Tag: 20th century Japan

Nationalism and Propaganda: The Flaws of Kuki Shūzō’s Iki no kōzō as a Nationalistic Ideology

Nationalist undertones are clearly evident in Kuki Shūzō’s Iki no kōzō, or The Structure of Iki; however, critiques on his exploitation of hermeneutic methodology and his universalization of a term concerning a minority for the whole of Japan undermine his book’s ability to serve as nationalistic ideology.

Published in 1930, Iki no kōzō explored the cultural meaning of iki in order to reconcile Japan’s past against the infringing influences of Western modernity. Kuki argues that iki is a Japanese sensibility of taste which can be symbolized through objectification but only truly understood by personal experience. In other words, one may be able to find attributes of iki in Western aesthetics, yet the works would lack the hermeneutic meaning of iki, ‘as a phenomenon of consciousness’.1 Thus, iki becomes a ‘distinct self-expression of an oriental culture,’ —a uniquely Japanese phenomenon.2 In this exposition as a Japanese exclusive taste, Kuki presents a nationalist view: the realization of iki separates Japan from the vulgarity of the West. Hence, in terms of aesthetics, Japan was culturally superior. Nevertheless, this nationalism fails to successfully manifest into nationalist ideology.

In her article ‘In a Labyrinth of Western Desire: Kuki Shūzō and the Discovery of Japanese Being’, Leslie Pincus critiques a paradox in Kuki’s employment of hermeneutics. Although Pincus’s interpretation is contested as ironic and overreaching— ‘[Pincus] removes Kuki’s work from the Japanese context… and tries to build a culturalscape of Japan’s fascism and imperialism in a discourse of Japan’s aesthetics, that may not have existed exactly as she portrayed’ —her evaluation of the hypocritical impact of hermeneutics in Kuki’s argument should not be discounted.3 The paradox stems from Kuki’s revelation that ‘iki has no place in Western culture as a certain meaning in its ethnic being’ and his assertion ‘the study of iki can exist only as a hermeneutic study of ethnic being’.4 The problem, then, lies in the fact that hermeneutics is a Western mode of analysis. Therefore, Kuki ironically ‘the terms in which he articulated Japan’s difference from the West were clearly marked by a long and productive apprenticeship to European letters’.5 If Kuki must rely on European methodology in order to extract Japan’s distinctive aesthetic, iki, then the question of whether this concept would exist without Western modernity emerges. Since Kuki posits iki in direct opposition to Western influences—that iki remains untainted by the West—this question undercuts his book’s appeal to nationalistic ideology. How can Kuki’s argument purport a superiority of Japanese aesthetics, or issue iki as a national defense, when the only way to comprehend this mode of being is through a Western lens. Thus, Western influence infiltrates the very thing Kuki argues it does not, ultimately weakening his nationalistic argument.

Moreover, Kuki’s decision to universalize a term pertaining to a small selection of Japan’s population, hinders his overall assessment of iki as a national mode of being. Iki, as an aesthetic, grew in popularity during the Edo period of Japan. Denoting a specific style of the mercantile class in the city of Edo, iki represented a resistance to the samurai bureaucracy.6 In other words, historically, iki resided in the sentiments and style of the Edo merchant class—a class holding great wealth but lacking status. By choosing a word associated with one social class in one city, Kuki severely limits the inclusive aspect of his argument. How can iki constitute the mode of being for all of Japan when it is only linked to a small percentage of the population? In employing iki as a cultural signifier, Kuki enlarges this minority group to portray Japan. He essentially fabricates a national identity. The lack of consideration for other groups diminishes Kuki’s declaration of iki as a national phenomenon, for iki does not truly represent all of Japan. Consequently, Kuki’s book is unsuccessful as nationalistic ideology.

  1. Shūzō Kuki, ‘The Structure of Iki’, in Hiroshi Nara, J. Thomas Rimer, and Jon Mark Mikkelson (eds), The Structure of Detachment: The Aesthetic Vision of Kuki Shūzō (Honolulu, 2004), p. 58. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 17. [↩]
  3. Yukiko Koshiro, ‘Fascism and Aesthetics – Leslie Pincus: Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics’, The Review of Politics, 59: 3 (1997), p. 608. [↩]
  4. Kuki, ‘The Structure of Iki’, pp. 58-59. [↩]
  5. Leslie Pincus, ‘In a Labyrinth of Western Desire: Kuki Shuzo and the Discovery of Japanese Being’, boundary 2, 18: 3 (1991), p. 144. [↩]
  6. Ibid., p. 143. [↩]

Breaking Dialectic: Tanabe Hajime’s Adaptation of Hegelian Reason in the Logic of the Specific

       In modern Japanese philosophy, Tanabe Hajime stands out as a philosopher who assimilated and transformed major parts of Western thought, specifically German idealism. Tanabe’s engagement with Hegel best displays his inspiration from German idealism. While Tanabe draws strongly from Hegelian dialectics in his own works such as the Logic of the Specific (種の論理), Tanabe ultimately reworked Hegel’s logical system to display historical fallibility, ethical failure, and the necessity of radical self-negation.¹ This comparison illuminates both Tanabe’s intellectual development and a broader evolution of the Kyoto School. While philosophers and Japanese society debated between Buddhist notions of impermanence and non-self and Western systematic philosophy, Tanabe Hajime was able to rework both areas of thought to confront guilt concerning unethical historical acts and transform the individual and society through self negotiation. Through deep engagement with Hegel’s dialectical philosophy Tanabe transforms Hegel’s philosophy by rejecting Hegel’s teleological reconciliation of contradictions and replaces it with a model focused on historical fallibility, the instability of communal structures or species, and the need for radical self-negation or metanoesis.

