Kita Ikki and the Contradictions of Utopianism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Devoted wives and wise mothers’: The irony of Kita Ikki’s suffrage reform in relation to Choson Korea and Qing China

In 1919 Kita Ikki, in response to an apparent national crisis ‘unparalleled’ in Japan’s history, proposed a series of reforms for which he believed could propel Japan to leadership in the Asian continent, thereby expunging the toxins of western imperialism that threatened the culture and livelihood of the Asian nations[1]. Universal suffrage was one such reform, declared by Kita as an ‘innate right of the people’, necessary to protect the Japanese people against subjugation by an oppressive ruling class[2].

However, paradoxically, Kita proclaimed that “women will not have the right to participate in politics”, because Japanese women have “continued to be devoted wives and wise mothers” who have looked down upon politics as a realm of verbal warfare and violence not suited to their natural aptitudes[3]. This trope of the ‘devoted wife and wise mother’ evokes a particular irony with regards to Kita’s attempt at reform, most notably because it was an idea embodied within the societies of Choson Korea and Qing China, which were dynasties both subject to foreign humiliation: a scenario that Kita’s reform steadfastly desired to avoid.

For example, in Choson Korea, women were denied access to the civil service and public life more generally[4]. A woman’s role was conceived as participating in the moral education of her children, and more importantly, in creating a stable order at home, which was considered the sine qua non of female virtue[5]. In addition, any attempt to transcend this repressive order, such as through education, was generally chastised, and perceived as an ominous sign of misfortune within the family[6]. Furthermore, in Qing China, a chastity cult flourished that idolized this idea of the ‘devoted wife and wise mother’. Absolute fidelity to one’s husband, refusal to remarry after the death of one’s husband and even committing suicide after his death were behaviours considered central to the idea of the perfect woman[7]. In addition, women were denied access to public life, meaning they could not participate in the political sphere or even gain an education equivalent to their male counterparts[8].

By no means was Kita Ikki’s vision for a new political and social order for Japan as repressive as those exhibited above. For example, Kita believed that boys and girls should have the right to same education and work prospects (excluding politics), but also that the rights of women within marriages should be protected, such as by outlawing adultery and prostitution[9]. However, the significant factor that links these three phenomena is their veneration of the ‘devoted wife, wise mother’ type of woman. All three social orders exclude women from the political process and stress the importance of such concepts as chastity and devotion to one’s husband. The great irony here is that Kita Ikki was attempting to reform Japan into a progressive and modern state, capable of repelling western imperialism. Yet, Choson Korea and Qing China were relics of the past, and states that were subject to great amounts of foreign interference and humiliation (as Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910 and China suffered at the hands of the both the west and Japan in the Opium wars and the Sino-Japanese War of 1895). By invoking the idea of a ‘devoted wife, wise mother’ Kita appealed to an image that was indicative of more backward societies, antithetical to the image of Japan that he was trying to create. His logic here appears self-defeating, as not only does the exclusion of women from politics negate the notion of ‘universal’ suffrage, but the veneration of such a trope as ‘devoted wife, wise mother’ subverts the more progressive elements of his reform such as equal education, as it emphasizes a woman’s supposed proclivity to the domestic sphere.

 

[1] Ikki, Kita, ‘An Outline for the Reorganization of Japan’, in Wm. Theodore De Bary, Carol Gluck and Arthur Tiedemann (eds), Sources of Japanese Tradition 1600 to 2000 (New York, 2005), p.961

[2] Ibid., p.964

[3] Ibid., p.964-965

[4] Martina Deuchler, ‘Propagating Female Virtues in Choson Korea’, in Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush and Joan Piggott (eds), Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), p.152.

[5] Ibid., p.153

[6] Ibid., p.153

[7] Fangqin Du and Susan Mann, ‘Competing Claims on Womanly Virtue in Late Imperial China’ in Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush and Joan Piggott (eds), Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), p.220.

[8] Yi-Tsi Feuerweker, ‘Women as Writers in the 1920s and 1930s’ in Margery Wolf, Roxanne Witke and Emily Martin (eds), Women in Chinese Society (Stanford, 1975), p.144.

[9] Ikki, Kita, ‘People’s Right to a Livelihood’ in Brij Tanka (ed), Kita Ikki and the Making of Modern Japan: A vision of Empire, (Kent, 2006), pp.197-203.