a history of nationalism in modern japan

A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan

Handbook of Oriental StudiesHandbuch der Orientalistik

Section Five

Japan

Edited by

M. BlumR. KerstenM.F. Low

VOLUME 13

A History of Nationalism in

Modern Japan

Placing the People

by

Kevin M. Doak

LEIDEN • BOSTON2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available on the Internet at http://catalog.loc.gov

ISSN 0921-5239ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15598 5ISBN-10: 90 04 15598 8

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printed in the netherlands

To my parents

Samuel and Peggy Doak

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

CONTENTS

Preface ……………………………………………………………… ix

Chapter One Representing the People as a Nation ………………... 1Contemporary Nationalism Theory: What is Nationalism

and Who are the Nation.……………………………………… 5Theoritical Influences on Japanese Discourse on the Nation ..… 11Contemporary Japanese Theories on Nationalism . ……………. 25

Chapter Two The Preconditions of Japanese Nationalism.……… 36The Bakamatsu Years and the Preconditions of National

Identity ……………………………………………………… 37Creating a Public and Building a State in Early Meiji . …………45

Mitsukuri Rinsh� and the Legal Theory of “Minken”.……… 65Miyazaki Mury� and the Concept of “Minzoku” .... ………… 71Mitsukuri, Miyazaki and Japanese Nationalist Discourse ...... 80

Chapter Three Tenn� …………………………………………….. 83The Monarch as Liberator of the Japanese People . …………… 84Monarchy and the Moral Nation .………………………………. 92The Monarch as Emperor (K�tei) ..……………………………. 102The Tenn� as Symbol of the Nation .. …………………………. 113

Chapter Four Shakai .…………………………………………… 127Coming to Terms with Society in Meiji Japan ..... …………….. 129Constructing Society, Conceiving of Shakai ..... ………………. 135Society as a Problem ..………………………………………… 143Taisho Sociology and the Problem of the “People” .................. 149Postwar Japan and Shakai ……………………………………. 154

Chapter Five Kokumin …………………………………………. 164Civilization and Nationalism, 1868-1890 .................................. 169

Meiji Kokumin Aesthetics ....……………………………….. 177Meiji Kokumin Theology ...………………………………… 184

viii CONTENTS

Meiji Kokumin Political Theory ........................................... 191From Political to Cultural Nationalism, 1890-1945 ………….. 194The Postwar Return of the Kokumin, 1945-Present... ………… 203

Chapter Six Minzoku …………………………………………… 216Minzoku and Empire.………………………………………….. 219Minzoku and Liberal Political Theory .. ………………………. 226Minzoku and War . …………………………………………….. 236Minzoku and the Postwar Nation...……………………………. 250

Chapter Seven Afterword: The Place of the Nation inJapan Today.. ………………………………………………….. 265

Bibliography ……………………………………………………… 275

Index ……………………………………………………………… 285

PREFACE

My effort to provide a comprehensive analysis of Japanesenationalism has occupied–indeed, all too often, preoccupied–mythinking, research and publications for most of my professional career.It stems from my first book published in 1994 that focused on a groupof romantic nationalists during the wartime, but seeks to provide abroader context for that work by outlining the various strains ofnationalism that often vied for dominance and official recognitionover the course of modern Japanese history. The all-encompassingnature of this study makes it more difficult than usual to identify theparticular sources of support and influence I have received from somany people and institutions over the years I have been engaged withthis project. I am painfully aware of the fact, and need to admit itfrom the outset, that many who gave tirelessly and patiently to helpme understand the nuances of nationalism, both in Japan and as ageneral sociological feature of modern societies, inadvertently will beoverlooked in my acknowledgements, and to them I can only offermy apologies.

This book is the result of work that I have done over the lasttwelve years at six universities on three continents. The idea of asynthetic approach to Japanese nationalism that emphasized theinternal contestations of nationalist discourse was sketched out in myclasses on Modern Japanese History at Wake Forest University in theearly 1990s. Exceptional colleagues and students accompanied me onthe incipient stages of that journey, and I particularly would like tothank Yuri Slezkine, Alan Williams, Michael Hughes, Simone Caronand a former student at Wake Forest, David Ellis, who is now anAssociate Professor of German History at Augustana College. Theactual research and writing of the book commenced during my tenureat the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana from 1994 to 2002.I received financial support from a William & Flora Hewlett SummerInternational Research Grant in 1995, and an early draft of ChapterTwo was composed during spring of 1997 when I was appointed aFellow in the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of

PREFACE

Illinois. During my eight years in Urbana, there were simply toomany colleagues, students and friends who stimulated my thinkingand provided various forms of support for me to list them all. But Iwould be remiss not to mention Ronald Toby, George Yu, DavidGoodman, Atsuko Ueda, Emanuel Pastreich, Jason Karlin, Jinhee Lee,Paul Droubie, Curtis Gayle, Harry Liebersohn, and especially FredJaher. To those whom I have neglected to single out, my apologies.All of you have shaped me in ways that I may never fully realize andfor which I can only express my gratitude.

One highlight of those years was a grant I received from the SocialScience Research Council to conduct research on the formation of thenation-state in Meiji Japan from May through August 1998 at theNational Humanities Institute, Kyoto University. Shin’ichi graciously agreed to direct my work and gave generously ofhis time and resources. I can never adequately thank him for all he didfor me during those hot summer months in Kyoto. His supportextended to securing for me Ministerial appointment as a VisitingResearcher so I could return to Kyoto during 2002-03 to complete thisbook. I regret that I was unable to accept that appointment as I hadjust accepted a new position at Georgetown University that began thesame year. Undoubtedly, that appointment would have expeditedwhat was already a long-overdue book.

I would also like to thank Akitoshi Shimizu of HitotsubashiUniversity for inviting me to present a paper on “Nakano Seiichi andColonial Ethnic Studies” at the workshop on Wartime JapaneseAnthropology in Asian and Oceania, held in 1999 at the NationalMuseum of Ethnology in Osaka. Some of the material from thatpresentation is incorporated in Chapter Six of this book. Also, I amdeeply grateful to Konan University and its International ExchangeCenter (KIEC) for support during 2000-2001 when I was appointed asthe Resident Director of Illinois’s Year in Konan Program. Theyprovided me with a quiet and spacious office, where I was able tofinish much of Chapter Two and parts of Chapter Five, in betweenteaching a course and administrating the Year in Konan program.Many faculty and administrators at Konan were extraordinarilygenerous with their time and support and I thank them all, especiallyTakano Kiyohiro. Over the course of that year, I was able to meetother professors in Japan who were very generous in their support andhelpful in my work on Japanese nationalism. Yonehara Ken of OsakaUniversity invited me to make a presentation to his seminar and hasbeen an exceptional guide on Japanese nationalism, particularlyduring the Meiji period. Matsuda K�ichir� at Rikkyo University has

Yamamuro

x

PREFACE xi

also been an invaluable aid, providing me with research materials andinviting me to join his collaborative project during 2001-02 on“Research into the Political Theory and Political Study ofContemporary Problems in Ethnicity and Nationalism.” MasakoKatano of Osaka University of Commerce alerted me to the range ofinfluence that Meiji Christian intellectuals had on civic nationalism.And Takada Yasunari of the University of Tokyo has been an idealfriend, collaborator and intellectual provocateur who opened up newworlds of ideas to me.

I must thank also my colleagues at Georgetown University,especially Philip Kafalas, Michael McCaskey, Yoshiko Mori, JordanSand and Jingyuan Zhang. It was only after I joined them in 2002 thatthis book really began to come together and their support has beenessential in bringing it to fruition. A semester leave in 2003 waspivotal in making that final push to completion. I thank the Dean ofGeorgetown College, Jane Dammen McAuliffe, for granting me theleave and John Witek, SJ for taking on additional administrativeresponsibilities so I could accept the leave. It was at this point thatRikki Kersten at Leiden University began to make such a differencein moving this project toward completion. First, she invited me topresent the gist of the project in a talk on “Nationalism and the Issueof Ethnicity in Japan” as part of the workshop she organized withAxel Schneider on “Historical Consciousness and the Future ofModern China and Japan: Conservativism, Revisionism, and NationalIdentity” at Leiden University on May 25, 2003. Then, after includingme on a real instance of “traveling theory” that took this project onhistorical consciousness to Harvard and then on to the annual meetingof the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago, she invited me tospend the month of June 2005 in Leiden as a Lecturer in Residencefor the Workshop on Historical Consciousness in China and Japan.Traveling theory was fine, but nothing like spending a summer monthin Leiden devoted to writing the book. It was during this period, andwith remarkable resources from the Leiden University East Asianlibrary collection, that I was able to complete drafts of Chapters Fourand Five and begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Duringthat brief summer in Leiden, I was blessed with a rich intellectual andsocial life, and I wish to thank Rikki, Axel Schneider, Maghiel vanCrevel, Christopher Goto-Jones and Albert Hoffstädt for showing mea life in Leiden that even now seems as though it were only a dream.To Albert and Patricia Radder, my editors at Brill, my deepestgratitude for not giving up on me as this book missed one deadlineafter another.

PREFACExii

Finally, there are those whose influence on me and this book hasbeen so pervasive that they require special mention. Kosaku Yoshinoof Sophia University was a critical influence in helping me find theconceptual tools and theoretical sources for understanding Japanesenationalism in a comparative framework. Harry Harootunian andTetsuo Najita were true Doktorvaters: without them, none of thiswould have been possible. In terms of this particular project, I amindebted to Tets for teaching me to think about nations as internallycontested forms of identity (especially his model of bureaucratism/idealism which has influenced my understanding of Japanesenationalism as a struggle between civic and ethnic nationalisms) andto Harry for turning me and a generation of his graduate students onto the significance of minzoku ideology in modern Japanese cultureand politics. They, along with all those acknowledged above, cannotbe held responsible for the faults of this book: for that, theresponsibility is mine alone.

My wife Therese and my sons Anatole and Emile have contributedto this book in ways that go beyond the usual things families oftenendure in the course of a book project. Yes, they put up with myfrequent absences and my inattentiveness to them even when I washome. But they also gave up much of their lives to accompany me toJapan not once, but three times. Anatole and Emile accepted their newlife as students for a year in Okamoto Dai-Ni Elementary School inKobe, where they learned Japanese in order to do their assignmentsand speak with their classmates, and they had to develop newtechniques to deal with soccer fields composed more of sand thangrass. But through their experiences in Japan and at home, andespecially through what they have taught me about soccer, I havebeen able to understand nationalism from a vantage point that all thelibraries in the world could not have given me. But it is to Theresethat I must confess my greatest debt: she has not only prepared thefinal manuscript, under great pressure and time constraints, but shehas been my constant companion throughout my journey into theworld of nationalism and the nationalism of the world. There aresome debts that no formal acknowledgement will ever suffice tocover. My debt to her is one.

CHAPTER ONE

REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE AS A NATION

Much of what is written about Japanese nationalism is not reallyabout nationalism at all. This is the first paradox that anyone whowishes to understand the past, present and future of Japanesenationalism must confront. It is not only true about academic writingon nationalism in Japan, but a fortiori of journalistic accounts of“rising nationalism” or “neo-nationalism” that plague so many of thecontemporary English language media reports on politics in Japan.When narratives of this “neo-nationalism” in Japan today are tied,implicitly or explicitly, to the historical militarism or expansionism ofImperial Japan during World War II, then misunderstanding ofJapanese nationalism only deepens. That is not to say that history isirrelevant to nationalism in Japan or elsewhere. It certainly is relevant,and that is one reason that this study takes a historical approach tounderstanding Japanese nationalism. It is, rather, a question of“getting the history right,” or in this case not only of getting thehistory right, but of accurately identifying the subject of analysis:nationalism itself. The legacy of World War II, compounded with theinstitutional bias of postwar modernization theory, has left a strongtendency in works on Japanese nationalism to focus on the role of thestate. State indoctrination, state control of the economy and education,state predominance over regional and local governments—allcombine to yield the impression that the main story line of Japanesenationalism is how the state emerged to control so much of life inmodern Japan. This study does not deny the significant presence ofthe state in modern Japanese life, and particularly in political life. Itsimply argues that much of this narrative about the state is not really anarrative about nationalism. In fact, the statist bias in some writingson Japanese nationalism often yields a lesson, not in “seeing like astate,” as James C. Scott put it,1 but in how trying to see like a state

1 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the

Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

CHAPTER ONE2

can result in a blindness to the reality of nationalism. Put succinctly,nationalism is a principle that asserts the people as the privilegedprinciple of political life. But this principle of the people is more thana political one. It makes certain cultural claims that go to the heart ofidentity, individual and collective, and as such it can place itself as aconflicting relationship with the state. It certainly did so for much ofmodern Japanese history.

More than twenty years of reading the literature on Japanesenationalism has left me with a strong sense that what is said inEnglish and what is said in Japanese about the subject are oftenworlds apart. This difference is not so much one of evaluativepositions: it is easy enough to find authors in either language whoreject nationalism completely or who support it, at least for limitedstrategic reasons (most commonly, for what is believed to be its valuein anti-imperialism). But what has been most striking is the rathercasual use of the term “nationalism” in English writing, and the moreattentive and discriminating use of terminology to convey the idea ofnation or nationalism in Japanese. In part, this is due to a specificlinguistic feature of Japanese that needs to be stated at the outset here,and indeed in any study on Japanese nationalism. There are twodistinct words in Japanese for “nationalism,” kokuminshugi andminzokushugi, just as there are two distinct words in Japan for“nation,” kokumin and minzoku. A third term, kokkashugi, is oftenmis-translated into English as “nationalism,” but it really denoteswhat the French language captures better as étatisme, or “statism.”And, similarly, the root word kokka should be translated into Englishas “state” rather than “nation.” Anyone who speaks or writes onnationalism in Japanese must come to some understanding as to whatthese different ways of articulating nationalism in Japanese signify,and then sometimes make a choice between these alternative ways ofarticulating “nation” or “nationalism.”2 To choose one term over theother is to select, explicitly or implicitly, a particular understanding ofwhat nationalism is.

To fully appreciate the subtle differences that emerge from thechoice of terminology requires some understanding of basic political

2 In recent years, there has been an increasing tendency to use the English word

“nationalism” in phonetic form (nashonarizumu). This approach has had two effectson Japanese discourse on nationalism: one, an increase in theoretical ambiguity aboutwhat exactly is being addressed (i.e., “what is nationalism?”); and two, a tendency toexoticize nationalism as something that comes from, or is characteristic only of, theWest.

REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE 3

theory on nationalism and the state. But in the first place, it isimportant simply to recognize that the Japanese language forces aconscious choice in terminology on one who wishes to discourse onnationalism in Japanese. When a person speaks or writes aboutnationalism in Japanese, he must decide whether the subject isminzokushugi, kokuminshugi, or even kokkashugi—with considerabledifferences in connotation. The first “nationalism” is rooted in aconcept of minzoku, the people as an ethnic (some argue “racial”)group; the second is based on the principle of the kokumin, the peopleas constituted into a political unit (which may, but need not, beethnic); and the final, as we have seen, is really about placing the state(kokka) above all else, potentially even above the nation. The Englishlanguage has not developed a plurality of terms for “nation” or“nationalism.” Consequently, in recent years, theorists of nationalismwriting in English have developed modifications of nationalism toconvey these distinct conceptions of nationalism: “ethnicnationalism,” “civil nationalism,” “political nationalism,” and the like.“Cultural nationalism” is less a modification of nationalism than anumbrella term that reminds us of how ideologies mobilize identitywithin various forms of nationalism. “Cultural nationalism” can bemerely a way of indicating how ethnic, civil and even statist variantsof nationalism are mobilized through cultural discourse. In Japanese,the term “cultural nationalism” (bunka nashonarizumu) is anawkwardly translated term at best, since the existing terms inJapanese for nationalism already convey a particular theory and modeof cultural nationalism.3

The primary challenge in writing an English language handbookon Japanese nationalism then is how to represent the subject matterwithout either relying on the traditional, and inadequate, modes ofwriting about Japanese nationalism in English (and erasing thedistinctiveness of specific language choices in the Japanese sources)or falling into that particular form of Orientalism that asserts theinherent incommensurability of languages and concepts of non-Western cultures (emphasizing those different terminologies as if theywere untranslatable). Language issues aside, such an Orientalism is,as many have already pointed out, fatally flawed for its ethicalimplications alone. But it is especially important to note that it wouldbe tautological in a study on nationalism to employ Orientalist

3 Cf. It� Kimiharu, Yanagita Kunio to bunka nashonarizumu (Tokyo: Iwanami

Shoten, 2002). Yoshino K�saku, Bunka nashonarizumu no shakaigaku (Nagoya:Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 1997).

CHAPTER ONE4

conceits: for it is not Orientalism that presents the strongest case forcultural incommensurability, but nationalism itself. Any argumentabout Japanese nationalism that even implicitly asserts the uniquenessof Japanese ideas about their national identity would not inform usabout Japanese nationalism so much as it would merely re-presentthat nationalism itself. To deny the uniqueness of Japanesenationalism is not, however, to reject the historical particularity ofpeople, ideas and debates that contributed to a received discourse onnationalism in modern Japan. Here, we need to walk a fine linebetween the obvious fact that a universal human nature underlies allintellectual activities (including conceiving of national distinctive-ness) and the equally true fact that all intellectual work is done byparticular individuals in particular historical and social contexts andthus cannot be reproduced completely in another place or time.Explanations of Japanese nationalism that merely assert Japan asanother case of a universal theory of capitalism or the ubiquitous stateof human nature simply are not particular enough to constitute acompelling argument about Japanese nationalism, just as a history ofthe Japanese as a distinct, unchanging nation from ancient times tothe present are less histories of Japanese nationalism as instances ofnationalism itself!

Given this inherent challenge in identifying the subject ofnationalism without running aground on the Scylla of a reductiveJapaneseness or the Charybdis of a bland universalism, it is essentialto chart a middle course. My own approach is first to foreground myunderstanding of Japanese nationalism in an overview of majordevelopments in nationalism theory (theory that, I hasten to add, isnot a Western “mastertext” to be applied to a non-Western case study,but which has been fully absorbed by Japanese political theorists andto which Japanese theorists have contributed). Theory and culture arenot in conflict, but in many ways mutually interdetermined. This isparticularly so in the case of nationalism, which is at once a theory ofculture and a cultural manifestation of a particular theory of identityand politics. But once we have come to understand, through atheoretical introduction, what the subject of nationalism is, we mustthen move to the particular manifestations of that theory in thesubstance of Japanese nationalism itself. Thus, in the body of thisbook, I trace the historical developments in modes of conceiving thenation in Japan in concrete detail, alongside the historical events thatprovided the context for major nationalist assertions. Finally, in theconclusion, I return to the question of what such a historical approachcan tell us about nationalism in Japan, past and present. Whether this


course will avoid shipwreck is for others to decide: for my part, I willtry to maintain a steady course through these perilous waters so as toavoid the dangers that lie on either extreme.

Contemporary Nationalism Theory:What is Nationalism and Who are the Nation?

To ask “what is nationalism?” first requires that we understand what anation is, for nationalism, as chimeric as it can seem at times,certainly is a matter ultimately of elevating the “nation” to the centralprinciple of social and political life. Historically, the concept ofnation is older than the concept of nationalism. As theorists ofnationalism have consistently stressed for decades, the English word“nation” and its European cognates have their origins in the Latinword natio, meaning “a being born, having come into being.” It isalso sometimes pointed out that this word natio has a common root inthe word for nature, thus linking a nation with something natural. Yet,we need not leap to the conclusion that nations are natural entities.The word nationem was used in Medieval European universities toloosely distinguish students by geographical or linguistic regions.Thus, the “nation de France” included students from France, Italy andSpain, the “nation de Germanie” included those from England andGermany, the “nation de Picardie” referred to Dutch students, and the“nation de Normandie” were students from the Northeast. Yet, asLiah Greenfeld points out, this “national identity” was merely anadministrative category and not an identity embraced by the studentsthemselves: “this identity was immediately shed when their studieswere completed and they returned home.” 4 It was certainly not anatural identity for these university students. As the universities sentrepresentatives to church councils (especially the Council of Lyon in1274), the concept of nation was applied to mean “representatives ofcultural and political authority, or a political, cultural, and socialelite.”5 Of course, concepts are not easy to control, and there is someevidence that the concept of nation in the medieval Europe was usedalso in a more broad sense to refer to “the people.”6 Even so, the word

4 Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1992), 4.5 Greenfeld, 4-5.6 Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300,

(Oxford: Claredon Press, 1984), excerpt reprinted 137-40 in John Hutchinson &

CHAPTER ONE6

nation lacked its contemporary meaning, one that would connect it tothe later emergence of nationalism.

The origins of nation in its modern sense are found in earlysixteenth century England, when “the word ‘nation’ in its conciliarmeaning of ‘an elite’ was applied to the population of the country andmade synonymous with the word ‘people.’”7 Greenfeld maintains thatnationalism began at this moment and spread around the world fromits origins in England. In the process, it gave rise to differentapprehensions of “the people” based on the historical conditionsfound in the major incubators of nationalism: England, where thepeople were defined as equal; France, where the people were definedby social contract in relation to étatism; Russia, where the peoplewere defined in paradoxical relationship to the soil and the state;Germany, where resentment against England and France gave rise toan ethnic (Volkisch) concept of the people, and America, whereBritish contractual nationalism gave birth to an idealistic civicnationalism. Because Greenfeld identifies the emergence of this newconcept of the nation at this early date, she also concludes thatnationalism began at that very moment. Hers is an intellectual historyof nationalism precisely because she, following Hans Kohn, graspsthat nationalism is first a mode of conceiving of identity and onlythen a political movement:

The specificity of nationalism, that which distinguishes nationalityfrom other types of identity, derives from the fact that nationalismlocates the source of individual identity within a “people,” which isseen as the bearer of sovereignty, the central object of loyalty, and thebasis of collective solidarity. The “people” is the mass of a populationwhose boundaries and nature are defined in various ways, but which isusually perceived as larger than any concrete community and always asfundamentally homogeneous, and only superficially divided by thelines of status, class, locality, and in some cases even ethnicity. Thisspecificity is conceptual. The only foundation of nationalism as such,the only condition, that is, without which no nationalism is possible, isan idea; nationalism is a particular perspective or style of thought. Theidea which lies at the core of nationalism is the idea of the ‘nation.’8

Anthony D. Smith, eds., Nationalism: Oxford Readers (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1994), 140.

7 Greenfeld, 6.8 Greenfeld, 3-4. Cf. “Nationalism is first and foremost a state of mind, an act of

consciousness, which since the French Revolution has become more and morecommon to mankind.” Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Originsand Background (New York: Collier Books, 1944), 10-11.


Greenfeld’s understanding of the nation as an idea corresponds toHans Kohn’s similar approach that seeks the origins of “the idea ofnationalism.” Both emphasize that the nation is a mode of conceivingof the people. But because Kohn starts with nationalism and worksback to the nation, while Greenfeld starts with the nation and thendeduces nationalism from it, they arrive at very different conclusionsabout nations and nationalism. The most significant difference is thatKohn insists on the centrality of popular sovereignty in relation toterritory, while Greenfeld considers the territorial question secondary(cf. in sixteenth century England, the territorial question was not asignificant one in the emergence or historical impact of the idea ofnation). In this regard, Greenfeld’s approach to nationalism is morehelpful in understanding nationalism in Japan, where the territorialissue was more similar to the situation in sixteenth century Englandthan to disputes that emerged elsewhere over state boundaries or eventhe creation of new states as national homelands for displaced peoples.

Although there is considerable debate over when, how and in whatforms the concept of nation emerged in world history, there issubstantial agreement that it was an effort to conceive of “the people”in a significantly new fashion. Even scholars of nationalism whoemphasize the pre-modern originals of nationalism recognize that the“nation” was an effort to represent the people in some collectivefashion. Hugh Seton-Watson and John Armstrong both argue for theemergence of nations before nationalism, and both accept that thenation was a means of referring to the people and not to a unit ofterritory.9 Perhaps the most influential theorist on the question ofwhat is a nation is Anthony D. Smith who has argued forcefully thatthe core of any true nation lies in what Smith terms a pre-modern“ethnie,” or an ethnic community. What is an ethnie? In the firstplace, it is an ideal, but one that has tremendous attraction for thosewho are caught in its web. Smith lists six characteristics of an ethnie:(1) a collective proper name; (2) a myth of common ancestry; (3)shared historical memories; (4) one or more differentiating elementsof common culture; (5) an association with a specific ‘homeland’; (6)a sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population.10 Notethat while Smith finds an ethnic origin to all nations, he stresses that

9 See Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States (London: Methuen, 1977) and John

Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of NorthCarolina Press). Both works are excerpted in John Hutchinson & Anthony D. Smith,eds., Nationalism, 134-7 and 140-7.

10 Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991),21.

CHAPTER ONE8

this ethnie is not equivalent to race, nor does this ethnic origin ofnations negate the fact that all nations have both ethnic and civicelements to them.11 The association with a homeland opens the doorfor an ethnie to later become a nation through the mediation of aterritorial state. But Smith is quite persuasive on the distinctiveness ofthe nation as rooted in a primordial sense of ethnic identity, and not ineither biological race or a territorial, administrative sense of the state.

The distinction between a nation and a state is recognized even bypolitical theorists for whom the state is the primary focus of concern.Charles Tilly, one of the foremost practitioners of state-centeredpolitical analysis, noted this distinction in a volume on the rise ofnational states which he edited thirty years ago. Speaking for hiscollaborators, Tilly noted that

we concentrated our attention increasingly on the development of statesrather than the building of nations. There were several reasons for thisdrift. One was the greater ease with which we could arrive at someworking agreement on the meaning of the word “state. “Nation”remains one of the most puzzling and tendentious items in the politicallexicon. Another was our early fixation on the periods in which theprimacy states was [sic] still open to serious challenge; they were notgenerally periods of nationalism, of mass political identity or even ofgreat cultural homogeneity within the boundaries of a state.12

Abstract theory and historical discourse converge in testifying to theimportant distinction between nation (minzoku, kokumin) and state(kokka), a singularity shared from early modern Europe tocontemporary Japan. In fact, Gidon Gottlieb reminds us that “the ideaof nation is entirely absent from the definition of the state which canbe found in the writings of the thinkers–Machiavelli, Bodin, andHobbes–who first mapped out the new landscape of the modernpolitical world.”13 To understand the dynamics of nationalism, eitheras a political or cultural ideology, we must first recognize thedistinctive claims that can be raised in the name of the state or in the

11 Smith, 15, 21. Cf. “In fact, every nationalism contains civic and ethnic elementsin varying degrees and different forms. Sometimes civic and territorial elementspredominate; at other times it is the ethnic and vernacular components that areemphasized.” (13).

12 Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), 6.

13 Gidon Gottlieb, Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflicts andthe Decline of Sovereignty (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993),137. Gottlieb is summarizing the work of A. Passerin d’Entreves, The Notion of theState (Oxford, 1967).


name of the nation, and particularly how the nation configures thepeople into a privileged subjectivity for cultural and political purposesin a way that is not necessarily true of the state.

When we hear that in a given society, nation and state are one andthe same thing or, alternatively, that ethnicity and nation (minzoku,kokumin) are identical, or that making such distinctions is ameaningless parsing of the real integral nature of nationalism, we arelikely hearing not so much an objective analysis of nationalism as aninstance of nationalist aspirations. Similarly, arguments that assertnationalism is always a method by which a nation achieves its ownterritorial state reveal a particular nationalist agenda, and when that“nation” is conceived as an ethnic group, then the formula simplyexpresses ethnic nationalist ideals. One of the reasons that thishandbook does not include a chapter on the state (kokka) as a keycomponent of Japanese nationalism is to counter precisely thisnationalist presumption that nationalism is always intertwined withthe state, in spite of so much scholarship that demonstrates that thenation and the state are separate matters. More political histories ofJapan should follow Tilly’s lead and decide whether they will focuson the state or the nation, not confuse the two in an effort to do bothsimultaneously. In this study, I opt for the nation as my subject ofanalysis. But having said that, I do not completely ignore the Japanesestates (prewar imperial and postwar democratic), rather I note whenthe trajectories of nation and state intersected and collided in Japan’smodern history, and especially what the historical and politicalimplications of those periodic intersections were.

Just as the nation is not the same as the state, neither is the nationreducible to ethnic identity. As Greenfeld’s study reveals, not allnations are ethnic ones, and similarly not all theorists of nationalismassert ethnic nationalism as the only form of nationalism. Some do.Thomas Hylland Eriksen, for example, adopts an anthropologicalperspective on social identity that leads him to conclude that truenations are ethnic nations, although he allows for a distinctionbetween a nation and an ethnic group based on whether a certainethnic people have their own state. When they do not, they may beconsidered merely an ethnic group; when they do, then they are an(ethnic) nation-state. The process by which an ethnic group obtains itsown state is called “nationalism”, but it is possible for an ethnic groupresiding within the boundaries of another ethnic national state to

CHAPTER ONE10

express its identity in terms of a “nationalism against the state.”14 Thisethnic reductivism aside, Eriksen’s anthropological perspective thusaugments the point that Kohn, Greenfeld and many others have made:nationalism is a product of intellectual or emotional activity, ratherthan the expression of a primordial object or the natural manifestationof an underlying reality independent of human cognition.

At the identity level, nationhood is a matter of belief. The nation, that isthe Volk imagined by nationalists, is a product of nationalist ideology:it is not the other way around. A nation exists from the moment ahandful of influential people decide that it should be so, and it starts, inmost cases, as an urban elite phenomenon. In order to be an efficientpolitical tool, it must nevertheless eventually achieve mass appeal.15

While Eriksen sides more with Ernest Gellner’s “nationalism createsnations” rather than Greenfeld’s “nations create nationalism,” in hisemphasis on the core element of ethnicity and his recognition of thekey role of subjective agency involved in determining nationalconsciousness, he is closer to Greenfeld. Yet, overriding theirdifferences on these minor points is a broadly shared belief thatnations are not to be reduced to states but that the nation is aparticularly powerful way of conceiving of the people, as a culturalunit with a shared identity, and as a political agent independent of thepolitical state.

The state of theory on the nation at present may be summarized inthe following manner. There is now a general agreement among mostspecialists that nation refers to a particular mode of conceiving of thepeople as a collective subject of cultural and political identity. Further,this concept of the people, which often historically has been rooted inan ethnic sense of identity, can at times be extended to a politicalsense of civic unity (eg., “citizenry”), although there remains avigorous debate over whether non-ethnic, or “civic,” nations arelikely to have the same historical staying power as ethnic nations havedemonstrated over the years. There remains a further divide over thehistorical origins of nations between modernists like Greenfeld andGellner who assert that nations are recently constructed subjectivitiesthat have much to do with the contingencies of historical events,industrialization, political centralization, uniform educational systems,

14 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: AnthropologicalPerspectives (London: Pluto Press, 1993) 109-111.This idea of “nationalism againstthe state” is shared by the legal scholar Gidon Gottlieb who, nonetheless, takes adiametrically opposed position to Erkisen’s on whether nations must always be ethnicones. See Gottlieb, Nation Against State.

15 Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 105.


etc., and primordialists like Smith who argue that nations are rootedin ancient ethnic identities that underlay what often passes as civic ormodern forms of nationality.

Yet, all these theorists recognize the difference between a nationand a state, and in fact that distinction is one of the most importantfeatures of contemporary nation theory. For primordialists, therelation between nation and state is often a contentious one,particularly if a given ethnic nation does not possess its own state.This tension is often articulated in terms of anti-imperialism andmovements for national self-determination. Yet, even amongprimordialists (and quite common among modernists), one finds arecognition that national identity, even ethnic identity, is a mode ofconception, a way of thinking about identity that need not have anynecessary basis in nature. Consequently, how national identity isproduced, propagated and consumed is also a major area of debateamong contemporary theorists of nationalism. All of this suggests thatnationalism is ultimately a complex and multi-leveled effort toaddress the relationship of a people with each other, and also with thepolitical organization particular to their collective life: the state.When the nation and the state are in close conformity, one can then,and only then, speak of the existence of a “nation-state.” But a true“nation-state” is more frequently the ideal goal of nationalist rhetoricand action than it is a source of nationalist ideology.

Theoretical Influences on Japanese Discourse on the Nation

All too often, historians of Japan seek to uncover cultural andintellectual features of Japanese life by eschewing theory itself as“foreign” to Japan and relying on an implicit, indigenous assumptionof Japanese culture. Or, alternatively, historians who use theorymerely impose current theories (almost always from the West) on thepresumed indigenous field of inert cultural data drawn from Japan.The first approach is merely insufficient, if not dishonest, since thereare always theoretical assumptions employed in any cultural analysis,and the indigenous approach itself is deeply entrenched in a particulartheoretical assumption about the incomensurability of social andcultural orders. Most commonly, this approach derives from a theoryabout the incomensurability of Japanese culture (as “Oriental”) andWestern theory, and it often makes an implicit argument aboutcultural imperialism. Eschewing any theoretical component to thestudy of society not merely indulges in a particular romantic embraceof particularity and collective authenticity, but it also reproduces thevery assumptions of cultural, especially ethnic, nationalism in its

CHAPTER ONE12

interpretive framework. As noted above, such an indigenous culturaltheory is merely a tautology when it attempts to explain nationalism.At the same time, efforts to explain Japanese nationalism throughwhatever theory happens to be in vogue at the time is at best only halfa solution. It can shed light on our current prejudices, but it does notnecessarily explain the internal development of the object of analysis:the nation itself as a historical development of concepts of identitythat stems from particular ideas about self, other, and culture. For that,we need to both address theoretical influences on how a particularmode of conceiving the nation came to be, and also to be aware ofwhich theoretical approaches were read, absorbed and debated withinthe discourse of a particular nation.

That is to say, a universal “one-size-fits-all” theory cannot explainevery national formation in the world, but neither can a rejection oftheory in the name of empirical indigenousness suffice to explain thehistorical formation and reformation of a nation. So, to understand thehistorical formation of concepts of the nation in modern Japan, I turnnext to those theories about the nation that have been widely anddemonstrably influential on Japanese discourse on the nation. Ofcourse, we cannot assume that Japanese writers on the nation merelyreflected the conclusions of these non-Japanese theorists. To completeour understanding of the relationship of theory to the formation ofnational consciousness in Japan, we will conclude with a look at howinfluential Japanese language theorists understood and discussed theproblem of the nation.

One of the most influential developments in nation theory wasFriedrich Meinecke’s distinction between the nation as a culturalbody (Kutlurnation) from the nation as invested in the political state(Staatsnation).16 Meinecke’s distinction was, of course, part of hisown national concerns, especially a sense that by the late nineteenthcentury the Bismarkian state had lost its chance at winning over thehearts and minds of the German people. Under these conditions, heturned to romantics like Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel and Adam Mülleras the true bearers of the German nation.17 Note that, in contrast tomodernization theorists for whom the nation is only of interest to theextent it is involved in a movement toward building a nation-state,Meinecke’s theory worked against the presumption that a nation-statewas the inevitable political expression of the nation. For this reason,

16 Anthony Smith, National Identity, 8.17 Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism, trans. Guy Oakes, (Cambridge, MA: The

MIT Press, 1986), 27.


his sense that true national identity was cultural was attractive tomany early twentieth century Japanese nationalists, since their ownmonarchical state had rejected calls for a true nation-state andseverely restricted the franchise. It had placed the people on themargins of political life. Disappointments with the failure of the“People’s Rights” Movement led to an embrace of Meinecke’sconcept of a Kulturnation in post-Constitutional Japan. TakayamaChogy� introduced this concept as Kulturvölker, which he thenrendered into Japanese as jimbun minzoku. In contrast to Meinecke,Takayama argued that civilization required that a nation (minzoku)had its own state: he was not ready to give up on the modern state justyet. In fact, his overriding concern was to identify the conditions andprocedures through which a people moved from the category of aNaturvölker (shizen minzoku) to a Kulturvölker. But he had no doubtthat all Naturvölker would inevitably become Kulturvölker, and atthat point they would become their own kokumin, or a Staatsnation.18

Takayama’s argument about the historical development of nationsmoved in precisely the opposite direction of Meinecke’s. But themore important point is how he incorporated Meinecke’s romanticconcept of the nation in Volkisch terms. In doing so, Takayama notonly provided the foundations for the modern Japanese concept of anethnic nation, but he did so in explicit contrast to the concept of thepolitical, or statist nation.

Japanese theorists on national identity and nationalism used thisdistinction in various ways. Takayama used the idea of a Kulturnationto challenge broad racial categories that, albeit popular in latenineteenth century political theory, undervalued the particularities ofspecific nations with a single racial category. But in the wake of thepopulism and “culturalism” of the Taisho period, the very idea that anation need not be invested in a political state, or at least the idea thatthe two–nation and state–are distinct, began to have a tremendousinfluence on the Japanese discourse on nationalism. In 1917,Sakaguchi Takakimi of Kyoto Imperial University built onTakayama’s early awareness of the significance of culture in nationalidentity, arguing that particular national cultural traditions were moreimportant that regional racial categories. Without mentioningMeinecke or Takayama by name, he foregrounded Meinecke’sdistinction between a Kulturnation and a Staatsnation, but in contrastto Takayama, he did not render either sense of nation in terms of a

18 Takayama Chogy�, Sekai bummei shi (1898), reprinted in Chogy� zensh�

(Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1930) volume 5: 1-282, at 20, 32-3.

CHAPTER ONE14

minzoku or Volk. For Sakaguchi, the corresponding terms were bunkakokumin and kokka kokumin. One cannot conclude that thisterminology was a result of Sakaguchi being unaware of thedistinction between minzoku and kokumin, or that he intentionallycollapsed the two concepts. His article bore the title, “Minzoku,kokumin and global culture,” and was in fact one of the earliestcontributions to the Japanese discourse on ethnic nationality as adistinct mode of national identity.19 His decision to render nation herein both instances in terms of kokumin is a central feature of thisunderstanding of nation, nationalism, and its relationship to the state,ethnicity and global influences.

The distinction between a cultural nation and a statist nationremained a cardinal feature of Japanese discourse on nationalism,especially among sociologists. Usui Jish�’s 1934 essay, discussedbelow in chapter four, had a tremendous influence in this regard.Usui’s understanding of the various possibilities of what a nationcould mean had changed since Sakaguchi’s day, but he retainedSakaguchi’s translation terms for cultural and statist nation: bunkakokumin and kokka kokumin. He did not credit Meinecke directly forthis distinction, but cited A. Kirchhoff’s zur Verständigung über dieBegriffe Nation und Nationalität (Vorwort, 1905) as his source, alongwith Kirchhoff’s original terms, Staatsnation and kulturelle Nation. 20

Usui was largely alone, however, in privileging the kokumin, or civic,sense of nation. Most of his fellow sociologists were shifting to anethnic bias, one that sometimes even clouded their ability to recognizebasic facts. Nakano Seiichi was one such ethnically driven sociologist.In his own essay a few years later, “Staatsnation and Kulturnation,”Nakano declared he would retain the original European terms because,while he conceded that Usui’s translations were technically accurate,he was concerned about the polysemy in the Japanese translations fornation. The problem is that he misrepresented Usui’s translations askokka minzoku and bunka minzoku, whereas Usui had not used theterm minzoku but kokumin in translating both Staatsnation andKulturnation.21 This slip was undoubtedly a reflection of Nakano’s

19 Cf. my discussion of Sakaguchi’s article in the context of a renaissance ofethnic national theories in the Taisho period in “Culture, Ethnicity and the State inEarly Twentieth-Century Japan,” chapter in Sharon Minichiello, ed., Japan’sCompeting Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 1900-1930 (Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 1998): 181-205.

20 Usui Jish�, “Kokumin no gainen,” Nihon shakaigakka nenp�, Shakaigaku, dainish� (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1934), 1-97, at 49.

21 Nakano Seiichi, “Staatsnation to Kulturnation,” Sh�gaku T�ky� volume 13(December 1938), 1-30, at 1, n.1


own infatuation with ethnicity as the basic underlying principle ofnational identity. He did, however, explicitly acknowledge theinfluence of Meinecke, along with J. Neuman and Kirchhoff, in thisdistinction between a cultural nation and a state-nation.

By the early twentieth century, there was already among Japanesescholars of nationalism a recognized field of literature with whichsome familiarity was expected of any serious contributor to theorieson nation and national identity. An invaluable source of insight intothis field is Kada Tetsuji’s 1939 survey of the literature on the nation,nationalism, sociology and economics. Among European texts mostinfluential on Japanese ideas of the nation were J. A. Hobson,Imperialism: A Study (1902), Ramsay Muir, Nationalism andInternationalism (1916), G.P. Gooch, Nationalism (1921), CarltonJ.H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (1926), Heinrich Schnee,Nationalismus und Imperialismus (1928), Bernard Joseph, Natonality,its Nature and Problems (1929), Herbert Adams Gibbons,Nationalism and Internationalism (1930), and Harry Elmer Barnes,World Politics in Modern Civilization (1930); and on the left, OttoBauer’s Nationalitätsproblem und die Sozialdemokratie (no dategiven), and Lenin and Stalin’s writings on the nationality questionavailable by then in Japanese translation. Equally interesting are theJapanese theorists recognized by Kada as the leading voices on theproblem of nation theory: Takata Yasuma, Yanaihara Tadao, KoyaYoshio, Komatsu Kentar�, and Kada himself.22 To the Western booksKada listed, one might add W.B. Pillsbury’s The Psychology ofNationality and Internationalism (1919) and William McDougall’sThe Group Mind (1920), both of which were often cited texts by theimportant Japanese writers on nationalism discussed below,especially in chapter six. A brief survey of some of these theorists,with particular emphasis on how they understood what nation andnationalism meant, will go far in elucidating the contours of Japanesediscourse on national identity and how it developed.

Hobson’s study positioned nationalism in the context ofimperialism, and thus immediately raised the question of how onemight determine the limits of one nation and the beginnings ofanother. For Hobson, nationalism was merely the establishment of apolitical union on the basis of nationality, and thus what constituted anationality needed to be defined. He turned to J.S. Mill for his answer.

22 Kada Tetsuji, “Bunken: minzoku, minzokushugi, sens� shakaigaku,

keizaigaku,” chapter in Shimmei Masamichi, et al., Minzoku to sens� (Tokyo: NihonSeinen Gaik� Ky�kai, 1939), 205-244.

CHAPTER ONE16

Mill held that “a portion of mankind may be said to constitute anation if they are united among themselves by common sympathieswhich do not exist between them and others.”23 Hobson acceptedMill’s pluralistic approach to defining the elements of this commonsympathy (race, descent, language, religion, geographical limits, butespecially a common history of shared pride and humiliation, pleasureand regret), but his interest was not really in defining the constitutiveelements of nation. Rather, his focus was on imperialism, “thedebasement of nationalism” that occurs when a nation attempts to“overflow its natural banks and absorb the near or distant territory ofreluctant and unassimilable peoples.”24 Imperialism was a recentphenomenon, not something that might have characterized Britishpower in the New World, as the colonial people were not seen asunassimilable, regardless of how reluctant they may have been.Rather, it was the destablizing proliferation of empires during the latenineteenth century that rendered unavoidable the question of what arethe limits of a nation (“what is a nation”). Hobson’s was very much aBritish theory of imperialism, but it also was informed by a functionalpragmatism that simply left the fundamental question of what a nationis unanswered. For all its apparent similarity to Renan’s famous pointthat a nation is merely a daily plebiscite, Hobson’s theory was quitedifferent. He was less concerned than Renan was with the internalprocesses that constituted a nation. His definition of a nation was farfrom satisfactory, but he had foregrounded a subjective element in thedetermination of national identity. And that subjective element,moving the discussion from biological race, was deemed progress andreason enough to read Hobson.

It did not take long for political theorists to focus on the weaknessof Hobson’s definition of a nation. Ramsay Muir was one of theearliest and most important theorists to do so. Like Hobson, Muir wasa British academic who was opposed to imperialism, having traveledin India in 1913-4. He began with Hobson’s idea (from Mill) that anation is merely a group of people who feel naturally linked together,but then he evaluated what possible grounds there could be for thislinkage. Geographical boundaries? These were most important toHobson in determining when a nation “overflows” its proper place.But Muir noted that not all nations could be spatially determined: theGreeks were scattered around the world, the Poles were not clearly

23 J.S. Mill, “Representative Government, “ chap. xvi., cited in J.A. Hobson,

Imperialism: A Study (New York: James Pott & Company, 1902), 3.24 Hobson, 4.


delineated by bounded territory, and even France and Germany haddifficulty establishing their national boundaries. Unity of “race”? No,Muir pointed out that there is no nation that is not of mixed “racial”origins. But, of equal significance, he insisted that the ideas of raceand nation be kept distinct. Race, he noted, has led to German claimsover Holland, Denmark, and Belgium—even though these nationshave their own distinctive national cultures. Unity of language? Again,Muir had no difficulty pointing out weaknesses to this theory. TheIrish and Welsh have adopted the Celtic language, German speakerseast of the Elbe are largely Slavonic in ethnicity, Indians have onlythe English language in common and yet do not feel they are of theEnglish nation, and unity of language does not necessarily lead tonational unity (Latin American), nor does disunity of languagenecessarily prevent a nation from coming into being (USA,Switzerland, Belgium). Unity of religion has never defined a nation.Muir recognized that nations have divided over religion (Dutch andBelgium, North and South Ireland), but in other places religionsimply has not posed an obstacle to national unity (Germany,England).

Muir evaluated other claims, too: unified government, communityof economic interest and a common tradition, only to find that whilethere is some merit to all these factors, none ultimately could accountfor the formation of nations, as there were exceptions to them all.Ultimately, Muir concluded that no single theory could account forthe formation and continued existence of nations:

Nationality, then, is an elusive idea, difficult to define. It cannot betested or analyzed by formulae, such as German professors love. Leastof all must it be interpreted by the brutal and childish doctrine ofracialism. Its essence is a sentiment; and in the last resort we can onlysay that a nation is a nation because its members passionately andunanimously believe it to be so. . . . and even this may be mistaken orbased upon inadequate grounds.25

Like Hobson, Muir ultimately arrived at a pragmatic conclusion aboutthe inability to define a nation. This reply was of course a rejection ofStalin and Bauer’s efforts to lay out a final theoretical formula fornational identity. But in contrast to Hobson (and Stalin and Bauer),Muir added the heady idea that nationality can be nursed intoexistence even in places where it had never existed before or when

25 Ramsay Muir, Nationalism and Internationalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 1917): 51, 54.

CHAPTER ONE18

most of the above elements are lacking.26 His point was not so muchto force nations upon the word, but to recognize that nations arecontingent and not necessary or essential features of human lifethroughout history.

This understanding of a nation, its origin, nature, substance, limitsand possibility for change, was associated with a political liberalismthat placed primacy on the freedom of individual feelings (at least tothe extent they did not conflict with existing power structures). If anation were simply a matter of sentiment, an idea that exists in aperson’s mind, then it was only a matter of time before psychologistsweighed in on the matter. Two of the most important were W.B.Pillsbury, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, andWilliam McDougall, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.The two men were aware of each other’s writings, and even referredto one another in their texts. Pillsbury set the tone with his ThePsychology of Nationality and Internationalism (1919) in which hetried to explain the nation as a psychological unit that “as a wholeresembles the activities of individual animal or man.”27 His point wasthat the nation could neither be understood analogously as a “crowd”(Marxism) or as its own particular self (conservatives) but only as asocial embodiment of the instincts of an individual. Pillsbury tried,not too successfully, to avoid racial nationalism while rooting histheory of the nation in the biological instincts of an individual. Heinsisted that instincts are unique to the individual and can change. Hispurpose was to underscore the idea that nations are ideational, but tolocate this ideational function as an emotional, rather than rational,expression of life and to open the door to historical change withinnations, as within individuals.

McDougall went even further. Citing Muir’s effort to define anation as a “mental condition,” McDougall believed thatpsychological science could avoid Muir’s failure to adequatelyexplain what a nation is. Without a serviceable definition of a nation,McDougall pointed out that

the Statesmen of the Paris Conference are to reply—“We do not knowwhether your claim is well-founded; for the historians and politicalphilosophers cannot tell us the meaning of the word ‘nation.’ Go to and

26 Muir, 51.27 W.B. Pillsbury, The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism (New York:

D. Appleton and Company, 1919), 22.


fight, and, if you survive, we shall recognize the fait accompli and hailyou a Nation.28

Conservatives and Marxists might accept this situation as reality, butnot liberals like McDougall. He sought the answer to the slippery taskof defining the nation in the field of psychology, and he found it: “anation, we must say, is a people or population enjoying some degreeof political independence and possessed of a national mind andcharacter, and therefore capable of national deliberation and nationalvolition.”29 McDougall understood that this definition of a nationrequired that he then offer some analysis of what “a national mind” isand how it functions. Not surprisingly, he did not make much successin that effort, and instead got mired down in all sorts of racialstereotypes of groups of people. Such racial and ethnic stereotypingwas not his objective, but in fact ran counter to the main thrust of hisargument, which was a caution against “excess in the direction of theunalterability of race” and an effort to explain “not merely the historyof the rise of nations, but rather of the perpetual rise and fall ofnations.”30 But it was an inevitable effect of assigning a “group mind”to ethnic groups and then trying to account for their achievements onthe basis of that collective mentality.

In that sense, McDougall’s psychological approach was far morecollective than Pillsbury’s equally ill-fated effort to provide anindividualist, instinct-driven model of the nation. But what attractedJapanese national theorists to McDougall and Pillsbury was not thisslip into racism. Rather, it was the promise they held out that a nation,as a mental artifact, could be understood on the basis of scientificknowledge, not merely determined through violence.

A breakthrough in nationalism theory occurred with Carlton J.H.Hayes’s very influential 1926 essay, “What is Nationalism?” Hayes’sarticle was many things, not the least of which was a repudiation ofbiologically-determined, psychological efforts to define a “groupmind” or “nation-soul.” He accepted the general conclusion ofnationalism studies that the underlying force of nationalism is an

28 William McDougall, The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principles of Collective

Psychology with Some Attempt to Apply Them to the Interpretation of National Lifeand Character (New York & London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920), 139. This passagewas well-known to Japanese theorists of nationalism, as it was cited in Japanesetranslation in Masaki Masato, “Minzoku to wa nani zo?” Shigaku vol. 1, no. 1 (1921):148-155, at 153.

29 McDougall, The Group Mind, 141.30 McDougall, The Group Mind, 168, 144. Emphasis in original.

CHAPTER ONE20

emotional factor, or the sentiment of being a nation. But he also wasone of the first to recognize how terminological confusion (heactually alleged intentional efforts to “corrupt” the language) wascomplicating the task of understanding what nationalism is. Hayesnoted that the word nation had its roots in the Latin word natio (birthor race, a social group based on a community of blood and language),and he also knew that the word “nation” had been used since theseventeenth century to describe certain populations that had nothingto do with racial or linguistic unity:

It was in part to atone for the abuse of the word “nation” that the word“nationality” was coined in the early part of the nineteenth century andspeedily incorporated into most European languages. Thenceforth,while “nation” continued chiefly to denote the citizens of a sovereignpolitical state, nationality was more exactly used in reference to a groupof persons speaking the same language and observing the same customs.The jurists have done their best to corrupt the new word “nationality,”just as they had corrupted the old word “nation”; they have utilized“nationality” to indicate citizenship….

A nationality, by acquiring political unity and sovereignindependence, becomes a “nation,” or, to avoid the use of thetroublesome word “nation,” establishes a “national state.” A nationalstate is always based on nationality, but a nationality may exist withouta national state. A state is essentially political; a nationality is primarilycultural and only incidentally political.31

As Hayes explained with powerful clarity, nationality (what we mighttoday call “ethnicity”) has been around as far as history oranthropology can reach, but nationalism is a modern phenomenonthat seeks to fuse nationality and patriotism, a sense of loyalty to theidea of the state. Yet, it was perhaps Hayes’s contribution to identifynationality and patriotism as separate phenomenon more that it was tofind the Holy Grail of a final definition of nation, nationality or evenpatriotism. More important was his cultural approach that rejectedbiological, racial arguments for national identity and his assertion that“political independence is not an indispensable condition ofnationality.”32 In this sense, Hayes was the source both of justificationfor imperialism and for contemporary theories of the multi-ethniccivic nation (state).

Hayes’s effort to get at the heart of nationalism was influentialamong Japanese political theorists, but they did not simply swallow

31 Carlton J.H. Hayes, “What is Nationalism?” in Essays on Nationalism (New

York: The MacMillan Company, 1926), 1-29, at 4-5.32 Hayes, “What is Nationalism?” 20.


everything he said on the topic. Kamikawa Hikomatsu reviewedHayes, along with McDougall, Muir, Pillsbury and others, andcorrectly identified the key problem all these theorists sought toresolve: how much of a nation is racial and how much is not.Kamikawa found the psychological approach too subjective, but healso rejected the conservative racial theories of Joseph-ArthurGobineau as insufficiently historical. He proposed a middle waybetween these two extremes, but his middle way was essentially theposition staked out by Hayes, i.e., that nationality was a culturalphenomenon, the product of social environment, which includedelements of consciousness. 33 Nakatani Takeyo’s two-part essaycovered many of the same theorists (Pillsbury, McDougall, Muir,Hayes) but he was a bit more critical than Kamikawa of Hayes’sassertion that “most of the tribes described by anthropologists andmost of the peoples whom we encounter in history are nationalities.”34

Nakatani objected that since it had been established that a nation(minzoku) was merely a form of consciousness, a psychological unit,it was necessary to recognize that the mode of consciousness itselfwas a product of modernity.35 He rejected Hayes’s theory thatseparated the nation from nationalism, arguing that the two weredeeply intertwined. Rather than seeing national consciousness flowfrom the prior existence of the nation, or assert than nationalconsciousness produced the nation, he countered that “the nation,national consciousness and nationalism are all three locked into asimultaneous, mutually dependent relationship.”36 Of course, Hayeshad distinguished nationality (ethnicity) from nationalism as part of abroader argument that all forms of nationalism need not be ethnic, butin fact should emphasize patriotism or citizenship. Nakatani’s essaywas a harbinger of a new emphasis during the 1930s on ethnicity asthe expression of a self identity that allowed no distinction betweennationality (ethnicity) and citizenship (see Chapter Six below).

The theorists discussed above may be criticized as apologists forimperialism. By that, I do not mean that they were jingoistic ornecessarily advocated the exploitation of other peoples by a foreign

33 Kamikawa Hikomatsu, “Minzoku no hon’shitsu ni tsuite no k�satsu,” Kokka

gakkai zasshi, volume 12, no. 1(December 1926): 1825-51 at 1835-6.34 Hayes, “What is Nationalism?,” 21; cited in Nakatani Takeyo, “Minzoku ishiki

oyobi minzokushugi,” Gaik� Jih�, no. 541 (June 1927): 116-128. The first part ofthis two-part essay was “Minzoku, minzoku ishiki oyobi minzokushugi,” Gaik� Jih�, ,no. 537 (April 1927): 110-120.

35 Nakatani, “Minzoku ishiki oyobi minzokushugi,” 121.36 Nakanati, “Minzoku ishiki oyobi minzokushugi,” 126.

CHAPTER ONE22

state. Rather, they tended to see in the distinction between a culturalnation and a statist nation (which was not equivalent to a “nation-state”) a recognition of how history impacted different societiesdifferently, creating unevenness in the modern political order.Various prescriptions flowed from Japanese theorists who shared thisperspective. For some, this unevenness in development meant thatJapan had a moral obligation to lead other nations in achieving theirown independent statist nation; for others, it simply meant Japan hadto provide political protection through its state for other culturalnations who had yet to establish their own statist nations; and forothers yet, it meant Japan had to assist other peoples in making thetransition from the state of a natural nation to becoming a true culturalnation. Imperialism then could be the mark of regional dominance,regional development, or even of a multi-ethnic civic national identitywithin the homeland itself as well as within the periphery. Thedistinction between bunka kokumin and kokka kokumin, much like thecontemporary theoretical distinction between an “ethnic nation” and a“civic nation,” had a range of practical applications and implicationfor the form and function of the political state, but it was never simplyreducible to the state. For these liberal theorists, the problem of“nationality,” an ethnic form of social identity, was far moreattractive than the issue of the state and its governance.

Today, after Auschwitz, Serbia and Rwanda, it may seem strangethat liberals in early twentieth century Japan would extol the ethnicnation. But praise it they did, albeit under different terms and fromdifferent theoretical sources from those used by Marxists andconservatives. Both Marxists and liberals were drawn to the notion ofethnic nationalism at roughly the same time, the years during andimmediately after the First World War. But whereas Marxist interestin nationalism was instrumental, liberals sought in a new substantiveunderstanding of ethnic national identity as means of overcomingracism. For them, a theory of the ethnic nation as a form ofconsciousness was a way to break free of the determinism of the older,racial theory of the nation as a primordial, organic identity that couldnot easily be reconciled with the state. What was distinctive about thisliberal approach to ethnic nationalism was that it was less territorialand more conceptual in orientation than conservative and Marxisttheories of the nation. Yet, in the hands of Yanaihara Tadao, bothconceptual and territorial, ethnic and civic aspects of the nation weremobilized to assert an anti-imperialist theory of nationalism that wasindependent of Stalinist agendas. Liberal nationalists, includingYanaihara, were drawn to a constructivist notion of national con-


sciousness both as a way to limit the claims of the state over the self-expression of the individual and to condemn biological racism thatwas founded in the claims of nature. If this new liberal approach tonational consciousness emphasized the difference between nation andstate, it also encouraged diverse ways to think about the nation itself,although oftentimes these new and diverse ways of thinking about thenation ultimately settled on an ethnic concept of national identity.37

Ethnic nationalism held particular fascination for Marxists andsocialists who found in that particular theory of nationalism avaluable tool for their global, political agendas. Worldwide Marxistinterest in ethnic nationalism stemmed from disagreements overnationalism that came to the fore at the Congress of the SecondInternational at Basel in 1912. What sparked this debate was OttoBauer’s 1907 Die Nationalitatenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie [“thenationality problem and social demoncracy”]. Bauer’s argument,which subsequently became known as the “Austro-Marxian positionon nationalism,” was that national identity had to be accepted as basicform of identity and thus multiple nationalities must be recognizedwithin a single, multiethnic (socialist) state. Bauer went so far as tosuggest that national identity was more fundamental than class, atleast to the extent that class was projected in some internationalsystem. To effectively counter Bauer’s argument that national identitywas more important than class consciousness, while at the same timeholding together the coalition of nationalities within the EasternEuropean Marxist movement, Stalin needed to concede something tonational identity while subordinating it to the international Marxistagenda. It was not an easy thing to do. Stalin’s conclusion, articulatedin his influential Marxism and the National-Colonial Question (1913),was that national identity should be recognized to the degree that itwas a useful tool against capitalist imperialism. But it should not beallowed to undermine Marxist solidarity in the struggle againstimperialism.

The debate over nationalism and Marxism crystalized in the waythe two men defined a nation. Bauer maintained that “the nation is atotality of men bound together through a common destiny into acommunity of character.”38 Stalin insisted on a definition of the nationthat employed more criteria, and his definition subsequently shaped

37 See my “Colonialism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Political Thought of

Yanaihara Tadao (1893-1961)”, East Asian History, no. 10 (December 1995): 79-98.38 Otto Bauer, “The Nationalities Question and Social Democracy,” (1907);

reprinted in Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay, eds, The Nationalism Reader(Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: The Humanities Press, 1995), 183-91 at 183.

CHAPTER ONE24

many others. “A nation,” he argued, “is a historically evolved, stablecommunity of language, territory, economic life, and psychologicalmake-up manifested in a community of culture.”39 Stalin’s definitionwas more determinant of a nation (rather than descriptive, as wasBauer’s), in the sense that he did not accept that national charactercould override these other elements, especially the demands ofterritory. In short, he made it explicit that Bauer’s definition of anation could not, indeed would not, exclude the imperialism implicitin Austria establishing jurisdiction over other nationalities (eg.,Czechs, Poles, Germans) within its territorial boundaries. Stalinintroduced the most powerful definition and theory of a territorializedconcept of the nation so as to provide both a justification of theemerging Soviet solution (autonomous national-territories within theboundaries of the Soviet Union) and especially to harness the nationto a theory of anti-imperialism. Here, it is worth noting thatimperialism, as a theory and practice, is inconceivable without first anembrace of the territorial claims of ethnic nationality along the linesStalin drew. Today, such “de-territorialized” ethnic identity is simplypositioned within the concept of a liberal democratic “multi-ethnic”nation. Stalin’s instrumental ethnic nationalism was, and remains,inordinately influential among Japanese nationalist theorists from the1920s to the present. As discussed below in Chapter Six, his theories(and Bauer’s) were widely debated among theorists of nationalism(chiefly among Marxist political theorists) such as Nagashima Matao,Sano Manabu, Nishi Masao, �yama Ikuo, Matsubara Hiroshi andothers. During the wartime, Stalin’s theory of nationalism wasreferenced and rejected by Nakano Seiichi, Takata Yasuma and otherswho proposed a Japanese “third option” to Wilsonian or Soviet(Stalinist) theories of nationality. Perhaps the best way to understandthe theoretical context for Japanese wartime national theory is to seehow it sought to revise Stalinist theory into a national socialistapproach that was premised on the construction of a new ethnicidentity that would be consistent with the boundaries of the state.While this constructivist conceit was short-lived, the postwar saw areturn to Stalin’s territorialized ethnic nationalism among theJapanese left as early as 1949.40 But perhaps the most compelling

39 Joseph Stalin, “Marxism and the National-Colonial Question,” (1913) reprinted

192-7 in Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay, eds, The Nationalism Reader, 192-7,at 192.

40 Cf. Yokota Kizabur�, et al. eds., Kokusai seiji to minzoku mondai, shakaishugik�za volume 9: kokusai seiji (Tokyo: Sangensha, 1949).


example of Stalin’s postwar influence is the lead position ofMatsubara’s 1935 article in the postwar collection of seminal work onminzoku theory edited by Band� Hiroshi and published in 1976 andagain in 1998.41 After the discrediting first of Stalinism and then thegeneral rejection of Marxism in the 1990s, Stalinist theories of thenation have generally been abandoned, except in some circles ofliterary theory, where they are embraced as a necessary tool in thestruggle against imperialism.

Contemporary Japanese Theories on Nationalism

Without a doubt, the most important political theorist of postwarJapan was Maruyama Masao. The influence and scope ofMaruyama’s thinking on political issues was so vast that it is nearlyimpossible to overestimate and certainly impossible to do justice to itin this short a space. Even a synoptic treatment is beyond thelimitations of this handbook.42 Here, I will only focus on the corecontribution of Maruyama to nationalism theory: his approach to theperennial question of what a nation truly is, and how he saw theoverall dynamics of nationalism in Japanese history. Much attentionin the West has been given to Maruyama’s theory of “ultra-nationalism,” as his concept of ch�-kokkashugi was translated by IvanMorris. 43 But “ultra-nationalism” can be misleading, especially if it isunderstood as a hyper-intense nationalism, rather than a nationalismthat “goes beyond” or “supercedes” the state, which is closer to whatMaruyama’s concept of ch�-kokkashugi truly signifies. Those(primarily, but as we shall see not exclusively, scholars in the West)who have failed to grasp this vital point have often compounded theirmisunderstanding of Maruyama by concluding that he sawnationalism as a terrible thing and devoted his entire oeuvre topreventing a recurrence of it in postwar Japan. Such an impression is

41 Cf. Band� Hiroshi, ed., Rekishi kagaku taikei 15: minzoku no mondai (Tokyo:

K�s� Shob�, 1976)42 Fortunately, there are good works on Maruyama that provide such an overview

of his thought and his contribution to nationalism theory. See especially RikkiKersten, Democracy in Japan: Maruyama Masao and the Search for Autonomy(London and New York: Routledge, 1996) and Curtis Anderson Gayle, “ProgressiveRepresentations of the Nation: Early Postwar Japan and Beyond,” Social ScienceJapan Journal 4 (1), 1-19. In addition, most of Maruyama’s writings on nationalismare available in English translation.

43 Maruyama Masao, “Theory and Psychology of Ultra-Nationalism,” originallypublished in Sekai (May 1946), trans. Ivan Morris and published in Ivan Morris, ed.,Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1963): 1-24.

CHAPTER ONE26

a reasonable one after reading Maruyama’s essay on “ultra-nationalism,” since in that 1946 essay his focus was on explaining thepolitical situation during the war. He was not primarily concernedwith explaining modern Japanese nationalism, and he certainly didnot condemn nationalism per se. In fact, Maruyama strove throughouthis life to complete what he considered as Fukuzawa Yukichi’sunfinished project: the construction of a democratic, or “healthy,”nationalism in modern Japan.44 But to understand that key feature ofMaruyama’s thought, one needs first to see what he understoodnationalism and the nation to mean.

One must begin by recognizing that Maruyama’s theories onnationalism began not in the postwar period, but at the end of thewartime. His understanding of nationalism thus bridged the twoperiods and thus brought into the postwar period what he consideredto be the lessons of the wartime state. Writing in 1944 on the eve ofhis induction into the Imperial Army, Maruyama outlined a theory ofnationalism in which he sought “to trace the development ofnationalism since the Restoration in terms of a transition frommodern—democratic—nationalism to bureaucratic statism.”45 Maru-yama took up Meinecke’s introduction of the concept of a “culturalnation” as distinct from the “political nation” yet he rejected the termminzoku in favor of kokumin to convey this sense of a “culturalnation.” His reasons for this conscious choice of terminology,occurring as it did during the height of the war, deserves ourattention:

Nationalism has been translated into Japanese as minzokushugi (senseof racial [sic] identity), but this term is appropriate to a people with thestatus of a minority race [sic] in another nation-state, or a colonizedpeople, that gains its independence, or when a race that has been splitinto several groups under different nation-states unites to constitute anindependent nation. But its use is questionable in the case of Japan,where racial [sic] homogeneity has been preserved from the past andwhere there have never been any serious racial [sic] problems. Whenthe term minzokushugi is used in Japan, it sounds as if it involves only

44 Gayle, “Progressive Representations of the Nation,” 1; Kersten, Democracy in

Japan, 149.45 Maruyama Masao, “Author’s Introduction,” Studies in the Intellectual History

of Tokugawa Japan, Mikiso Hane, trans., (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1947), xxxiii. This essay, “The Premodern Formation of Nationalism” appeared inthe Kokka Gakkai Zasshi (1944), the very journal that had carried KamikawaHikomatsu’s earlier article on the nature of a minzoku. Maruyama had originallyintended to title it “The Emergence of the Theory of Nationalism,” but, running outof time before his deployment, limited himself to the premodern period.


external problems, but nationalism, as will be shown below, is indeed amatter of external problems, but also one of internal problems. Theterm kokkashugi (étatisme) is frequently used as a concept inopposition to individualism, so it too is not an appropriate term. At acertain stage in its development, nationalism is inextricably linked tothe tenets of individual autonomy. To cover all these nuances, the termkokuminshugi is used here.46

Maruyama’s history of nationalism’s emergence in Japan began withcultural and intellectual theories in the Tokugawa period, butculminated in the suppression of democratic (populist) nationalism bythe Meiji state. Subsequent nationalism was an effort to recover thoseinitial democratic aspirations for nationalism and to reassert thepeople as the truly sovereign subject of cultural and political life inmodern Japan. But he parted company with those who sought to usethe concept of minzoku to achieve this goal, recognizing that howeverattractive minzoku might seem in articulating presumptions ofoppression by Western powers, it wreaked more havoc indestabilizing the delicate balance of democratic possibilities andautocratic structures that had taken shape in modern Japan. For themost part, Maruyama simply ignored the minzoku form of nationalism,preferring the term kokumin and kokuminshugi in his writings. But inone important essay, published in 1961 just after Marxist historianshad revived the wartime glorification of minzoku nationalism, hereminded his readers that wartime fascism was not merely thedominance of the state: he decried the irrational contributions to theculture of fascism by literary types who extolled minzoku during thewar.47 What had brought Maruyama to this shift in emphasis from hisimmediate postwar concern with statist oppression of kokuminnationalism was the turn among Marxist historians in the late 1940sand early 1950s to a renewed embrace of minzoku nationalism.

46 Maruyama, “Introduction: the Nation and Nationalism,” in Studies in the

Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, 324, n.2. The term “racial” for minzoku isthe translator Mikiso Hane’s. But in light of the theoretical discussion in the Japanesediscourse on nationalism, outlined above, it should be clear that Maruyama would nothave equated minzoku with “race,” but with ethnicity or nationality.

47 “Yet another group discovered in the myth of ethnic nationality [minzoku] andthe emperor the ir-rationality which had been rejected in the previous clamor over‘the supremacy of politics.’ They tried very hard to burn up their literary selves in thetotality of irrationality which was the flip-side of the totality of rationality.”Maruyama Masao, “Kindai nihon shis� to bungaku,” reprinted in Nihon no shis�(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2000, reprint of 1961), 105-6.

CHAPTER ONE28

T�yama Shigeki was the intellectual leader of these Marxist ethnicnationalists.48 He articulated most powerfully the reasons for theattraction of ethnic nationalism among early postwar Marxists, inspite of the role ethnic nationalism had played in justifying the waronly a few years earlier. In a seminal essay published in the highlyinfluential journal Ch�� K�ron in 1951 (the final year of Japan’smilitary occupation by Allied Forces) T�yama argued that there wasnot one Japanese nationalism but two, a “progressive nationalism”and a “reactionary nationalism,” and they were in contention witheach other. Undeniably, he was drawing on Stalin’s instrumentalapproach to nationalism, extolling ethnic nationalism as a nationalismof the people (specifically, of the “working class”) that was inopposition to, and oppressed by, a nationalism cynically deployed bythe ruling class. But T�yama did more than simply apply Stalin’stheory of nationalism to Japan. He explicitly labeled reactionarynationalism in Japan as “ultra nationalism” (he uses the English word),thereby appearing to align himself with Maruyama’s critique of thewartime state. Yet, unlike Maruyama, T�yama did not restrict thisultra-nationalism to the wartime period, but placed it in a broaderhistorical perspective that posited this reactionary nationalism againstindigenous, populist nationalism as early as the People’s RightsMovement of the late nineteenth century, and it was only in thispopulist nationalism that he found the sole hope for “a future,progressive victory.”49

Most important, however, was the way this article sought tolegitimate ethnic nationalism by blurring the actual distinct formsthrough which Japan’s indigenous nationalism(s) arose. WhereasMaruyama was scrupulous in recognizing the different conceptualforms of nationalism in Japan, T�yama dismissed the importance ofconceptual and linguistic form, finding in all forms of nationalism adeeper significance in how it was used. Thus, from the outset, helumped minzoku nationalism together with patriotism and otherexpressions of nationalism, and referred to the topic not asminzokushugi, kokkashugi or kokuminshugi, but through the English

48 On these early postwar Marxist ethnic nationalists, see Curtis Andeson Gayle,Marxist History and Postwar Japanese Nationalism (London: RoutledgeCurzon,2003) and my own article, “What is a Nation and Who Belongs: National Narrativesand the Ethnic Imagination in Twentieth-Century Japan,” The American HistoricalReview, vol. 102, no. 2 (April 1997): 283-309. In Japanese, see Amino Yoshihiko,Rekishi to shite no sengo shigaku (Tokyo: Nihon Edit� Suk�ru Shuppanbu, 2000).

49 T�yama Shigeki, “Futatsu no nashonarizumu no taik�: sono rekishi-tekik�satsu,” Ch�� K�ron (June, 1951); reprinted in Band�, ed., Minzoku no mondai,119-35, at 123, 135.


loan word “nashonarizumu.” It was a brilliant move, as it allowedT�yama to co-opt the appeal of ethnic nationalism without beingtarnished with the notoriety it had gained during the war. But he didnot admit that this dismissal of any significant distinction betweenminzokushugi and kokuminshugi was a rejection of Maruyama’sthesis that a cultural nationalism supportive of liberal democracycould be found in non-ethnic expressions of Japanese cultural identity.Instead, Maruyama’s three-dimensional model of Japanesenationalism was flattened out to a two-dimensional one that waswrapped in the unfamiliar cover of nashonarizumu. But in T�yama’ssubsequent writings, this “progressive nationalism” was explicitlyidentified as ethnic nationalism (minzokushugi), although he himselfnever identified is as “ethnic” per se.50 Nonetheless, he placed italongside the ethnic nationalism that Marxists were supportingaround the world as “liberation movements” and invested similarhopes in the completion of Japan’s ruptured nationalism through thevictory of this ethnic, populist nationalism. One of T�yama’sstrongest legacies on contemporary Japanese nationalism was hisearlier effort to legitimate ethnic nationalism by obscuring its realhistorical nature under the cover of the ambiguous English loan wordnashonarizumu along with a denial that there was a meaningfuldistinction between minzokushugi and kokuminshugi. Those todaywho follow this line of argument almost always end up implicitlysupporting ethnic nationalism in substance even while disavowing theform.

After the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty Revision riots (“Anpo”),which had brought together rightist and leftist nationalists in a jointeffort to protest what was seen as a violation of Japanese nationalsovereignty (both by the Treaty itself and by the Kishi government’shandling of the revision process), a new voice emerged in Japanesenationalism theory. Yoshimoto Taka’aki combined elements of therightist and leftist populist nationalism with a deeper intoxication withthe “indigenousness” than even T�yama’s anti-imperialist ethnicnationalism had imbibed. Yoshimoto went further than T�yama,whose appeal to indigenous identity was encapsulated within aStalinist theory of global capitalism that gave indigenous identity auniversal theoretical context. Yoshimoto argued that nationalism layoutside of intellectuals and their representations and rested with theamorphous and undefinable “people” themselves. Yoshimoto argued

50 Cf. T�yama Shigeki, Kindaishi: kaiky� to minzoku no kaimei o shu to shite,

k�za rekishi, vol. 2 (Tokyo: �tsuki Shoten, 1955).

CHAPTER ONE30

that once the people were represented by intellectuals in one fashionor another (minzoku, kokumin), they lost their claim onindigenousness and thus their role in defining a Japanese nationalidentity. Although Yoshimoto favored the term taish� for “thepeople” and nashonarizumu for nationalism, he was highly aware ofthe irony in this effort to represent the unrepresentable that is thepopulist nation itself. His brilliant 1964 summary of Japanesenationalism presented a sweeping historical survey that argued thatthis populist nationalism was constantly being co-opted by theintellectuals and the state for various purposes, thus never allowingthe full flowering of nationalism as a populist mode of self-expression.51 He vigorously condemned the Stalinists for betrayingthe common people during the Anpo protests, was no less excoriatingof liberals whose nationalism was equally derived from foreign(Western) political theories, and only vaguely gestured toward aprinciple of “autonomy” (jiritsu) and the people as locked in astructure of animosity with elites and political institutions like thestate.52 Yoshimoto’s vision of a populist, yet conceptually undefinable,nationalism had appeal for many Japanese intellectuals (ironically)who were growing tired of the highly theoretical discussion ofnationalism and yet were aware of the long history of nationalism inJapan as an effort to place the people at the center of political andcultural affairs. That legacy continues on among many contemporaryJapanese writers who sidestep the conceptual definition of a nation ornationalism (kokuminshugi? minzokushugi?) and follow Yoshimoto inreferring to the phenomenon through the English loan wordnashonarizumu. It also continues on among many who embracedYoshimitsu’s populist argument that the nation, as the Japanesepeople, only has been exploited by the state and the social andintellectual elites.

A third position, neither Yoshimitsu’s unrepresentable populismnor T�yama’s Stalinist minzokushugi was set out with exceptionaltheoretical and historical vigor by Hashikawa Bunz� in his 1968 bookNashonarizumu (reprinted in 1994). Unlike T�yama, who set ethnicnationalism within Stalin’s global framework for proletariannationalism, Hashikawa drew from a host of Western specialists on

51 Yoshimoto Taka’aki, “Nihon no nashonarizumu,” 7-54 in Yoshimoto, ed.,

Nashonarizumu, gendai nihon shis� taikei volume 4 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob�, 1964),10.

52 Lawrence Olson, Ambivalent Moderns: Portraits of Japanese Cultural Identity(Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), 105-7.


nationalism theory (eg., E.H. Carr, F. Hertz, E. Kedourie) to arguethat nationalism is one side of a general cultural fulcrum that shiftsbetween universalism and particularism, and the particularism ofnationalism stemmed from a specific historical moment that sought toreplace God as a signifier of universal morals. In this sense, hecontrasted nationalism to patriotism, which “is a universal sentimentcommon to all races and ethnicities and not a new idea that arose at aspecific historical period, as did nationalism.”53 In essence,Hashikawa made a distinction between a universal love of homelandand modern nationalism which seeks to effect a nation-state(kokumin-kokka). This historicist approach impelled him to seek thefoundations of modern Japanese nationalism in Edo period Shintoistand neo-Confucian philosophy, even as he recognized its fruition onlyafter the arrival of Perry and the construction of a state that wentseeking a nation. The key was how nationalism and the state werelinked–or better, disconnected–in the early Meiji period. To make hispoint that nationalism in modern Japan was corrupted by the state, hedrew from Shimazaki T�son’s historical novel, Before the Dawn, toillustrate how populist Shintoists were expelled from the modern,secularizing state. Like T�yama and Yoshimoto, he saw the basicfeature of modern Japanese nationalism as a bifurcated rift betweenthe people and the state. Yet, unlike T�yama he did not place thisrupture within a universal theory of class conflict, nor did heexplicitly identify populist nationalism as minzokushugi. And unlikeYoshimoto, Hashikawa did not argue that the people were entirelyunrepresentable, nor did he include all intellectuals as functionalequivalents to the state in repressing the amorphous masses.

Yet, like Yoshimoto, Hashikawa played his own conceptual sleightof hand. While he was quite insistent on the conceptual differencebetween nation (kokumin) and state (kokka), and on the differencebetween nationalism (nashonarizumu) and patriotism (aikokushin,sokokuai), he never really addressed minzokushugi as a form ofnationalism in Japanese history. He did explicitly identify somethinghe called “ethnic nationalism”, (jinshu ch�shin-teki nashonarizumu;i.e., race-centered nationalism) but his idiosyncratic gloss of the thingdistanced this “ethnic nationalism” from any existing form of, ordiscourse on, Japanese nationalism. He did ultimately associate the“ethnic nationalism” of the nineteenth century Hirata School nativistswith minzoku and a “Missionsidee” (minzoku no shimei kan), avant la

53 Hashikawa Bunz�, Nashonarizumu, Kinokuniya Shinsho B-32 (Tokyo:

Kinokuniya, 1968; reprinted 1994), 16.