       First in order to understand Tanabe, Hegel’s philosophy must be explained. Hegel’s dialectic operates within the teleological movement of Absolute Spirit, where contradictions are ultimately reconciled through sublation or a simultaneous canceling and lifting up of a concept.² For Hegel, the historical process tends toward increasing actualization of freedom through institutions such as the state, ethical life, and shared rational structures. Individuals participate in this rational whole and do not participate in anything outside of the rational whole.³ Historians of philosophy have often seen Hegel as offering a self-confident modernity in which reason’s capacities are affirmed, even when they operate through contradiction.

       In connection to Hegel, Tanabe’s early work heavily drew from the Hegelian model of the rational structures. But by the 1930s and 1940s, Tanabe found many limitations in the idealist assumption of an ultimately harmonizing rational structure or state. In the Logic of the Specific, Tanabe replaces Hegel’s concept of Spirit, an overarching structure where all things in existence are a manifestation of this “Spirit”, with a three part structure: individual, species, and universal.⁴ While this format resembles Hegel’s universal individual mediation, Tanabe assigns a very different role to the mediating term. Hegel’s mediating structures (especially the state) are rational embodiments of universal ethical principles. Tanabe’s “species,” however, are historically contingent communities such as nations, religions, cultures, social institutions that shape the individual’s concept of meaning and are very prone to flaws such a collective delusions or mob mentality. In contrast to Hegel’s confidence in the rationality of historical development, Tanabe depicts these species as inherently unstable, prone to self-absolutization, and capable of generating collective delusions.

       The shift from Hegel’s trust in rational historical development to skepticism can be associated with Tanabe’s interaction with crises of Japanese nationalism during World War II.⁵ While Hegel’s state is the ethical culmination of Spirit’s self-realization, Tanabe saw the Japanese state of his time showcasing the species’ capacity for violent error. Therefore the Logic of the Specific is both a philosophical model but also a historical critique that seeks to explain how rational systems and communal forms can betray their supposed universality.

       The conflict between Tanabe and Japanese nationalism leads to what Tanabe later called metanoetics, or the philosophy of repentance.⁶ While Hegel propels Spirit forward by incorporating contradiction into higher unity, Tanabe believes the Spirit’s self realization signals the breakdown of reason’s self-sufficiency. Tanabe states, reason cannot fully comprehend or repair its own failures and transformation requires not sublation but absolute self-negation through “other-power” (tariki), a concept drawn from Shin Buddhist thought.⁷ Tanabe’s turn to metanoetics marks a significant rejection of Hegel’s rationalism in order to focus on existential and Buddhist forms of dialectic. 

       Overall, Tanabe retains Hegel’s insight that human existence is mediated by communal and historical structures where individuals cannot access the universal directly but Tanabe uses this framework to criticize Japanese imperialism. Where Hegel envisioned reconciliation, Tanabe insists on an ongoing cycle in which individuals are forced to confront their complicity in the failures of the species and must reform it. Tanabe’s Logic of the Specific represents a reorientation of dialectical philosophy toward historical consciousness where Buddhist-influenced self-negation and ethical responsibility are used to navigate modernity’s crises.

  1. Tanabe, Hajime. Philosophy as Metanoetics. Translated by Yoshinori Takeuchi, James W. Heisig, and Valdo Viglielmo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
  2. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  3. Hegel, G. W. F. Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

  4. Tanabe, Hajime. The Logic of Species (種の論理). In Tanabe Hajime: Collected Works, vol. 7. Trans. Yoshihisa Yamamoto. University of Tokyo Press, 1998.

  5. Heisig, James W. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.
  6. Ozaki, Masakatsu. “Tanabe’s Interpretation of Hegel.” The Eastern Buddhist 20, no. 2 (1987): 107–130.
  7. Tanabe, Hajime. Philosophy as Metanoetics. Translated by Yoshinori Takeuchi, James W. Heisig, and Valdo Viglielmo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

The Paradox of Peace: Japan’s Evolving Identity from 1919-1964

       After Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1933 and withdrawing from the League of Nations in 1933, the world believed Japan to be rejecting internationalism.¹ The believed rejection of internationalism by Japan was proven to be false as Japan developed the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a pan-Asian conglomerate with the aim to promote an anti-colonialism from the West.²  From the interwar years through the postwar decades, Japan’s engagement with the world was full of contradictions torn between universal ideals and imperial ambitions. As historians Jessamyn Abel, Tomoko Akami, and Mark Lincicome each show, Japan’s global identity was never simply nationalist or internationalist. It was a constant negotiation between empire and moral legitimacy.

