.⁶ For Xishan, Cosmopolitanism is not only a solution to the suffering of the individual, but the ending of the Cold War and the threat of further nuclear destruction in East Asia. In his eyes, the Cosmopolitan solution would ultimately bring peace to the world by establishing a disarmed government, removing the fear of mass nuclear destruction from the equation.

Boobbyer, Philip. ‘5 Strategy and Organization’. The Spiritual Vision of Frank Buchman, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, 2013, pp. 110-111 [↩]
Kang, Youwei, and Laurence G Thompson. Ta t’ung Shu: The One-World Philosophy of K’ang Yu-Wei. London: Routledge, 2005. p. 37 [↩]
Ibid., p. 46 [↩]
Yan, Xishan. How to Prevent Warfare and Establish Foundation of World Unity, pamphlet, p. 38 [↩]
Ibid., p. 7 [↩]
Ibid., 5 [↩]

Nichiren’s Teachings in Modern Contexts – Tanaka Chigaku and Sōka Gakkai’s Misapplications of Nichirenism

The teachings of the thirteenth-century Buddhist thinker Nichiren inspired numerous twentieth-century intellectuals, who drew on his steadfast belief in the all-encompassing Lotus Sūtra to advance their contemporary agendas. However, their application of Nichiren’s teachings to modern contexts led to reworkings of their core principles and revealed inconsistencies with the Buddhist Dharma, which stemmed from Nichiren’s disloyal relationship with the Buddhist Dharma and that which he preached.

Nichiren believed that he was born in the ‘Final Dharma age’ prophesized by the Buddha, which meant that only the Lotus Sūtra could lead to Buddhahood.¹ He regarded Japan as an ideal place to be born, as it had ‘an affinity for the Lotus Sūtra’, and sought to extend the teachings of it ‘worldwide’.² However, in Nichiren’s time, Japanese expansion was unrealistic as they posed no ‘threat to other countries’.³ Moreover, Christine Naylor argues that many of his teachings opposed Buddhist principles, since Nichiren understood that ‘false teachings’ were leading the world to disaster, and could not ‘promise peace to his followers in this life’.⁴ Because of this opposition, he believed Japan and the world’s reluctance to follow solely the Lotus Sūtra had resulted in this ruin. Furthermore, Nichiren’s contradictions undoubtedly led to more difficulty in modern interpretations. For example, he initially believed the Japanese kamis protected the ‘devotees of the Lotus Sūtra’, but then ‘threaten[ed] them with punishment’ once he convinced himself they had betrayed him.⁵ Finally, adding to interpretation confusion, Naylor contends that the misunderstandings partially derive from Nichiren not following ‘the first of Śākyamuni’s precepts, which forbids the taking of life’, as he ‘sanctioned both secular and religious wars’.⁶

Tanaka Chigaku’s utilization of Nichirenism for imperialist Japan reworked its core principles as they were not intended for the modern context in which Tanaka employed them. As Japan struggled ‘to assume a place among the world’s powers’ during the Meiji era, Tanaka looked to Nichiren’s argument for Japan to globally spread the Lotus Sūtra as a means for expansion.⁷ Jacqueline Stone argues that Tanaka was possibly the ‘first person in modern Nichiren Buddhist history’ to believe that the worldwide spread of Nichirenism and the kaidan was truly achievable.⁸ Nichiren, confined to the contexts of his time, had not even thought such a thing to be genuinely realistic.

The major contrasts between Nichiren and Tanaka become apparent when considering the relationships of their principles with the imperial family. Where Nichiren disrespected both Amaterasu and Hachiman, a ‘tantamount irreverence to the emperor’, Tanaka connected Nichirenism with Shinto nationalism, making him ‘indissolubly linked to the modern imperial state.⁹ Nichiren’s principles opposed the imperial family, whereas Tanaka’s supported them. Moreover, Naylor argues that Tanaka read Nichiren’s passages out of context, which led him to believe Nichiren was ‘an ardent believer of the imperial system’, citing the confusion.¹⁰ The fact that Nichiren’s principles support Japanese imperialism ‘only if torn out of context’ supports the notion that Tanaka’s ‘loyalty was to Japan and the emperor, not to Buddhism’.¹¹ Ultimately, the ‘tangled strands of [Nichiren’s] personality and ideas’ made his writings difficult to interpret and even more difficult to appropriately apply to modern contexts.¹²