CHAPTER ONE32

lettre, but only to argue for its universality through comparison withsimilar forms of ethnic nationalism in Europe.54 Thus, it may be saidthat, cum Yoshimoto, his point was to legitimate Japaneseminzokushugi without calling it as such, but in sharp contrast toYoshimoto, he concluded it was the universality of this “ethnicnationalism” that constituted its grounds for legitimacy: every peopleloves its homeland. This argument left Hashikawa’s theory ofnationalism a bit contradictory, both internally and in relation to howmost theorists of nationalism and patriotism understand these distinct,political movements: it would seem that, for Hashikawa, ethnicnationalism was really patriotism, and state-driven nationalism (thequest for a kokumin kokka) was not patriotism but a form of stateoppression of the people. To explain these contradictions, one mustnot forget Hashikawa’s own personal experience during the war.Because of these wartime experiences, his main concern was to argueagainst the heavy-handed exploitation of the people by the state.Within this framework, even efforts to assert a populist nationalism(which for Hashikawa cannot be the project of building a nation-state,or kokumin-kokka, since that project is inevitably the exploitation ofthe people by the modern, secular state for its own purposes) can onlybe articulated as the unfinished business of grounding the Japanesepeople’s “General Will” within their political and social institutions, abusiness that Hashikawa correctly identified as “awaiting the nextgeneration.”55

In reviewing the intersecting trajectories of how nationalism isunderstood today, how it has been understood by influential theoristsin the past, and especially how these ideas have shaped the modernJapanese discourse on nationalism, two characteristics loom large.First, the main emphasis on nationalism has been an effort to come toterms with a new subjectivity in modern history that rests in somefashion on “the people,” collectively conceived. Yet, how the peopleare conceived (kokumin? minzoku? taish�?) held implications for hownationalism was understood and enacted. This struggle to identify andthen place the people as the key agent of cultural and political life wasforced to confront terminology and concept, as the complex andconflict-laden history of nationalism in modern Japan spun offvarious interpretations of who the people as nation are and what theirpolitical prospects should be. Broad historical events such as the

54 Hashikawa, Nashonarizumu, 123-6.55 Hashikawa, Nashonarizumu, 186.


emergence of a multi-ethnic empire, the demands of nationalsolidarity during wartime, the destruction of the Japanese state duringthe Occupation, and the reconstruction of the nation formally as akokumin under the postwar constitution played significant roles indirecting and diverting nationalism. It was not the case that suchhistorical events determined Japanese nationalism. Rather, theybecame key interventions in how nationalism was understood andarticulated, but this intervention often raised counter-articulations tothe expectations of the dominant structures. At the heart of Japanesediscourse on nationalism was a belief that the nation was bothimminent and transcendent, that it actually existed in the present butalso had potential that was yet unrealized. This belief shaped thedevelopment of nationalism in Japan in ways that emphasizedarticulation, discourse, and representation as the very stuff ofnationalism. It also signified a strong sense that national aspirationswere never fulfilled in any given moment. The nation always neededto be articulated and rearticulated.

This leads us to the second major emphasis one finds in modernJapanese nationalism. Throughout the theoretical literature, andespecially the theoretical literature that shaped the Japanese discourseon nationalism, there was a consistent emphasis on the differencebetween the state (kokka) and the nation (kokumin, minzoku). Thisawareness that the state is not the nation was shared broadly byliberals, Marxists and ultra-conservatives. When counter-argumentswere raised, such as during World War II, it was to displace thisdiscourse of conflict between nation and state and to suggest thesuccessful completion of Japan’s quest for a modern nation-state(kokumin kokka). Few were convinced by such assertions. And sincethe Meiji state was not designed constitutionally or institutionally as anation-state (it shifted from being a monarchical state to a multi-ethnic imperial state and finally, during 1945-52, to no state at all),such assertions of being a nation-state only gave rise to counter-statepopulist nationalism, often in the form of minzokushugi (ethnicnationalism). Japanese nationalism was, and still is, in this sense a“conflictual nationalism.” By calling it “conflictual,” I do not meanthe usual sense that it was a nationalism in conflict with other peoplesor only with its state. This dynamic inter-relation and contestationbetween state and nation was mirrored in the contestations that tookplace within nationalist discourse over whether the Japanese nation isa minzoku (ethnic nation) or a kokumin (civic, and thus potentiallymulti-ethnic, nation). That debate continues even today, providing

CHAPTER ONE34

evidence that Japanese nationalism remains, internally, a highly“conflictual” nationalism.

Nationalism, always and everywhere, is an effort to place thepeople in a conceptual, political and social order that makes sense forthose who espouse that nationalism. Nationalism, then, is both causeand effect of this conception of a collective group of people as anation. It both shapes them into a nation, and represents the effects ofthoughts and actions taken on behalf of that nation. At the same time,nationalism is an ideological effort to erase the gap between thehistorical emergence of the nation (which may precede or postdate thestate) and the political structures that claim to speak and act in thename of the nation. Consequently, any effort to assert whennationalism arises in relation to the emergence of a state is not only amatter for historical debate but also represents evaluative differencesover what a nation or state truly is. Separate historical developmentsmay provide for separate ideological claims made in the name of each.To differentiate nation and state (and sometimes differentarticulations of the nation) is a key step to a critical, scholarlyevaluation of nationalism. It is characteristic of nationalism itself toconflate state and nation (and in some forms, to conflate allarticulations of national and ethnic identity), and to suggest that thenation must be the primary identity in all aspects of one’s life. Theprecise significance of that claim–and thus the objective of a specificnationalist movement–rests in what meaning is attributed to “thenation” in particular cases.

To answer that question with respect to Japan, we must now turnto how the nation emerged and was articulated in modern Japanesehistory. In the chapters that follow, I try to do precisely that. The nextchapter surveys the preconditions for nationalism in Japan: the socialhierarchy and decentralized political structure of early nineteenthcentury and how its transformation gave rise to various efforts toconstruct a modern nation in Japan. Out of the intricacies ofrevolutionary fervor came a notion of the public that grewincreasingly inclusive and ultimately was utilized as the foundationfor a new concept of the people as a nation. The third chapter looks atthe role the monarchy played in raising and suppressing nationalistaspirations, even as it argues that in Japan, as elsewhere, monarchydid not accommodate itself to nationalism without serious conflict.But the main point of that chapter is to demonstrate that, as importantas the monarchy was and remains in Japanese cultural and politicallife, it is not synonymous with Japanese nationalism. Chapter Fourlooks at nationalism from what some Japanese theorists might call


“the bottom up.” If top down nationalism has often been erroneouslyattributed to the monarchy (tenno-sei), other theorists have equallyerroneously imagined society as the antidote to nationalism preciselybecause of its affinity with the masses. In this chapter, I move fromleading social theories on the relationship between concepts of societyand the nation (as both approximations of “the people”) to an analysisof the development of the concept of society (shakai) in modernJapan to argue that social imaginaries are even closer to Japanesenationalism than monarchial institutions are. Chapters Five and Six,on the concepts of kokumin and minzoku, respectively, represent theheart of Japanese nationalism, as these concepts are the core of thealternative ways in which Japanese articulate nationalism(kokuminshugi, minzokushugi). These chapters analyze the history ofthese discourses independently, arguing that inherent in thesediscourses, even as they change over time, are independent conceptsof what the Japanese nation was, is, or should be. Finally, in theafterword, I offer some reflections on how these key elements ofJapanese nationalism come together and how they are shaping thepresent and future of nationalism in Japan.

CHAPTER TWO

THE PRECONDITIONS OF JAPANESE NATIONALISM

Prior to 1853, there was no Japan. This may seem at first apreposterous claim, but it can only be fully understood once we haveunpacked what a national concept like “Japan” really means.Certainly the claim is not that the islands which today make up thearchipelago of Japan did not exist. And foreigners and even somenatives did make occasional reference to a place called “Japan” evenif such vague references to Japan rarely were consistent either witheach other or with the territory that would later become Japan. Mostimportantly, “Japan,” as the national signifier we understand it to betoday, was for all practical purposes irrelevant to the dominant formsof politics and to everyday life in the archipelago. Throughout theEdo period, and even into the early Meiji period, “Japan” neitherreferred to a single, clearly demarcated, centralized political authority,nor to a meaningful identity for those whom “Japan” would claim torepresent. Without first appreciating what the absence of Japan as anational existence meant prior to the Meiji Restoration, one cannotfully comprehend the historical upheaval, contestation and sense ofcrisis that accompanied the Restoration and subsequent attempts toconstruct a modern nation-state in the early Meiji years. Nor is it easyto recognize the diverse forms of nationalism that have continued toinform political and cultural practice in Japan without first realizingthat this sense of “Japaneseness” was, and is, a contingent andcontested mode of identity.

In order to appreciate what this absence of national identity meant,we must first guard against the temptations of anachronism. It istempting to extract a concept from premodern texts that resembles amodern sense of nationality and then carry that concept forth intosubsequent years, regardless of how well the actual existence of such“national” forms of identity is supported by other kinds of historicalevidence. Some scholars have argued that this anachronisticprojection backward of national identity is ingrained in the verynature of the modern discipline of history. There is no question thathistorians of Japan have frequently used their craft to provide

PRECONDITIONS OF NATIONALISM 37

evidence for a continuous sense of Japanese nationhood, and theyoften favor the “early modern” (Edo) period as the best site for thisnative sense of Japanese national identity. Indeed, the gradual shiftamong many historians from seeing the Edo period as a time of“feudalism” to an “early modern” period often relies implicitly on atheoretical and ideological effort to identify elements of anindigenous Japanese identity prior to Perry’s arrival and the culturalcompromises believed to have resulted from “Westernization.”

Metanarratives of historical progress, whether Marxist ornationalist, have often argued that nationalism develops only after thecollapse of agrarian feudalism and the onset of bourgeois capitalism,the true harbinger of modernity. Consequently, by rejecting theappropriateness of feudalism in describing the Edo period, or byemphasizing capitalist economies prior to the Meiji Restoration,historians have constructed narratives that can easily be appropriatedby others who wish to stress the nativist origins of Japanesenationalism. The full range of these dynamics is vast and complicated,involving Marxist agendas that both support nationalism as anti-imperialism and denounce nationalism as capitalist “emperor-system” ideology, as well as non-Marxist agendas that also lionizeethnicity or native cultures as anti-imperialist forces or, from a morepost-Marxist perspective, envision an open-ended plurality ofidentities as a means of countering the supposed baneful effects ofcitizenship in a constitutional state. This is not the place to unravelthe intricacies of these interrelated narrative strategies; to do sowould, in any event, require an entirely different book. Instead, itmust suffice to survey briefly some of the conceptual sources fornational identity prior to the Meiji Restoration, and to simply appealto the need to always historicize assertions of national identity.

The Bakumatsu Years and the Preconditions of National Identity

Although the nation of Japan is a recent construct, the term by whichwe signify the Japanese nation today is of ancient origin. The earliestwritten record of reference to “Japan” appears in a diplomaticexchange between Prince Sh�toku and the Tang Emperor in 645 A.D.Writing on behalf of the emperor, Prince Sh�toku refered to theJapanese court as “the place were the sun rises” in juxtaposition tothe Tang court, where “the sun sets.” More than geographyinfluenced Sh�toku’s choice of words, and the diplomatic affrontencoded in his language was registered in China and back home,

CHAPTER TWO38

where one can imagine the popularity of this reference to “the placewhere the sun rises” was directly related to prestige the Yamato courtfelt it had gained at the expense of the powerful Tang court. In anyevent, this territorial reference to “Japan” was inextricably linked tothe court itself, and is best understood as a reference to the monarch(tenn�) on whose behalf Sh�toku was writing.1 As Kano Masanaohas pointed out, this seventh century reference to “Japan” in courtpapers “did not signify the widespread establishment among thepeople [at that time] of the same kind of consciousness of “Japan” orof “the Japanese” that we have today.”2 It was not a national or ethnicsignifier. Kano’s caution is a good reminder that the seductive forceof nationalism can make it very difficult to look backwards throughtime and not project modern assumptions about ethnic homogeneity,political centrality or national identity on a time when they wouldhave held little meaning for people then living.

Prior to the Meiji Restoration, the political world of “Japan” wasstructured around a Confucian concept of “universe” (tenka), not thenation-state. The concept of “universe” was a rather loose concept ofpublic space and, while it was not completely open-ended, nor did itsignify the clear demarcation of countries the way the modernconcept of nation does. In fact, the terms “country” (kuni) or “state”(kokka), which after the Restoration would signify national units ofgovernance (i.e.,“Japan”), referred to the local domains thatconstituted the primary political units of the baku-han system.Equally important for assessing the degree to which Japan was a“nation” in the early nineteenth century is the fact that the people, inthe broadest sense, were constituted either as “domainal people”(ry�min) or “village people” (sonmin), whereas when the termkokumin was used, it was either as a synonym for the “domainalpeople” or more narrowly, referred only to the samurai of a specificdomain.3

To pay attention to the concepts through which national identity isexpressed is not merely to parse historical discourse or to play thepedant. Historians have wasted far too much time debating, frommodernist and anti-modernist biases, how much of modern Japanesenationalism can be traced back to the Edo period. Sakamoto Takaohas provocatively suggested that we cease thinking of the Meiji state

1 Yoshida Takashi , Nihon no tanj� (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,1997).2 Kano Masanao, Kindai nihon shis� annai (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999), 30.3 Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship and Kano, Kindai nihon shis� annai , 31. See

the more extensive discussion of the transformation of the meaning of the idea ofkokumin below in Chapter Five.


building process in terms of “revolution and discontinuity” andrecognize instead that the key issue was really one of “competitionand unification.”4 His suggestion opens up a field in which nation-building in modern Japan was a far more complicated process thanone of retaining “tradition” while adding (superficial) Western formsto social and political life. Appreciating the breadth of the nationalappeal in bakumatsu and early Meiji Japan does not necessarily leadto a discounting of tradition, but it does help restore an awareness ofthe political uses of tradition in a shared agenda of nation building.Contestation over nation-building then can be seen, not only in policystruggles among political elites, but also at a social level: in “howpeople at that time sensed and saw their world... how people placedin given political context understood their social environment.”5

Identifying the concepts that governed social and political identityduring the Edo period, and recognizing their historical differencesfrom later periods helps establish the social particularities of a worldthat was organized around a Confucian political ideology rather thanaround the modern nation-state. When challenges to that universe(tenka) begin to appear on the horizon, it is meaningful to speak ofthe decline of the baku-han order, or the period of bakumatsu. But weneed not approach this historical process from a general assumptionabout discontinuity and loss, or from its functional equivalent--assumptions of the perfect durability of tradition as a supposedanchor in a revolutionary period.

Positing too sharp a break between the Edo and Meiji periods hasoften led to a kind of magical modernist narrative which sees allhistorical change, especially the move towards a national identity, ascoming from outside and “top down.” In reality, a new socialimagination began to take hold among samurai and merchantscholars nearly a hundred years before the Meiji Restoration, and itlaid the foundations for subsequent broader notions of the people asthe legitimate agents in a national body politic. Scholars of nativism(kokugaku) played an important role in undermining the dominantConfucian symbolic order, following Motoori Norinaga’s distinctionin his “Commentaries on the Kojiki” (1764) between “the august landof the emperor”(mikuni) and “the (foreign) land of China” (karakuni).Motoori’s innovation was to challenge the legitimacy of theoriesderived from foreign countries to represent Japanese ways of life, but

4 Sakamoto Takao, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 23.5 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, Kindai nihon no chi to seiji: Inoue Kowashi kara taishü

engei made (Tokyo: Bokutakusha, 1985), 148-9.

CHAPTER TWO40

he stopped short of articulating a political concept of nationalgovernance or an explicit model of the Japanese people asconstituting a nation. His theory of identity was a historicist one thatlooked to the past for the sources of a more authentic identity. Butwithin a few decades, his historicist nativism would soon gainsupport from another approach that drew on boundary consciousnessin reflecting a more explict sense of political nationalism.

What transformed an emerging theory of cultural distinctivenessinto the beginnings of nationalist ideology was the discovery of theWest. In Kano Masanao’s elegant formula, “the discovery of theWest also produced the discovery of Japan.”6

The arrival of Westernships off the coasts of the Japanese archipelago in the late eighteenthcentury both directly challenged the legitimacy of the “barbariansubduing” shogunate and gave rise to a sense of common fate and aneed for common defense among growing numbers of the samuraiacross the land. One of the earliest articulations of this new sense ofboundary difference came from Hayashi Shihei whose KaikokuHeidan (1786) expressed a new sense of “Japan” as a single entitydefined by its structural opposition to “foreign countries.” Moreover,Hayashi appealed to a need to bar the door to possible invasions bythese foreign countries. Drawing on this discovery of the West andthe urgency of protecting Japan as a single unit, Shizuki Tadaotranslated sections from Engelbert Kaempfer’s An Account of Japanas Sakokuron in 1801, providing the first instance in Japanesediscourse of this term sakoku, which both signified the need to closeJapan to Western ships as well as a recognition that something called“Japan” was defined by sharing a common external threat. Mitoscholars promoted this sense of Japan as a common land under asingle ruler, especially after Aizawa Seishisai’s Shinron (New Thesis,1825) drew on this call to close the country, protect Japan fromforeigners, and support the emperor. Aizawa’s “discovery of theWest” was more than metaphoric: he had interviewed the crew of anEnglish fishing vessel that had come ashore in his domain. Hisexperience had drawn his attention, not only to the need to drive offthe foreigners, but to clarify how the various countries of the baku-han system should constitute a single body, and he sought to explainthis through the concept of kokutai.7 For Aizawa, kokutai was

6 Kano, Kindai nihon shis� annai, 30.7 Kano, Kindai nihon shis� annai, 30-32. Although kokutai is often referred to

simply as the “body politic,” a rendering that exposes a certain bias towards politicalrepresentations of national identity like the state, the very debate over the kokutaithat began with Aizawa and, as we shall see, escalates throughout subsequent


conceived within a neo-Confucian traditional debate over how todecide who the rightful ruler was. He used kokutai to highlight theemperor as the rightful ruler, and his definition of the “divine land”as “the place where the sun rises” meant his concept of a unifiedrealm was limited to asserting the national scope of the emperor’slegitimacy; the people remained “the people of the imperial land”(k�koku no tami) rather than the foundation of a truly national body.8

In short, Aizawa drew from the ancient meaning of “Japan” assignifying the imperial court in contrast to foreign countries, but hisviews did not yet constitute a truly national vision of Japan. Andmost importantly, the people whom he sought to signify as the nationhad yet to embrace in large numbers this national vision of his.

As H.D. Harootunian has demonstrated, other nativists developedan agrarian sense of the collective people juxtaposed in a verticalrelationship to the political authority in the castle towns.9 The legacyof such agrarianism would remain to influence Japanese conceptionsof society, particularly after the Meiji Restoration when societyemerged as a political counterweight to the authoritarian state thathad resulted and the agrarian village seemed a repository of theutopian hopes that had been crushed by the harsh realities of the newindustrial economy. In order to fully appreciate how these influentialmodes of imagining society and state in modern Japan took shape, itis important first to recognize that the political visions of nativistactivists who had grounded their visions of society in agrariancommunitarianism contributed to the diminished possibility of civilsociety in Meiji Japan, in spite of (because of?) their harsh criticismof those working for a modern Japanese state. By the mid-nineteenthcentury, cultural and political articulations of native identity weregrowing among certain segments of the populations, but thesediscourses neither found a means of synthesis nor had they grownstrong enough to transform the de-centralized structure of the baku-han political system into a centralized modern national state.

The arrival of Commodore Perry’s fleet in 1853 brought domesticnativism and the foreign political crisis together in a complex series

Japanese history, suggests that the concept went deeper to the very essence of whatmade Japan a “nation,” a problem that has not been easy to resolve. Yet the politicalbias in interpreting kokutai itself is derived from Aizawa’s own orientation towardpolitical solutions to unification through the emperor.

8 See Sakamoto Takao’s reading of Shinron in Meiji kokka no kensetsu, nihon nokindai 2, (Tokyo: Ch�� K�ron, 1999), 36-39.

9 H.D. Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology inTokugawa Nativism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 242-72.

CHAPTER TWO42

of events that would eventually establish the contours of a trulynational state and bring forth calls for a national people. Earlierattempts, largely by the samurai, to articulate “Japaneseness” soonbecame caught up in specifically modern responses to the problem ofhow to mediate the claims of individual and collective wills, andthese responses in turn shaped and were shaped by the fall of thebakufu and the rise of the centralized Meiji state. In a sense, then, theinitial solution to these problems in the form of the Meiji Restorationcan be seen as a political solution that was both less than and farmore than the initial problem created by the arrival of Perry’s ships.Less, because it could not solve the problem of expellingforeigners–particularly foreign influences that would permeateJapanese culture–but also more, because the Meiji Restoration andthe modern state that resulted would radically transform the sociallandscape, giving legitimacy to the ideal of a united Japanesenational people, while in the process establishing new, modern formsof political resistance to the state. In this sense, It� Yahiko’sdescription of Perry’s “Black Ships” as a “liquifying phenomenon”that dissolved the pre-existing political world and provided anopening to the “populist activists” (s�m� no shishi) is an apt one.10 Byno means did Perry’s arrival inject a principle of historical change toa stagnant world, as some historians have claimed. But it didcontribute to the dissolution of the old baku-han system and itsascriptive social order which had prevented the development of thenational society envisioned by nativists and others.

For nativist scholars, Perry’s arrival and the problems it caused forthe bakufu were both cause for concern and hope. They did notwelcome the incursion of foreigners into the divine land, but theycould also hope that this would be the latest “divine wind” to rescuethe emperor from obscurity and return him to the political center. Thearrival of the Black Ships galvanized the nativist movement anddirected it towards a greater emphasis on the emperor and politicalconceptions of “Japan.” Nativism was not inevitably or originally anideology of nationalism or emperor worship. For centuries, nativismhad encompassed both a particularistic theology that emphasized theancestral gods of the emperor (k�so kami: Amaterasu �mikami;Jinmu tenn�) as well as a universalistic cosmogony focussed oncreator gods (z�ka kami), and the two traditions were frequentlyintertwined. Throughout most of the Edo period, the emphasis onAmaterasu as a metaphysical diety that transcended both politics and

10 It� Yahiko, Ishin to jinshin (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1999), 2.


“Japan” was dominant.11 But Hirata Atsutane’s emphasis onAmenominakanushi-no-kami (Creator-god), Musubi-no-kami, and the�kuninushi-no-kami nativism that would emerge after Perry’s arrivalacquired a new force and newly acquired sense of purpose.

In contrast to the threats posed by earlier foreign ships arriving offJapanese coasts, Perry’s arrival had a more profound impact onJapanese national formation. The timing of his arrival in the midst ofa difficult domestic political situation was a factor, but so was hisunprecedented insistance on signing a binding, formal agreementwith Japanese authorities. Unlike other foreign visitors, Perryannounced he was not going to go away without major concessionsfrom the bakufu. This intransigent imposition of foreignness on theJapanese body politic planted the seeds of a truly modern form ofnationalism in Japan by heightening a sense of boundaryconsciousness first imposed by the arrival of Perry along the coastand then by the incessant pressure brought to bear by foreigndiplomats on the governing bakufu in the decade and a halfsubsequent to Perry’s arrival. As Tanaka Akira has argued,

The foreign pressure of the bakumatsu years forced a consciousnessfirst of “nation” [kokumin] on the people [hitobito] and then of the“state” [kokka]. But, at that time, this consciousness of “nation” wasstill in incipient form and thus it is usually called the early stage ofnationalism. Thus for this reason, I will call it “nationalism” inparenthesis.”12

Tanaka’s argument that the arrival of Perry encouraged Japanesepeople to begin to think of themselves as a united nation rather thanas members of diverse regions and occupational strata helps explainthe broad range of pressures that brought down the bakufu. But it isimportant not to read too much into this early stage of nationalism.The nation was, as Tanaka admits, still in incipient form, and fewordinary Japanese people thought of themselves as a nation in themodern sense of the concept.

11 Katsurajima Nobuhiro, Bakumatsu minsh� shis� no kenky�: bakumatsukokugaku tominsh� sh�ky� (Kyoto: Bunrikaku, 1992), 20-24.

12 Tanaka Akira, “Bakumatsu no shakai to shis�,” 236-258 in Bakumatsu ishinshino kenky� (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K�bunkan, 1996): 237. To support this view, Tanakacites from Takekoshi Yosabur�’s 1891-92 Shin nihonshi. In Takekoshi’s words, thearrival of the American warships in Uraga Bay meant that “the sense of mutualsuspicion and enmity among the various domains quickly and easily disappeared andthe three hundred domains became brothers, the numberless people all discoveredthat they were one nation (ichi kokumin naru o hakkenshi) and from here the idea ofthe Japanese state (nihon kokka naru shis�) gushed forth.” Takekoshi, Shinnihonshi; cited in Tanaka, 237.

CHAPTER TWO44

Yet, the effects of Perry’s arrival in transforming peasants intoJapanese were profound. Even in the remote countryside, far from thetreaty ports, Japanese peasants were affected by this sense ofboundary consciousness and some were beginning to give expressionto this sense of collective Japanese identity.13 For example, SuganoHachir�, a farmer in the distant northeast region who led an 1866uprising in the country of Iwashiro found a way in his spare time towrite a journal called “Dreams from a Rainy Night.” In it, heoutlined a map of the world (with Japan in the center) and noted that“rumors fly all around Japan, and everyone is so nervous they canhardly keep body and soul together.” Takekoshi Yosabur� credits thisline as a frank expression of an early consciousness of Japanesenationalism.14 Such sentiments were shaped by economic changesthat were affecting the entire nation, transforming Japan in suddenand shocking ways into a single national market. The treaties thatopened Japan to foreign trade in the late 1850s wreaked considerablehavoc on the Japanese markets and the delicate system of allocatedtrade that the bakufu had established. The gap between those fewwho were able to benefit from trade in the ports and the rest of thecountry that generally suffered from the inflationary effects of thistrade, particularly on the price of agricultural products, only madethis early sense of nationalism more attractive, not only to thosewithin the circle of political elites, but also and for different reasonscommoners who had never participated before in political affairs.15

These developments were slow and largely imperceptible changes,however, that often are best appreciated as nationalism only from thehindsight of a historian. It would be a mistake to argue that popularnationalism among the peasants and commoners was the drivingforce behind the political changes that led to either the MeijiRestoration or the construction of a modern Japanese state.Historians have often appealed to such populist narratives to suggestthat the modern Japanese state was, or should have been, a nationalstate. In actuality, the historical record is a far more complicated one.Burgeoning nationalist sentiment, coupled with traditional anti-bakufu and anti-Confucian ideologies, mingled with internal political

13 Tanaka Akira, Bakumatsu ishinshi no kenky�, 238.14 Takegoshi Yosabur�, Shin Nihonshi; cited in Tanaka, Bakumatsu ishinshi no

kenky�, 237-38.15 Tanaka, Bakumatsu ishinshi no kenky�, 238. See also Shimazaki T�son,

Before the Dawn , trans. William Naff, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,1987.)


struggles within various domains and in the bakufu along withgrowing tensions between the bakufu and the court, all of which wascapped off by the unprecedented problem of Perry and the West.

The upshot of all this was not a cystallization of nationalismaround a state that would defend Japan against the West but acomplicated series of events that built the foundation of modernJapanese nationalism into what it still remains today: a contestedfield of competing nationalist claims that include assertions ofethnicity, loyalty to the emperor, allegiance to the political state,Asian traditionalism, pro-Western individualism, and so forth. Inemphasizing the complexity of modern Japanese nationalism, I donot mean to suggest that it cannot be comprehended. Just the opposite.Japanese nationalism can only be understood properly once werecognize that theoretical attempts to grasp Japanese nationalism as asingular thing often fail to grasp the true range of its historical forms,particularly when they are too heavily invested in one or another ofthese elements of Japanese nationalism. Japanese nationalism wasnot constructed solely by the state, by capitalism, by the West, by theemperor, or even by the “people. Japanese nationalism was the resultof a specific series of historical and political events that created aplurality of agents in a contested arena, where each sought to expel,expunge or appropriate the others in the name of the true Japanesenation. As nationalism, however, this discourse has its defining limitsaround the question of the “people”: who are they, where are they,and over whom/under whom do they have sovereignty, identity andmeaning?

Creating a Public and Building a State in Early Meiji

The foundation for this new context in which nationalism would riseas a debate over political, social and cultural identity may be found inthe emergence of a new concept of “the public” during thebakumatsu and early Meiji years. As with any historically significantconcept, one can find antecedents for “public consultation” fromearlier Japanese history. Historians have located elements of publicconsultation in the deliberations of kugy� in the Daj�kan governmentof the Heian period, in the tradition of “shinzen no g�gi” in medievaluprisings, and in the Edo period, in the village “yoriai” and even theg�gi of senior councillors in the bakufu.16 But these arguments for

16 Mitani Hiroshi, Meiji ishin to nashonarizumu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha,

1997).

CHAPTER TWO46

ancient Japanese forms of proto-democratic practices, while aimed atEurocentric views that would discount Japanese experience, do notby themselves explain the revolutionary impact that eventraditionalist inspired appeals to public consultation had in the highlycharged atmosphere of the bakumatsu years. It may seem rather triteto point out once again that tradition was recontextualized for newpurposes in bakumatsu and early Meiji Japan, as we are allincreasingly made aware of how modern societies are constructed noton the erasure of tradition but through the recontextualizing, and thusreinvention, of traditional practices. That is precisely what happenedto this earlier “tradition” of public consultation during the social andpolitical maelstrom of Japan during the 1860s.

A close reading of the history of “public consultation” in the yearssurrounding the Meiji Restoration reveals some surprising results. Incontrast to earlier forms of public consultation, “consulting publicopinion” (k�gi yoron) during and after the 1860s became enmeshedwith another discourse on “rewarding talent” (jinsai t�y�) andincorporated new models of constitutional politics from Westerncountries. Public consultation was not simply the expression of anindigenous form of democracy, but was equally useful at repressingdemocratic aspirations. Along with “rewarding talent,” the concept of“consulting public opinion” became one of the key sites where thenew political elite sought to control the people’s minds.17 Thus, thisemerging rhetoric about “consulting the public” was not merely acontinuation of traditional forces of consultation, but one of themajor factors in the disruption of prevailing political institutions.Such rhetoric served as a catalyst towards a revolutionary view ofsocial and individual worth. But of course, it is important torecognize that it was not the language of these concepts itself thatdetermined the historical use of “public consultation,” but thehistorical mobilization of this rhetoric that determined what thelanguage of the “public” would mean in modern Japan.

The loosening of this discourse on “consulting the public” from itstraditional moorings began soon after the arrival of Perry’s ships.When the bakufu took the unprecedented step of consulting with thedaimyo over the question of opening the country, it inaugurated asubtle but fateful change in political ideology. Until that point,governance was the “private” right of the bakufu, but in consultingwith the daimy� (who previously had no right to speak on matters ofgovernance outside their domains), the bakufu had implicitly

17 It� Yahiko, Ishin to jinshin, 43.


recognized the legitimacy of the daimyo to speak on politics as a“public” matter. From that moment on, “consulting the public”became a useful tool for those forces that sought to be included in thepolitical center.18 In this way, the first modern incarnation of thediscourse on “consulting the public” became intertwined with abroader debate that might be rendered as “opening up discourse”(genro d�kai). This broader claim for “opening up discourse”captured a sense that prevailing social and political institutions werepreventing new ideas from being heard and thus, from discoveringnew solutions to the new challenges that faced the bakufu and“Japan.” Of course, these arguments had broad appeal, but it wasmainly the lower samurai—men like �kubo Toshimichi, Saig�Takamori, and Kido Takayoshi–who promoted “opening updiscourse” as a means of identifying and “rewarding new talent.”19

Eventually, their use of the discourse on “consulting the public”would challenge the entire social status system of the Edo period, aswell as the bakufu’s politics, and bring them into conflict with thedaimyo, for whom “consulting the public” was not meant to signify aradical new social order.

The origins of this modern form of public consultation lay in aplan by members within the restoration coalition, especially samuraifrom Tosa, to promote the influence of their domains against thebakufu. Tosa was a weak partner in the restoration, lacking thenumbers of retainers that Satsuma could deliver and the courage inbattle evidenced by Ch�sh�. In light of these disadvantages,restorationists in Tosa were particularly quick to recognize the powerof ideas, and men from Tosa played on this strength in political ideasthroughout and after the Restoration. They began to advocate “publicconsultation” in the aftermath of the bakufu’s move towards a“unification of court and camp” (k�bu gattai) that reached ahighpoint in 1862 with the marriage of Princess Kazunomiya to theshogun, Iemochi. For Tosa, the domain’s fortunes were wedded tothe success or failure of this policy on “public consultation.”

After driving the restorationist forces out of Kyoto in 1863, the“court and camp” alliance held a conference that explored a methodof expanding the participation in government of daimyo likeYamanouchi Toyoshige of Tosa and even Shimazu Hisamitsu ofSatsuma who had not yet thrown his weight behind the anti-bakufumovement. In short, the bakufu saw this proposal for “public

18 Sakamoto, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 29-30.19 Sakamoto, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 30-31.

CHAPTER TWO48

consultation” as an opportunity to divide the forces that were hostileto it. At the conference, a plan emerged for a new political systembased on government through a conference of domainal lords (k�giseitairon) modeled on the American bicameral legislature. The

concept had been sketched out earlier in Sakamoto Ry�ma’s Sench�Hassaku, but it was Got� Sh�jir� of Tosa who best understood thepotential of this system of “public consultation” for realizing a newnational political system. Got� convinced his daimyo, Yamanouchi,of the merits of this new scheme, which Yamanouchi then took to theshogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu. Yamanouchi pointed out theadvantages of a new political system based on “public consultation”including the chance for avoiding a bloody war between the anti-bakufu and bakufu armies. He also stressed that such a system heldout the probability that the Tokugawa house would still be requiredto play an important role in the new political system. Indeed, therewas every reason at the time to believe not only that this strategywould work but that it was the only remaining hope for the survivalof the Tokugawa house. Yoshinobu finally concurred and announcedthe end of the bakufu by “returning government” to the court on 13October 1867.

Yoshinobu may have had another reason for quickly returninggovernment to the Court. At that very moment, the anti-bakufu forceswere working with the Court to declare the Tokugawa enemies of theCourt. Yoshinobu’s voluntary return of government to the Courtgreatly frustrated that plan by demonstrating Tokugawa loyalty to theemperor. In any event, the shogun was willing to gamble on this newscheme, as he announced to his retainers in Kyoto on 12 October, “Iwill return government to the Court, and devote myself to publicconsultation [k�gi] throughout the realm.”20

Although it might appear that promoting “public consultation”was merely a cynical ploy to undermine the bakufu, the demand forpublic consultation only grew stronger after the Restoration and itchallenged courtiers like Prince Arisugawa Taruhito and Sanj�Sanetomi who tried to establish a new government based solely on anappeal to tradition and the prestige of the emperor. But the Court hadno military and little political power of its own (in spite of PrinceArisugawa’s own success on the battlefield), and it needed thesupport of a wide array of domains if the new government were to

20 Cited in Sakamoto, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 29.


succeed. Hence, even the Court found some utility in the new schemeof “consulting the public.”21

This discourse on public discussion eventually gave rise to a newconcept of “the public,” and along with this new concept of thepublic came trenchant criticisms of any political arrangement that didnot reflect this new sense of a public. Consequently, in early 1868,with the Boshin War just underway, the new political leadersundertook a major reorganization of the fledgling government thatreflected a greater need to incorporate these growing demands for“consulting the public.” As commanding officer of the forces thatattacked the Tokugawa and their supporters in the east, PrinceArisugawa had seized the moment to establish himself at the top ofan awkward governmental system designed to shore up the influenceof his fellow courtiers. This governmental structure was firstorganized into the Three Offices (sanshoku) of s�sai, gij� andsan’yo; a month later the latter two Offices were organized into firstthe “Seven Departments” (17 January-3 February 1868) and then intothe “Eight Bureaus” (3 February-21 April 1868). The keycharacteristic, however, of this first attempt at forming a governmentin modern Japan was that it placed nobles at the head of all the majorDepartments or Bureaus. Prince Arisugawa also co-headed (alongwith fellow nobles Nakayama Tadayasu and Shirakawa Sukenori) theDepartment of Rites, the immediate predecessor of the Office ofRites which under the Daj�kan became the Ministry of Rites, beforeceding that position under the Eight Offices to Shirakawa.22 Almostimmediately, criticism of this archaic, court-led government aroseamong the younger samurai activists who had initiated the anti-bakufu movement. To them, Prince Arisugawa’s governmentappeared just as elitist and restrictive–if not more so–than the oldbakufu had been. It too failed to reflect their convictions that a new

21 Such considerations have led Eiko Ikegami to see the Meiji debate on k�gi

yoron as merely an insincere strategy by the new government to hold together theanti-bakufu forces. See her chapter, “Citizenship and National Identity in Early MeijiJapan, 1868-1889,” in Charles Tilly, ed., Citizenship, Identity and Social History,International Review of Social History Supplement 3, (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995): 185-221.

22 On the history of the “Division/Office/Ministry of Rites,” see James E. Ketellar,Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), esp., 8, 66-7. There is scant consistency inEnglish translations of early Meiji political institutions such as the “SevenDepartments and the Eight Offices” (Shichika, Hakkyoku). Ketelaaar, for example,prefers the “Seven Divisions and Eight Offices.” I have followed the terms used inthe K�dansha Encyclopedia of Japan (Tokyo & New York: K�dansha, 1983).

CHAPTER TWO50

system was needed, not merely to enshrine the emperor, but to enable“new talent” to rise to the fore from within a broader concept of the“public.”

With the proclamation of the Charter Oath on 06 April, theprinciple of public consultation received the full authority of theemperor himself. The first of the five articles in the Oath stated that“deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all mattersdecided by public discussion.”23 The Charter Oath was of coursedesigned in part to allay concerns of the Western Powers that the newgovernment might not be “enlightened” and might condone the spateof attacks on foreigners in Japan that had escalated through the 1860sunder the cry of sonn� j�i. But domestic affairs were even morepressing on the restoration leaders’ minds, and the Charter Oath wasalso meant to curry favor with the daimyo, by suggesting that, on theeve of a full-scale military attack on Edo castle, the new governmentwould be open to them. In this fluid period of crisis, the leaders of thenew government could scarcely afford to alienate powerful militarycenters like the daimyo.24 The phrase “public discussion” (k�ron) wasadded to the Charter Oath by Fukuoka Takachika (K�tei) of Tosa,who incorporating the Tosa plan for “public consultation” into hisdraft. The Oath had a difficult balancing act to perform: satisfyingnot only the Western Powers and potentially dangerous daimyo, butalso reassuring the court nobles who had grown concerned—notunreasonably—that this emphasis on “public consultation” wasdirected against them as a check on their newly acquired power. Thedifficult task of reconciling these differences was left to Kido, whosimply added the diplomatically ambiguous phrase “conferenceswould be held widely” (hiroku kaigi o okoshi) without specifyingwhich groups would be included or excluded when these conferenceswere held.25

Backed by the authority of the Charter Oath, influential samuraiand their court allies sought a solution to these emerging politicaltensions in a broader concept of government that would reflect thisnew understanding of “the public.” The idea for a different political

23 “The Charter Oath,” in Ry�saku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore De Bary, and Donald

Keene, eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition volume II, (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1964), 136-7.

24. Yamazaki Y�k�, “‘K�gi’ y�shutsu kik� no keisei to h�kai: k�gisho to sh�giin,”in It� Takashi, ed., Nihon kindaishi no sai-k�chiku (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha,1993): 49-76, at 55.

25 Sakamoto, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 55-60.


system, the Daj�kan (“Grand Council of State”), originated withFukuoka and Soejima Taneomi (Hizen) who sought to expand theinfluence of non-nobles in the government. Soejima and Fukuokaenvisioned a Western inspired “three branches of government”divided between the legislative, executive and judiciary branches,and this vision was incorporated into the Seitaisho (“the Constitutionof 1868”) which was made public by the government on 21 April asthe outline for their re-organization under the Daj�kan that went intoeffect on 27 April. The Seitaisho opened by restating the CharterOath, re-emphasizing what appeared to be the emperor’s owncommitment to this new notion of “public consultation.” In keepingwith this principle of broader political inclusion, power was muchmore diffused under the Daj�kan than it had been under the initialpost-Restoration settlement.

Although often called a “constitution” in English, the Seitaisho isbest considered a working memorandum for several competinggroups with de facto power over how their authority would beallocated in the immediate future. Japan was still far from having astate, and the Seitaisho did not carry anything like the legal or publicauthority of a modern national constitution. But even in name, thedocument itself echoed the “debates over a government based onpublic consultation” (k�gi seitai ron), and indeed it tried toincorporate these arguments for a broader “public” form ofgovernment than what had been accomplished under PrinceArisugawa’s first political structure. The Seitaisho moved govern-ment closer towards a pluralistic political system than the earliersystem of “Departments and Offices.” It invested this pluralism in theDaj�kan, the political structure that would survive as the governingapparatus of Japan until 1885, when It� Hirobumi’s “cabinet” systemprepared the way for the constitutional Meiji state. The Seitaishoreflected a growing consensus among those who held power thatmodern Japan could not survive as a government of courtiers whoserved only the Court, and it even secured imperial legitimacy for thedemands to open the corridors of power to new talent outsidetraditional channels of authority and hierarchy.

In this limited sense, the Seitaisho worked as a solution to thenational tensions opened up by the Restoration. The most salientcharacteristic in the Daj�kan was the rise in political influence of theyoung samurai and the relative marginalization of the conservatives,courtiers and their daimyo supporters who had tried to control thefirst incarnation of the new government. The executive branch wasrepresented by the Gy�seikan, which was headed by two co-equal

CHAPTER TWO52

imperial “advisors,” Sanj� and Iwakura Tomomi. This division ofexecutive authority between two offices was a direct repudiation ofPrince Arisugawa and his attempt to act as the sole executive of thegovernment. Prince Arisugawa, in fact, was denied a major positionof responsibility in the first Daj�kan. Ironically, the principle of“public consultation,” which had emerged as a criticism of the bakufu,had outlived the bakufu only to challenge the influence of anti-bakufuconservatives like Prince Arisugawa in the new government. Theofficial rationale for the reform of the executive branch was that onlythe emperor himself could claim the position of sole head of thegovernment, but the real purpose was to open government to moreparticipants, especially from outside the court. Although courtiersthemselves, Sanj� and Iwakura had worked closely with the leadersof the Satsuma and Ch�sh� activists and enjoyed their trust. But theywere also respected by conservative forces in the court, who wereconfident that Sanj� could control the more radical calls for openingthe country to the influence of the West and introducing a more“public” centered form of government. Thus, they played a valuablerole in keeping the anti-bakufu coalition of court and daimyo togetherduring the crucial early days of the new government, even while theyused their influence to bring more of the restorationist samurai topositions of influence in the Daj�kan.

It was mainly through the legislative branch (Giseikan) thatsamurai influence found access to power in the new government.The legislative branch was bicameral. The Upper House (J�kyoku)was composed of members (gij�) appointed from the nobility and thedaimyo as well as counselors (sanyo) appointed from nobles, daimyo,elites, samurai and commoners. The Lower House (Gekyoku) wascomposed of members (k�shi) sent from the various domains as theirrepresentatives. The design was a marked improvement in thedirection of expanding public consultation in the new government.This tenuous balance of power envisioned in Soejima and Fukuoka’splan did not last long, however, as the legislative branch wasabolished by 1 August (a brief attempt to resurrect it in the followingApril quickly failed) and some gij� and sanyo began to infiltrate theexecutive branch. By then, the legislative branch had served itspurpose. While it fell short of a true, elected legislature, it hadprovided a means of distancing conservative daimyo from the policycenters of the Daj�kan. Real power lay with Sanj� and Iwakura in theGy�seikan, and with their assistance, Soejima, Got�, Maebara Isseiand later �kubo, Kido, It� Hirobumi and �kuma Shigenobu wereable to rise to positions of influence. In its short life, the Giseikan


provided a useful mechanism through which to identify talented menwith a new vision for Japan who were then placed in positions ofresponsibility for the ministries and many of the main functions ofthe new government.

Historians often describe the Giseikan as “feudal” and attribute itsfailure to this allegedly “feudal” nature. What such allegations reflectis the predominance of conservatives in the Giseikan, especially inthe upper house where the interests of the daimyo and conservativecourtiers were concentrated. But the Giseikan was no feudalinstitution: it was inspired by American political institutions andfunctioned ironically to support the more progressive leaders of theRestoration by providing a relatively inconsequential place to housedefenders of the old decentralized order while the Daj�kan’sexecutive branch moved forward in a new direction. Yet, while thisploy kept hopes for a truly national Japanese state safe from theforces of decentralization, it did so at a considerable cost. Thiscynical manipulation of Japan’s first deliberative assembly left anegative legacy which compromised the effective function oflegislatures later in Japanese history, as the function of a legislaturewas seen from its very inception to be to house radicals and critics,but not to serve as the repository of a responsible government. Fromthis discourse on “consulting the public,” government leaders cameto expect the legislature to serve merely as the representatives ofpublic opinion and not to play a key role in drafting laws or forminggovernments. This diminished expectation was internalized by manylegislators themselves, beginning with the disillusioned daimyo andconservative courtiers in the Giseikan, who saw their mission aschastising the government in the name of “public opinion” ratherthan working with the government to resolve public issues. Theirgrounds for dissatisfaction with the new government were many, butit soon became clear that the Giseikan was providing a centralizedplace where their opposition to the government was becomingunified. The government responded by ordering the first legislativebody in Japanese history to be closed down.

With the closing of the Giseikan, supporters of “k�gi seitai”petitioned the government for the re-opening of an assembly,emphasizing that the government needed a broader base of support tosurvive at this critical transitional time. Akizuki Tanetatsu, who hadbeen the President of the Lower House before it was closed,submitted a petition on 10 September 1868 beseeching thegovernment to recognize the value of the Lower House. His petitionwas supported by san’yo �ki Takat�, who added that the government

CHAPTER TWO54

should restore the assembly since “public deliberation wasindispensable…and we should establish a true assembly which wouldserve as the foundation for the state.”26 Influenced by thesearguments, the government decided to reopen the assembly on 21September. Support for the idea of a government responsive to thepublic, or at least support for an assembly where public opinionwould be debated and expressed, was widespread among members ofthe government, although various factions had their own reasons, anddegree of support, for such an assembly.27

Consequently, thegovernment also established the Giji Taisai Torishirabesho on 19November to ensure that the new assembly would function in amanner supportive of the government’s course of action.

What they got instead was the most powerful concentration of thek�gi seitai ron faction yet seen, along with a growing consensusagainst the Westernization policies of the new government, whichwere seen as elitist and contrary to the interests of the “public.” ThePresident of the Giji Taisai Torishirabesho was gij� YamanouchiToyoshige, the head of the k�gi taisei movement, and his Vice-President was his close friend Akizuki Tanetatsu. They were joinedby san’yo Fukuoka, who had inserted the “public deliberation” clausein the Charter Oath, and �ki Takato, Mori Arinori, Kat� Hiroyuki,Tsuda Mamichi, and Kanda K�hei. Together, they were able to passthe K�gisho h�sokuan, Japan’s first law establishing a nationallegislature. Under the authority of this law, the K�gisho building wascompleted on 6 December 1868 and the assembly opened session on01 April of the following year, with 227 representatives (k�ginin)selected from the various domains.

26 “�ki Takat� monjo,” Kokuritsu kokkai toshokan kensei shiry�shitsu z�, cited

in Yamazaki, 60.27 Yamazaki Y�k� offers a nuanced analysis of the different groups in early Meiji

politics and their reasons for supporting some form of “public consultation.” Hedivides the political support for “k�gi” into seven groups: (1) those for whom itmeant an assembly of daimyo to push through rapid Westernization (Yamanouchi,Akizuki, Kat_ Hiroyuki); (2) those committed to an assembly of daimyo, but whofavored gradual Westernization (Fukuoka); (3) those seriously committed to abroader concept of the public who favored rapid Westernization (It� Hirobumi,�kuma Shigenobu, Inoue Kaoru); (4) those committed to this broader concept of thepublic, but who favored gradual Westernization (Kido Takayoshi, �ki Takat�); (5)those whose support for “public consultation” was superficial and who were anti-Westernization (Iwakura, Sanj�, Fukushima); (6) those whose support for “publicconsultation was also superficial, but who favored gradual Westernization (�kubo);(7) those for whom it meant an assembly of daimyo and who were anti-Western(staff of the K�gisho). See Yamazaki, “‘K�gi’ y�shutsu kik� no keisei to h�kai,” 66.


Drawing on a mixture of Dutch, English and American models,the K�gisho was an eclectic assembly to which representatives wereselected from each domain for four year terms, with half themembership up for election every two years. Yamanouchi andAkizuki may have been favorably disposed towards opening thecountry to the West and towards the general direction ofWesternization, but the majority of the representatives in the K�gishowere of an altogether different frame of mind. Among the billsrejected by the representatives was a law on establishing tradingrelations with foreign countries; strong opinions were voiced againstallowing foreigners to serve in the new government; and a resolutionin favor of persecuting Christianity was passed with overwhelmingsupport.28

These sentiments suggest the depth of nativist sentiment inearly Meiji society, but also that this nativism was something thegovernment could neither easily control nor overlook. Sincemembers of the K�gisho were elected as representatives of theirdomains, the K�gisho tended to function as an institutionalizedexpression of domainal interests within the new government. Ratherthan expressing the will of the people conceived as a national body,samurai sent from their domain to serve in the K�gisho adopted avariety of strategies that frustrated the new government’s efforts atestablishing a centralized approach to political or social reform.

These domainal representatives were not simply functioning aslocal representatives in a healthy democratic national legislature.They were in fact trying to assert their traditional domainal interestsover and above national, and certainly popular, interests. One of themost important of their strategies in the K�gisho involved a debateover the very existence of domains in the nation’s emerging newpolitical system. This debate was sparked in the early days of theK�gisho, when on 06 April Mori Arinori presented a memorandum toAkizuki on “Four Problems in Understanding the National Polity.”Essentially, Mori’s memorandum raised the question of whetherJapan should adopt a federalist (h�ken) or centralized (gunken)system of government, with the implication that the K�gishorepresentatives had to cooperate by convincing their domainal leadersthat political centralization was the only realistic option for Japan.Akizuki presented the issue in the form of a draft bill, and discussionon the bill proceeded for the next month. Opinions ranged widely,and surprisingly there appeared to be a large measure of support for

28 Yamazaki, “‘K�gi’ y�shutsu kik� no keisei to h�kai,” 68.

CHAPTER TWO56

the centralized system of government: of the 212 domainsrepresented in the K�gisho, 102 domains supported, in one fashion oranother, this proposal for a centralized government that would at thevery least compromise the wide-ranging local authority that domainalleaders had become accustomed to enjoy.

Closer analysis, however, reveals that the domains were merelysearching for a means of survival within what were clearly prevailingwinds blowing against local autonomy or even federalism. AsKatsuta Masaharu’s careful analysis reveals, those 102 domains thatspoke in favor of gunken can be divided into two groups. Only fortydomains strongly supported the proposal, including its provisions forpublic confiscation of their private lands, to have “governors” (chifuji,chikenji) appointed and to move the former daimyo to Tokyo. Buteven these most supportive domains insisted on a compromise clausethat, for the time being, the governors would remain the formerdaimyo or their representatives. Although this group comprised onlyforty of the 102 domains in support of centralization, three largedomains (Kanazawa, Wakayama and Hiroshima) were included,suggesting that their support was a compromise measure designed toseek access to political influence in the emerging new government.The remaining sixty domains adopted a position Katsuta calls“formalistic” support of centralization, since they tried to limit theimpact of gunken to a name change: large domains would be called fuand smaller domains would be called ken, but the land and positionof governor would remain the hereditary property of the daimyo-governors.29

In short, there were–as one would expect–actually fewdomainal representatives in the K�gisho who were in favor of theDaj�kan’s proposal to move towards a centralized national state.Nonetheless, Mori’s proposal and the subsequent debate over gunkenin the K�gisho were instrumental in preparing the ground for theeventual abolishment of the domains and a re-configuring of what“public” would mean in modern Japan.

The final defeat of supporters of “public consultation” began tounfold in mid-1869 and reached a crescendo in late 1870. Given thekind of bills that were and were not being passed in the K�gisho,leaders in the Daj�kan resolved to take effective measures to ensurethat their nation-state building project would not be undermined.Sanj� was the first to raise the issue. In a letter to Iwakura Tomomihe pressed for a reform of the legislature, noting that “what has men

29 Katsuta Masaharu, Haikan chiken: “Meiji kokka” ga umareta hi (Tokyo:

K�dansha, 2000), 68-70.


with a sense of purpose today in an uproar is when those of positionbecome enamored with Western things and, falling victim to Westernvices, lose themselves in wine, women and luxury.”30 Sanj�’s attemptto paint his political opponents as cosmopolitan fops and thereforeless nationalistic than those who supported centralization would seem,at first glance, to support the conclusions of those historians whoportray the government reforms that followed as conservativecounterattacks on the liberal, Westernized members of thelegislature.31 But this interpretation, shaped by later conservativeattacks on the Imperial Diet in the early twentieth century, does notdo justice to the complicated situation facing the Daj�kan during thefirst years of the Meiji period.

As we have seen, members of the K�gisho were, if anything, evenmore anti-Western than Sanj� and Iwakura were. The reorganizationof government that followed on July 8 did indeed remove the currentPresident of the K�gisho Kanda K�hei and Vice-President MoriArinori and replace them with courtiers �hara Shigetoku and AnnoKinzane. But it also changed the name of legislature from theK�gisho (Place of Public Debate) to the Sh�giin (Institute forCollective Debate), thus rendering null any explicit connectionbetween the legislature and the Charter Oath’s promise to “consultthe public”. This change in name was not trivial: it was clearly anattack on members of the k�gi seitairon faction who, led byYamanouchi, had tried to turn the legislature into their own politicalbase for challenging the Daj�kan and its efforts at building acentralized state. Even this reform was not sufficient, however, toconvert their opposition to one loyal to the new centralizinggovernment, and the Sh�giin was forced to close on 10 September1870.

At stake was both principle and political interest. The differencesbetween Yamanouchi’s “consult the public” faction and Iwakura’sfaction were less over the principle that the new government shouldbe responsive to the public than they were over what this sense of“public” (k�) signified. Iwakura was more inclined toward this newconcept of the public being served best by a central governmentresponsive to national public opinion while Yamanouchi’s was afaction of assorted domainal interests who merely used this concept

30 “Iwakura Tomomi monjo,” Kokuritsu kokkai toshokan kensei shiry�shitsu z�;

cited in Yamazaki, 70.31 Cf. Kasahara Hidehiko, Meiji kokka to kanry�sei (Tokyo: Asahi Shob�, 1991).

CHAPTER TWO58

of “public” both to keep the Daj�kan off balance and to reassert thetraditional role of daimyo as the only “public” that mattered.32 ForYamanouchi’s faction, “‘k�ron’ really signified the will of thedomains, and the K�gisho was the institutionalization of that will [notthe people’s will].”33 At the very least, Iwakura and �kubo sought toimplement a new national form of politics, while Yamanouchi’sfaction represented more conservative forces that still held out hopefor some sort of daimyo federation, if not for a direct restoration ofancient monarchy. But �kubo and Iwakura were also aware thatYamanouchi’s faction had a powerful weapon in this politicalstruggle against them: they had a strong claim, through their traditionof supporting the principle of k�gi seitai, to having removed thebakufu and to being the true representatives of “the people.”Moreover, �kubo and Iwakura knew that Yamanouchi was notaverse to using this ideological weapon against the Daj�kan’s movetoward creating a centralized state. In spite of promises that openingup public debate was linked to selecting “talent”, Yamanouchi’sfaction represented a kind of “talent” that had little value to theDaj�kan, as it sought to build a modern nation-state that wouldnecessarily, in some fashion, incorporate the nationalist principle thatall politics ultimately was about “the people.”

Simply abolishing the Sh�giin certainly could not settle the issue.Participation in these earlier assemblies had exposed representativesof the domains to a wider range of political concepts and strategies,and they had begun to forge new alliances that would be useful intheir continued attacks on the Daj�kan. Even as the domains, throughtheir representatives in the K�gisho, sought to monopolize thediscourse on “consulting the public” as a critique of the Daj�kan,they found themselves wrapped up in the complications of actualpublic deliberations that brought to the fore differing interests amongthe domains. Larger domains sought strategies of self-preservationthat were designed to maintain their relative advantages over smallerdomains, while trying to check the power of Satsuma and Ch�sh� inthe Daj�kan; smaller domains in turn looked to Daj�kan policies in

32 Yamazaki Y�k�, “‘K�gi’ y�shutsu kik� no keisei to h�kai: k�gisho to sh�giin,”

54. Indeed, �kubo and Iwakura had been committed to a more revolutionaryapproach to Japanese politics from the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, whenYamanouchi and Got� Sh�jir� were still trying to mute the revolutionary impact ofthe Restoration by keeping the Tokugawa Shogunate centrally involved in thepolitical reform. See Katsuta Masaharu, Haihan chiken, esp., 20-22.

33 Katsuta, Haihan chiken, 66.


their efforts to find leverage against the larger domains. The politicsbehind the abolishment of the domains was a far more complicatedaffair than binary oppositions between pro- and anti-governmentstruggles or simplistic assertions that the movement to abolish thedomains was the result of a spontaneous social movement.34 Newideologies of nationalism and social equality played influential roles,as did the new context of a national public space where these ideasnow circulated. Yet, ideas in early Meiji, as always, proved difficultto control, and often resulted in unforeseen consequences.

One example of these unforeseen consequences is the way thatideas of social equality, public deliberation, and national government(which were mobilized by the larger domains that sought to contestthe hegemony of Satsuma and Ch�sh�) were eventually employed bythe Daj�kan in order to abolish all the domains. But first these ideashad to travel a rather circuitous path. One might pick up the trail inApril 1871, when a group of six large domains (Kumamoto,Tokushima, Hikone, Fukui, Yonezawa and Tosa) came togetherunder Itagaki Taisuke’s leadership to promote domainal reform. This“Tosa Federation” was the result of discussions between MiyajimaSeiichir� of Yonezawa and Itagaki and was an attempt to replace theforum daimyo recently had enjoyed in the K�gisho and Sh�giin.Miyajima had been impressed by Tosa’s own internal reforms, andhe filed a request in the fifth month of 1871 with the Daj�kan foradvice on adopting a law on commuting samurai stipends to bonds,as Tosa had already done. In his request, he made an explicitconnection to the principle of “the equality of the four peoples”(shimin heikin). Similarly, Itagaki led the Tosa Federation in callingfor a return to formal deliberations among domainal representativesas a means of public debate throughout the land (tenka k�ron). Headded that such public deliberations would undermine attempts bydomains like Satsuma to assert that governance was their own privateright. Finally, Tokugawa Yoshikatsu, governor of Nagoya domain,submitted a memorandum to the Daj�kan that outlined five policiesneeded for national unification of the political system: unification ofthe school system, selection of talented personnel (jinsai t�y�),consolidation of military authority, a system of one governor for eachstate, and equalization of the nobility’s stipends. The proposal even

34 For two examples of recent historical studies that have, in different ways,

located the haihan movement as an internal struggle within the government, seeSakamoto, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 74-109 and Katsuta, Haihan chiken, esp. 5-14.

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went so far as to suggest that the very existence of the domainsfractured both the people and political systems, and it thereforeencouraged the adoption of a state system (sh�sei) as a means ofimplementing a truly national (popular) government.35

Political opponents of centralization were, in effect, cynicallyemploying the ideas of the new nationalizing government againstitself. Kido had been advocating abolishing the domains as early as1868, and he was able to convince his own daimyo, M�ri Takachikaof Ch�sh�, to take the first step in returning his domainal register bypointing out the advantages of abolishing the domains as politicalunits. Kido’s main argument was that so long as the domains existedthe Court would be able to control national politics by playing offSatsuma and Ch�sh� against each other.36 In contrast, Itagaki, asleader of a federation of anti-government domains that was nowadvocating abolishing domains, had spearheaded reforms in his owndomain of Tosa, including a reluctant agreement to disband thesamurai as a class, only in order to preserve the existence of thedomain.37 It was by no means certain that Itagaki’s Tosa Federationactually intended to abolish all domains (including themselves), andthere were good reasons for Daj�kan officials to regard these calls toabolish the domains as an invitation to political disaster. But theinvitation was a double-edged sword. Once these domains hadcommitted themselves publicly to a policy of abolishing the domains,they would find it nearly impossible to withdraw that commitmentlater.

The Daj�kan’s immediate response was tempered. Iwakura had�kuma draft an official reply that signaled the Daj�kan’s agreementwith the proposal for domainal abolishment put forth by the largedomains, while reinforcing the point that it was the centralgovernment’s responsibility to formulate national political reformsand the domain’s duty to carryout governmental plans. But beyondthat statement, the Daj�kan showed little inclination to rashly acceptthis invitation to court immediate disaster by quickly attempting toabolish the domains.38

Such a move would have been risky indeed,since the Daj�kan had no direct command over any armed force tobackup its policies. The first order of business then was to putsubstance behind the government, and this was done in February1871 through the formation of an Imperial Guard formed by

35 Katsuta, Haihan chiken, 122-4.36 Sakamoto, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 81-83.37 Katsuta, Haihan chiken, 110.38 Katsuta, Haihan chiken, 125-6.


volunteers from the troops in Kagoshima, Yamaguchi and K�chi.With these 8,000 samurai, under the direct control of the Daj�kanand stationed in Tokyo, proponents for centralization now had somemuscle behind their policies.39

The Daj�kan began to act more assertively against the domainsafter a July meeting between Yamagata, Torio Koyata and NomuraYasushi of Ch�sh�. Torio and Nomura successfully pressedYamagata to agree to move towards gunken, or centralizedgovernment. Subsequently, Yamagata persuaded Saig� Takamori tosupport the plan, while Nomura and Torio worked on KidoTakayoshi through the intervention of Inoue Kaoru, who had beenpersuaded through a threat against his life.40

With Kido, Saig� andOkub�’s support, Sanj� went to the Court and received an imperialrescript which he read on 14 July to fifty six daimyo, informing themthat they were to surrender their registers of land and people to theCourt. With this act, the vestiges of the old decentralized politicalsystem were swept away, and the foundations for the new system ofweak prefectures and a strong central government were quickly laid.But, as Katsuta Masaharu has described it, this was a governmentalre-structuring that was carried out through “force”, and one which nolonger needed to pay any heed to the domains under the pretext of“public discussion.”41

As we have seen, the dissolution of the baku-han system waspossible only because both the pro-baku-han system and the anti-bakufu restorationists shared a commitment to the principle of a moreexpansive concept of “the public” as the source of politicallegitimacy. But even as the new government sought to restructure agovernment that would reflect that broad commitment to “publicdeliberations,” differences among the anti-bakufu forces emerged andwere not easily reconciled. Ultimately, the new government began totake shape through measures designed to move forward towards acentralized state. Yet, it was the heavy-handed way in which this

39 Katsuta, Haihan chiken, 127-40; Kat� Y�k�, Ch�hei-sei to kindai Nihon.

(Tokyo: Yoshikawa K�bunkan, 1996). Kat�, however, argues that the rise of theImperial Guards should be seen as a substitution of �mura Masajir�’s plan thatsought to establish, with the support of the Sh�giin and the Hy�bush�, a conscriptarmy as part of a true, nationalizing reform of the social estates into a single kokumin._mura’s assassination by conservative samurai in 1869 abrogated that plan, however,conservative samurai influence dominated in the Imperial Guard that Yamagataimplemented instead of �mura’s conscript army (40-41).

40 Katsuta, Haihan chiken, 152.41 Katsuta, Haihan chiken, 156.

CHAPTER TWO62

course was followed that alienated many of the former restorationistsand drove many of those committed to “public deliberations” fromthe new government order. The most immediate consequences werespectacular. Within a few years, senior members of the government,often those who had advocated “consulting the public, “began toleave the government and in some cases took up arms in rebellion.Et� Shimpei, who in 1874 had joined with Itagaki in presenting apetition to the Sa-in calling for a legislature elected by the people, ledsamurai back in Saga in armed revolt. Two years later, Maebara Isseiled a similar group of disguntled samurai in revolt in Hagi. And inthe most serious of these revolts, Saig� himself was persuaded to leadan army of 25,000 samurai in a vain effort to resist the newgovernment. Various causes have been ascribed to these revolts:erosions of the samurai class, the emergence of a new conscript army,and especially the rejection of plans to invade Korea. All thesefactors played a role. But we must not lose sight of the fact that manyof these rebels were embroiled in the movement that intoned themantra, “consult the public”, by which of course they meantthemselves. They lost that debate with the new government, but theeffects of that debate continued to shape the contours of what themodern Japanese nation would look like, long before the state wascodified by a constitution at the end of the 1880s.

Intellectuals and political activists of this period, men as diverseas Et� Shimpei, Mitsukuri Rinsh�, Nakae Ch�min, �i Kentar�, andMiyazaki Mury�, were often motivated by a sense that the Meijigovernment was betraying their own nationalist aspirations. Many ofthem were associated with the Tosa domain, the source of much ofthe public theory during bakumatsu and early Meiji and, especiallyafter 1874, a hotbed of “people’s rights” activities against the Meijigovernment. Some turned to French political theory, because theysaw it as espousing a particular form of Republican nationalism thatseemed to provide the necessary framework for strengthening the“consult the public” discourse which had been rejected by thegovernment. The impact of French political theory in early MeijiJapan was not univocal, however, but applied in a variety of ways tosuit different national objectives.

Building a Japanese Nation through French Political Theory

The years from 1874 to the Meiji Constitution of 1889 provide awonderfully rich milieu for exploring the range of possibilities forhow the modern Japanese nation might take shape. Tetsuo Najita has


emphazed the political rather than ideological conflict during the1870s, arguing that it was the decade of the 1880s when politicalconflict turned ideological, especially in disputes over the shape ofthe impending constitution.42 As a general outline, and especially asan explanation of how revolutionary sentiment was quelled in theearly Meiji years, his analysis is quite compelling. Yet, beginning inthe 1870s, a variety of new political theories were presented andcontested, and by the middle of the 1880s some already had emergeddominant while others had been pushed to the margins. This periodof experimentation reached a watershed with the Meiji Constitutionof 1889, which found an initial and powerful resolution of thequestion of the “public” in Prussian theories of constitutionalmonarchy which codified citizens as subjects and which reduced thechallenges of the public to a matter of public law taking priority overcivil law. As the result of two decades of sometimes violent clashesover the form the new society should take, the Meiji Constitutionshould be kept in mind when exploring the various aspects of civilsociety in the early Meiji period–the Freedom and People’s RightsMovement, journalists’ critiques of the government, political partyformations, etc. Rather than seeing the first two decades of Meiji astwo distinct stages–the political and military struggles of the 1870sgiving way to the constitutional struggles of the 1880s--we mightalso see the entire period prior to the promulgation of the MeijiConstitution as a continuous struggle over which theoretical modelswould be used to resolve the challenges of “public consultation” andthus the question whether, in the new political order, the nationwould take precedence over the state.

The 1870s was a time when the goal of Japan emerging as a truenation seemed most attainable and when the hopes for building ademocratic national society were most palpable. Hanging in thebalance was the question of how much autonomy society would havefrom the state, and how strongly democratic values would besupported by the new social order. The question of society raisedduring these first two decades of Meiji Japan was an extremelyserious one, since until the constitutional question was settled and themodern state took form with the Imperial Diet and other institutionalappendages, concepts of society could and at times did function as

42 Tetsuo Najita, Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese

Politics, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 78.

CHAPTER TWO64

replacements and supplements for concepts of the nation.43 Socialdefinitions were often inextricable from national definitions in thisperiod when nation and state in Japan were still open questions.Further, how these concepts eventually were resolved must beunderstood in the context of the social, intellectual and politicaldevelopments of the entire pre-constitutional period. FollowingFukuzawa Yukichi, one might even suggest that until 1889, MeijiJapan was at best a society with an fledgling government, but not yeta state or even a nation.

Two translators of French theory in the 1870s reveal how theeffects of this effort to understand the meaning of society led todifferent kinds of nationalist visions, even among those who sharedan oppositional stance to the new government. The first, MitsukuriRinsh� (1846-97), was a member of what Yamamuro Shin’ichi hascalled the “legal bureaucrats” and has even been called theMontesquieu of Japan.44 He worked on translating French legal codes,particularly in the area of civil law. The second, Miyazaki Mury�(1855-1889), was a translator, journalist, and writer of “politicalnovels,” and was connected with the Freedom and People’s RightsMovement. In short, each represents one of the major groups of Meijipublic intellectuals, legal bureaucrats and journalists, whom we areoften told played active roles in fostering the values of civil society inMeiji Japan.45 A comparison of their use of French social andpolitical theories not only will demonstrate certain commontendencies within the French faction, but also should allow us to testthe impact of Montesquieu’s approach to civil society in MeijiJapanese nation building.

43 John Breuilly’s clarification of how the state-society relationship is addressed

by nationalist theories is especially relevant here. See his Nationalism and the State2nd Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994): 54-71.

44 Yokose Fumihiko, Hy�ron shimbun, no. 40; cited by Yamamuro Shin’ichi,“Mitsukuri Rinsh� to Kawazu Sukeyuki,” 297-314 in H�sei daigaku daigaku shiry�iindai,ed., H�ritsugaku no yoake to h�sei daigaku (Tokyo: H�sei Daigaku, 1992):302.

45 On “legal bureaucrats” in the formation of civil society, see YamamuroShin’ichi, H�sei kanry� no jidai: kokka no sekkei to chi no rekitei (Tokyo:Bokutakusha, 1984). On journalists as the main advocates of civil society, IgarashiAkio, Meiji ishin no shis� (Tokyo: Seori Shob�, 1996): 226-242. Kyu-hyun Kim, in“The State, Civil Society and Public Discourse in Early Meiji Japan:Parliamentarianism in Ascendancy, 1868-1884” (Harvard Ph.D. diss., 1996), arguesthat journalists and legal bureaucrats were joined by defense lawyers as the mainforces for civil society in Meiji Japan (100-106).


It is important to bear in mind that the categorization of Japanesesocial thought into such distinct national “factions” (eg., “German”“French”) can merely obscure common patterns that these various“factions” shared, and which can be attributed not to nationaldistinctiveness in Western approaches to social theory, but to thespecific nationalist needs of post-Restoration Japanese society. Here,the central issue is not the theoretical question of the possibility oftranslation itself-establishing the equivalance or nonequivalence ofdifferent national languages or cultures–or in the nuances between“translation”and “translingual practices.” Unquestionably, we mustremember that these translations of “society” were always shaped bydomestic considerations within Japan, and not merely questions ofthe technical ability of early Meiji Japanese to “get it right” when itcame to understanding Western social theories, or the problem ofnations and democracy. The results of this bold engagement withWestern theories of society and social structure tell us less about ageneral theory of cultural translation than they do about the socialand political divisions that surrounded the construction of nation andsociety in early Meiji Japan. And, as I will argue, the value of atheory of civil society in thinking about Meiji Japan is intricatelyinterwoven with our understanding of the social and political contextof that time period. To focus on civil society as a method of inquiryinto the conditions of democratic life opens up ways of thinkingbeyond essential “singularities” and towards the specific practicesthat determine the ethical and democratic nature of societies, andhence nations.

I. Mitsukuri Rinsh� and the Legal Theory of “Minken”

Mitsukuri Rinsh� represents an important example of how social andlegal theory combined in the early Meiji years to present a strongcase for a republican nationalism along the lines suggested byMontesquieu. His attempt to define Meiji society through translationsof French civil codes, and his belief that a civil code was at least asimportant as the public law of the constitution, can be seen aspowerful attempts to shape the newly emerging nation in thedirection of citizenship and popular democracy. That his viewseventually did not prevail is less important than how his voicemingled with others in laying the foundation for a sharp division inmodern Japanese political discourse between “the people” and “thestate.” His contribution went well beyond his translation of legalcodes to influence many populist critics of the Meiji state, even after

CHAPTER TWO66

Mitsukuri himself had thrown his lot in with the new state. Touncover his significance in the emergence of modern Japanesenationalism, and the unintended consequences of his contribution tolegal theory, we need to pay close attention to his social world, aswell as to his intellectual work.

Unlike many others involved in French social theory in earlyMeiji Japan, Mitsukuri was not from Saga domain. Born in Edo inthe Tsuyama yashiki in 1846, he followed his grandfather Genbo, acartographer and scholar of Dutch Studies in the bakufu’s Institute onBarbarian Studies. Interest in civil law grew out of these DutchStudies specialists, and the first serious attempt to translate Europeancivil codes was begun by Tsuda Mamichi (1829-1903), a student ofGenbo, who went to the University of Leiden in 1862 where “hediscovered the existence of private or civil law-law concerned withcitizens’ rights over and against each other and the state.”46 It wasTsuda who coined the term minp�, which became the standardtranslation for “civil code” in Japanese.47

The turn from Dutch to French civil codes began in March 1867,when Mitsukuri was ordered to join Tokugawa Akitake (1853-1910)on a Friendship Mission to the West, including to the Paris WorldExhibition. Akitake (1853-1910) was not only the younger brotherof the Shogun Keiki; he was also vice-minister of the Minbu, or the“Department of the People.”48 Akitake’s mission resulted in anincreased interest in French Civil Code, largely through the influenceof Kurimoto Joun (1822-97), the Japanese ambassador to France anda strong advocate of the Code Napoléon.49 When the mission returnedto Japan in February 1868, Mitsukuri (not to mention TokugawaAkitake) found a new government awaiting him in Tokyo. The Meijigovernment, perhaps not trusting this former bakufu retainer with aclose tie to the Tokugawa elite, sent him off to Osaka as an officialtranslator. While in Osaka, Mitsukuri found time on the side to teachat a Western studies school (the Y�gaku densh�j�), while taking inseveral private students as well. Among his students were manyimportant luminaries in the People’s Rights Movement, including �iKentar� and Nakae Ch�min. Their enthusiasm for the French

46 Robert Epp, “The Challenge from Tradition: Attempts to Compile a Civil Code

in Japan, 1866-78,” Monumenta Nipponica, 22:1 (1967): 15-48, at 17.47 Epp, 18. Also, Richard H. Mitchell, Janus-Faced Justice: Political Criminals

in Imperial Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 7.48 Yoshii Tamio, “Kindai h�gaku no Mitsukuri Rinsh�” in Kindai nihon no kokka

keisei to h� (Nihon Hy�ronsha, 1996): 379-381.49 Epp, 18-19.


language surely was part of a general expectation that the Frenchconcept of a post-revolutionary, republican government, with anequal citizenry defined and protected by law, might be adopted by thenew Meiji government. Such hopes may appear today as utopian, butduring the early years of the Meiji government, they were a distinctpossibility. As Yamamuro Shin’ichi has noted, during the first yearsof the new government, when power was centralized in the Daj�kanin accordance with the April 1868 Seitaisho, the concept of the nationand of separation of powers employed by the new governmentresembled that of Abbe Sieyés who held that the nation is “a body ofassociates living under common laws and represented by the samelegislative assembly.”50 At this early state, before even theconstitutional sense of national identity (kokumin) was defined, letalone a sense of the Japanese people as an “ethnic nation” (minzoku),such a legally defined sense of the Japanese as a constitutional,democratic nation was still possible, and French civil codes seemed apromising avenue for exploring that enfranchisement of the ordinarypeople into the new, egalitarian nation.

Such hopes were soon dashed. On 26 May 1869 Soejima Taneomi(1828-1905), member of the Daj�kan, ordered Mitsukuri to beginrendering the French Penal Code into Japanese and the followingyear, the Code Napoléon.51 Mitsukuri was employed in the Bureau ofInstitutions, along with Soejima, Tsuda, Kat� Hiroyuki, and MoriArinori, and from then on he played a leading role in the translationof the Napoleonic Code and in advocating a civil code for the newJapanese nation. Apparently his work was not progressing quicklyenough for the Daj�kan. The following year, Et� Shimpei was put incharge of the Civil Code compilation committee, and he brought withhim his reputation for getting things done. Et� was most concernedwith the need for a civil code as part of Japan’s attempt, throughfukoku ky�hei, to achieve equality with the Western powers. Pushingalong the project, Et� reportedly ordered Mitsukuri, “Don’t botherabout mistranslations, just translate it quickly!”52

Et� neededsomething to show at the Daj�kan’s 1870 Civil Code Conference

50 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Meiji kokka no seido to rinen,” 115-148 in Iwanami

k�za nihon ts�shi vol. 17: kindai 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994): 127-8. I havetaken Sieyès’s quote from his “What is the Third Estate?” in Omar Dahbour andMicheline R. Ishay, eds., The Nationalism Reader (New Jersey: Humanities Press,1995): 35-37, at 37.

51 Mitchell, Janus-Faced Justice, 7-8.52 Et� Shimpei, quoted in Matano Hansuke, Et� Nampaku (Tokyo, 1914), II: 107;

cited in Epp, p.25, n.36.

CHAPTER TWO68

which he was to chair. At the conference, members of the Daj�kantook issue with Mitsukuri’s translation of the French droit civil asminken (“the people’s rights”). “What rights do the people have?”retorted an incensed Daj�kan member to Et�. Et� tried to convincethe members of the Daj�kan that the translation was not final, andthat Mitsukuri meant no threat to the public order.53 Here it isapparent that the issue at hand was not Mitsukuri’s accuracy intranslating French into Japanese, or even his grasp of the intricaciesof French civil law. Rather, Mitsukuri had, perhaps unintentionally,articulated a key issue–that of minken or people’s rights–that wouldemerge in subsequent years in struggles over the shape of the newnation.54 He had also tested the outer limits of permissible definitionsof society and nation in post-revolutionary Japan. Even as Mitsukurihimself returned to the technical problems of translating civil codes,he had articulated a concept of social inclusion and legal rights thatwould inform activists throughout the pre-constitutional Meiji period,from samurai rebels, to parliamentary movements, to advocates of“Freedom and People’s Rights.”