       The three historians all attempt to understand how Japan builds its identity within the global sphere. Abel focuses on the “international minimum” which was Japan’s way of maintaining a baseline of global participation even during times of war.³ The main example of this baseline was the bid from Japan to host the 1940 Tokyo Olympics. Abel frames the Tokyo Olympics as a gesture of goodwill to the international community even though at the time Japan’s imperialism was spreading over Asia. Japan projected an image of peace and enlightenment while simultaneously expanding its empire. The display of Japanese culture on a global scale such as the Kokusai Bunka Shinkoukai sponsoring art and education abroad helped to show that Japan is a key component to bridge the East and the West. Abel concludes that Japan rebranded itself throughout time by using culture as a front to project the image of peace while still expanding the nation’s imperialism throughout Asia.⁴ This use of culture illustrates how Japan reshaped its identity to fit any ideology that the moment required in order to build an identity with the West.

       While Abel traces cultural diplomacy, Tomoko Akami examines international engagement that was meant to foster peace but emphasized global tension. In 1925, The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was created to foster a dialogue between nations around the Pacific Rim.⁵ Japan joined early and eagerly sent scholars and diplomats to discuss trade, diplomacy, and governance. As Japan’s imperialism grew throughout the 1930s, tension grew between the countries and came to a head at the 1926 Yosemite Conference. Japanese representatives defended the nation’s expansions in China stating the expansion as a need for modernization yet this argument illustrates how Japan combined imperialism and internationalism. Akami states, Japan’s participation was a performance of legitimacy as it sought to appear as a civilized and cooperative power, even while defying Western norms.⁶ The IPR revealed how internationalism could reinforce imperial hierarchies rather than dissolve them which illustrates that Japan’s identity in the international stage was centered around imperialism and fake facades of modernization according to Akami.

       Similarly to Abel and Akami, Mark Lincicome uncovers how Japan’s schools and universities became ideal for shaping “international” citizens and uses education as a global identity. After World War I, international education was promoted and students were taught to value peace, cultural understanding, and global citizenship.⁷ But by the 1930s, these ideals were absorbed into the state’s nationalist mission. Under imperial rule, the “global citizen” became an imperial subject who represented Japan’s cultural superiority abroad and brought “civilization” to colonized Asia.⁵ Lincicome’s insight illustrates how Japan used education as another front to cover imperialistic colonization of Asia similar to Akami’s view on Japan’s modernization. The very language of peace and world citizenship that Japan used after 1945 had imperial roots and ideals didn’t vanish; they simply rebranded just as seen in Abel’s view on Japan using culture to project ideals of peace. 

       Throughout the three works, all of the historians portray an image of Japan that ties its identity to facades of peace and global cooperation. Abel’s Japan uses culture to maintain international visibility and a connection with the West even after Japan left the League of Nations. Akami illustrates how Japan uses opportunities of international cooperation and discussion to put on a false image of peace and cooperation between countries. Lincicome combines the two views into one by illustrating how Japan uses education as a part of culture to enforce global ideals that serve the nation. Abel, Akami, and Lincicome remind us that nations rarely reinvent themselves from scratch. They evolve through the reinterpretation of old ideals. Japan’s imperial past was not erased by defeat: it was rewritten through the language of internationalism.

  1. The Japanese Embassy to the State. September 24, 1931.
  2. Beasley, W. G. “The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” In Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945, 233-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  3. Abel, Jessamyn R. The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933–1964. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015. Introduction.
  4. Abel, Jessamyn R. Chapter 3, “Cultural Diplomacy for Peace and War,” pp. 81–107.
  5. Akami, Tomoko. Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–1945. London: Routledge, 2002. Introduction, pp. 1–16.
  6. Akami, Tomoko. Chapter 8, “The IPR and the Sino-Japanese War, 1936–9,” pp. 200–239.
  7. Lincicome, Mark Elwood. Imperial Subjects as Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Education in Japan. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. Chapters 3–4.



Vasiliy Eroshenko: Esperanto as a Tool for Thriving with a Disability

Born in what is now Ukraine in 1890, Vasiliy Eroshenko was an important figure in the history of blind activism in Japan. His story is one that has close ties with the Japanese Esperanto movement. After a bout of measles left him blind at a young age, Eroshenko learned about how people of other countries lived by listening to his sighted friends read him books about foreign nations.1 He was advised to learn Esperanto and study music in England but shortly after decided to move to Japan at age twenty-four to train as a masseuse (a common viable career option for the blind).2 The Tokyo Eroshenko lived and studied in (between 1914 and 1921) was a hub of transnational activity, a vibrant mixture of foreign and Japanese students, creatives, missionaries, and activists.3 Although not all individuals in Eroshenko’s circle were Esperantists and he was a part of a variety of groups; Esperanto provided the means by which Eroshenko, a blind, disabled man, was able to form a strong support network, make meaningful connections, find fulfilment through activism, pursue his interests, and support himself.

First, Eroshenko’s knowledge of Esperanto allowed him to communicate and find community, which is vital when navigating a new space. Tanabe Kunio (a fellow Esperantist and graduate of the Tokyo School for the Blind) recalls that Eroshenko ‘received every possible assistance from Japanese Esperanto scholars’, who guided him through the streets and helped him find an apartment.4 Eroshenko also made use of this support network when traveling to Siam, Burma, and India after the breakout of the Russian Revolution made his position as a foreigner in Asia uncertain.5 Because of Esperanto’s association with leftist radical politics, Eroshenko was arrested and deported out of Japan. Although they were unsuccessful, his friends did appeal and campaign for his release.6

Besides the practical benefits of having a support network, Eroshenko’s involvement in Esperanto also allowed him to form meaningful connections, befriending individuals who had similar values and lived experiences. For example, one of his good friends, the playwright Akita Ujaku, helped him with his writing and introduced him to a network of other creatives and members of the intelligentsia.7;8 In a Soviet radio broadcast about Esperanto, Akita shares a story that mirrors Eroshenko’s, saying that once he [Akita] made Esperanto friends and teachers in Moscow, he ‘“was able to use their linguistic aid to enter the real life of Moscow…I was able to make contact with workers’ daily lives, home, factory, and club lives”’.9 Eroshenko too benefited from this linguistic aid.

