Tag: nationalism

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. [↩]

Modernising China: Why Discourses Surrounding Love and Sex were Central to Republican China’s National Rejuvenation.

In Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China Prasenjit Duara maintains that the nation is often conceived as the primordial subject of history: the foundation upon which a multiplicity of social, political and economic phenomena may be analysed[1]. As such, historiography surrounding nationalism has often taken a ‘top-down’ approach, suggesting that the reification of nationalist sentiments is instantiated by governing bodies or international events[2]. Hence historians such as Lloyd Eastman, Maggie Clinton, Frederick Wakeman Jr., and William Kirby have analysed China’s quest for modernity as a response to the dynamic rise of fascist states in Europe, as Germany and Italy’s rapid national rejuvenation provided a model for nationalists in China who coveted national development[3].

However, these analyses provide an impoverished account of China’s ineluctable path to modernity. Most notably, they overlook how apparently superfluous cultural phenomena such as love, and sex could contribute to China’s national development. Frank Dikötter’s Sex, Culture and Modernity in China provides a necessary response to such historiography by demonstrating how ideas related to sex and sexual desire contributed significantly to China’s modernising discourse[4].

Dikötter argues that in Republican China interest in the subject of sex grew exponentially, as evidenced by the proliferation of new periodicals such as The sex periodical, The sexual desire weekly, The sex journal bi-weekly and ‘The sex journal’[5]. This interest was grounded in the belief that the control of sexual desire was somehow integral to the restoration of a strong China, for if ‘evil’ sexual habits could be eliminated, then Chinese citizens could sacrifice their attention to the development of the nation[6]. For example, great interest was placed upon reproductive health and the procreative behaviour of couples, as medical scientists sought to understand the optimum conditions with which healthy offspring could be produced, as such offspring could then be successfully integrated into China’s fledgling industrial workforce[7].

Contra Eastman, Clinton, and others, one cannot fail to see that discourses around sex and China’s national well-being were inextricably linked. Chinese nation-building was not simply a process of emulating Europe, rather, it embodied certain indigenous cultural transformations such as more open discourses surrounding sex and changing attitudes towards love. Haiyan Lee develops this argument in Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 in which she demonstrates the significance of love in the discourses surrounding national development. The May Fourth Movement (a political and cultural movement emanating from Beijing in 1919) is one such example, where love and its free expression became symbolic of equality and autonomy from foreign interference[8].

Therefore, an intellectual history of the discourses surrounding China’s national development in the Republican period cannot and should not overlook these cultural factors. The history of Republican China should not be a history of competing political ideologies, viewing Chinese nationalism as a tabula rasa upon which a European creed could be imprinted. The Chinese path to modernity is more complex than this, and, in like manner to Dikötter and Lee, explanations which reflect these complex cultural and social dynamics are imperative.

[1] Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China, (Chicago, 1995), pp. 27-29

[2] Jing Tsu, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895-1937, (Stanford, 2005), p.1

[3] Lloyd Eastman, Fascism in Kuomintang China: The Blue Shirts, The China Quarterly, 49: 1 (1972), pp.1-31. Maggie Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937, (Durham, 2017). Frederick Wakeman Jr., A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism, The China Quarterly, 150: special issue: Reappraising Republican China (June, 1997), pp.395-432. William Kirby, Germany and Republican China, (Stanford, 1984)

[4] Frank Dikötter, Sex, Culture and Modernity in China, (London, 1995), p.2

[5] Ibid., p.1

[6] Ibid., p.2

[7] Ibid., pp.62-71

[8] Haiyan Lee, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China 1900-1950, (Stanford, 2007), p.5