Reaction from the Daj�kan was swift. Mitsukuri was sent abroadfor further study in civil law codes. In 1871, the Bureau ofInstitutions (seido kyoku) that had overseen the project of compiling acivil code was dismantled and incorporated into the Left Chamber(Sa’in). In April 1872, the civil code complitation project was placedunder the immediate supervison of the Ministry of Justice (Law),headed by Et� Shinpei. Under Et�’s initiative, the codification ofcivil code progressed rapidly, yielding a nine volume, 1,185 article“Provisional Civil Code of the Imperial Government” by July 1872.In November 1873, however, advocates for a civil code were dealt asetback when Kido Takayoshi supported their adversaries whoinsisted that a constitution must precede the civil code, since civilcodes “are the offspring of the constitution, for the constitution is theroot of every part of the system of government and there is nonewhich does not take its rise from this.”55 Mitsukuri joined the MeijiSix Society, whose members generally agreed that society was at

53 �tsuki, Mitsukuri Rinsh� kunden (Tokyo: Maruzen Kabushiki Kaisha, 1907), p.

89; Yoshii Tamio, “Kindai h�gaku no Mitsukuri Rinsh�,” 384.54 Mitchell, 8. Mitchell also points out that Mitsukuri coined the term kenri

(rights), and he shows the impact this had on subsequent protest movements and onlegal thought.

55 Kido Takayoshi, quoted in McLaren, Japanese Government Documents; citedin Epp, p. 27.


least as important to the health of the nation as the state was. Et�reacted more strongly: he left the government and joined the Sagauprising, after which he was tried and executed. While manyhistorians have emphasized the debate over invading Korea(seikanron) in the 1873 crisis and in the Saga uprising, we should notforget that Et� was deeply involved in the civil code project, and thathis participation in the Saga uprising also stemmed from his despairover establishing a legal foundation for “the people“ in the emergingnew state.

After the Saga Uprising, the civil code project was placed underthe supervision of �ki Takat�, chief of the Justice Department.Gustave Emile Boissonade (1825-1910) was brought in as a technicaladvisor, and Mitsukuri continued on as compiler. But with thedecision already made in favor of public law over civil law, theproject of compiling a civil code had lost much of its promise forsocial change, as it was now clear that the compilation of a civil codewould not carry the potential for inscribing strong legal rights for thepeople over against the state. Mitsukuri remained with thegovernment (in spite of Fukuzawa Yukichi’s advice), and continuedhis work on the civil codes, completing his Draft of Civil Code (the“Mitsukuri Civil Code Draft”) in 1878. His timing could not havebeen worse. The government, having just survived the SatsumaRebellion, had little money or inclination to support the codificationof a civil code before public law (the constitution) was established, soMitsukuri’s Draft was never acted upon. With the establishment in1880 of the Civil Code Compilation bureau in the Senate, the job ofcompiling a civil code passed from the Ministry of Justice to theSenate, and Mitsukuri became an official (gikan) of the Senate.56

Mitsukuri’s official position within the Senate further underminedany residual hope for a civil code that would enshrine private rightsagainst the state. In 1886 the Civil Code Compilation Bureau wasabolished and, following Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru’s failure torevise the unequal treaties, the Civil Code Compilation task wastransfered to the Foreign Ministry. Mitsukuri was still on thecommittee in charge of the civil code. But his Civil Code wasapproved and implemented only on 1 January 1893, well after theconstitution was securely in place, and after Mitsukuri himself hadbeen made a member of the House of Peers. Any hopes that theNapoleonic Code or Montesquieu’s “spirit of law” might underwrite

56 Yoshii, 385.

CHAPTER TWO70

a republican form of nationalism in Meiji Japan had been betrayed bythe primacy placed on a Prussian approach to constitutionalmonarchy that had absorbed civil codes within the state and hadsubstituted for citizenship the emperor as transcendent of the socialand legal restrictions that Montesquieu had argued were necessary tomake monarchy compatible with democracy.

Mitsukuri’s efforts in articulating “droit civil” as minken had notended all efforts at republican nationalism in Meiji Japan, but he hadrevealed the limitations of Montesquieu’s legal approach to definingthe nation within the new order. Following the 1873 repudiation ofthe civil code by Kido Takayoshi, proponents of “people’s rights”began to turn from legal theories to political activism. In 1874 aMemorial on Establishing a Popularly Elected Assembly wassubmitted by members of the Tosa-based Patriots Society(Aikokusha) to the Left Chamber and, perhaps more importantly, waspublished in Nisshin Shinjishi newspaper, a newspaper whose criticalviews of the Meiji government were tolerated only because its editor,the Australian J.R. Black, was protected by extraterritoriality. TorioKoyata spoke for many conservatives who were outraged by this newconcept of popular rights:

Using the two characters min and ken [“people” and “rights”], thesepeople want to destroy the country’s order, violate political laws, andform parties and classes. Torio was certain that “this idea of minkenwill be used to justify the mob violence of later ages.”57

Along with this movement for popular empowerment through anelected assembly of the people came an increasing tendency toconceive of society in more populist, and totalizing, ways.

While the Tosa activists, many of whom were inspired byMitsukuri’s translations from French, argued for the inclusion ofsociety through a popularly elected (minsen) assembly, others drewsimilar lines of opposition between society and the government intheir efforts to cast the society in national terms. One importantinstance was Murota Mitsuyoshi’s 1875 translation of M. François

Guizot’s A History of Civilization in Europe, where Murotatranslated Guizot’s concept of “society” as minzoku, ( , oftenrendered today as “folk, or “ethnos”).� This was the earliest

57 Torio, Tokuan zensho I:585, cited in Yukihiko Motoyama, “Meirokusha

Thinkers and Early Meiji Enlightenment Thought,” trans. George M. Wilson, inMotoyama, (Elisonas and Rubinger, eds.,) Proliferating Talent: Essays on Politics,Thought and Education in the Meiji Era (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,1997) p. 249.


appearance of this word to appear in modern Japanese.58 Murota’stranslation of society as minzoku (with overtones of ethnicity ornationality) was an influential one, and can be detected a few yearslater in Taguchi Ukichi’s A Brief History of the JapaneseEnlightenment (1877). During the 1870s, as Haga Noboru has noted,“there was a strong interest in the “folk” [minzoku; ] in the senseof a group of people that mingled together, and this provided thefoundation for nurturing a disposition that respected the commonworld and vulgarity.”59 Like other translated political concepts inearly Meiji Japan, that of minzoku was in considerable flux. But itbelonged to a specific political discourse that sought to articulate asense of the nation as a people increasingly defined by its oppositionto (and by) the government in Tokyo. This emerging structure ofopposition between the “people“ (nation) and the government (later,“the state“) is evident in Nishi Amane’s concern that those involvedin French political theory drew from Rousseau to embrace radicalforms of utopian politics.60 The government took seriously theseconcerns about advocates for “people’s rights”, and on 28 June 1875passed a new Libel Law and Press Ordinance for “regulating radicalpopulist ideas.”61 The foundations for modern Japanese nationalism’sbifurcated structure of opposition, its uneasy relationship betweennation and state, were beginning to take shape.

II. Miyazaki Mury� and the Concept of “Minzoku”

The first decade after the Restoration was a period of considerableopen experimentation in translating and reformulating the problem ofsociety in Japan. But after the Political Crisis of 1881, French legaltheories were largely pushed aside in favor of the Germanic state-centered theories of Stein, Bluntschli, and Bismark, as publicdiscourse moved toward settling the form of the new constitution.62

The heavy statist tendency in this Germanic social-political theory,

58 Haga, Meiji kokka no keisei, 236.59 Haga, Meiji kokka no keisei, 236.60 Nishi Amane, “Refuting the Joint Statement by the Former Ministers,” 40-43 in

Meiroku Zasshi: Journal of the Japanese Enlightenment, trans. William R. Braisted(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1976). See also Mori Arinori, “Criticism of theMemorial on Establishing a Popularly Elected Assembly,” 32-34.

61 Motoyama, 250.62 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Mitsukuri Rinsh� to Kawazu Sukeyuki: futari no shodai

k�ch�,” 297.

CHAPTER TWO72

supported by It� Hirobumi, Kat� Hiroyuki and others close to thereins of power, exacerbated the growing tensions between state andsociety in Japanese political discourse. Increasingly, social theoristssaw the state as the enemy of society, and those in power oftenreturned the favor, seeing society only as a threat that had to becontained by the state. This chronology of increasing antagonismbetween state and society in Japan during the 1880s was only furtherexacerbated by those in social movements who drew from France intheir critiques of the increasingly Prussian-styled Meiji state. Eventsin France converge with events in Japan to suggest the limited valueof French social theories for the Meiji state-builders. During the1870s, the French monarchists had appeared firmly in control of thenew Third Republic, and hence Japanese authorities at the time sawlittle reason to fear that French social theory posed an inherent threatto the imperial principle of the Meiji state. On the contrary, the ThirdRepublic offered evidence that populism and monarchy were, if notcompletely compatible, then certainly capable of working out amodus vivendi, and French oriented Japanese social theorists werenot necessary guilty of lese majeste for their views. But when theFrench republicans gained a majority in the Parliament and themonarchist president Mac-Mahon had to step down in 1879, thethreat from French social theory to the Japanese monarchy seemedmore real, both from the perspective of the state and from those whoprotested the new Meiji state in the name of society. As It� and thestatists moved clearly toward Prussian transcendental statismcentered on the emperor, people’s rights advocates began to refinetheir use of French social theory away from Montesquieu’s “spirit oflaws” and more towards a populist nationalism centered on theopposition between the people and the newly emerging, elitist state.This general shift was supported by developments in France, wherethe victory of the republicans meant that the political right turnedtoward nationalism, which in the hands of men like Maurice Barrésand Charles Maurras stressed the distinction between the “legalcountry” (which they had lost) and the “real nation” (which theyclaimed). For Japanese minken advocates working closely in French,the choice seemed a similar one between the legalistic, bureaucraticstate and a revolutionary concept of the nation as founded in thepeople.

To appreciate this discursive shift and its implications for civilsociety in Japan, we must recall that the early 1880s was the periodwhen the “Freedom and People’s Rights Movement” was at its height,and this movement reinvigorated the claims of natural rights of the


people against the state. Even Fukuzawa Yukichi, a well-knowncritic of the state, protested the increasingly strident tone adopted atthe time by those pursing “people’s rights”. In an 1881 letter to�kuma Shigenobu, Fukuzawa wrote, “The Minken Ron (Advocacy ofPeople’s Rights) seems to be more and more favoring direct action. Ifit goes in that direction, the antagonism between the government andthe people will become increasingly embittered, and in the end I fearit will mean unfortunate bloodshed.”63 In the same year, ChibaTakusabur� drafted his own “Constitution of the Empire of Japan” inwhich he wrote that the Japanese nation (kokumin) had inalienablerights and freedoms that public law (kokuh�) must protect. Shortlyafterwards, however, Ueki Emori wrote in his draft constitution,“Outline of the Constitution of the Japan” that the Japanese nationhad a right to armed revolution when state bureaucrats violated theirrights.64 These protest constitutions may have been conceived asattempts to influence It� Hirobumi to accept Itagaki’s moreparliamentarian model in their discussions over the Greater JapanImperial Constitution. But with Itagaki’s ouster in 1882 and thedecision in favor of a Prussian transcendental state constitutionalready made, such attempts to secure a civic form of the nationbecame increasingly marginalized and radical.

As lines between state and society hardened, the FrenchRevolution emerged as a powerful symbolic battlefield in deter-mining the fate of the people in post-revolutionary Japan. Transla-tions and studies on the French Revolution proliferated in Japanduring the 1870s and early 1880s, both by those who saw theRevolution as an essential expression of modern democracy and fromthose who feared its totalitarian, populist aspects. KawazuSukeyuki’s translation of F.M. Mignet’s 1824 Histoire de laRévolution Française played an important role in introducing theFrench Revolution into Japanese political debate during those years.But Kawazu also reminds us of the variety of reading strategies thatwere employed in determining the signficance of the FrenchRevolution for Meiji Japan. Kawazu worked as a prosecutor for theSenate and, although he was transferred to Osaka during the 1881political crisis (he was affiliated with �kuma Shigenobu’s RikkenKaishint�), he was a critic of the French Revolution and not, as isoften thought, an advocate of social revolution in Japan following the

63 Letter of Fukuzawa to �kuma Shigenobu, dated October 1, 1881; cited by E.H.Norman, in Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State; reprinted in John W. Dower,ed.,Origins of the Modern Japanese State, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975): 288.

64 Yamamuro, “Meiji kokka no seido to rinen,” 128-9.

CHAPTER TWO74

model of the French Revolution. In fact, Kawazu had supportedPrussian gradualism before Inoue Kowashi and others in thegovernment came out in favor of it. His pro-statist inclinations areevident in that fact that by 1886 Kawazu had returned to office in theMinistry of Justice and held a variety of governmental posts beforehis death from illness in 1894.65

Kawazu’s negative assessment of the French Revolution wascontested by Miyazaki Mury�. At issue were not merely textual orhistorical debates, but shifting lines within the opposition to the Meijigovernment and the role of the people in that opposition. WhereasKawazu wrote for �kuma’s Rikken Seit� newspaper, Miyazakipresented his work on the French Revolution in the rival Jiy�Shimbun, which was associated with Itagaki Taisuke. Thisinstitutionized rivalry helps to understand the rift between those inthe increasingly populist and radicalized “People’s Rights”Movement who associated with the Jiy� Shimbun, and Kawazu andhis more moderate colleagues in the “constitutional party” movement.Miyazaki was a journalist, political novelist, and activist in thePeople’s Rights Movement who had come from Tosa (“the Girondeof Japan”) to Tokyo in 1882 and immediately began publishing hisserialized translation of Alexandre Dumas’s Ange Pitou in the Jiy�Shimbun.

Like many other political novels of the day, Miyazaki’s was asmuch a rewriting as a translation: he took considerable liberties withDumas’ text, abridging, summarizing and offering commentariesalong with his translations. Here, the key point is not how accuratelyhe rendered Dumas’s novel into Japanese (or how accurately Dumasreflected the history of the French Revolution!), but the ways inwhich Miyazaki’s literary work engaged the broader social andintellectual context of Japan during the early 1880s, especially withregard to the people’s rights movement. Some of this reworking ofDumas’ novel can be seen even from Miyazaki’s title. WhereasDumas called the work Ange Pitou, after the country bumpkin heroof the novel, Miyazaki called his translation, Notes on the FrenchRevolution: The Battle Cry of Liberty. In so doing, Miyazakiforegrounded one of the key concepts in the People’s RightsMovement, “liberty” (jiy�). But his understanding of “liberty” is bestgrasped through Miyazaki’s own explanation of why he undertookthe translation of Dumas’s Ange Pitou. Miyazaki wrote that Dumaswas most interested in the “taking of the Bastille,” a theme

65 Yamamuro, “Mitsukuri Rinsh� to Kawazu Sukeyuki”, 307-312.


introduced earlier by his colleague at the Jiy� Shimbun, SakuradaMomoe (1859-1883) in his partial translation of Dumas’ TheMemoirs of a Physician.66 Illness had forced Sakurada to withdraw,and Miyazaki took up the task, emphasizing again their commonunderstanding of the storming of the Bastille as a key metaphor forliberty from the state and its repressive acts against its political critics.

Miyazaki and Sakurada shared a common concern with “liberty,”and they both expressed that liberty through the historical agency ofthe “people.” But how they represented the people differed, and it ison this point that Miyazaki made his most original contribution. Theproblem of how “the people” were conceived was a central one, notonly for those in the “People’s Rights” Movement, but also for thosein the Meiji government who were trying to resolve difficultquestions of sovereignty, national identity and popular enfran-chisement. The considerable fluidity in conceptions of the Japanesepeople that flowed from the abolishment of the shi-n�-k�-sh�structure and its replacement by a new system of “commoners”(heimin) during the early 1870s was giving way by the early 1880s toa more rigid imposition of social and political hierarchy.67 Althoughthe concept of the Japanese people as “subjects” (shimmin) alongwith that of “nation” (kokumin) had been used as early as 1871 in theHouse Registration Law (Kosekih�), the first formal use of theconcept of the people as “subjects” was in the October 1881 ImperialInstructions (chokuyu) on establishing the National Diet.68 Thisattempt by the Meiji state to displace earlier terms used to refer to thepeople (okuch�, sh�sh�, s�sei, banmin, jimmin) and to establish aconcept of the people as imperial subjects provides that backdrop toMiyazaki’s interest in Dumas’s work on the French Revolution asoffering a more people-centered vision of nation. Miyazaki’stranslation of Dumas’s Ange Pitou was so closely related to the“Freedom [jiy�; liberty] and People’s Rights” Movement that thesentence of the defendents handed down in the Fukushima Incidentreferred to a “Pitou”, the hero of Dumas’ story.69 Miyazaki’s

66 Miyazaki Mury�, “Furansu kakumeiki: Jiy� no kachidoki,” in Meiji bungaku

zensh� 5: meiji seiji sh�setsu sh� (Chikuma Shob�, 1966): 29-67. Sakurada’stranslation is available in the same collection as “Fukoku kakumei kigen: nishi noumi chishio no saarashi,” 11-28.

67 See the chart on “Shimin gainen no hensan to haikei” in Kobayashi Masaaki,“Nihon” in Furusawa Tomokichi and Sanada Naoshi, eds., Gendai shimin shakaizensh� 1: shimin shakai no kiso genri, 93-132, at 99.

68 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Meiji kokka no seido to rinen,” 129-130.69 Yanagita Izumi, “Kaidai,” 435-441 in Meiji bungaku zensh� 5: Meiji seiji

sh�setsu sh� (1) (Tokyo Chikuma Shob�, 1966): 437. Yanagita notes that the name

CHAPTER TWO76

translation appeared in the Jiy� Shimbun from 12 August 1882 to 8February 1883, and therefore his interest in the post-revolutionarynational assembly in France likely took place at the same time orshortly after this shift in Imperial discourse away from the nationtoward redefining the Japanese people as merely the “subjects” of theEmperor.

Miyazaki’s innovation was genuine and powerful. WhileMiyazaki, like Sakurada, often employed the more neutral jimmin(read as tami) for people,70 he went beyond this general concept ofthe people to make an original and important contribution tonationalist discourse in translating Dumas’ “assemblée nationale” asminzoku kaigi ( ). This is the earliest known instance of thissense of minzoku as nation, and it deserves further analysis.71 Sincethis concept of the Japanese people as a minzoku ( ) was to play animportant role in early twentieth century political discourse,especially by advocates of fascism, we need to know what Miyazakimeant when he introduced this term into the post-revolutionarymovement as a translation of the elected national assembly.Miyazaki’s choice of the word minzoku to translate “national” mayseem odd given the usual connection in Japanese discourse betweenminzoku and Germanic concepts of the Volk, both of which areusually contrasted with a French emphasis on the civic nation that isbetter translated as kokumin. It is unlikely that he meant the kind ofVolkisch definition of the nation that stems from Herder and GermanRomanticism and which would later be expressed through thisconcept of minzoku. To understand what he meant we must besensitive both to the thematic issues at play in his translation ofDumas and to the social and political climate in Japan during whichhe translated Dumas’s work on the French Revolution.

For an understanding of the possibilities of civil society in MeijiJapan, Miyazaki’s interpretation and employment of the themes hefound in Dumas are more important than how French scholars have

was mis-printed as “Hit�” and the mystery remained unsolved until Sugiyama Kenji,son of defendent Sugiyama Shigeyoshi, approached him and Yanagita was able tomake the connection to “Pitou.”

70 Cf. Sakurada “Fukoku kakumei kigen: nishi no umi chishio no saarashi,” 13, 15,25. See especially the passage where Sakurada described the relations between thegovernment and the people in revolutionary France in the following terms, “seifu noyatsura ga jimmin (tami) o gyaku suru y�su o yosonagara…” (25).

71 Miyazaki Mury�, “Furansu kakumeiki: jiy� no kachidoki,” 29-67 in Meijibungaku zensh� 5: Meiji seiji sh�setsu sh� 1 (Chikuma Shob�, 1966): 43. Cf.Alexandre Dumas, Ange Pitou (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, Éditeurs, 1860): p. 149.


subsequently read Dumas’s own purpose and politics in this text.Dumas’s Ange Pitou is a remarkable, entertaining, and ambiguoustext–it can be read as pro-monarchical, anti-monarchical, republicanor pro-revolutionary, or even as a testimony to the chaos that ensueswhen a mob take politics into their own hands. What is clear fromMiyazaki’s own selective abridgement and summary of Dumas isthat Miyazaki chose to read this text as a powerful statement on howthe Revolution liberated the French people, a kind of heroic historythat was useful in pursing claims by the Freedom and People’s RightsMovement for an elected assemby (minsen) against the defenders ofthe Meiji emperor and the Prussian monarchical constitution. Let�usnow see how these themes emerge in Miyazaki’s translation.

As mentioned above, Miyazaki’s Battle Cry of Liberty was notonly a summary that was highly selective, but it was a considerableabridgement of Dumas’s Ange Pitou. Battle Cry of Liberty onlycovered the first twenty one chapters of Dumas’s first of twovolumes, and left the second volume (a total of forty nine morechapters) untouched. Miyazaki’s approach to the text reveals hisoverriding interest in the political issues of national formation, and heshows much less interest in the pathetic figure of Pitou and hisawkward atttempts at heroics and romance. Miyazaki leaves the storyoff with a debate between Necker and Dr. Gilbert over thedifferences between France and the United States, with Neckerinsisting the peace in post-Revolutionary France would be restoredby the monarch and the aristocracy and Dr. Gilbert warning Neckerof a rising new nationalism that will overthrow the aristocracy andtheir privileges.72

With this general concern in mind, let us now take a close look atthe passage where Miyazaki introduces this new concept of thenation as a minzoku:

War and peace immediate change the lay of the land, and prosperityand decline choose their own places. Those voices that yesterday hadhailed the king’s procession to Notre Dame, crying “long live the king,long live the queen,” the very next day turned to advocating liberty andrights. Seeing how the situation in the Parliament had suddenly takenan extreme turn, the representatives of the people (jimmin) took themajority of seats and overwhelmed those selected from the clergy andnobility and were crushing their power. Finally, when the king heardthat they had even changed the name of the Parliament to the NationalAssembly (minzoku kaigi; ), he was angry but, while regrettingthis detestable natural course of events in the world, had no proper

72 Miyazaki Mury�, “Furansu kakumeiki: jiy� no kachidoki,” 66-67.

CHAPTER TWO78

means of addressing it. Even so, it was not hard to see that, if left alone,these events would soon become a matter of grave importance. At anyrate, the king decided to suspend and dissolve the assembly….73

A comparison with the original French text reveals significantchanges that Miyazaki made. Most noticeable is the lack of mentionof Sieyès, whose concept of the nation as a legally definedcommunity had framed the early Meiji approach to national identity.In Dumas’ original, it is Sieyès who enters the parliament, finds theclergy and nobility absent and is told that the Third Estate alonecannot form the States General. To which Sieyès responds, “all thebetter, it [the Third Estate] will form the National Assembly.”74 Tothe French readers of Dumas, Sieyès role here is hardly incidental.Abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès had in fact become known as animportant theoretician of national identity through his 1789 pamphlet“What is the Third Estate?” that offered a legal definition of thenation consistent with democratic theories of civil society and insharp contrast to the German romantic notion of the nation as acultural, organic Volk. Why did Miyazaki leave Sieyès out of hisstory? Perhaps he was simply unfamiliar with Sieyès. But it isequally likely that he was not interested in a legal definition of thenation, since the failure of Mitsukuri’s attempts to institute a civilcode that would ensure a French legal codification of the nation thatwould protect the Japanese people from the arbitrary authority of thestate. Certainly, his text underplays the role of the Third Estate inDumas as contesting over parliamentary power and he emphasizesinstead the clear lines of opposition between the people and themonarch (and his representatives in the clergy and aristocracy). Inrecognizing these differences, we begin to see, not how Miyazakimistranslated Dumas, but how he used Dumas’s text for localpurposes in the Japanese Freedom and People’s Rights Movement.

Miyazaki’s interest in the national assembly, and his reasons forcoining this new term minzoku for the nation, must also beunderstood in the context of social reforms taking place in Japan

during that time. Whereas Dumas was describing the call for an

assembly of the national people who would replace the social

hierarchy built around the First, Second and Third Estates,

Miyazaki’s concept of the nation as minzoku might best be seen in

opposition to the new class of Peers, or kazoku, that were being

73 Miyazaki Mury�, “Furansu kakumeiki,” 42-43. Cf. Alexandre Dumas, AngePitou, 148-149.

74 Alexandre Dumas, Ange Pitou, 149.


institutionalized in the early 1880s when he wrote Battle Cry of

Liberty.75 Although the term kazoku had an ancient lineage itself,

after 1869 it found new service as an umbella term that encompassed

all court nobles (kuge) and former daimyo, both of whom

increasingly were concentrated in Tokyo after the Restoration.

Noticeably excluded were the samurai, who as shizoku were left

somewhere in between the new Peers (kazoku) and the new class of

commoners (heimin). Between 1873 and 1883, the very period when

Miyazaki was working on his translation of Dumas, Kido Takayoshi

and other former samurai in the higher levels of government led a

movement to include all samurai in the Peerage (kazoku), which they

largely accomplished with the 1884 Peerage Law. However, the vast

majority of samurai who made it into the Peerage were from Satsuma

and Ch�sh� not from Hizen or Tosa, which remained a hotbed of

populist sentiment.76 Miyazaki was one of those populists from Tosa

who stood little chance of becoming Peers. Given the general socialdebates of the day on this newly expanded Peerage, I believe thatMiyazaki sought to frame a concept of the national people as min-zoku ( — ) in opposition to the Peerage (ka-zoku — ), and hefound this concept in Dumas’ Third Estate. That is, while it is safe tosay that Miyazaki did not have the German concept of Volk in mindwhen he coined the term minzoku for the nation, this does not meanthat he completely avoided the same kind of romantic, totalization ofthe people in his conception of the popular nation. As Hannah Arendthas shown, the French Revolution also gave rise to a totalitarianconcept of le peuple, a new foundation for the nation that “had

carried, from its beginning, the connotation of a multiheaded monster,

a mass that moves as one body and acts as though possessed by one

will…. [but whose] manyness can in fact assume the guise of oneness,

that suffering indeed breeds moods and emotions and attitudes that

resemble solidarity to the point of confusion.” 77 And just as Arendt

points out the connection between this post-Revolutionary concept of

le peuple and “the social question” that ensued in France, Miyazaki’s

concept of the Japanese people as a unitary minzoku laid the grounds

75 Similarly, Peter Duus argued that Tokutomo Soh�’s 1886 definition of Japan as

a “popular society” (heiminteki na shakai) was conceived in opposition to“aristocratic society” (kizokuteki na shakai). See Duus, “Whig History, JapaneseStyle: The Min’y�sha Historians and the Meiji Restoration,” Journal of AsianStudies vol. XXXIII, no. 3 (May 1974):420-1.

76 Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the ModernJapanese Nobility (University of California Press, 1993): 46-53.

77 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: The Viking Press, 1963): 89-90

CHAPTER TWO80

for the social question (shakai mondai) of the 1890s.78 But it also had

helped foreclose the possibility of modern Japanese national identity

framed around principles that might have encouraged civil society

and democracy. As Jean Bethke Elshtain has pointed out, this post-

Revolutionary French concept of the will of the people was not the

condition for democratic politics or civil society, but for the kind of

totalitarian “take no prisoners” politics that would characterize much

of the twentieth century.79 Miyazaki’s concept of the nation as a

unitary minzoku performed a similar function, and it thus laid

troubling foundations for a populist “democratic“ tradition of

oppositional politics in modern Japan.

III. Mitsukuri, Miyazaki and Japanese Nationalist Discourse

What do Mitsukuri Rinsh� and Miyazaki Mury� tell us about thesocial and intellectual conditions of nationalism in early Meiji Japan?First, we should not succumb to facile conclusions that eithernationalism “already existed“ or “was completely lacking“ at thisearly period. Nor should evidence of tensions with the emerginggovernment be taken as signs of a healthy, civil society that wouldunderwrite democracy in modern Japan. Shades of democraticpolitics, elements of civic nationalism, were certainly present inMeiji Japan, as they are in relative degrees in all modern societies.Rather, the question of civic nationalism in early Meiji Japan askswhether there was a preponderance of the characteristics of civilsociety in Japan, and whether those characteristics were strongenough to provide the conditions for democratic politics. Whenframed carefully, the question of civil society is a useful means ofassessing the possibilities of democratic values in Japan, withoutreducing the question of democracy to formal political structures.Certainly, one can find something like a “public sphere” in MeijiJapan, in which “public discourse” over political issues took placewith some degree of freedom from state interference. Yet, whileMeiji Japanese society witnessed a good deal of public debate (k�giy�ron), much of that debate was restricted to elites (mainly former

78 On the “social question” in Japan during the 1890s, see Sheldon Garon, The

State and Labor in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987):23-29; in Japanese, Ishida Takeshi, “‘Shakai’ no ishikika to shakai seisaku gakkai”in Nihon no shakai kagaku (Tokuo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1984): 45-71. I discuss thetopic in the context of nation-building below in chapter four.

79 Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial (New York: Basic Books, 1995),119-120.


samurai) and was always under the threat of interference from thegovernment. The divisions that began to emerge during this initialstage of national formation may have informed subsequentdemocratic aspirations; but they may also have informed anti-democratic forms of populism and fascism.

Mitsukuri’s efforts in translating and compiling a civil code toprotect the rights of individuals or even of society from the stateprovide us with reasons to hesitate before applying a formalisticapproach to the problem of civil society in Meiji Japan. Moreover, asCarol Gluck has demonstrated, Meiji public discourse interwovepositions of the officials (kan) with those of the people (min) to effecta powerful nationalist myth in which the people and the state foundthemselves distinct, yet intertangled.80 And, as Yamamuro Shin’ichihas noted, those with expertise in Western political and legalknowledge were few, so even those in the political opposition wereclosely tied to those in government through a fluid network ofpersonal ties, and they tended to move from opposition togovernment position with surprising ease.81 This was certainly true ofMitsukuri, who nonetheless provided one of the strongest cases for alegal foundation for civil society in modern Japan through hisattempts to ensure that the rights of the people (minken) would beprotected in a civil code. His failure to win approval of those rights ina civil code equal to or independent of the Meiji Constitutionsuggests the limitations of civil society as a theory forconceptualizing the nationalism of Meiji Japan.

The question of civil society requires more than institutional orformulistic considerations, such as whether there existed politicalopposition or public debate in Meiji Japan: beyond ensuringprocedures of free speech, civil society invokes certain values andattitudes that support democratic concepts of the national community.Consequently, any analysis of civil society in Meiji Japan must alsobe able to account for the subsequent development of the radicalnationalism or “fascism“ of the 1930s and 40s, and for the politicalvalues of postwar Japan as well. While it would seem inaccurate,under these considerations, to describe the values of civil society asdominant in Meiji Japan, it would be equally inaccurate to suggestthat Meiji Japan lacked any tradition of civil society, either due to thepower of traditional culture or to the influence of authoritarian or

80 Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths,: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 60-67.

81 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Mitsukuri Rinsh� to Kawazu Sukeyuki,” 313.

CHAPTER TWO82

totalitarian ideologies. Mitsukuri Rinsh� and Miyazaki Mury�’stranslations from French legal and social theories testify both to theirefforts to establish civil society and democratic values in Meiji Japan,and to the specific historical conditions that prevented the widespreadadoption of those values. As Mitsukuri’s efforts to codify civil rightsthat might contest the state were absorbed into and made dependenton the state, losing their potential for legally protecting the functionsof civil society, Miyazaki and others in the Freedom and People’sRights Movement turned to Mitsukuri’s concept of “people’s rights”(minken) while increasingly seeing the interests of society and thoseof the state as irreconcilable.

During the 1880s, as the emerging state employed force and lawto suppress the People’s Rights Movement, this concept of a totalized,populist society positioned in radical opposition to the statecontinued on in a variety of forms. This radicalization of the peoplewas encouraged when the Meiji rulers rejected the concept of asovereign civic nation by replacing Inoue Kowashi’s proposal of apolitical nation (kokumin) in the August 1887 draft of the constitutionwith the concept of the Japanese people as “subjects” (shimmin)instead. As Yamamuro Shin’ichi has pointed out, this movecompleted a reversal of Abbe Sieyès’s argument that nationaldevelopment moves from subject to a civic nation.82 With the Meijiconstitution thus foreclosing any place for a sovereign nation or evenan autonomous role for society, this radicalized sense of the peoplere-emerged in the debate over the “social problem” of the 1890s thatfocussed on poverty and ultimately gave rise to class consciousnessand the birth of modern Japan’s socialist movement, merging later inthe twentieth century with populist nationalism in the form of aminzokushugi that would once again contest the Meiji state for thepeople’s allegiance. The legacy for Japanese nationalism of thisinitial post-Restoration settlement was not, however, a stronger,consolidation of Japanese nationalism. Rather, the lines of oppositionbetween various conceptions of “the people“ and “the state“ etchedthe outlines of a nationalism that would constantly seek to reconcilethe people with a state, even while often adopting a hostile attitudetoward the existing institutions of political authority.

82 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Meiji kokka no seido to rinen,” 129.

CHAPTER THREE

TENN�

It might seem paradoxical to include a discussion on monarchy in ahistory of nationalism. Monarchy is frequently depicted as a form ofgovernance systematically and historically opposed to nationalism.The French Revolution, often heralded as the origin of nationalism,provides the prototype for this argument that nationalism, theprinciple of the people as the true bearer of political sovereignty, is arepublican movement to repossess, often from a monarch, theinstitutions of government “of, by and for” the people. The anti-monarchical nature of nationalism is one of the very few points thatmost theorists of nationalism agree on, even those who, like AnthonySmith, assert that nationalism has pre-modern, even primordialorigins. Yet, Japanese nationalism is often characterized as intimatelyconnected with the tenn� (the monarch, “the emperor”) and withclaims to the “unbroken 2,600 year lineage of the emperor” asconstituting the core of what supposedly makes the Japanese nationculturally unique. Paradoxical or not, arguments about the tenn� dofigure prominently in debates over Japanese nationalism.

One can point to at least two reasons for this tendency toforeground the problem of the monarchy in Japanese nationalism. Themost influential factor is the politics surrounding the memory andrepresentations of Japan’s actions during the Second World War. Inthis vein, theories of nationalism that emphasize the centrality of warin the making of nations have lent themselves, more often implicitlythan explicitly, to shaping approaches to Japanese nationalism thatrely heavily on wartime political forms and practices, including theprominent role of the monarch during the war. The second factor forthis emphasis on monarchical nationalism stems, ironically, from thevery weakness of true nationalism in modern Japan (cf. Chapter Two).The post-revolutionary resolution of social and political disorder inthe late nineteenth century yielded a state that rejected republicannationalism in favor of the monarchy as the only legitimate principlefor unifying the Japanese people. The result of this elevation of themonarch to legal, political and cultural authority did not mean,

CHAPTER THREE84

however, that truly nationalist aspirations were extinguished, or thatthey ceased to be important factors in subsequent Japanese politicalhistory. Rather, what resulted from the triumph of constitutionalmonarchy was a continuation of a contestation over nationalist formsand methods, a contestation that also included debates over the roleand significance of the monarchy. A complete understanding of therole of the monarchy in modern Japanese nationalism cannot sufficewith simplistic reductions of nationalism to the emperor or to the“emperor-system”, but requires a familiarity with the wide-rangingdebates over the relationship of the emperor to nationalism that stillinform nationalist ideals and practices today.

The Monarch as Liberator of the Japanese People

The monarchy became an important political factor in modern Japandue to a growing sense throughout the nineteenth century that onlythe monarch could save Japan from its host of social, economic andpolitical troubles. In contrast to the monarchy during therevolutionary period in France, the monarch was not a major figure inthe political landscape, but a remote, symbolic presence that was opento varied interpretations by men with a range of interests.Consequently, he could be, and was, represented as the savior of thenation, the one person who could overthrow the existing militarygovernment and usher in a true era of harmony, peace and prosperitythroughout the land. These moral activists had as their Bibles AizawaSeishisai’s Shinron (1825) and Tekiihen (1833). Both books arguedthat Japan could no longer survive by merely “tinkering” withstrategic reforms (although reforms were called for). Fundamentally,a lasting solution to Japan’s plight would require Japan to protect itskokutai. What was this kokutai? Various arguments were made: thefundamental spirit which has not been corrupted by Confucianism;that which defines the country from the beginning; the form (tai) thatpulls the country (koku) together; that which synthesizes the variouselements within the realm into a single unity. This last point isinteresting because the synthesizing function of the kokutai meantwhat was most Japanese always presumed influences from outsidecultures that the kokutai would synthesize into a particularly Japaneseculture. For these monarchical (sonn�) activists, only the tenn�enjoyed these synthesizing powers. Continuity in Japan was secured,unlike in China, through the monarch. Japan, they insisted, never hada revolutionary overthrow of the tenn�. But theirs was no merepolitical monarchical movement: it was deeply moral in vision, and

TENNO 85

they imagined “Japan” as a place where seizen no rinri (a moral senseof the importance of this world) required taking politics seriously.1

These monarchical activists were not only promoting a particularmoral vision of politics; they were also revising history to yield thepolitical theory they desired. The concept of kokutai had a longhistory, but it was a history that was not immediately usable for thismoral vision. As Joseph Pittau pointed out, kokutai was originally aChinese concept that had little to do with monarchy but merelyreferred to

‘the organ of the state’ or ‘organization of the state.’ In Japan this termwas used first by Kitabatake Chikafusa (1293-1354), the author ofJinn� Sh�t�ki (“Record of the Legitimate Succession of DivineEmperors”). Kitabatake had as his aim giving as much support aspossible to the claims of the Southern Court. He wanted not only toshow that the Southern Court’s claims on the throne were legitimate….he [also] placed special emphasis on the idea that a very close relationexisted between the emperor and the people; this relation he calledkokutai.2

It was this sense of kokutai that the monarchical activists emphasizedin their writings, as they turned to the past for a vision of the monarchas united with his people, the monarch as savior of the nation.

This view of the monarchy was deeply infused with moraldimensions. While emphasizing the monarchy as the source ofcontinuity in Japanese cultural and political life, and juxtaposing thissystem to the foreign Chinese culture in which dynastic revolutionswere a constant feature throughout history, the Mito writers presenteda theological-political system in which loyalty to the emperor was notmerely an obligation of rulers, but also an emblem of Japaneseidentity. This system of monarchical culture was also conceived inopposition to an understanding of the legacy of fifteenth centuryKirishitan (Catholics) as merely a front (kakure mino) for Europeanpolitical conquest of Japan.3

With the advent of Russian and thenother Western ships on Japan’s coasts in the early nineteenth century,these fears of Western cultural invasion were resurrected in the formof anxieties about the potential collapse of the theory of saisei itchi,

1 Ishikawa Itsuo, “Bakumatsu ishin ni okeru kokka no arikata o meguru rons�,”

296-312 in Imai Jun and Ozawa Tomio, eds., Nihon shis� rons�shi (Tokyo:Perikansha, 1979), 298-300.

2 Joseph Pittau, Political Thought in early Meiji Japan, 1868-1889 (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press,1967) 215.

3 Ishikawa, 301.

CHAPTER THREE86

or the unity of the moral and the political realms in the person of thetenn�.

Maruyama Masao has analyzed the historical transformation thatled to a new relationship of the tenn� to nationalism in the followingterms:

During the first half of the nineteenth century…the country was underthe dual rule of the Mikado (tenn�), who was the spiritual sovereign,and the Tycoon (Shogun), who held actual power. After the Restoration,unity was achieved by removing all authority from the latter, and fromother representatives of feudal control, and by concentrating it in theperson of the former. In this process…prestige and power werebrought together in the institution of the Emperor. And in Japan therewas no ecclesiastical force to assert the supremacy of any ‘internal’world over this new combined, unitary power.4

Maruyama provides an important synopsis of this complicatedprocess of positioning tenn� and nation in Meiji Japan. But it isimportant to recognize that the process was not as smooth orpredictable as his retrospective view might make it seem. Before thetenn� could be reconfigured as both spiritual and political sovereign,a complicated process of negotiating political, legal, moral andcultural implications of the new world of Meiji Japan had to takeplace. In this process, a new relationship of kokutai, tenn� and thepolitical state had to be forged.

It is important to recognize that It� Hirobumi and other architectsof the Meiji state did not set out with any preconception that themonarch would be the supreme commander and sole locus ofsovereignty in the new state. Of course, there could be no questionthat, as the principle (if not principal) of the successful anti-bakufumovement, the fifteen year old tenn� would have to play an importantrole in the post-Tokugawa Japanese political order. But there weremany possible roles, including a continuation of the divided system ofMikado and Tycoon, a return to the role of the tenn� under theancient Heian system of government, a new role as the pre-eminentspiritual head of the Japanese, or the eventual result: a transcendentand sovereign monarch within a constitutional order The ultimatedecision to rest sovereignty in the emperor was the result of a seriesof negotiations, both internally among competing centers of power inthe emerging state and externally with forces like the Freedom and

4 Maruyama Masao, “Theory and Psychology of Ultra- Nationalism,” (1946),translated and reprinted in Ivan Morris, ed., Maruyama Masao, Thought andBehaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (Oxford University Press, 1963), 4.

TENNO 87

People’s Rights Movement that sought to wrestle legitimacy and evenauthority away from the newly established political elite.

This ultimate solution to the role of the Meiji tenn� was not pre-ordained by the anti-bakufu movement or the events that surroundedthe Meiji Ishin. It was, rather, a contingent result of post Ishinpolitical struggles and negotiations that reflected both domestic andglobal political realities. Kimura Junji has captured this dynamic well:

Certainly, the idea of respect for the monarch (sonn� shis�), stemmingfrom Hirata’s school of Nativism and the Mito school, held broadinfluence over the late bakufu ideological circles, but once the Ishin hadestablished a monarchical government, the restorationist theoriesgradually ebbed in influence. The major political debates of the earlyMeiji years did not focus much on the tenn�. Rather, they wereprimarily concerned with what the relationship of state authority(kokken) and popular sovereignty (minken) should be under the Meijiadministration which had already placed the monarch at its head….Thus, when they used the term kokutai they were trying to express theform of the country, the national character….Since the Mito Studies ofthe late bakufu years, the term was often used, especially by theadvocates of cultural particularism (kokusuishugi) to summon upconcretely the superiority of the Japanese as an ethnic group that hadpreserved a long imperial lineage that had never suffered a dynasticbreak.5

As Kimura suggests, the resolution of the monarchical question by theMeiji elites had implications for the meaning of kokutai. After therestoration of the monarchy, the pre-Meiji understanding of this termneeded to be revised in keeping with the needs of the new society, asociety that required a theory of national identity and unity.

Fukuzawa Yukichi was one of the earliest, and most important, ofthese modernizers of the theory of kokutai. In his Outline of a Theoryof Civilization (1875), he made his new understanding of kokutaiexplicit, glossing the ancient term with the English pronunciation“nationality.” While Fukuzawa’s approach to the concept of kokutaiwas not completely different from Aizawa’s, he emphasized itsindependence from the monarch and he offered an interpretation ofthe traditional concept in light of contemporary Western politicaltheory. For this, he was criticized by nativists who had hoped theIshin would bring about a spiritual and political reunification of thenation in the person of the tenn�. Yoshioka Tokumei was one such

5 [Kimura Junji], Kindai nihon shis� kenky�kai, eds., “Tenn� ron no keifu,” in

Tenn� ron o yomu, 207.

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nativist critic who, in his Kaika honron (1879), ridiculed those likeFukuzawa who would translate kokutai into Western terms instead ofrecognizing kokutai as an essentially Japanese concept that referred toJapan’s unique tradition of an unbroken lineage of tenn� throughouttime. It was not to be translated, either linguistically or conceptually.

The nativists were not, however, in positions of power in MeijiJapan. Those who were shaping the new state held a view of thenation closer to Fukuzawa’s modernist one than to the “archaicism”of the nativists.6 It� Hirobumi, the first Prime Minister and architectof the Meiji Constitution, did not give the problem of kokutai a greatdeal of attention. At best, he considered the kokutai to be Japan’s“national organization” and as such something amenable to the forcesof time and change (kahen teki na mono). Like many of thesetheorists of the nation, his conclusions reflected broader concerns, inthis case, with shaping a new government and new constitution forpost Ishin Japan. Kaneko Kentar� rejected that sweepingcharacterization of kokutai in order to make a more nuanced argumentthat recognized the need for change and continuity in nationalformation. He drew from Fujita T�ko’s K�d�kan kijutsugi to arguethat only the government (seitai) was mutable, not the kokutai, whichhe accepted as referring to the unbroken lineage of monarchs.

Kaneko had made an astute political compromise between themodernizers’ emphasis on the need to change political forms and thetraditionalists’ insistence on cultural continuity. In the face ofKaneko’s argument, It� abandoned his earlier view, thereafteradopting Kaneko’s belief that the kokutai and the form of government(seitai) were separate and distinct. Fukuzawa’s effort at outlining arepublican nation through kokutai was rejected, and Kaneko’s binarytheory quickly became the orthodox interpretation of kokutai.

A further refinement of Kaneko’s theory, one that sought toincorporate Fukuzawa’s ideas, was offered by It� Miyoji, a memberof Hirobumi’s “brain trust.” Miyoji defined the kokutai as “that whichthe unbroken lineage of monarchs has governed over”, and noted thatthe new government called for by the monarch’s sanctionedconstitution would have to fit with Japan’s kokutai and its popularsentiments (minj�). Here, it is clear that Miyoji did not consider thekokutai to be identical to the emperor or even to the imperialhousehold or lineage. Rather, he understood it within the same

6 See H.D. Harootunian, “The Consciousness of Archaic Form in the New Realism

of Kokugaku,” chapter in Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner, eds., Japanese Thoughtin the Tokugawa Period: Methods and Metaphors (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1978), 63-104.

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republican framework as Fukuzawa, to refer to the immutablecharacteristics of the Japanese people, the nation itself, which was notthe same as the monarchy or other forms of government—although itcould co-exist with a monarchical government. Nor did Miyojiconsider the kokutai to be the same as the political sense of nation(kokumin) that could be constructed through laws and constitutions.As Haga Noboru has noted, for Miyoji, the kokutai was not merely alegal concept. Miyoji went so far as to encourage Hirobumi to imitateforeign countries “for the security of the state” and to adopt arepublican form of government based on contemporary Germantheories. In contrast to the nativists, he did not believe that suchmodern, Western governmental forms in any way compromised thiscultural foundation of the nation, the kokutai.7 This view was offeredas a challenge to Iwakura Tomomi who tried to promote a policy ofuniting people and monarch (kunmin d�chi) as a means of preventingchange in the kokutai. He made it clear to Miyoji that the Japaneseconstitution should not be considered a national contract like theFrench constitution.8

As Bernard Silberman has demonstrated, the most important taskfacing the revolutionary Meiji government was to stem the forces ofrevolution, to consolidate authority and legitimacy in itself and toundermine the theoretical appeals of others (especially the nativists)who might take recourse to the same monarchist strategies that theRestorationists had used earlier to gain power, this time to overthrowthe new government.9 Given the special role of the monarchy as arevolutionary principle in restorationist ideologies ranging from MitoConfucianism to Shinto nativism, and expressed in calls such assonn� j�i and ikkun banmin, the monarch quickly became a testingground for whether the new government could construct a sense ofpublic that would serve the interests of political stability and theprivileged positions of those already in power. By 1881, thegoverning elite recognized this task required “the construction of aformal legal structure of the state” in which

7 Haga Noboru. Meiji kokka no keisei, 166-7.8 Haga Noboru. Meiji kokka no keisei, 168.9 See Bernard Silberman, “The Bureaucratic State in Japan: The problem of

authority and legitimacy,” chapter in Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann, eds.,Conflict in Modern Japan: The Neglected Tradition (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1982): pp. 226-57; also Cages of Reason : The rise of the rational state inFrance, Japan, the United States and Great Britain (Chicago: The University ofChicago Press, 1993), esp., 193-8.

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the integrated nature of state and society rested on the public characterof the emperor—“the axis of the nation.” Beyond this, it was necessarythat the leadership establish that the public character of the bureaucracywas not derived solely from the appeal to higher authority—theemperor. Rather it had to show that the bureaucracy and, therefore, itsleadership partially derived its public character from its autonomouscapacity to determine and represent the public interest.10

As Silberman points out, the monarch’s processions around thecountry were scaled back in 1881 in order to elevate the monarchabove political partisanship, as the nation became engulfed in debatesover which constitutional model would be best for the new nation.11

This scaling back of monarchical processions coincided with animportant watershed in political debates over the monarchy and thefuture of the nation. Known as the 1881 Political Crisis, this strugglepitted It� Hirobumi and advocates for a sovereign monarch against�kuma Shigenobu and those who clamored for a sovereign nationrepresented by political parties. �kuma did not rule out a role for theconstitutional monarch, but he envisioned the Meiji monarch’s role tobe similar to that of the British monarchy. The main point of hisproposal was that “the essence of constitutional government isgovernment by political parties” and that “careful considerationshould be given to state clearly where power is vested and what arethe rights of the people.”12 This language about the rights of thepeople (minken), along with Okuma’s priority on constitutionalparties, was regarded nonetheless as a threat by It� Hirobumi andIwakura Tomomi to their efforts to secure a transcendental, sovereignmonarch. Okuma’s proposal was rejected and he left the government,taking with him fifteen senior officials.

The immediate result of the 1881 Political Crisis was that thegovernment was now firmly in the hands of members of the formerdomains of Satsuma and Ch�sh� (the Sat-Ch� clique), and planningfor a constitution could proceed within certain limits. The

10 Silberman, Cages of Reason, 193.11 Silberman, Cages of Reason, 194. Michio Umegaki makes a similar point on the

basis of evidence of the constitutional composition: “the writing of the Constitutionof 1889, which was to define explicitly the role of the emperor and his prerogatives,also indicated implicitly the ways in which the emperor’s exposure could beminimized. In other words, the Constitution was designed so as not to impede theinsulation of the emperor from political responsibility.” After the Restoration: TheBeginning of Japan’s Modern State (New York and London: New York UniversityPress, 1988), 216-7.

12 Okuma Shigenobu, cited in Joseph Pittau, S.J., Political Thought in Early MeijiJapan, 1868-1889, 85.

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promulgation of the Constitution of the Great Japanese Empire on 11February 1889 (put into effect on 29 November 1890) settled therelationship of sovereignty, monarchy and the nation, at least in legalterms, for the next 55 years. Deftly sidestepping the ragingcontroversy about whether national sovereignty lay in the people(minken) or the state (kokken), the constitution noted that sovereigntyrested with the monarch, and expressed this concept of sovereignty ina term that might better be rendered as “the right to rule” (t�chiken).13

The sovereignty of the monarch was legally recognized, but theconstitution excluded any consideration of a sovereign nation, eitherdefined as the people themselves or as a political state. The Japanesepeople were rendered “subjects” (shimmin) of the sovereign, and thestate was merely a collection of imperially appointed ministers,supported by a bureaucracy, whose tasks were to advise the monarch.

From the early days of the Meiji Constitution there were criticslike Minister of Education Mori Arinori who argued that since theconstitution defined the people as “subjects,” a term that referredsimply to their relationship to the emperor, it was not appropriate forthe constitution to also discuss their “rights and duties.” It would havebeen enough for the constitution to simply stipulate the people’ssocial standing as subjects of the emperor. Mori, in turn, wascriticized by Miyoji as suffering from “anti-constitutional thinking”.14

A sense of who actually held power can be gleaned from the list ofthose who signed the Imperial Rescript that accompanied thepromulgation of the constitution. Also issued on 11 February 1889and formally under the emperor’s name, the Rescript was signed byPrime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka and his cabinet. In addition to CountKuroda (Satsuma), these men included counts It� Hirobumi (Ch�sh�),�kuma Shigenobu (Saga), Saig� Tsugumichi (Satsuma), Inoue Kaoru(Ch�sh�), Yamada Akiyoshi (Ch�sh�), Matsukata Masayoshi(Satsuma), and �yama Iwao (Satsuma), along with viscounts MoriArinori (Satsuma) and Enomoto Takeaki (former bakufu retainer).Two points emerge from a cursory glance at this list. First, all thesignatories were high ranking members of the new aristocracy. Assuch, their social positions and political interests were wedded to themonarchical system that the constitution enshrined. Second, all exceptfor �kuma and Enomoto were from the two domains of Satsuma and

13 Dai nihon teikoku kenp�, reprinted in Nihonkoku kenp� (Tokyo: K�dansha,

1985), 66-77, at 66.14 Haga Noboru, Meiji kokka no keisei, 170.

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Ch�sh�. The first exception, �kuma, requires explanation. He wasgiven the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs because he haddistinguished himself earlier in handling complaints from Westernnations over the persecution of Japanese Christians. But he was alsobrought into the cabinet in the hopes of silencing criticism of thegovernment from the people’s rights activists who looked to �kumafor leadership. It was not a completely successful scheme, as �kumahimself was the victim of a terrorist attack later that year that cost himhis leg. Enomoto held the relatively insignificant post of Minister ofCommunications. The more important positions (Ministers of Army,Navy, Finance) were all occupied by Sat-Ch� men, especially theposition of President of the Privy Council, which was occupied by It�Hirobumi.

Monarchy and the Moral Nation

Given the prominence of Sat-Ch� men in the government, andespecially their adoption of aristocratic titles, hopes for reconciliationbetween democratic nationalism and the monarchy became even moreremote after the promulgation of the constitution. In spite of this newpolitical reality, or perhaps precisely because of it, a new debate overthe role and significance of the monarch broke out in Japanesediscourse. While the question of constitutional monarchy had beendebated throughout the 1880s in elite political circles (and amongsome populist groups, too),15 the tenor and breadth of the debatechanged in the wake of the constitution and its accompanyingimperial rescripts. Matsumoto Sannosuke recognized this significantdiscursive shift when he noted that “the first moment in modernitywhen theories about the monarch were directly debated was after the1880s.”16 Support for the monarchy was increasingly framed assupporting “despotism.” This angry denunciation of the monarchystemmed in part from the perception that the monarchy had become aa puppet firmly in the hands of the Sat-Ch� elites. Those whodenounced the constitutional monarchy as “despotic” were generallyresponding to this perception, as is apparent in the term they used for

15 Irokawa Daikichi uncovered a vigorous debate over constitutional forms and the

monarchy among rural people in the Tama region during the early 1880s. See his TheCulture of the Meiji Period, (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1985),especially pp. 76-122.

16 Matsumoto Sannosuke, “Meiji kokka no keisei to tenn�sei k�s�,” 12-54 inTomisaka Kirisutoky� sent�, ed., Kindai tenn�sei no keisei to kirisutoky� (Shinky�Shuppansha, 1996).

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“despotic government” (sensei seifu), which literally meant“monopoly government.” Their complaint was that this system of“monarchy” deprived the monarch from his people, and left thepeople outside of the government.

Yet, another criticism of the monarchy came from those who feltthat certain political elites were not merely trying to represent themonarch as the principle of political unity but were in fact imbuingthe monarch with a new moral claim on the Japanese people. Article28 of the constitution guaranteed Japanese subjects freedom ofreligion “so long as it did not betray their obligations as subjects ordisturb the peace and order.” This limited right to religious freedomunder the Meiji Constitution co-existed with increasing claims thatthe monarch was not merely a political sovereign but was investedwith unique moral status that no Japanese could ignore.

Two sources of this claim were the 1889 Imperial Rescript on thePromulgation of the Constitution and the 1890 Imperial Rescript onEducation. The former stressed that the tenn� was more than a mereconstitutional monarch established through modern laws andprocedures designed to address contingent political issues. Rather, thelanguage of the Rescript emphasized that (1) the Meiji tenn�’sauthority was derived from his ancestral lineage (chin ga sosh� niukuru no taiken ni yori), (2) this ancestral lineage was “sacred”(shinsei naru), and (3) the Japanese subjects were descendents ofgood and loyal subjects of this lineage.17 The moral tone of thisRescript implied that disloyalty to the emperor was a betrayal of allone’s ancestors and an immoral act as well.

Even more influential on debates over nationalism and themonarchy than the Rescript that accompanied the constitution was theImperial Rescript on Education, which became the source of efforts toestablish the tenn� as the moral head of the Japanese nation. TheRescript itself was not explicitly religious in nature, although itexpressed a heavily Confucian sense of social relations and tried toapply those ethical principles to the relationship between the monarchand his subjects. Maruyama Masao, reflecting on the significance ofthe Rescript after the calamity of World War II, offered what has

17 Kenp� happu chokugo, reprinted in Nihonkoku kenp�, 62-3. It should be noted

that the Buddhist religious flavor of this passage (eg., the tenn� as a merciful,benevolent savior of his people) is also intimated through the use of specific language.For example, the characters for taiken (authority, sovereignty—the Meiji alternativeto kokken or minken, the sovereignty of the state or people, respectively), can also beread daigon, a term of respect for the Buddha who takes on various forms to savepeople.

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become a classic statement on the significance of the Rescript inJapanese nationalist ideology:

The Japanese State never came to the point of drawing a distinctionbetween the external and internal spheres and of recognizing that itsauthority was valid only for the former. In this respect it is noteworthythat the Imperial Rescript on Education should have been proclaimedjust before the summoning of the First Imperial Diet. This was an opendeclaration of the fact that the Japanese State, being a moral entity,monopolized the right to determine values. . . .

It is hardly surprising that the clash between Christianity and thepolicy of national education . . . should have taken the form of a heatedcontroversy about this Imperial Rescript. Significantly it was at aboutthis period that the word étatisme came into frequent use.18

Maruyama’s revelation that the debate over education and religiongave rise to the beginnings of a discourse on statism (kokkashugi) isan important one. It suggests that statism as an element in modernJapanese nationalism was not part of the early Meiji political agenda,but rather developed in light of the cultural changes (eg.,theEnlightenment, religious and academic pluralism, etc.) ushered inafter the Restoration. In light of the protests raised particularly byJapanese Christian intellectuals (who were a more serious challengeto this moral nationalism than the foreign Christian missionaries),statism appeared as a useful ideology for containing morals andpolitics within one and the same framework. And to these statists, theImperial Rescript on Education was the fundamental text used tosupport their view that modern Japanese political loyalties andreligious faith had to be conjoined around the monarch.

The Imperial Rescript on Education is short enough, and thedebates over what it said about the relationship of the monarch andthe nation are important enough, to justify reproducing it here in itsentirety:

Know ye, Our subjects:Our Royal Ancestors have founded Our country on a basis broad and

everlasting, and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjectsever united in loyalty and filial piety have from generation togeneration illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of Ournationality [waga kokutai no seika], and herein also is to be found thesource of Our education. Ye, Our subjects, be filial to your parents,affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives beharmonious, as friends true; bear yourselves in modesty andmoderation; extend your benevolence to all; pursue learning and

18 Maruyama Masao, “Theory and Psychology of Ultra- Nationalism,” (1946), 5.

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cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual faculties and perfectmoral powers; furthermore, advance public good and promote commoninterests; always respect the Constitution and follow the laws of thecountry; should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously inservice to the public; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of theThrone coeval with heaven and earth. So shall ye not only be Our goodand faithful servants, but render illustrious the best traditions of yourforefathers.

The Way here set forth is indeed the teaching bequeathed by OurRoyal Ancestors, to be observed alike by Their Descendants and thesubjects, infallible for all ages and true in all places. It is Our wish tolay it to heart in all reverence, in common with you, Our subjects, thatwe may all attain to the same virtue. (30 October 1890)19

The Rescript did not define the Emperor as the kokutai, but onlynoted that “the glory of our kokutai” was to be found in the unity infilial piety and loyalty of the Japanese people, or “subjects.” TheRescript thus appealed to a sense of nationalism, a unity of theJapanese people, but it defined this nationalism in heavily Confucianterms, and it distinguished the tenn� from the claims of nationalism,placing him squarely at the head of these familial relations ofConfucian filial piety. There was no mention of the “state” (kokka) or“statism” (kokkashugi), although the Rescript did refer to the“country” (kuni), its laws and constitution.

In light of later allegations about the function of the Rescript inpropping up State Shintoism and in marginalizing any moral systemindependent of the state, it is ironic that the first draft of the Rescriptwas composed by a Christian, Nakamura Masanao. This is the sameNakamura who, shortly after his conversion, had argued thatChristianity should be the national religion of Japan and that, toaccomplish this goal, the emperor himself should convert toChristianity.20 What makes the historical fact of Nakamura’sauthorship of the Rescript important is that the Rescript soon becamethe center of a vigorous debate between traditional moralists, whosupported the Rescript, and Christians who criticized it as radicalrevision of the role of the emperor that threatened the freedom ofreligion guaranteed under the Meiji Constitution. The story of howthis Rescript went from Christian authorship to an object of Christian

19 My translation is based on “The Imperial Rescript on Education,” in Sources of

Japanese Tradition, volume II: 139-40, in consultation with the original, as reprintedin Sakamoto Takao, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 372.

20 Irwin Scheiner, Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan, reprintMichigan Classics in Japanese Studies, (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies,University of Michigan, 2002), 61.

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critique is an intriguing and important one for understanding thesubsequent efforts to present the monarch as a religious figureheadfor the nation, even a “god incarnate” (arahitogami).

To understand the debate over the monarchy that revolved aroundthe Rescript on Education, one must begin with earlier efforts byMotoda Nagazane (Eifu) in the late 1870s to propagate a concept ofthe tenn� as a Confucian patriarch. During the framing of the MeijiConstitution, Motoda’s concept of the monarch as moral figureheadwas rejected by It� and Inoue Kowashi whose modernist sensediscounted the importance of religion, seeking instead to convert thetenn� into a constitutional monarch who would serve as the politicallynchpin of the new centralized state. After the constitution waspromulgated, Motoda and his followers found a new opportunity torealize their goals: this time through the back door, by calling for anational religion (kokky�) as a means of exhorting the nation’s loyaltyto the monarch. This Confucianist strategy was distinct from, and incompetition with, efforts of bureaucrats in the Ministry of Educationwho were trying to construct a policy of moral suasion of the nation(kokumin ky�ka) by systematizing native Shinto beliefs into a religion.As Sakamoto Takao’s nuanced commentary reveals, Motoda himselfwas “relatively cool” to these Shintoist efforts, as his Confucianist“national religion was founded on the tenn� as a virtuous monarchwho manifested standards of moral behavior,” not on the claims ofethnic tribalism.21

But what re-animated their mission of establishing a moralmonarch was the revision of Nakamura’s draft by Inoue. Nakamurabelieved that Christianity was a logical extension of Confucian ethics,and he had mixed the two systems in his draft. Inoue deletedNakamura’s argument that “loyalty and filial piety derived from areligious attitude of respect for the teachings of the Lord of Heaven[tenshu, i.e, the Judeo-Christian God].”22 When Inoue removed thisChristian reference from Nakamura’s draft, he opened the door toMotoda and the Confucian interpretation of the tenn� as a source of(Confucian) virtue and ethics for the nation. Motoda and Inoue in factexchanged drafts of the Rescript several times before settling on thefinal version, a compromise between Inoue’s preference for a secularsense of national ethics open to all religious traditions, and Motoda’s

21 Sakamoto Takao, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 368.22 Nakamura, quoted in Joseph Pittau, S.J., “Inoue Kowashi, 1843-1895, and the

Formation of Modern Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica, vol. XX, nos. 3-4, p. 274; citedin Scheiner, p. 186.

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Confucianist sense of a deep connection between national ethics andimperial virtue.23

Only a few months after its promulgation, the Imperial Rescript onEducation became the center of a prominent debate known as “theclash between education and religion.” The controversy began inJanuary 1891, when Uchimura Kanz�, a teacher at the Imperial FirstHigher School and a Christian, refused to show reverence to anImperial portrait that was sent to the school with the Rescript.Uchimura, it is important to note, did not object to any of thesubstance of the Rescript or to the emperor, but simply refused toengage in what he considered idolatry by worshipping images.24 Hisrefusal to show respect for the imperial portrait caused a ruckuswithin the school. Yet, as it became more widely known thatUchimura was a Christian, the debate became public and thenewspapers reported on the “incident of fukei” (lèse majesté; treason;blasphemy). Writers referred to Uchimura as “blasphemous,” “anoutrageous teacher,” “a rude lout,” “a disloyal subject,” “a disloyallout enslaved to foreign teachings” and more. Incidents of persecutionof Christians as disloyal Japanese spread around the country, asdiscussion of Christianity in public schools was prohibited.25 FiveProtestants, led by Oshikawa Masayoshi (1849-1928), UemuraMasahisa (1858-1925), and Iwamoto Yoshiharu (1863-1942), came toUchimura’s defense and published a joint declaration of support inthe Yomiuri and other newspapers. They argued that to call theemperor “a god” (kami) and to force Japanese to worship him wouldviolate Article 28 of the Meiji Constitution, which guaranteedfreedom of religion, and they declared their willingness to “fight tothe death”, if necessary, to contest such interpretations.26

Motoda died in 1891, so the Confucianist case was taken up by thephilosopher Inoue Tetsujir�, who already had earned a reputation as apowerful opponent of Christianity. Against those who celebrated thefreedom of religion guaranteed by Article 28 of the Constitution,Inoue emphasized that the constitution allowed such freedom only “tothe extent that [it] did not disturb the peace and order of the realm or

23 For the details concerning the negotiations between Inoue, Motoda and

Nakamura over the drafts of the Imperial Rescript on Education, see Sakamoto, 370-4.24 Sakamoto, 374.25 Gonoi Takashi, Nihon kirisutoky�-shi (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K�bunkan, 1990),

282.26 “Aete yo no shikisha ni kokuhaku su,” cited in Unuma Hiroko, “Dai yonsetsu:

kokumin d�tokuron o meguru rons�,” 356-79 in Imai Jun and Ozawa Tomio, eds.,Nihon shis� rons� shi (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1979), at 358-9.

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undermine [one’s] duties as an imperial subject.”27 In November 1892,he published “Mr. Inoue Tetsujir�’s Remarks on the RelationshipBetween Religion and Education” (later re-titled, “The ClashBetween Education and Religion”). As Oguma Eiji has noted, Inouecontrasted the Imperial Rescript on Education that “put into writingJapan’s unique morals” with Christians “who make no distinctions ofrace or state, taking all people to be children of God.” Inoue thenasserted that “Christianity was harmful to the state, because it wasincompatible with the spirit of the Imperial Rescript.”28 He tried toleverage the Uchimura lèse majesté incident through his own narrowinterpretation of the Imperial Rescript on Education in order toeradicate, or at least de-legitimate, Christianity as a religious optionfor modern Japanese. Christianity itself, Inoue concluded, wasincompatible with the duties of a loyal subject of the Emperor.

Christians did not remain silent in the face of this attack on theirpatriotism. Christian dissent from Inoue’s position was prominentover the next decade, and some, especially Protestants, simplyrejected the Imperial Rescript, and on occasion even the monarchyitself, as incompatible with their faith.29 But a more moderate positionwas expressed by two Catholic priests who did not accept theargument (shared, ironically, by Inoue and some of his laterProtestant critics) that Christianity was incompatible with theImperial Rescript or with the monarchy itself. This Catholic positionmust not be overlooked in assessing the significance of the “clashbetween religion and education” or the more general question ofwhether one could be a loyal subject of the monarch and a Christian.

Shortly after Inoue’s article appeared, François A.D. Linguel (aFrench Catholic priest) and Maeda Ch�ta (the first Japanese ordaineda priest in the Tokyo diocese) co-wrote Religion and the State (1893),which presented a refutation of Inoue’s thesis from a Catholicperspective.30 Maeda and Linguel challenged Inoue’s argument thatthere was a “clash between religion and education” through a close

27 Nihonkoku kenp�, 69.28 Oguma Eiji, Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen, (Tokyo: Shin’y�, 1995), 56. I

have translated this section myself, since David Askew’s translation (A Genealogyof ‘Japanese’ Self-Images, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002), is not accuratehere. For instance, he renders the reference to distinctions of jinshu (race) and kokka(state) in this passage as a distinction between “nations and states,” (Genealogy, 38).

29 Kashiwagi Gien (1860-1938), a follower of Niijima J�‘s brand of ProtestantChristianity, was an implacable foe of the “emperor system“ and all wars who wasattracted to socialism. See Katano Masako, Kofun no hito Kashiwagi Gien: tenn�-seito kirisuto-ky� (Tokyo: Shinky� Shuppansha, 1993).

30 Gonoi Takashi, Nihon kirisutoky� shi, 282.

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reading of Inoue’s text that parsed it into fifty-one specific points,addressing each in detail. Throughout, they insisted that support forthe state, the monarch and the Imperial Rescript was in no wayincompatible with Catholicism. In response to Inoue’s argument thatUchimura’s actions revealed how Christians could never be loyalsubjects of the emperor since they were subjects only of Jesus, Maedaand Linguel cited in Latin Jesus’s own command: “Reddite qué suntCésaris, Césari; et qué sunt Dei, Deo” (render to Caesar that which isCaesar’s, but render to God that which is God’s.)31 Against Inoue’sallegation that Christians like Uchimura showed disrespect for theEmperor, Maeda and Linguel countered that “disrespect” (fukei) wascontrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. As evidence, theyoffered Matthew 18:10 (“See that you despise not one of these littleones”) and noted that even “the Protestant Guizot” had recognizedthat the Catholic Church was the greatest school of respect in theworld (“L’Eglise Catholique est la plus grande école de respect qu’ily ait au monde”). For a Church that taught respect for even littlechildren, Maeda and Linguel concluded, respect and honor for HisMajesty, the head of state, was beyond question.32

Maeda and Linguel’s critique exposed the fact that Inoue wasseeking to change the significance of the monarch from what theframers of the constitution had intended, and that his interpretation ofthe Rescript was, at best, a novel or idiosyncratic one. Althoughpresented as a Catholic position, theirs was neither a parochial nor aforeign one (Linguel’s co-authorship clearly served to add theauthority of the West to the argument; Maeda’s revealed that theseviews were shared by loyal Japanese: hence, both Linguel andMaeda’s authorship had important and complementary roles inestablishing the legitimacy of this challenge to Inoue’s religiousbigotry). Their Catholic defense against Inoue’s attack on Christiansas disloyal subjects of the monarch was completely consistent withthe original interpretation of the monarch put forth by It� Hirobumi

31 Maeda Ch�ta and François A.D. Lignuel, Sh�ky� to kokka (Tokyo: MaedaCh�ta, 1893), reprinted in Suzuki Norihisa, ed., Kindai nihon kirisutoky� meichosensh�, dai IV-ki kirisutoky� to shakai, kokka hen (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sent�, 2004),1-217, at 43, 74-75. While the work was self-published by Maeda, it was distributedby prominent Tokyo bookstores (Maruzen, Meih�d�, Hakubunsha and Fuky�sha)until it was censored by the government. Thus, the text should not be seen as highlyinfluential in Meiji public debates over morality and the monarch. But it is veryvaluable for demonstrating the range of views among Christians on the monarchy andmorality in the early 1890s.

32 Maeda and Lignuel, 43-44.

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that the tenn� was merely a constitutional monarch and that civicloyalty to him did not conflict with the constitutional right enjoyed byhis subjects to practice the faith of their choosing. Their carefullyconstructed counter-arguments revealed that it was not Christianswho were in violation of Japan’s modern political tradition, but Inouehimself. Inoue, they revealed, was trying to change the significanceof the tenn� from being simply the constitutional head of state tobeing the head of a national religion, an incarnate god (arahitogami)for the Japanese people.

Although Maeda and Linguel argued strenuously against Inoue,and with reason, ironically, they had more in common with Inouethan they did with It� Hirobumi and his vision of a secular,monarchical state. Inoue and the Catholic priests shared a belief thatno state could survive without a foundation in morality. Maeda andLinguel did not object to Inoue’s concept of a religiously foundedstate (recall that it was a Christian, Nakamura Masanao, who hadinitially drafted the Imperial Rescript on Education). Their objectionwas that Inoue sought to establish his religious state on a false god,the human emperor, rather than on the one true God. Maeda andLinguel asserted that no educated person of the day really believedthat Amateratsu �kami was truly a supreme god, and they evenquestioned whether Inoue himself believed that the monarch was sucha supreme god.33 As had Nakamura, they welcomed the idea of amodern Japan founded on Christianity, but of course they did notseriously attempt to establish Japan as a Christian state. Rather, theirpoint was that morality was intrinsically connected to the political andsocial well-being of a nation, and they did not reject monarchy as asystem of governance that could, potentially, lead to such an ethicallyformed national people. But in their arguments, the monarch and thenation were distinctive elements, and ultimately morality wasrevealed through the actions of the people who constituted the nationrather than being something that was vested solely in the person ofthe monarch.

The Catholic political theory sketched by Maeda and Linguel hadconsiderable potential for establishing a working compromisebetween the constitutional monarchy and rising concerns about themoral characteristics of the new nation. That potential, however, wascompromised when the government prohibited the publication ofReligion and the State almost immediately after its release. The

33 Maeda and Lignuel, 39-40.

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precise reasons for this measure are not clear, but timing suggests itwas a victim of a reaction against increasing challenges fromintellectuals to Shinto’s religious stature.

Just a year earlier, in 1892, Professor Kume Kunitake had beenremoved from his chair in history at the Imperial University of Tokyofor writing in the Shigakkai zasshi, the historical journal of record,that “Shinto is merely old customs for worshipping the sky.” Kume’sdenial that Shinto was a religion rankled the emerging religiousnationalists, but his rational positivism was actually quite close to thepragmatic utilitarianism of the framers of the Meiji Constitution. Thefact that Kume was now in trouble for expressing this secularistsentiment reveals how much things had changed for Japanesenationalism from the time of the Restoration to the post-Constitutional years. Yet, in spite of these efforts to question thepatriotism of Christian Japanese, most Christians, Protestant andCatholic, supported the Sino-Japanese war in 1894 as a goodopportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the emperor.34

That support began to wither immediately after the war. Thedecade of the 1890s was an important watershed for Japanesenationalism, as it marked the rise of a new, populist nationalism thatbrandished concepts of the people (kokumin, minzoku) against thegovernment and even against the monarch. I treat this populistnationalism in more depth elsewhere in this volume. Here it willsuffice to note its connection with Christianity and its emergencefrom the debates over morality, the monarch and the nation.Tokutomi Soh� is one important link. In 1876, he had joined theKumamoto Band of Christians, associated with Niijima J�, andevidenced both socialist and nationalist tendencies in his thinking. Hisjournal Friend of the Nation, founded in 1887, was one of the mainmouthpieces for this populist nationalism. Tokutomi, however, didnot move against the state or the monarch, and his nationalismbecame prominent particularly after the Russo-Japanese war (whichhe, unlike most Christians, did support). Others of this KumamotoBand moved more decisively toward populist nationalism as a forceagainst the monarchy. For example, Kashiwagi Gien (1860-1930)rejected Inoue’s argument that Christians could not be loyal subjects,but he mixed socialism, pacifism, and anti-monarchial sentiments,ultimately offering in the early Taisho period a contrast between the

34 Gonoi, 286.

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Christian vision of “man as the end” with the ideology of “man as themeans” which he associated with the “emperor system” (tenn�-sei).35

The introduction of “Liberal Theology”, especially by Unitarianand Universalists shifted Christian thought even further frominstitutions, authority and in some cases, even away from support forthe monarch. The influence of Liberal Theology over JapaneseChristians was not long lasting, but its political and social impact wasconsiderable. Its anti-institutional influence can be seen in the Societyfor the Study of Socialism, founded in 1898 almost entirely byChristians (the lone exception was K�toku Sh�sui). K�toku is animportant link between the late nineteenth century “clash betweeneducation and religion,” led by Christians, and more radical forms ofanti-monarchical nationalism that began to emerge in the earlytwentieth century. Although many Christians continued to assert thecompatibility of their faith with patriotism, some Protestants hadbegan to withdraw their support for the imperial government aroundthe time of the Russo-Japanese War. Most would not go as far asanarchists like K�toku did, advocating an overthrow of the monarchyitself. However, the tensions that had emerged by the end of thecentury between a constitutional monarchy (which most Christianshad initially welcomed) and a new moral, even religious,interpretation of the tenn� revealed that the modern Japanesemonarchy had not resolved the problem of national legitimacy somuch as it had drawn important lines around the debate over nationalidentity.

The Monarch as Emperor (K�tei)

After the Russo-Japanese war, and particularly after the 1905 HibiyaRiots that followed the announcement of the disappointing terms ofthe Treaty of Portsmouth, the fissures in Japanese nationalism thathad been growing wider during the 1890s became deep andsometimes violent. Emerging populist critiques of the state asoppressing the Japanese people spilled over into critiques ofimperialism and consequently of the “emperor” himself. As a worldpower, Japan was now very much a player in the region, and itsactions were increasingly criticized as imperialist both at home andabroad. Anti-imperialist movements were strongest, of course, inChina and Korea (which had fallen under Japanese dominance after

35 Katano, Kofun no hito Kashiwagi, 2.

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the war and would be annexed into the empire in 1910). But domesticcritiques of imperialism were also gaining strength, and they raisedarguments not only about territorial expansion in Asia, but also aboutthe suppression of democracy at home. In this context, an “empire”(teikoku) required an “emperor” (k�tei), so the monarch wasrepresented as an emperor both by imperialists and later by those whoadvocated an imperial nationalism led by His Majesty. Throughoutthese debates and the turbulent years of war that followed, the MeijiConstitution, which was designed originally not for expansiveimperialism but for centralized monarchical government, remained inforce. Yet, as with the Imperial Rescript, what mattered more than theconstitution itself was the political debate over the meaning of the text.And the battle over the meaning of the monarchy was assuredly themost important of legal and constitutional debates.