Sōka Gakkai, a lay Nichiren Buddhist organization, in the postwar era interpreted Nichiren’s concept of kaidan not from an imperial perspective, but instead from a modern perspective within the limitations of the postwar parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Its second president, Toda Jōsei, believed it was the organization’s responsibility to prevent the ‘sufferings epitomized by the recent war’ from repeating through the supposed peace preached by Nichiren.¹³ Similar to Tanaka, the third president, Ikeda Daisaku, sought a true nationwide acceptance of Nichirenism and the Lotus Sūtra; he believed this could be achieved if two-thirds of the country supported Sōka Gakkai.¹⁴ However, despite these efforts, its core message of peace contradicts Nichiren’s teachings, as seen earlier in this post. Thus, both the imperialist and militaristic interpretations by Tanaka, and the peaceful interpretations by Sōka Gakkai, ultimately fail to understand Nichiren’s teachings, as they are nearly impossible to apply to modern contexts.

Jacqueline I. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree’, in Steven Heinen and Charles S. Prebish (eds), Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition (Oxford, 2003), p. 194. [↩]
Christina Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism, and the Peace Movement’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 18: 1 (March 1991), p. 67. [↩]
Ibid., p. 66. [↩]
Ibid., p. 70. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 61-62. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 70-71. [↩]
Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, pp. 198-199. [↩]
Ibid., p. 200. [↩]
Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism’, p. 63. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, p. 203. [↩]
Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism’, pp. 64-65 [↩]
Ibid., pp. 73, 60 [↩]
Ibid., p. 56 [↩]
Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, p. 205 [↩]
Ibid., p. 211 [↩]

Failure to Reject Tradition – The Evolution of the New Culture Movement’s ‘xiao jiating’

The family-reform ideals of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century gained widespread popular support from the nation’s young men through periodicals, such as Family Research, which encouraged individualism and attacked patriarchal society. Their absorption in individualism blinded them to the inherent misogyny in their search for the ideal wife—one who was educated and politically conscious. However, it lacked the appeal necessary for a socioeconomic revolution, as those young men did not subscribe to all of the Movement’s radical ideas; often, they subconsciously preferred traditionalism despite their ambition to form a modern state. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party retroactively revised and imposed the New Culture Movement’s xiao jiating, or conjugal family, by forcing individuals to devote themselves equally to their emotional relationships and the state.

In her monograph, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953, Susan L. Glosser argues that those who started Family Research believed family reform was the ‘necessary first step in China’s modernization’, as individuals must first be ‘happy at home’ in order to provide their full contribution to the urban reform movements throughout China.¹ The primary obstacle preventing young men from this domestic happiness, they contended, was the patriarch. Under the Confucian standard, the patriarch held great control over his children’s lives. Thus, to free themselves for their ultimate goal of a ‘transformation of the Chinese economy’ and ‘political structure’, they began by attacking the patriarch due to his control and ‘as a stand-in for the nebulous forces of “power” and “class” that strangled China’.² It was only then, with the happiness from their new family, that they understood that China could modernize economically and socially.³

As happiness, and thus productivity, was believed to be derived from the family, those involved in the New Culture Movement ‘developed a new set of expectations for their wives’.⁴ In opposition to traditional arranged marriages, they argued in favor of a concept of marriage based on romantic love, in which the couple involved jointly shared ‘intellectual and political interests’.⁴ However, Glosser declares, these young men failed to consider what an ideal husband might be, and pushed unrealistic standards onto the women of their time.⁵ Thus, they thought only of what would make them happy in marriage, while expecting their wives to work independently in the domestic sphere and join other social spheres, revealing a misogynistic core behind their advocacy for women’s rights.