Additionally, Eroshenko’s connections and Esperanto skillset allowed him to pursue his intellectual interests and find fulfilment through activism. His connection with Esperanto and subsequent friendship with Akita led him to develop his talent for writing.8 Akita translated Eroshenko’s Esperanto writings into Japanese and provided him with cultural information when the two saw plays together. As for his activism, Eroshenko was part of the Japanese Congress for the Blind (an advocacy group), taught music and Esperanto courses to blind students, and later helped teach and organise schools for the blind among other activities.10 It can be reasonably said that without knowing Esperanto upon his arrival to Japan, he would have had much more difficulty gaining a footing and thus contributing to the blind activist cause there.

Eroshenko was also able to make a living teaching Esperanto. For instance, he taught at the Tokyo Public School for the Blind and was invited by an Esperantist to take up a position lecturing at Waseda University.11 After his deportation, he was able to make ends meet teaching Esperanto in China.5 Also, Akita helped edit and popularise Eroshenko’s fairy tales to improve his financial situation.12

The popularity and use of Esperanto as a lingua franca amongst intelligentsia and radical groups in Japan is a common thread throughout Eroshenko’s interactions in Japan. Eroshenko faced multiple layers of social oppression as a blind man, living through persecution, multiple arrests, deportation, and living in a foreign land. However, he was able to utilise existing Esperanto networks in East Asia to support himself financially, physically, and emotionally. Language in the early twentieth century was an integral feature of both transnational activity and of Eroshenko’s individual life.

  1. Julia V. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article ‘Familiarizing with the Achievements, Learning from Our Pioneers. Vasiliy Yeroshenko: Staying in Japan and His Friends,’” in Вісник Університету Ім. А. Нобеля. Серія Філологічні Науки 1, no. 17 (Alfred Nobel University: Dnipro, 2019), 107, https://doi.org/10.32342/2523-4463-2019-0-16-10. [↩]
  2. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 107-108. [↩]
  3. Ian Rapley, “A Language for Asia? Transnational Encounters in the Japanese Esperanto Movement, 1906–28,” in Transnational Japan As History, Pedro Iacobelli, Danton Leary, and Shinnosuke Takahashi (ed.), (United States: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 173, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56879-3_8. [↩]
  4. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 108. [↩]
  5. Rapley, “A Language for Asia?” 175. [↩] [↩]
  6. Ibid. [↩]
  7. Ibid, 173. [↩]
  8. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 111. [↩] [↩]
  9. Rapley, “A Language for Asia?” 181. [↩]
  10. Ibid, 112. [↩]
  11. Ibid, 114. [↩]
  12. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 115. [↩]

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 the topic of “Overcoming Modernity”. This symposium demonstrates the daunting, improbable, and often paradoxical attempts to counter and move beyond Westernization to retrieve the lost Japanese cultural identity. However, these discussions occurred when Western culture, values, and technology were 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: The symposia rejects 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.

In the symposia there is 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.3. 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.4 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.5 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”.6 Instead, film must be adapted to promote a “higher culture” in Japan.7 Thus, to return culture to its idyllic past, away from the poisonous influence of the West, Japan must use a 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.8 Cinema represents one Western medium that the panel both rejects and embraces to overcome modernity. However, living through a time of ‘world-historical importance’ at the opening of World War 2, 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. ibid  [↩]
  5. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.202 [↩]
  6. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.203 [↩]
  7. Calichman, Richard. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. (New York: Columbia Press, 2008), p.203 [↩]
  8. 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/. [↩]

From Tonghak to Ch’ondogyo

Tonghak as a religion underwent vast transformation between its founding by Ch’oe Che-u in 1860 and the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910. Particularly, it saw shifts in its socio-political aims and its spiritual doctrine, made possible by the legalisation of the movement and wider influences upon its makeup. Carl F. Young traces these developments in his work Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way (2014) in part of a broader narrative which saw the movement become a viable platform for nationalist voices by the 1919 March First Movement. As part of this transformation, the most apparent change is in the organisations “rebranding”, a change in name from Tonghak to Ch’ondogyo, announced in late 1905. This change in name is reflective of the wider developments Young traces, particularly within the religious sphere.