The century opened with grave concerns about the violent formspolitical criticism was taking. In 1906, K�toku announced his turntoward radicalism, outlining a new emphasis on “direct action”against the state. Many within the Socialist Party left theparliamentary wing of the Party headed by the moderate Christiansocialist Katayama Sen, seduced by K�toku’s call for direct actionthrough strikes, marches, and violent confrontation with theauthorities. Having radicalized the socialist movement, K�toku ledmany of his colleagues through the streets of Tokyo in 1908, callingfor an overthrow of the capitalist government and engaging the policein street brawls. He was arrested in 1910 as the ringleader of a groupof anarchists who had plotted to assassinate the emperor (the “HighTreason Incident”) and was executed, along with eleven others, in1911.

By then, socialism already had emerged as a powerful ideologicaland political force that adopted the most extreme position against theemperor and imperialism. Yet, not all socialists accepted K�toku’sradicalism, nor did all socialist ideas lead to leftist politics. In 1906,the same year that K�toku was announcing his radical approach, KitaIkki published his influential book, A Theory of Nationality and PureSocialism. In it, he outlined an argument that would shake up thesocialist world. Rather than seeing the state as the tool of the capitalistclass, as K�toku did, Kita argued that the state was really societyitself, and thus the Diet is merely the representation of the people.Consequently, he proposed that the monarch was actually subordinateto the people who are represented in the “citizen state” (k�min kokka):

The emperor of Japan is an organ who began and continues to exist forpurposes of the survival and evolution of the state….It is clear that…

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when the emperor acts as chief administrative official or commands thearmy and navy, he does so as an organ.36

As George Wilson notes, this argument seems to resemble the “organtheory” developed later by Minobe Tatsukichi, except that Kita doesnot accept the idea that the emperor is the highest organ of the state;rather, in Kita’s mind, the emperor is merely one part of the statealong with the more important part, “the people.”37 In essence, Kitawas trying to do for socialism what the Christian intellectuals earlierhad tried to do for their faith: show that it was not incompatible witheither the kokutai or monarchical government.

If the issues that had informed the Meiji debates over the monarchwere those of legitimation, centralization, implementation and loyalty,the issues that shaped debates over the monarchy in the Taisho periodadded to this mixture concerns with succession and institutionalstability. By “succession” I do not mean the more limited question ofwho the next monarch would be, after the passing of Emperor Meiji.There was no question that his son, Yoshimutsu, would succeed to thethrone. A deeper concern was over systematic change and continuity:whether the institutional solutions to the political problems of themid-nineteenth century would be able to withstand the challenges of amature powerful state, and if not, to what degree revisions would beneeded or permitted. This new debate over the emperor did not takeplace in a vacuum. As the new century unfolded, few of the originalmen who guided the formation of the Meiji imperial state were stillalive. A broader “sense of ending” and a more focused political crisisfollowed in the wake of the Emperor Meiji’s death in 1912. The“sense of ending” encapsulated broadly felt misgivings about whetherthe new generation of Japanese was prepared to make the sacrificesnecessary to ensure Japan’s security and prosperity into the future.

These anxieties seemed justified by the political crisis that tookshape in the form of the “protect the constitution movement” (gokenund�) of late 1912-early 1913. The movement began when, after thefall of the second Saionji cabinet, a conference on “protecting theconstitution” was held by journalists and party politicians such asOzaki Yukio of the Seiy�kai and Inukai Tsuyoshi of the NationalParty (Kokumint�). Ignoring the conference, the genr� simplyappointed Home Minister Katsura Tar� the next prime minister, as

36 Kita Ikki (Terujir�), Kokutairon oyobi junsui shakaishugi, Kita Ikki chosakush�,

I: 425, 231; translated and cited by George M. Wilson, Radical Nationalist in Japan,Kita Ikki, 1883-1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 28.

37 Wilson, 28-31.

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recommended by the leaders of the Sat-Ch� coalition. In response,tens of thousands of protesters surrounded the Imperial Diet on 10February 1913, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Katsura.He and his cabinet resigned the following day. To historians who seethe Taisho period as one of “Taisho democracy,” this movement toprotect the constitution is a key moment in Japan’s experiment withindigenous democracy.

Yet, there was both more and less than democracy on display inthis moment. At one level, this pro-constitution movement wasmerely a return to the political struggle between the government andthose anti-government groups that had earlier identified with the“Freedom and People’s Rights Movement.” It was, in a sense, powerpolitics between opposing factions of modern Japan’s elite. At thesame time, it expressed a new force in this political struggle: the roleof “the people” that saw itself as the legitimate source of sovereigntyin Japan, as in any modern nation. This appeal to “the people” wasmost striking in the mob that surrounded the Imperial Diet, but it alsowas captured in the convening of a conference to “protect theconstitution,” and in the very name of Inukai’s political party, theNational (i.e, the “people”) Party. At the same time, the claims madeon behalf of the “people” inevitably brought the question of themonarchy to the fore, since after all it was the monarch who hadbestowed upon the people this very constitution that they were nowclaiming only to “protect.”

Advocates of “protecting the constitution” found a surprisingopponent in the ghost of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Fukuzawa had died in1901, but his ideas were resurrected against the populists in theconstitutional movement by the government, through the re-printingof his On the Imperial Household (1882-1911, 1931). Ironically,Fukuzawa has long been viewed sympathetically by those critical ofthe government (in spite of his siding with the government after 1881),for he had taught, famously, that a good scholar should remainoutside of government service. Fukuzawa’s independent spirit hasappealed greatly to journalists, intellectuals, and others critical of thestate. But in fact, he shared much with Inoue Tetsujir�, including hishatred of Christianity and his support for the government, especiallyafter 1881.

As early as 1875, when Christianity was still quite weak in Japan,Fukuzawa wrote the following:

In essence the Christian religion takes eternity as its end, an eternity ofeverlasting bliss and comfort or of everlasting suffering and affliction.It fears punishment in the next world more than in this, considers future

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Judgment more important than judgement [sic] in the present…if theworld is one family and all men on the face of the earth are likebrothers, then love should be meted out equally to all men…to dividethe globe into sections…and worst of all, to take up weapons andmurder one’s brothers within other boundaries, to take their land fromthem, and to contend with them for business profit—this cannot by anymeans be the aim of religion. In view of these abuses it seems that weshould set aside for a while consideration of eternal punishment in theafterlife and say that punishment in the present life is still inadequate.And the offenders [deserving of punishment] are the Christians.38

Fukuzawa’s antipathy to Christianity was not merely abstract. Hebecame involved in the “Catholic Funeral Affair,” in which aJapanese Catholic had his deceased wife buried in the local Buddhistcemetery after holding a Mass of Christian burial for her. When theBuddhist priests protested and sued in court to have her remainsremoved from the cemetery, Fukuzawa filed a brief in support of theBuddhists, sought to pressure the judges through his influentialpolitical friends, and mobilized his students in the anti-Christianmovement.39 As Yonehara Ken has demonstrated, Fukuzawa’santipathy to Christianity influenced his theory of the monarchbeginning around the early 1880s, as he was moving toward a theoryof Japanese nationality that emphasized the centrality of the ImperialHouse. In this sense, Yonehara may be quite justified in noting thatFukuzawa had begun to reconsider his earlier arguments againstethnicity as “an empty fiction intoxicated with vainglory.” 40 Thelater Fukuzawa appears to have been a rare example of an implicit“ethnic nationalist” who, while refraining from explicitly invoking theconcept of minzoku (ethnic nationality) in favor of the concept of apolitically constituted nation (kokumin), nonetheless believed that agood Japanese could not embrace the Christian faith.

As we have seen, in his earlier days, Fukuzawa had experimentedwith a liberal or republican theory of nationalism, in which thedifference between kokutai (“nationality”) and the monarchy wasemphasized in order to stress the role of the people in forming astrong national unity. He had stressed the distinction betweennationality (kokutai), legitimation (seit�), and the blood lineage of themonarchy. Why, he asked, was Japan able to change its political

38 Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, trans. by David A.

Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst, (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1973), 177.39 Yonehara Ken, Kindai nihon no aidenteitei to seiji (Tokyo: Mineruva Shob�,

2002), 53-4, n. 13.40 Yonehara, 18.

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forms over the centuries without loss of its nationality and hencesovereignty? “Because,” he answered, “Japan was governed byJapanese sharing a common heritage of language and customs.”41 Atthis point in his thinking, Fukuzawa believed that a shared sense ofhistory was more important than ethnicity or blood in thedetermination of a people’s nationality.

Most importantly, Fukuzawa did not appeal to some putativetranscendental value of the imperial household itself. He argued thatthe kokutai and the monarchical lineage were not synonymous, and heemphasized the theoretical possibility that kokutai could change, as ithad in many European countries. Nor was a single kokutai a conditionfor a necessarily united nation-state, and as an example he pointed outthat “the various German states are virtually independent, but becausetheir language and literature are the same and they share a commonlegacy of the past the Germans have till this day preserved a Germannationality which distinguishes them from other people.”42 Rather, heargued that what value the imperial household had was due to itsvalue as a source of national unity. He was most impressed with howthis unity was displayed after the Satsuma Rebellion when samuraiwho had served in the war returned home with no material reward fortheir service but a word of thanks from His Majesty.43

The key argument Fukuzawa presents about the institution of themonarchy (the “imperial household”) is that it must always remainoutside of politics (teishitsu wa seijisha-gai no mono nari).44 Here, wecan glimpse the significance of this argument for party politicians andothers in the “protect the constitution” movement, as well as for thosewho would follow Kita Ikki’s radical call for a closer embracebetween the nation and the monarch (kokumin no tenn�). Yet, wemust also keep in mind the historical context that surrounded thecomposition of Fukuzawa’s theory on the imperial household. It was

41 Fukuzawa, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, 26.42 Fukuzawa, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, 23-24. The citation is from

Dilworth and Hurst’s translation, except I have substituted Fukuzawa’s ownrendering of kokutai as “nationality” for Dilworth and Hurst’s “national polity.” SeeFukuzawa Yukichi, Bummeiron no gairyaku (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1931), 37.

43 Kimura Junji, “Teishitsuron: Fukuzawa Yukichi,” in Tenn�ron o yomu, 15.44 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Teishitsuron (1882-1911, 1931), reprinted in Sakamoto

Takao, ed., Fukuzawa Yukichi chosakush� (Tokyo: Kei� Gijiku Daigaku Shuppankai,2002), 9:163-217, at 171. In 1937 the Ministry of Education declared Fukuzawa’sTeishitsuron as “inappropriate” for use in university, so the university he founded,Keio University, excised it from the reprinted edition of Fukuzawa’s SelectedWritings. It was returned to the collection published by Kei� University only in the2002 edition cited above.

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written the year following, and in relation to, the 1881 political crisisthat pitted the people’s rights parties against the parties that stood forthe power of the officials. Fukuzawa was deeply concerned that thenation might devolve into civil war and, failing to maintain unity, fallvictim to the colonizing ambitions of the Western Powers. Thus, hissolution, which Sakamoto Takao notes foreshadowed the postwar“symbolic emperor,” was to elevate the emperor above politics, topresent the emperor in English monarchical theory as one who“reigns but does not rule.”45

Fukuzawa’s view of the emperor went a bit beyond this passiveformulation, however, as he saw the role of the emperor as not merelya passive symbol of national unity, but as the active unifying force ofthe nation in spiritual terms. This was, in a sense, a reversal of KitaIkki’s concept of the monarch as belonging to the nation. Theemperor was to remain above politics, but should devote himself“centrally to the task of winning over the Japanese people’s spirit.”46

In so doing, Fukuzawa made the monarch the lynchpin of ethnicnationalism by transforming the monarch from a constitutionalmonarchy designed for political unity to a cultural figurehead whoembodied Shintoist beliefs as the core of a native Japanese spiritualsensibility.47 This “spiritual” task was left rather ambiguous: it mightentail cultural activities such as the collection of traditional arts andcrafts as much as conferring honors on individuals and establishingschools and encouraging the people to study. But the role of theemperor was to unify the nation and the state, to heal the rift betweenthose who extolled the rights of the people (or civil rights) and thosewho placed a primacy on the authority of the government. Theambiguity in Fukuzawa’s approach to the Imperial Household waskey to its broad appeal. His argument encapsulated the two maindirections in which emperor-theory would subsequently develop:toward a political approach that elevated the emperor beyond civiliancontrol, and toward a spiritual approach that, while also elevating theemperor beyond the state, did so only to emphasize the emperor’scentrality to cultural nationalism.

45 Cf. “Teishitsu wa banki o suburu mono de ari, ataru mono dewa nai.”

Fukuzawa, Teishitsuron, 171 also cited in Kimura, Tenn�ron o yomu, 12. SakamotoTakao calls this view of the Emperor a precursor to the postwar constitutionalemperor as a “symbol of the nation.” See Sakamoto, “Kaisetsu,” Fukuzawa Yukichichosakush�, 9: 309.

46 Fukuzawa, Teishitsuron, cited in Kimura Junji, “Teishitsuron: FukuzawaYukichi,” in Tenn�ron o yomu, 13.

47 Yonehara Ken, Kindai nihon no aidenteitei to seiji, 17-24.

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Fukuzawa’s theory of the imperial household gained support fromKat� Hiroyuki who, like Fukuzawa, had come to detest bothChristianity and the power of the people during the Freedom andPeople’s Rights Movement of the early 1880s. He outlined the twomajor positions held by scholars of constitutional law on themonarchy and provided his own, separate view. The first was the“Monarchical Organ Theory” (kunshu kikan setsu) that held that themonarch was an organ of the state and that sovereignty rested in thestate, not the monarchy. This theory was advocated by MinobeTatsukichi and Ichimura Mitsue. The second was the “MonarchicalSubject Theory” (kunshu shutai setsu) that held that state sovereigntydoes not inhere in the state itself, but rather is a particular property ofthe monarch. This theory was advocated by Hozumi Yatsuka,Shimizu T�ru, Uesugi Shin’kichi, and Inoue Mitsu. Kat� found faultwith both theories: the organ theory presumed the state was artificialand the people were natural, which Kat� argued precisely turnedreality upside down; and the subject theory unduly emphasized theuniqueness of Japan’s monarchy when, as Kat� noted, sovereigntyvested in a monarch rather than in the state was a principle andpractice derived from European monarchical theories.48

Kat�’s objective was to identify the right theory of monarchicalrule that would be compatible with Japan’s expanding empire. Heexplicitly noted how Japan’s acquisition of Taiwan and Korea forcedthe issue of multi-ethnic nationality to the foreground, and he realizedthis required a theory of the sovereign that was neither too narrowlyethnic (thus, incompatible with imperial expansion) nor too multi-ethnic (to the point of the Japanese people losing their privilegedposition). He also sought to legitimate the monarch on universal,secular terms, avoiding the kind of mystical religious theories thattried to claim the monarch as a Shinto god. His solution—imperialsovereignty instead of national sovereignty or a tenn� conceived as anethnic tribal chieftain—certainly never won universal acceptance. Butit was a powerful statement of where the tensions were in debatesover the monarchy, as Japan increasingly took on the realities of amulti-ethnic, imperial state.

It is well-known that Minobe Tatsukichi was persecuted during theearly 1930s for his organ theory and ultimately was forced to give uphis seat in the parliament in 1935. However, the fact that the organtheorists were persecuted does not mean that the theory of ethnic

48 Kat� Hiroyuki, Kokka no t�chiken, (Tokyo: Jitsugy� no Nihonsha, 1913),reprinted in Kat� Hiroyuki no bunsho (Kyoto: D�hosha Shuppan), 3:629-661, at 630.

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monarchical sovereignty was accepted as orthodox. Rather,throughout the 1920s and especially in the 1930s, advocates for thetheory of the monarch as ethnic chieftain grew vociferous even astheir cries went largely unheeded. One of their sacred texts wasOrikuchi Shinobu’s “The True Meaning of the Great EnthronementRitual” (Daj�sai no hongi), which was composed just before theShowa Emperor’s enthronement in 1928. In contrast to Fukuzawa andKat�, Orikuchi saw the emperor very much as a religious figure. Itwas not so much the actual monarch himself who embodied thisspiritual power, but the entire lineage of monarchs who had gonebefore. Orikuchi and his supporters embraced a theology of continuityof this lineage that placed importance on the incarnation of this spiritin the enthronement ceremony. His theory of the origins of theexpression mikotomochi held that mikoto referred to the words of thegods, and that he who transmitted this “word of the gods” was the onewho had the mikoto, the mikotomochi. The emperor, known as thesumera no mikoto, was the most supreme (sumera) holder of this“word of the gods”.49 In this sense his theory “relativized the absolutenature of the monarch, while at the same time it emphasized theabsolute authority of the gods.”50 The power and dignity of themonarch was not derived from his constitutional position as supremesovereign, nor from his symbolic power as the cultural unifyingprinciple of the Japanese nation. Rather, the source of his majesty andauthority came from the physical incarnation of this spirit of the godsthat takes place in the divine enthronement ceremony of the Daj�sai.

Orikuchi’s theology of the monarch as the tribal chieftain of theJapanese ethnic people joined a growing chorus of dissident voicesthat rejected the official ideology of the emperor as the sovereignhead of a multi-ethnic state. By the middle of the 1930s, a diversegroup of nationalist scholars, including Takamura Itsue and YasudaYoj�r�, were challenging this idea of the tenn� as a modern emperorand offering instead a passionate neo-nativist vision of the tenn� asthe religious leader of an ancient Yamato people. This ethnicnationalism was of course a serious challenge to the legitimacy of theempire, and it was not merely a theoretical threat. Acts of terrorismand political assassination had been on the rise during the 1930s, andmuch of it was fired by nationalist resentments against the multi-ethnic constitutional system.

49 Cf.“Shinto ni arawareta minzoku ronri,” in Zensh� 3—Ch�� K�ron.50 Kimura Junji, “Daj�sai no hongi: Orikuchi Shinobu,” Tenn�ron o yomu, 20-21.

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To extreme nationalists like Minoda Muneki (Ky�ki), traditionalconstitutional theories that accepted the emperor as head of a multi-ethnic empire were simply intolerable. He found an easy target inMinobe Tatsukichi’s “organ theory” and, along with Diet memberKikuchi Takeo, hounded him from his legislative seat in 1935.Minobe’s “organ theory” had become a cause célèbre for thoseconvinced that the emperor was being taken away from the Japanesepeople in the service of a multi-ethnic empire. Their response was aclamor to “clarify the kokutai”, and the government responded in1937 with the publication and wide-scale distribution of a new tract,The True Meaning of the Kokutai. Yet, this document never achievedthat status of being the definitive statement on Japanese nationalismthat many have claimed for it. Rather than speaking clearly on theissue, it reflected the diverse views of its multiple authors. It certainlypushed the concept of kokutai to the forefront of debates on Japanesenational identity, but it left open what exactly kokutai meant in termsof nationality.

The True Meaning of the Kokutai argued forcefully againstindividualism and other liberal Western ideologies. And it certainlyrepudiated the “organ theory” of the emperor, emphasizing that thekokutai was synonymous with Japan’s unique, unbroken line ofemperors. Yet, the tract was unable to establish a consistent argumenton the status of the people in relationship to the emperor, at timesopting for the constitutional (multi-ethnic) structure, where the peoplewere defined as “subjects”, at other times, referring to the nation(kokumin) and rarely to an ethnic definition of the nation (minzoku).51

A careful reading of the document suggests that the purpose ofissuing this official statement on the kokutai was to co-opt the mono-ethnic nationalist threat to the empire as far as possible without

51 The predominant reference in Kokutai no hongi is to the people as the (multi-

ethnic) nation (kokumin), but there are scattered references to the ethnic nation.Unfortunately, in Gauntlett’s translation, the minzoku references are either renderedas “race” or inexplicably omitted. Cf. in rendering a citation in the text from theImperial Rescript on the Promotion of National Spirit, Gauntlett drops the referenceto the ethnic nation in the passage that describes the duties of the subject as “kokka nok�ry� to minzoku no an’ei, shakai no fukushi to wo hakaru beshi [give heed to theflourishing of the State, the peace and prosperity of the ethnic nation, and the welfareof the society] as “give heed to the welfare, peace, and prosperity of the State, and tosocial well-being”. John Owen Gauntlett, trans., Robert King Hall, ed., Kokutai noHongi: Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan (Newton, MA: CroftonPublishing Corporation, 1974), 87. I have relied on the on-line version of Kokutai nohongi, http://j-texts.com/showa/kokutaiah.html#sec0403.

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compromising the multi-ethnic nature of Meiji political order.Consequently, it was not very successful in resolving this tension overthe meaning of the nation. It was considerably more successful,however, as a re-statement of the sacredness of the emperor as thespiritual center of the empire and of the duty of loyalty owed theemperor (tenn�) by all His subjects. In the end, the document wasconcerned with maintaining order under the imperial constitutionalsystem, and for that very reason it was limited in its ability toincorporate the rising challenge to the imperial structure from populistnationalism.

But the forces behind the composition of The True Meaning of theKokutai were able to directly impact the legal representation of themonarchy in international affairs. When Emperor Hirohito signed thedeclaration of war against the United States and England in 1941, hebroke with the modern tradition of officially referring to the monarchof Japan as a k�tei and referred to himself instead in the language ofthe 1937 tract as the tenn�. The contrast with precedent is striking.His grandfather, Mutsuhito (“the Emperor Meiji”) had referred tohimself as k�tei when he signed the declarations of war against China(1894) and Russia (1904). And his father Yoshihito (“the EmperorTaisho”) had used to term k�tei in 1914, when he signed thedeclaration of war against Germany and its allies. As Miwa Kimitakahas noted,

the difference is truly significant, because K�tei was common nounused in East Asia to designate the emperors of China and even at timesKorean kings. Even monarchs of European empires from ancient timesdown to the contemporary period…were all referred to as K�tei. ButTenn� was totally different. It had been used once by the Chinese inancient times and then was discarded. But as far as the Japanese wereconcerned, this word simply signified the Japanese emperor andnobody else. In 1894, 1904 and 1914, wars were declared in the nameof K�tei and the Japanese fought them as a modern Western-type nation,meticulously abiding by international law. Japan then was just one ofmany similar nation-states [sic]. But in 1941 Japan declared war on twomajor Western nations in the name of a monarch who was not onlydistinct in designation but represented a whole set of distinctly differentvalues.52

52 Miwa Kimitada, “Neither East nor West but All Alone,” in Harry Wray and

Hilary Conroy, eds., Japan Examined: Perspectives on Modern Japanese History(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983): 384-9, at 389.

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Miwa concludes that these distinctively different values meant that“by 1941 Japan had become ethnocentric in idea.”53 It may be goingtoo far to suggest that all Japanese had become ethnocentric. Japanremained a multi-ethnic empire, with Koreans and other non-ethnicJapanese living alongside ethnic Japanese and fighting alongsidethem in the imperial armed forces. But certainly this shift interminology represented a last ditch effort to reconcile imperialmonarchy with nationalism in the interests of national unity in a timeof war. The effort was “too little, too late” to have much impactduring the remainder of the war, but the forces it unleashed were tosubstantially affect the development of the monarchy in the years tocome.

The Tenn� as Symbol of the Nation

Kokutai no hongi and other official efforts to define nationalismthrough the emperor could not successfully arrest the inherenttensions between nationalism and empire, between the claims ofnational self-determination and popular sovereignty on the one hand,and the people’s status as multi-ethnic imperial subjects and theirsovereign emperor on the other. But defeat and foreign occupationprovided a new opportunity to reconsider the relationship betweennationalism and the emperor in a post-imperial Japan. The postwareffort to reconstitute the relationship of the emperor and nationalismwas shaped by the immediate concern over how to assessresponsibility for defeat in the war. This effort began on 5 September1945, when Ashida Hitoshi submitted a memorandum in the firstpostwar Diet on “The Cause and Responsibility for the UnfavorableResult of the Greater East Asian War.” Over the next several months,many claims and counter-claims of war responsibility were made, butthe focus was mainly on whether the “bureaucrats” or “the military”were responsible for the war. Significantly, exempted fromresponsibility for the war were the nation (kokumin) and theemperor.54

One group was not shy about blaming the emperor for the war. On10 October 1945, Tokuda Ky�ichi, Miyamoto Kenji, Shiga Yoshioand other leaders of Japan’s Communist Party were released fromFuch� Prison. They too exempted the nation from war responsibility,and in their “Appeal to the People” (jimmin ni utau) outlined their

53 Miwa, 389.54 Oguma Eiji, <Minshu> to <aikoku>: sengo nihon no nashonarizumu to

k�ky�sei (Tokyo: Shin’y�sha, 2002), 104-5.

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agenda of abolishing the monarchy and establishing a “people’srepublic.” The debate over war responsibility then became a tool forthe accomplishment of their long-sought objective: abolishing themonarchy. In November Shiga Yoshio made the harshest indictmentof the emperor to date in the Communist Party newspaper Akahata,arguing that “the Emperor is the worst war criminal.” It is importantto recognize, as Oguma Eiji has pointed out, that even thecommunists who were against the emperor were not againstnationalism per se but were appealing to a different kind ofnationalism.55 Their choice of Marxist terms like “a people’srepublic” may be misleading, however, if one infers from thislanguage that they were seeking to build a republican nationalism inpostwar Japan.

Marxist Japanese nationalism, particularly in its critique of theMeiji imperial system, rested on a concept of the nation as a singleethnic group. This vision is revealed in Miyamoto’s argument that theimperial system was the “corruption of the ethnic nation” (minzoku nooshoku) and that history should be studied to find the true “pride ofthe ethnic nation” (minzoku no hokori).56 Of course, in one sense, theCommunists were simply continuing a prewar rejection of theemperor that stemmed from their 1922 Draft Program and reachedstrongest formulation in support of the May 1932 Theses calling forthe overthrow of the emperor system.57 What was new was thehistorical and political context, one in which the Communist Partyenjoyed full political freedom and where the debates over warresponsibility and the urgent need to rebuild the nation converged torenew their hopes for a nationalism that would dispense with themonarchy. This local effort must be placed in its regional and globalcontext of the early postwar years, when Marxists around the worldwere supporting ethnic nationalism as a legitimate tool againstcapitalist imperialism. Japanese communists saw this global agendaas an opportunity to construct a new, postwar nationalism in Japanthat was not centered on the monarch but on ethnicity. This agenda, ifrealized, would be a true overthrow of the Meiji constitutional order,

55 Oguma, 122.56 Miyamoto Kenji, “Tenn �sei hihan ni tsuite”, Zen’ei (February 1946), cited in

Oguma, 123.57 On prewar Marxist critiques of the emperor, see Germaine A. Hoston, Marxism

and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1986), especially, 60-75.

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a political system in which the multi-ethnic social base of the empirewas held together by the monarch as the sole source of sovereignty.

The revolutionary potential of this Marxist assault on the emperorwas recognized and challenged. After Hirohito was compelled byGeneral Douglas MacArthur to renounce his divinity in his famous“Declaration of Humanity” (ningen sengen) in January 1946, asurprising group of liberals came to the defense of this downsizedmonarchy. Led by Tsuda S�kichi and Watsuji Tetsur�

they were considered during the war to be dangerous thinkers opposedto the kokutai, so it might seem strange to find them defending themonarchical system [in the postwar]. But they shared a basicunderstanding of the emperor’s position as outlined in Minobe’semperor organ theory and thus did not consider monarchy to beincompatible with parliamentary politics or democracy.58

What made possible their support for the postwar monarchy was theinstitutional and cultural transformation of both the monarch (tenn�)and of the nation (kokumin). The “emperor” now lacked not only anempire but even a clear, political role in the postwar nation, as theImperial Constitution was no longer valid and a new one had yet to bedrafted. In the interregnum, Hirohito, who during the war hadrenounced the title k�tei in favor of tenn�, was less an “emperor” thanever before. But even as a “monarch,” his fate and function wasuncertain. He was, in a sense, monarch without portfolio.

What was the Japanese monarchy? Who was the monarch inrelation to the newly sovereign nation (kokumin)? If Hirohito himselfhad moved the conception of the monarchy towards an ethnicchieftain (tenn�) and away from the universal, legal sense of k�tei,would the new, post-imperial conditions of a defeated Japan require areturn to the concept of k�tei that had served a more internationalJapan in the past? An early answer to these questions came in March1946, only two months after Hirohito’s “Declaration of Humanity,”when a draft of the new constitution was published in the majorJapanese newspapers, introducing the principle of the monarch asboth tenn� and as the “symbol of national [kokumin] unity.”59 Thiswas the first, and most important step in what Yonetani Masafumi has

58 Kimura Junji, “Tenn�ron no keif�,” Tenn�ron o yomu, 215.59 On the development of the “symbol emperor system” from prewar currents, both

foreign and domestic, see Masanori Nakamura, The Japanese Monarchy:Ambassador Grew and the Making of the ‘Symbol Emperor Sytem,” 1931-1991, trans.by Herbert Bix, Jonathan Baker-Bates and Derek Bowen, (Armonk,NY: M.E. Sharpe,1992).

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called “the nationalization [kokuminka] of the emperor system.”60 Itwas an innovative, if not quite revolutionary, shift in Japanesemonarchical theory, one that sought to reconcile claims of themonarch as unique to Japan with a constitution premised on universalrights and national sovereignty.

Only one month later, in April 1946, Tsuda published an article on“The Circumstances of the Founding of our Country and the Ideologyof Unbroken Imperial Lineage” in the journal Sekai. Tsuda arguedthat history showed that the modern emperor system was anaberration in the long history of the Japanese monarchy. Throughouthistory, the Japanese monarchy had largely been a symbolicinstitution, and the monarch had rarely been the head of an actualmonarchical system of government. This defense of the monarchystartled many who recalled that only three years earlier Tsuda hadbeen charged with lèse majesté for concluding that the Kojiki andNihon Shoki recorded, not historical facts, but fictions designed toshore up monarchical claims to power. Yet, this postwar argumentshould not have surprised anyone. Tsuda consistently adopted aliberal position that saw myths as human fictions and he rejectedefforts to make the monarch into more than he actually was, whetheras sovereign head of state or as a living god.

Watsuji, Tsuda’s colleague in this effort to rehabilitate the postwarmonarch as symbol of the nation, had a different history and adifferent argument about the symbolic monarchy. But he toochallenged an excessively theological understanding of the monarch.Watsuji had argued at the height of the war that the monarch’s“divinity” did not imply any transcendental power as Creator ofnature or mankind; he drew a sharp distinction between the sense ofdivinity attributed to the Japanese monarch and the sense of divinity“that Jews and Christians attribute to Yahweh and Deus.”61 While heconceded that a kind of divinity inhered in the ancient imperialancestors, his main point converged with Tsuda’s thesis that the roleof the living monarch was not an active political one. Rather, themonarch’s traditional role had been the expression of the collectivewill of the nation (kokumin no s�i), and since the formation of anation’s collective will is an essential step in establishing national

60 Yonetani Masafumi, “Tsuda S�kichi Watsuji Tetsur� no tenn�ron: sh�ch�

tenn�sei ron,” 23-56 in Amino Yoshihiko et al., eds., Tenn� to �ken o kangaeru daiikkan: Jinrui shakai no naka no tenn� to �ken (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002): 23.

61 Watsuji Tetsur�, Sonn� shis� to sono dent� (Iwanami Shoten, 1943); cited inKimura Junji, “Sonn� shis� to sono dent�: Watsuji Tetsur�,” in Tenn�ron o yomu,43-44.

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sovereignty (kokumin shuken), the monarchy, he concluded, could notbe excluded from the formation of a democratic nation.62

Watsuji accepted, even emphasized, the ethicality associated withthe imperial lineage. But in making a distinction between the lineageof imperial ancestors (k�so) and the existing monarch (tenn�), hecreated an opening for others to support the monarch as a symbol ofnational unity, without conceding the theological question of thepersonal divinity of the monarch. Watsuji has been criticized forinterpreting the monarchy through the lens of Shintoism and thuslimiting his postwar concept of the nation to a theocratic one.63 Yet,regardless of whether one finds that argument about Watsuji’s theoryof the monarch persuasive, it does not provide a comprehensiveexplanation of the early postwar support for the monarchy from the“old liberal” group.

Tanaka K�tar� was one of the “old liberals” who supported thepostwar monarchy, and he was both a professor of law and a devoutCatholic. His defense of the postwar monarch has been discounted asmerely reflecting a “fear of anarchy and despotism” and a “scorn forthe masses.”64 But it ran much deeper than that, and stemmed from hisunderstanding of the causes of wartime fascism. Tanaka understoodthat the political forces that had threatened Japan during the 1930sand early 1940s came from extremist movements on the right and theleft, populist movements that were guided by two distinct ideologies:a cultural nationalism (kokusuishugi) that rejected any universal valueand a radical libertarianism (jiy�shugi) that claimed freedom from anymoral restraint.65 With defeat in the war, he knew that rightistnationalism was no longer a serious danger to the new social order.

But the discrediting of rightwing nationalism left a void that wasbeing filled in the immediate postwar years by individualistichedonism. Tanaka was deeply concerned by this rejection of moral

62 Watsuji Tetsur�, “Kokumin zentaisei no hy�gensha,” (July 1948) reprinted in

Watsuji, Kokumin t�g� no sh�ch� (Tokyo: Keis� Shob�, 1948); cited in Kimura,“Tenn�ron no keif�,” in Tenn�ron o yomu, 216-7.

63 See Yonetani Masafumi, “Tsuda S�kichi Watsuji Tetsur� no tenn�ron,” 47-8.However, Watsuji does not appear to have been so intolerant of other religions inJapan. He helped the Catholic philosopher Yoshimitsu Yoshihiko get a positionteaching ethics at Tokyo Imperial University in 1935 and appears to have supportedhis career in many other ways. On Watsuji’s relationship to Yoshimitsu, see HanzawaTakaro, Kindai nihon no katorishizumu (Tokyo: Misuzu Shob�, 1993), 32.

64 Oguma, <Minshu> to <aikoku>, 133, 846, n. 58.65 Tanaka K�tar�, “Katorishizumu to kokusuishugi to jiy�shugi: Tosaka Jun-shi ni

kotau,” Yomiuri Shimbun, June 1, 1935, reprinted in Tanaka, Ky�y� to bunka no kiso(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1937), 563-4.

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values, for he had argued even during the war that moral values werecrucial to the health of a society. He saw no reason that the oldliberals’ argument that the monarchy, now constitutionally framedaround a sovereign nation (kokumin), could not effectively expressthe social values of a postwar, pacifist nation. His voice in support ofthe constitutional symbol-monarch was important, especially since heoffered this support openly as a Christian, not as a Shintoist. As aCatholic and a liberal democrat, Tanaka combined FukuzawaYukichi’s idea of the monarch as a symbol of national values withMaeda and Lignuel’s defense of Catholicism as a legitimate faith forpatriotic Japanese who were loyal to their monarch. Tanaka’s supportfor the monarchy, as a liberal Christian Japanese, was neither novelnor exceptional: he drew from a tradition that was almost as old as theconstitutional monarchy itself.

These debates over whether the monarchy would survive and whatform and function it might have in the postwar era were brought to anend, in one sense, on 3 May 1952, when the new Constitution ofJapan went into effect. Chapter One, Article One of the newconstitution spelled out the emperor’s role and his relationship to thenewly sovereign nation:

Article One. The position of the Emperor, the sovereign nation(kokumin shuken). The Emperor is a symbol of the Japanese State(nihon koku no sh�ch�) and a symbol of the unity of the Japanesenation (nihon kokumin t�g�), and this position is founded in the generalwill of the Japanese nation (nihon kokumin) which is sovereign.66

The new constitution enshrined in the highest law of the land theposition of the “old liberals” that the emperor was “a symbol of thenation” and that this function was derived from the “general will” ofthe Japanese nation. Tanaka’s support for the postwar revision of theemperor system as a liberal, democratic form of monarchy was publicand undeniable. As Minister of Education in Yoshida Shigeru’scabinet, his name appeared in the official preamble to the constitutionwhen it was announced on 3 November 1946. This support for thepostwar monarchy by a prominent, liberal, Catholic jurist is importantto recall when, in later years, critiques would be leveled that theconstitution merely gave a new lease on life for State Shintoism in

66 Nihon koku kemp�, K�dansha gakujutsu bunko 678, (Tokyo: K�dansha, 1985),

12. I have retranslated the original to emphasize the nationalism explicit in theJapanese. Here is the official translation, from the same source: “Article 1. TheEmperor shall be the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people, deriving hisposition from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power” (116).

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postwar Japan. Certainly, as a Christian, Tanaka did not worship theJapanese monarch as a living god.

The constitution settled the question of whether the monarchywould survive and established its role as subordinate to the legal andpolitical oversight of the Diet. But the constitution and its legalsettlement of the monarchy’s role in the new nation did not end alldebates over the monarchy. Rather, in Kimura Junji’s succinctphrasing, it merely “shifted [the debate] from the direct engagementover abolishment or defense [of the monarchy] to an effort to get anew, objective handle on the emperor system.”67 In short, after 1952,the question of the monarchy became an academic one, where issuesof values, moral consciousness and cultural identity played largerroles than sovereignty, law and political structure. The constitutionalsettlement did not address the question of whether the monarchshould be considered the chieftain of the Japanese ethnic nation anymore effectively than the Meiji Constitution had. Nor did it clarifywhether the “symbolic” status of the monarch gave him symbolicreligious value as the chief priest of Shintoism. Consequently,academics and others have continued to debate, and thus to establish,the meaning of this “symbol emperor” through the postwar period.

The most influential of these postwar academics was MaruyamaMasao and those such as Matsumoto Sannosuke, Fujita Sh�z�, andKamishima Jir� who drew from his ideas to frame a particularapproach to understanding the monarchy. This group has often beencalled the “Maruyama School,” or even the “Modernization School,”because they shared Maruyama’s belief that a premodern form ofcommunal identity was retained and subtly incorporated into themodern monarchy and that the ideology of monarchy in modernJapan functioned to perpetuate this sense of premodern communalidentity. Perhaps the most interesting member of the MaruyamaSchool was Hashikawa Bunz�. Hashikawa suggested that it was noteasy to distinguish modern and premodern forms of thought fromwithin the modern episteme and he raised questions about how wellMaruyama could analyze in objective, social scientific terms theideological structure that he himself inhabited. Hashikawa turned hisattention to Yasuda Yoj�r� and the Japan Romantic School tounderstand how aesthetic nationalism functioned during the war at anon-intellectual level.68

67 Kimura Junji, “Tenn�ron no keif�,” 219.68 Kimura, 219-20.

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Historians also have raised persistent questions about thecontinuity of the monarchical house based on research into its earliesthistory. Mizuno Hiroshi, influenced by the historical positivism ofTsuda S�kichi, rejected the notion of an unbroken monarchical linegoing back to the age of the gods. He argued in his 1952 Introductionto a Historical Theory of the Ancient Japanese Monarchy that therewere three distinct dynasties in the ancient period, each with theirown blood lines. In more recent years, Amino Yoshihiko has built onMizuno’s approach, extending his argument into medieval Japanesehistory with creative results.

Amino attacked the notion of the Japanese as an agrarian nationand the monarch as the chief planter in this rice culture. His keyargument was that a transformation of the monarchy had occurred inthe late medieval period. According to Amino, Emperor Godaigo(1288-1339) spearheaded this transformation when he sought supportfor a restoration of the monarchy from anyone who would be usefulin challenging the power of local authorities. This included especiallymobilizing artisans, craftsmen, fishers and even social outcastes andcriminals—precisely those who were alienated from the agrariansocial order.69 In the medieval period, it was largely the “non-agrarianpeople” who turned to the emperor for their hopes of liberation.Godaigo’s effort at imperial restoration failed, at least in terms of hisown short-term objective of gaining power. But Amino suggests thatGodaigo’s failed restorationist bid had a deeper, long-lastinginfluence on the meaning of the monarchy for subsequent Japanesehistory: it created the tradition of the monarchy as a idealized space offreedom for those oppressed by local authorities, a tradition thatwould not only shape the Meiji Restoration, but subsequent efforts at“restoration” ever since.

If historians have explored the meaning of the symbol emperorthrough temporal analysis, social scientists, inspired by theanthropological methods of Yamaguchi Masao, have applied spatialand cultural analyses with rich results. Yamaguchi introduced astructuralist method based on the juxtaposition of concepts of centerand periphery, everyday and non-everyday, order and disorder tosituate Japan’s monarch in a general anthropological theory ofkingship. In such works as Portraits of the Mikado (1986) and TheMikado and Fin du siècle: The Logic of Kingship (1987) Yamaguchi

69 Amino Yoshihiko, Ikei no �ken, Nihon ch�sei no hi-n�gy�min to tenn�, cited in

Kimura, 220-22.

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located the Japanese monarchy in a general theory of kinship, whichexplored the meaning of the Japanese monarch in a context farremoved from the kind of cultural particularism that had informed thewartime theory of kokutai.70 Yamaguchi’s structuralist approach hasbeen quite influential on academic discourse on the monarchy and itdeserves credit for trying to locate the Japanese monarchy in auniversal structure of analysis. In this sense, it can be placedalongside efforts by the “old liberals” like Tanaka K�tar� who soughtto locate the Japanese monarchy in a universal scope of natural law. Akey difference, however, lies in Yamaguchi’s academic language andaudience that rendered his analysis of the monarchy in such abstracttheoretical terms that it often seemed remote from the problem ofnationalism.

Yamaguchi’s abstracting of the monarchy from its concretehistorical setting may well have been strategic. During the 1970s and1980s, as Marxist theories increasingly began to lose their appealamong the Japanese public, the main concern of the liberals whosupported the symbolic monarchy was the rise of rightist nationalismand renewed arguments for a restoration of imperial rule. While theycertainly did not ignore cultural aspects of the monarchy, these right-wing nationalists emphasized its political significance, especially itsimportance to nationalism. For them, Japanese nationalism simplycould not permit a continuation of the postwar symbolic monarchywhich they saw as imposed on Japan by a foreign conquering army.

Mishima Yukio’s dramatic suicide (after his failed call for arevolution of the postwar order) may be taken as a watershed in thisneo-rightist discourse on the emperor. It was followed by HayashiFusao’s publication of A Thesis on Jimmu Tenn� as Really Existing(Jimmu tenn� jitsuzai ron, 1971; republished as Tenn� no kigen,1988; reprinted together as Tenn� no kigen, 2002). Hayashi was oneof the key members of the wartime Japan Romantic School thatMishima had idolized, and he certainly was an advocate of the ethnicnationalism that Miwa argues attended the conceptualization of themonarchy as a tenn�. Hayashi’s argument was, at least, an interestingone. Rather than accept the premise that Tsuda’s views were identicalwith those of the “self-styled Tsuda School” (i.e., Hani Gor�, InoueKiyoshi, Wakamori Tar�, Ienaga Sabur�), he cited Tsuda’s ownwritings to show that Tsuda himself never went as far as his postwarepigones did in denying the historical reality of the early emperors.

70 Kimura, 222-3.

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He pointed out that while Tsuda did say that the narratives about theearlier emperors were unreliable, he did not say that, therefore, theearly emperors were not historical persons. This nuance was lost onthe postwar “Tsuda School” that read more into Tsuda than Tsuda’sown texts allowed, as Hayashi enjoyed pointing out. Second, whileTsuda recognized that the early myths depicted the origins of ethnicgroups with close connections to the monarchy, he never asserted thatthey were narratives on ethnic national identity, nor did he indicate apositive or negative assessment of that fact. Yet, the “Tsuda School,”animated by the post-imperial embrace of ethnicity, drew theconclusion that since “the Myths ignored the ethnic nation [minzoku],they were ‘works of political deception and oppression” that wereagainst the people [han-jimmin-teki].71 Hayashi himself was deeplysympathetic to ethnic nationalism, but what concerned him most werethese leftist ethnic nationalists that conceived their ethnic nationalismin opposition to the monarchy.

Hayashi’s ideas had resonance long after his death in 1975. Fromthe 1970s through the 1980s, a host of right wing nationalist groupshad begun to form alliances over a variety of strategic issues (eg., thenon-proliferation treaty, anti-communism, opposition to the Yalta-Potsdam, or YP, system). When Emperor Hirohito fell gravely ill inSeptember 1988 and the mainstream media began prematurelypredicting his death, reaching a feverish pitch between 20 Septemberand 15 October, both old conservative and neo-conservative groupsrallied to protest what they felt was disrespectful reporting on themonarch. They hoped that the new monarch would take theopportunity to sweep away the postwar order (“the YP system”), callfor a revision of the constitution and establish a direct, monarchicalrule.

They were dealt a blow on 9 January 1989, when the new emperorspoke at his first press conference in the Matsu-no-Ma room of theImperial Palace. His views, addressed to the Japanese nation, wereexpressed clearly and directly:

I will not cease working with you to protect the Constitution of Japanand I pledge to fulfill my constitutional duties, never ceasing in my

71 Hayashi Fusao, Jimmu tenn� jitsuzai ron (Tokyo: Mitsubunsha, 1971) reprinted

as Tenn� no kigen (Tokyo: Natsume Shob�, 2002), 375-6.

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hopes for the nation’s prosperity and an increase in world peace and thewelfare of humanity.72

Since the ultimate goal of the right-wing ethnic nationalists was thereturn of direct monarchy, the support of the new monarch for thepostwar constitution came as “profound shock.”73 Emperor Akihito’sstatement posed a crisis for the conservative nationalists, since nowthey could not support direct monarchy without contradicting themonarch’s own expressed wishes. Their only solution was to arguethat the monarch’s words were supplied by the government and thatthe Japanese monarch, unlike Western royalty, is not accustomed todivulging his true opinions in public. One rightwing leader called forthe overthrow of the Takeshita cabinet for its role in orchestrating theMatsu-no-Ma declaration, and on 5 March two extremists werearrested after crashing a truck filled with gasoline into the PrimeMinister’s residence. The date was significant: it was also on 5 March(1932) when the Ketsumeidan activist Hishinuma Gor� took the lifeof Baron Dan Takuma.74 The message was clear: these rightwingextremists felt that, once again, the emperor was being held hostageby elite political and financial groups and was unable to serve thenation.

The monarchical succession of Akihito brought to the fore thequestion of how the monarchy and the people should be understood inthe context of newly energized debates over Japanese nationalism.Most broadly, there was a sense among supporters and detractors ofthe monarchy that with the passing of Hirohito there was anopportunity to gain a new start in the way the people and the monarchwere related. Hopes were high on the left that, with a new monarchy,there might be a chance to return to the debate over war responsibilityof the immediate postwar period, this time with a more satisfactoryconclusion. Hopes were high on the right that Akihito still mightrespond in some way to their long-cherished goal of direct rule of themonarch. In the meantime, moderates caught in the middle continuedto watch these developments with caution, hoping that postwarJapan’s experiment with democratic, constitutional monarchy wouldnot be undermined from either extreme. Nobody seemed interested in

72 Emperor Akihito, “Matsu-no-ma address,” 9 January 1989, Imperial Palace;

cited in Ino Kenji, “Heisei shin-jidai to uyoku sho-ch�ry� no d�k�,” in Ino et al., eds.,Uyoku minokuha s�ran (Tokyo: Nij�seiki Shoin, 1991) 42.

73 Ino, 42-43.74 Ino, 44-45.

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replacing the term tenn� with the more universal, if now somewhatantiquated, concept of the monarch as a k�tei.

Some significant changes had developed over the final decades ofHirohito’s reign. On 17 October 1978, Yasukuni Shinto Shrineofficially enshrined the souls of fourteen “Class A” war criminalsfrom World War II, along with thousands of other who died in serviceof their country. Around that time, Emperor Hirohito suspended hisannual visits to the Shrine. But in 1984, Prime Minister NakasoneYasuhiro, as part of his pronounced effort to encourage a sense ofnationalism among the Japanese people, made the first official visitby a Japanese prime minister to the Shrine since the inclusion of thefourteen war criminals. But he too suspended official visits to theShrine due to protests, mainly coming from China. Consequently, itwas Prime Minister Hashimoto Ry�tar�’s official visit to Yasukuni in1996 that raised concern over whether the practice was here to stay.But, like Nakasone, Hashimoto also discontinued his visit in the faceof protests. When in 2001 Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichir�announced his decision to visit Yasukuni Shrine in an officialcapacity, the protests from many of Japanese Asian neighbors andeven from some Japanese people grew vociferous.

Much had changed since 1978 and even since Nakasone’s visit toYasukuni in 1984. Japanese military participation in the War onTerror in Iraq mobilized Japanese troops outside of Asia for the firsttime in the postwar era, a growing number of Japanese, especiallyyounger Japanese, called for a revision of the postwar constitutionthat formally seemed to prevent such non-defensive mobilization oftroops, and a group of historical revisionists called The LiberalSchool of History submitted a new middle school textbook forgovernment approval that emphasized the function of historicaleducation in creating civic consciousness.75 For neo-nationalists, thesetrends gave reason for optimism that the postwar, indeed modern,alienation of the people from the state was being overcome through arenewed national pride. For the left, there was considerable anxiety,even panic, that the monarchy was becoming the lynchpin of this new,unapologetic nationalism.

One of the most influential critics of the monarchy from the left isTakahashi Tetsuya, who has done more than perhaps any other personin Japan to bring back the war responsibility debate of the early

75 On this change of atmosphere in nationalist debate at the close of the last

millennium, see Rikki Kersten’s important article, “Neo-nationalism and the ‘LiberalSchool of History’,” Japan Forum, 11 (2) 1999: 191-203.

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postwar years. In a series of influential books and articles and ontelevision programs, Takahashi has contested the Liberal School ofHistory, maintaining that far from being a victim of his advisors,Emperor Hirohito had considerable personal responsibility for the war,a responsibility which was never satisfactorily acknowledged. AsRikki Kersten has pointed out in her superb assessment ofTakahashi’s views, “Takahashi argues that the severance ofdemocracy and accountability has been preserved andinstitutionalized in the post-war symbol emperor system.”76

In essence, Takahashi has taken the liberal argument on the“symbolic monarchy” and turned it upside down. As we have seen,liberals from Fukuzawa to Minobe to Tanaka have argued that,precisely because the emperor was removed from a direct role inpolitics, there was an opening for constitutional democratic forces(“the people”) to engage in the public realm. By elevating theemperor to a “symbolic” or “organic” role, the prewar and postwarconstitutional monarchy provided for various degrees of democraticinput. Conversely, Takahashi maintains that the abstraction of themonarch as a “symbol” of the people’s unity has served as a barrier todemocracy because the monarchy (and Hirohito in particular) wasallowed to continue to function in the postwar period, without everfully accounting for its role in leading the nation to war. The effect ofthis symbolic monarchy, according to Takahashi, has been to co-jointhe emperor and the people in a “system of irresponsibility” that is thehallmark of postwar Japanese nationalism. While Takahashi’s intentis to conjure up a trans-national (especially pan-Asian) subjectivity,the terms of his analysis ironically suggest a rather cohesivenationalism through this bond between the emperor and the people ascollaborators in this postwar “system of irresponsibility;” more sothan in fact may be warranted.

From the beginnings of modern Japanese political history, themonarchy has played an important role. But it is not accurate to say,as some cultural exceptionalists have, that monarchy (either as tenno,“emperor-system” or however else expressed) is the essence ofJapanese nationalism, or that Japanese nationalism cannot beunderstood apart from the monarchy. It would be more accurate tosay the monarchy cannot be understood unless it is first conceivedapart from nationalism. Nationalism, in Japan as elsewhere, is alwaysa question of how the people are conceived as a unit and then

76 Rikki Kersten, “Revisionism, reaction and the ‘symbol emperor’ in post-war

Japan,” Japan Forum 15 (1) 2003: 15-31, at 20.

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represented as possessing a common sentiment of solidarity. Themonarchy has had a long history of appealing to many in Japan whohave sought to overturn existing political arrangements, and with theconstruction of the Meiji state around the rhetoric of monarchicalrestoration, the monarch has loomed large in all efforts, whether “topdown” or “bottom up,” to approximate a more perfect national unity.Thus, even before 1946, the Japanese monarchy had served as asymbol for many groups and for many political agendas. Whether themonarchy does or will serve as a nationalist symbol, and whether thatnationalist symbol can augment democratic values within the nation,are not questions that can be answered through conceptual orhistorical analysis of the monarchy itself but will always need to beassessed on the basis of values and contexts that exist outside of themonarchy itself.

CHAPTER FOUR

SHAKAI

This chapter explores the permeations on Japanese collectiveconsciousness of a concept and reality that we now recognize as“society” (shakai). Even more so than with the previous chapter,some explanation may be warranted as to why the concept of societyfigures so prominently in an intellectual history of nationalism. Thisis especially the case when many historians of Japan, particularlysince the end of World War II, write as though “society” were notmerely an entirely different matter than nationalism but even aprophylactic against the infectious spread of nationalism. Society–andbuilding on that concept, socialism–is supposed to provide analternative to the hierarchical, oppressive ideology which theyassociate with “nationalism”: the more of one, the less of the other, orso we are told. In most cases, this argument is not so much wrong asit is ambiguous, or at least under-articulated. To conclude that“society” and “the nation” are at loggerheads depends greatly on howboth concepts of society and nation are conceived and understood.Usually, the claim that society and nation are at odds rests on animplicit understanding of “nation” as interchangeable with the state(kokka) and society as a rather undifferentiated mass of “the people”conceived in opposition to the state. When understood in these terms,the argument about “state versus society” has more than a certain ringof veracity to it. But at the same time, to the extent that “society”refers to the Japanese people as a whole, it is deeply entrenched in theappeal of nationalism as an ideology that upholds the people as thesole legitimate subject of politics. Consequently, while society maybe mobilized at times against the state, it may also act in parallel withthe nation (e.g., “the nation against the state”) to the point that societyand nation can become all but indistinguishable. For that reason, atthe very least, a sustained look at the manner in which society wasrepresented and mobilized in modern Japanese history is necessarywhen delineating the contours of nationalism and its effort to placethe people in modern political arrangements.

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Before turning to the historical details of how society (shakai)came to be conceived in modern Japan, it is useful to get a broaderview of the relationship of society and the nation as a generic problemof modernity. Most social theorists agree that society is a distinctivelymodern phenomenon and one that is reproduced in the modernity ofsociology, the discipline that takes society as its object of study.Anthony Giddens is no exception, and his analysis of the relationshipof society and nation is good place to start:

Authors who regard sociology as the study of ‘societies’ have in mindthe societies associated with modernity. Now, understood in this way,‘societies’ are plainly nation-states. Yet, although a sociologistspeaking of a particular society might casually employ instead theterms ‘nation,’ or ‘country,’ the character of the nation-state is rarelydirectly theorized. In explicating the nature of modern societies, wehave to capture the specific characteristics of the nation-state–a type ofsocial community which contrasts in a radical way with pre-modernstates.1

Because Giddens’s primary concern is not with the nation per se, butwith what he calls a “post-modernity” that evokes new, moreglobalized arrangements of power, his failure to distinguish theparticular features of nation-states from nations and states need notdetain us here. Rather, what is important is his indication of howsociologists often refer to the nation as a functional equivalent ofsociety, and how this national society is distinct from earlier kinds ofsocieties. Giddens accepts the interchangeability of society and nation(even if he generalizes all nations as “nation-states”), arguing that“modern societies (nation-states), in some respects at any rate, have aclearly defined boundedness.”2 This emphasis on “boundedness”gives Giddens the opening to correlate nation with state, and thus toequate modern societies with this bounded “nation-state.”

But even for specialists in political theory who generally recognizea distinction between nation and state, society is often both new to themodern era and deeply enmeshed in the logic of the nation. ErnestGellner is perhaps the most influential theorist in this regard, havingproposed his famous theorem that nations are the products of a shiftfrom agrarian to industrial society. In contrast to Giddens, Gellner’stheory is not so much a spatially determined one as an internal,procedural one: nations result from internal changes (educational,

1 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press, 1990), 13.2 Giddens, 14.

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cultural, economic, etc.) within societies that increase homogeneityand yield a new concept of the people as a nation. Bounded states areboth a prior reality and an effect of this social transformation towardsnations.3 Gellner takes us further in recognizing that modern societiesare “nations” rather than “nation-states,” but it is Liah Greenfeld whoprovides the most definitive statement on the relationship of societyto nation. Greenfeld emphasizes that nations are not so much the fruitof geographical or economic expansion as they are the result ofconceptual transformations:

National identity is one among many possible, and often coexisting andoverlapping, identities–such as religious, estate, occupational, tribal,linguistic, territorial, class, gender, and more. In the modern world,national identity represents what may be called the ‘fundamentalidentity,’ the one that is believed to define the very essence of theindividual, which the other identities may modify but slightly, and towhich they are considered secondary. Modern societies are ‘nations’ bydefinition.4

In short, Greenfeld takes us even further to the heart of the matterthan Giddens or Gellner by pointing out that “nationalism, notindustrialization [or the bounded state] lies at the basis of modernsociety and represents its constitutive element.”5 If Greenfeld is rightthat nationalism is the constitutive element of modern society (and Ithink she is), then the conceptualization of society is at once aconceptualization of the nation. And an intellectual history of the ideaof shakai, its contestations, alternatives, and assertions, are all centralto any history of Japanese nationalism.

Coming to Terms with Society in Meiji Japan

The term shakai, which is used today in Japanese to refer to theconcept of society, can be traced back to the Song period, where itappears in volume nine of the twelfth century Chinese text, Jinsi lu, ina comment that “when people of the communities formed anorganization (shakai), he drew up regulations for them that madeclear and distinguished between good and evil so the people might beencouraged to do good and be ashamed to do evil.”6 The earliest

3 Cf. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 1983), 39-52.

4 Liah Greenfeld, “Nationalism and Modernity,” Social Research vol. 63, issue 1,3-40 (Spring 1996): 10.

5 Greenfeld, 8.6 Morohashi Tetsuji, Dai kanwa jiten (Tokyo: Daish�kan Shoten, 1959), 8: 416-

417. Although this reference to a twelfth century text is often cited by Japanese

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instance in Japanese, according to the renowned scholar oflexographical development, Sait� Tsuyoshi, dates from the Edoperiod, but the term was a translation of the Dutch word for“cloistered monasteries” (Kloofters).7 For the roots of the modernJapanese concept of society, lexographical form is of less help thanconceptual history. We must consider a wide variety of terms thatwere used in the late Edo and early Meiji dictionaries as equivalentsof European terms for society: majiwaru (to associate), atsumaru (toassemble), ryohan, nakama, kumi, rench� (companions), kai(association), kaisha (company), k�sai (intercourse), yoriai, sh�kai(meeting), and shach� (troupe).8 Early on, three terms emerged asfavored translations for society: kaisha, k�sai and setai (the way ofthe world). Of course, the English glosses provided above (and alsobelow) are problematic: these Japanese terms have their own historiesof lexical development that need to be followed independently tounderstand how they came to acquire the contemporary meaningswith which I have glossed them here. These English “definitions” atbest can only provide a sense of the range of possible nuance in theterms employed to capture this illusive sense of “society.” While allthe glosses alert us to certain aspects of the modern concept of“society,” it is also evident that these early translation terms fell shortof capturing the full meaning of the concept of society. Indeed, thevery plurality of the terms employed suggests that a vigorous debatewas still raging in the early Meiji years over how best to come toterms with this new concept of society.

The conceptual ambiguity, even chaos, that underlay thisterminological variation, can be seen in the struggles of early Meijischolars to arrive at a definition of “society.” In his 1868 Conditionsin the West, Fukuzawa Yukichi had yet to settle on a single translationfor society, employing various terms such as ningen k�sai (“humanintercourse”), k�sai (“intercourse”), majiu (“mingle”), kuni (“the

scholars as the earliest instance of this compound shakai in China, it may have beenpreceded by earlier instamces, including a reference to an agrarian temple festivalthat is dated to the Jin Dynasty (265-420 A.D.). My thanks to my colleague PhilipKafalas for finding these references and translating them for me.

7 Sait� Tsuyoshi, Meiji no kotoba: higashi kara nishi e no kakebashi (Tokyo:K�dansha, 1977), 192-4.

8 Sat� Masayuki, “’Kojin no sh�g�tai to shite no shakai’ to iu kangaekata noteichaku ni hatashita shoki shakaika no yakuwari” [“Society as CollectiveIndividuality: The Introduction of Social Sciences in the Post War JapaneseCurriculum”] Nihon Shakaika Ky�iku Gakkai, ed., Shakaika ky�iku kenky�, no. 68(June 20, 1993): 18-29, at 23.

SHAKAI 131

country”), and sejin (“the people”). Seven years later, in An Outline ofTheory of Civilization, he added as translations for society kazoku nok�sai (“intercourse between families”) and kunshin no k�sai(“intercourse between lords and servants”). But most telling is hisassociation of civilization with both country and society:

Bummei is what is called in English “civilization.” That is, the wordderives from the Latin civitas and means the country [kuni]. Thus,Civilization [bummei] is a word that describes the state of humansociety [ningen k�sai] as it has reached a stage of improvement. Itdescribes a unified state [ikkoku] that stands in opposition to theisolation of lawless barbarism.9

Here, we have evidence of a remarkable convergence of concepts andterms in an effort to approximate a social unity that simultaneouslysignaled the historical novelty of the sought-after unity. ForFukuzawa, civilization was connected to the country (kuni), which inturn could represent “society” and reach its final stage in nationalunification (ikkoku). As he understood it, this was an unprecedentedeffort to conceive and structure something that the Japanese peoplehad yet to experience: not only a unified independent state, but anegalitarian society that would provide the foundation of that nationalstate.

Similarly, when Nakamura Masanao (Keiu) translated John StuartMill’s On Liberty as Jiy� no ri (1872), he also used a wide variety ofterms to render Mill’s concept of society. As Douglas Howland hasnoted, “the most striking idiosyncrasy in Jiy� no ri is that Nakamuradoes not consistently differentiate between ‘society’ and‘government.’ Nakamura’s reproduction of Mill’s text in Japanese ispersistently simplified by the interchangeability of seifu (‘govern-ment’ or ‘administration’) and a host of translation terms for so-ciety.”10 These terms included seifu (government), nakama rench�(“social group”), sezoku (the ways of the world), nakama (“by whichI mean seifu”), jimmin no kaisha (“which means seifu”), kaisha, ands�motojin (the whole people). As does Fukuzawa, Nakamura revealsin his translations an effort to locate a national totality through anengagement with this new concept of a “society.” And likeFukuzawa’s translations, Nakamura’s terms for society locate that

9 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bummeiron no gairyaku, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1931),

51; the translation is Dilworth and Hurst’s , 35.10 Douglas Howland, Personal Liberty and Public Good: The Introduction of John

Stuart Mill to Japan and China (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 64.

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totality in an uneasy relationship with the government, even thoughnot completely absorbed by it. Although it is shocking to somescholars that Nakamura (and Fukuzawa) did not draw as sharp adistinction between state and society as we might expect today, weshould not leap too quickly to a conclusion about the significance oftheir “failure” to distinguish state and society. The sharp line inJapanese political discourse between state and society was drawn as aresult of later historical events, and we must be careful not to fall intoanachronistic projections onto this time period.

A better understanding of the development of the concept ofsociety comes from a sensitivity to the historical developments thateventually made state and society seem as if they were essentially(rather than only contingently) in opposition. This opposition of stateto society was not a salient feature of the early Meiji engagement withshakai, for the overriding concern of that time was to built a socialwhole, a nation or a state–or both–that could unite the Japanesepeople in the face of the challenges coming from the outside.

Of course, this overriding concern with social integration does notmean that social conflict was unknown to the early Meiji socialthinkers. But as Nishi Amane made clear, social tensions were notseen as ingredients of positive or “progressive” movements that oughtto be encouraged, but as potentially anarchic forces that couldthreaten the peace and security of the people’s livelihood. In theprocess of articulating these concerns, Nishi introduced a term thatseems to invoke a contemporary understanding of shakai as society (amisleading interpretation encouraged by William Reynolds Braisted’sanachronistic translation of Nishi’s shakai as “society”). In aFebruary 1874 criticism of Fukuzawa, Nishi wrote

[As for] Fukuzawa’s comparison of government to the life force withinthe human body and the people to an external stimulus…. I am obligedto take issue with his point…

It is, then, very fine when the public spirit is strong and when society[sic., shakai] is upright. But it is most unfortunate when disturbancesultimately erupt after the emergence of factionalism…. What will bethe end if factions successively proliferate one after another? There willbe no limit to dissent and disruption in society [sic., shakai] brought onby these boastful braggarts who need not look far to learn theconsequences of their behavior.11

11 Nishi Amane, “Higakusha shokubun ron,” in Meiroku Zasshi (issue, no. 2,

1874); English translation as “Criticism of the Essay on the Role of Scholars” inWilliam Reynolds Braisted, trans., Meiroku Zasshi: Journal of the JapaneseEnlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 25-29 at 27-28.

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Braisted’s translation of Nishi’s concept of shakai as society isunderstandable, as Nishi appears to conceive of shakai as anautonomous force that cannot be entirely controlled by thegovernment (or “the state”), something quite close to thecontemporary understanding of society held by most social theorists.Moreover, Nishi seems to intuit that political order is a function of thestability of this shakai, not the other way around. Nonetheless, Sait�Tsuyoshi’s study has demonstrated that Nishi did not intend shakai asa translation for society; at the time, he still used other terms like shaor “aiseiy� no michi” for direct translations of “society.”12 WhateverNishi meant by “shakai” (social mores? morals?) it clearly had causalpriority over, and autonomy from, the government.

Nishi’s use of shakai makes Fukuchi Gen’ichir�’s use of the sameterm (with phonetic script alongside the compound to read “society”)in his editorial in the 14 January 1875 issue of the Tokyo Nichi-Nichinewspaper all the more fascinating.13 Although Fukuchi had workedwith Nakae Ch�min, by 1874 he upheld the theory of monarchicalsovereignty against the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement.Thus, one might have expected him also to disagree with Nishi thatthe construction of shakai had priority over the reform of politicalinstitutions. But in fact, Fukuchi was very much a proponent ofconstructing a new society around the concept of heimin (commoners)and in abolishing the social privileges of the samurai. In fact, he hunga large sign in front of his home that read “Commoner FukuchiGen’ichir� of Tokyo.”14 His firm understanding of the importance ofbuilding a new society is clear from the fact that, unlike Nishi’s use ofthe term shakai, Fukuchi’s was a direct translation of the concept ofsociety. Moreover, because it appeared in a major newspaper editorial,it spread the term as a translation of society to a broader readingpublic. Thereafter the term grew in popularity: Mitsukuri Rinsh� usedshakai, again with phonetic marks for society, in his translation ofCaspar Hopkins’s 1875 A Manual of American Ideas; Mori Arinoriemployed shakai for society in his speech published in the Meiroku

12 Sait�, Meiji no kotoba, 184.13 While Fukuchi’s published editorial precedes Nishi’s article in the journal

Meiroku Zasshi by a few weeks, that does not necessarily mean that his usages ofshakai was prior or influential on Nishi. It was, however, the most influential on theJapanese public, due to its medium. For the unresolved debate over whose usage ofshakai was “truly” the first, see Sait�, Meiji no kotoba, 183-8.

14 Sakamoto Takao, Kindai nihon seishin shiron, K�dansha gakujutsu bunko 1246(Tokyo: K�dansha, 1996), 251.

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Zasshi that year, and Fukuzawa himself used shakai in his journalKatei s�dan, which he began publishing in September 1875.15

From this brief summary, we may conclude that from about 1875,the Japanese term shakai was clearly being accepted as the translationof the Western concept of society. But how did these translatorsunderstand shakai (or “society”)? The convergence in usage of theterm shakai as a translation for society does not necessarily meanthere was clear or uniform understanding of what society meant. Sat�Masayuki has explored this question by analyzing the Englishdictionary that Fukuzawa, Nishi, and Nakamura used. That dictionary,Webster’s 2nd Edition (1864), provided two definitions for society:

(1) A number of persons associated for any temporary or permanentobjects; an association for mutual profit, pleasure, or usefulness; asocial union; a partnership. (2) The persons, collectively considered,who live in any region or at any period; any community of individualswho are united together by any common bond of nearness orintercourse.16

Japanese of that time thought of the country, the old domain, orperhaps the extended “house” (ie) as fulfilling the second definition.This concept of society then was seen as a thoroughly privatizedrealm, rather than as a realm where public and private interestsintersected in the construction of a social or national whole. Thereason for the uncertainty and experimentation in translating theconcept of society in early Meiji Japan is that there was no priorexperience with society in this sense before Meiji Japanese begantrying to translate it into Japanese. As Sat� notes, “the societyexpressed through the application of the word shakai that was not incommon parlance at the time did not sufficiently convey during theMeiji period the sense of society as a collective body ofindividuals”.17 Translation and social theory were as much acts ofintervention oriented toward the construction of a social whole asthey were mere objective renderings of that concept into the Japaneselanguage.

Indeed, the effort to establish a concept of society as a collectivebody of individuals did not prevent the unleashing of certain demonsinto the political discourse. We saw above in Chapter Two that

15 Sait� Tsuyoshi, Meiji no kotoba,206-9.16 Webster’s 2nd Edition (1864); cited in Sat� Masayuki, “’Kojin no sh�g�tai to

shite no shakai’ to iu kangaekata no teichaku ni hatashita shoki shakaika noyakuwari,” Shakai kagaku ky�iku kenky�, no. 68 (June 1993), 24.

17 Sat� Masayuki, 25.

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Murota Mitsuyoshi translated Guizot’s concept of “society” asminzoku, ( ), the earliest known instance of that Japanese word,18

and it is striking that it appeared first as a translation of “society.”Although Murota’s translation of society as minzoku did not last longin translations of Guizot (Nagamine Hideki replaced it with shakaithe following year)19 it was an influential intervention in broaderintellectual discourse, and its effects on understandings of society canbe discerned in Taguchi Ukichi’s 1877 A Brief History of theJapanese Enlightenment. But most importantly, it revealed theunderlying links between efforts to conceive of society and risingnationalist aspirations. In the middle of the 1870s, when the conceptand reality of society were still largely undetermined, this translationof society as minzoku added to the confusion about what societymeant, even as it pushed that discourse closer to the growing populistnationalist discourse of the day (which I take up in detail in ChapterSix). In any event, it provides clear linguistic evidence of the generalpoint Greenfeld makes in social theory about the close relationshipbetween “society“ and “nation“ and particularly the intimations ofethnic nationalism that often lie behind certain incantations of“society“ in modern Japan.

Constructing Society, Conceiving of Shakai

These efforts to translate Western ideas about society did not occur ina vacuum. To understand their significance, it is important to placethem alongside efforts at social reform, or more accurately, theproject of “building a society” in the early Meiji period. In the headydays following the Meiji Restoration, there were serious efforts byleading activists, intellectuals and bureaucrats to construct a new,more egalitarian social order. Almost immediately, social categorieswere re-organized in a gradual process that eventually led to thedisestablishment of the privileged samurai class. This social reformwas known as shimin by�do (“equalizing the four categories of thepeople”), and while of course inequalities inevitably re-emerged, it ismost important for understanding the connection between society andnationalism to recognize the appeal of this broad effort bygovernment and non-government leaders to encourage a moreegalitarian society in law and in attitude.

18 Haga, Meiji kokka no keisei, 236.19 Sait� Tsuyoshi, Meiji no kotoba, 209.

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The most striking example of this radical effort to build anegalitarian society was the effort by Kat� Hiroyuki and �e Taku20 andthe “enlightened bureaucrats” (kaimeiha kanry�) to outlaw dis-crimination against the historically persecuted outcaste people.Significantly, these people were referred to as “the filthy” (eta) oreven “non-people” (hinin). Efforts to end this discrimination werenothing less than efforts to include these people within the category of“the people” that would constitute the foundation of a new nationalbody. This anti-discrimination effort should not be misconstrued as anattempt to outlaw all social distinctions; after all, the categories of“aristocrat” (kazoku) and “former samurai” (shizoku) were leftunchallenged, as was the position of the monarchy and the circle ofmonarchical family members (k�zoku) that enjoyed the highest socialposition. Rather, the objective was to include all commoners in somefashion within the conceptual and legal contours of “society” or “thepeople.”

In August 1871 these efforts were rewarded with the issuance ofthe “Ordinance Liberating the Outcastes” (Senmin Kaih� Rei) whichofficially abolished the use of discriminatory language in reference tomembers of the outcaste and established their formal legal equalitywith commoners. Henceforth, they were to be known officially as“New Commoners.” The goal of this law was to remove one of thegreatest barriers to constructing a social whole. The connectionbetween the rising nationalism and this effort to outlaw socialdiscrimination is noted by �e Shinobu (even as his language betraysthe statist bias mentioned above):

The abolition of the status of despised people (eta, hinin) wasconsidered a necessity by the new unified state. As Kat� Hiroyukiinsisted, for the new government that was seeking equality with the

20 �e Taku (1847-1921) was a politician and entrepreneur from K�chi who had

joined the anti-bakufu side in the Restoration. In addition to submitting the petition toabolish the Eta class in 1871, he was later jailed for thinking about raising an army tohelp Saig�; in 1887 he founded the Daid� Danketsu to heal divisions in the Freedomand People’s Rights Movement. He was elected to Diet in 1890, and as chair of theBudget Committee tried to work out a compromise between advocates for thegovernment and of the people. Failing to win re-election in 1892, he then worked inrailroad and anti-buraku discrimination movements. Later, he founded TeikokuK�d�kai and became a Buddhist priest.

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Western Powers, the caste system not only contravened the laws ofHeaven, but was a “national shame” (gokokujoku).21

There were limits to what a fiat from above could do to eradicatediscriminatory attitudes and behaviors that had settled deeply intoJapanese life. Even the use of the moniker “New Commoners” (shinheimin), whether in everyday life and parlance or in officialdocuments like the family registers, undermined the intent of the lawagainst social discrimination. Everyone knew that the “NewCommoners” until recently had been the outcastes, and the issuanceof an ukase did not easily overturn historically ingrained attitudestoward those people. In the late 1890s, the name “New Commoners”was replaced by an even more odious term, “Special Hamlet People”(tokushu burakumin) with equally limited success. This flawed effortto redress social inequalities–essentially, to construct a true nation–isa valuable reminder that nation building and social reform wereadvocated not only by populists who may have been antagonistictoward the new government but also by members of the government,along lines that cut across the government/people divide.22

The lesson of these efforts to outlaw social discrimination, theimposition of a conscription law in 1873 and many other laws thatsought to reform society is not simply that they failed in certainrespects. To expect laws to immediately transform a society and itstraditional customs is to expect too much. Rather, the legal, political,social, economic and other areas of social reform that flooded Japanduring the 1870s are important reminders that society itself was influx even as journalists, intellectuals, and officials tried to understandand codify what “society” meant. It is important to try to glimpse thistransformation as more than technical linguistic or legal reform, butas the inter-dynamic process it was. Concepts of society were putforth that both shaped and reflected certain understandings of society,and social reforms were implemented that both were influenced byand influenced social theories and translations. Two salientcharacteristics may be noted in of all these efforts to reshape society:a highly self-conscious sense that society needed to be, and could be,reshaped and improved; and a belief that models from other traditions,especially from the West, were appropriate sources for guidance.These convictions were emboldened by the realization that Japan still

21 �e Shinobu, “Ka-shi-zokusei to ‘shin heimin,” 48-49 in Fujiwara Akira, Imai

Seiichi and �e Shinobu, eds., Kindai nihonshi no kiso chishiki (Tokyo: Y�hikakuBukkusu, 1979): 48-49.

22 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, Kindai nihon no chi to seiji, 157.

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lacked a political constitution that would define the nation in legalterms. Prior to, and in anticipation of, the establishment of such aconstitution, social theories became a key place for the articulation ofnational imaginaries.

Without doubt, the most important model for such nationalimaginaries was the French Revolution. It is well known that NakaeCh�min and his “French School” of translators were deeply affectedby the French Revolution as a model for understanding therevolutionary impact of the Meiji Restoration on the new Japanesesociety. But it is too simplistic to think that there was a “French”school promoting the model of the French Revolution and an Englishand German school of translators opposed to it. In fact, during the1870s, French and English social theories were the most dominantamong Japanese translators of Western social theory; Germantheories came later. And in practice, there often was little distinctionbetween French and English “schools,” with some “French”translators actually working through English translations of Frenchtexts. Nor was “France” exclusively a symbol of a republicanideology opposed to either a British or Prussian model of monarchicalgovernment, as is often thought. The Meiji (monarchical) governmentauthorized its own translations from French political theory, andmany government and anti-government scholars working in the“French” tradition (including Nakae) were critical of the extremism ofthe French Revolution.23

To grasp the role of France as a factor in Japanese social theoryduring the pre-constitutional years, it is helpful to begin with ageneral note on the differences between the French Revolution, thecounter-Revolution in Germany, and the Meiji Restoration. TheFrench Revolution unleashed populist forces that saw in therevolution hopes for liberation by overthrowing the Frankish ancienregime in the name of liberty and by scorning, under the banner ofuniversal reason, religious institutions and practices as meresuperstitions. But the French Revolution was not universallyacclaimed even in France: it was bitterly opposed by powerfulelements who retained considerable influence even after theRevolution. They welcomed the counter-revolution that German poetsand writers inaugurated in the early nineteenth century by extollingancient myths and local superstitions against the invasion of newuniversal ideals, and these conservative counter-revolutionists

23 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Mitsukuri Rinsh� to Kawazu Sukeyuki: futari no shodaik�ch�,” 312.

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sometimes turned toward a romantic, cultural view of the people as anethnically defined Volk who would be led by elites such as themselvesagainst the foreign enemy. Whether conceived as “society” or “Volk,”this idea of the nation as the people themselves rose to the fore as aresult of the French Revolution and its attack on monarchy as thesovereign subject of national politics.

