Tag: socialism

The Worldist Tongue: Esperanto as Anti-Imperial Ideology in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia

In the early twentieth century, Esperanto, the “planned” language created by Ludovic Zamenhof in 1887, found a surprising stronghold. Beyond its European origins, it was in Japan, and later China, where the language flourished, forming the largest Esperanto community outside Europe by the 1930s.1 Conventional history often dismisses Esperanto as a noble but failed utopian project, especially when compared to the global ascent of English.2 However, this view misses its more profound significance. In East Asia, Esperanto was not a failure but a powerful ideological force. This was a manifestation of a homegrown philosophy known as “worldism” (sekai shugi), which is the belief in a political order that transcended the nation-state and centred on a global community of common people. This philosophy directly challenged the foundations of the Western world order.3

Esperanto’s rise coincided with an era of burgeoning nationalism and a simultaneous search for internationalist ideals. East Asian intellectuals developed a profound critique of the prevailing system, arguing that true peace could never be achieved through the competitive framework of nation-states.4  Thinkers like Japan’s Kōtoku Shūsui and China’s Kang Youwei envisioned a political order built around heimin (“the common people”) as a global, transnational community. For them, Esperanto was not an “international language” (kokusaigo) for state diplomacy, but a “world language” (sekaigo) for the people.5 This distinction was crucial. By embracing Esperanto, Japanese activists, for instance, were engaging in a form of anti-imperial resistance, rejecting their country’s participation in a Western-dominated system.

A key to Esperanto’s appeal was its perceived cultural neutrality. It was viewed as a blank slate, functioning as a transnational medium without the baggage of a specific national history or civilisation.6  This allowed it to become a powerful symbol that could amplify the diversity and equality of all local cultures.7 So more than just a tool for communication, Esperanto represented an ideology of world unification. This vision resonated perfectly with existing East Asian utopian projects. Kang Youwei’s The One-World Philosophy (Ta T’ung Shu), for example, had already called for a universal language.8 Meanwhile, Chinese anarchists in Tokyo saw Esperanto not as a replacement for their “unmodern” language, but as a framework to promote Chinese culture on a global stage.9 The language was successful because it could be seamlessly integrated into local visions of a unified world.

The movement was inherently grassroots, spreading through informal networks rather than state sponsorship. A diverse mix of intellectuals, artists, and ordinary citizens studied it in coffee shops and rural homes, often in evening classes.10 This created a unique space for transnational connection. A notable example is the Russian writer Vasily Eroshenko, a blind Esperantist who gained celebrity status in Japan. His blindness was symbolically interpreted as also being an inability to see racial hierarchies, allowing him to transcend national boundaries and live integrated within Japanese society.11 His influence extended to China, where he later lectured, inspiring figures like the playwright Akita Ujaku, who found that only Esperanto could convey the true meaning of universal brotherhood.12

Despite its non-state origins, authorities viewed Esperanto as “subversive”, and it was indeed used for political struggle, such as in Chinese anti-Japanese propaganda.13 The movement’s enduring coherence came from a continuous, deeply felt desire among its participants to make “concrete connection[s] with the wider world”.14

Therefore, the true importance of Esperanto in early 20th-century East Asia lies not in its linguistic reach, but in its ideological power. It gave tangible form to a comprehensive “worldist” vision. Esperanto was a vehicle for peace and global unity based on individual agency and cultural equality. It stood as a powerful, indigenous alternative to the Western geopolitical paradigm, rejecting a system defined by state sovereignty and a linguistic hierarchy that mirrored imperial power imbalances.

 

 

  1. Rapley, Ian, ‘A Language for Asia? Transnational Encounters in the Japanese Esperanto Movement, 1906-28’, in Iacobelli, P, et al., (eds.), Transnational Japan as History, (2016), p.167 [↩]
  2. Kim, Young S., ‘Constructing a Global Identity: The Role of Esperanto’ in Boli, John and Thomas, George M., Constructing World Culture: International Non-Governmental Organisations since 1875, (1999), p.148 [↩]
  3. Konishi, Sho, ‘Translingual World Order: Language Without Culture in Post-Russo-Japanese War Japan’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 72: 1 (2013), p.92 [↩]
  4. Ibid, p.99 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.94 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.100 [↩]
  7. Ibid, p.93 [↩]
  8. Ibid, p.96 [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.103 [↩]
  10. Ibid, p.91-92 [↩]
  11. Ibid, p.108 [↩]
  12. Ibid, p.106 [↩]
  13. Ibid, p.107 [↩]
  14. Rapley, Ian ‘A Language for Asia?’, p.182 [↩]