The surveys of two Chinese sociologists, Chen Heqin and Pan Guangdan, that Glosser examines, reveal that despite the insistence of the New Culture radicals, many young men appear ‘to have been willing, and even happy, to make their peace with much that was traditional in the Chinese family’.⁶ The primary family-reform ideals of the New Culture Movement that they supported were the rejection of arranged marriages and the education of women. However, many young couples were not too interested in establishing ‘households independent of their parents’.⁷ Moreover, despite wanting to choose their own wife, the qualities they looked for in a wife were more traditional than they might have anticipated—over three-quarters of Chen’s respondents did not list any interest in an ideal wife’s talents.⁸ In conclusion, Chen and Pan found that many of their respondents simply picked and chose certain aspects of the New Culture’s xiao jiating and ‘ignored or modified others’.⁹

The Marriage Law, passed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1950, promised the right to choose spouses and ensured equality among men and women.¹⁰ It was described by the Party as the final step in ‘the long fight, begun by the New Culture Movement, against the “feudal” customs of traditional China’.¹¹ However, the Party initially hesitated to enforce the law due to concerns that the peasants might react negatively toward legislation that abruptly hindered tradition. Glosser contends that the Party ‘promised to resolve the tension that the conjugal family ideal had created between the individual and the state’ through their ‘version’ of the ideal xiao jiating.¹² Although, their method of doing so was to absorb the citizens entirely into the state and make the state the sole legitimizing factor of marriage. Thus, the individuals were forced to jointly devote themselves to their emotional relationships and the state, as marital privacy was stripped away, disguised as the Party’s loyalty to New Culture ideals.

Susan L. Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953 (Berkeley, 2003), p. 31. [↩]
Ibid., p. 38. [↩]
Ibid., p. 44 [↩]
Ibid., p. 49 [↩] [↩]
Ibid., p. 51 [↩]
Ibid., p. 57 [↩]
Ibid., p. 62 [↩]
Ibid., p. 69 [↩]
Ibid., p. 77 [↩]
Ibid., pp. 169, 171 [↩]
Ibid., pp. 169-170 [↩]
Ibid., p. 195 [↩]

Shamanic Nationalism and Colonial Drag: Queer Cultural Resistance to Authoritarianism in Colonial Korea

Merose Hwang’s chapter in Todd A. Henry’s Queer Korea analyzes the ongoing battle for cultural representation in occupied Korea, just after the 1919 revolution, in the context of shamanic rituals. These popular performances acted as sites of gender and sexual fluidity, questioning heteronormative practice. Subsequently, both colonial and nationalist intellectuals attempted to subvert, regulate, and co-opt these practices, distorting historical understandings and erasing their queerness in the process. Queerness, Hwang concludes, allowed shamanic ritual spaces to question Japanese authoritarianism in Korean culture by ‘dragging’ colonialism.

Merose Hwang presents shamanistic ritual as an archive of queer community, erased by nationalist and colonial ethnohistoriographical memory. Her analysis of these rituals as ‘colonial drag’ provides historians with a way to ‘queer’ the Korean historical landscape, bypassing the ethnonationalist and eurocentric limitations of Korean studies and queer studies.

In order to reveal silences created in the historical narrative. Hwang utilized queer forms of analysis. The frameworks provided by José Esteban Muñoz and Petrus Liu, that being the ideas of postcoloniality, the mandate of queer futurity, and neoliberal queer theory, allow Hwang to elucidate the queer nature of ritual specialist performance in colonial Korea. Using this framework, she reveals that shamanistic performers seemingly spiritually assimilated with colonial rule, but were actually mimicking and mocking imperial attempts at cultural modernization.

Colonial forces used bureaucratic and intellectual institutions, such as the establishment of anthropological schools and commissioning of ethnographic studies of Korean history through the lens of shamanistic ritual, to subvert Korean cultural identity as backwards. Representations of shamanistic practice in media and popular memory shaped the lives of the shamanists, as queerness in ritual practice and social life was punished by the authoritarian regime. Colonial media portrayed shamanists as non-normative, hypersexualized, and perverse.¹ Shamans were criminalized as morally inept.² Thus, shamanism was used as a scapegoat for national demise and a roadblock to modernization.³

Nationalist resistance focused on the indigenous nature of shamanistic ritual practices as to draw Korean cultural origins away from Japan, inwards towards Siberia and China, co-opting shamanism as a form of resistance but simultaneously erasing its queerness.⁴ Despite problematically depicting shamans, nationalist thinkers offered a formula for decolonizing, utilizing queerness on the continent as an origin myth for Korean culture.