The translation and uses of French and German social theory inJapan reflected the ambiguous nature of the Meiji Restoration, whichcaptured aspects of both the progressive French Revolution and theGerman romantic movement’s cultural conservatism, along with itsgoal of constructing the national people as an organic social totality.Beyond these differences and prior to them lay an earlier politicaltradition in Japan that distinguished between the officials ofgovernment (kan) and the people (min) over whom they ruled. Thistraditional distinction between the people and the governmentallowed for a considerable range of options in incorporating modernsocial and national theories from Europe, even while sometimesreinforcing those social theories that drew a sharp distinction betweenstate and society. Yet, throughout these debates, there was one strongdifference between how the Meiji Restoration was received in Japanand how the French Revolution was received in France:

The narratives that informed the various movements and people whoplayed active roles in the Meiji period had some slight differences fromeach other, but one cannot overlook the fact that there was a kind ofcommon core to them all. Almost everyone involved in the events hadsome kind of positive appraisal of the significance of the MeijiRestoration as reform (henkaku).24

For the most part, contestation over the significance of the MeijiRestoration was guided by a shared sense that it was an opportunity tomake things better, and where it had failed to do so, the failure was aresult of an “incomplete” Restoration, a corruption of the originalgoals of the Restoration, or a lack of resolve in implementing the fullagenda of the Restoration. This belief remained strong throughoutsubsequent Japanese history, as witnessed in later calls for “a TaishoRestoration,” “a Showa Restoration,” and even most recently, “aHeisei Restoration.”

Within this shared narrative of social progress through theRestoration, two important differences in strategy emerged thatinfluenced the basic political structure of Meiji Japan and shaped the

24 Sakamoto, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 16.

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development of debates over the role of the people and governmentthereafter. One arose in the continuing debate over whether the role ofthe government could be contained within the Edo ideal of“benevolent government” (jinsei) or whether a more revolutionaryform of “enlightened” (bummei kaika) policy, with an active nationalcitizenry, was required. These were not clearly divided schools ofthought in the sense that partisans of each were consistently andclearly identifiable across the tumultuous changes of early Meijipolitics. Rather, they were intellectual signposts around whichshifting political allegiances and re-alignments often took place.Consequently, they are difficult to discern within traditional politicalor social histories of the era. But when seen within the intellectualhistory of the Meiji period, some underlying trajectories of this debateare discernable, and they impacted the conception of society and itspolitical significance in different, but important, ways.

Advocates of “benevolent rule” included elements within thefledging new government, such as �kubo Toshimichi and Et�Shimpei, as well as former daimyo like Shimizu Hisamitsu, Hirataschool nativists, and local officials who sought to protect theirtraditional privileges from �kubo’s centralizing policies. Althoughthey employed different strategies, all shared an elitist view that “thepeople” were incapable of participating in government and wouldrequire benevolent leadership from an elite corps of rulers. Thus,while they could at times seem nationalist in their culturallyexclusivist ideologies, they were not nationalist in the social sense, asthey retained a traditionalist belief in political and social hierarchyand a dim view of the potentiality of the people as sovereign agents.

A more radical view was put forward within the government byKido K�in (Takayoshi) and Inoue Kaoru, by intermediaries likeShibusawa Eiichi, and outside the government by publicists likeFukuzawa Yukichi. Fukuzawa argued that “benevolent government”was simply a re-incarnation of the traditional “feudal” attitude ofcondescension toward the people. These modernizers called for athorough transformation, not only of political institutions, but also ofsocial mores and values as a condition for a responsible citizenrycapable of self-government. Within the government, this position wasmost closely associated with the Ministry of Finance, especially in theearly years when it was under the control of Inoue Kaoru. After Et�Shimpei’s reorganization of the Daj�kan during the Iwakura Mission,Inoue and Shibusawa resigned. But they submitted a petition thatdrew a sharp distinction between “political enlightenment” (seiri j�no kaimei) and “popular [social] enlightenment” (minryoku j� no

SHAKAI 141

kaimei) and argued that Et�’s new cabinet had failed to take intoaccount Japan’s current “social strength” (minryoku). Throughout hislong career, Inoue never stopped criticizing Prussian constitutionallaw for its over-emphasis on the priority of the government and itslack of appreciation of the people’s will (min’i).25 Of course, Inoue’spoint was in part a justification of his own policies of financialretrenchment (and thus tax relief) that had caused great friction withother ministries, particularly with Et�’s Ministry of Justice. WhenSasaki Takayuki returned from the Iwakura Mission, he responded toInoue’s petition with great finesse, showing sympathy for Inoue’sdifficult plight, but also insisting that “benevolent government” wascompletely compatible with Inoue’s emphasis on thrift.26 In short,Sasaki tried to retain political control by incorporating into the newgovernment the appeal that “benevolent government” had fortraditionalists, many of whom were not entirely reconciled to therevolutionary, new government. It was an entirely successful solution.

These arguments for “benevolent government,” and the division itpresumed between the people (“society”) and the government, maycreate the impression that there was continuity of tradition in theMeiji political and social order. It would be a mistake, however, tooveremphasize continuity in the Meiji social order. Some historiansof modern Japan have criticized modernization theory rightly for itsoveremphasis on the revolutionary nature of the Meiji Restoration,preferring to see instead a transitional period in which traditionalcultural practices heroically resisted a cultural invasion from the West,as Japanese creatively adapted and indigenized Western culturebeneath slogans that extolled the universal ways of modern,enlightened societies. Such revisionist arguments are of course asmuch indebted to the German counter-revolutionary theories ofsociety as primoridal Volk as they are objective assessments of theability of Western social theories to reshape Japanese society in theearly Meiji period.

It is important not to forget that the Meiji Restoration was, like theFrench Revolution, experienced in its own day as a revolutionaryoverthrow of existing social relations. As Kaji Ry�ichi reminds us,the problem of “society” in Meiji Japan cannot be understood withoutfirst recognizing these early revolutionary changes, including theabolishment of the shi-n�-k�-sh� social castes in favor of equality ofcommoners; the abolishment of the samurai right to carry a sword;

25 Haga, 226-7.26 Sakamoto Takao, Meiji kokka no kensetsu, 99-102, 148-164.

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the abolishment of the tonsure and official concubines; and theabolishment of institutionalized discrimination against outcastes.While Kaji concedes that conservative ideas remained in some sectorsof society, he emphasizes that “overall, [society] was permeated byforeign thought to the degree that it was almost a complete translation[of culture and society].”27 Perhaps one way beyond the morass oftraditional culture versus modern politics is to shift our emphasisfrom cultural determinism to a greater appreciation of social changeand the individual transformations that took place within it.Recognizing the influence of Western social theory is one way tounderstand the revolutionary impact of the Meiji Restoration onJapanese society. It also alerts us to the fact that social transformationwas a distinct problem separate from, but interrelated with, thetransformation of the political order and the rise of a modern state. Bypaying careful attention to the process of selective translations andadaptation of those Western theories into Japanese language to meetthe needs of Japanese society, we can better appreciate the relevanceand limitations of this social revolution that accompanied the processof building a modern nation during the Meiji period.

One cannot overemphasize the seriousness of the question ofsociety that was raised during the first two decades of the Meijiperiod. Until the constitutional form of the new government wassettled and the modern state took form with the Imperial Diet andother political structures after 1890, concepts of society could and attimes did function as equivalents for ideas of the nation. And thedistinction between the nation and the state (or “the government”)was being developed at the very same time. Social definitions wereoften inextricable from national definitions in this period when nationand state in Japan were still open questions. Further, how theseconcepts eventually were resolved must be understood in the contextof the social, intellectual and political requirements of the entire pre-constitutional period. In the absence of a constitution that formallydefined the state (and by defining the monarch as sovereign, definedaway the possibility of national sovereignty), much was still up forgrabs. Thus, one could say, to paraphrase Fukuzawa Yukichi, thatuntil 1889, Meiji Japan had, at best, a fledgling government with anincipient society, but not yet a state or even a nation. At least, effortsto form the Japanese people into a nation were as much focused onsocial theory as they were on political and legal notions of whatconstituted a nation. And after the constitutional foreclosure of

27 Kaji Ry�ichi, Meiji no shakai mondai, 20.

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national sovereignty, theories of society functioned as surrogates foraspirations to nationhood.

Society as a Problem

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, society wasincreasing articulated as a “problem” in Japanese political action anddebate. Indeed, the sociologist Ishida Takeshi has suggested that “wemight well consider shakai itself to have been established from thevery start [in Japan] as a ‘problematic’ (mondai-teki) thing.”28 Thisproblematizing of society can be traced to deepening tensionsbetween self-appointed spokesmen for society (often activists withthe Freedom and People’s Rights Movement) and governmentofficials and police in the major cities, particularly in Tokyo. But italso resulted from the introduction of concepts of society that raisedexpectations for political empowerment that often seemed undercutby the political and economic developments of the 1880s. The decadeof the 1880s was a fervent period of political debate which mainlyfocused on influencing the outcome of constitutional deliberations.But as the decade unfolded, high level government officials grewwary of the challenges raised in the name of the “people” and turnedtoward a renewed defense of monarchical prerogatives in its politicalstructures and “benevolent rule” in its fiscal policies. As a result,nationalist expectations and resentments often exploded in various“social forms.”

The social historian Makihara Norio has pointed out that the majorissue in the newspapers of the early 1880s was the price of rice andthe outbreak of suspicious fire in the cities, and he believes the twoissues were related. The most destructive fire began on 26 December1879, in and around the Nihombashi-Kyobashi neighborhood ofTokyo. It raged from noon until after seven at night, burning down10,613 houses and killing 24 people. That fire was apparentlyapolitical in origin, caused by carelessness in extinguishing a charcoalcooking fire. But the ones that followed in 1880 were of a differentnature. According to Home Ministry statistics, in 1880 44 percent ofthe 514 cases of fires in Tokyo were arson; in 1881, 58 percent of 495cases were arson. When suspected arsons are included, the figures are51 percent for 1880 and 62 percent for 1882. These patterns were truefor other urban centers besides Tokyo, but what is striking is thatnone of the newspapers at the time seemed inclined to criticize those

28 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 47.

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who were setting the fires.29 The newspapers drew a clear connectionbetween the sudden rise in the price of rice and acts of theft and arson.The reasons for theft are easy enough to surmise, but why arson?Makihara’s explanation is simple: if you were burned out, you wouldreceive aid money and rice from the government.30 This was a case of“benevolent rule” meeting society. At a time when, in Makihara’sterms, Japan was in a transitional period between treating the peopleas objects of domainal authority (kyakubun) and nationals (kokumin),the very idea of society was mobilized to assert certain rights of thepeople against the government. No longer satisfied with passive statusand not yet recognized as a sovereign nation, some people wereacting on the notion that their status as “society” gave them certainrights vis à vis the government.

This emerging antagonism between society and the governmentcan be seen in efforts to reshape social consciousness by revising thevery concept of society. Kat� Hiroyuki, who for the last ten years hadbeen an advocate of the People’s Rights Movement and–as we justsaw–a leading figure in the effort to eradicate social discrimination,was starting to grow cautious in his attitude toward these socialmovements. In his 1880 translation of Bluntschli’s The Theory of theState, he used kaisha, the word that today means a company or largebusiness, to render the concept of society. His rather eccentric choiceof kaisha for “society” requires explanation, as it appears five yearsafter shakai had been broadly accepted as the standard translationterm for “society.” He was not implying that society is equivalent to abusiness or corporation. Rather, it seems his goal was to encourage asense of society as a “coming together,” an integration of political andcultural forces with the state. Throughout the 1880s, as Kat� movedaway from the People’s Rights Movement toward a closer embrace ofthe state, he strategically coined neologisms by inverting the order ofcompounds to counter the more revolutionary concepts bandied aboutby anti-statist forces (see the discussion below in Chapter Six onKat�’s 1887 neologism of zokumin for nationality, instead of the morecommonly accepted term, minzoku). This practice of yomigae(restatement) was popular among both people’s rights advocates and“rightists and cultural nationalists”31 and Kat� was one of thoseunique Meiji intellectuals who could claim membership in bothgroups. If his kaisha was a restatement of shakai in this sense—an

29 Makihara, 22-25.30 Makihara, 23.31 Irokawa, Culture of the Meiji Period, 106-7.

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effort to redefine society in terms that would encourage socialconsensus and cooperation with the government—it helps to explainwhy he proposed this unusual translation term so long after others hadaccepted shakai as the standard term for society.

But Kat�’s intervention was, in any event, too late. In 1881, TokyoImperial University began using shakai instead of setai in translatingsociety. By 1885, its Department of Sociology was now referred to asthe department of shakaigaku, rather than the department of setaigaku,the neologism coined by Inoue Tetsujir� to render the concept ofsociology.32 It was Inoue who, as we saw above in Chapter Three,precipitated a clash with Japanese Christians in the early 1890s. Thetwo facts are not unrelated. There is no question that by the 1880s,Christians were playing a key role in highlighting problems in society,and their preferred term was shakai. Moreover, their understanding ofsociety was often premised on the belief that society rested on certainuniversal norms and a moral autonomy that could not be reduced topolitics or the government’s decrees. Inoue believed that theChristians, armed with their concept of shakai (which, recall, had itshistorical origins in religious groups in ancient China) were apotential threat to the state. Consider that the first organization withthe name shakai in it was Tarui T�kichi’s T�y� Shakait� (OrientalSociety Party)33 founded in 1882 in Shimabara, Nagasaki, the verysite of a famous Christian uprising in 1637 that led to the outlawing ofChristianity in Japan for the next 234 years. Tarui advocated socialequality and was imprisoned in 1883 for his political activities.

Historians generally hold that, while the term shakai as anequivalent for the modern concept of society emerged amongintellectuals in the 1870s, the concept of shakai as society “did notcome into common use until the 1890s.”34 Moreover, the broadfamiliarity with the concept of society is generally explained as a postSino-Japanese war phenomenon, when the media regularly reportedon something called the “social problem” (shakai mondai).35 Forexample, Kano Masanao argues that “the social problem came to the

32 On Inoue Tetsujir� as the originator of the term seitaigaku, see “setaigaku,” in

Shimmura Izuru, ed., K�jien (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1955), 124433 Kano Masanao, Kindai nihon shis� annai, 232.34 Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, p. 320, n. 37; attributed to Sait� Tsuyoshi,

Meiji no kotoba, 175-228.35 The phrase shakai mondai is often rendered into English in the plural (“social

problems”), a rendering which the Japanese language’s lack of specificsingular/plural inflections permits, but one that erases the broader sense that it wassociety itself that was a problem, or in Ishida’s words, that society was “aproblematic thing.”

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public’s attention after the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, when the termkas� shakai appeared in the media as a means of describing the socialeffects of the Matsukata deflationary policies.”36 The problem withthis analysis is that it is not easy to separate these historical assertionsabout the late nineteenth century from subsequent twentieth centuryevents that influenced Kano’s analysis. In short, the rise of a socialistparty in the early 1900s that saw society primarily through economicterms was a precondition for this historical analysis that,retrospectively, attributes the emergence of society in popularconsciousness to economic causes. Undoubtedly, there is some truthto the economic-social nexus, and I will turn to that problem below.But this economic explanation remains partial. Just as the nationcannot be reduced to economic causes, so too was there moreinvolved in the emergence of social consciousness–even society as aproblem (shakai mondai)–than economics. For example, moreattention needs to be given to Tarui and the Oriental Society Party’srole in events leading up to the Sino-Japanese War. When Taruiassisted the Korean enlightenment activist Kim Gyokukin (1851-1894) in the failed K�shin coup in 1884, the political turmoil broughtthe Japanese army into Korean domestic politics and set the stage forthe Sino-Japanese War ten years later. Tarui was but one example ofthe “continental adventurers” (tairiku r�nin) who turned to Asia in thelate nineteenth century to enact social and national agendas that theyfelt could no longer succeed at home. It is also apparent that theOriental Society Party was expressing and acting on a concept ofsociety that functioned for some Japanese and Koreans as theequivalent of an unbounded concept of the nation, and likenationalism, motivated them to great personal sacrifice in their effortsto redress political (=social) grievances.

Domestic economic issues of course also played a role inmotivating people to take action in the name of “society.” The mostnotorious of these domestic issues was the Ashio Copper MineIncident. During the late 1880s, the Watarase River in Ibaraki becamepolluted from runoff of the Ashio Copper Mine and this affectedagricultural land along the riverbanks. Residents of the arearepeatedly petitioned the government to stop the pollution andprovide redress for the damage, but to no avail. In 1891 TanakaSh�z�, a former activist in the Freedom and People’s RightsMovement, brought the issue national public attention when he raised

36 Kano Masanao, Kindai nihon shis� annai, 232.

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the matter in the Diet, but the only concrete result was renewedgovernment suppression of local protests against the pollution. Eventhe eruption of the Sino-Japanese war did not end the matter, and in1897 a large group of farmers from the area descended on Tokyo andclashed with police. In 1901, they made a direct petition to theemperor for relief, which went unheeded. Around this time publicopinion was inflamed by their sufferings, and socialists andintellectuals pressed the case. In 1902, the government established aCopper Pollution Investigative Committee, but the committee’scharge was limited to flood control matters. As the public’s attentionshifted to the Russo-Japanese war, various construction projectsbegan to improve conditions around the Watarase River, and finallywith the death of Tanaka in 1913, the issue of the Ashio Copper Minepollution no longer captured headlines. But the “social problem,”which the Ashio Copper Mine pollution incident had brought to theforefront of national attention, was now a major political issue thatreshaped relations between the people and the government.

Ishida argues that uneven modernization left a time lag betweenurban and rural areas in late nineteenth century Japan, so that thegovernment was able to control the unrest in Watarase River region,where a consciousness of society was weak. But, he adds, the incidentcontributed to the “political socialization” of intellectuals likeUchimura Kanz�, Kinoshita Naoe, and Sakai Toshihiko.37 Notably,these intellectuals were overwhelmingly Christian, as were themajority of those men who founded the Association for Research intothe Social Problem in 1897, which the following year became theSociety for the Study of Socialism. This Society laid the foundationof Japan’s socialist movement, which crystalized with theestablishment of the “Social Democratic Party” by Abe Is�,Katayama Sen, Kinoshita, Nishikawa K�jir�, Kawakami Kiyoshi, andK�toku Shusui–all Christians except K�toku. The Party declared itscommitment to “true socialism,” to the abolishment of the House ofLords, and its support of direct popular elections (it was immediatelydeclared illegal and shut down). One result of all this was a generalconfusion in the public’s mind between “socialism” and “society.”Contributing to that confusion was the common association of thenew concept of shakai, the “shakai mondai” of the Ashio CopperMine pollution, and the socialists’ championing of the victims of thelatter. Moreover, even the name of the new Party was not, strictlyspeaking, the socialist party, but “the Society-People-Sovereign [ie.,

37 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 47, 50-51.

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“Social Democratic”] Party” (Shakai Minshu T�). Consequently, asIshida points out, the very concept of “society” began to be associatedwith idea of social misfits or “miscellany” (zatsu).38

Significantly, it was in 1899, at the height of the “social problem”that what it meant to be Japanese was first legally defined by theNationality Act. At its core was a concept of the Japanese people, notas constitutionally defined “subjects,” but as a quasi-ethnic people.Specifically, the Act stipulated that those born to a Japanese fatherwould be “Japanese people” (Nihonjin)-not the term Japanesesubjects (Nihon shimmin) employed in the 1889 Constitution. AsYoon Keun-cha suggests, “the ethnic concept here of “the Japanese”was used as an unprecedented synonym for the legal concept of theJapanese subjects” (Nihon shimmin).39 Nonetheless, the Act did littleto clarify who was a Japanese. At best, it expressed a tacitunderstanding that everyone who lived on the Japanese archipelagoprior to the establishment of the Nationality Act was “Japanese”,completely sidestepping the question of Ainu or Okinawan identity. Ifthis was an ethnic conception of national identity, it also wasindifferent to Ainu and Ryukyuan ethnic claims of distinctiveness;alternatively, one could argue that it was a trans or quasi- ethnicidentity; a claim to national identity that drew from ius sanguinuswithout restricting that “blood” to a clearly demarcated ethnictradition. It left many questions unanswered. As Yoon has asked, howcould one prove one’s father was Japanese, when the definition ofJapanese identity merely rested on the tautological assertion thatbeing Japanese meant having a Japanese father? At its most ridiculous,the Nationality Act was based on patrimonial lineage, but it wasinsufficient for proving even that Amaterasu �mikami, the supposedancestor of the emperor, was a Japanese!40

What is clear, however, is that this was not an explicit legaldefinition of the Japanese people as an ethnic nation, but a quasi-ethnic approach to national identity that is comparable to the mixedethnic-civic nationality of Wilhelminian Germany. The NationalityAct was roughly simultaneously with the surge in ethnic nationaldiscourse in Japan (see Chapter Six below). But it was more anattempt to co-opt the appeal of ethnic nationalism within a legalframework than it was an effort by the imperial state to promoteethnic nationalism. Close attention to the language of the Act is

38 Ishida, 47.39 Yoon Keun-cha, Nihon kokumin ron, 99.40 Yoon, 99.

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revealing: this official definition of the Japanese people by thegovernment avoided the use of the term minzoku which was quicklybecoming the favored term for representing Japanese nationality bycritics of the government, whether on the far right or the left of thepolitical spectrum. At any rate, it is generally accepted that while theconcept of minzoku was at best only sporadically employed during theearly years of the Meiji period, there was a dramatic shift towardsacceptance and propagation of this concept of the ethnic nation byanti-state political activists during the last decade of the Meiji period,or around the beginning of the twentieth century.41 In this context,what the beginning of the twentieth century represented in terms ofefforts to “place the people” in modern Japanese politics was adeepening divide between the elitist state and broad social andpolitical critiques that increasingly turned to various incantations of“the people.”

Taisho Sociology and the Problem of the “People”

The Taisho period began, as the Meiji period had, with a crisis.Unfortunately, the “Taisho Political Crisis” is often neglected inhistories of modern Japan or passed over as yet another intrigue thatremained narrowly confined to internecine battles within elitepolitical circles and thus at best of marginal significance to socialhistory. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ishida Takeshi hasargued that it was Katsura Tar�’s inability to recognize the challengeposed by the new concept of society that ultimately caused thedownfall of his cabinet.42 Similarly, Ikimatsu Keiz� sees in theseevents clear evidence that the concept of the people (minsh�) hadgained enough strength to bring down a government.43 Katsura wasprime minister first between 1901-06, from the beginnings of thesocialist movement to the 1906 strikes against Tokyo streetcar priceincreases. Katsura’s second cabinet was from 1908 to 1911,culminating in K�toku’s High Treason Case, his execution, and thebeginning of the “winter” of the socialist movement. Katsura’s thirdand final cabinet fell in 1913, as a result of the Taisho Crisis.According to Ishida, Katsura’s tendency to draw a sharp distinctionbetween matters that were political (seiji) and those merely social(shakai) was his political Achilles’ heel. Katsura, like other

41 Nishikawa Nagao, Kokumin kokka ron no shatei, 86.42 Ishida, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 47.43 Ikimatsu Keiz�, Gendai nihon shis�shi 4 Taish�ki no shis� to bunka (Tokyo:

Aoki Shoten, 1971), 30-45.

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politicians who saw themselves as servants of the state, had failed tocomprehend this new concept of society that had come into generaluse between 1899 and 1910 and especially its significance forredefining nationalism. Rather than grasping the potential of thisconcept of society as a new concrete political subjectivity, thesestatists could only see “society” as a force for disorder and anarchy.This proved a fatal blow to Katsura’s career, as Ishida notes, for thisnew nationalist principle “was first expressed in the term minsh� thatemerged in the ‘protect the constitution’ movement of the TaishoPolitical Crisis.”44

Socialism emerged from its “winter period” in 1918, and, with itsreturn, brought the politics of shakai back into play. The JapanCommunist Party was established in 1922, but the communistinsistence on atheism left the Christians who had been among theearliest and most ardent promoters of the new concept of society outin the cold. Abe Is� and Katayama Tetsu thus founded the SocialMasses Party (Shakai Minsh� T�) in 1926 to continue their work onbehalf of society while adhering to their religious beliefs. In thecontext of this return of shakai, the incipient discipline of sociologywas reformed in an effort to bridge the gap between politics andsociety that Katsura Tar� had left in his wake. The most importanttheorist of this new sociology was Takata Yasuma. Takata coined anew phrase, “total society” (zentai shakai), in his 1919 Principles ofSociology as a means of establishing a new relationship betweensociety, the state and other organizations of socio-political life.45

Reasserting the power of society against those who saw it merely as“marginal” or “miscellany,” Takata argued that society was in fact theprimary force in modern life, the foundational unity on whichpolitical institutions like the state were premised. By the end of the1920s, Takada had begun to emphasize harmony between competingelements of the social order, a shift H.D. Harootunian has nicelycaptured as a move from a gesellschaft understanding of society to agemeinschaft one.46 In seeking a conceptual framework for this senseof society as a harmonic whole, Takata eventually arrived at the

44 Ishida, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 47, 73.45 Daid� Yasujir�, Takada shakaigaku, 143; see also H.D. Harootunian,

“Disciplining Native Knowledge and Producing Place: Yanagita Kunio, OriguchiShinobu, Takata Yasuma” and Nozomu Kawamura, “Sociology and Socialism in theInterwar Period” in J. Thomas Rimer, ed., Culture and Identity: Japanese IntellectualsDuring the Interwar Years, esp., 71-73 and 122-124.

46 H.D. Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology inTokugawa Nativism, 430.

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concept of the people as an ethnic group (minzoku), thus returning toone of the historical origins of the concept of shakai: a sense of thepeople as a national unity that was prior to, and independent of, thepolitical definition of Japanese as subjects (shimmin) or even asdefined through legal nationhood (kokuseki).

Takata’s sociology was not the only social theory during the 1920sthat foreground ethnicity as the foundation of the social unity. In 1923,the socialist �yama Ikuo published his Social Foundations of Politicsin which he agreed that the foundation of society was ethnic nationalidentity (minzoku).47 But �yama’s point was to present ethnic nationalidentity as a replacement both for society (which he saw as abourgeois structure of individualism) and the state (which he reducedto an instrument of capitalist exploitation of the people). Takata’ssociology, in contrast, emphasized the complexity and growth ofmodern society, and the need to contextualize minzoku in relationshipto a state. In essence, if �yama found minzoku to be an appealingsubstitute for shakai, it was to recapture the opposition to the statefound in the early history of the concept of shakai but to update thissocial theory on the basis of the new concept of ethnic nationality thatafter World War I offered the most promise of a powerful weaponagainst the capitalist, imperialist state. For Takata, the whole point ofsociology was to show how historical development in modernsocieties made possible a reconciliation between society and the statethrough the mediation of the national identity of minzoku. The realissue that animated much of subsequent sociology until the end of thewar was how to discern what the precise conditions were for thissocial development and whether those conditions could–or should–bereplicated in various societies under Japanese colonial rule.

At this critical juncture in Japanese history, this new sociologywas foregrounding the relationship of society and nation by turning tonew concepts of ethnic national identity that the First World War hadunleashed.48 The annals of the 1934 meeting of the JapaneseSociology Association provide a remarkable record of how societyand nation had become intertwined. Usui Jish�’s contribution was along essay on “The Concept of Nation (kokumin)” in which he posited

47 See my discussion of �yama’s social theory in “What is a Nation and Who

Belongs?: National Narratives and the Ethnic Imagination in Twentieth-CenturyJapan,” The American Historical Review, vol. 102, no. 2 (April 1997): pp. 282-309.

48 See my discussion of “the sociology of ethnicity” in “Nakano Seiichi andColonial Ethnicity Studies,” in Akitoshi Shimizu and Jan van Bremen, eds., WartimeJapanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific, Senri Ethnological Studies no. 65(2003): pp. 109-129, esp., 111-116.

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the idea of nation in analogous terms to what society (shakai) hadmeant earlier: a community of people as distinct from, but notnecessarily incompatible with, a political state. For Usui, the conceptof nation (kokumin) was distinct from both state (kokka) and Volk(minzoku) in the sense of it being a community of culture (not blood).While Usui was more interested in the modern cultural possibilities ofkokumin than the blood claims of minzoku, his overall argument wasquite in keeping with Takata’s new sociology: the consciousness ofbeing a community of national culture was a sociologicalphenomenon, not something dependent on the indoctrination effortsof a state.49 But Usui’s belief that minzoku was determined by bloodand his turn instead to kokumin was not shared by most of the newsociologists. Instead, they were drawn to new “liberal” interpretationsof ethnic identity as consciousness, and this opened up the possibilityof exploring parallels between the concept of society and that ofminzoku. Watanuki Tetsuo in a good example. His contribution wasan essay nearly as long as Usui’s on “Ethnicity” (minzokusei) thatdrew from William McDougall’s The Group Mind to emphasize thateven the nation as minzoku is a subjective matter of consciousness.Watanuki did not rest his case on theory, but illustrated the theorywith historical examples of how Nagasaki and Tosa domains had theirown historical forms of social consciousness throughout Japanesehistory. Watanuki’s point was that Japan was already a multi-culturalsociety, even prior to imperial expansion, and the historicaldevelopment of this multi-cultural social consciousness was an open-ended, dynamic one. There was no theoretical reason to limitmembership in Japanese society (or the Japanese nation) to thosehistorical domains that constituted the core society.50 A betterhistorical application of Takata’s sociological theories would be hardto find.

Other sociologists in the 1934 annals also focused on the conceptof nation, but it was Seki Eikichi’s article on “Ethnic Nationality asBasic Society” that best exemplified the direction of interwarsociology. Seki argued that previously certain sociologists (Takata?)had identified something called “total society” (zentai shakai) whichthey generally treated as an synonym for “community.” But Sekiwanted to get closer to the true meaning of “total society”, which hefound not in quantitative totality (merely adding up the various

49 Usui Jish�, “Kokumin no gainen,” 46.50 Watanuki Tetsuo, “Minzokusei,” Nihon shakaigakka nenp�, Shakaigaku, daini

sh�, 99-150 at 138-150.

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subunits of a society), but in the qualitative essence of Japanesesociety that made it distinctive from all other societies. Seki reportedthat most ordinary Japanese and even some scholars held themistaken belief that this basic society or community in Japan wasprovided by the state (kokka). His job was to prove them (and anyMarxist who held that class was the basic social form) wrong. Thebasic society of Japan, he maintained, was ethnic nationality(minzoku).51 Like most ethnic nationalists of his day, Seki quicklyadded that he recognized the historic presence of other ethnic groupsin Japan (mainly Chinese), but that over the centuries, they had fullyassimilated. Thus, Japan “had no need” to treat its assimilatedChinese the way Germany dealt with its Jews (who were like “a largecancer eating at the nest” of European ethnicities).52 Capitalism inJapan was ethnic capitalism, class was subordinated to ethnicnationality, and the world was nothing more than a space whereethnic nations vied with one another. Japan’s basic society, its ethnicidentity, lay in its spirit, its “Yamato kokoro.”53 This ethnic spirit hadbeen obscured by so much emphasis on the international forms whichJapan had adopted from the West, but “right now this ethnicconsciousness has moved out in the open from the subconsciousnessto overt consciousness.”54

Seki was correct about one thing. Ethnic national consciousness(minzoku ishiki) was on the rise in the mid 1930s. Sociologists,including Koyama Eiz� who had contributed to the 1934 annals of theassociation, played a key role in creating the modern discipline ofethnology. Official ethnology in Japan began in 1934, when UnoEnk� and Ishida Kannosuke joined Koyama on the planningcommittee to oversee the establishment of the Japanese Society ofEthnology. The Society of Ethnology was founded on 10 November1934 and began publishing The Japanese Journal of Ethnology in1935. The Journal provided clear evidence in its pages of thisconceptual emphasis on ethnicity as the basic component of socialidentity, as it drew its readers’ attentions to various Asian ethnicitiesoutside of Japan. These developments reached a benchmark on 18January 1943 when the Ethnic Research Institute was establishedunder the direct control of the Ministry of Education. Its director was

51 Seki Eikichi, “Kiso shakai to shite no minzoku,” Nihon shakaigakka nenp�,

Shakaigaku, daini sh�, 217-241, at 217-8.52 Seki Eikichi, “Kiso shakai to shite no minzoku,” 233.53 Seki Eikichi, “Kiso shakai to shite no minzoku,”236-7.54 Seki Eikichi, “Kiso shakai to shite no minzoku,”237.

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Takada Yasuma.55 These institutional and disciplinary changes arestark evidence of how far this ethnic national consciousness had gonein substituting for social consciousness; or another way of putting it isthat during the 1930s and 1940s, sociologists had sought in the idea ofminzoku a means of reconnecting to the national imaginary thatshakai had been founded in from its inception.

Postwar Japan and Shakai

If wartime sociologists had tried to place the people in the category ofethnic nationality as a final resolution to modern Japan’s longstruggle with nation building, postwar sociologists turned to theconcept of “society” (shakai) to achieve similar results. This elevationof shakai as the preferred surrogate for national identity waspromoted by the Occupation as a safe, international, de-militarizedand de-politicized mode of conceiving of the Japanese people. It wasalso explicitly a reversal of Takada’s shift from gesellschaft togemeinschaft. Sat� Masayuki writes that the indoctrination ofJapanese children with this idea that “society is an assembly ofindividuals” was the primary objective of the Occupation.56

Immediately after the Occupation ended, one of the most influentialof the wartime ethno-sociologists, Yanagita Kunio, reflected that thisconcept of shakai was a completely new idea for Japanese:

As far as we could tell, this word shakai was a new word. When wewere young, there was something called the shakai policy researchassociation, and there was a time when it was mistaken for a bunch ofsocialists, so we felt that once again wouldn’t people start getting thewrong idea about this thing called shakai?…Among foreigners[Americans] there probably wasn’t anyone unfamiliar with the word“social.” But in Japan, I think there are quite a few grandmas who mayhave heard the word shakai but don’t grasp the concept.57

What could Yanagita have been thinking? We have already seen thathistorical research has established that the concept of shakai wasalready familiar to most Japanese by the 1890s (those “grandmas” of1953 would have been young modern girls right when the concept

55 See my, “Building National Identity through Ethnicity: Ethnology in Wartime

Japan and After.” The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 27, no.1 (2001): pp. 1-39.56 Sat� Masayuki, “‘Kojin no sh�g�tai to shite no shakai’ to iu kangaekata no

teichaku ni hatashita shoki shakaika no yakuwari”, 26.57 Yanagita Kunio, in Seij� ky�iku kenky�jo, ed., Shakaika no shin-k�z� (Tokyo:

Jitsugy� no Nihonsha, 1953); cited in Sat� Masayuki, “‘Kojin no sh�g�tai to shite noshakai’,” 25-6.

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was most prevalent in the media). To grasp the significance ofYanagita’s disavowal of shakai, it is essential to recognize that hewas an advocate even in the postwar years of an ethnic theory ofJapanese identity (see the discussion in Chapter Six of Yanagita’srejection of a distinction between “folk” and “ethnic nation.”). Inshort, his comment reveals the contested nature of this postwar effortto redefine the Japanese people, not as an ethnic nation, but as asociety of individuals.

As laudatory as this effort to enhance individualism in OccupationJapan might seem, postwar educational and social reforms had theunintended consequence of furthering the divide between society andstate, while inflaming a radical populist nationalism associated withshakai, but more frequently with minzoku. It did so by weaken-ing–even extinguishing–political citizenship during the Occupationperiod when, in the absence of a Japanese state, “society” or “ethnicidentity” were the most likely remaining forms through which theJapanese people could be conceived and expressed as a nationalwhole. Until the new constitution came into effect in 1947, theJapanese were still not kokumin (and even after the constitution wentinto effect, until 1952 there was no koku, no Japanese independentstate to which these min could be effectively incorporated). Yet, withthe surrender on 2 September 1945 and the end of Imperial Japan, theJapanese people were no longer imperial subjects (shimmin). Whatwere they? One suggestion came from 3,000 communists who werereleased from prison on 10 October 1945: their leaders, TokudaKy�ichi and Shiga Yoshio, appealed to “the people” (jimmin). Thisconcept of the Japanese as jimmin was not only a functionalreplacement for “society,” but it was also a politically loaded one. Ofcourse, it referred to the Japanese as the starving mass of physicalhumanity that they had been reduced to by war and poverty. But italso referred back to wartime Communist Party propaganda,specifically placing the Japanese people in a hostile relationship to thestate. It was an ironic kind of anti-statist ideology since, as IshidaTakeshi has noted, what remained of the state was hardly somethingstrong enough to be worthy of this kind of sustained anti-statismattack.58

As detailed below in Chapter Six, during this vacuum when theresimply did not exist an independent Japanese state, there was acontinuation and indeed enhancement of the wartime ethnic national(minzoku) theory of the people not only among the political right, but

58 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 161-7.

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especially among Marxists and the left. A turning point came in early1948. Building on antipathy toward the American Occupationfollowing General MacArthur’s suspension of the planned 1 February1947 General Strike, the Communist Party had begun to consider theAmericans their enemy rather than their friend. This attitude hardenedas Mao’s communist forces began to emerge victorious, and the USbegan to mobilize for war against communism in Korea. In February1948, in the midst of these developments, the Japanese CommunistParty announced its support for “ethnic national fronts” and began toemphasize the idea of minzoku (ethnic nation) as its preferred way ofreferring to “the people” or “society.” This minzoku discourse was notcensored, largely because SCAP did not recognize the role played byethnic nationalism in wartime propaganda, and the turn to minzokusocial theory by communists seemed to support the conclusion that itwas not a reactionary ideology. In any event, the Occupation’sattention was concentrated on the more apparent dangers ofinstitutional and militarist expressions of nationalism, whichgenerally were located in relation to statism, not ethnic nationalism orsocial theory. While the Occupation did try to promote a newconsciousness of society premised on individualism, it was much lessconcerned with backlash from ethnic pride or cultural nationalism.Like the Japanese police during the Imperial period, they simply didnot believe that such ideas could pose a threat to the order andstability of the public realm. It was a momentous oversight, for itallowed a virulent nationalism to fester beneath the radar screen as amere form of “social theory.”

The Occupation’s new individualist concept of society wassupported by progressive intellectuals who believed that a newsociety could be built without too much concern over the dregs ofwartime ethno-sociology. These intellectuals were called the “CivilSociety School” (shimin shakaiha) and included such luminaries asMaruyama Masao in political science and �tsuka Hisao in economichistory. While most had been influenced by, and were sympathetic insome ways, to Marxism, they were willing to pursue their socialagendas within the framework of the American Occupation. Thisrequired finesse. Generally favorably predisposed towardmodernization, they viewed the Occupation as an unprecedentedopportunity to complete the unfinished project of modernity in Japanby shaping a true nation (kokumin) through reform of consciousnessand social structures. These intellectuals upheld the principle ofuniversality against the increasing particularism and ethnicnationalism of the Marxists. Maruyama found universalism in “a

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modern way of thinking” that could not be simply equated with theWest; similarly, �tsuka located the grounding of universal values inChristianity which he understood was more than a mode of Westernculture.59 Yet, even as the progressive intellectuals tried to reshapesociety through reforming social consciousness, society itself wasshifting toward a materialistic, consumerist society that Ishidaidentifies as “taish� shakai.”60 He traces this social change to the1955 economic recovery spurred by the supply of munitions for theKorean War and through the “high growth economics” of the 1960s.It was a complete reversal of the jimmin society of the 1950s: then,Japan was a nation of hungry, needy people; now, it was a nation ofaffluent consumers.

This “economic animal” theory of Japanese society has lasted atleast 40 years. But even during its incipient period, sensitive mindsrecognized its dangers and struggled to provide an alternative. One ofthe most important of these alternative voices was that of ShimizuIkutar�. Trained in social science in the prewar at Tokyo ImperialUniversity, Shimizu was one of the most influential, and mostinteresting, social theorists in modern Japan. In 1946 he wasappointed President of the Twentieth Century Research Institute, agroup that included most of the postwar progressive intellectuals suchas Maruyama, Tsuru Shigeto, Minami Hiroshi, Mashita Shin’ichi,Takashima Zen’ya and Hayashi Kentar�. If there was onecharacteristic this disparate group of contentious intellectuals had incommon, it was a general aversion to ideology and a pragmatic bentof mind.61 This was certainly true of Shimizu, who worked in, butnever was completely possessed by, any of the major intellectualcurrents of modern Japan. Shimizu recognized that during thisunprecedented period of change in Japan, the most important elementin a reform of society was the reformation of values that might bringthe Japanese people together in a common cause and give meaningback to their lives.

Rikki Kersten has articulated Shimizu’s contribution to postwarsocial theory so well it is best to yield to her:

While many intellectuals saw the lesson of war as the need to distancesociety from the State, Shimizu turned his critical gaze towards hisfellow thinkers, and more importantly, towards society-at-large.Shimizu argued at the time that for him, defeat was not so much a

59 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 189.60 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 172-3.61 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 176.

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change in value orientation on the part of society, as it was a wholesalecollapse of values: this is not a turning point, rather it is a time ofdestruction or collapse, or at least it contains the danger of becomingso’. Moreover, it was an act of self-deception to believe that defeat perse could be invested with meaning. Shimizu stands apart from his peersimmediately following the war in that he showed more concern for thedevelopment of society than he did hostility towards the State….

Whereas colleagues such as Maruyama saw defeat as a greatliberation, Shimizu saw mainly disconcerting continuity: We know thatfrom the outbreak of war through to its prosecution and then onto thecontemporary trend in democracy, people who have no sense ofindependence at all are casting a long shadow.’ For the most part, thiskind of undesirable continuity could be seen in society at large.Shimizu’s formula for postwar society was very similar to his formulafor the imperfect wartime society…. The implementation of acompletely new system of social organization could only be achievedby changing people’s attitudes, and having them act in concert. Merelyimposing a system externally would achieve nothing. In postwar thegreatest impediment to this kind of actualisation of democracy was notthe State, it was society itself.”62

The remaining question was what kind of values should be promotedin order that people might change their attitudes in a democraticdirection. It was not merely a matter of coming up with the correctdefinition of the people–although that was very important. Shimizuhimself preferred a conception of the Japanese people as the shomin,the common man. This concept had the advantage of connecting toJapanese tradition without relying on any explicitly racial or ethnicassumption. It conceived of the people in a manner that created anopening between the people and the government. It carried none ofthe essential anti-statism of minzoku, nor was it necessarily investedin the state as was kokumin. Consequently, Shimizu found in this ideaof the people as shomin the foundations on which to build the valuesof civil society.

Again, let us turn to Kersten’s words to guide us in understandingShimizu’s theory of civil society:

In 1940, Shimizu had defined the modern manifestation of society, civilsociety, as something that emerged in a process of opposition andresistance to the State: ‘[civil society] should represent a modernsociety that is established in opposition to an absolutist State andthrough liberating itself from that State’…. Because of the warexperience, the State appeared in postwar as ‘at once more powerful

62 Rikki Kersten, “Shimizu Ikutar�: Prophet of the Common Man 1931–1951,” 32-

33, in Shimizu Ikutar�: The Heart of a Chameleon (forthcoming).

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and more fundamental’ than society. If creative self-conceptualisationon the part of society was to be achieved after 1945, Shimizu believedthat the ghosts of the wartime State needed to be exorcised from thecollective mentality. Thanks to the situation of crisis and enmitybetween the Japanese State and the rest of the world between 1931-1945, Japanese had been unable to develop the notion of civil society ina universal context. Civil society had by necessity been particularisticin its formulation. As a result, ‘society became something that belongedto Japan alone’.63

Shimizu’s point was that changing historical conditions required achanged assessment of the possibilities of the State and the rightattitude of the people toward it. With the eventual end of theOccupation in sight, Shimizu turned toward raising a consciousnessof patriotism among the Japanese people, as he understood patriotismas a valuation by the Japanese people of their own political agency, anessential first step toward the realization of Japan as an independentdemocratic state. His book Patriotism, published in 1950 and again in1973, sought to provide the theoretical underpinning of this patrioticspirit required by civil society. It did so by explicitly relegating“ethnocentrism” (his translation of minzoku ch�shinshugi) to the past,and offering instead a broader sense of society that was framed by theinstitutions of modern life in a political, territorial state.64

For many among the “Civil Society School” theorists, the 1960protests over the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty (“Anpo”)represented the greatest hope for civil society in postwar Japan. Theysaw in the broad movement that, in the aftermath of the Kishigovernment’s forceful passage of the revised Security Treaty,extended from left-wing and right-wing activists to include students,housewives and ordinary citizens, real evidence of the engagedcitizenry that democratic society required. Ishida is only one of manysocial historians who found in Anpo the rise of the shimin.65 For some,this meant the emergence of powerful “people’s movements”, forothers, a true “citizens’ movement,” and yet others wondered if theseprotests in the streets did not herald the beginning of an authenticcivil society (shimin shakai).66 Yet, in the end, what emerged during

63 Kersten, 46.64 Shimizu Ikutar�, Aikokushin (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1950), 23-34, 60-61.65 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no shakai kagaku, 195-207.66 See, for example, Shirotsuka Noboru, “’Shimin shakai’ no im�ji to genjitsu,”

Shis� no.6 (June, 1966):1-15; Takabatake Michitoshi, “Shimin und� no soshikigenri,” trans. by James L. Huffman as “Citizens’ Movements: Organizing theSpontaneous,” in J. Victor Koschmann, ed., Authority and the Individual in Japan:Citizen Protest in Historical Perspective (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1978):

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this decade of fractious protests was less civil society than a protestculture that grew increasingly remote from democratic engagementand more a matter of self-expression and anti-statism. Looking backat the start of the next decade, Inoue Shun summarized the results ofthe 1960s in terms of what he identified as “the anti-statism of theyoung people.”67 Indeed, the deepening antagonism with the state, notonly among the young, but on the part of Japanese society itself, didnot bode well for prospects of a democratic civil society since, as JeanBethke Elshtain has noted, “the state, properly chastened, plays a vitalrole in a democratic society.”68

Shimizu was trying to say much the same thing as Elshtain, butthis nuanced approach to the state was largely drowned out during the1960s and 1970s. As the more openly political protests against thestate receded in the mid-1970s, cultural theory returned as a surrogatenation, as it generally worked through sociology and other socialsciences. Known in Japanese as Nihonjinron (“the discourse on beingJapanese”), this body of psuedo-scientific writing claimed, in variousterms, that Japanese society was constructed as a differentia specifica,a society “uniquely unique” in the world. Nihonjinron theories rarelyreferred explicitly to the concept of shakai as framework for thisdifferentia specifica.69 Much more common was a reliance on theconcept of minzoku, and thus social scientists K�saku Yoshino andHarumi Befu are quite right to see this Nihonjinron theory as analternative theory of Japanese identity that is rooted not in the postwarstate but in an enduring sense of ethnic identity.70 Nihonjinron was,

189-99; Furusawa Tomokichi and Sanada Naoshi, eds., Gendai shimin shakai zensh�1: shimin shakai no kiso genri (Tokyo: D�bunkan, 1977.): 131-132. The latter workhas a fascinating, if a bit reductive, chart that lists dominant conceptions of theJapanese people in chronological order: 1868-1889: jimmin (people); 1889-1905:shimmin (subjects); 1905-1914: heimin (commoners); 1914-1923 sh�min (commonpeople); 1923-1932 j�min (“abiding folk”); 1932-1945 kokumin; 1945-1960 jimmin;1960-1976 j�min (residents); 1976- shimin (citizens). Furusawa and Sanada, 99.While it is not without reason, this list is a curious one, particularly in the restrictionof kokumin to a time when it had no legal recognition and excluding entirely theconcept of the people as minzoku.

67 Inoue Shun, “Wakamonotachi no han-etatisumu,” Tenb� no. 145 (January1971): 60-67.

68 Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial , 18.69 Two notable exceptions are Nakane Chie, Tate shakai to ningen shakai (1967)

and Murakami, Kumon Shumpei, Sat� Seizabur�, Bunmei to shite no ie shakai(1979).

70 Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan (London:Routledge, 1992); Harumi Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity (Melbourne: TransPacific Press, 2001).

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then, a revival of the effort from the late nineteenth century toestablish a national identity among the people that would beindependent of, and prior to, the nationalism invested in the state. It isnot surprising that it became enmeshed in minzoku, given thatconcept’s history of trying to articulate a national identity that wasneither statist nor civic. But for those social theorists who were tryingto promote democratic citizenship in postwar Japan, minzoku andNihonjinron were the greatest conceptual challenges of the 1960s and1970s, particularly since they were embraced by both extremes of thepolitical spectrum. Under those circumstances, it was quite difficult toarticulate and propagate a sense of civil society that would provide amodern, democratic nationalism that neither worshipped the state norrejected it out of hand.

Nihonjinron survived into the 1980s, but it had come under heavycriticism, especially as the Japanese economy became increasinglyglobal and cultural particularism seemed too quaint and parochial forthe needs of an international society. But criticism of the culturalcollectivism of Nihonjiron did not necessarily benefit the cause ofcivil society. Instead, social fragmentation and radical individualismfollowed the logic of consumer choice in the unprecedented affluenceof the age. On the one hand, all forms of social theory were tainted ascollectivism and “nationalistic”; on the other new social theories builton the exceptionalism and anti-individualism of Nihonjinron whilerejecting its national framework. The most influential of these newsocial theories was Fujioka Wakao’s idea of a new Japanese societystructured on “micromasses.”71 This idea may have seemed novel andexciting to young affluent consumers who found in it a legitimation oftheir behavior of “spending their way to freedom.” But it was merelyan expression of what Ishida Takeshi had worried about earlier: afragmentation and “de-moralization” of society. In Fujioka’s “micro-mass” society, the anti-statism of the earlier “mass society” (taish�shakai) combined with radical individualism to yield a sense ofcollective identity that allowed for any moral choice, so long as youcould afford to participate with a few like-mind consumers of thatpleasure. Fujioka’s micromass” theory of society was the highpoint ofa social and national theory of the postwar Japanese as “economicanimals,” as a people that needed no political or moral expression, but

71 Fujioka Wakao, “Futatabi ‘sayonara taish�,’” Voice (January 1986): 206-29;

abridged and translated as “The Rise of the Micromasses,” Japan Echo volume 13,no. 1 (1986): 31-8.

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merely affluence to be happy. It was of course still an exceptionalist,Nihonjinron, social theory.

Even during the height of the consumer culture of the 1980s, somesocial theorists offered an alternative to cultural exceptionalism andgroup consumerism. In 1985 Koyanagi Kimihiro and Katsuragi Kenjibrought together half a dozen academics with connections to KyushuUniversity in a volume that explored in depth the theory and practiceof civil society, at home and abroad. If Fujioka’s “micromass” theorywas a promotion of capitalist consumerism, Koyanagi’s group was aneffort to promote socialism. As he wrote in the introduction to thevolume,

Our motivation in publishing this collection of essays in intellectualhistory is rooted in the shared, and very reasonable, perception that theimage of society that Japan will need in the future is that of a socialistcivil society.72

In retrospect, it is fair to say that this project failed. Several reasonsfor its failure can be offered. First, in contrast to Fujioka’s writings,this “civil society” theory was written by and for a specializedacademic audience. (In that sense, it contributed, ironically, to thefragmentation of society that Ishida warned against). Second, a theoryof civil society linked to socialism has limited appeal among Japanese,and not only for ideological reasons. In the history of concepts ofsociety in modern Japan, shimin shakai had been too narrowlyconceived as an urban phenomenon: this was, indeed, one of the mainreasons that the “rise of the shimin” during the Anpo demonstrationsfailed to lead to a new social order, as many had hoped. Shimin (“citypeople”) too easily connoted the privileged urban residents, especiallyof Tokyo, and left out many other Japanese in small towns and in thecountryside. Finally, with the decline in popularity of socialism inJapan during the 1990s, any effort to rebuild democratic civil societyfrom a socialist agenda was bound to fail.

To some, the decline of socialism means the decline of societyitself and a reduced chance for a healthy sense of nationalcohesiveness when addressing national problems. Certainly, one findsfewer efforts to address national problems by trying to establish theright concept of society than in the past. But this should not be takenas a sign that the fundamental problem that social theory hasaddressed for over a hundred years in Japan has been resolved. There

72 Koyanagi Kimihiro, “Josh�: Shimin shakai ron o megutte,” 1-8 in Koyanagai

and Katsuragi Kenji, eds., Shimin shakai no shis� to und� (Kyoto: Mineruba Shob�,1985), 1.

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are still significant tensions between the nation as the people and thestate as the governing power. Nor should we conclude that thepolitical decline of socialism means a decline of interest in society orsocial issues (this equating of society and socialism was one of thekey misunderstandings that plagued sociology in Japan from its latenineteenth century beginnings). On the contrary, recent years mayprovide the best grounds for optimism that democratic practice isstronger than ever in Japan, and that the underlying issues that“society” served as a cover for may be, indeed are being, addressedopenly by a larger number of people. What once had been limited to anarrow circle of intellectuals and political activists is now being takenup by journalists, popular writers, media figures and even nationalpoliticians.

Throughout much of modern Japanese history, “society” served asa codeword for “the nation,” and it did so for historical reasons. Until1952, there was no legally recognized nation, and this legal fact leftthe field of national debate open to select from a variety of terms andunderstandings of what the nation was or should be. Shakai emergedearly on in this debate as an effort to grasp the national people as awhole that was distinct from the imperial state. Debates over“society” and “the science of society” (shakaigaku/shakai kagaku)were in fact debates over the meaning, scope, and politicalsignificance of “the nation.” But when nationalism was debated underthe cover of the concept of society, the result often was adisassociation of the nation (society) from the state. What we find inrecent years is an open discussion of the relationship of the nation andthe state, in Japan and in other countries around the world, and thereturn of the concept of society from a kind of covert nationalism toits proper role in mediating the relationship of nation and state is ahealthy development for Japanese democracy. However, it also meansthat to understand the continuation of this long debate over “thepeople” and their relationship to the state, we need to pay attention tothe concepts used to represent the nation. It is to those concepts ofnation (kokumin, minzoku) that we turn next.

CHAPTER FIVE

KOKUMIN

In this chapter, I trace the emergence of the concept of a civic orpolitical sense of nation (kokumin), first in context of efforts toprotect the rights of samurai against the Sat-Ch� clique government;then as a broadening movement that aspired to national sovereignty inthe constitution; then after 1890, as a final, desperate hope for acultural national sovereignty that would be exercised through the Diet,before becoming overwhelmed by the Constitutional rejection ofnational sovereignty and the rise of a rival minzoku discourse thatabandoned political nation-building for the compensations of culturalidentity (this minzoku discourse is outlined below in Chapter Six).During World War II, kokumin discourse re-emerged, both as abulwark against Marxist ethnic nationalism and as a logic ofassimilation (or at least integration) of the various ethnic nationalitiesthat composed the Japanese Empire. After World War II, the newconstitution enshrined kokumin as the official Japanese sovereignnation, although it was frequently overwhelmed and undermined bythe tradition of a cultural minzoku national identity that wasconceived in opposition to the state. In spite of the Occupation andthe Constitution’s role in asserting this kokumin national identity,minzoku national discourse continued to flourish, albeit contested byand at times intertwined with kokumin nationalism. Since the 1990s,kokumin nationalism has been enjoying its strongest rebirth inJapanese history. The reasons for this renaissance of civic nationalismare many: the global rise of civic nationalism in theory and practiceafter the fall of Marxism; the increasingly multi-ethnic composition ofJapanese society; and the explicit use (and occasional abuse) ofkokumin nationalism by many Japanese intellectuals, journalists andpoliticians who seek a resolution to the structural imbalance ofpostwar Japan’s political institutions.

Such a broad conceptual history of the idea of kokumin is essential,if we are to fully appreciate the nature of early Meiji nation buildingin either comparative context or in its own particular historical setting.It is important to comprehend the full significance of the famous

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statement by Hans Kohn, one of the twentieth century’s mostauthoritative voices on nationalism: “nationalism is a state of mind.”1

Kohn’s insight captures much of the distinctiveness of a nationconceived as a civic nation (kokumin). In this understanding of thenation, a nation is not a natural expression of an ancient, organicbeing, but a mode of consciousness that exists socially only as arepresentation of a specific kind of contingent and created collectivity.Thus the concept chosen to express the nation (eg., whether the nationis represented as kokumin or minzoku) is more than a matter oflinguistic form; it bears significantly on the meaning of nationalism,both for the one who makes a conceptual preference and for thosewho hear and reproduce these concepts.

Given the significance of the conceptual expression of the nation,it is striking that, during the first decades of the Meiji period, therewas no consensus on the conceptual or linguistic modes forexpressing the idea of “nation.” In fact there were few terms for“nation” in general use in the political discourse of those years. Notuntil the 1880s do we begin to see the emergence of the twocommonly used terms today for nation, kokumin and minzoku. And itwas not the concept of minzoku (“ethnic nation”) that emerged first inpolitical discourse, but the concept of the political or civic nation(kokumin). This historical fact challenges the claims of manyadvocates of ethnic nationalism that the ethnic national identity of theJapanese people predates their consciousness of nationalism as a civicforce. Ethnic national consciousness did not precede politicalnationalism, but stemmed from the frustrations of advocates forpopular nationalism who could not realize their hopes in the debatesleading up to the Meiji Constitution. Its own primordial claims weresimply projected backwards in time as fact in order to cover up itsrecently constructed origins. Consequently, we must first understandthe history of the effort to establish a political or civic sense of thenation in Meiji Japan before we can properly consider the reaction ofethnic nationalism.

1 Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Princeton, NJ, 1965;

reprinted by Robert E. Krieger Publishing, Co., Inc, Malabar, Florida, 1982): 9. Theunderstanding of nations as modes of consciousness can be traced to Ernest Renan’s“Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” (1882) which opposed the Germanic belief in objectiveethnic roots of national identity with the theory of the nation as a “daily plebiscite.”This theory of the nation as a mode of consciousness became very influential aroundthe First World War, and is generally understood as a “liberal theory of nationalism”versus the “conservative theory” of the ethnic determination of nations.

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As we will see below, some scholars have traced this modernconcept of kokumin back to 1871, but it is not entirely clear that thisusage captured fully what is usually meant by “a nation.” The termitself, kokumin, was not a neologism, but carried with it earlierdenotative and connotative meanings from the Edo period. Forcenturies, it had been used to refer to the samurai of a given domainand generally excluded all others, most notably the peasants whoformed the majority of the people.2 Consequently, within the area wetoday think of as “Japan,” there were hundreds of different kokumingroups, just as there were hundreds of domains. Whether at this pointthe Daj�kan meant to imbue all the Japanese people with full nationalrights, or whether it was merely attempting to replace the bakufu as asingle feudal domain under the sovereign monarch, is open toquestion. In any event, Fukuzawa Yukichi did not believe a nationexisted in Japan by 1875, when he famously declared that “whilethere is a government in Japan, there is no nation (kokumin).”3 He wasfamiliar enough with the concept to recognize the absence of the thing.Prior to the 1880s, the concept and reality of a Japanese nation as aunification of the entire people in the realm, based on a consciousnessof shared membership in the nation, was nebulous at best. What ismost remarkable is the emergence of this concept, and how itcontested with entrenched forces that were unwilling to permit therealization of civic nationalism in modern Japan.

Who promoted kokumin nationalism in early Meiji Japan? Whowere its opponents? Arano Yasunori has argued that the foundationsof modern Japanese national identity lie in the anti-Christianprejudices of the Edo period, as well as in efforts to assimilate thevarious ethnic groups into standard Japanese mores and customs

2 T�yama Shigeki, Meiji no shis� to nashonarizumu, T�yama Shigeki chosakush�

vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992): 297; Luke Roberts, Mercantilism in aJapanese Domain (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 4-5; MarkRavina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1999): 30-31. Ravina and T�yama differ on whether the kokumin referredmainly to the commoners or exclusively to the samurai, but they agree with Robertsin that kokumin was limited in reference to the domain.

3 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bummeiron no gairyaku, 192. See also the translation byDavid A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst, Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Outline of a Theoryof Civilization, 144. It should be noted that Fukuzawa supplied the phonetic notes toread the term kokumin as “nation,” just as he glossed kokutai as “nationality.” Theseglosses are important clues to the meaning of these key terms of political discourseand should be consulted by all who study the meaning of nationalism, kokutai, orkokumin in modern Japan.

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under baku-han authority.4 Arano’s argument about the anti-Christianroots of Japanese nationalism is offered in the context of a largerpurpose, which is to explain the rise of nativist sentiment, perhapseven a proto-ethnic sense of Japaneseness, that emerged incontestation with Sinitic culture and thought in the Edo period. But toshoehorn this broad intellectual movement for cultural distinctivenessinto the modern theory of kokumin would require excessive force.

By the time kokumin nationalism was explicitly debated in the1870s and 1880s, it was not anti-Christians, but Christians themselveswho played a leading role in advocating this particular kind ofnationalism. Arano’s argument that anti-Christian sentiment shapedthe basis of modern Japanese nationalism notwithstanding, NottoThelle notes that early in the 1880s it was Japanese Christians likeKozaki Hiromichi who promoted kokuminshugi in order to emphasizea nationalism grounded in the people (kokumin) rather than the state.Buddhist nationalists, on the other hand, primarily identified theirnationalism (kokkashugi) with the state, and modern Buddhismeventually came to regard itself as “state Buddhism” (kokka-tekiBukky�, or kokka Bukky�). As Thelle concludes, Christian nationalism“identified itself neither with the past nor with the state, as Buddhistnationalism had tended to do, but rather with the future and with thepeople.”5 Here, it is worth recalling, as we saw above in ChapterThree, that the first draft of the Imperial Rescript on Education wascomposed by a Christian, Nakamura Masanao, who shared thefuturistic, individualistic, and populist orientation of Christiannationalism. For Christian Japanese, consciousness was always asignificant element to social identity.

To reconcile Arano and Thelle’s apparently contradictory claimson the relationship of Christianity to Japanese nationalism, one mustfirst pay careful attention to chronology: the differences between theEdo and early Meiji period, when Christian Japanese were notrepresented among the intellectuals but severely persecuted, and themiddle to late Meiji period, when Christian Japanese began to play adisproportionate role in political and social thought. At the same time,it is important to recognize that there was no consistent understandingduring the early and mid-Meiji period of what nationalism is, its

4 Arano Yasunori, “Nihon-gata ka-i chitsujo no keisei,” in Amino Yoshihiko, ed.,

Nihon no shakaishi vol. 1: Retto naigai no kotsu to kokka (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,1987).

5 Notto R. Thelle, Buddhism and Christianity in Japan: From Conflict to Dialogue,1854-1899 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987): 164-5.

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significance, and what its relationship to the government should be.Certainly anti-Christians, notably Shinto activists, saw Christianity(especially foreign missionaries) as incompatible with their vision ofJapanese national identity. But not all anti-Christian nationalistsfavored kokumin as the theoretical place for the people in the neworder. Shintoists tended toward an ethnic or tribal concept of thenation as a natural, organic category. But most government elitesfollowed Inoue Tetsujir� in rejecting nationalism entirely in favor of aconcept of the people as subjects of the emperor. In this context, it isquite true that during the mid-1880s, most Japanese Christians werevery much advocates of kokuminshugi, a nationalism that is bestunderstood in term of a civic, multi-ethnic community in which thepeople as such were sovereign.

Of course, Christians were not the only advocates of kokuminnationalism. But they certainly figured large even in the group ofintellectuals associated with Tokutomi Soh�’s journal Friends of theNation (Kokumin no tomo). That group included Taguchi Ukichi,Nakae Ch�min, Nitobe Inaz�, Ueki Emori, Ozaki Yukio, Kanai En,Shimada Sabur�, Yokoyama Gennosuke, Katayama Sen, UchimuraKanz�, Ukita Kazutami, Abe Is�, Nijima J� and others. Of course, theappeal of a kokumin centered polity was not limited to Christians,although undoubtedly Christian belief in the dignity of the individualinfluenced the rise of this more individualistic nationalism. IgarashiAkio has tried to identify who the bearers of the values of civilsociety were during the Meiji period by focusing on three groups:journalists, Christians, and “technicians” (bureaucrats, artists, etc).What was common to these groups was that the majority of them hadbeen retainers of the bakufu before the Restoration. Thus, he argues,they carried into the new society a different “spirit,” one forged in theexperience of defeat and alienation from the victorious government Itis an enticing theory, and one that helps to identify the alternativevalue system in the early Meiji period that often appealed to universalvalues like civil society. Igarashi’s argument is derived from YamajiAizan, who in turn took his theory that Christians were largely drawnfrom the losing side of the Restoration from Fukuzawa Yukichiwhose theory clearly reflected his low regard for Christianity.6 Butthe theory is not completely persuasive, since many influential

6 Cf. Yamaji Aizan, Essays on the Modern Japanese Church, translated by

Graham Squires, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies,1999), 68.

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Protestants, like Kozaki Hiromichi (who was from Kumamoto) werenot former bakufu retainers.

Civilization and Nationalism, 1868-1890

From the earliest years of the Meiji period, there was every reason tobelieve that the new government would take the form of a nation-state(kokumin kokka). “Civilization and enlightenment” (bunmei kaiki)was the catch-phrase of the day and, as the historian NishikawaNagao has noted, civilization and culture have specific valences whencombined with the concept of the nation. In contrast to JohannGottlieb Fichte’s idea of the German nation as an Urvolk based on along, historical culture, Nishikawa presents Ernest Renan’s concept ofthe French nation as founded on a notion of civilization that appealsto contract and consciousness rather than blood, origins, language andthe like. As Nishikawa summarizes, while this polarization innationalism theory between the German Fichte and the French Renanleft the English discourse on nation rather ambiguous, in Japanese thedistinction was much clearer than in English:

As for the term minzoku, this is a Japanese neologism that combinedtwo terms min [people] and zoku [tribe; clan] (it is not originally aChinese term). It may be a bit difficult to align it with a European termbut it is closest to the German term Volk. And then, we would have tosay that what best approximates the term nation from a civilizationalperspective is the term kokumin, and when approached culturally,minzoku.7

To grasp the politics of early Meiji kokumin nationalism, it helps tounderstand that the modern concept of civilization first emerged ineighteenth century France as a critique of despotic monarchy byadvocates for a nation founded on civil society. Civilization was notcontained within the nation, but carried with it a sense of universaldevelopment: that all nations would inevitably follow the Frenchmodel of a civilized national development. Thus at its inception, civicnationalism was caught in the paradox that in order to be trulycivilized, one had to be French, and to be a truly French nation, theFrench had to extend their influence and treasure beyond theirnational boundaries. As Liah Greenfeld succinctly captured this

7 Nishikawa Nagao, Kokumin kokka ron no shatei (Tokyo Kashiwa Shob�, 1998),

79.

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development, “La Grande Nation was the reincarnation of le roi tréschrétien ...she carried and spread the gospel of Nationality–libertyand equality–with fire and sword. The crusading nation succeeded thecrusading king.”8 One of the fundamental political challenges, if notthe essential challenge, facing the new Meiji government after theRestoration was whether and how this civilizational nationalismmight be reconciled with monarchy, and France presented anexcellent source for exploring this possibility.

To be sure, considerations of culture or ethnicity were not entirelyabsent from the Meiji efforts to construct the nation as a kokumin, asYoon Keun-Cha insists in his ethnologically determined reading ofMeiji Japanese nationalism.9 Neither were they completely absentfrom the French discourse on the nation.10 But during the first twodecades of the Meiji period, ethnic and cultural issues were secondaryconsiderations: the overriding ones were civilization, universaldevelopment, participation in the international system, and along withit the development of legal codes to determine the conditions andpractices of citizenship and governance in the new Meiji state.Discourse on culture was overwhelmed by the obsession withcivilization to the degree that even the use of the Japanese word thattoday is recognized to mean “culture” (bunka), during the early Meijiyears connoted “civilization”: it was a contraction of the phrase“civilization and enlightenment” (bunmei kaika--> bun-ka).11 Andeven Yoon concedes that the word for ethnicity (minzoku) is rare inMeiji political discourse until the 1890s.12

The significance of this relative absence of ethnic and culturalforms of national representation (minzoku, bunka) in favor ofcivilizational and political forms of the nation (bummei, kokumin) inthe early Meiji years lies in its potential for exposing a historicalrupture in Japanese nationalist discourse. This absence contrasts withthe marked turn toward these cultural and ethnic forms of national

8 Greenfeld, Nationalism, 188.9 Yoon Keun-Cha, “Minzoku gens� no satetsu: ‘nihon minzoku’ to iu jiko teiji no

gensetsu,” Shis� no. 834 (December 1993): 4-37.10 Liah Greenfeld notes that the French took much of their republican nationalism

from England (Nationalism, 156-8); Rogers Brubaker stresses the undercurrents ofethnic nationalism within the dominant republican discourse of France in Citizenshipand Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1992): 98-102.

11 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation (Armonk, NY,:M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 64-5.

12 Yoon, “Minzoku gens� no satetsu,” 9.

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identity around 1890–a shift in nationalist discourse that reveals asmuch about the nature of nationalism in the middle of the Meijiperiod as its does retrospectively of the early Meiji nation-stateformation. Early Meiji discourse on nation-state formation wascharacterized by strong aspirations for the development of theindividual after the fall of the “feudal” ancient regime. Thisconnection between the interests of the individual and the nation ismost famous in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s concern with the politicalmaturation of the individual Japanese as key to building a strongnation (which situates his position within the French enlightenmentdiscourse on the liberating effects of the nation). This connection isalso clear in the writings of Nishimura Shigeki, one of the luminariesamong early Meiji intellectuals. In one of the earliest explanations ofwhat “civilization” meant for Meiji Japan (Meiroku Zasshi, May1875), Nishimura argued that bummei kaika is the equivalent of theEnglish concept of “civilization,” and that in translating the conceptinto Japanese it is important to retain the sense that civilization means“to improve one’s character” (hitogara no yoku naru to iu koto nari).Significantly, historical research shows that an understanding of“civilization” in this individual and social context preceded the laterconnection of “civilization” with the state and its slogan of “wealthynation, strong army.”13

To appreciate how and why many intellectuals and politicalactivists invested their hopes for an individualist, civic nationalism inthe new government is not an easy thing to do, especially in light ofour present historical perspective, from which we can look back onthe Meiji period from the vantage point of subsequent historicaldevelopments. But we can gain a more empathetic view by resistinganachronistic transferences and giving close attention to the variouslegal and governmental reforms as they unfolded during the earlyMeiji period. From their future-oriented perspective, we canunderstand why such hopes did not seem unrealistic or naive at thetime. Early Meiji was still a revolutionary time, one that offered greatpromise to those who hoped that the new government–in contrast tothe authoritarianism of the ancient regime–would be organizedaround civic, democratic principles and that “the people” would havean unprecedented access to political power.

One might start at the beginning, in January 1868 when KandaTakahira (1830-98)’s Kaigi h�soku an introduced parliamentary

13 Nishikawa Nagao, Kokumin kokka ron no shatei, 82.

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debate procedures, five years before Fukuzawa, Kohata Tokujir� andKoizumi Shinkichi (translators)’s 1873 Kaigi ben sought to explain toa broader public the virtues of democratic government. Kanda’s billwas an early harbinger of institutional democracy, and one surely notwidely understood by the public. But the public was increasinglybeing incorporated into democratic practice, especially through itsgrowing awareness of the importance of public speech for democraticgovernance. Surely, the most significant moment in this growingappreciation of political speech was the 1872 publication ofFukuzawa’s Encouragement of Learning.14 It is for this reason thatNorio Makihara called Fukuzawa’s Encouragement of Learning the“first real work of nationalism (kokuminshugi) in Japan.”15 Makiharais quite right to place this text within Fukuzawa’s broader effort tobuild a nation (kokumin) by placing the people at the center ofdemocratic practice. Often overlooked in histories of Fukuzawa wasthe importance of “speeches” as a method he encouraged to reach thepublic. Yamamuro Shinichi has noted that 1874 was an importantyear in the public’s appreciation of “speeches” (enzetsu) inencouraging civic national consciousness. Fukuzawa’s AnEncouragement of Learning prepared the way, but its goals wereenacted by the Mita Speech Association and the various Meiji SixSociety activities.16 Fukuzawa advocated public speeches as a vitalpart of the process of creating kokumin, as not all Japanese enjoyedthe level of literacy necessary for a nationalism based on “print-capitalism.” Moreover, speech was a public act, and one that requiredthe physical presence of a community, a group of people who wereboth part of and symbolic of the nation itself.17

During these early post-Restoration years, measures taken by thecentral government converged with popular aspirations for a truenation-state. This convergence can be seen in the 1869 abolition ofregional autonomy and the replacement of the Edo period status

14 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Kaidai,”in Matsumoto Sannosuke and Yamamuro

Shin’ichi, eds, Genron to media, nihon kindai shis� taikei 11 (Tokyo: IwanamiShoten, 1990), 271.

15 Makihara Norio, Kyakubun to kokumin no aida: kindai minsh� no seiji ishikiNew History Modern Japan 1 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K�bunkan, 1998), 11.

16 Yamamuro, “Kaidai,” Genron to Media, 268.17 Speech clubs were most active between late 1879 and 1883. Admission to

speeches usually cost 1-3 sen, not an inconsequential amount then, but many peopleof limited means paid the fee. Sait� Tsuyoshi argues that, to truly appreciate whatthese enzetsu represented, the term should be understood as the equivalent of theEnglish word “speech” rather than “lecture.” Sait�, Meiji no kotoba:higashi karanishi e no kakebashi (Tokyo: K�dansha,1977), 386-402.

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system (shi-n�-k�-sh�) with a new, radical declaration of the formalequality of all people, regardless of former status. Thus, Yamamurofinds in these two radical measures early steps in the direction of“nation formation” (kokumin keisei).18 This trend toward civicnationalism under the new regime was further supported by theFebruary 1869 Newspaper Publication Regulations that removed theprohibition on private publication of newspapers set by the June 1868Regulations. This lifting of the earlier restrictions encouraged aproliferation of newspapers and a diversity of political ideas in publicdiscourse. Newspapers and public speeches were two complementaryparts of the incipient structuring of democratic or civic nationalism inMeiji Japan: ideas that were published in newspapers were often readaloud in public speeches to those who did not, or could not, read thepapers.19

Concomitant with these developments in public discourse, thegovernment moved to establish a spatial boundary of the kuni, thegeographical contours for the new concept of a kokumin. In July 1869,it established a colonial office for Ezochi and, in August, it accepted apetition by Matsuura Takeshir� to change the name of Ezochi to“Hokkaido”.20 Similarly, in the home territories, the 1871 estab-lishment of prefectures as replacements for the old domains (haihanchiken) converted the 273 old domains into mere administrativedistricts of the central government.21 This centralization of gov-ernment invited a transfer of the domainal people’s consciousness oftheir domains as o-kuni (“our country”) to a new consciousness of theunified political community of Japan itself as the new kuni to whichloyalty was owed. This was not always merely a subtle suggestion or

18 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Kokumin kokka keisei-ki no genron to media,” 477-540,

Genron to media, 483.19 Laws were enacted in Kyoto and Hiroshima (1871.7), Niigata (1872.8), and

Chikuma (1873.12) to encourage buying and reading newspapers; associations(shimbun setsuwa kai; shimbun k�gi kai) were formed all over the country to readand explain what was in the newspapers to those of more limited education;moreover, newspapers were made available for the public to read without charge.Further, in Tokyo and Yokohama popular rakugo storytellers helped disseminate thecontent of the newpapers. For example, Sany�tei Ench� (1839-1900) read the Ch�yaShinbun to his audience, while Sh�rin Hakuen (1832-1905) read the Y�chi H�chiShinbun to his audience. See Yamamuro, “Kokumin kokka keisei-ki no genron tomedia,” 487-8.

20 Matsuura (1818-1888) was a late Edo explorer and cartographer who specializedin northern Japan. He worked as an official in the Colonial Office from 1869 until heresigned in protest in 1870.

21 The best study on haihan chiken in the context of the politics of nationalism isMichio Umegaki, After the Restoration: The Beginning of Japan’s Modern State.

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invitation. The April 1871 Household Registration Law, which tookeffect in February 1872, required all Japanese to register, whethersamurai or commoner. The logic worked both ways: all Japanesewere required to register, and those who registered were considered,ipso facto, Japanese. Although it retained for a while the usage of thenames of new status groups (ka shizoku heimin), it marked asignificant step toward nationalism by establishing the formalequality of all Japanese nationals, regardless of social status, and bymaking registration by law an essential part of the process ofdetermining who was a Japanese national. It was also the firstinstance of the word kokumin in an official government document.22

Needless to say, the definition of nationality was no mere conceptualgame: it had real consequences, as can been seen in 1871 when theJapanese government declared to be Japanese the fishermen onMiyafuru island in the Ryukyus who were murdered by “barbarians”(seiban) in Taiwan. It then sent troops to Taiwan to avenge the slightto Japanese national honor and prevent future massacres of theJapanese people.

Yet, in spite of these reforms of administration, social status,registration, and efforts to define and promote equality among theJapanese people–certainly conditions for national formation–wecannot conclude that the Japanese nation was automatically formed atthat point. As Yamamuro notes, these developments merely marked“the departure on the long road toward nation formation.” While the“opening of the country” by Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853introduced an acute consciousness of other nations to Japanesesociety, detailed knowledge of those nations was not yet widelydisseminated among the Japanese people.23 Moreover, Yamamuro iscertainly correct to point out that the emergence of a new nationalmedia did not engineer a new nation in top-down fashion, but onlyprovided the opportunity for people to begin to imagine theiridentities and common fates within the context of this new media.National formation is achieved only when people become a nationthrough their own consciousness, and not through being led or forcedinto forming a nation by political elites or institutions. Thisconsciousness, which must develop autonomously, nonetheless does

22 Yoon Keun-Cha, Nihon kokumin ron , 92; also, Nishikawa Nagao, Kokumin

kokka ron no shatei, 86.23 Yamamuro, “Kokumin kokka keisei-ki no genron to media,” 483-5.

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not develop solely by itself, but through a relationship with others,including those who are not members of the nation.24

Yamamuro’s perspective offers a fresh insight into nationalformation in early Meiji Japan. He invites us to look beyond moresimplistic histories that focus on top-down efforts at nation-building,particularly by the government, and then declare–oftenprematurely–either national formation as the foundation of success inmodernization, or an indictment of Japanese modernization bypointing to the emergence of a strong state-centered patriotism whichexcluded all hopes of true nationalism. Instead, he draws our attentionto the important debates and discursive formations that happened inthe years between 1868 and 1890, years of great significance for thedissemination of civic values and national identity in modern Japan.And, rather than giving us an ideological driven narrative ofoppression of the people by the elites, he uncovers in this formativeperiod a dynamic history of contestation, contradiction, and conflictthat suggests efforts at a populist formation of civic nationalism.