Firstly, the change in name from Tonghak to Ch’ondogyo is representative of the movements desire to separate itself from the negative image it acquired during the 1894 rebellion, which was neither promoted nor led first by official Tonghak leadership, but began as a reaction to local economic concerns. Most involved were of lower social status,  of which Tonghak initially attracted due to the centrality of folk religious elements in its early meetings and worship. Tonghak is described by Young as an almost hybrid or union of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and native Shamanism – involving aspects of Buddhist meditation and Confucian ethics – and those native folk elements, for example Che’-u’s supposed healing power, or the healing power of the yŏngbu (talisman) were among reasons why many were initially attracted to Tonghak. [[1]] The detachment from its folk elements and practices we see later in the spiritual and doctrinal developments of the religion can be viewed as a response to the 1894 uprising; an attempt to control how it was perceived by the masses. It too indicates a shift in its target audience, from peasant masses it once attracted before and during the 1894 rebellion towards the attraction of those from educated classes, alienated by the Confucian system but attracted by the preaching of its virtues. Young Ick Lew argues that this is what attracted Chon Pong-Jun, leader of the first 1894 rebellion, to Tonghak. [[2]]  Carl F. Young makes the case that a tension between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures – folk elements conflicting with Confucian values – may have contributed to divisions within the movement. [[3]] Ultimately, it seems these ‘high cultures’ were deemed a greater necessity to the long term survival of the organisation (something of utmost importance to its highest leadership) due to its appeal to those alienated educated classes who were to assume leadership roles and ensure the continuation of Tonghak dissemination and expansion.

Young applies Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’ to the reorganisation of Tonghak into Ch’ondogyo, claiming it to be a ‘reimagining and refocusing of the parameters that held together the religious community that had been founded by Che-u’. [[4]] It can be argued that the refocusing of doctrinal aims in the detaching itself from folk religious practices ‘refocused the parameters’ of the movement in terms of its makeup, shifting the extent of its influence but in turn preserving the community. Further consolidation of this occurred in the establishment of Ch’ondogyo’s official teaching: In nae ch’on. This principle emerged officially in 1907 – translated as ‘humans are heaven’- and claimed that the divine resides within humans and pervades all creation. Anyone could attain full contact with the divine regardless of learning or social rank, allowing for potential widespread appeal, while also calling for proper ethical behaviour as a way of showing respect for heaven. The ethical and moral implications of the doctrine may have appealed to those more educated who were attracted to Tonghak due to its promotion of Confucian virtues and ethics. In nae ch’on presented Ch’ondogyo as a rational religion, in contrast to what was perceived as ‘irrational’ folk practices, and served as the foundation for social action the movement promoted.

Finally, the change in name from Tonghak to Ch’ondogyo can perhaps be seen as a reflection of the organisation’s involvement and interaction with foreign ideas via the Japan’s intellectual scene. Its initial name ‘Tonghak’ translates as ‘eastern learning’, a deliberate choice as opposed to ‘western learning’ (Sohak). Here, it presented itself as a ‘national’, Korean alternative to the Christian mission present in Korea in the early twentieth century. The movement was to provide the moral foundations for a transformed Korean society, and fill the apparent spiritual vacuum caused by the ‘discrediting of traditional neo-Confucianism and a weakened Buddhism’. [[5]] The adoption of ‘Ch’ondogyo’ translated as ‘teaching of the heavenly way’ removes the distinction between east and west, a distinction perhaps not needed nor desired following interaction with reformist thinkers in Japan and acceptance of western intellectual currents, political and social thought. Young claims that it was this western political and social thought encountered in Japan via its leader Song Pyong-jun and the movement’s involvement with the Ilchinhoe that allowed for the ‘systematisation and rationalisation of Tonghak ritual and doctrine’, and moved Ch’ondogyo away from aspects which tied it to the 1894 rebellion and negative image. [[6]]

Overall, tracing the development and shift from Tonghak to Ch’ondogyo is interesting in the study of how foreign ideas came to influence religion in Korea, and how its leaders responded to pressures to keep the movement alive and well regarded. We see that the shift allowed for a more universal audience, as indicated in its new meaning. Too, its new doctrine allowed for a new duality, appealing to both those who valued  the teaching of Confucian ethics and virtues but also those who desired a new religious community which allowed anyone to attain contact with the divine. This new apparent widespread appeal is arguably what made Ch’ondogyo a viable but also successful platform for nationalist voices later in the decade.

 

[[1]] Carl F. Young, Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way: the Tonghak and Ch’ondogyo movements and the twilight of Korean independence (Honolulu, 2014) pp. 8-9.

[[2]] Young Ick Lew, ‘The Conservative Character of the 1894 Tonghak Peasant Uprising: A Reappraisal with Emphasis on Chon Pong-jun’s Background and Motivation’ in The Journal of Korean Studies 7 (1990), pp. 149-180.

[[3]] Young, Eastern Learning, p. 18.

[[4]] Ibid., p. 114.

[[5]] Ibid., p. xix.

[[6]] Ibid.

 

 

The Value of Education: A Comparison of Confucianist and Anarchist Objectives

A common element of Anarchism and Confucianism is the value both philosophies place upon education, and the role education held, whether theoretically or in practice, in propagating their objectives. In their chapter ‘Propagating Female Virtues in Choson Korea’, Deuchler explores the role of literature for ‘indoctrination’ in promoting Neo-Confucian ideals and virtues among elite women which proved to ensure the stability of the domestic realm, and subsequently the stability of the state and society functioning under Confucian hierarchy. Through exposure to works such as Elementary Learning (1189), Illustrated Guide to the Three Bonds (1432), and Instructions for Women (1475), virtues and morality were to be transplanted into the household, and women were to act as ‘the guardians of Confucian norms in the inner realm’ in Korea.[1] Too, Tocco in their ‘Norms and Texts for Women’s Education in Tokugawa Japan’ discusses the extent of women’s education within Tokugawa Japan, and provides example of a woman’s education as accessed through moral guides and texts whose foundations lay in Neo-Confucian ethical precepts which stressed the importance of filial piety and kinship. Both Deuchler and Tocco illustrate well how the education of women in preparation of their managerial and ethical domestic responsibilities came to play a role in the upholding of a Confucian hierarchical society and ideals of filial piety.