Shamanism was not simply used for colonial or nationalist reasons, but for the purpose of mocking the empire.⁵ Hwang argues that ritualists paid homage to imperial spiritual imagery as a form of mockery.⁶ Regulations on indigenous decentralized religious practice turned performances into a form of ‘colonial drag’, maliciously complying and satirizing Japanese rule in Korea in a distinctly queer way. Ritual experts disguised themselves as devotees of imposed Shinto deities to scrutinize state driven patriarchy and imperial policing of culture.⁷

In colonial and nationalist cases, anthropology and ethnohistory were used to paint a particular view of Korean culture, silencing the queerness of shamanistic practice along the way. Hwang’s recognition of the anti-modern, queer practices of shamans as a form of resistance has carved a path for historians operating between the fields of Korean studies and queer studies. Korean studies tends to maintain heteronormative, nationalist assumptions, and queer studies tend to privilege the western perspective.⁸ Hwang bridges this gap in her analysis of Korean culture, effectively ‘queering’ the landscape. She displays the fact that queerness is not imported but native to Korean life, and integral to the preservation of Korean culture.

Merose Hwang, ‘Ritual Specialists in Colonial Drag Shamanic Interventions in 1920s Korea’, in Todd A. Henry (ed.), Queer Korea (Durham, 2020), p. 56. [↩]
Ibid., p. 58. [↩]
Ibid., p. 62. [↩]
Ibid., p. 64. [↩]
Ibid., p. 69. [↩]
Ibid., p. 70. [↩]
Ibid. [↩]
So-Rim Lee, ‘Review of Queer Korea (Durham, 2020), by Todd A. Henry,’ Journal of Korean Studies 26, no. 1 (2021), p. 155. [↩]

Uchiyama Gudō’s Anarchist Buddhism – The Impact of International Socialism on Japanese Buddhism

Anarchism, described by Fabio Rambelli as part of the international socialist movement, inspired Japanese Buddhist intellectuals to synthesize their respective philosophies for the benefit of the newly emerging working class. The Buddhist priest Uchiyama Gudō sought to utilize the revolutionary concepts of anarchism in order to implement theoretical Buddhist social principles. Gudō believed that both Buddhism and socialism, at their core, ‘aimed to improve the living conditions of the people’.¹ Thus, the communication of both Buddhist ideas and socialist anarchism to the working-class villagers were not dissimilar; Gudō understood his Buddhist sermons to be inherently socialist, as well. Uchiyama Gudō’s background in Buddhism inspired his socialist beliefs; therefore, he understood socialism and anarchism not as departures from Buddhism, but as natural expressions of Buddhist egalitarianism. What he failed to grasp, however, were the conflicting natures of Buddhism’s inner liberation and anarchism’s outer revolution.

Rambelli’s Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharma of Uchiyama Gudō highlights Gudō’s connections between Buddhism and anarchism. In a 1903 serialization of Heimin shinbun, a socialist newspaper, Gudō cites three excerpts from prominent Buddhist sutras as his reasoning for becoming a socialist. However, Rambelli argues that the excerpts were taken ‘out of context and re-signified…in a socialist fashion’, highlighting Gudō’s core Buddhist beliefs, attempting to utilize socialist motivations for societal change.² Moreover, Gudō established links between the social equality of anarchist communism and that of traditional Buddhist monastic life, still present in China. In doing so, Rambelli claims that Gudō shifted the ‘idealized utopia’ of the Buddhist sangha to a smaller scale to include a ‘self-contained social space’, more in line with the beliefs of socialist utopias.³