Yet, by the early 1880s, efforts at building an inclusive, civicnationalism were dealt a number of significant setbacks. Theresolution of 1881 Political Crisis meant the defeat of those who hadinvested their hopes with �kuma Shigenobu’s British consti-tutionalism and the victory of the monarchical statism of It�Hirobumi. While the formalization of this victory in the MeijiConstitution was still nearly ten years away, the failure of this effortto create a consciousness among the people of being a kokumin wasevident in the language of the Imperial Rescript on the Establishmentof a Diet. Up to that point, there had been no uniformity in howgovernment documents referred to the people. Terms such as jinmin(the people), sh�sho (the multitudes) and even kokumin (thenation/citizens) had been employed on occasion. But, after lengthyand passionate debate over the need to create a consciousness ofkokumin among the Japanese people, the Rescript simply referred tothe Japanese people as shimmin (“the monarch’s subjects”). Thisreference to the people as mere subjects in a Rescript announcing the

24 Yamamuro, “Kokumin kokka keisei-ki no genron to media,” 489-90.

Yamamuro’s assessment that there was yet no nation (kokumin) in early 1870s Japanis shared by most historians of Japanese nationalism. Cf. Ysoon , Nihon kokumin ron,90; Makihara Norio, Kyakubun to kokumin no aida: kindai minsh� no seiji ishiki, 9-19; and of course, most famously, Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bummeiron no gairaku, 192.To fully appreciate the point, one should add that there was no “state” (kokka) either,at least not until 1890.

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formation of a parliament sent a strong message that nationalsovereignty and civic rights were not to be expected. As a result, theefforts to create a consciousness of kokumin shifted from the realm ofdiscourse and media to political movements that sought to workthrough the political parties to advocate for populist causes.Consequently, partisan bickering and political self-interest soonabsorbed this effort at building nationalism, rendering it at best asecondary concern of the parties that grew more focused on self-preservation. Whatever vestiges of this kokumin movement were stillsmoldering within the parties at the end of the decade were furtherextinguished when the 1889 Constitution of the Great Empire ofJapan not only defined the country as an empire (teikoku) rather thana nation-state (kokumin-kokka), but legally codified the previousannouncement that the Japanese people were not a nation but merelysubjects (shimmin) of their monarch. The concept of a nation (eitheras kokumin or minzoku) appeared nowhere in this first modernconstitution of the Japanese “nation.”

The kokumin movement had failed on several levels. First, andmost decisive, was the rejection of the effort to codify the people as akokumin in the Meiji Constitution. Equally serious, and related to thisinstitutional failure, was the inability to establish a coherent sense ofwhat nationalism is within modern Japanese political discourse and inthe common parlance. Nationalism was an extremely important issueof the day, but it remained inchoate and highly contested in meaningand applicability to Japanese politics and society. As one measure ofnationalism’s inchoateness, we might turn to Sait� Tsuyoshi’sdiscovery that an 1885 English-Japanese dictionary listed the word“nationalism” in English, but provided no adequate equivalent inJapanese. Critically important was the fact that no compound with thesuffix shugi (ism) was offered, neither kokuminshugi norminzokushugi, suggesting that the Japanese language of that day didnot register the essence of the concept of nationalism. Sait� concludedthat while some journalists were starting to use compounds with shugiaround 1885-6, the usage was not widely shared or recognized.25

Hamano Teishir� and Watanabe Osamu offered the wordh�kokushugi ) in their 1885 translation of Herbert Spen-ser’s political philosophy.26 But this concept only exposes the officialgovernment’s interpretation of nationalism that excluded the people

25 Sait�, Meiji no kotoba, 372.26 Sait�, Meiji no kotoba, 384.

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as the agency of nationalism. In terminology and meaning,nationalism was still a very contested concept in the 1880s.

I. Meiji Kokumin Aesthetics

During the mid-1880s, advocates of civic nationalism kept it alive bydeveloping “deep” theories that prepared the ground for subsequentefforts to restore kokuminshugi to the forefront of Japanese politicaltheory. Culture and art were ideal fields in which to sow the seeds ofnational consciousness. Nakae Ch�min, a leader of kokumin thoughtand the People’s Rights Movement, played a key role in histranslation of Véron’s Aesthetics (originally, L’Esthétique Paris: C.Reinwald, 1878). His translation appeared in print between 1883-4,while he was in the employ of the Ministry of Education, thus makingit an official government project. The official nature of this work isunderscored by the fact that the translation was advertised in theofficial gazette (Kanp�). Yet, this fact does not at all mean that thegovernment unified in supporting these efforts to promote kokuminnationalism. Far from it. There were divisions within the governmentover the national question and, as we have just seen, the course hadjust been set for drafting a constitution that would reject the principleof a sovereign nation for that of a sovereign monarch. But in the early1880s, there were still influential voices, some within the government,who called for a different path. And, to the extent that these voiceswere expressed in arcane cultural and aesthetic theories, they werepermitted expression.

Nakae’s translation of Véron’s Aesthetics provides a usefulreminder that ideas on art and culture are not peripheral in the projectof constructing a national consciousness. But it also provides valuablehistorical evidence that in pre-constitutional Meiji Japan, kokuminnationalism did not always reject the integration of the people withthe newly emerging state, even if the government was beginning toreject the idea of the people as sovereign. In the early 1880s, Nakaestill thought that there was room within the emerging Meiji state for akokumin nationalism, and his optimism may have been encouraged bythe fact that the 1881 Political Crisis was between advocates ofBritish and Prussian political theories. Nakae represented a thirdalternative: French republican nationalism. The fact that historysubsequently proved him wrong about the viability of the Frenchoption, at least under the Meiji constitution, does nothing to diminishthe historical significance of his work, and the vision he and the“French School” expressed, in shaping a culture of kokumin identityin late nineteenth century Japan.

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To appreciate the reasons for Nakae’s optimistic sense that thegovernment work was not incompatible with forming kokuminconsciousness, it helps to start with some background on the Ministryof Education in the early 1880s. The head of the Ministry’s Office ofTranslations was Nishimura Shigeki, and under his direction theOffice was focused on translating and disseminating William G. andRobert Chambers’s Information for the People (Kokumin Shuchi).27

The Japanese title, which is more accurately rendered as “Knowledgethe Nation [kokumin] Must Have,” emphasizes the agenda Nishimuraand his Office had: to build a modern nation as a collectivity of thepeople with a sense of civic responsibility forged, not only ontraditional or indigenous values, but on the values of modern liberalnationalism. It can be seen as a direct response to Fukuzawa’s 1875complaint that the Japanese people still lacked a true consciousness ofthemselves as a single nation (kokumin). Kokumin Shuchi waspublished in two volumes between 1884-5, so we may conclude thatthose working in the Office of Translation at the time were thinkingof Véron’s Aesthetics within a similar framework of constructing anation compatible with the culture of progress and “enlightenment”(keim�). At the same time, it appears that individual translators weregiven considerable freedom in the selection of particular texts, and itwas most likely Nakae’s own decision to include Véron’s Aestheticsin this series.28

There is further evidence that it was in fact Nakae’s purpose topromote a kokumin nationalism in Japan through this translation.Eugène Véron (1825-89) was a French journalist and writer who, as arepublican nationalist, resigned his position as a professor of literaturein protest of the establishment of the Second Empire (1852-70). As aprivate educator and journalist, he contributed to many newspapersand journals associated with the progressive, republican cause,including a position as editor of the Progrès du Lyon in 1868. As IdaShin’ya has noted, Véron was an ardent supporter of republicannationalism whose progressive spirit deeply informed his thinkingabout art and aesthetics. His politics–and his cultural approach topolitical issues–could hardly have escaped the attention of Nakae,who spent a year in Lyon from early summer 1872, when the Third

27 Tsuchikata Teiichi, “Kaidai,” Meiji geijutsu bungaku ronsh� Meiji bungaku

zensh� vol. 79 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob�, 1975): 398-436, at 405.28 Asukai Masamichi, “Minken und� to Uen-shi Bigaku,” chapter in Kuwabara

Takeo, ed., Nakae Ch�min no kenky� (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1966): 116-128, at121.

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Republic was still in its early triumphant days.29 Lyon was theepicenter of French republicanism. Then and there, republicannationalism–not monarchy–seemed the inevitable wave of the futurefor the world, and France was thought to be riding the crest of thatwave. In 1881, only two years before Nakae’s translation of Véronbegan to appear in Japanese, It� Hirobumi had effectively vanquishedthe “English School” advocates of representative democracy bydriving �kuma Shigenobu and his supporters out of the government.To Nakae and those in the “French School,” it seemed the future ofdemocracy in Japan was left to them. But they had to proceedcarefully, as they were a minority in the government and the“Prussian School” monarchists clearly had the upper hand.

The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 (led by a Christian convert, Saig�Takamori),30 and the Crisis of 1881 had signaled the limits to opencriticism of the “Prussian School” and its chief advocate It� Hirobumifrom within the government. The objective of this “Prussian School”was not to foster republican or any other kind of nationalism, butprecisely to protect the monarchical state from the challenges ofpopulist nationalism. In such an atmosphere, one can appreciate thedecision to publish a work on aesthetics as an indirect form ofpolitical critique. Yet it is also important to recognize, as AsukaiMasamichi has emphasized, that at this time, Nakae was not the anti-government revolutionary that some historians have imagined him tobecome later. Although he was on the editorial board of the LiberalParty’s Jiy� Shimbun, he remained an advisor within the government,where he sought to encourage policy shifts toward what he called agreater degree of “civil liberty.”31 Nakae joined others, especially inthe Office of Translations, who believed that what had beenforeclosed politically was not impossible to achieve culturally. For

29 Ida Shin’ya, “Uin-shi bigaku,” in Kat� Sh�ichi et al., eds., Hon’yaku shis�

Nihon kindai shis� taikei 15 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 432-441, at 435-6.30 Saig� Takamori (1827-77) is an important and well-known figure in early

Meiji history; it is not widely known that he was also a Christian. The identificationof him as Christian was made by his near contemporary and fellow Christian, YamajiAizan (1864-1917). See Yamaji, Essays on the Modern Japanese Church, 69.

31 Asukai, 118, 120. Nakae’s emphasis, while working within the government, onthe people’s “civil liberty” almost certainly was indebted to Voltaire’s preference forthe concept of “civil liberty” to signal of importance of intellectuals and culture inshaping democratic movements in England, in contrast to Montesquieu’s stress on“political liberty.” It was also a shrewd political decision, given that “politicalliberty” would be a difficult concept to promote within the Japanese government inthe 1880s. as it was too closely associated with the taboo topic of minken, or people’srights. On Voltaire, Montesquieu and the debate over “civil liberty” and “politicalliberty,” see Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity , 156-8.

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them, a true republican nation would not come into being simplythrough legal fiat: it required first a change in consciousness, a greateracceptance of the values of liberal nationalism, from among thepeople themselves.

Véron’s Aesthetics was one means to that end. In the early 1880s,the question of aesthetics, its meaning and political significance, waslargely an open one, and thus Nakae found an opportunity to promotea democratic national culture that was neither completely subordinateto the state nor radically disassociated with the democraticpossibilities of a civic nationalism.32 By making Véron’s Aestheticsavailable to the Japanese public, Nakae challenged the risingdominance of Hegelian aesthetics that stemmed from the speechesand writings of Ernest Francisco Fenollosa. Fenollosa came to Japanin 1878 as a recent graduate of Harvard University to study Japaneseart. By the 1880s he was advocating a Hegelian view of art thatlionized Japanese tradition as distinct from modern Western culture.Kitazawa Sh�ji and Tsuchikata Teiichi have written that Fenollosa’semphasis on an eternal national “Spirit,” manifested through anation’s unique artistic forms, was intrinsically linked to ethnicnationalism (minzokushugi).33 In contrast, Stefan Tanaka hasemphasized that Fenollosa’s Hegelian aesthetics glorified the state(kokka) as the site where modern Japanese national identity waslocated and expressed.34 These studies may seem to contradict each

32 Asukai’s point that the Hegelian academism that Véron confronted in 1870s

France was not the dominant aesthetic theory in Japan at the time is beside the point.As he himself notes, Fenellosa was in fact asserting a traditionalist aesthetics in Japanduring the early 1880s (Asukai, 118, 122). More to the point is Iwasaki Chikatsugu’sassessment that Nakae’s translation of Véron was introduced into a Japan where thevery notion of aesthetics as a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of culturewas still an unfamiliar one, and thus the situation presented Nakae with anopportunity to shape the emerging field of aesthetics. As Iwasaki notes, even theprose form of written Japanese (genbun itchi) had yet to be established. Cf. IwasakiChikatsuku, “Nakae Ch�min to E. Véron no bigaku” in Nihon kindai shis�shi josetsu:meiji zenkihen-ge (Tokyo: Shin nihon shuppansha, 2002), 173-4.

33 Two Japanese scholars who explicitly say that Fenollosa’s aesthetic theoriescontributed to ethnic nationalism (minzokushugi) are Kitazawa Sh�ji (“Uin-shibigaku to Nihon kindai bijutsu: huontan�ji, fuenorosa, veron,” in Ida Shinya, ed.,Ch�min o hiraku: meiji kindai no <yume> o motomete, (Tokyo: K�b�sha, 2001):157-181, at 164) and Tsuchikata Teiichi (“Kaidai,” Meiji bungei bungaku ronsh�,409).

34 Stefan Tanaka, “Imaging History: Inscribing Belief in the Nation,” The Journalof Asian Studies 53, no. 1 (February 1994): 24-44. Although the title of this articlerefers to the “nation,” it is apparent from Tanaka’s translation of the title of an 1880series of photographs, the Kokka Yoh�, as “Glories of the nation” (39) that hisconcept of “nation” really refers to the kokka, or the state. The question of whether

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other on the political implications of Fenollosa’s aesthetics. But oncloser analysis (and making allowances for Tanaka’s translation ofkokka as “nation” rather than as “state”) they converge in pointing toFenollosa as the spokesman for an aesthetics of cultural identity thatsought to associate the ideal of a collective, Japanese identity with theemerging state. Kitazawa and Tsuchikata’s use of the termminzokushugi to describe this effort is a bit anachronistic, as that termwas not in general currency in the early 1880s, and certainly not bythe aristocrats and government officials who welcomed Fenollosa’sHegelian aesthetics.35 But the key point is that this Hegelian aestheticstotalized Japanese cultural identity around an ostensibly immutableessence, and it was against this organic cultural theory, and itsconservative political implications, that Nakae offered his translationof Véron’s Aesthetics.

In contrast to Fenollosa’s Hegelian aesthetics, Véron’s aestheticswas built on the principle of personalism. Véron called the Hegeliannotion that beauty rested on a “Beau idéal” merely an “ontologiechimérique” (kyom� no sonzairon) that sought to curb the passions ofthe contemporary youth by regulating them according to a modelderived from cultural norms found in history from ancient Greecethrough Renaissance Italy. To Véron, Hegelian, or “academic,”aesthetics was less a philosophy of beauty than a transparent politicalideology designed to protect existing structures of power from thethreat of change. In contrast, he argued that “the essence of art…wasthat which emanated from the personnalité of the artist himself.”36 At

Fenollosa’s aesthetics supported the kokka (state) or the nation (and which concept ofnation–kokumin or minzoku) is an important one, if one is to reconcile Tanaka’sargument with Kitazawa and Tsuchikata’s analyses, which otherwise agree withTanaka that Fenollosa’s Hegelian aesthetics was supportive of a conservativenationalism, not the republican nationalism of Nakae and Véron. This is all the moreimportant since, by omitting consideration of Véron’s aesthetics, Tanaka’s article cangive the impression that aesthetics was not an internally contested field, as Kitazawaand Tsuchikata’s separate analyses show so clearly.

35 Fenollasa’s most important speech on aesthetics, “Bijutsu shinsetsu,” (“TheTrue Theory of Art”) was given at an October 1882 meeting of the Ry�chikai, anassociation Stefan Tanaka calls “an aristocratic club” (Tanaka, 30). Founded in 1879by Sano Tsunetami, who also founded the Japanese Red Cross, and Baron KukiRy�ichi (the father of Kuki Sh�z�), the organization was not staffed with the kind ofpeople who would embrace minzokushugi, which at that time was begining to emergeas a populist movement against the aristocratic government. The speech isreproduced as “Bijutsu shinsetsu” in Meiji bungei bungaku ronsh�, 36-48; there is auseful analysis of the speech and the Ry�chikai in Ibid., 408-410.

36 Nakae Ch�min, trans, “Uin-shi bigaku,” [Véron’s Aesthetics], 1883 (original,Eugène Véron, L’Esthétique, Paris: C. Reinwald, 1878); reprinted in Hon’yaku shis�,

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first glance, it would seem that Nakae inserted his own interpretationonto this passage, for he rendered Véron’s term personnalité as j�sei,a term that can mean one’s individual temperament or nature. Moreso than the French term personnalité, j�sei invested the concept of anartist’s own uniqueness in an emotional dimension. But thistranslation was not a simple misreading of Véron. Nakae understoodVéron’s argument quite well: rather, Nakae had to find–and moreoften, create–a new vocabulary in Japanese for these concepts due tothe evolving nature of the Japanese language at the time. Histranslation was itself an instance of Véron’s theory that a true artistdoes more than simply “translate” in a functionally reductive sense.

In his aesthetics, Véron divided art into three types: academic art(“l’art conventionnel”) that conceived of the artist at best as atransmitter or translator (traducteur) of what had been done before;realist art (“l’art réaliste”) that saw the artist as a photographer, areproducer of external reality; and personal art (“l’art personnel”) thatholds as the highest form of art the “manifestation of individualimpressions.”37 Only the last of these three could lead to true art, andVéron emphasized that true art was beautiful because it allowed theexpression of the full humanity of the artist, emotions and all. Nakaewas aware of this conception of emotions as constitutive of theindividuality of the artist, as his translations of the French “sapersonnalité” in other sections of the text demonstrate.38 But equally

Nihon kindai shis� taikei 15 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 209-229, at 209, 211.See also, Ida Shin’ya, “Uin-shi bigaku,” 432-441.

37 Nakae, “Uin-shi bigaku,” 224-9; Ida, “Uin-shi bigaku,” 438-439.38 Cf. Nakae’s rendering of Vérons’s “Mais ce qui constitue et détermine

essentiellement l’art, c’est la personnalité de l’artiste; ce qui revient à dire que lepremier devoir de l’artiste est de ne chercher à rendre que ce qui le touche et l’émeutréellement” as “Hitori dai san no h�h� nomi sakusha no yoroshiku ijun subeki tokoronari…dai san no h�h� ni itarite wa, tett� tetsubi kangai no ki o motte shishu tonasazaru nashi. Kore masa ni kokin daika no seimei o naru yuen nari (Hon’yaku noshis�, 229); earlier in the text, Nakae had rendered Véron’s “emotion” as aij� (225).Yet, to fully appreciate Nakae’s grasp of Véron’s nuanced argument is not an easytask. It is essential to understand that the Japanese language was, in many ways,“under construction” in the early 1880s. And it was translators like Nakae who wereinstrumental in developing a modern Japanese vocabulary to express new conceptsfrom the West. At the same time, concepts they employed in this effort were notnecessarily equivalent to their modern meanings. The variance and nuance in Nakai’stranslation as a whole showed he was aware of Véron’s meaning. But whether hisreaders of his Japanese translation grasped Véron’s original meaning, or whether theyfilled in their own interpretation of this nuances is an open question–and certainlyone that Nakae must have welcomed, given his appreciation of Véron’s argument that

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important was that Nakae rendered Véron’s concept of the “artiste” assakusha, a concept that implied a broader subject than merely onewho dallies in the fine arts or expresses his own emotions. Translatingthe “artiste” as sakusha, or “one who makes,” emphasizes the role ofthe individual as capable of establishing new norms, and Nakae evenemploys the concept of sakui that, two centuries earlier, Ogy� Soraihad articulated as the human capacity to change social and politicalinstitutions.39

Véron’s valorization of the individuality (personnalité) of the artistfollowed the emphasis placed on liberty and equality in Frenchrepublican nationalism. Personalist aesthetics liberated the artist toexpress his own emotions and experiences, unencumbered by culturaltraditions or social status. All (true) artists were equals, with oneanother and with any social or political elite. But neither the Frenchtradition of republican nationalism nor Véron’s aesthetics should beconfused with individualism or libertarianism. At the core of thisaesthetics was a political ideology that sought to balance the claims ofindividualism and collectivism, to shape individuals into Frenchmen(Japanese) without making recourse to an ethnic theory that wouldrestrict national identity on the basis of natural ties of blood or clan.40

In his personalist aesthetics, Véron did not omit the social context ofthe individual artist, but in fact emphasized that all art is national art.The key distinction was that “un art national” (Nakae: ikkoku no f�)is something produced by the artist’s work; it is not something that

a true artist does not merely mimic what he finds in another time or place, but createssomething original from within his own self.

39 Nakae, trans., “Uin-shi bigaku,” 216. It is not insignificant that Nakae uses theconcept of sakui to describe the artist (sakusha)’s work in the context of its ability tochange a national culture rather than to being fully determined by a nationalizedaesthetics. The locus classicus for Sorai’s concept of sakui is Maruyama Masao,Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, Mikiso Hane, trans.,(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974): 94-95, 150. Nakae’s translationalso employs other more conventional terms for “artiste” (eg., geijutsu no shi). Butthe term sakusha is reserved for the artist who truly understands art, who follows themethod of l’art personnel and expresses his own subjective understanding of theworld. Maruyama explicitly connects the Sorai School’s tradition of sakui to theMovement for Freedom and Popular Rights, although not specifically to Nakae orVéron (312-3).

40 Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, 11. Seeespecially the section, “Republicanism and the Making of Frenchmen,” 104-110. Formore on the tensions between individual and community in French nationalism, seeAlain Finkielkraut, The Defeat of the Mind (New York: Columbia Press, 1995); LiahGreenfeld, Nationalism, 133-88; and Frederic Cople Jaher, The Jews and the Nation:Revolution, Emancipation, State Formation, and the Liberal Paradigm in Americaand France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

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exists outside of art as an abstract limitation on the permissible rangeof artistic creativity.

Here, Nakae’s translation diverges in a significant way fromVéron’s original. Whereas Véron briefly summarized his argumentthat all art is national art, and that this national art is found in “thoseinstinctive preferences common among the entire race (à la race toutentière), Nakae makes no reference to race, but develops an extensivecommentary on how the artist, if left to pursue his own impressionswithout any external, political constraints, will naturally [onozukarani] foster the development of the particular ways of a specific country(ikkoku no koy� no f�sh� o y�sei suru koto o eru).41 Nakae wasperfectly capable of expressing the French concept of “race” inJapanese when he wanted to do so.42 Thus, his decision not to in thiskey passage must be taken seriously as his own position that theJapanese nation would develop through free cultural expression, andthat such a nationalism had nothing to do with any racial or ethnicclaims on one’s identity.

II. Meiji Kokumin Theology

As noted above, Meiji period Christians were key advocates of anindividualistic nationalism that privileged the people (kokumin)against the coercive powers of “despotic” government. In their moralcritique, grounded in the conviction of a universal Truth and thedignity of the individual person, we find one of the earliest and mostpowerful expressions of the goals of civic nationalism, orkokuminshugi. This civic nationalism sought a path for Japan’sdistinctive cultural development that remained in a tense relationshipwith, but never completely subsumed into, the emerging state. It builton the “social criticism” that Irwin Scheiner identified as a majorcontribution of Meiji Christians to political discourse. This Christiancriticism was not unbridled or profligate: it was carefully tied to aspecific agenda and a particular target. One of the key kokumintheologians, Uemura Masahisa of the Presbyterian Church, outlinedthis agenda most clearly. The nation, he argued, “is designed to helpperfect human nature and to help man march toward the divine.”43 As

41 Nakae, trans., “Uin-shi bigaku,” 216.42 Cf. Nakae’s rendering of Véron’s “race” as shuzoku (118, 120) in “Nakae

Ch�min hen: Uin-shi bigaku shoron,” in Meiji bungei bungaku ronsh�, 112-2543 Uemura Masahisa, quoted in Takeda Kiyoko, Ningen-kan no s�koku (Tokyo,

1959), cited by Irwin Scheiner, Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan,183.

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Scheiner summarized this agenda, “National law must come intoaccord with the moral law. Piety, inevitably, defined patriotism.”44

These Christian patriots were not setting Church against State, butrather were outlining a political theology that approximates what JeanBethke Elshtain called for when she noted that “the state, properlychastened, plays a vital role in a democratic society…But the citizenof a democratic civil society understands that government cannotsubstitute for concrete moral obligations; it can either deplete ornourish them.”45 Rather than seeing these Christian political activistsas trying either to establish a theocracy or to build a wall of separationbetween Church and State, we would do well to explore their nuancedefforts to negotiate their faith with membership in an emerging statewhose contours were not well-defined prior to 1890.

The nature of this journey toward a Christian-inspired kokuminnationalism is well-illustrated in the life of the country school teacherChiba Takusabur�. Chiba even drafted his own constitution in 1881 inan effort to demonstrate how the kokumin could be made compatiblewith the emerging modern Japanese state. He was an eclectic thinker,and his connection to Nakae and the French School is evident in thesubsequent discovery in his library storehouse of eight governmenttranslations of lectures given by Gustave Emile Boissonade, theFrench legal theorist who had come to Japan in 1873 as a governmentadvisor.46 Chiba’s connection to the French School apparently wasthrough the Catholic missionary Fr. Francis Vigroux. As Irokawawrites, “In April 1876 [Chiba] Takusabur� went to study under thewell known French Catholic priest Father Vigroux; he stayed withhim until the beginning of the Satsuma Rebellion in February1877…and it is likely that Takuzabur� accompanied him on theproselytizing walking tours that he began in the Hachi�ji area in 1875or 1876.”47 There is some evidence Chiba may have shifted toProtestant Christianity sometime after 1877 through the influence ofthe Methodist missionary Reverend R.S. Maclay, but his specificdenominational affiliation is less important in terms of his role inkokumin nationalism than the fact that he remained a Christian at hisdeath in 1883. His attraction to Christianity no doubt stemmed from agenuine religious conversion, but it was not irrelevant to Chiba’spolitical activities and writings that Christianity was associated withthe rising kokumin nationalism of that day.

44 Scheiner, Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan, 183.45 Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial, 18-19.46 Irokawa Daikichi, The Culture of the Meiji Period, 109.47 Irokawa, 89-90.

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Influential Christian intellectuals of the 1870s and 1880s wereamong the most ardent supporters of a nationalism centered on thekokumin rather than on the state. Some Protestant Christians,especially those who like Kozaki Hiromichi had been with theKumamoto Band of Captain Leroy Janes, came to the conclusion that“one could only serve the nation by being a Christian,” raising thequestion for some historians of whether religious faith or nationalismwas the higher priority.48 Kozaki stands out among these Christianprogressive nationalists. But both he and Uemura were critical of theinordinate role played by foreign missionaries in Japan, and both ledindependent (anti-missionary) churches, while arguing for the need todiscard traditional ideas of loyalty and filial piety in order tomodernize Japan. For Christian converts like Uemura, Kozaki and themembers of their churches, “their success in establishing anindependent, self-supporting church permitted them to argueconvincingly that they were Japanese Christian nationalists, with anew vision, however, of what patriotism entailed.”49 Their “newvision” of nationalism was a defense of the people’s rights against thegovernment that, beginning in the early 1880s, had been increasinglyinterfering in the lives of Christians, through such measures asenforcing Buddhist funeral rites and promoting Confucian values inthe schools.50 This new vision of patriotic nationalism foregroundedthe role of the people and gave Christians an appreciation of the state,not as the summit of nationalism, but merely as an instrument formeeting the people (“the nation”)’s needs.

The two major texts to which Christians turned for guidance onsuch political and cultural questions in the social cauldron of the1880s were Uemura’s The Christian Church (Shinri Ippan, 1884) andKozaki’s New Thesis on Politics and Religion (Seiky� Shinron,1886).51 Uemura’s text was the less overtly political. Much of the

48 Scheiner, 93.49 Scheiner, 39-40. Scheiner’s view of Kosaki and Uemura as Christian

nationalists requires a distinction between their nationalism, which respectedindividualism and was progressive and socially engaged, and the nationalism thattraditionally has been ascribed to Christians only after 1890, which was more ajingoistic kind of patriotism. For the traditional interpretation of post 1890s Christiannationalists, see �hata Kiyoshi and Ikado Fujio, “Christianity,” chapter in HideoKishimoto and John F. Howes, eds., Japanese Religion in the Meiji Era (Tokyo:�bunsha, 1956): 173-309, at 264-77.

50 �hata and Ikado, 228-231.51 The title of this work, “Shinri Ippan,” is usually translated as “Common Truth.”

My translation builds on the fact that in the early 1880s “for Christianity, the termsused were things like “Jesus-doctrine,” Iesu-ky�, or Yaso-ky�; and apparently through

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book focused on proofs for the existence of God and other theologicalquestions. But Christian theology could hardly be isolated frompolitics in the early 1880s. In 1882, at the height of the Freedom andPeople’s Rights Movement, rumors flew through the Christiancommunity that the government was about to suppress the faith onceagain.52 Uemura was concerned that the government was beingpressured again by Buddhist priests to crack down on the Christiancommunity, and he wrote that “bigoted [Buddhist] priests naturally doeverything they can to prevent the progress of Christianity. But whata disgrace it is for those claiming to be scholars and politicians topaddle around after these priests doing the same thing.”53 In thecontext of growing attacks on Japanese Christians as unpatriotic,Uemura offered a rebuttal that appealed to an inclusive, civic conceptof the nation as an indictment of elitist, state officials–and Buddhistsand others who would question the loyalty of Japanese Christians.Assessing the ancient Greco-Roman notion that a citizen (kokumin)should be removed from labor (by slaves, if necessary), Uemuracountered that Christ taught one to be a servant to all–and he addedthat Christianity was a religion of social equality that in his day wasfighting against slavery, in marked contrast to the support for slaveryby “the Muslims and Saracens.”54 Slavery itself was not a pressingissue in Japanese society at the time. Rather, Uemura was usinghistory as analogy to address whether the Japanese people themselveswould be liberated as sovereign citizens or rendered as functionalequivalents to slaves to the state. He was also presenting the Christianbelief in the dignity and rights of the individual citizen as an activemember of the political community.

the influence of the Rikug� Zasshi, the word Kristo ky� (Christianity), wasstandardized. Among the people on the Rikug� Zasshi [which included Uemura],however, there were some who used the expression Shin no Michi (the Way of Truth),or simply Shinri (Truth) for Christianity. And in this connection it should be notedthat in Uemura’s Shinri Ippan the word shinri is used in this sense.” K�saka Masaaki,ed., Japanese Culture in the Meiji Era, volume IX: Thought, (Tokyo: Pan-PacificPress, 1958), 180. Ippan can mean “an entire squad” (ie., church) or “spots”, as in theexpression “ippan o mite zenby� o bokusu” (to judge a leopard by his spots). In anyevent, as the older translation “common,” indicates, ippan suggests unity andwholeness, rather than pieces or spots of some large thing.

52 �hata and Ikado, 230.53 Uemura Masahisa (1882), cited in �hata and Ikado, 231. These fears were not

unfounded, as subsequent years would prove.54 Uemura Masahisa, Shinri Ippan (Tokyo: Keiseisha, 1884); reprinted in Suzuki

Norihisa, ed., Kindai nihon kirisutoky� meicho sensh� dai-ikki: kirisuto ky� shis�hen,vol 1 Shinri ippan, seiky� shinron (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sent�, 2002): 251-3.

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This egalitarian and civic understanding of what kokumin couldsignify was grounded in the transformative power of Christianity andits future-oriented teleology. Earlier in the same text, Uemura hadargued that, as Christianity had made inroads into Rome, it called onRomans to redefine their identity through the mediation of this newreligion that came from their despised Jewish subjects. Thus, Uemuraconcluded, when he and his fellow Japanese Christians lectured onthe Bible, they never failed to emphasize how Christianity offered anopportunity to escape from “the stench of one’s native soil and itsmores” (h�do jisei no sh�mi). Taken out of context, such a remarkcould lead cultural conservatives to agree with the Confucianist InoueTetsujir� or the Buddhist nationalist Shimaji Mokurai that JapaneseChristians were not loyal to their country. But Uemura’s point was amore nuanced one. Read together with his earlier discussion on whatkokumin meant to a Christian (i.e., service to all), it should beunderstood that he was seeking a progressive, egalitarian sense ofcommitted citizenship and social engagement.

The Christian civic nationalism that Uemura had outlined wasdeveloped more explicitly by Kozaki Hiromichi two years later in hisNew Thesis on Politics and Religion. Kozaki’s work directlyaddressed the need to embrace some form of nationalism, and for tworeasons: first, as a member of the Kumamoto Band, he had alwaysbrought a political agenda to his interest in Christianity; and second,the return of Christian persecutions between 1884-5 gave his politicaltheory a greater sense of urgency.55 Christianity was locked in a battlewith Confucianism over the proper relationship between Man and thestate, and over whether hierarchy or egalitarianism was the best formof social order. Kozaki outlined the political differences between thetwo value systems by contrasting Confucian kingship (�d�) with thelines from the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come…on earth as it isin Heaven”:

55 In the famous “Mt. Hanaoka covenant,” the Kumamoto Band of Christians

expressed their determination to “serve their country” through their faith. Thepossibility that their Christianity “might be diverted…to a kind of nationalism” waspronounced, and Kozaki himself noted that the Band “all had politics as their aim.”�hata and Ikado, 208, 207. There were at least two incidents of popular persecutionof Christian Japanese between 1884-5 that took place with the tacit approval of localofficials. In one town, a mob made a straw effigy of Christ, impaled it on a spear andmarched around the town with it. In another, Christian services were interrupted by amob that “threw rocks, snakes and frogs” at those present, while shouting that “allChristians, to the last man, should be slain with spears.” �hata and Ikado, 234.

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Confucian kingship is limited to a single government in a singlecountry; in contrast, the Kingdom of God seeks to reach all thecountries in the world. Confucian kingship as government is limited toa generation or age in the past; whereas the Kingdom of God, to theextent it can be seen as a government, exists in the future and itspolitics are eternal and unlimited; Confucian kingship distinguishessuperiors from inferiors, noble from servile, the honored from thedespised, and holds as its objective the strict maintenance of thishierarchy; in the Kingdom of God, however, there are no distinctions ofsuperior or inferior, noble or servile, honored or despised: all standequal before God. It obligates all men on earth to eradicate suchdistinctions, to regard everyone as a brother or sister, and to love oneanother. Confucian kingship indoctrinates in a set pattern from topdown, from the country to the individual. The kingdom of God is notlike that: it holds the moral order to proceed from bottom up, from theindividual who can influence the entire country.56

As Irokawa has pointed out, this political theory of human equalityassumes a “conception of the individual in civil society and builds aworld order that begins with him and then goes on to consider state,globe, and universe. It is a powerful conception.”57 What made it evenmore powerful was Kozaki’s historical siting of Confucianism as aproduct of China’s past and vision of Christianity as the future of allhumanity. His point was not to denigrate Chinese culture, but torebuff authoritarian Japanese in his own day who were promotingConfucian monarchy and values as part of their effort to rollbackcivic consciousness and populist nationalism.

Kozaki’s Christian faith underwrote a vision of nationalism thatmediated individual and country, the particular and universal, one’sown nation and the world. It was, in fact, one of the strongestarticulations of civic nationalism that Japan had seen yet. Like many

56 Kozaki Hiromichi, Seiky� Shinron, reprinted in Suzuki Norihisa, ed., Kindai

nihon kirisutoky� meicho sensh� dai-ikki,1-156, at 98-99. I have consulted StephenVlastos’s translation of this passage in Irokawa Daikichi, Culture of Meiji Period,118, but made some revisions; see also Scheiner, 120. Vlastos’s translation does notmake the connection of �d� (“the Kingly Way” or kingship) to Confucianismexplicit, but Scheiner does, as does K�saka Masaaki, in Japanese Culture in the MeijiEra volume IX Thought, 183-5.

57 Irokawa, 118-9. Irokawa goes on to discount the influence of Kozaki’s ideas“among the people.” But this dismissal is rather tendentious: Irokawa is promotinghis own theory of populism, stemming from the later developments in the 1960s.And if the influence of Kozaki’s views can be dismissed, even more so can Irokawa’schampion Chiba Takusabur� whose writings were completely unknown until Irokawaunearthed them in a remote farmhouse in 1968. Scheiner’s assessment, which tracesthis political thought from Protestant Christianity to socialist protest, captures thehistorical influence of these ideas better.

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contemporary theorists of civic nationalism, Kozaki drew from Alexisde Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in his effort to imagine acivil society “that is neither individualist nor collectivist….[that]partakes of both the “I” and the “we.”58 Kozaki understood, with deTocqueville, that what forged the American people into a nation wasto a great extent their shared moral values and their freedom toexpress those values in religious practice. Kozaki identified thiscommon sense of identity as that of “the freedom of a civic nation”(kokumin no jiy�) that both drew from the people’s own moral valuesand ensured that the state could not impose legal restrictions on thenation’s free exercise of religious belief.59

The challenge of Kozaki’s political theory was clear: the state didnot create the nation; rather, a free and healthy nation (kokumin),steeped in the universal truths of Christianity, was seen as the bedrockof a healthy state. In coming to understand the primacy of nation overstate, Kozaki was particularly influenced by Elisha Mulford’s Nation:the Foundations of Civil Order and Political Life in the United States(1872). Kozaki translated the title of Mulford’s book as Kokumin, andthis rendering, along with the subtitle of the book, tells us everythingwe need to know about why Mulford’s argument appealed to Kozaki.But we need not merely infer. Kozaki cited with approval Mulford’sargument that all true, civic nations were informed by the life ofChrist and that, throughout history and in his own time, there existedno civic nation outside the reach of Christian influence. Mulford’sinterest was apparently in contrasting the politics of Islamic tribalismwith the civic societies of Europe and America. But Mulford alsocited Indian Buddhists who decried their own weak politicalorganization and failure to form a nation, and Kozaki leapt at thechance to draw a parallel lesson for Meiji Japan. “Those advocates ofpreserving Japanese culture through Buddhism and those scholarswho simply want to perpetuate Buddhism to maintain historicalcontinuity with the past,” he reflected, “would learn a lot from thisbook.”60 What they might learn was not only about Christianity, hesuggested, but also about the political and moral superiority of a freenation that was formed by a free people rather than by anauthoritarian state that propped up its power by appealing to arestrictive concept of traditional morals and culture.

58 Elshtain, Democracy on Trial, 9.59 Kozaki, Seiky� Shinron, 75.60 Kozaki, Seiky� Shinron, 79.

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III. Meiji Kokumin Political Theory

Kozaki’s civic nationalism was of course in part an apologia of hisChristian faith. But it was also offered as a defense of the Japanesepeople in anticipation of the establishment of the Imperial Diet. Heopened his “new theory on religion and politics” by noting that theJapanese people had been promised their own national parliament in1890, only four years away, and yet “the vast majority of the nation[kokumin] has no idea of the nature of the government of their ownstate.”61 His effort to outline a theory of civic nationalism was offeredexplicitly as an exercise in reforming the people’s minds so that theywould be ready to exercise the responsibilities of citizens in ademocratic nation. Yet the window of opportunity for a civic nationwas already closing. In July 1884, less than a year earlier, thegovernment had announced the kazokurei, the legal order thatrecovered privileges for nobility and served as a bulwark againstdemocracy by enhancing the imperial house at the expense ofnationalization of people along lines of social equality. It remained ineffect until 1889 and, as Yamamuro has noted, technically, one couldclaim that this nobility system prevented the development of Japan asa true nation (kokumin) until the postwar constitution. Still, asYamamuro concedes, such a strict understanding of what a nation iswould exclude many European countries from “nation-state” status,and at any rate, the criterion for being a nation is not the existence ofequality or the absence of social exploitation, but the belief inequality of its members and the belief that one people does constitutea nation.62 Yamamuro’s point is an important one, for it alerts us tothe importance of both structure and consciousness in the process ofnation-building.

At no previous time in Japanese history was the issue of nationbuilding as important as during the years between 1885 and 1889. Inthe intense, public and private political debates of those years,structures and consciousnesses were shaped that would last fordecades and, in some ways, would inform much of subsequentJapanese political history. One key moment was in 1886 when theHome Ministry completed the process of establishing the “House”(ie) system as the basis on the modern Japanese national identitythrough its Koseki H�rei. Thereafter, the paternal house became thelegal foundation for the Meiji civil code, stipulating that head of

61 Kozaki, Seiky� Shinron, 4.62 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Kokumin kokka keisei-ki no genron to media,” 485.

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household and inheritance would be determined patrilineally. Thiswas a serious blow to kokumin nationalists, as it directly undercuttheir hopes for equal civic rights in the new constitutional nation. Thepoint was made even more clearly in November when, in InoueKowashi’s draft constitution submitted to It� Hirobumi, the termshimmin (subjects) was used in place of the term jimmin (people).Inoue had argued that the term shimmin was inappropriate and shouldbe replaced by the term kokumin, but he was overruled and in the endthe decision remained in favor of defining the Japanese people in theconstitution as monarchical “subjects,” not as a “nation.”63 This was apivotal event and year, and thereafter populist nationalists grewincreasingly radical, steadily moving away from Nakae’s belief thatcooperation with the state could lead to the establishment of a civicnation in Meiji Japan. The next year, Nakae himself was forced toleave the capital under the Peace Regulations, passed on 27 December1887 to deal with the increasing radicalization of the kokuminmovement.

The radicalization of the movement for populist nationalism hadmany sources, but Inoue Kaoru’s failure to secure revision of theunequal treaties in 1887 was one key factor. It signaled to many in themovement the folly of attempting to rely on an “alternative West”(i.e., France) as the grounds of political criticism of the government.Inoue’s failed attempt at treaty revision created the appearance of ahumiliating concession to the West and raised a new kind of populistnationalism that was generally opposed to the Westernizing policiesof the Meiji government.64 Opposition to the treaty revisions (whichwould have opened Japan to a wide array of rights for foreigners)came not only from conservative Japanese like Tani Kanj� but alsofrom the government’s French legal adviser. Boissonade who wasalso responsible for much of the civil code. As hopes for France as asymbol of civic rights and progressive nationalism began to disappear,a strong counter-force of anti-Westernism and ethnic nationalismbegan to rise to the fore of the populist movement. This movementwas fueled by resentment against the West for perpetuating theunequal treaties and against the Japanese government for failure tosecure national interests vis-à-vis the West. Inoue was forced to resign,and his successor in treaty negotiations, Okuma Shigenobu, was

63 Ineda Sh�ji, Meiji kemp� seiritsu shi vol. 2; also ibid, Meiji kenp� seiritsushi no

kenky�; cited in Yoon, Nihon kokumin ron, 96.64 Motoyama Yukihiko, Meiji shis� no keisei (Tokyo: Fukumura Shuppan, 1969)

205-6.

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attacked in a bombing incident two years later for what wereperceived as further unjust concessions to the West. He lost his leg asa result.

Not all effects of this new anti-government populist nationalismwere so dramatic, at least in the immediate term. But anti-governmentand anti-Western ideas were coalescing around a new intellectualproject that is best described as ethnic nationalism. This ethnicnationalism was both a rejection of the Western concept of the nationas a political subjectivity framed around the contingency of politicalcommunity (kokumin) and a rejection of the belief that this politicalcommunity rested in the institutional framework of the Meiji state. Itis important to grasp how both aspects played into this newradicalization of populist nationalism. While the government hadalready made it clear by 1887 that the new constitution would notcodify the Japanese people as a kokumin but instead as imperialsubjects (shimmin), the authorities were no less concerned about therising challenge to Japanese nationalism presented in the theory of theJapanese people as a minzoku. The decision in favor of defining thepeople as subjects marked the government’s retreat from the field ofpopulist nationalism, leaving the way open for minzoku nationalists tofill the void.

Ethnic nationalism was not only incompatible with a broadervision of modern Japan as a multi-ethnic empire, it also ran counter todominant strains in modern constitutional and progressive politicaltheory that by the early 1880s had begun to emphasize, thanks largelyto Ernest Renan’s influence, a consciousness of constructedcitizenship over primordial claims of blood and culture. In deciding infavor of monarchical sovereignty, the government found itself in adilemma: how to reconcile the Meiji imperial state with modernexpectations of national identity without making concessions either tonational sovereignty (kokumin shuken) or to ethnic nationalism? Thequestion came to the fore in June 1887 when the Privy Councilopened the Constitutional Conference and immediately debated theproblem of how to achieve national integration (kokumin t�g�) butwith the emperor as the center of the polity.65 The solution they found,and were to employ throughout the Meiji Constitutional period (1890-1945), was to informally employ the rhetoric of kokumin as amechanism for ideological integration of the people into the state,while maintaining the legal and constitutional reality of monarchical

65 Motoyama, 211.

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sovereignty. Regardless of whether some government officialsoccasionally intoned the concept of kokumin, it enjoyed no legal,constitutional recognition or officially recognized status.

From Political to Cultural Nationalism, 1890-1945

The government’s use of the rhetoric of nationalism, even whilerejecting the reality of nationalism and the rights it would bestow onthe people, did not set well with the many intellectuals and activistswho had pinned their hopes on a nationalist constitution. Theirdisappointment led to a sharpening of one of the major features ofmodern Japanese nationalism: deeply entrenched intellectualmovements that advocated a nationalism independent of, and at timescritical of, the state. The earliest instances of this movement were alsoamong the most influential. In 1887 Tokutomi Soh� established theMin’y�sha (“Friends of the People”), a society of intellectualscommitted to populist nationalism and critical of the government Asnoted above, Christians were prominent in this group, and Tokutomihimself had been baptized, although by this time he no longerpracticed the faith. The following year, Tokutomi published his ownalternative vision of Japan, his influential The Future Japan. AsMotoyama summarizes these events, they began a ten year period,beginning around 1888, when the earlier individualistic nationalismof the People’s Rights period was increasingly engulfed by a romantic,historicist nationalism that asserted the particularity of the Japaneseethnic nation (nihon minzoku).66 This new ethnic nationalism wasadvocated most prominently by such intellectuals as Miyake Setsureiand Shiga Shigetaka who established the journal Nihonjin (theJapanese) in 1888, and by Kuga Katsunan who founded thenewspaper Nihon (Japan) on 11 February 1889, the very day the MeijiConstitution was promulgated (Kigensetsu Day).

Up to the promulgation of the constitution, Shiga had vigorouslyadvocated a nationalism centered on the Japanese ethnic people(Yamato minzoku) against the Westernizing tendencies of Japan’spolitical authorities.67 But by 1890 the term had completely

66 Motoyama, 206-7.67 Cf. Shiga Shigetaka, “Nihonjin ga kaih� suru tokoro no shugi wo kokuhaku su,”

Nihonjin, no. 2 (April 1888): 1-6. It is noteworthy that while Shiga frequently refersto the “Yamato minzoku” in this article, he does not employ the term minzokushugi.Also, he provides the English term “nationality” as the equivalent for the Japanesekokusui.

KOKUMIN 195

disappeared from his texts. Why? Motoyama thinks that it had to dowith the Meiji state avoiding the “comprador behavior” of selling outJapan to the West and instead rapidly developing the Japaneseeconomy on largely autonomous conditions.68 The development of asuccessful capitalist economy seems rather forced as an explanationof a change in Shiga’s thinking that happened in little over a year;however, Motoyama is surely correct to suggest that the constitutionand the opening of the Diet did co-opt some of the support for Shiga’spopulist nationalism and re-direct it away from criticism of the state.

The 1889 Meiji Imperial Constitution was, then, not so much thegenesis of modern Japanese nationalism as a key moment in theintervention in, and deflection of, it. Although it rejected the conceptof the Japanese as a kokumin in favor of the definition of the peopleas imperial subjects (shimmin), it did stipulate that the conditions forbeing a Japanese subject would be determined by law. But theNationality Law, the Kokuseki H�, was not established until March1899. Until then, the definition of what and who was a Japanese wasto a large degree up for grabs, yielding a raging debate that contestedthe meaning of Japanese identity during the 1890s. This discourse onJapanese identity was not, as often suggested, the result of amomentary crystalization in Japanese nationalism, a simple return totradition, or a greater concentration of Japanese national identity inthe constitutional state, but quite the opposite. The debate overJapaneseness during the 1890s reflects both an awareness of themodern importance of determining national identity and a realizationthat the question was still to a great extent an open one. It could andwould be contested in cultural, if not legal, terms. These post-constitutional cultural nationalists were not always conservative, evenif they frequently invoked Japanese tradition in the criticism of theMeiji state. Their politics were not backward looking or merely adefense of existing political relations. Rather, we find in them the firstimportant moment in modern Japanese nationalism when culture, as acode for conceptualizing the collective identity of the Japanese as asingle people, was mobilized in agendas that spanned the politicalspectrum. There was probably no other time in modern Japanesehistory when both the importance of nationalism as a contemporarypolitical issue and the open-ended nature of its political significancewere so great.

This shift from political nationalism to cultural nationalism can beattributed to several causes: the denial of national sovereignty and the

68 Motoyama, 222.

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rights of citizenship in the Meiji Constitution; the sense thatWesternization had overridden concern for cultural continuity in thedrafting of the Constitution and the practices and rituals of the Meijistate; and even the conservative attack on Christians led by InoueTetsujir� in 1891 (see Chapter Three). Many of these populistnationalists were Christians and/or traced their origins to the People’sRights Movement. As Christians, many would grow disillusionedwith their status as subjects of the Japanese monarch, especially whenconservatives like Inoue began to offer revisionist interpretations ofthe monarch, no longer as merely a constitutional sovereign, but as amoral principle, even a Shinto god. Some of these populistnationalists resisted this revisionism and continued to outline a senseof the Japanese people as a cultural community that remained distinctfrom the modern Meiji state. One key moment in this effort was theProtestant Kashiwagi Gien’s debate with Kat� Hiroyuki over theeffort to substitute statism (kokkashugi) for nationalism.69

Kuga Katsunan was one of the most articulate spokesmen for thisnew culturally-informed kokumin nationalism. The cultural emphasisof his nationalism is clear from an article he published in June 1888 inthe Tokyo Denp� called “The Crossroads in Japan’s Progress inCivilization.” According to Nishikawa Nagao, this article marked thefirst appearance of the word “culture” (bunka) in Japanese. Equallysignificant is that Kuga used the term as an equivalent of theGermanic concept of Kultur, a sense of culture as a collective identitythat captures the nationality of a people who may not enjoy adistinctive, independent political citizenship. Although he used theterm kokumin, his cultural emphasis marks a new shift toward anethnic conception of the nation:

If one desires to integrate or consolidate each of these nations, then onemust integrate and consolidate cultures. But what makes culture arethose elements in language, mores, blood lineage and customs that trulyconstitute the particular character of a nation (kokumin), along withother things like institutions and laws that are appropriate to the bodyof the nation (kokumin no shintai), and the difficulty in integrating andconsolidating these elements is no different than trying to turn a childimmediately into an old person.70

69 Katano Masao, 124.70 Kuga Katsunan, “Nihon bunmei shimp� no kiro,” Tokyo Denp�, (June 1888);

cited in Nishikawa Nagao, Kokumin kokkaron no shatei; 84.

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Kuga grasped culture as national culture and understood nationalismas divided between the nationalism of powerful countries and that ofweak countries, to be sure, but more innovative was his identificationof Japan with the nationalism of weak countries.

His approach to Japanese nationalism as one of the “weaknationalisms” was shaped both by his understanding of both domesticand international events. If international events (eg. Japan’s failures intreaty revision, and later the Triple Intervention) seemed to provideevidence for this distinction between the nationalism of powerfulcountries and that of weak or subordinate countries, domestic events(eg., suppression of the People’s Rights Movement, Matsukata’sdeflationary policies, and the rejection of popular nationalism in theMeiji constitution) led Kuga, in Nishikawa’s words, to adopt “the sideof those people who had been forced out of the flow of modernity.”Nishikawa concludes that even while Kuga did not explicitlyarticulate an ethnic nationalism (minzokushugi) as such, “hisviewpoint adumbrated the ethnic nationalist cultural theories of thepostwar war third world.”71 It is a tempting conclusion, made all themore so by a recognition that a nationalism of the weak, even anethnic nationalism, does not preclude adopting an aggressive positionon international affairs. In fact, Liah Greenfeld and Daniel Chirothave pointed out that it is precisely this kind of collectivistic-ethnicnationalism that is “more likely to engage in aggressive warfare thanindividualistic nationalism.”72 And indeed, Kuga connected hisnationalism with the emperor, supported the Sino-Japanese war andapproved of Japanese colonial domination.

Other commentators have been even more harshly critical ofKuga’s nationalism. The anti-Christian Yoshimoto Takaaki haswritten that “the progressive ‘nationalism’ of such intellectuals as[Kuga] Katsunan clearly already had the form of social fascism.”73

How could progressive nationalism become a foundation for socialfascism? For Yoshimoto, it was because Kuga’s nationalism “wasbuilt around the form of a schismatic unity (bunri-teki t�itsu) ofhuman rights philosophy and State’s rights philosophy (jinken shis�,kokken shis�).”74 Whatever Yoshimoto precisely meant by such aclaim, the underlying reason for his hostility to Kuga is that, by the

71 Nishikawa, 84-5.72 Liah Greenfeld and Daniel Chirot, “Nationalism and Agression,” Theory and

Society, vol. 23, no. 1 (February 1994): 79-130, at 86.73 Yoshimoto Taka’aki, “Kaisetsu: nihon no nashonarizumu,” 7-54 in Yoshimoto,

ed., Nashonarizumu, 36.74 Yoshimoto, 36.

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1960s, he had emerged as one of postwar Japan’s most influentialnationalists. Yoshimoto advocated a vague sort of nationalism thatwas really a kind of anarchic populism that went even further thanKuga’s nationalism did in disassociating itself from the state.Yoshimoto’s critique of Kuga was really the expression of his ownOedipus complex: he was seeking to slay his intellectual father, thereceived modes of populist nationalism that Yoshimoto felt were tooclosely linked to the West. Matsuda K�ichir�’s more recentassessment of Kuga’s nationalism is more persuasive. Matsuda haspresented a theoretically informed, close reading of Kuga’s key texts,concluding that Kuga’s importance was in trying to establish anautonomous field of political discourse that could provide a culturalfoundation for democracy in modern Japan. And a key concern ofKuga’s within political discourse was in conceptualizing what“nationality” (kokuminshugi) meant in Meiji society. For Kuga,kokuminshugi was less a discourse on political nationalism than adiscursive effort to clarify the meaning of who “the people” were, aquestion that was more a problem of culture than of constitutional orlegal definitions.75

Kuga’s rise in influence in nationalist discourse came at a timewhen a rift was developing between kokumin nationalism and theChristianity that had played such an important role in advocating thiskind of civic nationalism. Influential kokumin nationalists left thefaith and shifted their nationalism towards cultural and ethnicconcerns, even as the government “as a matter of policy encouragedmembers of the upper classes to become [Catholic] Christians….AsCatholicism spread and the government learned that the Pope was thehead of a secular state, the Japanese realized that Modern Catholicismdid not oppose monolithic [sic; “monarchical”?] government.”76 Thekey development was the spread of Liberal or “Free” Theologybetween 1887-9 among Protestants. In 1889 Kozaki tried to defendorthodox Christian teaching against this new theology (that denied thenecessity of believing Christ was the Son of God). But even the anti-Christian Fukuzawa Yukichi found such a diluted form of Christianity

75 Matsuda K�ichir�, “’Seironsha’ Kuga Katsunan no seiritsu,” Tokyo toritsu

daigaku h�gakkai zasshi, vol. 28, no.1 (July 1987): 527-84; “Kinji seironk� ichi:Kuga Katsunan ni okeru ‘seiron’ no h�h�,” Tokyo toritsu daigaku h�gakkai zasshi,vol. 33, no. 1 (July 1992): 111-171; “Kinji seironk� ni kan: Kuga Katsunan ni okeru‘seiron’ no h�h�,” Tokyo toritsu daigaku h�gakkai zasshi, vol. 33, no. 2 (December1992): 53-95.

76 Kishimito, ed., Japanese Religion in the Meiji Period, 212.

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acceptable, and he praised it in a published newspaper article. LiberalTheology’s influence was not long lasting on Japanese Christianity,but its political and social impact was considerable. Its influence canbe seen in the Society for the Study of Socialism, founded in 1898almost entirely by Christians who were drawn to this LiberalTheology (the lone exception was K�toku Sh�sui who was not aChristian).77 Under the influence of Liberal Theology, theseProtestants become more interested in carrying out social work thanin defending the Christian faith. In 1900, this Society was re-organized as Society for Socialism, and again K�toku was joined byfive liberal Christians: Katayama Sen, Abe Is�, Kinoshita Naoe,Nishikawa K�jir�, and Kawakami Kiyoshi. Although some Christianscontinued to assert the compatibility of their faith with patriotism,many Protestants, especially those involved in the socialist movement,had began to withdraw their support for the imperial governmentaround the time of the Russo-Japanese War.78 After the war, Abe,Kinoshita and Ishikawa Sanshir� withdrew from the socialistmovement in protest of its materialism and increasing violentmethods and advocated Christian humanism. But the impact onnationalist discourse was already felt and, as a result, thekokuminshugi movement that Christians had helped inspire in the latenineteenth century never completely recovered from thesedevelopments until the postwar period. Instead, social and nationalissues were increasingly blended with ethnic identity, a topicdeveloped in more detail in Chapters Four and Six. In any event, bythe early twentieth century, nationalists were seeking a newconceptualization of the nation to replace the Christian emphasis onpersonalism and the dignity of the individual that had been invested inkokuminshugi. Some turned to minzoku, others to shakai, and othersyet simply abandoned the nation for an embrace of the state or themonarch.

To trace the development of kokumin nationalism in the early tomid twentieth century is difficult, as a number of historical, political,social and discursive events intervened, rendering this nationalismmore ambiguous that it previously had been. The key developmentwas the incorporation of Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1910 asintegral parts of the Japanese policy. However, with this territorial

77 The founding members of the Socialism Research Society who were Christians

of this bent were Katayama Sen, Abe Is�, Murai Tomonari, Kishimoto Nobuta,Kakawami Kiyoshi and Toyosaki Zennosuke.

78 �hata and Ikado, 269-76.

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acquisition came the question of whether the people that resided inthose territories could be incorporated into the nation (kokumin), andif so, under what conditions. There were certainly Japaneseintellectuals and ordinary people who favored an expansive notion ofthe nation that would include other ethnic peoples. Yet, this processof expansion appeared to many Japanese as driven by the politicalelites, and since the Hibiya Riots of 1905, a strong sense of betrayalof the nation by its own state pervaded any discussion of integrationof peoples acquired through imperialist expansion. As a result, theearlier kokuminshugi discourse often incorporated ethnic nationalistelements, expressing itself in continued criticism of (and at timesopposition to) the imperial state, but also occasionally collapsing anymeaningful distinction between a nationalism grounded in Japaneseethnic identity and a nationalism framed in legal and civic terms. It isimportant to emphasize that this was no mere conceptual or linguistgame. The issue was not the instability of terminology or concepts:rather, an ethnically determined kokuminshugi was merely anotherinstance in world history of what ethnic nationalism has alwayssought everywhere–a collapse of any meaningful distinction betweencivic membership in the country and ethnic identity. And ethnicnationalism in early twentieth century Japan was clearly in oppositionto the dominant tendencies of the imperial Japanese state.

The most succinct and reliable analysis of nationalism in Japanprior to and during World War II is Thomas R. H. Havens’s 1973article on “Frontiers of Japanese Social History During World WarII.”79 Havens points out that modern Japanese nationalism wasstructured around the tensions between kokuminshugi and kokkashugi,and he recognizes the former as a true nationalism that is centered onthe people, whereas the latter is often called “statism” because it ismore concerned with the authority of the state than with the nationitself:

At first most. . .kokuminshugisha accepted state authority but dismissedit as peripheral to their central concern, which dealt with the essence of

79 Thomas R.H. Havens, “Frontiers of Japanese Social History During World War

II,” Shakai kagaku t�ky� vol. 18, no. 3 (March 1973): 582-538 (the pages are inreverse of the usual order, with higher numbers first). Although this is one of themost accurate analyses of prewar Japanese nationalism, it has not had a significantimpact on the scholarship in the field (especially in comparison with Havens’s other,well-known works), in part because it was an English article published in a Japanesescholarly journal, and in part because the title gave little indication of its substantialfocus on nationalism.

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the Japanese as a people. Later, in the 1910s and 1920s, some of thembegan to use their nationality sentiments to attack the state and itskokkashugi dogmas glorifying governmental power. The precis whichfollows outlines the dichotomy between state and nation in prewarJapanese nationalist writing.80

Havens locates a key shift in nationalism around World War I. Thesewere the years of kokumin nationalism, such as that of Kita Ikki, thatunderwrote strong and sometimes violent attacks on the existing state(Havens concedes that Kita was a statist, if only in the potentialfuture: his immediate politics attacked the existing Japanese state inthe name of kokumin nationalism). Havens concludes that “by the eveof World War II Japanese nationalist thought was cleft intokokkashugi and kokuminshugi, an obvious and nearly irreparableerosion of the early Meiji consensus on national loyalties.”81 Statistsemphasized the monarchy and a revisionist and rather obscureinterpretation of the kokutai (“national essence”); nationalists weresplit among those who accepted the constitutional structure ofgovernment and those who did not. Yet, for these nationalists, “theconcept of kokutai was frequently irrelevant–to many writers aharmless vestige, worthy of obeisance but not veneration.”82

This sharp dichotomy between nationalism and the state was ofconcern to both intellectuals and to the government. But between1937 and 1945, the overriding concern of the state and its apologistswas to close the gap between nationalism and the state, and to renewthe people’s allegiance to the state at a critical moment of war.

80 Havens, 580-79. Havens glosses kokuminshugi as both “ethnic” and “cultural”

nationalism, a determination that reflects both the increasing influence of ethnicnationalism in prewar Japan and the personal influences on some of his sources, mostnotably Ishida Takeshi. Ishida, born in 1923, came of age at the height of ethnicnationalism and his own writings on Japanese nationalism assert the position that allJapanese nationalism is essentially ethnic nationalism and that Japan is a unique casewhere the general distinctions between nation, state and ethnicity do not apply. SeeIshida Takeshi, Nihon no seiji to kotoba-ge: ‘heiwa’ to ‘kokka’ (Tokyo: TokyoDaigaku Shuppankai, 1989): 158-9. To be fair, Havens accepts Ishida’s point thatminzoku and kokumin are not a meaningful distinction, but he maintains thedistinction between nation (kokumin) and state (kokka).

81 Havens, 578.82 Havens, 577. Havens’s point is a long-overdue one, as too many studies of

Japanese nationalism have misconstrued this obscure concept of kokutai as thedetermining factor in Japanese nationalism. All such arguments do is mis-interpretthe problem of nationalism as one of statism. Such studies on kokutai may tell usmore about state indoctrination, but at the expense of learning much at all aboutJapanese nationalism.

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Consequently, the April 1938 State Mobilization Law expressed thisdesire by implying that the country’s very future rested on areconciliation of these divergent discourses on the nation and thestate:

An essential requisite for achieving the goal of victory is for thecountry to do its utmost to secure the livelihoods of the people[kokumin] and to harmonize those aspects of the well being of the state[kokka] which are necessary for prosecuting the war.83

This Law was preceded by a broader effort to utilize kokumin rhetoricto legitimate the state’s cultural efforts to integrate the people into itsagenda. On 14 August 1937, the Konoe cabinet announced a NationalSpiritual Mobilization (kokumin seishin s�d�in) movement. Again,Havens’s assessment is superb: “Since it would hardly do to admit thestatist orientation of this government sponsored program, themovement was called a [national] people’s (kokumin) campaign, andelaborate steps were taken to invite their participation.84 A wide rangeof intellectuals participated in the effort to integrate nationalism andthe state, including Hayashi Fusao, Kamei Katsuichir� and KyotoSchool philosophers like Tanabe Hajime, K�saka Masataka andNishitani Keiji. In actuality, this intervention was less a matter of“integrating” nation and state than it was a state-driven effort toabsorb populist nationalism into the state under the sign of the“nation-state” (kokumin-kokka). Nishitani expressed the rationale ofthis project most clearly when he explained that the state (kokka)required the nation (kokumin) to adopt a subservient yet intrinsicallylinked relationship to it “because of the need to strengthen, as muchas possible, [the state’s] internal unity as a nation-state.”85 The effortwas never completely successful, but it did achieve a momentarystabilization in the relationship of nation and state, particularly giventhe exigencies of war.

83 Kokka S�d�in H�, reprinted in Suekawa Hiroshi, ed., S�d�inh� taisei (Tokyo:

Y�hikaku, 1940); quoted in Ishida Takeshi, Hakyoku to heiwa, Nihon kindaishi taikei,VIII (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1968), 81-82; cited by Havens, 575.

84 Havens, 574-3. For a similar assessment, but one which takes into accountethnic nationalism as a distinctive discourse, see my “Nationalism as Dialectics:Ethnicity, Moralism, and the State in Early Twentieth Century Japan,” chapter inJames Heisig and John C. Maraldo, eds., Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, &the Question of Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994): 174-96.

85 Nishitani Keiji, “ ‘Kindai no ch�koku’ shiron,” in Takeuchi Yoshimi andKawakami Tetsutar�, eds., Kindai no ch�koku (Tokyo: Fuzanb�, 1979), 27.

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The Postwar Return of the Kokumin, 1945 to the Present

Since the imperial state had subordinated nationalism to its priority onpublic order under the impetus of “wartime exigencies”, defeat in thewar was thus most immediately a defeat of this state and notnecessarily a repudiation of nationalism. Indeed, after the war, thenation now could be (and in fact was) represented as a victim of thestate and its “elite-driven” war and thus given an even greater patinaof legitimacy through the ubiquitous anti-war sentiment ofvictimhood. This point has often eluded those historians and politicaltheorists for whom nationalism is simply reduced to an ideology ofthe state. But for others who have paid closer attention to the tensionsbetween state and nation, between statism and nationalism as theyhave played out both in theory and in modern Japanese historicalpractice, the ironic re-legitimation of nationalism through the defeatof the state is one of the most significant, if ironic, political lessons ofthe postwar period.

Once again, Havens’s analysis of the postwar resurgence ofnationalism in the absence of a state is a good place to begin tounravel these ironies:

State and nation in modern Japan have existed in dynamic andinterdependent balance, both as magnets of nationalist ideology and asfocuses of day to day socio-political interaction. The two have normallyinteracted cooperatively, but when they fell to loggerheads in WorldWar II it was the nation which proved the more durable. In a literalsense, American bombs destroyed the Japanese state but not the nation.Metaphorically the nation swallowed up the state’s ambitions by settinglimits on how successfully its dreams could be realized.86

From a different perspective, I have come to a similar conclusion that“the disestablishment of the imperial state after the war left manyJapanese with a sense that the state was a thoroughly corrupt agent forsocial change, but it did little to temper a broader, popular sense thatnational cultural identity…remained untrammeled by the sins of themilitarized, Westernized state.”87 There were many ways in whichJapanese turned to nationalist discourse in the postwar period, and theethnic revival is one that we survey below in Chapter Six. But aboveand apart from the dispute that broke out among nationalists overwhether ethnic or cultural nationalism should prevail was their sharedsense that the end of the imperial state marked a new lease on life for

86 Havens, 544. Emphasis in original.87 Kevin M. Doak, “Building National Identity through Ethnicity: Ethnology in

Wartime Japan and After,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, 27:1 (1-39): 3.

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nationalism, a discourse that foregrounded the Japanese peoplethemselves as agents of their common fate. The question was whetherthis resurgent nationalism would be a civic type that would integratethe people into a new state as kokumin, or whether it would continuethe wartime discourse on the Japanese as an ethnic nation (minzoku),with an ambivalent relationship to the state.

The most important element was the simple fact that fromSeptember 1945 to April 1952 there was no Japanese state. TheJapanese people lived under an occupying armed force, essentiallyrun by General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of theAllied Powers (SCAP) and his subordinates in the Allied PowersGeneral Headquarters (GHQ). Yet, even in the absence of a state, aJapanese nation (kokumin) acquired legal existence on 3 May 1947when the postwar Constitution of Japan went into effect while Japanwas still under foreign, military occupation. The much debated issueof how much contribution Japanese legal scholars had in drafting theconstitution and how much of it was “forced” on the Japanese peopleis a side-issue: there was some input by Japanese legal scholars, andeven broader acceptance by the general populace of the newconstitution. But most importantly, it remains in effect today, as doesits legally codified notion of what the Japanese nation is–i.e, a“kokumin.”

The postwar constitution, written and implemented in the absenceof a sovereign Japanese state, was issued in the name of the nation(kokumin), which it defined in simple and concise terms:

Chapter III Article 10. The conditions necessary for being a member ofthe Japanese nation (Nihon kokumin) shall be determined by law.88

This constitutional provision marked the first time in Japanese historythat the nation was made legally sovereign. But the language, even instipulating a legal, political foundation for the nation, left open apossible interpretation that the law could thus codify the Japanese as anation on the basis of blood or ethnic ties. That possibility wasaddressed in part by Article 14, which stipulated that “all members ofthe nation (kokumin) are equal under the law, and there shall be nodiscrimination in political, economic or social relations because ofrace, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”89 Thus, the newlyestablished Japanese nation was constituted as a constitutional nation,

88 “Nihonkoku kenp�,” reprinted in Nihonkoku kenp�, 1-58, at 16.89 “Nihonkoku kenp�,” 18.

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a people whose common identity and fate was determined by laws,not by race or creed. The irony remained, however, that this nationexisted in a context that did not include a Japanese state and in which,only by confusing race with ethnicity, could ethnic nationalism beexcluded as a legal option. This situation would present challenges forthe full realization of a civic sense of nationhood, as the completionof civic nationhood requires the engagement of citizens with theirown independent state and with the seductions of ethnic pride in apost-imperial context.

Even though constitutionally enshrined, political nationalism(kokuminshugi) faced serious challenges in early postwar Japan. Itcould easily be seen as a continuation of the multi-ethnic polity ofimperial Japan, and thus tarred with all the criticism of the wartimestate, especially its denial of national sovereignty (to the Japanesepeople, as well as other peoples conceived in ethnic terms). For thisvery reason, mono-ethnic nationalism was quite strong in the earlypostwar period, as we will see below in Chapter Six. Those whosought to defend civic nationalism not only had to contend withvestiges of statism, but also with those on both extremes of thepolitical spectrum who embraced ethnic nationalism as their onlyspoils from a disastrous war. One of the key objections ethnicnationalists raised to kokuminshugi was that the very concept of anation as a kokumin was a Western one, indeed an Americanaberration.

This argument gained strength from the joint publication of twoessays by Watsuji Tetsur� in the last days of the war that juxtaposed“Japan’s way of imperial subjecthood” with “America’s civicnationality” (Amerika no kokuminsei). Watsuji was really seeking todiscredit the concept of a “civic nationality” by arguing that, beneathits veneer of civic values, America was really just an “Anglo-Saxon”racial nation. Yet, what may have remained in most people’s mindswas merely this unfavorable association of kokumin with Americaprecisely at a time when Japan was at war with that country. Theassociation of the two was only strengthened by the (largely)American occupation issuing a constitution that enshrined thekokumin as the only legally recognized concept of a sovereign nationin Japan.

While many of those opposed to America’s influence in postwarJapan (both die-hard rightists and Marxists) advocated the alternativeof ethnic nationalism, not everyone who was re-thinking thepossibilities of populist nationalism was so open in his ethnicproclivities. Watsuji offered an influential intervention in the growing

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divide between official civic nationalism and dissident ethnicnationalism. In his 1952 essay “The Issue of National Morality”(Kokumin d�toku no mondai; an earlier version was published in 1932as Kokumin d�tokuron), Watsuji presented a strong case for moralconsciousness as a key element in uniting the individual with thenation.

In doing so, he made two major contributions to the nationalistdebate. First, he emphasized the “polysemy” of the word kokumin:not that it referred both to ethnic and civic types of nations; rather,that it could refer both to “the nation” as a collective and to anindividual member of that nation.90 On the face of it, this argumentsimply reinforced the mutually constitutive nature of the relationshipbetween an individual and the nation–leaving unclear whether thisrelationship was grounded in common ties of ethnicity or in a moralconsciousness that can and needs to be taught. Watsuji’s secondcontribution was to wrench kokumin discourse away from its Meiji-period foundations in Christianity. By failing to make a consistentdistinction in his writing between kokumin and minzoku, and byrejecting moral systems that are universal in scope, he essentiallyundermined Japan’s traditional civic nationalism that had grown outof the Meiji Christian emphasis on the dignity of the individualperson, substituting instead a Buddhist concept of nothingness as theethical core of the national whole.91 Watsuji’s understanding ofethnicity (minzoku) stemmed from the 1920s liberal tradition ofseeing ethnicity as a cultural, rather than a racial, community. But thiscultural community was not seen as composed of individual personswho retain their personhood even after integrated into the nation.Thus, Karube Tadashi writes that for Watsuji, “to be consciously amember of the ethnic nation (minzoku) is the realization of ‘truecharacter’ (shin no jinkaku).”92 In short, Watsuji provided thetheoretical language for an implicit, ethnic dimension to a discoursethat was ostensibly proffered under the rhetorical cover of kokuminnationalism.

Watsuji’s effort to “ethnicize” civic nationalism in the name of aculturally specific ethical sensibility of the Japanese people did not gounchallenged. Maruyama Masao emerged from the war aghast at howethnic nationalism had underwritten what he called the “fascist”

90 Unuma Hiroko, “Kokumin d�tokuron o meguru rons�,” 356-379 in Imai Jun

and Ozawa Tomio, eds., Nihon shis� rons�shi, 377-8.91 Karube Tadashi, Hikari no ry�koku (Tokyo: S�bunsha, 1995),185-97.92 Karube, Hikari no ry�koku, 189. For Watsuji’s rejection of individual person

(jinkaku) in favor of intersubjective human community (ningen), see 117-130.

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values of the wartime. He identified the core of this anti-liberalideology in a myth of ethnic tribalism that sought to substitute for therights of the kokumin an irrational belief in the collectivist claims ofethnic (minzoku) identity.93 The very future of democracy, Maruyamabelieved, rested on returning to Fukuzawa Yukichi’s early Meijieffort to establish kokumin consciousness among the Japanese people(i.e., Meiji civic nationalism without the explicitly Christian element).Curtis Anderson Gayle has accurately described Maruyama’s projectas one of raising “civic national consciousness”; Maruyama himselfgenerally referred to it merely as a “healthy nationalism” (kenzen nakokuminshugi). In either case, it was offered in sharp contrast to the“unhealthy” nationalism premised on ethnicity (minzoku). Gayle’sanalysis of Maruyama’s nationalism is helpful in understanding whatwas at stake:

Maruyama constructed a reflexive notion of individual identity basedupon the constant mediation and negotiation of individual interests inthe context of citizenship and a sense of nation…. To this extent,Maruyama appears closer to…[the] notion that citizenship should bebound up with ‘the struggle to make something public’ as a ‘strugglefor justice.’

This would seem to place Maruyama’s kokuminshugi not far from…[what has been] propounded as “liberal nationalism.”…[These] liberalforms of nationalism assume the nation to be a cultural construct that“defines membership in terms of participation in a common culture”that is flexible and able to accept people of various ethnicities.94

In other words, Maruyama was the most powerful advocate in theearly postwar period for the individualist nationalism that Meijiintellectuals like Fukuzawa, Kozaki, Nakae and others had hopedwould secure the future of a democratic modern Japan.

As always, historical context matters, and Maruyama’snationalism was also a critical reflection on the excesses of statismthat he had experienced during World War II. Maruyama faced adifficult problem: the need to steer carefully between the Charybdisof the statism (kokkashugi) that during the war had denounced

93 Maruyama Masao, Nihon no shis�, 106.94 Curtis Anderson Gayle, “Progressive Representations of the Nation: Early Post-

war Japan and Beyond,” 7. The internal quotes are to Seyla Benhabib, “Models of thePublic Sphere: Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Jurgen Habermas,” in CraigCalhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992);Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993);and Kai Nielsen, “Cultural Nationalism: Neither Ethnic nor Civic,” ThePhilosophical Forum, vol. XXVIII, nos. 1-2, (Fall/Winter, 1996): 42-52,respectively.

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individualism as a decadent Western ideology and the Scylla of anti-liberal collectivism that now trumped individualism with class orethnic (minzoku) consciousness (often both–see the discussion onTakashima Zen’ya below in Chapter Six). We have seen thatMaruyama associated collectivist identity with the extreme anti-liberalism of the wartime “fascism.” But it is also important tounderstand his wariness toward the state. As Rikki Kersten hassuggested, “Maruyama’s positive evaluation of Fukuzawa’s ideas onnational and popular sovereignty rested on one key element:Fukuzawa’s insistence on distance between the individual and thestate.”95 Through his reading of Fukuzawa, Maruyama presented ahighly nuanced, subtle theory that offered “not opposition to the statebut a sense of social autonomy from the state.”96

This distinction–along with much of Maruyama’s ownluster–frequently was lost in the aftermath of the US-Japan SecurityTreaty Crisis of 1960 and the radicalization of politics that followed.Even Maruyama at times appeared to agree with his erstwhileopponents on the left that the postwar state appeared hopelessly“fascist,” in the grips of the “dictatorship of the majority.”97 Hispolitically-embedded civic nationalism was tarnished, and themomentum had shifted to those on both extremes of the politicalspectrum who intoned a dis-enfranchised nationalism of the “people,”especially in the form of an ethnic nationalism that would positionJapan against the “West” (meaning the United States) and its lackeysin the Liberal Democratic Party’s “fascist” state. During the 1960sand 1970s, Maruyama was increasingly elevated to iconic statusamong elite academics, even as populist nationalism turned to “thetheme of minzokushugi as a viable ethnic critique of the state andpost-war democracy.”98

At the same time, beginning in the 1960s, Prime Minister IkedaHayato’s “income doubling plan” and high growth economic policiessought to draw the support of the majority of the Japanese peopleback to the postwar government, if not directly to an embrace of thestate per se. By the 1970s, newly found affluence was widening thegap between collectivist nationalism and political activism, oftendisconnecting minzokushugi of its earlier nationalist moorings andrendering it merely as a free-floating discourse on Japanese cultural

95 Rikki Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan, 71.96 Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan, 66.97 Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan, 212.98 Gayle, “Progressive Representations of the Nation,” 14.