A direct comparison between Confucianism and Anarchism can perhaps be made in their conflicting objectives; the Confucian upholding of hierarchy versus the anarchist aims to dismantle hierarchy and those social institutions which serve it, namely state institutions, and familial structures. The value of education therefore is found and placed in competing goals.

Dirlik in Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (1991) emphasises the perceived importance of education among early twentieth century anarchists in achieving revolutionary change. Education is presented as an ‘instrument of revolution’, a tool to create a self-awareness/revolutionary consciousness which would in turn allow for a successful, conscious uprising to dismantle those institutions.[2] Education within anarchist philosophy is also presented as the equivalent of revolution, for there is no distinction made between process and goals of revolution: revolution is a necessary condition for the possibility of anarchist education, but revolution cannot be achieved without education. An anarchist education therefore taught truth and public-mindedness – freedom, equality, and the ability for self-governance – as the means and ends of anarchist revolution.

Kanno Sugako (1881-1911), a central figure in the early Japanese anarchist movement, clearly voiced the need for women to develop self-awareness, and is reflective of wider anarchist ideas on the importance of education in achieving this social consciousness:

‘For us women, the most urgent task is to develop our own self-awareness […] women with some education and some degree of social knowledge must surely be discontented and angry about their status.’[3]

Here she also suggests how education may allow for women to think critically of their status within society. Kanno implies the importance of education in achieving self-awareness, and suggests that this self-awareness of women’s status in society is not recognised to a great extent. Yet, she also suggests that some degree of education must be enough to make one critical of their status – perhaps even one of a Confucian grounding. This seems to conflict slightly with one argument presented by Deuchler, that Japanese women, through their ‘indoctrinating’ education, were complicit in and ‘contributed to the perpetuation of the Confucian system’ which in turn served to promote hierarchy and uphold patriarchy.[4] While this may be true on a macro-scale, their use of the term ‘indoctrination’ suggests those educated women themselves were uncritical, and it is this implication I find dubious. With little evidence written by women themselves proving as a limitation in their work, no outright rejection of a system which suppressed the visibility of women at this time does not necessarily mean there was no critique or ‘self-awareness’. Rather, it serves as a reflection on the success of the patriarchal system in limiting women’s purpose to the domestic realm.

Despite the value of education being found competing goals, both philosophies emphasised the importance of moral teaching. The moral aims of Confucian education however were confined within the family, and were to ensure good Confucian household and the teaching of children Confucian moral values, whereas moral education among anarchists aimed to achieve a public revolution of morality as to achieve its humanitarian goals. This apparent divergence from private teaching of filial piety towards a public revolution promoting equal respect across humanity is interesting, and raises the question of whether the popularity of anarchist ideals within China and Japan was viewed as, or came as a rejection of traditional values of Confucianism.

 

[1] Martina Deuchler, ‘Propagating Female Virtues in Chosón Korea’ in Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush and Joan R Piggot (ed.) Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), p. 152.

[2] Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, 1991), p. 90.

[3] Mikiso Hane, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Pre-war Japan (Berkeley, 1993), p. 53.

[4] Deuchler, ‘Propagating Female Virtues in Chosón Korea’ in Women and Confucian Cultures, p. 165.

Were the Ilchinhoe justified in their support of the Japanese, 1909-1910? A look at collaboration in a colonial setting

In December 1909, the Korean organisation the Ilchinhoe proposed a Japanese-Korean ‘merger’ that they believed would instil new life in Korea as a nation with Japan as its saviour.[1] Instead, the merger is attributed to starting the chain of events that led to Korea’s brutal annexation by the Japanese that lasted thirty-five years.

Yumi Moon’s article ‘Immoral Rights: Korean Populist Collaborators and the Japanese Colonisation of Korea, 1904-1910’ explores the idea that the Ilchinhoe, who are remembered in Korean history as ‘notorious collaborators’, need to be considered in a colonial context so that their actions may be explained.[2] This blog post will consider if Moon’s article provides justification to the Ilchinhoe’s support of the Japanese in the lead to up the annexation of Korea in 1910.

To understand why the Ilchinhoe collaborated with the Japanese, Moon urges historians to avoid contemporary moral views as it becomes a ‘major hindrance’.[3] Historians need to consider the setting and conditions of those who are being colonialised so they can grasp why certain groups chose to work with those who are doing the oppressing.

 So, for the context of Korea and the Ilchinhoe, Moon places a great emphasis on the point that the Ilchinhoe movement was populist. She quotes Margaret Canovan, writing, ‘Populists claim legitimacy on the grounds that they speak for the people: that is to say, they claim to represent the democratic sovereign’.[4] Therefore, the Ilchinhoe were doing what they believed was best for the Korean people. They viewed Korea as a ‘backwards’ nation while Japan was a “civilising’ empire’ that could protect Korea’s prosperity.[5]

Looking at the Ilchinhoe’s view with a contemporary mindset will result in a negative judgement of the group. However, using Moon’s argument that the colonial context must be considered allows for one to see that the Ilchinhoe genuinely believed they were doing what was best for Korea. Their logic was ‘Independence through dependence’, and that Korea needed to understand what it was and wasn’t capable of so that Japan could guide them as a ‘friendly ally’.[6] The Ilchinhoe always advocated for the rights of Korean people and did not wish for Korea to lose its independence; what they wanted was for Japan to revitalise their government.