Gudō’s belief that social change begins through moral example reveals the Buddhist foundation of his activism. His support of the anarchist concept where the working class follows ruling-class leaders who renounce their property reflects his commitment to a radical, egalitarian ideal of shared equality.⁴ The working class should not revolt and take down the ruling class, as that would deem the latter as lesser than the former in the new anarchist society, according to Gudō. Furthermore, he firmly believed that the awakening of the masses by the aforementioned examples supports the ‘Zen Buddhist soteriology of…responsibility’; it was the responsibility of the leaders and workers⁵ Gudō’s ideological stances on these issues reveal his Buddhist core and depict him as a Buddhist involved in the anarchist movement.⁶

Gudō initially hesitated to support the anarchist violence necessary for a successful revolution, as it fundamentally opposed Buddhist principles. By the time Gudō fully accepted anarchism, however, the anarchist movement had begun to shift toward ‘direct, sometimes violent, action’.⁷ This shift had a clear impact on Gudō, as a key argument in his work Museifu kyōsan kakumei states that ‘readiness to use violence’ was necessary ‘to achieve’ a ‘revolutionary movement’.⁸ Despite his reluctance, the deteriorating medical condition of his socialist colleague Kōtoku Shūsui provided the final push toward his acceptance of the violence required to initiate a revolution.⁹ Gudō’s evident internal difficulty to accept violence revealed itself in his depiction of a god who ‘loves revolutionary martyrs’ in his writings, as no buddhas would love such individuals ‘in a modern Japanese context’.⁷ This internal difficulty demonstrates his inability to accept the inherent conflicting natures of Buddhism and anarchism.

Uchiyama Gudō’s growing acceptance of a violent revolution led him to distance himself from his original, more Buddhist understanding of anarchism. Gudō originally accepted socialism , and subsequently anarchism, as social methods for change and revolution, as they aligned well with his Buddhist beliefs. However, as he became more involved with socialism, it began to take precedence in his life, molding him into a Buddhist who was involved in the anarchist movement. Furthermore, Gudō came to embrace violence as necessary for a revolution and the success of anarchism in Japan. This acceptance created internal strife, as the anarchist path to outer revolution diverged significantly beyond the Buddhist path to inner liberation.

Fabio Rambelli, Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharma of Uchiyama Gudō (Berkeley, 2013), p. 15. [↩]
Ibid., p. 13. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 20-21. [↩]
Ibid., p. 16. [↩]
Ibid., pp. 27, 13. [↩]
Ibid., p. 30. [↩]
Ibid., p. 23. [↩] [↩]
Ibid., p. 18. [↩]
Ibid., p. 26. [↩]

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. This ideology would materialize in the ‘Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere,’ positioning the Japan as the protector Asia, uplifting the East (through political, social, and economic reforms) to make it competitive with the West.³ Similar to the imperial ideology, the Bahai faith is a humanist religion. Abdu’l-Baha shows his humanist values by denouncing the war and hatred that stems from national and religious differences. In ‘Bahai World Faith’ he argues the spread of Bahai to all nations will birth a unified “heavenly civilization” and saw the Japanese as possessing a unique capacity to enact it – unifying the East and West.⁴ Abdu’l-Baha’s successor, Shongi Effendi, gifted several Bahai books to Emperor Hirohito in 1928 with a message encouraging him to use the Bahai teaching as inspiration and to “arise for its worldwide recognition and triumph”⁵. The utopian vision of Japan leading world peace and unity aligns with Naruse’s Concordia Movement.

Historians like Mark Lincicome are critical of 20th-century Japanese liberal internationalists (like Naruse) for the paradoxical justification of imperialism on humanist, anti-war grounds. Lincicome shows how during the Taisho Democracy Era, educators advocated for Japan’s unique capacity in promoting world peace through the cultural, political, and economic assimilation (Doka) of weaker Asian nations.⁶ This internationalism adapted to become hyper nationalism after the Manchurian Invasion in 1931. The Concordia Association of Manchukuo, originally established to promote left-leaning ideas of Pan-Asianist racial equality (Pan-Asianism) and self-determination would become a totalitarian puppet regime after the Japanese Kwantung Army’s occupation of Manchuria.⁷ Like the Taisho educators, Naruse’s Concordia movement turned away from its liberal values through political pressure and liberal internationalism’s adaptability.