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identity (Nihonjinron). At times, it seemed as though there were aninverse relationship between cultural theory and the politics of thestate (the more one delved into cultural theory, the less relevantpolitical parties and the like seemed; the more one studied nationalpolitics, the less culture was of interest). Culture (ethnic nationalism)was certainly more interesting. Most of what leading intellectuals inthe media and academia wrote about was given over to broad, culturalthemes (even stereotypes) rather than close, dispassionate politicalanalysis of party mechanics, voting behavior and political platforms.

A key effort to reconcile culture and politics, nation and state,came in 1980 when Prime Minister �hira Masayoshi’s policyresearch group published its report on “Economic Management in anAge of Culture.” At first glance, the report seems quite unremarkable(in spite of its use of such phrases as “an era that will overcomemodernity”–which for some echoed the 1942 Symposium onOvercoming Modernity). It was mainly a dry outline of a series ofpolicies designed to enhance the welfare of the Japanese people, byshifting the government’s economic priorities from high-growthindustrial economics to de-centralized, consumer-oriented and socialwelfare programs. But the point of the report, and its recommendedpolicies, was summed up in a telling phrase:

In order to secure the support and understanding of the nation[kokumin] with regard to the seriousness and significance of policydetermination, it will be necessary to strive as much as possible toreduce the ‘sense of disconnect’ and the ‘conditions of estrangement’between the national people (kokumin taish�) and the complexeconomic system.99

In short, while scrupulously avoiding any reference to the concept ofminzoku,100 the report recognized that a significant gap had arisenbetween the people and the government. In rhetoric and policysubstance, the report tried to close that gap by outlining economic andcultural policies that would demonstrate how the government wouldenhance the welfare of the people.

99 “Bunka no jidai no keizai un’ei,” �hira s�ri no seisaku kenky� h�kokusho 7

(Tokyo: �kurash� Insatsu Kyoku, 1980): 166.100 The lack of reference in the �hira group report to the Japanese as a minzoku is

unexpected and thus significant. In the first place, it is unexpected, given that �hirahimself had repeatedly referred to the Japanese as a minzoku in the 1970s. Cf.Kenneth Pyle, The Japanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Age, 69. Also,Umesao Tadao, director of the National Ethnology Museum, was chair of one of thenine groups involved in composing the report and would have been expected topromote an ethnic concept of the Japanese people.

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While the report highlighted the concept of culture in its title, thebody of the report focused on a new civic relationship between thepeople and the government, and it scrupulously avoided the languageof ethnicity or cultural collectivism In this sense, its intellectualantecedents may be found in the 1950s debates over whether, as apluralistic state, Japan should be a welfare or a cultural state.101 Inopting for a welfare state, even one that included cultural activitiesunder the concept of “welfare,” the �hira report adopted a pluralistictheory of the state, one that ironically presumed and encourageddistance between the state and society102 (and “society,” as we saw inChapter Four, was often a surrogate for “the nation”). In trying toreconcile nation and state, yet within a pluralistic, democraticframework, the �hira report opted for a loose relationship betweensocial and cultural identity and the state. The weakness of thisproposal stemmed from the fact that much of cultural and socialdiscourse was, at the same time, invested in the minzoku attitudes ofNihonjinron, and simply did not respond to a nationalism premised ona civic identity (kokumin) that left out this deeper sense of culturalidentity.

The true beginnings of a postwar kokumin nationalism that soughtto reconcile nation, culture and the state are largely found during the1980s. Often given a variety of descriptive labels, (eg. “liberal,”“healthy,” “civic,” “political), this kokuminshugi movement wasspurred by Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro’s effort to revise the�hira project by injecting the long-dormant political nationalism ofthe Democratic wing of the Liberal-Democratic Party into the Liberalwings’s economism. Kokuminshugi advocates sought, not aSonderweg for the Japanese people (even if, especially if, Japan’sputatively unique system was described as economism), but a greateracceptance of Japan as “a normal nation,” both by the internationalcommunity and by the Japanese people themselves.

Nakasone’s revision of the �hira group’s proposal focused on itsfundamental weakness–its unintended encouragement of a greater gapbetween the nation and the state by not addressing the broad, socialsense of Japanese identity that in the interim had all too frequentlybecome invested in the concept of being a particular minzokuNakasone, however, went too far in the other direction, making aseries of unfortunate remarks about Japan’s ethnic homogeneity in his

101 Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no seiji to kotoba-ge, 225-9.102 Ishida, 224-6.

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misguided effort to signal that nation and state could coalesce inpostwar Japan. The implication was as clear as it was unacceptable toliberals and civic nationalists: for Nakasone, reconciliation of thishistorical tension between nation and state in Japan could only comeabout through a reaffirmation of Japan as an ethnic nation-state(minzoku-kokka). These remarks were unfortunate because, asKenneth Pyle has demonstrated, Nakasone’s ultimate objective was tostrengthen a liberal nationalism that would extol Japan’s particularstrengths while showing a greater appreciation for other cultures,even while moving towards closer collaboration with globalinstitutions and networks.103 Nakasone wanted a more “internationalstate,” but his effort to bring the Japanese people on board was miredin a prior appeal of ethnic identity, and this ethnic nationalismundercut his effectiveness among many who truly sought a moreliberal nationalism in postwar Japan.

With the wide-scale discrediting of Nakasone’s nationalism, acritique that drew (ironically) on a long history of minzokunationalism that distrusted the elite state (see Chapter Six below),intellectuals again took the lead in promoting nationalism. But whatwas different this time was that some intellectual nationalists tried toreconcile nation and state from their positions outside the state. Themost significant of these intellectual nationalists are those whoassociated themselves with the “Liberal School of History” whichProfessor Fujioka Nobukatsu founded in July 1995. The Schoolclaimed a membership of 500, and it was most active in promotingmiddle school textbooks that would present a more patriotic view ofJapanese history. They were particularly incensed by the demands ofleftist teachers that middle school students focus on the ImperialArmy’s role in forcing women into prostitution at the front duringWorld War II (the “comfort women” or j�gun ianfu, issue). WhileFujioka’s critics claimed he was simply trying to use history to“glorify war,” Fujioka himself declared that the Liberal School was“based on the hypothesis that Japan could have avoided the war if ithad adopted other policies, [and] we wish to specifically investigatethese possibilities and realities.”104 While their critics argued theywere denying historical facts, Fujioka and his group countered thatthe real question was which facts were appropriate for a history

103 Pyle, The Japanese Question, 94-101.104 Fujioka Nobukatsu, “Ware o gunkokushugisha to yobonakare,” Bungei Shunj�

(February 1997): 292-302, at 300-1; cited in Rikki Kersten, “Neo-nationalism and the‘Liberal School of History’, 195.

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curriculum that was part of a compulsory education system foradolescents.

Ultimately the debate (which still smolders) revealed sharpdisagreements over whether nationalism could or should beassociated with the state (Fujioka’s critics were often covertnationalists themselves, but their nationalism stemmed from anti-state,even ethnic nationalism), and whether ethnic nationalism or civicnationalism should be the normative type for postwar Japan. For someopponents of the School, a belief that the wartime state hadcommitted unpardonable sins against the Japanese people (in additionto those against other people in Asia) militated against any effort toaugment loyalty to the postwar state. They were joined by otherswhose communist sympathies and ethnic nationalism simply rejectedthe capitalist state as inherently imperialist, oppressive, andillegitimate. The Liberal School, for its part, by emphasizinghistorical consciousness as the mode through which national identityand civic-mindedness is fostered, and in finding an acceptable placefor the state within their nationalism, seemed to offer new hope forcivic nationalism in Japan. Yet, many prominent members of theSchool (eg., Nishio Kanji, Kobayashi Yoshinori) revealed an ethnicbias in their writings which, once again, undercut the arguments beingmade for a civic nationalism that might realize the long-sought goalof a democratic rapprochement between nation and state: a civicnation-state (kokumin-kokka) that eschewed a view of Japan as anethnic nation-state (minzoku-kokka). In the end, Rikki Kersten’sassessment of this on-going drama may be best:

Perhaps we can take some comfort from the fact that Fujioka chose todress his nationalism up as liberalism. Even if it is only a label, it tellsus that liberalism retains its value as a legitimizing idea incontemporary Japan.105

One hastens to add that “liberalism” in Japan, whether the prewar“old liberals” or the early postwar “new old liberals” were often thoseintellectuals who most passionately advocated a “healthy”nationalism that might balance the interests of the citizens (as thenation) with the resources of the constitutional state.

Yet, there is another dimension to this struggle over nationalism incontemporary Japan, and that is the possibility that what is takingplace in these public debates over memory, war, history, ethnicity,imperialism and nationalism is both more and less than what oftenmeets the eye. Simultaneously, and independent of the discourse on

105 Kersten, “Neo-Nationalism,” 202.

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nationalism, postwar Japan has witnessed the gradual decline of theintellectual class as the spokesmen for public values. This decline wasfirst noted in the early postwar years, but it has sharply escalatedsince the 1980s. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that theacademic intellectuals are being supplanted by the kind of publiclyengaged “civil intellectuals” that Jeffrey Goldfarb has argued areessential to a mature, functioning democracy.106 Civil intellectualsmake use of the print media, but they often publish in more popularformats, including newspapers and opinion journals, and they arefrequently active on the internet through web blogs and the like.

One of these new, civil intellectuals is Saeki Keishi, who began hiscareer as a typical academic intellectual, before breaking on the scenein the mid-1990s as a public intellectual with a clear message for anew postwar nationalism. In two major books published in 1996 and1998, Saeki collected two dozen essays previously published in awide range of popular journals in which he had condemned thepostwar Japanese “liberal democracy” for its failure to address theissue of nationalism, especially for its hostility to the state.107 Thefundamental failure of postwar Japanese political thought, accordingto Saeki, had been the attenuation of a sense of membership in thestate (kokka ishiki). Saeki argues that postwar Japanese liberalism hasmilitated against any open, legitimate sense of collective identity thatcould provide a foundation for loyalty to the state.108 Saeki does notcall for a complete subordination of individual to the state, but ratherseeks to reconcile national collective identity with the state in what heoutlines as a form of “civic liberalism.” “Civic,” he emphasizes, isdistinct from “civil” insofar as it not only avoids the overlyprivatizing tendencies of “civil” (esp., in contrast to the “military”actions of a state), but also in the sense that it relies on some notion ofvirtue that binds a people together.109 Consequently, Saeki believesthat what Japanese democracy needs is a complete overthrow of apostwar culture rooted in selfishness and its replacement by a civicdemocratic spirit that finds in the constitutional state a mechanism forbuilding a communal spirit of service to others.

106 Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Civility & Subversion: The Intellectual in DemocraticSociety (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 42-55.

107 Cf. Saeki Keishi, Gendai nihon no riberarizumu (Tokyo: K�dansha, 1996) andGendai nihon no ideorog�: gur�barizumu to kokka ishiki (Tokyo: K�dansha, 1998).

108 See, for example, Saeki, Gendai nihon no ideorog�, 72-84.109 Here, it should be noted, Saeki’s use of the concept of “civil” diverges from

that of Goldfarb, who sees “civil society” in terms largely analogous to Saeki’sconcept of “civic.” See Goldfarb, 78-102.

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Saeki’s call for a new nationalism that would radically overturnthe postwar system is echoed by Matsumoto Ken’ichi, anotheruniversity professor who writes for a broad public. In one of his manypublications, Matsumoto took up the question of the relationship ofthe people to the state by exploring the controversy that erupted whena parliamentary bill was passed and went into effect on 13 August1999, making the “Hi-no-Maru” the official Japanese flag and the“Kimi-ga-yo” the Japanese national anthem. What could be soobjectionable about a democratically elected parliament passing a billthat merely gave formal recognition to what had been the informalstatus quo for the entire postwar period? (What other contenders werethere for the Japanese national anthem or flag?) Yet, many on the leftwere outraged by this parliamentary act. What is surprising is thatMatsumoto shared their outrage, albeit from the other end of thepolitical spectrum. Like those on the left, Matsumoto argued that thiswas a “top down” and utterly unnecessary measure. But his reasonsreveal much about how he understands nationalism and why he is socritical of the postwar state.

For Matsumoto, the Japanese nation is really an ethnic nation(minzoku) and thus any formal effort to define it legally is gratuitousat best, and a foreign, Western cultural imposition at worst.Matsumoto begrudgingly admits that, with the rise of (Western)international law, a nation-state must have a flag. But this is merewindow dressing, for “one can say that there is no other country likeJapan where the Hi-no-maru was established [as the nation’s flag] notthrough law, but through Japan’s unique culture.”110 Matsumoto’sworry is that legal measures like the national flag and anthem billmight mislead Japanese people into thinking that theirs is a contingentnation constructed by laws rather than the ancient ethnic culturalnation that he avers it really is. Nonetheless, Matsumoto does notseriously object to a tighter embrace of nation and state in postwarJapan so long as the ethnic nation is accorded priority in the resultantminzoku-kokka (ethnic nation-state).

Matsumoto shares with Saeki and many other public intellectuals abelief that a more populist nationalism is needed to secure Japanesedemocracy. But not all these influential public intellectuals embraceMatsumoto’s ethnic assumptions Perhaps the most interesting of thesecivil intellectuals is Sakurai Yoshiko, graduate of the University ofHawaii, former writer for the Christian Science Monitor, television

110 Matsumoto Ken’ichi, “Hi-no-maru, Kimi-ga-yo” no hanashi (Tokyo: PHP

Kenky�jo, 1999), 193-4.

KOKUMIN 215

news broadcaster, and now an independent journalist who has the earof many important Japanese politicians.

Sakurai is a good example of Goldfarb’s civil intellectual in manyrespects. She writes for a general educated public, and reaches manyof her audience through her stimulating website. Her preferredconcept of the nation is that of kokumin, and she does not restrict itsmeaning to an ethnic one. In fact, she largely sidesteps the oldquestion of “mono-ethnic vs. multi-ethnic” nationalism by taking amore pragmatic approach to the challenges of nationalism in Japantoday. Sakurai’s concerns range over a wide variety of topics (eg.,AIDS, education, changing gender roles, political corruption, taxpolicies and revenue sharing between local and central government).But throughout, there is an underlying theme that the most seriousobstacle to the development of democracy in Japan is not too muchnationalism, but in fact a nation that is too weak.111 Sakurai is a goodrepresentative of where kokumin nationalism is going today: not byany means towards militarist or expansionist nationalism, but towardsa greater civic engagement with public policy that will give theJapanese people themselves more control over their destiny.

111 Cf. “Tatakai o wasureta zeijaku na kokuminsei” chapter 21 in Sakurai Yoshiko,

Nihon no kiki Shinch� Bunko 41-1 (Tokyo: Shinch�, 1998): 353-68.

CHAPTER SIX

MINZOKU

The Great Japanese Empire is neither a state based on a homogeneous nation,nor a country based on nationalism (minzokushugi).

Murofushi Takanobu, 1942.1

Nationalists, who write so much of the material on nationalism,unfortunately are not the most reliable source of information on thehistory of nationalism. Leftwing ethnic nationalists, like InoueKiyoshi, have tried to pin the origins of ethnic nationalism in Japanon the sonn� j�i activists who overthrew the bakufu.2 Rightwingethnic nationalists in contemporary Japan also trace the history oftheir nationalism to those opponents of the bakufu’s policies ofWesternization (�ka) who led the movement for direct monarchy andexpelling Westerners. But, as they tell the story, their nativistforefathers were betrayed by the likes of Iwakura Tomomi and �kuboToshimichi when they turned back to the same policy ofWesternization after their 1871-73 journey to the West. They see therejection of Saig� Takamori’s proposed invasion of Korea as abonding moment among early minzoku nationalists, and they layclaim to early rebellions such as the 1874 Saga Uprising, theJimp�ren Incident and Hagi Uprising of 1876, and even Saig�’sSatsuma Rebellion of 1877. But the most important of theirpredecessors is T�yama Mitsuru. What they see in T�yama is his anti-government nationalism revealed in the legendary tale of how heapproached Itagaki Taisuke, after the 1878 assassination of �kubo,seeking Itagaki’s help in raising an army to overthrow the“Westernizing new Government.”3 That request, needless to say, wentunheeded, but T�yama went on to form key organizations ofrightwing nationalists, especially the Gen’y�sha (est., 1881). The

1 Murofushi Takanobu, Monbush� shakai ky�iku kyoku (1942): 15; cited in Eiji

Oguma, Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen, 3.2 Hashikawa Bunz�, Nihon nashonarisumu genry�, reprinted in Hashikawa Bunz�

Chosakush� vol. 2 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob�, 1985), 3-4.3 Ino Kenji, “Uyoku minzoku-ha und� o tenb� suru,” in Ino Kenji, ed., Uyoku

minzoku-ha s�ran, 71-72.

MINZOKU 217

Gen’y�sha spawned a good many other rightwing nationalist groupsuntil it was finally disbanded in 1946, the most important of whichwas undoubtedly the Kokury�kai, founded in 1901 by Uchida Ry�heiwith T�yama as its chief advisor.

This history, so replete with facts, seems quite compelling. Butthis self-narration by postwar ethnic nationalists of their ownhistorical origins is flawed, and it ought to be a cautionary tale toanyone who blithely projects certain concepts back onto the past. Theproblem, simply put, is that it loads a heavy argument on flimsyhistorical evidence. Inoue could not convince even his fellow left-wing ethnic nationalist T�yama Shigeki, who called the anti-bakufuactivism nothing more than a reactionary feudal movement againstforeigners. Like Inoue, Ino Kenji, albeit from the other end of thepolitical spectrum, tried to establish the origins of what he called the“right-wing ethnic nation school movement” (uyoku minzoku-haund�) at a time when the evidence for the existence of the keyconcept of “ethnic nation” is questionable at best.

It may be useful to begin with a review of the early origins of theconcept of minzoku. The earliest known instance of the concept inmodern Japanese discourse was in 1875, when Murota Mitsuyoshi’stranslation of Guizot’s A History of Civilization in Europe appeared.But Murota used different kanji than the usual ones for “nation” torender the homonym word minzoku and indeed his reference is not tothe nation per se, but quite clearly refers to Guizot’s concept ofsociety.4 The earliest use of the concept of minzoku as “nation” (withthe same kanji used today in the word for nationalism, minzokushugi)was Miyazaki Mury�’s 1882 translation of Dumas’s concept of“assemblée nationale” as minzoku kaigi.5 Yet, as we saw above inChapter Two, this concept was conceived as a means of juxtaposingthe people to the aristocracy in revolutionary France. Whether itcarried the same relationship to ethnic nationalism that Ino associateswith his postwar nationalist group is quite dubious. And whileMiyazaki was affiliated with the Freedom and People’s RightsMovement, the concept of minzoku was incidental to his text, just as itwas marginal in two other texts of the Freedom and People’s RightsMovement during the 1880s. These nearly simultaneous appearancesof the concept include the 1882 translation of Mirabeau’s “On the

4 Haga Noboru. Meiji kokka no keisei, 236.5 Yasuda Hiroshi, “Kindai nihon ni okeru ‘minzoku’ kannnen no keisei: kokumin,

shimmin, minzoku,” 61-72 Shis� to gendai 31 (September 1992): 62.

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Abuses of Despotic Government” (the translator is unnamed, but wasprobably Nakae Ch�min) which introduced the homologous termminzoku in Nakae’s Seiri s�dan (the Seiri s�dan instances useddifferent kanji than Miyazaki, returning to the kanji used in Murota’stranslation of Guizot.). The exact concept referred to by this term isnot self-evident, but it was not “society,” as the text used shakai forthat concept.6 It seems to refer to something like national mores orcustoms, but it could even refer to the people as “the nation,” as wefind it used in that context in the same issue of the journal in thetranslation by a pseudonymous “K�ya Sei” of an article by “OujeanBallot” that criticized the centralized government’s destruction ofnational culture. In what was clearly a case of political criticism of theMeiji government by metaphor, ”Oujean” argued that centralizedgovernments like Imperial Rome harm the “national people” (kokuf�minzoku).7 States do not always enhance national identity.

In any event, in these early years, there is little, if any, record ofthe extension of this concept of minzoku (which at the time couldmean anything from “people,” “folk,” “society,” “nation” and even“race”) to the term minzokushugi, or nationalism. The termminzokushugi (nationalism, in the ethnic sense) arises much later inJapanese discourse and appears to have emerged around the FirstWorld War. One sourcebook on Japanese social thought concludesthat minzokushugi did not enter public discourse until after that war.8

This view gains additional weight from the reminiscenes of an activeparticipant in the minzoku discourse, Kamei Kan’ichir�, who wrote in1941 that “the word minzoku first appeared in print in actual worldpolitics after the Versailles Treaty.”9 Since it is quite clear that theword minzoku was used in printed debates about world affairs quite abit earlier than the Versailles Treaty (1919), it appears that Kameimust have meant the word minzokushugi.10 Sait� Tsuyoshi’s linguisticstudy of how the suffix shugi got applied to words in modernJapanese in general also raises some intriguing questions about the

6 Mirabeau, [Nakae Ch�min, trans.?], “Sensei seiji no shukuhei o ron su (zoku)”

Seiri s�dan no. 6 (May 10, 1882): 233-9, at 233.7 Oujean Ballot, (K�ya Sei, pseud., trans.), “Ch�� shuken no sei wa kokka no

f�zoku o j�hai su” Seiri s�dan, no. 7 (May 25, 1882): 5-13, at 5.8 Habu Nagaho and Kawai Tsuneo, “Minzokushugi shis�,” 326-346 in Tamura

Hideo and Tanaka Hiroshi, eds., Shakai shis� jiten (Tokyo: Ch�� DaigakuShuppanbu, 1982), 330-3.

9 Kamei Kan’ichiro, Dai t�a minzoku no michi. (Tokyo: Seiki Shob�, 1941), 301.10 One instance of minzokushugi in political discourse that well-predates the

Versailles Treaty is Tanaka Suiichir�’s article on "Minzokushugi no kenky�,” in Mitagakkai zasshi (1916) 10: 1-22.

MINZOKU 219

relationship of minzoku discourse to minzokushugi. Sait� notes thatInoue Tetsujir� pointed out that the practice of adding shugi (C:zhugi) as a suffix to words was a common linguistic pattern inChinese long before it was adopted in Japanese. But this suffix didnot necesssarily render the composite word an “ism“ as in modernconcepts like individualism (kojinshugi) or socialism (shakaishugi).Rather, in this practice, the meaning is that the concept so inflected“is the main principle.“ Sait� concludes that the Japanese may havecoined the use of shugi for modern “isms“ and reimported it back toChina.11 This may be a more useful way to understand the earliestexpressions of minzokushugi, i.e., to assert that it is minzoku that isthe main principle of the nation (not the kokka, kokutai, tenn�, etc).But it also raises the question of whether Japanese discourse derivedthe word minzokushugi from Chinese, since Sun Yatsen had beenpropagating the concept of minzokushugi in Chinese between 1904and 1924. But which way the linguistic influence flowed remainsshrouded in mist, as Sun himself was also closely advised byJapanese who were deeply involved in the minzoku movement backhome. What does seem clear is that minzoku emerged as a conceptbefore minzokushugi, and the meaning of both must be understoodhistorically, through close attention to both intra-discursivedevelopments and to international and domestic events that shapedthe rise of nationalism at that time.

Minzoku and Empire

As with the emergence of the concept of minzokushugi, exactly whenthe concept of minzoku became an important factor in modernJapanese nationalism is a contested issue. Hashimoto Mitsuru arguesthat it was not until the Sh�wa era, 1928 to be exact, that “Japanstarted seriously asserting an image of itself as a particularminzoku.”12 But most scholarship on the question concludes thatminzoku discourse originates much earlier, even as far back as the latenineteeth century. Yasuda Hiroshi has concluded that there are fewinstances of the word minzoku in Meiji discourse prior to 1890, butthereafter it exploded across the pages of the journal Nihonjin and thenewspaper Nihon, as journalists like Shiga Shigetaka and Kuga

11 Sait� Tsuyoshi, Meiji no kotoba, 370.12 Hashimoto Mitsuru, “Minzoku: nihon kindaika wo t�g� suru chikara,” Senjika

nihon shakai kenky�kai, ed., Senjika no nihon, 6.

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Katsunan tried to clarify the meaning of the national essence(kokusui).13 Yamamuro Shin’ichi agrees that the beginnings of ethnicnationalism are to be found in the 1880s, and he points to ShigaShigetaka’s use of the concept of minzoku to mean

that which constitutes the essence of our nation is accepting theinfluence of all sorts of foreign things in our country and mixingappropriately with them like a chemical reaction, thereby planting,giving birth, and developing them, while at the same time continuing topreserve for the current era what has been transmitted and purifiedamong the Yamato minzoku since ancient time.14

Nonetheless, Yoon Keun-Cha argues that “in the first half of theMeiji period [i.e., until 1890], there was an absence of collective orgroup consciousness as a single ethnic nation, which is to say that ‘theethnic nation’ did not exist or at least was still not fully formed, andin reality, one can hardly find any actual instances of the wordminzoku then, and certainly not in the late bakufu or Restorationyears.”15

Clearly the word (and with it, the concept) of minzoku grewincreasingly prominent in nationalist discourse in post-constitutionalMeiji Japan. But even then, one has to be cautious about assigning asingle, fixed meaning to the concept at this early date. Yonehara Kenhas demonstrated that in Tokutomi Soh�’s writings around that time,the concept of minzoku was used interchangeably with class, but torefer to Tokutomi’s ideal of the “country gentleman.“16 What is clearis that the concept was neither introduced nor promoted by Kat�Hiroyuki, as is sometimes thought to be the case. As late as 1887,Kat� was still employing a now obsolete term, zokumin, to render thissense of nationality, the nation as a popular body, and his point was todeny its legitimacy as a real form of the nation.17 Given the historicalpoint of erupture of this discourse, and the arguments it spawned, itdoes seem plausible that minzoku emerged as a challenge to theImperial Constitution’s denial of legal nationhood and its substitution

13 Yasuda Hiroshi, 66.14 Shiga Shigetaka, cited in Yamamuro Shin’ichi, Shis� kadai to shite no Ajia:

kijiku rensa t�ki (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2001), at 110.15 Yoon Keun-Cha, “Minzoku gens� no satetsu,” 9.16 Yonehara Ken, Tokutomi Soh�: Nihon nashonarizumu no kiseki, Ch�k� Shinsho

1711 (Tokyo: Ch�� K�ronsha, 2003), 74-75.17 Kat�’s term zokumin was his translation of Bluntschli’s Nationalität, presented

in his 1887 translation of Allgemeine Staatslehre. Cf. Kat� Hiroyuki, “Zokumintekino kenkoku narabi ni zokuminshugi,” Doitsugaku ky�kai zasshi vol. 40, no.41(January 1887); reprinted in Tanaka Akira and Miyachi Masato, eds., Nihon kindaishis� taikei: rekishi ninshiki (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991): 432-441.

MINZOKU 221

of the status of imperial subject (shimmin). It was trying to assert thatthis principle (minzoku) was the heart and soul of what the nationtruly is, or at least should be.

Yet, other historians who accept the general time frame of latenineteenth century as the point of departure nonetheless look to othersources of the discourse. Oguma Eiji, for example, traces thebeginnings of minzoku discourse to a debate among anthropologistsover the origins of the Japanese people. Western anthropologists who,like Edward S. Morse, Erwin von Bälz and Heinrich Philipp vonSiebold (Philipp Franz’s son), came to Japan during the 1870sbrought with them their Orientalist and imperialist assumptions aboutpeoples and cultures, and they applied these assumptions to the questfor the origins of the Japanese people. In looking for enduringpatterns of ethnological identity among the Japanese, these Westernacademics promoted a “composite nation“ theory that held that theJapanese people were the result of mixtures among several distinctlineages. Oguma notes that while most mainstream Japaneseanthropologists adopted the “composite nation“ theory of theirWestern teachers, a few such as Kurokawa Mayori and Nait� Chis�were offended by the notion that not all the Japanese were membersof the same group who had descended from the gods. Characteristicof their work is their reliance on the concepts and methods ofninetheenth century physical anthropology, and thus the resultingconfusion of the concepts of race and ethnicity. The result of thisanthropological inquiry was not so much distinctive theories aboutrace and ethnology, but competing conceptions of the Japanesepeople that were informed by “two forms of nationalism.“18 In short,while the anthropological search for physical traces of the Japanesepeople’s early origins left a racial ring to some forms of minzokudiscourse, it was not free from the same divisions that marked thebroader political discourse over whether the nation was the people orthe Imperial State.

The question of Japan’s ethnic origins, particularly whether theJapanese were originally the same or different from other peoples inEast Asia, became an increasingly urgent matter as the century closed.The 1870s saw the incorporation of Okinawa within Japan, and in the1880s Hokkaid� became part of the territorial realm, even beforeJapan itself had established its own legal contours of identity as astate through a constitution. But it was the acquisition of Taiwan in

18 Oguma Eiji, Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen, 27-32.

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1895 that most acutely brought forth the question of who the Japanesepeople were, are, and should be. Prior to the 1890s, even“integral“ units of Japan proper found their administrativeincorporation into the new imperial state far from a natural transition.But with a constituion in place, a constitution that by design refusedto answer the question of who was a Japanese national and insteadreferred to all residents of the empire as “imperial subjects,“ furtherincorporation of other peoples raised the question of how far theboundaries of “Japan“ could be extended. This was particularly truewhen the new members of the realm had a distinctive culture, werelocated far from the center, and spoke an entirely different language.Moreover, just as Taiwan was added to the empire (as the result of awar fought with China over Korea), another war was heating up withRussia, once again over Korea. So, as the century ended, ethnicity andrace intermingled over the issue of whether the Japanese nation was anation for the Japanese ethnic people, and how far the definition of“the Japanese ethnic people” could be pushed.

The interwar period of 1895-1905 proved to be a formativemoment in the emerging minzoku discourse. Having defeated China,Japan was experiencing a surge of nationalism that at first seemed tolegitimize the direction that the Westernizers and architects of theimperial state had set. The sacrifices of the last two decades hadyielded real results, it seemed, in demonstrating that Japan wassuperior to China. In 1897 Kimura Takatar� captured this feeling inan article he called “The Japanese Are a Superior Minzoku.“19 Here,the concept of minzoku performed two roles. First, it separated theJapanese from the Chinese in ways that appeals to a common Asianrace could not have done, while at the same time not excluding thetheoretical possibility of assimilating the Taiwanese through thisconcept of national identity that relied on a culturalist andassimilationist notion of who was Japanese. Second, it located themotive force for military victory in the cultural essence of theJapanese people themselves, rather than in the machinations ofmilitary and civil bureaucrats who guided the state. Minzoku wasbeing wedded to a cultural ideology that would disappoint stateofficials who had hoped victory in the Sino-Japanese war would unitethe nation behind His Majesty’s government.

19 Kimura Takatar�, “Nipponjin wa y�sh�teki minzoku nari,” Nipponshugi, no. 3

(1897); cited in Oguma, 63.

MINZOKU 223

In May 1897, Kimura had joined with Inoue Tetsujir� andTakayama Chogy� in forming the Great Japan Society and espousinga brand of cultural nationalism they called Japanism (Nipponshugi).This nationalism looked to the core of Japanese culture and arguedthat unless that core identity was purified and strengthened, Japancould not continue to achieve victories like that of the Sino-Japanesewar. And with the humiliation of the Triple Intervention by Russia,Germany and France still stinging, and a general recognition that warwith Russia was around the corner, the Japanists began to regardWestern culture in Japan, not as the reasons for Japan’s victory overChina, but as a fifth columnist influence that had to be rooted out.Inoue, as we have seen in Chapter Three, was already embroiled inthe “clash between religion and education“ and this “clash“ indicatedwhere the influence of Western culture was most dangerous:Christianity. From the very first article of its founding charter, theGreat Japan Society declared that “we worship the founder of ourcountry“ and their journal Nipponshugi took the lead in publishingattacks on Christianity. It was a popular position to take: as Ogumanotes, “the intellectuals of that age joined the Great Japan Society oneafter another.”20

Christian intellectuals quickly responded to this attack on theirloyalty to the nation, just as they had five years earlier during theattack on their loyalty to the emperor in the aftermath of theUchimura lèse majesté affair. Many Japanese Christians in the latenineteenth century had an affinity with the minzoku movement andshared social and political roots with activists in the Freedom andPeople’s Rights Movement To them, especially after the elevation ofthe monarch and the rise of State Shintoism, conceiving of the truenation as the minzoku rather that the now Shintoist State was anessential means of asserting the compatibility between their nationalidentity and their faith. Watase Tsunekichi’s rebuttal of the Japanistattack on Christians is illustrative of this effort. Watase did not rejectthe concept of minzoku or its importance to national identity. But hecountered that it was too narrow a concept for the kind of civicconsciousness required by a cosmopolitan, modern government withthe dynamic and democratic aspirations he attributed to Japan. Herejected the narrow ethnic nationalism of Kimura and Inoue, arguingthat the founding spirit of modern Japan was one that was open topeoples of various races or ethnicities.21 Watase and other Christians

20 Constitution of the Great Japan Society (1897); cited in Oguma, 57.21 Oguma, 57-8.

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quickly sensed that the victims of such an exclusivist ethnicnationalism were not only Taiwanese and Koreans, but alsothemselves and anyone else who professed a faith that did not permitthe worshipping of the monarch as a Shinto god. They did not rejectthe claim minzoku made on individual identity; rather, they merelysought to subordinate it to the universal transcendence of theirChristian faith.

That was not enough for the Japanists; or perhaps it would be moreaccurate to say that it was too much. They found their best spokesmanin Takayama Chogy� who developed a wide-ranging theory ofcultural nationalism between 1897 and 1902 that mixed minzoku andrace, nationality and Asianism, all the while drawing heavily onWestern theorists in order to denounce the deleterious effects ofWestern culture on Japan. Takayama understood Japan’s growingtensions with Russia as part of a broader idea of global “racial war”that Ludwig Gumplowics had sketched in Der Rassenkampf (1883).From this racial lens, Takayama was certain that the TripleIntervention, Russian designs on Korea, and even the 1875-78 warbetween Russia and Turkey and the 1897 war between Greece andTurkey (Takayama believed Turkey was part of the East, or “theTuranian race”) were indicative of a “600 year old racial war betweenthe Aryan race and the Turanian race.”22 Against Watase’s argumentthat a modern state was able to withstand the challenges of a multi-ethnic populace, Takayama drew from Max Müller and Henry Georgeto argue that a state cannot simply be a territorial administrative unit,but must be built on, with, and through, a single people with a sharedcultural identity. Thus, even through the Japanese, Koreans,Taiwanese and others were all part of the Turanian race, theirdistinctiveness resulted from the fact that this race, like all races, wasdivided into Naturvölker (shizen minzoku) and Kulturvölker (jinbunminzoku). The Naturvölker were those peoples who had yet todevelop an integral, shared culture that provided the dynamism fortheir own independent states; the Kulturvölker were those ethnicgroups who had emerged out of the state of nature to built anindependent state on the basis of their unique culture.23 Of course,among the Turanian race, only Japan met the requirements of aKulturvölker. In one broad sweep of the pen, Takayama had sketchedthe conceptual foundations for modern Japanese imperialism as wellas the grounds for culturalist attacks on Christianity as a foreign creed

22 Takayama Chogy�, Chogy� zensh�, volume 5, 313.23 Takayama, volume 5, 20-22.

MINZOKU 225

incompatible with the culture of the emperor-nation. Not surprisingly,his last work published in 1902, the year he died, was an explorationof the thinking of the medieval xenophobic Buddhist monk, Nichiren.

The annexation of Korea in 1910 renewed and sharpened thedebate on whether Japan should be a homogeneous ethnic nation-stateand whether the concept of minzoku was flexible enough toincorporate Koreans in the Japan minzoku. Again, Christianintellectuals played a leading role in asserting an optimistic, openreading of the potential limits of ethnic assimilation, while theJapanist and statist intellectuals like Takayama and Inoue Tetsujir�were slow to accept a sense of minzoku that was not thoroughly andexclusively racist. Yamaji Aizan had laid the foundations for hisfellow Christians, arguing several years prior to annexation that theJapanese were a “composite” nation, historically formed through acombination of Ainu, Malay, and the Yamato (a branch of theTuranian race). On the eve of annexation, he refuted the argumentpresented in Takekoshi Yosabur�’s 1910 Nankokuki that the Tenson(descendents of the gods) group was entirely Malay.24 Yamaji’sarguments were controversial, but the helped spawn a sense thatJapan’s national identity, even when conceived in ethnic or racialterms, was more open, more pliable, to the forces of history thansome anthropologists and racial determinists were willing toacknowledge.

Christians in particular had reason to argue in favor of this multi-ethnic notion of Japanese nationality. Their interests were complex,involving both domestic and regional concerns, but it is not accurateto say that they simply were promoting imperialist interventionagainst a mono-ethnic interpretation of the nation that might haveprevented imperialism. The crux of the matter was not imperialism(both sides supported the annexation of Korea), but over how Japan’snew imperial subjects should be treated: compassionately, asmembers of the same family; or as a conquered people to be exploited.Influential Christian intellectuals like Ebina Danj� and UkitaKazutami argued the former line, with Ukita stressing that theannexation of Korea was not the result of a self-interested policy onthe part of Japan and that intermarriage between Japanese andKoreans, and thus Korean assimilation, should be encouraged.25

Japanese Christians generally welcomed the incorporation of Koreans

24 Oguma, 99-100.25 Oguma, 109-113. Ebina also went so far as to praise the patriotism of An Chung

Ken who had assassinated It� Hirobumi in 1909.

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into the empire since they hoped the relatively larger number ofKorean Christians would strengthen the voice of Christianity withinthe empire and counter the rising Shintoist nationalism at home. (It isalso not unreasonable to assume that they had a personal interest inintermarriage, so that their own sons and daughters would have awider pool of Christian marriage partners.) This position was in sharpcontrast to the views of the national polity (kokutai) and Shintonationalists for whom Japan’s annexation of Korea was proof ofJapan’s superior ethnic identity and the necessity of keeping Koreansin a separate and inferior social position. Even for those like InoueTetsujir� who grudgingly came to accept the “composite nation”theory of the origins of the Japanese, the true underlying moral fiberthat held together the empire was to be found in the monarch as amoral figurehead for his subjects. These tensions over how theconcept of minzoku was to be deployed continued to play a role innationalist discourse throughout the imperial period.

Minzoku and Liberal Political Theory

The outbreak of world war in Europe, sparked by a nationalistSerbian revolt against the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian empire, hada significant impact on Japanese concepts on nationhood. WhileJapan played an extremely limited role in the fighting of the war, noone in Japan could ignore the resurgent ethnic nationalism(minzokushugi) that the war had unleashed in the world, particularlyas a tool against multi-ethnic empires like their own. As BenedictAnderson has noted, “by 1922, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Romanovsand Ottomans were gone…. From this time on, the legitimateinternational norm was the nation-state, so that in the League [ofNations] even the surviving imperial powers came dressed in nationalcostume rather than imperial uniform.”26 Legitimacy now meant agovernment had to make a persuasive case that it represented thenation, which is to say, the people. This national principle was a newand revolutionary idea. In 1914, Matsumoto Hikojir� recorded one ofthe earliest recognitions of the new challenge posed by this risingethnic nationalism, as it struck close to home in the form of attacks byChinese nationalists on Japanese in China during September 1913.Clearly, Takayama and the Japanist belief in Asian racial solidarity

26 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983): 104

MINZOKU 227

against the West was revealed as limited in its appeal and, as aconsequence, the racial flavor of their understanding of the nation wasalso losing any attraction it once might have had as a principle ofunity against the West.

The reality of ethnic tensions within Asia made the demand for anew understanding of “what a nation is” an urgent one. To meet thatdemand, Matsumoto introduced a new approach to understanding theformation of ethnic nations that relied less on biological and naturalscientific claims about past origins and more on consciousness of thenationals themselves as expressed in the present. New psychologicaltheories were seen as offering an advantage over the old racial studiesapproaches that, at best, had introduced “composite” nations, butwhich were seen as mired in an old-fashioned way of thinking aboutnations at a time when a multitude of new nations seemed to beexploding out of the present, rather than the past. To explain this newphenomenon, Matsumoto introduced Wilhelm Max Wundt’sElements of Folk Psychology as the most recent development inscientific understanding of the formation and function of nationalidentity. Given this assumption that nations were mainly a matter ofconsciousness, Matsumoto proposed a new theory of national identitybuilt around religion. The constructivism of his approach is evident inhis suggestion that the religion needed to hold Japan’s empiretogether was not State Shintoism, but a new composite religion thatwould weave together the shard and patches of native Shintoism,Buddhism and even Christianity.27

Needless to say, Matsumoto’s proposal for a newly constructedreligion for the empire went unheeded. But his introduction ofpsychology as the best hope for a scientific understanding of minzokuwas a watershed event. The immediate effect of this approach was tocall attention to the difference between the institutional reality of thestate and the cultural and psychological force of national identity.With a world war underway that was reinforcing the claims of anethnic identity, an identity that was not always easily mapped outspatially, the distinction between the nation (conceived in ethnicterms) and the political state was a growing feature of Japanesediscourse on minzoku. In what may have been an indirect rejoinder toMatsumoto, the historian Tanaka Suiichir� (who established the MitaHistoriographical Institute which would produce many of theimportant theorists on minzoku) drew from Rudolph Springer to

27 Matsumoto Hikojir�, “Minzoku kenky� to kojiki,” Shigaku vol. 25 (1914): 228-

34.

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reinforce the argument that the nation (minzoku) and the state (kokka)were distinct entities and should be kept “as separate as religion andpolitics.”28 Tanaka may not have appreciated Matsumoto’s effort toshift Japanese national identity toward a new, composite religion, butboth men were in agreement that Shinto, as a state religion, wasunlikely to succeed in raising national consciousness in most Japanesepeople’s minds. It was simply too closely associated with the state.

Liberal and leftist intellectuals were quick to seize on this theoryof the nation as a form of consciousness, as they saw in it a way tobreak free of the determinism of the older, racial theory of the nation.Abe Jir� was one such liberal who was attracted to this new form ofethnic nationalism. One of the most influential intellectuals of thetime, he wrote in 1917 that there was no contradiction between theindividualism of liberals and ethnic nationalism; indeed, he arguedthat only by assimilating oneself to “the ethnic national spirit that isalive and well” could the individual truly thrive. His worry was thatthe state might suppress the unique identity of ethnic nations andreduce them all to some generalized, universal human nature. Thegreater threat to international justice, he concluded, was not ethnicnationalism but “imperialist statism” (teikokushugi-teki kokkashugi).29

Two years later, his support for ethnic nationalism was echoed by theleading “Taisho democrat” Yoshino Sakuz� who waxed exuberantlyin the pages of the influential Ch�� K�ron that the reorganization ofthe international world on the basis of ethnic nationalism was simplythe completion of the movement towards democracy that began with“nineteenth century civilization.”30 Yoshino’s colleague, and latersocialist luminary, �yama Ikuo joined the chorus, singing the gloriesof an ethnic nationalism that would not be a “subjugatingimperialism” like the old nationalism built around the state, but wouldusher in a new era of “international harmonism.”31 What animatedthis liberal support for ethnic nationalism was a broad consensus thatit was not “blood” nationalism, but an identity that rested on theconsciousness of individuals to embrace their own forms of identity.It was, therefore, democratic.

28 Tanaka Suiichir�, “Minzokushugi no kenky�,” (1916); cited in Kevin M. Doak,

“Culture, Ethnicity and the State in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,” 189.29 Abe Jir�, “Shis�j� no minzokushugi,” Shich� 1: 99-120, at 116-9.30 Yoshino Sakuz�, Sekai kaiz� no ris�: minzoku-teki jiy� by�d� no ris� no jikk�

kan�, Ch�� K�ron 367 (1919): 87-91, 90.31 �yama Ikuo, “Shinky� nishu no kokkashugi no sh�totsu,” Ch�� K�ron 367

(1919): 74-86, 82-83.

MINZOKU 229

If this new psychological approach to national consciousnessemphasized the difference between nation and state, it alsoencouraged diverse ways to think about the nation itself. One of themost remarkable texts to express this way of thinking about the nationwas Nakamura Ky�shir�’s The Nations of the Far East. The text isinteresting for many reasons. It was part of a series published by theMin’y�sha, so it had a historical connection with one of the groupsthat had originated the discourse on minzoku in the late nineteenthcentury. It came with two glowing introductions: one by TokutomiSoh� and another by Yoshino Sakuz�, both among the mostinfluential intellectuals of that time writing on issues of populistnationalism. But it also was unusual in its effort to reach a broadaudience. The text provided furigana throughout, so that even thosewho were only marginally literate could understand what was written.This consideration, along with the topic itself, suggests a seriouseffort to reach readers in Taiwan and Korea who may not have beennative Japanese speakers, in addition to native Japanese of limitedliteracy but unlimited interest in the problems of nationalism. Anyonewho is inclined to follow Yoshimoto Taka’aki’s postwar theory thatthe nationalism of intellectuals never reached the nationalism of themasses should first pay careful attention to this text.32 Nakamura’swork faithfully reflects both the broader intellectual world’s concernwith coming to a proper conceptual understanding of the problem ofnation as minzoku, and the growing turn from racial concepts in favorof a sense of the nation that was distinct from the state but formedthrough the usual factors: common ancestral lineage, historical unity,common culture, common religion, common language and customs,shared economic interest, and a common state structure. Therepetition of the familiar recipe for a nation is as important asNakamura’s insistence that a minzoku was not the same thing as race(jinshu), political nationhood (kokumin) or a state (kokka).33 In short,Nakamura’s text reveals how widely diffused this burgeoningdiscourse on minzoku as a mode of cultural consciousness was, aswell as how much this discourse was mobilized to intervene in thepolitical realities of the Japanese empire.

32 See Yoshimoto Taka’aki, “Nihon no nashonarizumu,.”33 Nakamura [Nakayama] Ky�shir�, Kokut� no minzoku (Tokyo: Min’y�sha,

1916 ), 6-10. For further analysis of this text in its historical milieu, see my chapter,“Narrating China, Ordering East Asia: The Discourse on Nation and Ethnicity inImperial Japan,” in Kai-Wing Chow, Kevin M. Doak and Poshek Fu, eds.,Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 2001.)

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The end of the First World War and the convening of the ParisPeace Talks in 1919 brought the issue of this new, populistnationalism to the attention of journalists, intellectuals and politiciansaround the world. Japan was no exception. The basic question thisnew nationalism raised was how to set uniform conditions forrecognition as a nation. The old rules, under which any governmentthat could demonstrate exclusive authority over a certain territorycould be recognized as a sovereign entity, no longer sufficed, as thewar had witnessed the ravages of a new, bloody nationalism that hadbrought down empires rather than shoring up existing powerstructures through indoctrinating loyalty among its people. Suddenly,the world was awash with claims of national identity, nationality,nationhood, and thus demands for recognition and politicalindependence of countless new groups. It was impossible to recognizeall these groups as sovereign nation-states, and it was left to a handfulof diplomats at Versailles to decide who had a “right to self-determination” and who did not. Most of the claims raised at the timedid not concern Japan. But the outbreak of Korean and Chinesenationalism in March and May of 1919 was not unrelated to this surgein populist, ethnic nationalism and did require a response fromJapanese government officials. The problem of who constituted anation under the new, post World War I rules was, in the end, also anurgent matter for Japan.

Masaki Masato was one of the first to address directly the problemof identifying this new principle of national “self” determination inthe postwar years. He did so by introducing William McDougall’s1920 book, The Group Mind which promised to bring the certitude ofscience, psychology to be exact, to resolve the thorny problem of whoconstituted a nation and who did not. Masaki’s article “What is aMinzoku?” went beyond a mere review of McDougall’s book as itsurveyed the field of liberal theories of national identity, introducingmany of the theorists whose work would continue to inform Japanesedebates on minzoku for the next ten to fifteen years. Chief amongthem were, in addition to McDougall, Karl Lamprecht, G.P. Goochand Ramsey Muir. Together, their work reinforced the idea that thenation (minzoku) is not equivalent to the state, nor is it the same thingas race (jinshu); rather, the nation is defined by the ties of affinity thatpeople conceive with one another on the basis of a variety ofgrounds.34 Masaki’s article was explosive, and both conservatives and

34 Masaki Masato, “Minzoku to wa nani zo?”, 151.

MINZOKU 231

Marxists responded quickly to the liberal claim that the nation was inessence a form of collective consciousness, or “group mind.”

To counter Masaki and defend the empire, Uesugi Shinkichiemployed the rhetoric of restatement in his article published the sameyear on “The Source of the State’s Powers of Unification.” Uesugirephrased Masaki’s question as “what is the state (kokka)?” Uesugilatched on to the psychological approach’s recognition of the opendefinition of a minzoku to reappropriate the concept for the service ofthe imperial state. Since, as Uesugi repeated, “a nation (minzoku) isnot the same as race” there could be no objection to conceiving evenan imperial state like Japan as a “nation-state.” Korean identity, forexample, was merely a contingent form of group consciousness thatcan, and would, change over time.35 Not to be left behind, socialistsand Marxists also tried to appropriate minzoku nationalism for theiragendas. For them, the main attraction of the concept was thedemonstrated ability of minzoku movements to break up empires.�yama Ikuo emerged as one of the leading leftists to contribute to theminzoku project when, in 1923 he published a book-length study, TheSocial Foundations of Politics, that built on his earlier argument thatminzoku had unleashed a new kind of nationalism that was on acollision course with statist imperialism. He drew on the Austriansocial democrat Otto Bauer, particularly Bauer’s distinction betweenthe socialist nation and the capitalist state, as a pre-condition forpositing minzoku as the preferred social imaginary, a proletarianagency that would rise up against capitalist imperialism. Like theliberals, �yama accepted that minzoku was the effect of a groupconsciousness and not an effect of racial or natural ties, but hepreferred Bauer’s mode of explanation: nations, he argued, wereproducts of history rather than of nature and this meant thatnationality (minzoku), like the state, was the result of struggle, warand conquest. In short, he accepted the liberals’ view that without anadequate definition of the nation, the formation of nations would be amatter left to sheer power politics. But he turned the problem aroundand argued that power was ultimately all there was to the matter: norules, however carefully crafted, could or should restrain the violenceunleashed by minzoku movements.

Although �yama did not share the liberals’ belief that a bettertheory of nationality might reduce, if not completely prevent, warsfought for national independence, he did agree with them that the

35 Uesugi Shinkichi, “Kokka ketsug� no genryoku,” Ch�� K�ron, no. 36 (1921):

15-37, at 24.

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concepts of nation, nationality and nationalism were fraught withconfusion and required clarification. His own effort to define theseterms is worth citing at length:

What I would like to add here is a reflection on how such terms asethnic nationalism (minzokushugi) and nationalism (kokuminshugi) aregenerally understood in their actual usage. The insistence on liberatingone or more nationalities from the statist domination of anothernationality usually is expressed through the term minzokushu-gi–“principle of nationality” [�yama's own English gloss]. In contrast,when a nationality [minzoku] that occupies a dominant position withina state attempts to realize its desire to express its existence in the formof an independent nation-state by carrying out assimilation policies oroppressing weaker nationalities at home, while manifesting hostility invarious ways toward other nationalities or foreign states, we usuallycall the guiding principle behind such efforts kokuminshu-gi–“nationalism” [�yama 's English]. This is because a nationality thatis under the dominance of another nationality is usually simply called aminzoku–“a nationality” [�yama 's English], but a nationality thateither has already formed its own state, or that occupies the center ofsuperior dominance and power within a state–a nationality that hasmade a state–is therefore called a kokumin “nation” [�yama 's English].We must pay careful attention to the fact that in Japanese commonusage, the original word "nation" is often used in a highlyindiscriminate way, and its direct Japanese translation as kokumin isalso used in a very thoughtless manner. In Japan, there are many caseswhere the word kokumin is used as a direct translation of the GermanStaatvolk to express collectively the general members of the object ofsovereign power. Before we use such terms as minzoku and kokumin,we should first be prepared to distinguish these points.36

What is striking about �yama’s terminology is his negative view ofkokuminshugi and his valorization of minzokushugi. This valorizationcan only be explained as the influence of the Versailles principle of“self-determination” as the right of ethnic groups to their own nation,and his own Marxist commitment to undermining imperial Japan,which was nothing more than an elitist, capitalist state that hadsuppressed the ethnic nations of Asia. There still were two forms ofnationalism at war with each other, as he had argued in 1919. Butnow he argued that, in addition to Japan’s oppression of other ethnicnations, the polarization of politics in Japan suggested that this warbetween nationalisms also could be found within the same country,

36 �yama Ikuo, Seiji no shakai-teki kiso (1923); reprinted in �yama Ikuo zensh�

(Ch�� K�ronsha, 1947), 1:217-237, at 232-3.

MINZOKU 233

that there was, in effect, something like “internal colonization” inJapan.

If it is true, as Hashimoto Mitsuru has argued, that by thebeginning of the Showa era (1926), minzoku first became a majorfeature of Japanese political debate, it is not because, as he claims,Japanese society had begun to coalesce around a minzoku identity.37

Just the opposite. From 1925 to 1935, minzoku discourse was morediverse than at any other time in Japanese history. This developmentcan be explained as a result of the appeal minzoku still had for variouspeople, parties and political agendas across the spectrum: from rightto left, everyone, it seemed, wanted a piece of the action. The effectof this broad interest in minzoku was not an enhanced national unityin Japan, but a dispersed, contested discourse over what minzokumeant, both conceptually and in practice, and a broad disagreementover how Japanese people should respond to its appeal. Through thatdecade, advocates of the liberal psychological approach continued topresent their case. Kamikawa Hikomatsu summarized their argumentsin his 1926 essay in the Kokka gakkai zasshi, which reviewedMcDougall, Hayes, Muir and Pillsbury, and sought to provide whatHayes had announced was urgently needed: a systematic theory ofnationality and nationalism. Kamikawa’s theory merely admitted racehad some influence on the formation of a nation, but ultimately heconcluded that a nation was formed most through the subjectivefactors of culture, history and tradition.38

The following year, former Diet member and Tokyo ImperialUniversity professor Nakatani Takeyo drew from the same theoriststo once again seek in minzoku a fusion of self and society that wouldnot extinguish the liberal hopes for a culture of personalism. Herejected Carlton Hayes’s effort to separate minzoku (nationality) andnationalism (minzokushugi), arguing such an effort was not consistentwith the lessons of social psychology: if the nation was the effect, notthe cause, of national consciousness, then there can be no significanttime lag between the emergence of national consciousness andnationalist movements. Since minzoku, in contrast to the state, was amode of consciousness that existed simultaneously in the mind of theindividual and in the minds of those who shared his national identity,minzoku consciousness was in fact the mediation between individualand the group. Consequently, nationalism, which completes the

37 Hashimoto Mitsuru, “Minzoku—Nihon kindai o t�g� suru chikara,” in Senjika

Nihon Shakai Kenky�kai, ed., Senjika no nihon, 6.38 Kamikawa Hikomatsu, “Minzoku no honshitsu ni tsuite no k�satsu,” 1851.

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individual, and is therefore a liberal movement, can be called a kindof “national personalism (minzoku-teki jinkakushugi), or socialindividualism (shakai-teki koseishugi).”39 This theory of minzoku as aform of subjective consciousness had a deep and broad influence onliberal political thinkers of the early Showa period, includingYanaihara Tadao, Tanaka K�tar�, and Hasegawa Nyozekan.40

At the same time, those further to the left continued to assert theirpreference for minzoku nationalism as the best hope for arevolutionary subjectivity. Nagashima Matao played a significant rolein making minzoku acceptable to Japanese Marxists. His 1929 articleon “The Nation and Nationalist Movements,” published in the journalUnder the Banner of the New Science, was essentially a response to�yama’s interest in the nationalism theories of Otto Bauer.Nagashima explored Bauer’s writings on the nation in depth, but healso cited heavily from Stalin’s “The National and ColonialQuestion.” This minzoku turn among Marxists was made possible bythe shift within the Marxist movement towards a reconsideration ofcultural and national issues in the late 1920s that lay behind theestablishment of the journal Under the Banner of the New Science.41

In addition, Sano Manabu and Nishi Masao had just translatedStalin’s work on the “National and Colonial Question” as “MinzokuMondai” in 1928, drawing their comrades into the already vigorousdebate over the meaning and politics of minzoku. Following Stalin’swritings closely, Japanese Marxists contributed to the discourse onminzoku by, paralleling their analysis of class struggle, positing anational struggle (minzoku t�s�) with “dominant nations” (shihaiminzoku) and “dominanted nations (hi-shihai minzoku), or sometimes“oppressor nations” (appaku suru minzoku) and “oppressed nations(hi-appaku minzoku).42 These distinctions were of course unstable,and allowed Sano himself (along with Nabeyama Sadachika) toabandon Marxism in 1933 in order to remain loyal to his own

39 Nakatani Takeyo, “Minzoku oyobi minzokushugi,” 127. Nakatani is responding

to the arguments Carlton J.H. Hayes made in Essays on Nationalism.40 For more on liberal views on minzoku during this time period, see my chapter on

“Culture, Ethnicity and the State in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,” ; on TanakaK�tar�’s views on minzoku, see my “What is a Nation and Who Belongs?: NationalNarratives and the Ethnic Imagination in Twentieth-Century Japan.”

41 See my article, “Under the Banner of the New Science: History, Science and theProblem of Particularity in Early 20th Century Japan.” Philosophy East and Westvol.48: no.2 (April 1998): 232-256.

42 Cf. Nagashima, 30-31.

MINZOKU 235

minzoku.43 Sano had come to believe, not merely that nationalstruggles paralleled class struggles, but that in fact national struggleswere the fundamental ones.

Sano and Nabeyama’s abandonment of Marxism was a watershedevent for many on the left. Both held key positions on the CentralCommittee of the Communist Party, and their turn from Marxismtoward a closer embrace of the nation made support for minzoku evenmore controversial among Marxists. Tosaka Jun was the loudest voiceagainst an intoxication with minzoku identity, warning that it wouldalways lead to reactionary politics and undermine the struggle againstcapitalism.44 Not all Marxists agreed. Matsubara Hiroshi (SugaHirota) published his own outline of Stalin’s ideas on minzoku in1935 as study material for his comrades who were planning aconference on ethnic nationalism. Matsubara emphasized that Stalin’sdefinition of the nation “is a most accurate, principled critique…ofthe confusion we find in our ‘everyday’ consciousness of ethnicity[minzoku], tribe [shuzoku], and race [jinshu], or of the ethnic nation[minzoku], the state [kokka], and the political nation [kokumin].”45

Matsubara’s memo on Marxist minzoku ideas was vigorously debatedby Tosaka Jun, Izu Tadao, �ta Takeo, Hirokawa Hisashi, UtsumiTakashi, Kojima Hatsuo and Mori K�ichi at the conference. Theirviews ranged widely, but their responses to Matsubara, published inthe 49th issue of the journal Studies in Materialist Theory, revealedthat most accepted minzoku as a useful tool, even as they stressed thatit was a product of history, and therefore was both real andcontingent.46 Although their politics were different, Marxist andliberal intellectuals shared a broader conceptualization of the ethnicnationality as a matter of consciousness (“ideology”) and as ahistorical reality that was forged through culture and history, ratherthan through organic, racial ties.

43 Sano Manabu, “Nihon minzoku no y�sh�sei o ronzu,” (February 1934);

reprinted in Sano Manabu chosakush� (Tokyo: Sano Manabu chosakush� kank�kai,1958): 945-61, 945.

44 Tosaka Jun , Nippon ideorogii ron (1936); reprinted in Tosaka Jun zensh�(Tokyo: Keis� Shob�, 1966); vol. 2: 223-438, at 316-7.

45 Matsubara Hiroshi, “Minzoku no kiso gainen ni tsuite–kenky� sozai,”Yuibutsuron kenky�, no. 30 (April 1935); reprinted in Band� Hiroshi, ed., Rekishikagaku taikei 15: minzoku no mondai, 9.

46 Band� Hiroshi, “Rekishi ni okeru minzoku no mondai ni tsuite,” in Band�Hiroshi, ed., Rekishi kagaku taikei 15: minzoku no mondai, 313-314.

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Minzoku and War

During the ten years from 1925 to 1935, when the influence of liberaland leftist discourse on minzoku was at its zenith, the emphasis of thisdiscourse gradually shifted from political theory to cultural theory. Itis tempting to attribute this shift to an internal development of thediscourse itself: the force of conceptualizing the nation in terms ofpsychology and consciousness, artifice and contingency, history andtradition which ultimately drew theorists to culture as the ground ofsuch identity-making practices. And there may be some truth to thatanalysis. But contingency was not only a theory, as specific eventsand particular individuals did make a difference. For example, in1935 Yasuda Yoj�r� founded a new journal Nihon R�manha thatspawned an influential literary movement that lasted throughout thewar. The Romantic School writers were not inclined to theoreticalarticulation of the nation, nor did they connect with the earlier effortsto keep up with the latest writings on nationalism coming from theWest. Rather, drawing on late eighteenth century German romantics,they condemned such “intellectual” activities as modern scholarshipand sought to actually re-present the ethnic nation itself through thecreation of aesthetic and literary works that spoke less to the intellectthan to the heart. Along with Kamei Katsuichir� and Hayashi Fusao,among others, Yasuda sought the core of Japanese national identity inan ethnic or Völkisch cultural identity which he traced back to thesixth century, before Korean, Chinese (and certain Western) cultureshad influenced Japan.47 Needless to say, this poetic archaicism wasnot easy to reconcile with the reality of the modern Meiji state, andpart of the fascination of the Romantic School writers is the variety ofways in which they tried to reconcile these two, the nation and thestate.

From the middle of the 1930s, Japanese literary and philosophicalworks were awash with minzoku impulses. In 1935, Watsuji Tetsur�wrote an influential tract, On Climate, that sought to explain theJapanese national character as a function of Japan’s unique climate.While he situated Japan within a broader monsoon climate thatincluded other Asian nations, ultimately he argued that Japan’sclimate was a unique blend of monsoon and temperate climates which

47 On the Japan Romantic School and their contribution to minzoku discourse, see

my Dreams of Difference: The Japan Romantic School and the Crisis of Modernity(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); also “Ethnic Nationalism andRomanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies, vol.22, no.1 (1996): 77-103.

MINZOKU 237

yielded the unique ethnic character of the Japanese people. Indeed,Watsuji’s argument on climate was in fact anti-nature in a mannerthat paralleled the emphasis on minzoku as a cultural or spiritualprinciple that contrasted with the nature of biological race. Whenapplied to explaining Japan’s unique climate and its role in shapingJapan’s particular culture, Watsuji’s argument was an effort to isolateJapan both from the claims of Westernizers and from Orientalists whowould relocate Japan in Asia. Watsuji’s approach blended literary andphilosophical ideas with social scientific concerns. There was a sensethat the social sciences (other than psychology) were lagging behindthe humanities, particularly in terms of responding to the appeal ofminzoku. Indeed, Hashimoto Mitsuru has concluded that the discourseon minzoku in the social sciences merely followed the initiative ofphilosophy and sought empirical evidence to support the ideas ofminzoku philosophies through fieldwork.48

If political science, philosophy and literature had quicklygravitated to the concept of minzoku as a product of culture ratherthan nature, anthropology was taking a bit longer to accept this idea.As a discipline, it was still recovering its footing in the aftermath ofthe subjectivist challenge from psychology, and was moving awayfrom an emphasis on the “objective” approaches of physicalanthropology and its emphasis on race in favor of new appreciation ofthe impact of culture and consciousness. There were earlier hints ofthis new direction, particularly in 1925 when Yanigita Kunio and OkaMasao founded a new journal Minzoku to shift the focus ofanthropological research from race studies to a more culturallyinformed ethnological approach. But Yanagita’s influence onprofessional anthropologists was limited, as he mainly worked outsidethe professional discipline, drawing as much from the mythologicalstreams that fed Yasuda as from cutting edge anthropologicalscholarship. And Oka left for Vienna in 1929, not to return until 1935,a pivotal year in minzoku discourse.

Consequently, the anthropological turn to ethnicity was spurred inlarge measure by the work done by sociologists. Many of the futureethnologists in Japan were trained in sociology, as it was in sociologythat they focused on developing an adequate theory of the people asthe national body (see Chapter Four). A key barometer of thesociological interest in ethnicity is the 1934 Annals of the JapaneseSociety for Sociology. All six of the essays carried in that volumewere explicitly concern with the problem of minzoku. Since they were

48 Hashimoto Mitsuru, “Minzoku: nihon kindaika wo t�g� suru chikara,” 8.

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treated above in Chapter Four in some depth, here I merely want tofocus on how some of these key arguments continued to shape theformation of ethnology and wartime discourse on minzoku.

Watanuki Tetsur�’s article called “Nationality” (minzokusei)followed Usui Jish�’s article on “The Concept of Nation” (kokuminno gainen), and implicitly raised the question of what the distinctionbetween kokumin and minzoku is. And, in fact, that question was thefundamental one that his article addressed. Watanuki did not build hisargument around a theoretical response to the difference betweenkokumin and minzoku so much as a historical analysis of differentminzoku within the Japanese nation. He explicitly drew hisconceptions of what a minzoku (nationality) is from the liberal,psychological vein, citing Muir, McDougall, Fouilée, and Le Bon,among others, to make the point that what constitutes a sense ofnationality is not so much “consciousness” (ishiki) as “mind”(kokoro).49 His reliance on McDougall’s concept of nationality as“group mind” allowed him to distinguish his approach to nationalityfrom the Marxist theory that transferred class consciousness tonationality consciousness. Instead, Watanuki was interested in howsub-groups (what today we would call “ethnicities”) within a givenstate or national arena develop distinctive cultural styles that yielddistinctive ethnic identities, or nationalities. What made his argumentmost provocative was that it emphasized different “national mores”(kokuf�) within Japan, specifically the different cultures of Tosapeople and Nagasaki people. Watanuki skillfully employedsubjectivist theories of nationality as a form of “group mind” toconclude that Nagasaki and Tosa represented two particularly strongexamples of the variety of nationalities (minzokusei) that existedwithin Japan proper. Ultimately, Watanuki concluded that, asrevealed by the example of Nagasaki and Tosa as particular culturalstyles that co-existed within the Japanese state, current efforts toreorganize global politics based nationality as the fundamental unit ofpolitical society failed to reflect the continuous dynamic change inthese social identities called minzoku.50

Watanuki’s article was provocative and influential. A shift wasunderway within sociology and it bore fruit when the JapaneseSociety of Ethnology was formed in 1934. The members of theSociety read like a “who’s who” of minzoku theorists during the

49 Watanuki Tetsur�, “Minzokusei,” Shakaigaku no. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,

1934): 99-150, at 139.50 Watanuki, 150.

MINZOKU 239

wartime: Uno Enk�, Ishida Kannosuke, Koyama Eiz�, ShibusawaKeiz�, Shinmura Izuru, Kuwata Yoshiz�, Utsurikawa Nenoz� andFuruno Kiyoto, with Shiratori Kurakichi as the Chairman of theSociety’s Board of Directors.51 All these men (but Ishida, Koyamaand Shinmura in particular) would make substantial contributions tothe wartime discourse on minzoku and, at least initially, all startedwith the belief that the cultural, subjective nature of minzoku requireda specific discipline distinct from the natural orientation ofanthropology and the institutional formalism of sociology.

But in fact, sociology in Japan was changing under the impact ofminzoku theory. No one did more to push the discipline into a seriousengagement with ethnology that the senior sociologist Takata Yasumawho joined his theory of “total society” to the new work being doneon minzoku with revolutionary results. In 1934, the same year thatWatanuki’s article appeared, Takata published his major work onClass and the State which sought to refute the theory put forth byMarxist social scientists that posited a deterministic relationshipbetween class and the state. In the process of building a pluralistictheory of political structures, Takata argued that the concept ofminzoku held an independent value that could not be reduced to thepolitical state in all cases.52 In that work, Takata’s main concern waswith demonstrating the pluralistic nature of the state; he was not yetfocused on the problem of minzoku and he strongly rejection thenotion that he supported ethnic nationalism (minzokushugi).53 But itimmediately became the central concern of his work to the end of thewar.54 Between 1935 and 1939, Takata mainly developed a theory ofminzoku that situated it within both modernist and subjectivistapproaches, rejecting blood as the primary factor and also criticizing

51 See my “Building National Identity through Ethnicity: Ethnology in Wartime

Japan and After,” 18-9.52 Takata Yasuma, Kokka to kaiky�, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1934): 15.53 In a October 1934 issue of Keizai �rai, Takata published a rebuttal of Shimmei

Masamichi’s claim that Takata had converted to a minzokushugi position, describinghis own position as that of a cosmopolitan (sekaishugisha). Cited in Seino Masayoshi,“Takata Yasuma no T�a minzoku ron,” 29-59 in Senjika Nihon Shakai Kenky�kai,ed., Senjika no nihon: sh�wa zenki no rekishi shakaigaku, 32. But as Seino goes on todemonstrate, “But by 1942…Takata had converted into one of Japan’s leading ethnicnationalists.” (33).

54 The centrality of minzoku in Takata’s wartime work can be gleaned from aquick list of some of his major publications: Minzoku no mondai (Tokyo: NihonHy�ronsha, 1935); T�a minzoku ron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1939); Minzoku tokeizai, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Y�hikaku, 1940); Minzoku ron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,1942); Minzoku to keizai, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Y�hikaku, 1943); and Minzoku kenky�jokiyo (Tokyo: Minzoku kenky�jo, 1944), which he edited.

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“climate” theories (Watsuji’s?) for relying too much on natural causesand not enough on culture (see the discussion on Takata’s sociologyin Chapter Four above).

Takata’s 1939 A Theory of East Asian Nationality made a major,original contribution to both minzoku discourse and imperialistideology by offering the concept of a single, culturally determinedEast Asian nationality (k� minzoku; t�a minzoku).55 This idea of a new,East Asian nationality drew from the subjectivist theory thatnationality was a matter of consciousness or “mind” and thus wasrelatively open in possibilities. If nationality was largely a subjectivesense of identity, then why could not socialization result in a singularsense of loyalty among all East Asian peoples to the Japanese empire?The key, however, remained the necessity of a state to raise the levelof identity to a true consciousness, thereby yielding a modern nation(kindai minzoku). Until they developed such a consciousness, otherEast Asian nationalities would remain at a pre-modern stage ofdevelopment and would have to rely on the imperial Japanese state toprovide them with organization and structure. In this way, Takatatransformed and extended a theory of a pluralistic state to a theorythat justified Japan’s multi-ethnic East Asian empire.

Takata had begun to outline a theory of ethnic nationality thatcould reconcile the two countervailing pressures in minzoku discourseup to that time: on the one hand, minzoku appealed as a culturaltheory of identity that was not invested in regional or racial identities;yet at the same time, it was deeply implicated in post World War Ipolitical movements for nationalism and a right to self-determination.For Takata, and for those who sought to legitimize the Japaneseempire, the problem was how to embrace this new concept as acultural theory without losing their right to govern other ethnicnationalities. The solution Takata found was a dual notion of minzoku,one that was temporally and spatially inflected: not all minzoku wereat the same stage of historical development, and not all minzokuidentity claims were narrow in scope. But it was Oka Masao whocame up with the most powerful articulation of this concept. Havingspent the years from 1929 to 1935 in Vienna, where he watched thedevelopment of ethnology, he returned to Vienna again that year andstayed, impressed with the Nazi support for ethnology. When hereturned to Japan in 1940, he brought with him a new idea. Within

55 On Takada’s theories on minzoku, see Hashimoto Mitsuru, “Minzoku: nihon

kindaika wo t�g� suru chikara,” 16-19; Doak, “Building National Identity throughEthnicity.”

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Takata’s horizontal community of an East Asian ethnic nationalitythere had to be a “hierarchy of ethnic nations (minzoku chitsujo) thatreflected the different historical stages of development of eachmember minzoku. And since Japan was the only ethnic nation to havedeveloped its own independent state, it was accorded the top position,the Herrenvolk (shid� minzoku) with the moral responsibility todevelop the other ethnic nationalities to their own, eventual politicalindependence.

Oka not only provided intellectual support for imperial ethnology,he was also the motive force behind the creation of the Japan EthnicResearch Institute (Minzoku Kenky�jo) in 1943. Takata was namedthe Director of the Institute. Oka had many valuable contacts in themilitary, as well as in companies with close connections to themilitary and civilian powerbrokers. He received substantial help fromFuruno Kiyoto who was working for the East Asian economicresearch department of Mantetsu and had strong ties to people in theMinistry of Education and in the Imperial Navy. Once it became clearthat minzoku ideas were not limited to the Marxist agenda, pragmaticimperial bureaucrats, bankers and high level military offers wereeager to use the fruits of this discourse both to suppress Marxism andto shore up imperial rule. Ishiwara Kanji is a case in point. Drawingon the idea of Kyoto Imperial University Professor Sakuda Sh�ichithat the ideals of ethnic national harmony and integration within thepolitical state were compatible goals, Ishiwara founded KenkokuUniversity (National Foundation University) in Manchuria in May1938, placing Sakuda effectively in charge of the University. At thatuniversity, ethnic harmony was not only an idea, but enacted throughadmissions policies that yielded a remarkable ethnic balance amongthe students enrolled. According to research done by Naka Hisao, amember of the last class of Kenkoku University, the first classenrolled 65 Japanese, 59 (Han) Chinese, 11 Koreans, 13 Taiwanese, 7Mongolians and 5 White Russians, a proportion that was maintaineduntil the university closed in 1945.56 But T�j� Hideki thoughtIshiwara’s belief in ethnic national harmony was quixotic at best, andhe never warmed to Ishiwara’s social reorganization plans forManchuria. In fact, he finally recalled Ishiwara to Tokyo and placedhim on inactive service.57

56 Naka Hisao, “‘Minzoku ky�wa’ no ris�: ‘mansh�koku’ kenkoku daigaku no

jikken,” 81-100 in Senjika Nihon Shakai Kenky�kai, ed., Senjika no nihon, 90-91,83-84.

57 Cf. Miyazawa Eriko, Kenkoku daigaku to minzoku ky�wa (Tokyo: F�ma Shob�,1997).

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Oka’s contribution to wartime Japanese minzoku discourserevealed a new shift in the way that discourse placed the people inrelation to the Imperial state. The concern no longer was limited to ashift from race to ethnicity through the mediation of culture. Rather,cultural and political issues began to merge more frequently,particularly under the influence of the Nazi model that the State itselfcould be reconceived as a Volk-Staat. This mode of taming the forceof ethnic nationalism to serve an expansive wartime state wasproviding Imperial Japan’s state bureaucrats with hopes that theymight be able to overcome the Wilsonian liberal theory of minzoku asa form of nationalist self-determination, an anti-imperialist movement.This was a marked shift from the negative assessment of minzoku thatwas characteristic of imperial state apologists from the days ofFukuzawa Yukichi, Kat� Hiroyuki and Uesugi Shinkichi.

From the late 1930s, the emphasis within Japanese minzokudiscourse turned toward ways the state might appropriate minzoku forits own purposes. This was no simple matter. First, the state had toadopt the liberal theory that minzoku was not an objective, racialidentity but a matter of consciousness. Second, it had to make apersuasive case that such ethnic consciousness could be transformed,and transformed in a way that would align minzoku identity with whatwas institutionally, historically, and legally a multi-ethnic Empire.And finally, it had to find methods that would successfullyaccomplish this goal, transforming minzoku consciousness from apotentially anti-imperial movement into one that would further investthe loyalties of various peoples throughout Asia in the JapaneseImperial State. What made this agenda particularly difficult was it hadto be accomplished without completely alienating ethnic nationalistswithin Japan who had been opposed to the modern, bureaucraticempire that had, in the words made famous in Japan by J.A. Hobson,become a “debasement of…genuine nationalism by attempts tooverflow its natural banks and absorb…reluctant and unassimilablepeoples.”58 At the same time, the incorporation of minzoku intoofficial ideology had to proceed without transforming the very natureof the constitutional Imperial state. Few of the state bureaucrats whowere now turning toward minzoku discourse wanted Japan to changeits constitutional system as Germany had. And fewer yet wereinterested in overthrowing the monarchy.

58 J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (New York: James Pott & Co., 1902), 4.

The quote is from Hobson’s introductory chapter, “Nationalism and Imperialism”which was widely cited by the liberal theorists of nationalism discussed above. It wasparticularly influential on Yanaihara Tadao.