In the end, the Japanese used this to their advantage and were able to annex Korea with ‘relatively little bloodshed’ thanks to the Ilchinhoe’s collaboration efforts.[7] Moon’s final argument urges an understanding that the Ilchinhoe, the colonised, had no agency or control over how the Japanese, the colonisers, acted. Ultimately, the Ilchinhoe may have had good intentions that they believed represented what the Korean population wanted but were misguided in trusting the Japanese. Japan ended up ignoring what was proposed in the merger and used it as proof that Korea was not able to be independent at all which led to the annexation.  So did Moon’s article justify the Ilchinhoe’s actions and shed a more positive light on their organisation? That depends on how naïve one would believe the Ilchinhoe were in thinking the Japanese wouldn’t take complete control over Korea. However, Moon does provide substantial evidence that suggests their collaboration was in the Korean people’s best interest.

[1]Carl Young, ‘Eastern Learning Divided: The Split in the Tonghak Religion and the Japanese Annexation of Korea, 1904-1910’ in Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea ed. Emily Anderson (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p.93

[2] Yumi Moon, ‘Immoral Rights: Korean Populist Collaborators and the Japanese Colonisation of Korea, 1904-1910‘, The American Historical Review 113:1 (2013), p.20

[3] Ibid. p.22

[4] Ibid. p.27

[5] Ibid. p.33

[6] Ibid. p.32

[7] Ibid. p.42

An Internalised Pure Land: Haijime Kawakami and the Imprisonment of Self.

Haijime Kawakami was an economist and one of Japan’s first Marxist philosophers, born in the late 20th century. He published articles which aimed to educate workers in Marxist theory and provided the introduction for the Japanese translation of Marx’s Das Kapital.[1] His activity with the Japanese Communist Party led to his imprisonment in the 1920s, which was formative in his engagement with the Buddhist philosophy of Pure Land. Kawakami’s engagement with the Pure Land is significant, as he belonged to a new generation of secular Pure Land philosophers who aimed to identify and reconfigure the Pure Land independent of religious tradition. Alongside Miki Kiyoshi and Ienaga Saburo, Kawakami used his Marxist background to discuss the potential of the Pure Land as a tool for the liberation of the masses from the state.[2]

Kawakami’s Prison Ramblings, written in 1937 after his arrest because of his involvement in the Japanese Communist Party, reveal his adoption of Pure Land philosophy.[3] This is synthesised with Marxist ideas to create a new sphere in which to propagate a utopian Japanese vision of the future. Consequently, in this work, Kawakami contributed to the reconfiguration of the Pure Land as something accessible and mouldable in the secular sphere. Primarily, Kawakami speaks of a ‘consciousness of consciousness’. He believed that in order to gain a true understanding of ourselves (which was needed in an age of repressive state techniques and the blanket identity of Japanese modernisation) we must examine our own consciousness in an extraordinary way.[4] This acts as an internal reconsideration which places our thought processes beyond the present and extracts us from accepted contemporary thought. Kawakami’s process of reimagining the Pure Land is based on an internalisation of thought which leads to an expansion of the mind beyond traditional peripheries. As such, it is a process of negation that eliminates all thoughts in order to provide access to a sphere of personal realisation, an ‘estranging image’.[5] This is what gave Kawakami’s Pure Land the power against the state. It removes reality in order to lead to an internalised realisation which, in turn, resituates Kawakami in the here and now. This implies an entirely empty vision which extracts the mind from restrictive structures of the state and the physical possibility of the Pure Land and locates Kawakami’s thought in the abstract. It is a positive discovery of the internalised conscience.

The internalisation of thought can be traced to Kawakami’s experience in prison. tenko, or ideological conversion, was a popular technique for confession or release of a prisoner.[6] Kawakami’s attempts, as a secular man, to draw on Buddhist philosophy are therefore surprising due to this attempted suppression and coercion. However, the internalised nature of his thought suggests a physical and mental withdrawal from any association with the state and their narrative of conversion and suppression. Just as the Pure Land itself gave internalised liberation, the actual process of Kawakami’s philosophy and writing of his Prison Ramblings liberated him from the horror of the present moment. As such, the very process of modern Pure Land thought was just as significant as the Marxist ideology behind it. Kawakami’s thought in prison created a space which the state could not access and therefore gave him the freedom that Pure Land advocated. It allowed him to create a solution to tradition, and from the very entrapment of his prison cell, force liberation and globalisation of philosophy. Kawakami’s Pure Land was a product of his Marxist thought- a rejection of the structures of state which literally surrounded him in prison, and emphasis on the individual. A connection with others philosophical liberation grounded him in the Marxist ideal of a communal victory for the masses, whilst his Pure Land remained abstracted within the self.