Both Naruse and Abdu’l-Baha viewed Japan as a unique, divine power to bring God’s purifying light for an international utopia. Combining Japanese exceptionalism with humanist logic explains Japan’s ability to justify “world war in the name of world peace”.⁸ Although Naruse and Abdu’l-Baha criticized war, nationalism, and militarism, it becomes clear how a nexus of universalist, cosmopolitan, and internationalist rhetoric in the Taisho Era would easily adapt and be consumed by the Showa Era’s Imperialist ideology, justifying a campaign for a Greater East Asia.

Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Baha’i World Faith’ (1975), pp.254-257 [↩]
Agnes B. Alexander “Abdu’l Baha meets President Naruse of Japan Women’s College.” Bahai Reference Library (1912) p. 113. [↩]
Lawson, Konrad. ‘Reimagining the Postwar International Order: The World Federalism of Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko’ (2014):9 [↩]
Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Baha’i World Faith'(1975), pp.254-257 [↩]
Barbara M. Sims, ‘Traces That Remain’ Bahai Publishing Trust of Japan (1989): 81 [↩]
Mark Lincicome, “Imperial Subjects As Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism and Education in Japan.” Lexington Books (2009) p. 40 [↩]
Young L., “When Fascism met empire in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.” Journal of Global History 12, no.2 (2017) pp. 282-283 [↩]
Mark Lincicome, “Imperial Subjects As Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism and Education in Japan.” Lexington Books (2009):104 [↩]

Mark Lincicome’s ‘Imperial Subjects as Global Citizens’

Mark Lincicome’s Imperial Subjects as Global Citizens offers an account of the development of the doctrine of international education, spanning a century from the 1880s to the 1980s.¹ He presents a radical reunderstanding of Japan’s pre-war education system, which he believes had previously only been written about as one that taught nationalism and militarism. His work seeks to bring to light the nuance and opposition that this system faced throughout the period. Furthermore, he argues that internationalism has been overlooked as a Japanese ideology, and his thorough analysis of the movement’s history certainly does it justice. However, one could argue that his work is overly conceptual, and fails to deal with the more practical consequences of educational reform.

To give a brief summary, the movement of international education begins in the 1870s, when reformers such as Tokutomi Soho, Egi Kazuyuki, and Saionji Konmichi argued that teaching of foreign languages and learning of other cultures should be implemented into the education system. However, these campaigns are swiftly condemned by the Meiji government and fail to take off. Only in the period of Taisho Democracy, the ‘high-water mark’ of the philosophy, do prominent writes and reformers set up institutions and physical schools which put this doctrine into effect.² He pays particular attention to the thinkers of Noguchi Entaro, Sawayanagi Masataro, Shimonaka Yasaburo and Harada Minoru, and their organisations such as the International Education Society of Japan and the All-Japan League for World Federation. As their names suggest, these organisations were focused on encouraging collaboration, integration and familiarity in global education. Noguchi, in particular, wrote that a mutual understanding and point-of-contact between cultures would lead to global peace, the ultimate goal of humanity.

However, as Japan’s invasions and colonisations of parts of Asia grow, the doctrine begins to conform to the propaganda of the military government and espouse nationalist, imperialist and militarist sentiments. Noguchi becomes a ‘chauvinistic ultra-nationalist’ and dedicates his public writings to defending Japan’s imperialism; while Shimonaka writes that educators must reform Japan from within, removing European influence and realising Japan’s goal of conquering the eight corners of the world.³

Following the end of the Second World War the movement had another revival – or, perhaps, a renaissance of the 1920s – and once again becomes a movement advocating for global peace, prosperity and connectedness. Shimonaka, despite being ‘purged’ in 1947, championed world peace, nuclear disarmament and the liberation of colonised peoples in Asia and Africa until his death.⁴

Lincicome’s book mostly fails to engage with what one might consider the most important part of education; the children. He does not write about the number of children being taught according to the principles of the reformists, nor the impact their organisations had on the education system. Ultimately, it is an intellectual history of around a dozen thinkers spanning a century. For a study of the ramifications of the Japanese education which has been in use for the past century, perhaps another book is required; but for a deep analysis of one of Japan’s forgotten yet most interesting ideologies, Lincicome’s history of internationalist education should not be missed.