Shifu’s Purist Anarchism: How His Beliefs Separated Him from Other Anarchists

Although Shifu’s introduction to anarchism followed similar paths of his fellow anarchists, his later articulation of a pure anarchist ideology and critiques of various anarchists differentiated him from others.

Born as Liu Shaobin in 1884, Liu grew up in a supportive, prosperous family. His father encouraged progressive ideals, such as educating his daughters and advocating to end foot binding.1 Liu performed well in school, and he eventually went to study abroad in Japan. There, he encountered revolutionary ideas, which served as the preface to many other contemporary anarchists as well. Following this introduction, Liu changed his name to Liu Sifu and joined Sun Yat-Sen’s Revolutionary Alliance, which promoted assassination as a means for reform. After a failed assassination attempt, Liu lost his left hand and was arrested. In prison, Liu’s conceptualizations of anarchism would foster, ultimately leading to his rejection of violence as the path for reform and to the creation of his own understanding of anarchism.2 

In 1912, three years after his release, Liu and three others established the Conscience Society. The twelve points of this society serve as the basis of Liu’s anarchist ideology, which members must follow. Despite the inclusion of a loophole for members to join while not precisely following the twelve points, Liu committed to them fully.3 His change of name to Shifu, rejecting the patriarchal power of a family name, most clearly represents his strict adherence to the points. His refusal to eat meat and ride in rickshas, even in his ailing health, further depicts his devotion. Shifu understood anarchism as a rejection of politics. Politics caused corruption in humanity, and the only way to rid this corruption from society was to take on social revolution. Shifu reasoned that ‘government would be replaced by people’s voluntary self-regulation’, which would depend on people’s management of their consciousness and behavior.4 The problem with society was politics; only with the complete eradication—not a mere replacement—of all forms of government could China be free. And in order to initiate this eradication, one must strictly devote themselves to dismantling the structure which society was built on by holding themselves to these specific standards.

His critique of fellow anarchists illustrates how Shifu’s strict belief in a pure anarchism separated him from other contemporaries. Shifu condemned multiple people for a failure to uphold anarchist ideology, including Zhang Ji and Wu Zhihui of the Paris anarchists and Sun Yat-Sen and Jiang Kanghu of the socialists. For Shifu, to maintain the anarchist ideology, one must reflect on themselves to completely reject the current structure of society: politics. Restructuring is difficult to do, for a complete reimagination of the foundation of society is often impractical. So, many anarchists accepted offices in the new Republican government, such as Zhang Ji and Wu Zhihui, under the pretense that these offices would allow them to strengthen their beliefs through government-backed organizations.5 However, Shifu contended that this acceptance of governmental office fundamentally went against the concept of anarchism and leaders of the Paris anarchists failed to moderate their own behaviors. Thus, Zhang and Wu could no longer be considered anarchists, for they did not align with Shifu’s strict anarchism.

Furthermore, Shifu discredited socialism as anarchism, on the basis of socialism’s narrowness. Shifu’s explanation that socialism concerns only the economy, while anarchism concerns all politics, sets the foundation for his criticism. In this explanation, anarchism is the broader concept which socialism fits under.6 Socialism argues for social policy to economically equalize society, not social revolution and the elimination of politics. Moreover, socialism works within the government to enact these policies; it simply replaces one government with another sympathetic to its ideology. Therefore, socialists should not portray themselves as anarchists, for they do not follow all of the requirements of anarchism. From this separation between socialism and anarchism, Shifu cements his concept of anarchism, which is strictly followed, as true anarchism. Thus, Shifu’s pure anarchism distinguishes Shifu from other contemporary anarchists.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (Lanham, 1998), p. 2. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 7. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 115. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 119. [↩]
  5. Ibid., p. 121. [↩]
  6. Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, 1991), p. 142. [↩]