Kawakami’s Pure Land was revolutionary. He used Marxist theory to reject the structures of the state and remove the need for a centrally controlled paradise. His Pure Land was accessible only individually, through the internalisation of thought and negation of the constrictions of the present world. This was Kawakami’s way of waging revolution on the Japanese government when he was physically restricted in the present world. It was also a philosophical revolution in the sense that Kawakami had no Buddhist background. He uprooted Pure Land philosophy from its traditional religious sphere and opened it up as a possibility for secular philosophers and ordinary people. Both these revolutionary aspects reveal Kawakami’s desire to create a Pure Land which was accessible to the masses, via their own resource of the inner mind. The internalisation which Kawakami advocated can be seen as a philosophical representation of his tangible experiences in the present world. Imprisonment, coercion, and his end of life in the days after World War Two, where briefly, the possibility of a globalised world had become apparent. Kawakami’s internalised Pure Land was a modernist and globalised vision which sought to project this philosophy into the future.

[1] Melissa Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists and the Utopian Imagination (Honolulu, 2017), pp.86-87.

[2] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.84.

[3] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.89.

[4] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.97.

[5] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.29.

[6] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.92.

Kuki Shūzō and Nishida Kitarō – Fascists or Subjects of Ideological Manipulation?

Christopher Goto-Jones makes the convincing argument that Nishida Kitarō did not promote facist ideologies, but instead that he expressed opposing political views with philosophical language. Goto-Jones argues that Nishida employed orthodox vocabulary in his political texts from the 1930s and 1940s in order to ensure that his texts would be published and also to avoid punishment from the increasingly totalitarian government.1 Nishida is often regarded as the founder of the Kyoto School, however unlike other groups of thinkers who are unified by an academic institution or an official organization, the Kyoto School can be used to loosely group together a diverse set of thinkers who did not formally organize.2 Although historiography on the Kyoto School is varied, the dominant view is expressed by James Heisig, who defines the school in terms of three central contributors: Nishida, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji.3 Although these figures may all be thought of as belonging to the Kyoto School, their philosophical thought differed greatly. This had adverse effects on Nishida in particular, the oldest of the three scholars, whose words were quoted out of context, thereby “manipulating his linguistic and ideological conventions into forms that resonated much more closely with the ultra-nationalist orthodoxy.”4 The language used by Nishida, necessitated by security concerns due to an overbearing government, created the possibility for ideological manipulation which resulted in Nishida’s thought being viewed as fascist.

The framework that Goto-Jones uses to exonerate Nishida from claims that he supported Japan’s brutal imperialism is a useful tool which can be instrumentalized in a discussion about Kuki Shūzō to show how the representation of Kuki’s ideas as fascist resulted from a lack of contextualization. Kuki is described as having been on the fringe of the Kyoto School, probably due to his teaching position at Kyoto Imperial University more so than due to similarities in philosophical orientation.5 Despite the fact that Kuki is not considered a central figure in the Kyoto school, and that his philosophy was markedly different than Nishidas, his ideas were also taken out of their original context and used to support facist ideologies. Similar to the process of de-contextualization of Nishida’s works which Goto-Jones describes as contributing to the false classification of this scholar as a fascist, Kuki’s writings have been taken out of their original context in order to support the claim that he was an active supporter of the fascist policies of the Japanese government.

In the case of Nishida, this ideological manipulation was undertaken by his fellow Kyoto School scholars, whereas in the case of Kuki it was done by scholars such as Leslie Pincus. Pincus argues that “By the late 1930s, Kuki had enlisted the tripartite structure of iki in the service of an ultranationalist imperial state.”6 In this view, Kuki’s vision of the aesthetic style of pre-Westernized Japan which he saw as a signifier of Japan’s capacity to excel in the modern world, as described in Iki no kōzō, provides an philosophical basis for Japanese domination in East Asia. As Yukiko Koshiro observes, Pincus’s failure to include Kuki’s other philosophical works in her study “dilutes the overall validity of her analysis.”7 Similar to the way in which Nishida’s works were taken out of the political context in which he wrote them to demonstrate his supposed support for fascist policies, Pincus uses Kuki’s Iki no kōzō without locating the text among his other contributions to show how it was used as a tool of cultural fascism. The alternative view, that “Kuki was unlikely to have been a willing and active conscript in serving the ideology that fueled Japan’s imperialism”, is more convincing because it accounts for the scholars lack of control over the ideological manipulations that their work is subject to.8 Goto-Jones’ analysis of Nishida’s works is a useful framework for an investigation into the political orientation of Kuki because it demonstrates how a philosopher’s work can be enlisted in fascist state policy, regardless of the author’s intentions.

  1. Christopher Goto-Jones, Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School and Co-Prosperity (London, 2009), pp. 81-86. [↩]
  2. Bret Davis, ‘The Kyoto School’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2019, [accessed 14 November 2020]. [↩]
  3. James Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School (University of Hawaii Press, 2001), p. 3-7 and 275-278 as cited in Davis, ‘The Kyoto School.’ [↩]
  4. Goto-Jones, Political Philosophy in Japan, p. 105. [↩]
  5. James Heisig, Thomas Kasulis, and John Maraldo (eds.), ‘Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School’, in Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Honolulu, 2011), p. 829 [↩]
  6. Leslie Pincus, ‘In a Labyrinth of Western Desire: Kuki Shuzo and the Discovery of Japanese Being’, Boundary, 18: 3 (1991), p. 154. [↩]
  7. Yukiko Koshiro, ‘Review of Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics (Berkeley, 1996), by Leslie Pincus’, The Review of Politics, 59: 3 (Summer, 1997), p. 607. [↩]
  8. Hiroshi Nara, The Structure of Detachment: The Aesthetic Vision of Kuki Shuzo (Honolulu, 2004), p. 6. [↩]