Lincicome, Mark. Imperial Subjects as Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Education in Japan (Lexington Books, 2009). [↩]
Ibid, p. 87. [↩]
Ibid, p. 91. [↩]
Ibid, p. 116. [↩]

Tanaka Chigaku’s ‘The Age of Unification’ and its justification of Japanese militarism

Tanaka Chigaku was born in a staunch Buddhist family in 1868, only a few years before the Meiji Restoration.¹ Disillusioned by the Meiji regime’s attack on Buddhism, he abandoned his priestly training to become a lay evangelist, preaching his doctrine of Nichirenism.² In the 20th century, this doctrine would justify Japan’s militarism, nationalism and imperialism, through his belief that the entire world must be unified around Japan.³ An exert, ‘The Age of Unification’, from his seminal text – Nichirenshugi kyogaku taikan, or ‘An Overview of Nichirenshugi Doctrinal Studies’, originally published between 1904 and 1913 – perfectly describes and explains his desire for unity. While mostly discussing world unity in peaceful, religious terms, the ongoing background of Japan’s militarism and subsequent imperialistic expansion under these terms makes the text an important document of Japanese history.

Tanaka repeatedly stresses the need for a ‘world unification’ of religion, morality, society and government.⁴ He stresses that past attempts at world unification – through solely military means, such as those of Alexander or Napoleon, or solely diplomatic means, such as international law and peace conferences – were lacking in religion and morality.

He offers a few steps on how this can be achieved. First, Japan must have a coexistence between religion and government; ‘government must be subsumed within Buddhism, and then Buddhism must be applied to government’.⁵ Other religious practices, such as Shintoism (which he describes as the ‘barbarous practices’ of worshipping foxes and badgers) must be eliminated.⁶ As evidence, he recounts prosperous periods in Japanese history in which Buddhism and government were aligned, such as the reign of the Emperor Kanmu; and periods in which the government did not accept Buddhism, such as under Nobunaga, when ‘spiritual poison’ seeped into the nation.⁷ After the government has accepted the great dharma, Nichiren writes that the emperor must hand down an edict for an ordination platform to be built; Tanaka interprets this that, if Nichiren was writing about the shogunate or military government, then in Tanaka’s era a resolution of the National Diet would do.²

And what of resistance to world unification? Tanaka writes, euphemistically, that ‘debates are ultimately resolved by the power of finance or aggression’; thus Japan must strengthen herself both financially and militarily.⁸ He writes that, if Japan follows his instructions, during the ‘impending’ Russo-Japanese War the country will be able to deploy fleets in the Japan Sea, the China Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and send a division to Siberia – specifying for the first time his exact military desires.² He makes it clear that when a priesthood ‘forgets the two great practical forces of financial power and military might’ it ‘becomes powerless to accomplish anything’.²

Tanaka’s doctrine of Nichirenism firmly justified Japanese military expansion and imperialism around the world. Although it predates the Russo-Japanese war, it both predicts and hopes for the Japanese Empire which in a few decades’ time would span from Alaska to Singapore.

Jacqueline I. Stone, ‘Tanaka Chigaku on “The Age of Unification”, in Georgios T. Halkias and Richard K. Payne (eds), Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts: An Anthology (University of Hawai’i, 2019), p. 632. [↩]
Ibid. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
Jacqueline I. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree: Politics and the Issue of Ordination Platform in Modern Lay Nichiren Buddhism’ in Steven Heine and Charles S. Prebish (eds), Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition (Oxford University Press), p. 193. [↩]
Stone, Tanaka Chigaku, p. 650. [↩]
Ibid, p. 640. [↩]
Ibid, p. 646. [↩]
Ibid, p. 644. [↩]
Ibid, p. 647. [↩]

Paradise on earth: Uchiyama Gudō’s imaginations of a (Buddhist) anarcho-communist utopia

The utopian vision of Uchiyama Gudō (1874-1911), a Zen Buddhist priest who was executed for his purported role in the plot to assassinate the Japanese Emperor Meiji in 1910, offers a unique example of the fusion of Buddhist and socialist ideas in early twentieth-century East Asia. Throughout his writings, Gudō repeatedly imagines a vision of tengoku, explicitly evoking the Christian idea of “soteriological and eschatological” paradise rather than the Buddhist jōdo (Pure Land) or gokuraku (land of bliss).¹ Although connections between Christianity and the development of socialist revolutionary thought in Meiji Japan by Rambelli help to contextualise the contemporary meanings and connotations of tengoku, it is arguably most significant in the negative sense; that is, the imagination of an earthly, anarcho-communist utopian ‘paradise’ over a Buddhist heavenly bliss.

Gudō’s (Buddhist) anarcho-communism formed part of a broader wave of emerging Radical Buddhism in late Meiji Japan. He was not alone in his focus on earthly paradise; contemporary anarchists like Tanaka Jiroku were similarly advocating ideas of genseshugi (‘this-world-ism’).² In China, both Taixu (1890-1947) and Lin Qiwu (1903-1934) developed similar imaginations of a “pure land in this world” where anarchist utopia and Marxism respectively were “one and the same” as the Buddhist Pure Land.³ Yet, not only do Gudō’s ideas predate many of these other anarchists, his utopian imagination also differs in a critical way in its absence of Buddhist spiritualism. Avoiding references to the pure land, Gudō situates his paradise purely in the earthly realm; in a way, he subverts Radical Buddhism, which views socialism and anarchism as paths to an explicitly Buddhist ‘pure land’, and instead proposes an anarcho-communist revolution in which consciousness and freedom is achieved through Buddhism (as Buddhism and socialism are two sides of the same coin) yet paradise itself is defined by its material, social and political conditions rather than ‘heavenly bliss’. For example, during his interrogation for his alleged role in the High Treason Incident of 1910, Gudo describes his intellectual conversion to anarcho-communism as a result of reading about the communal lives of the Buddhist sangha in Chinese monasteries⁴. However, this is framed from a specifically worldly perspective; it was the communal and egalitarian aspects of the sangha that appealed to Gudō, as opposed to their spirituality and religious practice. Thus, Gudō removes the distinction between Buddhism and anarcho-communism; he is not striving for a spiritual awakening to nirvana or pure land, but for a (Marxian) social revolution through labour unions to achieve “the ideal land of anarchist communism, where all are free and live a comfortable life”.⁵

As Rambelli emphasises, Gudō was seeking to transform the (earthly) world as a Buddhist anarcho-communist, rather than “striving for a socialist form of Buddhism”⁶. Paradise would be distinctively and exclusively anarcho-communist. Whilst inherently informed by the semantic, epistemological, and ontological frameworks of Gudo’s Buddhism, paradise on earth in its realised form seems more rooted in classical Marxism. Paradise would thus begin when the capitalist bourgeoisie “reject[s] the old crime of living out of his capital” and “realize[s] that all human beings must secure their clothing and food through their own labor”.⁷

Consequently, Gudō’s vision for paradise was both inseparable from his conception of Buddhism and yet fundamentally material. This fusion of Buddhism and socialism was the path necessary to achieve individual and collective consciousness to eliminate oppression and achieve freedom. Attaining social consciousness and establishing paradise would be achieved through Buddhism not because he imagined a future land of heavenly bliss, but instead because the worldly anarcho-communist ‘paradise’ envisaged by Gudō would be the true realisation of Buddhism on earth.

Fabio Rambelli, Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharam of Uchiyama Gudō (Berkeley, 2013), p.31. [↩]
Lajos Brons, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism (Santa Barbara, 2023), p.76. [↩]
Brons, A Buddha Land in This World, pp.92-95. [↩]
Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.20. [↩]
Uchiyama Gudō, Museifu Kyosan kakumei, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.50. [↩]
Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.30. [↩]
Uchiyama Gudō, Heibon no jikaku, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.63. [↩]