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Domestically, the extreme positions were marked out byconservative ethnic nationalists like Yasuda who sought in minzoku aprinciple of overcoming all traces of modernity, including the modernJapanese imperial state, and “reform bureaucrats” inspired by NaziGermany who sought to push the limits of the imperial state as closeto the Nazi model as possible. In between these two extremes werelegal theorists like Yanaihara Tadao and Tanaka K�tar� whoincorporated minzoku discourse into their writings but with the goalof resisting both the anti-modernity of romantics like Yasuda and thetotalitarianism of the “reform bureaucrats.” Significantly, in thecontext of a rising State Shintoism, both men were Christians.Yanaihara was a muky�kai (“non-affliliated,” i.e., in UchimuraKanz�’s tradition) Christian, and was inclined to see institutions likechurch and state as secondary to ideals which, transcendent, must beemployed to guide institutions. He brought this idealist philosophy tobear on the problem of minzoku in two books Minzoku to Heiwa(1936) and Minzoku to Kokka (1937), the latter based on a series ofspeeches he had delivered in Nagano between 31 August and 02September 1937. On the basis of these works, Yanaihara developed atheory of national identity that accepted ethnic nationality (minzoku)as the foundation of national identity, and he saw the state as anartificial institution that needed to be guided by the ideals of a nation(minzoku). In practice, he was offering a critique of the ImperialStates efforts at assimilating Koreans and at the war in China that hadjust started in July. When he published this moral critique of theJapanese state in Ch�� K�ron in September, he attracted the attentionand ire of the rightwing ideologue Minoda Muneki who attackedYanaihara for his pacifism, and ultimately Yanaihara was forced toresign his chair at Tokyo Imperial University.59 While the precisereasons for Yanaihara’s removal from teaching at the ImperialUniversity are in dispute, what is clear is that he argued that the statemust be accountable to the minzoku, not the other way around. Andthis view directly contradicted what statists had been trying to do withthe concept of the minzoku since the outbreak of the second Sino-

59 In fact, Yanaihara was only removed from the classroom and had his writings onminzoku and the state suppressed. At the same time, he was allowed to stay on aslibrarian at Tokyo Imperial University and was never imprisoned. As Susan C.Townsend has noted, “the Japanese authorities, although they persecuted andharassed Japanese Christians, were reluctant to imprison them” (267-8). See herYanaihara Tadao and Japanese Colonial Policy: Redeeming Empire (Richmond,UK: Curzon Press, 2000): esp., 235-251. On Yanaihara’s minzoku discourse, see my“Colonialism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Political Thought of Yanaihara Tadao(1893-1961),” East Asian History (July 1997): 79-98.

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Japanese war: subordinate minzoku claims to the imperial structure ofrule.

In any event, Yanaihara was neither persecuted for advocatingminzoku ideas nor for being a Christian liberal. That much is clearfrom the example of Tanaka K�tar�, a liberal, Catholic professor oflaw at the same university. Conceptually, Tanaka agreed withYanaihara that the nation (minzoku) had developed out of race but hadmatured into a concept distinct both from race and from the state.60

The real question from the perspective of international law, or whatTanaka called “global law,” was to determine whether a state was theby-product of a nation, or whether a nation could be engineered by astate. Tanaka rejected the idea put forth by radical conservatives thatthe Japanese state was an expression of the Yamato nation. But healso rejected the notion that ethnic nationality was merely a tool,either to overthrow the state (Marxists) or to be used to support themulti-ethnic state (authoritarian imperialists). Staking out his positionin the moderate middle, Tanaka argued that the relationship betweennation and state was one of mutual influence, or what we might todaycall “overdetermination.” His main point, from a perspectivegrounded in the transcendental principle of natural law, was to limitthe state’s activities to regulating the objective forms of social life:the state should simply stay out of national issues, as the nation was,ultimately, a spiritual reality.61 This argument was not only a defenseof the right to be both Christian and a loyal Japanese–as outlined byMaeda and Linguel forty years earlier–it was also a defense of Article28 of the Meiji Constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion. Atthe same time, it did not completely reject empire as a viable andpotentially just political system. Like Yanaihara, Tanaka’s approachwas not a structuralist, deterministic one, but a human, practical one:how might moral men exercise power in imperfect institutions toachieve the most just and humane result possible? But unlikeYanaihara, Tanaka did not adopt a pacifist position, either in principleor in regard to the second Sino-Japanese war. And, even though hewas an active and devout Christian throughout the war, he neversuffered any persecution.

There were, however, many social engineers who were eager tomake the principle of minzoku subordinate to the raw politicalinterests of Japanese imperialism. From the late 1930s, it became anincreasingly common feature of minzoku discourse that morality

60 Tanaka, Sekai h� no riron, I, 162-166.61 Tanaka, Sekai h� no riron I, 212-6.

MINZOKU 245

ultimately rested in the state, and thus minzoku identities could, andshould, be manipulated to suit the interests of the Japanese state.62

One way this argument was put forth is evident in the collection ofessays called Minzoku and War published by the Young JapaneseForeign Relations Association in 1939. This volume, with essays byleading minzoku theorists Shimmei Masamichi, Kada Tetsuji,Shimizu Ikutar�, Nagata Kiyoshi and Maehara Mitsuo, placed ethnicnationality at the center of Japan’s war in Asia, arguing from a varietyof perspectives that Japan had a moral mission to rectify the politicalinstabilities in the region that resulted from a failure to resolve theclaims of ethnic nationalism. The purpose of the book, which wasaddressed to young men of draft age, is best captured in the title ofShimmei’s article, “The Role of War in Establishing Ethnic Societies[minzoku shakai].” It provided a bibliography, which illustrated theenduring influence of liberal national theories and established thewritings of Takata, Yanaihara, Kada, Koya Yoshio, and KomatsuKentar� as canonical works in the Japanese discourse on minzoku.63

But most importantly, the authors had learned the lessons of thefailure of the liberal theorists to establish a definitive theory of who orwhat constituted a nation. Ultimately, they concluded, the liberaleffort to seek an adequate theory of the nation had failed, and the onlysolution was to be found through the effects of war.

This approach to resolving the minzoku issue through forcebecame most salient after 7 (8 in Japan) December 1941, when theattack on Pearl Harbor offered the chance to reinterpret the overtlyimperialist war in Asia as a war for the liberation of Asia from theWest. The war could not be presented effectively as a war ofliberation of Asian nations without a compelling case for what

62 The scope of this minzoku discourse from the late 1930s is truly impressive and

of course there are individual variations within it. But a representative sample of theinfluential works would include: Komatsu Kentar�, Minzoku to bunka (Tokyo:Ris�sha, 1939); Izawa Hiroshi, Minzoku t�s� shikan (Tokyo: Sangab�, 1939); TakataYasuma, T�a minzoku ron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1939); Tanase J�ji, T�a nominzoku to sh�ky� (Tokyo: Kawade Shob�, 1939); Matsuoka J�hachi, Shinaminzokusei no kenky� (Tokyo: Nihon Hy�ronsha, 1940); Kamei Kan’ichir�, Dai t�aminzoku no michi (Tokyo: Seiki Shob�, 1941); Koyama Eiz�, Minzoku to jink� noriron (Tokyo: Hata Shoten, 1941) and Minzoku to bunka no sh�-mondai (Tokyo:Hata Shoten, 1942); Kaigo Katsuo, T�a minzoku ky�iku ron (Tokyo: Asakura Shoten,1942); the 12 volume Minzoku series published by Rokumeikan in 1943, OgawaYatar�, ed., Nihon minzoku to shin sekaikan (Osaka: Kazuraki Shoten, 1943); HiranoYoshitar�, Minzoku seijigaku no riron (Tokyo: Nihon Hy�ronsha, 1943); andMinzoku kenky�jo kiyo (Tokyo: Minzoku Kenky�jo, 1944).

63 Nihon Seinen Gaik� Ky�kai, ed., Minzoku to sens� (Tokyo: Nihon SeinenGaik� Ky�kai, 1939): 211-244.

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nationality was and how it could be liberated by an outsidestate–Japan. Yet, as we have seen, the effort over several decades toestablish a definitive theory of nationality had met with little success.Even so, the failure of political theorists to establish a theory ofnationality for the empire did not lessen the need for a philosophy ofnationality, a normative outline for how nationality, properlyunderstood, could provide a justification for Japan’s war. And therewas no shortage of philosophers in Japan ready to provide just that.

K�saka Masa’aki, a leading philosopher in the Kyoto Schooltradition, emerged as the most influential of such philosophers whenhe published a book called The Philosophy of Minzoku in April 1942.In that book, he drew from the liberal theory of minzoku as acontingent product of history, as well as conservative views of thoselike Yasuda that there was no transcendental moral principle beyondthat of the minzoku. He argued that the true subject of world historywas neither the individual nor class but the minzoku, and he drewfrom Muir and others to emphasize that minzoku was distinct fromboth race and the state. But K�saka offered something new. Heemphasized that the ultimate goal, “a world historical nation” was a“state-nation” (kokka-teki minzoku):

Of course, the world is not going to be changed solely throughminzoku; the minzoku must be mediated by culture. And even if theworld itself can be seen as a kind of negative universal (mu-teki fuhen),there must be within the historical world a species-subject (shu-tekishutai). And that is the state-nation.64

K�saka’s fusion of nation with the state, minzoku with kokka, throughthe process of mediation, was a new, original contribution to themoral discourse on minzoku. He was not proposing a nation-state(minzoku-kokka), which would have contradicted the multi-ethnicempire, but the need for all minzoku in the region immediately toassociate themselves with a state (the only effective option being theimperial Japanese state). Even while recognizing the distinctionbetween the two concepts, he subjected that conceptual distinction tohis historicist philosophy that was more interested in offering creativeassertions about new realities than the more modest goal of reflectingwhat was traditionally seen as limitations to what the nation and thestate could demand of the individual.

This was no mere philosophical game. K�saka made it clear thathis interests were practical and involved specifically offering arationale for the policy of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity

64 K�saka Masa’aki, Minzoku no tetsugaku (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1942); 3.

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Sphere. The key to resolving the national question within the empire,he felt, lay in the grand concept of a co-prosperity sphere. Once thepluralistic and artificial (“historical”) character of minzoku wasgrasped, K�saka believed there would be no barrier, certainly notnature (he spent a great deal of energy distinguishing and discountingnatural scientific concepts like race from the historical subject ofnation), to the reconstruction of minzoku in a new relationship of co-prosperity. It was “not simply a matter of liberating nations in EastAsia, but of a new discovery of them and an establishment of them.”Sounding very much like Takata Yasuma, he argued that

the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere does not simply mean thatexisting states and existing nations will enter into a new relationship ofco-prosperity. Rather, it means the construction of their own states, thebeginning of their own history, for those nations that are non-autonomous, that lack their own history, and in this way, a new EastAsian world will open a new stage in world history.65

Such a grand constructivist project was possible, K�saka maintained,because a minzoku was an on-going social construct (gen ni dekitsutsuaru). But from a world historical standpoint, the most importantconsideration was how such non-historical nations would becomehistorical state-nations. The answer was quite predictable. “Throughthe leadership of our nation, new states will arise from among theother nations and appear on the stage of world history. But this willalso mean that our nation’s mode of existence will be fundamentallyenlarged and become capable of mediating the process toward a newworld.”66 While this 1942 defense of the co-prosperity sphere placedK�saka squarely among those on the political right, his philosophy ofminzoku could not have taken shape without the contribution ofliberal and leftist theories of minzoku that had sought to overcome theconstraints of nature and of race in particular.

By the late 1930s, imperial minzoku discourse had taken shapearound two distinct conceptual approaches. K�saka and Takatarepresented the corporatist approach that insisted that the plasticity ofthe concept of minzoku provided the grounds for the creation of a new,single East Asian identity that would provide the basis for theconstruction of a New Order in Asia. Takata’s student Nakano Seiichigave this theory its strongest articulation as a policy position in his1944 article on “An Unfolding of the Nationality Principle in EastAsia” published in the Bulletin of the Ethnic Research Institute.

65 K�saka, 193, 194-5.66 K�saka, 196, 197.

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Nakano recognized Oka’s call for an “ethnic national hierarchy” inthe region, but he added Takata’s notion of a “broader ethnic nation”as the foundation for a sense of community within the hierarchy ofethnic ations in the East Asian region. He noted that

the basis of all East Asian ethnic nations is to be found in the positionof a single East Asian Ethnic Nation (Dr. Takata). Once we accept thisfact, then it is clear that the position of an East Asian ethnic nation isalso basis of the position of ethnic national complementarity (minzokuhokan no tachiba). Moreover, this means that what appears as acomplementary relationship among the ethnic nations is, when seenfrom a different angle, merely each ethnic nation making manifest itsown special job. So, we can call this position of ethnic nationalcomplementarity the position of ethnic national duty. In time, as thiscomplementarity progesses, disarray might arise in the relationshipbetween ethnic nations and their specific duties. If we are to avoid sucha development, there will need to be a hierarchy among the ethnicnations. Thus, the position of ethnic national complementarity is tightlylinked to the position of an ethnic national hierarchy.67

Nakano’s synthesis was not a very successful one. It is most valuableas an example of how far the social theory of constructed identitycould go in providing justification for imperialism as a project thatwould “overcome” the limitations to national formation history hadrecorded, and which were seen in the last years of the war as aproblem of modernity, or the West.68

If Nakano had sought his synthesis largely from within thecorporatist approach to nationality in the empire, those who believedthat unity in East Asia could best be formed on the basis of a leagueof separate ethnic nationalities remained unconvinced by his policyrecommendation. Kamei Kan’ichir� still asserted that the life of theempire depended not on some dubious social experiment inengineering unprecedented forms of ethnic identity, but instrengthening existing ethnic identities in East Asia. Kamei had beendeeply impressed by the ethnic nationalism he found in NaziGermany, and he drew from that experience to argue that somethinganalogous was possible in East Asia and would lead to unity underthe Japanese empire. His league approach had been favored by manyactivists since the early 1930s, including Ozaki Hotsumi and Ishiwara

67 Nakano, p. 54.68 For a more detailed treatment of Nakano’s ethnic nationality policy, see my

chapter on “Nakano Seiichi and Colonial Ethnic Studies” in Akitoshi Shimizu andJan van Bremen, eds., Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific,Senri Ethnological Studies no. 65 (2003): pp. 109-129.

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Kanji.69 But after Pearl Harbor and the shift in ideology to emphasizethe war as a war against modernity, the league approach began to loseinfluence to the corporatists, who had an easier time connecting theirimage of a new East Asian minzoku with the effort to overcomemodernity and its emphasis on the state as the privileged unit ofmodern political life. But the debate continued down to the end of thewar, preventing any final consensus on a nationality policy for theempire.

The unresolved tensions between these two approaches informedthe massive “A Study of Global Policy with the Yamato Volk as theCore” composed in 1943 by bureaucrats in the Ministry of SocialWelfare’s Research Office Department of Population and Nationality.The report reflected the same tensions that existed in the broaderpublic discourse on minzoku which pitted Takata’s new, single EastAsia Volk against Kamei’s vision of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere built around the particular ethnic identities in theregion.70 In the end, wracked with internal contradictions and multi-vocal arguments, the report could only conclude that the Japanesestate needed to establish a nationality policy that would bring thesevarious minzoku into an organic unity.71 Yet, there was to be noreconciliation of these two approaches. In a sense, the failure toestablish a nationality policy was most likely the result of intractabledifferences of opinion within the department over what a minzoku isand how far it could be molded into something new. But, at the sametime, it may simply be that these bureaucrats found themselvesconfronted with the fundamental problem of Asian regionalism, asYamamuro Shin’ichi has expressed it: the impossible dilemma of

69 On the East Asian League (T�a remmei) and the East Asian corporatist (T�a

ky�d�tai) approaches to nationalism in the empire, see my chapter on “The Conceptof Ethnic Nationality and its Role in Pan-Asianism in Imperial Japan” in Sven Saalerand J. Victor Koschmann, eds., Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History (Londonand New York: Routledge, 2006).

70 Indeed, one section of the report urges cultural assimilation of other East AsianVölker by Japan, Yamato minzoku o ch�kaku to suru sekai seisaku no kent� 7, 2351;another section argues against any single policy for all the Völker of Asia, andparticularly warns that assimilation efforts would merely cause a backlash against theJapanese (7, 2364-5). On the public debate between proponents of a single T�aminzoku and those who insisted on a plural interpretation of T�a (sho-)minzoku, seemy “Narrating China, Ordering East Asia,” 102-105, 112, n. 57. It is easy to suspectKamei’s hand behind the anti-assimilation sections of the report, due to his influencein governmental circles, familiarity and support for Nazi nationality theories, and theparallels in the report’s arguments and in Kamei’s published works.

71 Yamato minzoku o ch�kaku to suru sekai seisaku no kent� 7, 2197.

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trying to hammer unity out of the plurality that has always been thereality of Asia.72

Minzoku and the Postwar Nation

It is often assumed that the devastation of Japan’s cities in the finalyears of the war and the humiliation of defeat and occupationcleansed the Japanese people of any attraction to nationalism.Alternatively, it is claimed that during the seven years of militaryoccupation, certainly during the early stages, any overt expression ofnationalism was censored or punished by SCAP. Evidence offered insupport of this view is principally the ease of the Occupation and therarity of any retaliatory attack on the foreign soldiers in Japan.Nationalism must have been worn out by the long war, it is presumed,or there would have been more resistance to the Occupation. Nothingcould be further from the truth. There was a wide ranging and verypublic expression of nationalism from the immediate postwar daysthroughout and beyond the period of occupation, and it came from allpoints on the political spectrum: right, left and center. Why didoccupation officials allow this open expression of nationalism? Whyhave so many historians of Japan in the past failed to recognize thevigorous nationalism in the early postwar period? And how has thisfailure to recognize and restrain nationalism during the years ofoccupation subsequently shaped the political discourse on nationalidentity and nationalism throughout the postwar period?

To understand why a free expression of nationalism was permittedunder military occupation, it is necessary first to recognize thatappeals to minzoku and minzokushugi are indeed forms of nationalism.The most common expression of nationalism in the immediatepostwar period was made in minzoku terms. American observers ofJapanese political thought from the occupation period up until quiterecently have not always understood that appeals to the minzoku wereinherently forms of nationalism; instead they have often swept theproblem of minzoku under the rug of “race.” This tendency to believethat a reference to the Japanese minzoku identity was simply a de-politicized (if somewhat morally disreputable) way of referring torace was encouraged by anthropological studies of the Japanese, the

72 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “‘Ta ni shite ichi’ no chitsujo genri to Nihon no sentaku”

In Aoki Tamotsu and Saeki Keishi, eds., ‘Ajia-teki kachi’ to wa nani ka (Tokyo:TBS-Britannica, 1998).,43-64

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most important of which was Ruth Benedict’s Chrysanthemum andthe Sword, a work widely read among occupation officials and eventranslated into Japanese as early as 1948.73 In short, there was acurious kind of mirror-effect, in which Americans who had beenencouraged during the war to view the Japanese as a “race” differentfrom themselves, reflected their own racial interpretation of theJapanese onto discussions of minzoku identity among the Japanese.The irony was that the postwar Japanese were not talking about raceas the Americans understood it, of course, but were continuing adiscourse on nationalism that had been quite vibrant during thewartime and prewar years. But in seeing this discourse as one about“race” rather than about nationalism, American Occupation officialscould easily conclude that it was a politically harmless, if somewhatdistasteful, topic for Japanese intellectuals to indulge. The imperialJapanese discourse on minzoku that separated minzoku claims fromthe right to an independent state only augmented this predilection forseeing minzoku discourse as political harmless.

There were also structural reasons for the resurgence of minzokudiscourse in the immediate postwar years. Oguma Eiji hassummarized the structural changes that made minzoku so attractiveafter the war. As he points out, a key condition for the rise of thismyth of minzoku identity was the transformation of Japan from themulti-ethnic Meiji Imperial State to a mono-ethnic nation through theprocess of de-imperialization. In short, the “liberation” of suchterritories as Taiwan and Korea from the Japanese empire meant thatthe claims of ethnic nationalism there now resonated with a sense ofethnic purity within Japan. Koreans and Taiwanese were no longerautomatically “subjects” or citizens of the Japanese nation(Okinawans were not to be Japanese again until 1972), and this ethniccleansing of the empire encouraged among the Japanese people asense of being a mono-ethnic nation. Moreover, drawing from bothprewar Marxist and liberal theories that idealized the minzoku andcriticized the state, this early postwar minzoku nationalism found iteasy to imagine the minzoku as a peaceful nation in contrast to theprewar, militaristic, multi-ethnic state.74 And, equally important, theearlier liberal distinction between the nation as minzoku and the state(kokka) provided a sense of legitimate national identity throughminzoku for the seven years of foreign occupation when an

73 Aoki Tamotsu, ‘Nihon bunka ron’ no hen’y� (Tokyo: Ch�� K�ron Shinsha,

1999), 31.74 Oguma, Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen, 339-40.

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independent Japanese state did not exist. The theoretical distinctionbetween nation and state seemed to be borne out by the politicalrealities of occupied Japan.

One of the most remarkable continuities between wartime andpostwar Japan is the way this minzoku discourse continued on,unchallenged by either occupation officials or by liberal or leftistJapanese. In recent years, Nishikawa Nagao described the spellminzoku has continued to have over the Japanese people as thepreferred form of national identity, even while they have largelydistanced themselves from the state.75 It may be tempting to concludethat this continuity, one of many historians have depicted across theprewar-postwar divide, represents the retention of rightwing, even“fascist,” elements in postwar democratic Japan. Yet, on closerinspection, the continuity in minzoku discourse proves to be, not anexclusively or even largely conservative ideology, but also anextension of the liberal and leftist minzoku discourse of the prewarperiod. Certainly, rightwing ethnic nationalists tried to express theirviews, but they had the most difficulty getting their ethnic nationalismin print under the occupation. It was not their ethnic nationalism thatraised objections, but simply their identities, past associations withwartime pro-government parties, or other extraneous, often personal,reasons that led them to be blacklisted by the occupation censors.Kageyama Masaharu has detailed was he sees as a history ofoppression that “rightwing” ethnic nationalists suffered at the handsof the occupying forces.76 But he also points out that, as a right-wingethnic nationalist, he took considerable solace in reading thenationalist appeal of the Christian Yanaihara Tadao that waspermitted to appear in the pages of the leftist journal Sekai (althoughKageyama distanced himself from Yanaihara’s Christianity).77 Whilethe extreme right was prevented from expressing their views throughthe occupation censors, minzoku nationalism was able to thrivethrough liberals and leftists who led the way in rehabilitating it in thecontext of post-imperial, occupied Japan.

One of the earliest instances of minzoku nationalism in the postwarperiod was a lecture given on 11 February 1946 by Nanbara Shigeru,president of Tokyo University. Nanbara was an expert on Fichte, andhe drew on his knowledge of Fichte in his speech on the “Creation of

75 Nishikawa Nagao, “Two Interpretations of Japanese Culture,” (trans. Mikiko

Murata and Gavan McCormack) in Multicultural Japan, 247-8.76 Kageyama Masaharu, Senry�ka no minzoku-ha: dan’atsu to ch�koku no sh�gen

(Tokyo: Nihon Ky�bunsha, 1979).77 Kageyama, 103-8.

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a New Japanese Culture” in arguing that the minzoku is “the site forthe creation of the spirit of freedom.” The war and all the horriblethings Japanese had done to others–and had been victims ofthemselves–all this could be laid at the feet of the state. States go towar, but minzoku were just people, and people were by naturepeaceful. Nanbara may have drawn inspiration from Fichte, but hewas also implicitly rehashing arguments that had been raised underWilsonian idealism around the time of the First World War: the hopethat if the world map were only redrawn along the lines of ethnicnationalism, true world peace might be attained at last. Nambara’sinvestment in this minzoku form of national identity, and his beliefthat such a national identity would be the foundation for a more justpostwar world order is evident in his statement that, “although ourminzoku has made mistakes, we nonetheless rejoice that we were borninto this minzoku and we have unending love for this minzoku. It isprecisely for that reason that we seek to punish our minzoku ourselvesand so recover its honor before the world.”78 When the president ofTokyo University makes such an appeal to the concept of minzoku,others are bound to follow. And follow they did. But what is moststriking about the flood of articles and books on minzoku nationalismin the early postwar period is that it came largely from liberals andleftists, not from rightwing nationalists like Kageyama.

Nanbara’s 1946 speech may have signaled that it was socially andpolitically acceptable to discuss minzoku identity in postwar Japan.But it was Shimmei Masamichi’s 1949 Theory of Historical Minzokuthat provided the clearest connection to prewar and wartime minzokudiscourse, while at the same time charting the future direction formany minzoku theories. Shimmei of course was an active minzokutheorist during the wartime: he was one of the contributors to the1939 Minzoku and War volume discussed above. Indeed, the chaptersof his 1949 book had been composed originally as lectures given atT�hoku Imperial University between 1943 and 1945. As such, theyprovide ipso facto evidence of the transwar nature of this minzokudiscourse. But they also allow us to see how the ideas of the earlierliberal theorists were used, not only to legitimate Japaneseimperialism, but after the war to provide a foundation for a Japanesenational identity in the absence of a state. Shimmei not only built hisargument on wartime Japanese theorists like Takata Yasuma,Komatsu Kentar� and K�saka Masa’aki; he also went back to the

78 Nanbara Shigeru, cited in Oguma, Minshu to aikoku: sengo nihon no

nashonarizumu to k�ky�sei (Tokyo: Shin’y�sha, 2002): 139

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liberal theorists Hobson, Muir and McDougall to emphasize that thecore of national identity lies in this sociological sense of communityforged through such elements as a common language, historicalexperience, and shared fate.79 Like the liberal theorists after WorldWar I, he emphasized the importance of the sentiment of the peopleas determining whether or not they constituted a nation (minzoku).And like them, too, he also drew a sharp distinction between race,nation, and the state.

In the two and a half years since the end of the war (the book waswritten in early 1948), Shimmei had time to consider how these ideasabout the nation, articulated during the wartime empire, applied toJapan’s new situation as an occupied people. In revising the contextand significance of his argument–if not the literal terms heemployed–he was able to apply his earlier argument that minzoku,which captured the essence of a society and did not depend on thepolitical form of the state for its existence, was the key form ofnational identity. As during the war, however, the relationship ofminzoku to the state remained of crucial importance:

Yet, while it is true that the state has an intimate role in theestablishment of a nation (minzoku), it is not necessarily correct tothink that the state precedes the nation and creates it…. The nation doesnot always depend on the state to create it, but may be thought of ascoming into being in a spontaneous form. Of course, as the state’spolitical unification progresses, the nation’s formation will alsoprogress necessarily…. But rather than saying this is the creation of thenation, it is better to understand this process as the completion of thenation. In this sense, the state is not the creator of the nation but thatwhich fosters the nation…. In this way, the nation may be called aKulturnation (bunka minzoku). But the fact that the Kulturnation isfully established apolitically, without any direct mediation by politicalunification, is sufficient proof that the political unification of the statedoes not necessarily constitute an absolute precondition for the nation.80

Shimmei’s was a nuanced argument with high stakes for postwarnationalism, and it deserves a careful reading. He explicitly termedhis theory of the nation a “historical one”, thus aligning it ostensiblywith the earlier Marxist theories of the nation that reduced the nationto historical determinism. But his ultimate objective was in asserting asense of the nation, rooted in minzoku, as the real foundation ofnational identity. Here he found an unexpected bonanza in imperialist

79 Shimmei Masamichi, Shi-teki minzoku riron (Tokyo: Iwasaki Shoten, 1949): 36-

68.80 Shimmei, Shi-teki minzoku riron, 55-6.

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national theory. During the empire, the theory that minzoku was theessence of national identity was offered to deny subjected peoplestheir own independent state. But now it was re-packaged as proof thatthe Japanese had not lost their nation and national identity, eventhough they had no state of their own.81

Shimmei’s postwar ethnic nationalism provides telling evidence ofa continuity between wartime and postwar efforts to place the peopleas an ethnic nation that was distinct from–indeed substituted for–anindependent political state. His argument is a powerful articulation ofa conclusion that many others had come to in the early postwar years,even those who had to revise much of their wartime theories to makethem fit Japan’s new circumstances. A key example of such arevisionist is Wakamori Tar�. Wakamori was an active participant inthe wartime ethnological discourse associated with Takata Yasuma,Oka Masao and others. In 1942, he legitimated Japanese imperialismin China with an argument that the Chinese people traditionally didnot invest their nationality in a political state as the Japanese did. Butin his Theory of the Japanese Minzoku published in 1947–when Japanno longer had an independent state to boast of–he reversed himself,arguing that any national identity promoted by or invested in a statewas inauthentic. And to give context to this anti-statist minzokunationalism, he added that it was Westerners–not the Japanesethemselves–who seemed unable to understand the difference betweenJapan’s true nationality based in ethnic culture and the false nationalidentity propped up by the state.82 Wakamori’s revisionism did notstop there. He laid the foundations for a particular brand ofconservative ethnic nationalism that asserted a moral difference in thetwo sets of characters used to write the word minzoku ( ),with preference going to the latter set. Wakamori thus was one of theearliest ethnologists to argue that there was a similar distinctionbetween an acceptable form of “folklore,” associated with YanagitaKunio, that was derived from this preferred minzoku calledminzokugaku ( ) and that was morally superior to the old,

81 For a different view of the relationship of state and nation in Shimmei’s work,

see Fujita Kunihiko, “Senjika nihon ni okeru kuni no hon’shitsu,” Senjika no nihon,61-79, esp, 67-68. I am not able to tell whether Fujita’s conclusion (that the state andnation were always connected) is due to his prior theoretical conviction or whether itis because he relies on a 1980 anthologized version of Shimmei’s Shi-teki minzokuriron.

82 Wakamori Tar�, Nihon minzoku ron (Tokyo: Chiyoda Shob�, 1947); cited inmy “Building National Identity through Ethnicity: Ethnology in Wartime Japan andAfter,” at 33-34.

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discredited wartime ethnology ( ). The problem with Wakamori’srevisionist effort was that Yanagita himself rejected suchorthographic distinctions, arguing that all minzoku referred toethnicity and thus preferring himself the characters to capture thesubject of his ethnological studies.83 Yanagita’s epigones have uni-formly ignored his warning on this point, and a postwar discourse ofminzokugaku continues to this day to promote a form ofethnic national identity that masquerades as merely “folklore.”

Shimmei’s historical approach to minzoku was significant foranother reason. Even as Wakamori was joined by wartimeethnologists Oka Masao, Ishida Eiichir�, Egami Namio and others inasserting a new national identity determined by ethnic culture,Marxists were re-asserting their historically determined minzokutheories that had been silenced for ten years during the war. AlthoughShimmei did not join with them, his effort to present his theory as a“historical” one testified to the prestige that the Marxist minzokutheories enjoyed in the early postwar years. Kubokawa Tsurujir� wasone of the first of the Marxists scholars to revive the prewar leftistethnic nationalism in the postwar period. His 1948 Literature,Thought, Life was, like Shimmei’s book, a republication of earlierwork, essays that first had been written between 1936 and 1941 andpublished in earlier volumes that had appeared in 1940 and 1942.Kubokawa had been a member of the Communist Party until hisconversion to nationalism in 1933, and he was most active as aliterary critic from then until the end of the war. In 1945, he rejoinedthe Communist Party and played a leading role in the New JapaneseLiterature group. His experience, both in converting to nationalismand then back to Communism in the postwar period gave him anunusually flexible perspective on ethnic nationalism.

Kubokawa was critical of minzoku cultural theories in the earlypostwar period because he saw how liberals and conservatives wereembracing minzoku culture as a surrogate for the political state, whenhis own goal was political independence from the American-ledoccupation. Given the employment of minzoku culture duringImperial Japan as a tool for preventing political independence ofnations within the Japanese empire, it is not surprising that he wouldargue that

83 Yanagita Kunio, “Minzokugaku kara minzokugaku e: Nihon minzokugaku no

ashiato o kaerimite,” Minzokugaku kenky� 14:3 (February 1950): 1; cited in my“Building National Identity through Ethnicity,” 34.

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the danger of Japan being colonized today comes from nothing but aspirit of anti-foreignism and ethnic nationalism. The reason is thatethnic nationalism and anti-foreignism are, as we all know, simplytools by which a certain group enslaves the people for their owninterests. But the present danger of being colonized also arises becausea certain group pursues its own interests by sacrificing the people, andthrough subordination, seeks to rely on a foreign country.84

Drawing from his knowledge of how minzoku was used in theimperial period as a cultural substitution for political independence byJapan’s colonies, Kubokawa was working toward a theory of internalcolonization that would explain how some Japanese elites hadbetrayed the Japanese people through a similar ideology of minzokuas a substitution for political independence from the United States.The key point is that he did not reject ethnic nationalism ipso factobut was merely critical of its exploitation by certain elites who soughtto prevent its inherent goal: political independence. The larger pointof Kubokawa’s argument reveals that he was not opposed to all formsof anti-foreignism (here, his complaint seems directed at those waryof Soviet influence in the Communist Party of Japan). In his shortessay on “The Conditions of Ethnic National Culture”, Kubokawadecried, not so much ethnic appropriations of national identity, butthe “formalistic” and “abstract” nature of ethnic nationalism that leftit devoid of any significant response to the demands of the day. Inlanguage quite reminiscent of K�saka, he argued that this nationaltheory should not be rejected but merely needed to be articulated in“world historical,” rather than in particularistic, terms.85

Kubokawa wrote as a literary critic for literary scholars. But hiscall for a more “historical” approach to minzoku that would connectethnic national culture to a critique of anti-colonization directed at theUnited States was answered by leading members of Japan’s historicalprofession. These historians were mostly Stalinists affiliated with theJapan Communist Party, the Party that had just announced a series ofpositions at its Sixth Conference that included a commitment toethnic national independence (minzoku dokuritsu). While partymembers presented this turn to ethnic nationalism as a response to theOccupation of Japan by the capitalist side of the Cold War, it is clearfrom Curtis Gayle’s recent work that this appeal to minzoku could notbe divorced from the prewar Marxist minzoku discourse that had been

84 Kubokawa Tsurujir�, Bungaku shis� seikatsu (Tokyo: Shinseisha, 1948): 241-2.85 Kubokawa, 26.

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derailed during the wartime.86 Of course, there were differenceemphases. There were, to start with, differences of context: thepostwar Marxist historians benefited from a more open society, froma retrospective sense throughout society that the war was morallywrong and thus everyone who opposed it (Marxists figuredprominently) were moral heroes, and from the affront of militaryoccupation to national dignity. Thus, one finds a resounding theme inMarxist historical writing from the late 1940s through the early 1950sthat emphasized interpreting the Japanese people as an ethnic nationoppressed by their own imperial state, betrayed by their postwar elites,and crushed under the rule of foreign military occupation. IshimodaSh�, Toma Seita and Matsumoto Shinpachir� were leaders in the“minzoku faction” of Marxist history, but the influence of minzoku asa way of conceptualizing the Japanese people was broadly and deeplyfelt: the 1951 and 1952 annual meetings of the Japan Historio-graphical Research Association were focused on the problem ofminzoku as the true subject of national history.87 Leftist historians allagreed that the minzoku was “a product of history” but beyond thatformulaic expression there was little agreement as to how far back inhistory its origins were to be found. Ishimoda’s “minzoku faction”sought to explain that historical production internally, as aprecapitalist, organic development going all the way back. In contrast,Inoue Kiyoshi, Eguchi Bokur� and T�yama Shigeki’s “modernizationfaction” argued that the Japanese minzoku was a product of capitalismand the advent of the West in the mid-nineteenth century.88 In spite ofthis difference, both wings of the Marxist minzoku movement shareda negative view of modernity, seeing postwar history not as aliberation of the nation from fascism, but as only further ensconcingthe people in fascism under liberal democratic cover.89

86 Curtis Gayle, Marxist History and Postwar Japanese Nationalism (London and

New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003): 52-57.87 Doak, “What is a Nation and Who Belongs? National Narratives and the Ethnic

Imagination in Twentieth-Century Japan,” at 302-3.88 Gayle, Marxist History and Postwar Japanese Nationalism, 86-87. Gayle quite

correctly notes the similarity between Ishimoda’s faction and the primordialism ofAnthony D. Smith’s theory on the historical origins of ethnic nations. One might alsoadd that Inoue and the “modernization faction” reflect arguments on the connectionbetween modern capitalism and national formation that have been raised morerecently by Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner.

89 Cf. Kubokawa, “Here I believe is the essence of this tendency that, in contrast tothe fascism of militarism we had in the past, now spreads fascism under the name of“democracy…our only true way to live is to make every effort to protect the peace,freedom and independence of Japan from the dangers of a new fascism and war; I

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The Left was not the only part of the political spectrum in postwarJapan that was outraged at foreign occupation and that turned tominzoku as the preferred form of nationalism. Conservative ethnicnationalists who had been prominent during the war were oftensilenced by occupation censorship, but some continued to write underpseudonyms. Yasuda Yoj�r�, one of the most influential of this group,was purged in 1948. Yet, he continued to find ways to expresshimself: in print through poetry and essays published under othernames, and in social gatherings where he influenced the thinking offellow conservatives who were not purged. Yasuda’s influence wasespecially pronounced in the journal Sokoku (1949-55). During thisperiod, he found various ways to present his argument that theJapanese minzoku, an agrarian people, had remained largelyunchanged in their commitment to ways and mores that weredistinctive from the Western forms of life introduced during and afterthe Meiji Restoration.90 In curious ways, Yasuda’s conservative ethnicnationalism echoed aspects of the ethnic nationalism of the leftisthistorians: an appeal to Asia as an alternative to the modernitypromoted by the occupation, a sense that minzoku was a preferredalternative social identity to that of citizenship in the postwar liberalstate, and a romantic appeal to pacificism as grounded in Asia as the“third way” beyond the Cold War polarities of the United States andthe Soviet Union.

Of course, there were serious political differences that separatedYasuda from the likes of Ishimoda and Inoue. But even within theirappeal to ethnic nationalism, there were significant differences. Whilethe leftwing ethnic nationalists intoned Asianism and a critique ofmodernity, what they meant by “Asia” was a political principle ofresistance to capitalist imperialism and what they meant by“modernity” was simply bourgeois class culture. In contrast, toYasuda “Asia” was a thoroughly poetic mode of being prior to andoutside of modernity, and by “modernity” he meant the entire cultureof the world as he experienced it in his day. Modernity included theUnited States, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the communism of MaoZedong. Perhaps because of the depth of Yasuda’s anti-modernity at atime when much of Japanese society was convulsed with celebrationsof modernity, his writings (even after he was freed from censorship)

believe that is the only way we can discover the true historical image of Japan at thiscurrent moment.” Bungaku shis� seikatsu, 242.

90 The best summary of Yasuda’s postwar ethnic nationalism is Oketani Hideaki,Yasuda Yoj�r� (Tokyo: K�dansha, 1996), 136-217.

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never garnered the attention and influence of his wartime work. Buthe remained one key anchor of conservative, anti-state minzokunationalism for many postwar intellectuals.

Yasuda’s influence was also diminished by the attack on him byMarxists and other leftists in the immediate postwar period. His highschool classmate and friend Takeuchi Yoshimi was able to avoidcriticism for “war responsibility” and bring to the public’s attentionmany of Yasuda’s ideas about Asia and ethnic nationalism. As aSinologist, Takeuchi saw Asia less as a projection of Japan’s ownresistance against the West, and more in terms of China as bothvictim of Japanese aggression and as offering a way outside ofmodernity (which he equated with Westernization). But even forTakeuchi, the core of this alternative to modernity was, as imperialistshad argued during the war, the national concept of minzoku as analternative to the modern state. Takeuchi’s first impulse was to resistthe postwar modernists who sought to move beyond ethnic nationalityand invest Japanese national identity in the new postwar sovereignnation-state. In his 1951 essay on “Modernism and the Problem of theEthnic Nation,” he argued against the notion that Yasuda and theRomantic School were responsible for everything that was wrongwith the war. While he explicitly decried the invasion of China andother parts of Asia, he celebrated the Pacific theater as a war againstthe West and suggested that postwar Japan should be built on aminzoku consciousness as the foundation for a pan-Asian, anti-Western regionalism. Many aspects of Takeuchi’s embrace of ethnicnationalism make him easy to confuse with the Marxist ethnicnationalists: especially, his critique of modernity, his expressedsolidarity with “Asia”, and his antipathy toward the AmericanOccupation. The belief that he was really on “the left” wasencouraged further by his 1959 essay “Overcoming Modernity”which was seen as providing a rationale for the “progressive” riotsagainst the LDP and the United States over the handling of therevision of the US-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) in 1960. Here, “theleft” really meant those who were “anti-America.” But, regardless ofwhether one characterized the Anpo riots as “leftist” (and there isample evidence of participation by those on both ends of the politicalspectrum), Takeuchi was no Marxist (he included Marxism in themodernity that he rejected) and was in fact politically and personallyclose to Yasuda and the conservative ethnic nationalist movement.

The decade of the 1960s saw the rise of populism in Japan, aselsewhere, and this populism had a decisive if complex impact onminzoku nationalism. As mentioned above in Chapter Five, as a

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resurgent state tried to regain the people’s respect and allegianceunder Prime Minister Ikeda’s economism and income-doubling plan,rising affluence and an assertive youth culture combined with theprotest culture to make the relationship between state and minzoku amore estranged one. Takashima Zen’ya is perhaps the best example ofhow the 1960s transformed the debate over minzoku. In a series ofarticles and books, most notably his 1970 Minzoku and Class,Takashima offered a new theory that would synthesize the Stalinistapproach of Ishimoda with liberal minzoku theories of WatsujiTetsur� and Imanaka Tsugimaro and the conservative nationalism ofHayashi Fusao and Mishima Yukio. To Takashima, the key point inunderstanding Japanese nationalism was the distinction between stateand nation. Nationalism held that the nation was the purpose of thestate’s existence, and by “nation” Takashima really meant theminzoku conceived as a natural mode of existence prior to theinstitutions of politics and culture. His pet formula was “minzoku asmother, class as master” (botai to shite no minzoku, shutai to shite nokaiky�).91 Takashima explained that “minzoku as mother” was aliterary expression (a gesture toward conservative literary nationalistslike Takeuchi Yoshimi, Mishima Yukio and Hayashi Fusao?) and“class as master”(or “subject”) was a philosophical expression (agesture toward Marxists like Ishimoda, Inoue and Eguchi?). Theprecise meaning of Takashima’s poetic argument is elusive, but asmetaphor it quite clearly was attempting a synthesis of minzokutheories as well as a synthesis of the nation itself that had splitbetween right-wing and left-wing ethnic nationalists. Significantly,Takashima saw class as a sub-category of minzoku, emphasizing thatthe bourgeoisie and the proletariat were equally members of theJapanese minzoku and each had valuable contributions to make to theminzoku. Takashima’s goal was a laudable one. He argued that byfirst separating nation (minzoku) from the state, the crisis thatconfronted Japanese nationalism could be resolved by building a civilsociety that would tame the state to serve its own purposes. But hisdemocratic theory was fatally flawed by his equation of the nationwith an ethnic body and by his dismissal of kokumin as a nationalidentity that was not moored to the natural claims of ethnicity. Ratherthan to democracy, his national theory brought him closer to nationalsocialism.

National socialism, even understood as ethnic nationalism inproletariat packaging, remained marginal to postwar Japanese

91 Takashima Zen’ya, Minzoku to kaiky� (Tokyo: Gendai hy�ronsha, 1970): 29-53.

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political culture. In part, this was because minzoku was increasinglydiscussed in isolation from the state, as a form of Nihonjinron thatsought to imbue the Japanese people with a distinctive identity notdetermined by what was seen as a bureaucratic postwar state run bythe LDP for their American masters. As the postwar state receded intomanagerial and technological bureaucratism, national identity, if notquite nationalism, became even more closely associated with minzoku.But minzoku was increasingly intoned as an ostensibly benign culturaltheory of how the people in Japan really are: their identities, valuesand traditions. As Peter Dale has summarized it,

the curious thing about the nihonjinron is that while they express,beneath a bewilderingly diverse range of ideas, a coherent ideology ofnationalism, they at the same time deny that they have anything to dowith ideology or politics. A key theme of the literature distinguishes theostensibly ideological, power-fixated character of Western discoursefrom the putatively aesthetic and sentimental expressionism of theJapanese…. Postwar nihonjinron merely attempts to salvage thisdiscourse [of prewar nationalism] by detaching it from the more overlyimperial-political idiom.92

If Takashima had hoped to move minzoku away from political theorytoward a more culturally inflected nationalism, he had succeeded inways he surely had not intended. The relationship this cultural theoryhad to nationalism may not always have been clear, but minzokucertainly had retreated from the kind of overtly political stance thatleftists like Ishimoda and Inoue, or conservatives like Yasuda andHayashi, or liberals like Yanaihara or Nanbara, had given it in theearly postwar period. It provided the people with a coherent identityof a people set apart, but the degree of identity thus achieved was alsoa measure of its distance from the institutions and organizations thatshaped political life. Nation and state were indeed separate anddistinct.

By the early 1980s, nationalism had left the realm of ideas andintellectuals and was becoming a central concern of mainstreampoliticians. This “neo-nationalism” has often been attributed both toJapan’s rising economic prosperity and to increasing frictions withJapan’s major trading partners, notably the United States. Butpersonalities played a role too. The most important individual inreviving a political theory of minzoku was Nakasone Yasuhiro. WhenNakasone became prime minister in 1982, he brought with him the

92 Peter N. Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1986), 38-39.

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long aspirations of the Democratic wing of the LDP to overturn the“abnormal” nationalism of Yoshida Shigeru and the Liberal faction’semphasis on mercantilism as a sufficient national purpose for postwarJapan. At an LDP seminar in Shizuoka in 1986, Nakasone proposed anew “liberal” nationalism that would reconcile the people with thepostwar state. Tragically, he articulated this project the following yearas the need to “reconcile internationalism with correct nationalism”which he explicitly identified with minzokushugi.93 Nakasone’semphasis on ethnic nationalism as the “correct” or “healthy” form ofnationalism, along with a series of pronouncements on Japan’s ethnichomogeneity, offended those Japanese who had begun to thinkbeyond ethnic nationalism, as well as many who simply were notready to see their ethnic national identity associated by political eliteswith the postwar state. To simply write off Nakasone as an ethnicnationalist is to miss a good deal of what he was trying to achieve. Hewas one of those postwar Japanese political elites who, as KennethPyle noted a few years after the controversy, “more often seek tocontain, if not to suppress, political nationalism.”94 Nakasone wastrying to associate the appeal the Japanese people felt for a culturaltheory of ethnicity with the state so that the Japanese state might beable to act more resolutely, with broader popular support, in theinternational arena. This project of reconciling the ethnic nation andthe state was a good part of his much ballyhooed “final accounting”of the postwar period. That he confused ethnic nationalism withliberal nationalism is easy to understand, given the long history inJapanese political discourse, dating back to the First World War, thatsought to embrace ethnic nationalism for liberal and even Marxistagendas. That his effort to reconcile the ethnic nation with the statemet with such stiff resistance tells us as much about Japaneseattitudes toward the state as it does about antipathy toward ethnicnationalism.

By the turn of the century, support for ethnic nationalism by theJapanese public, as well as among intellectuals, was fading. This turnof events is surprising, especially since nationalism was a growingfeature of intellectual and political discourse. Part of the reason forthis new devaluation of ethnic nationalism can be attributed to theshock effect of seeing a leader of the postwar democratic statereverting to a discourse that was deeply implicated in the wartime

93 Nakasone Yasuhiro, “Minzokushugi to kokusaishugi no ch�wa o,” Gekkan jiy�

minshu (October 1987): 44-61, at 44-45.94 Kenneth B. Pyle, The Japanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Era

(Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 1992): 63.

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empire (many critics immediately brought up Nakasone’s wartimeconnections with the imperial state). Another part of the reason,however, can be attribute to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 andthe general demise of Marxism around the world that followed in itswake. The two main supports of postwar ethnic nationalism–aMarxist theory that found in ethnicity a foundation for an anti-capitalist nationalism and conservatives who had accepted ethnicityas a pacifist substitute for a nationality invested in the postwarstate–had been seriously undermined. But ethnic nationalism was notonly falling of its own accord. Increasingly, it was being challengedby an alternative nationalism, a liberal nationalism that was groundedin political membership in the postwar state and which was moreconcerned with integrating the people’s loyalties into the state thanwith proclaiming their ancient ethnic lineages. This new nationalism(kokuminshugi) did not always escape the tugs of ethnicity, especiallywhen articulated by older intellectuals who had been influenced bythe postwar minzoku discourse.95 Yet, the very fact that this neo-nationalism more often preferred to be known as kokuminshugi ratherthan minzokushugi is a significant departure from the dominant appealenjoyed by ethnic nationalism in Japan for most of the twentiethcentury. How significant this change will be for the future of Japanesenationalism, and whether ethnic nationalism will eventually give wayto a more civic nationalism, only time will tell.

95 Representative of this rising kokuminshugi which, alas, did not always escape

from elements of ethnic nationalism is Matsumoto Ken’ichi, ‘Hinomaru, kimigayo’no hanashi (Tokyo: PHP Kenky�jo, 1999).

CHAPTER SEVEN

AFTERWORD:THE PLACE OF THE NATION IN JAPAN TODAY

As a handbook on Japanese nationalism, this volume has not set outto present an evaluation of nationalism, nor a particular thematicapproach to nationalism such as “nationalism and war,” “nationalismand memory,” or “nationalism and gender.” There is, at any rate, aplethora of such studies already available in English and Japanese.Instead, this volume has tried to identify the basic elements ofnationalism in Japan from which other specific arguments andassertions about nationalism in Japan have been, are, and presumablywill continue to be, built. It is comparatively easy to offer a thematicstudy on nationalism in Japan, and the bookstores and newspapers arefull of them. But without first identifying the basic building blocks ofnationalist discourse in Japan, it is impossible to fully understandwhat nationalism means in particular historical and discursiveinstances. This is particularly true when those building blocks areobscured by language that is not explicit about its sources andconceptual definitions.

The goal of this handbook has been to identify those basicelements of Japanese nationalism, but also to demonstrate how thoseelements themselves were not static but subject to historical changeover time. This process of historical change, as we have seen, is bothan effect of the internal dynamics of national discourse and ofhistorical events, both events in Japanese political life and in thebroader world. Japanese nationalist discourses, like all discourses,were structured around a common subject (tenn�, shakai, kokumin,minzoku), even as they were open to influences from other nationalistand non-nationalist discourses, most especially those concerning thestate and race. The chronological structure of the individual chaptersof this book was deemed necessary in order to convey something ofthe historical nature of these discourses. Nothing could be moremisleading than to see kokumin, minzoku or other elements ofJapanese nationalist discourse as essential, trans-historical ideas thatsimply inform nationalist debate. Certainly, some nationalists believethat to be the case (just as ethnic nationalists assert there is no

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distinction between a minzoku and a kokumin). But the historicalrecord of these basic elements of Japanese nationalism stands againstsuch reductive arguments–indeed against all efforts to erase thereality of historical specificity in the emergence and development ofnationalism.

To identify these basic building blocks of Japanese nationalism,and even to understand their historical developments is not, however,sufficient to comprehend Japanese nationalism, past or present. Acomprehensive understanding of Japanese nationalism requires yetanother conceptual move. Once these individual elements (tenn�,shakai, kokumin, minzoku) are understood in their own historical anddiscursive contexts, they must then be interrelated with each other toyield the meaning and significance of particular nationalist assertions.In essence, the individual chapters of this book need to be understoodas particular national discourses in their own independent contextsand simultaneously interwoven with and against the national elementsaddressed in others chapters at specific moments in time. At that point,we can begin to appreciate just how elusive any final grasp ofsomething as complex as nationalism truly is. This final grasp ofnationalism is not something that this book, or any book–limited asbooks are by the conventions of narrative structure and time–canbring to fruition: that must be left ultimately to the reader’s ownpowers of cognition and imagination.

Nonetheless, a brief conceptual example may at least be offered ofhow these elements can and need be interwoven: to grasp whatJapanese nationalism is in a given moment, one needs to take a cross-section of the discourses and events regarding, say, kokumin andreference it with the discourses and events shaping tenn�, shakai, andminzoku at the same moment in time. In some instances, kokumin willalign easier with tenn� than with shakai or minzoku and in other casesnot. When it does, we may have something like contemporary“official” nationalism where the kokumin is sovereign, the tenn� is asymbol of the kokumin and, by remaining distant from shakai orminzoku, the latter concepts are reserved for less-nationalisticpurposes (eg., shakai can refer to the space of residence in theterritory of the state, regardless of citizenship or nationality, minzokucan be relegated to the realm of private ethnic identity or aconsumerist approach to multi-cultural goods and service). Yet, thisdetermination must also take into account other factors, especiallyhow that particular nationalist equation relates to the state. When thestate is premised on a sovereign kokumin (as under the PostwarConstitution), the above scenario is a possibility. However, when

AFTERWORD 267

kokumin is not sovereign (as under the Meiji Imperial Constitution),then the result more closely approximates Kita Ikki’s efforts toconstruct a kokumin tenn� as a critique of the Imperial Meiji state,with its more ambiguous implications for society and ethnicity. Themost important elements indubitably are kokumin and minzoku. Moreso than the others, they directly address the question of who is or isnot a member of the nation. Since, under the current constitutionwhoever is included in the kokumin shares specific rights ofsovereignty, the relationship between kokumin and minzoku is ofcrucial importance. The greater the gap between them, the moreethnically inclusive (and by most standards, “democratic”) Japanesenationalism is. The more closely they converge, the more nationalismresembles an “ethnic nationalist” model and restricts membership inthe circle of those who constitute the nation to members of a singleethnic group. Yet, all modes of connecting these elements of nation-alism are instances of efforts to “place the people,” and thus forms ofnationalism. But the position of, and limitations around, the “people”vary widely depending on how these conceptual elements areinterwoven. And how they are interwoven has real consequences forthose within and without the Japanese nation.

Certainly, any assertion that denies the distinction betweenethnicity and citizenship (“there is no difference between the kokuminand minzoku,” or “any effort to make a distinction between kokuminand minzoku is a mere parsing of concepts, not a reality”) is merelythe familiar refrain of ethnic nationalists everywhere. A contemporaryexample may be found in a recent reprisal of Yoshimoto Taka’aki’seffort to locate Japanese nationalism in a nebulous, non-intellectualgrounding among the people. Asaba Michiaki’s Nashonarizumu(2004) is exemplary of the effort to redress the relationship betweenthe Japanese people and the state; it is also symptomatic of theinability to do so while remaining indifferent to the conceptualelements employed in historical Japanese nationalist discourse. Asabasurveys ten key nationalist texts from the Meiji period to the presentday, and he offers a promising analysis that organizes all nation-alisms around the polarities of “diffusion nationalism” (kakusannashonarizumu) and “convergent nationalism” (sh�ren nashona-rizumu).1 “Diffusion nationalism” stemmed from the FrenchRevolution and carried with it a belief in universal values; “con-

1 Asaba Michiaki, Nashonarisumu: meicho de tadoru nihon shis� ny�mon,

Chikuma Shinsho 473 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob�, 2004). Asaba acknowledges RaoulGirardet as his source for these two types of nationalism on 275.

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vergent nationalism” originated in Germany as a reaction against theNapoleonic invasion and emphasized the particular identity(“egoism”) of a nation. Note the similarities with civic (or republican)nationalism and ethnic nationalism discussed in Chapter One. Yet,what is most characteristic of Asaba’s theory is that, in the end, it isno theory at all. He not only follows Yoshimoto in erasing thehistorical distinction between minzokushugi and kokuminshugi underthe imported term of nashonarizumu, but he also asserts that Japanesenationalism is exclusively of the “convergent” (ethnic) variety. This“convergent” Japanese nationalism that Asaba upholds is a functionalequivalent of ethnic nationalism, not avant la lettre, but sans la lettre.Moreover, he joins a growing chorus of other covert ethnicnationalists who follow Yoshimoto in arguing that real nationalismlies at the instinctive level of the masses of Japanese, not among theideas of intellectuals.2

These theoretical problems aside (and they are serious), Asabaquite correctly emphasizes that the problem of nationalism in Japantoday is ultimately a matter of reconnecting the people and the state.His words are worth quoting:

Japan is now in the period of maturity in terms of its modern state….The excesses in efforts to repair [Japan’s] warped nationalism andmilitary power [during the early Sh�wa period] led to the forcing deepinto the subconscious, as a taboo, both the original choice to become amodern state and the significance of an egoism of self-existence andself-defense and its method, military power, which we have not beenable to think about during the postwar period….

Thus we are on an asymptotic line toward the recovery of what weneed: an equation of ‘state consciousness’ [kokka ishiki] with autonomy[shutaisei]. That is the current state of ‘nationalism’ in Japan.3

Asaba is no doubt correct that this subconscious desire for nationalrespect and national autonomy is coming to the fore among ordinarypeople in Japan. He is also quite correct to note that intellectuals maybe the last to recognize what is truly at stage in this “neo-nationalism”or return to a sense of responsibility for the defense of one’s ownnation. But his argument is truly a double-irony: Like Yoshimoto, herejects intellectual representations of this nationalizing phenomenon(he gestures instead toward manga, film, science fiction, etc. assources of this populist neo-nationalism), but he does so within the

2 Cf. Kayama Rika, Puchi nashonarizumu sh�k�gun: wakamono-tachi no

nipponshugi, Ch�k� shinsho rakure 62 (Tokyo: Ch�� k�ron Shinsha, 2002).3 Asaba, Nashonarizumu, 288-9.

AFTERWORD 269

traditional genre of intellectual discourse: an academic book repletewith abstract, even mathematical, jargon.

Whether intentionally or not, Asaba conveys an important truthabout the state of nationalism in Japan today. It is not being addressedmost effectively by intellectuals, even anti-intellectual intellectualslike Asaba and Yoshimoto. Rather, it is from journalists andpoliticians that the most promising inflections of nationalism arebeing articulated–and even more importantly–taken up as part of aneffort to strengthen democracy in Japan. The outbreak of the PersianGulf War in 1991 was a watershed event. When Japan was criticizedfor not sending troops to the arena and only offering monetaryassistance instead, the Japanese government was criticized for its“checkbook diplomacy.” But what could Japan do? It was a nearlyunanimous view among Japanese politicians, lawyers and judges thatthe postwar Constitution’s Article Nine forbade sending Japanesetroops out of the region, even as part of a United Nations or CoalitionForce. This event led to a recognition that if Japan were to pursuedemocracy while respecting its postwar Constitution, it could notparticipate with other democratic nations in their internationalmilitary operations. Japan would be democratic, but isolated. WereJapan to join in international missions (and move closer to therequirements of a leadership position in the United Nations), it wouldrisk at a minimum the appearance of violating the letter of theConstitution’s Article Nine.

Ozawa Ichir�, one of Japan’s best-known politicians, tried toaddress these problems in his 1993 Blueprint for a New Japan. Hisbook has been fairly described as a “manifesto for a normal country.”4

Ozawa drew on the pioneering efforts by Prime Minister NakasoneYasuhiro during the mid-1980s to strengthen the office of the primeminister, as the chief representative of the people, and to connect theinstitutions of government with what he called “healthy nationalism”(kenzen na kokuminshugi). Ozawa’s contribution was to pick up thiseffort to redress the unhealthy alienation of popular nationalism fromthe state and to do so without falling into Nakasone’s ethnicnationalism (minzokushugi). He emphasized the need for Japan tobecome and act as a “normal country” (futs� no kuni), by which hechiefly meant liberating Japan from the abnormal restraints on itsmilitary imposed by Article Nine and a misunderstanding of “theYoshida Doctrine” that held Japan should always disavow its right to

4 Asaba, Nashonarizumu, 250.

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self-defense.5 His definition of a “normal country” is worthy ofattention:

What, then, must Japan do to become a true, “global state”? … Japanmust become a “normal country.”

What is a “normal country”? First, it is a country that willinglyshoulders those responsibilities regarded as natural in the internationalcommunity. It does not refuse such burdens on account of domesticpolitical difficulties. Nor does it take action unwillingly as a result of“international pressure.” 6

Ozawa did not directly address nationalism per se, but by avoidingthe language of ethnic nationalism and by calling on Japanese tobecome “a society that values the individual”7, he clearly was callingfor an enhancement in Japanese society of everything that wenormally associate with civic nationalism. The underlying civicnationalism is evident in his surprising remark that it is not theJapanese state that inhibits civic democracy but the Japanese peoplethemselves. He concluded that “the biggest source of our lack offreedom lies with the people…. As long as citizens are unable orunwilling to take responsibility for themselves, we will have only aquasi-democracy, no matter how much politicians and bureaucratsstrive to institute democratic practices.”8

Ozawa’s point that the key to democratic practice lies with thepeople is an important reminder that nationalism–the particular wayin which “the people” are placed in relation to political, ethical andcivic values–is a bottom up, not a top-down social phenomenon. Yet,it certainly will not suffice to simply wait for a bottom-up movementto happen spontaneously. One of the most astute of observers andpractitioners of politics in Japan is Abe Shinz�, son of a foreignminister and grandson of a prime minister, who became Japan’syoungest prime minister on 26 September 2006. Abe is also the firstprime minister who was born in the postwar period, and thus has nopersonal link to the wartime. These personal facts give Abe a uniqueperspective on nationalism in Japan today.

5 Ozawa Ichiro, Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation, trans.

Louisa Rubinfein, edited by Eric Gower, (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994). Cf.with Ozawa’s original terminology, cited in Asaba, 250.

6 Ozawa Ichiro, Blueprint for a New Japan, 94. I have changed Rubinfein’stranslation slightly: where she refers to “normal nation,” I render the concept “normalcountry.”

7 Ozawa Ichiro, Blueprint for a New Japan, 156-88 Ozawa Ichiro, Blueprint for a New Japan, 203.

AFTERWORD 271

Just prior to his election as prime minister, Abe published a book,Toward a Beautiful Country, that builds on the previous work ofNakasone and Ozawa in moving Japanese society towards a tighterembrace of “healthy nationalism,” or kokuminshugi. Like Ozawa, hedoes not embrace minzokushugi in the way that Nakasone did. Butunlike Ozawa, Abe directly addresses the topic of nationalism,providing us with a sense of where he stands in the discourse and howhe “places the Japanese people” as a nation. Although he refers tonationalism in the ambiguous foreign loanword favored byYoshimoto and Asaba (nashonarizumu), even a cursory reading of hisbook is enough to grasp that his nationalism in founded on the civicvalues and patriotic sensibilities that place the nation in an ethnic-freecontext that emphasizes individual freedom. Abe’s favored term forthe nation is not minzoku, but kokumin. And he writes in movingterms of how national sports teams, particular in the World Cupsoccer tournament, include nationals of various ethnicities. Inreference to Japan’s own national team’s efforts to qualify for the1994 World Cup, he notes

At the “Doha tragedy” of 1993, when Japan entered the World Cupqualifying rounds for the first time, the native-born Brazilian [Ruy]Ramos shed tears of disappointment along with the Japanese. Eventoday, he is greeted with heartfelt applause when he performs in themajor Japanese cities. We really have to see that this sense of belongingto the community is found in this consciousness that anyone who fightsunder the Hi-no-Maru flag, regardless of his country of origin, is one ofus.9

Abe invokes a nationalism that locates the people as those who giveallegiance to the flag and anthem of their country, not those whoshare the same blood or descent. His example of soccer is well made.Although Ramos was unable to play for Japan in World Cupcompetition due to his retirement in 1998, another naturalizedBrazilian, Alessandro “Alex” Santos has played with the Japanesenational team in both the 2002 and 2006 World Cup competitions.Ramos and Alex have given the Japanese people and the worldundeniable evidence of the multi-ethnic nature of the legal, Japanesenation (kokumin).

This emphasis on the kokumin as defined by laws, institutions andloyalty to the state is precisely what is meant by civic nationalism andstands in direct opposition to ethnic nationalism. In this regard, Abe is

9 Abe Shinz�, Utsukushii kuni e, Bungei shinsho 524 (Tokyo: Bungei Shunj�,

2006), 80-81.

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certainly no epigone of Nakasone. He directly rejects ethnicnationalism, noting that when nationalism is translated asminzokushugi, it encourages people to accept an untenable allegianceto two national flags. He implies that when “progressive” intellectualsseparate Japanese nationalism into two types, they often do so only todiscourage the Japanese people from embracing the kind ofnationalism necessary for a democratic nation-state (kokumin-kokka).His civic nationalism is encapsulated in his insistence that “whenJapanese wave the Hi-no-Maru national flag, they are not expressingany kind of intolerant nationalism.10 Of course, when “progressive”intellectuals criticize the nationalism of Abe and other democraticrepresentatives, it is critical to understand that they do not alwaysreject all forms of nationalism. They are often simply afraid that thiscivic nationalism, this multi-ethnic citizenship that embracesnaturalized citizens like Ramos and Alex, is leaving their ownpreferred ethnic nationalism in the dustbin of history. It is preciselyfor this reason that any critique of nationalism in Japan must begin byclarifying its terms.

The various controversies over a supposed neo-nationalism inJapan today need to be seen in this light. Whether it is the question ofPrime Minister Abe’s future visits to Yasukuni Shrine, the issue ofhistory textbooks, proposals to revise the Constitution, or Japan’sdispatching a small force to assist behind the lines in the war againstterrorism in Iraq, the most important question is how the relationshipof the various elements of Japanese nationalism–minzoku, kokumin,shakai, tenno–are mobilized in particular assessments of a givencontroversy. To take but one example, the issue of visits to YasukuniShrine. Former Prime Minister Koizumi made it clear in the past thathe visited the Shrine to pay respects to those who sacrificed their livesfor Japan, not for any religious purpose. Moreover, his visits wereapplauded by Catholic Japanese like Sono Ayako and Miura Shumon,who also visited Yasukuni to pay their respects to those who died fortheir country.11 Such visits were ruled constitutional by the SupremeCourt in a 1977 decision that affirmed that visits to Yasukuni “forpurposes of rituals in keeping with social customs, are not considered

10 Abe Shinz�, Utsukushii kuni e, 98-99.11 I have written on the history of Catholicism’s respect for visits to Yasukuni

Shrine in various Japanese media. See, for example, “Yasukuni sanpai no k�satsu ch�,Sankei Shimbun (26 May 2006); “Sanpai wa ‘seinaru mono’ e no apur�chi da,”Shokun! (August 2006): 24-35, ‘Shink�’ kara mita yasukuni sampai mondai,” Voice(September 2006): 195-201.

AFTERWORD 273

as religious acts.”12 Prime Minister Abe supports the constitutionalguarantee of freedom of religion, noting that the monarch is, andalways had been, a symbolic monarch. By way of contrast, it isimportant to note that, among Prime Minister Abe’s critics are thosewho see the emperor as an ethnic tribal chieftain, or who feel thatvisits to Yasukuni Shrine are part and parcel of a revival of Shintoismas an ethnic religion required of all Japanese. Such arguments aredifficult to take seriously, however, in light of the fact that those soulsenshrined at Yasukuni include former soldiers of various ethnicitiesand religions.

Will Prime Minister Abe succeed in enhancing a sense of civilnationalism (and with it, civic responsibility) among the Japanesepublic? Will the “subconscious” ethnic nationalism that manyintellectuals embrace overwhelm this more open, international, civicnationalism? How will the pieces of Japanese nationalism be put backtogether? It would require either extraordinary sagacity or unboundedimprudence to predict the future. There are, however, grounds foroptimism when the current culture of Japanese pacifism, globalismand democracy are taken into account in understanding the reasonsfor the current awakening of interest in nationalism in Japan. Thisbook has emphasized that nationalism in Japan, as in all modernsocieties, has been a conflict-filled mode of consciousness thatappeals to humanity’s highest hopes for community, respect, love,and compassion as well as to our lowest temptations towardselfishness, arrogance, hatred and indifference. Democracy isimpossible without nationalism, but so too was fascism. Ifnationalism has been so contested and yet essential to democratic lifethroughout the world, how could it be anything less in Japan?

12 Supreme Court decision (1977), cited in Abe Shinz�, Utsukushii kuni, 66-7.

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INDEX

Abe Is�, 147, 150, 168, 199Abe Jir�, 228Abe Shinz�, 270-273aesthetics, 177-183; Hegelian 181;

personalist, 183Aizawa Seishisai, 40, 41, 84, 87Akizuki Tanetatsu, 53-55Amino Yoshihiko, 120Anderson, Benedict, 226Anno Kinzane, 56Anpo (see US-Japan Security Treaty),

29, 30, 159 , 162, 260Arano Yasunori, 166-167Arendt, Hannah, 79,Arisugawa Taruhito, Prince, 48-52Armstrong, John, 7Asaba Michiaki, 267-269, 271Ashida Hitoshi, 113Ashio Copper Mine Incident, 146-147Asukai Masamichi, 179

bakufu, 42-49, 52, 58, 61, 66, 87, 166,168-169, 216, 220

baku-han system, 38, 40, 42, 61, 167;dissolution of, 39, 42-49, 52, 58,61, 66

Bälz, Erwin von, 221Band� Hiroshi, 25Barnes, Harry Elmer, 15,Bauer, Otto, 15, 17, 23, 231, 234Befu, Harumi, 160Benedict, Ruth, 251Bluntschli, Johann Caspar, 71, 144Boissonade, Gustave Emile, 69, 185,

192Buddhism, 167, 190, 227bunmei kaika (see civilization and

enlightenment), 170

Catholic Funeral Affair, 106Catholic political theory, 100

Catholics, 85, 98-100, 117-118, 185,198, 244, 272

Chambers, William G. and Robert,178

Charter Oath, 50-51, 54, 57Chiba Takusabur�, 73, 185Chirot, Daniel, 197Christ (see also Jesus), 198Christianity, 55, 94-101, 105-106, 109,157, 167-168, 185, 187-190, 198-199,206, 223-224, 226-227

Christians (see also Catholics,Kumamoto Band of), 145, 147, 150,167-168, 184, 186-188, 194, 196,198, 207, 223, 225-226, 243-244,252

ch�-kokkashugi (see ultra-nationalism), 25-26, 28

Ch�sh� domain, 47, 59-61civic nationalism, 6, 80, 205-208, 212,

264, 270-273civil society (shimin shakai), 41, 63-

64, 72, 76, 78, 80-82, 158-162,168-169, 185, 189-190, 261

Civil Society School, 156, 159civilization and enlightenment (see

bunmei kaika), 169-170commoners, 44, 52, 75, 79, 133, 136-

137, 141communism, in Japan, 256constitution: Japanese, 51, 68, 69, 73,

192-195, 205, 221-222, 242;Imperial Constitution of 1889(Meiji), 62-63, 73, 81-82, 88, 91-97, 101, 103, 115, 122, 148, 175-176, 193-197, 220, 244, 267; ofJapan (postwar), 33, 118, 122-124,191, 204-205, 266, 269, 272

cultural nationalism (seeKulturnation), 3, 29, 108, 117, 156,194-195, 203, 223-224

INDEX286

Daj�kan, 45, 49, 51-53, 56-61, 67, 68,140, 166

Dale, Peter, 262Dan Takuma, Baron, 123domains, abolition of (see haihan

chiken), 59, 60, 173Dumas, Alexandre, Ange Pitou, 74-79,

217

Ebina Danj�, 225Egami Namio, 256Eguchi Bokur�, 258, 2611881 Political Crisis, 71, 73, 90, 175,

177, 179Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 80, 160, 185emperor, of Japan (see tenn�), 37, 40-

45, 48-52, 70-77, 103-108, 110-116, 118-125, 147-148, 168, 193,197, 273

Emperor Godaigo, 120, 122Emperor Heisei (Akihito), 122-123Emperor Meiji (Mutsuhito), 77, 104,

112Emperor Showa (Hirohito) 110, 112,

115, 122, 124-125Emperor Taisho (Yoshihito), 112Enomoto Takeaki, 91, 92Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, 9-10étatism (see kokkashugi, statism), 2, 6,

27, 94,ethnie, 7-8ethnic nationalism, 9-10, 22-24, 28-35,

108, 110, 114, 121-122, 148, 156,164-165, 180, 192-194, 197, 200,205-206, 208-209, 211-212, 216-217, 220, 223-224, 226, 228, 230,232, 235, 239, 242, 245, 248, 251-253, 255-257, 259-261, 263-264,268-273

Ethnic Research Institute, 153, 241,247

ethnology, and nationalism, 221Ethnology, Japanese Journal of, 153Ethnology, Japanese Society of, 153,

238Et� Shimpei, 62, 67, 140

Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco, 180-181Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 169, 252-253French Revolution, 79, 83, 138-139,

141, 267; impact on Japan, 73-79

Fujioka Nobukatsu, 211-212Fujioka Wakao, 161-162Fujita Sh�z�, 119Fujita Tok�, 88fukoku ky�hei (rich country, strong

military), 67Fukuchi Gen’ichir�, 133Fukuoka Takachika (K�tei), 50-54Fukuzawa Yukichi, 26, 64, 69, 73,

87-89, 105-110, 125, 130-132, 134,140, 166, 168, 171-172, 178, 198,207-208, 242

Furuno Kiyoto (Kiyondo), 239, 241 Gayle, Curtis Anderson, 207, 257Gellner, Ernest, 10, 128-129Gen’y�sha, 216-217George, Henry, 224Gibbons, Herbert Adams, 15Giddens, Anthony, 128-129Giji Taisai Torishirabesho, 54gij�, 49, 52, 54,Giseikan, 52-53Gluck, Carol, 81Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, 21,goken und� (protect constitution

movement), 104, 107Goldfarb, Jeffrey C., 213, 215Gooch, G.P., 15, 230Got� Sh�jir�, 48, 52Greenfeld, Liah, 5-10, 129, 135, 169,

197Gumplowics, Ludwig, 224gunken, 55-56, 61

Haga Noboru, 71, 89Hagi Uprising of 1876, 62, 216haihan chiken (abolition of domains,

establishment of prefectures; seedomains, abolition of), 173

Hamano Teishir�, 176Hani Gor�, 121,Harootunian, H.D., 41, 150Hasegawa Nyozekan, 234Hashikawa Bunz�, 31-32Hashimoto Mitsuru, 219, 233, 237Hashimoto Ry�tar�, 124Havens, Thomas R.H., 200-203Hayashi Fusao, 121-122, 202, 236,

261-262Hayashi Kentar�, 157

INDEX 287

Hayashi Shihei, 40Hayes, Carlton J.H., 15, 19-21, 233Hi-no-maru ( see national flag), 214,

271-272Hibiya Riots of 1905, 102, 200High Treason Incident, 103, 149Hirata Atsutane, 43, 140Hirokawa Hisashi, 235Hishinuma Gor�, 123Hobson, J.A., 15-17, 242, 254h�ken, 55Hopkins, Caspar, 133Howland, Douglas, 131Hozumi Yatsuka, 109

Ichimura Mitsue, 109Ida Shin’ya, 178Igarashi Akio, 168Ikeda Hayato, 208, 261Ienaga Sabur�, 121Ikimatsu Keiz�, 149Imanaka Tsugimaro, 261Imperial Rescript, 61, 91-94, 97-100

103, 167, 175imperialism, 11, 15-16 , 20-25, 37,

102-103, 114, 212, 224-225, 228,231, 244, 248, 253, 255, 259

Ino Kenji, 217Inoue Kaoru, 61, 69, 91, 140-141,

192Inoue Kiyoshi, 121, 216-217, 258-259,

261-262Inoue Kowashi, 74, 82, 96Inoue Mitsu, 109Inoue Shun, 160Inoue Tetsujir�, as anti-Christian, 97-

105, 145, 168, 188, 192, 196, 219,223, 225-226

Inukai Tsuyoshi, 104-105Irokawa Daikichi, 185, 189Ishida Eiichir�, 256Ishida Kannosuke, 153, 239Ishida Takeshi, 143, 147-149, 155,

157, 159, 161-162Ishikawa Sanshir�, 199Ishimoda Sh�, 258-259, 261-262Ishiwara Kanji, 241, 248Itagaki Taisuke, 59-62, 73-74, 216It� Hirobumi, 51-52, 72-73, 86, 88-

92, 99-100, 175, 179, 192It� Miyoji, 88-89, 91

It� Yahiko, 42Iwakura Tomomi, 216Iwamoto Yoshiharu, 97Izu Tadao, 235

Janes, Capt. Leroy, 186Japan Romantic School, 119,121, 236,

260Japanism (see Nipponshugi), 223Jesus, 99jimbun minzoku (see Kulturvölker),

13Jimp�ren Incident of 1876, 216jinsai t�y� (rewarding talent ), 46, 59Joseph, Bernard, 15

Kada Tetsuji, 15, 245Kaempfer Engelbert, 40Kageyama Masaharu, 252-253Kaji Ry�ichi, 141Kamei Kan’ichir�, 218, 248-249Kamei Katsuichir�, 121-122, 202,

236Kamikawa Hikomatsu, 21, 233Kamishima Jir�, 119Kanai En, 168Kanda Takahira (K�hei), 54, 57, 171-

172Kaneko Kentar�, 88Kano Masanao, 38, 40, 145Karube Tadashi, 206Kashiwagi Gien, 101, 168, 196Katayama Sen, 103, 147, 199Kat� Hiroyuki, 54, 67, 72, 109, 136,

144, 196, 220, 242Katsura Tar�, 104-105, 149-150Katsuragi Kenji, 162Katsuta Masaharu, 56, 61Kawakami Kiyoshi, 147, 199Kawazu Sukeyuki, 73-74kazoku (Peers), 78Kazunomiya, Princess, 47Kenkoku University, 241Kersten, Rikki, 125, 157-158, 208,

212Kido Takayoshi (K�in), 47, 50-52,

60-61, 68, 70, 79Kikuchi Takeo, 111Kimi-ga-yo (see national anthem),

214Kimura Junji, 87, 119

INDEX288

Kimura Takatar�, 222-223Kinoshita Naoe, 147, 199Kirchhoff, A., 14-15Kirishitan (see Catholics), 85Kita Ikki, 103-104, 107-108, 201, 267Kitazawa Sh�ji, 180-181Kobayashi Yoshinori, 212k�bu gattai (unification of court and

camp), 47k�gi seitai ron (debate on government

through public consultation), 48,51, 54, 57

k�gi yoron (public consultation), 46K�gisho, 54-58Kohata Tokujir�, 172Kohn, Hans, 6-7, 10, 165Koizumi Jun’ichir�, 124, 272Koizumi Shinkichi, 172Kojima Hatsuo, 235kokkashugi (see statism), - 3, 25, 27,

29, 94-95, 167, 196, 200-201, 207,228

kokumin, 2, 8-9, 13-14, 22, 26-35, 38,43, 67, 73, 75-76, 82, 89, 96, 101,106-107, 111-119, 144, 151-152,155-156, 158, 163-170, 172-178,184-188, 190-196, 198-207, 209-210, 215, 229, 232, 235, 238, 261,265-267, 271-272

kokumin-kokka (civic nation-state),31, 36, 38-39, 56-57, 169, 176, 202,212, 272

kokumin seishin s�d�in (see NationalSpiritual Mobilization), 32-33, 202

kokuminshugi, 2-3, 27, 30, 35, 167-168, 172, 176-177, 184, 198-201,205, 207, 210, 232, 264, 268-269,271

Kokury�kai, 217Kokuseki H� (see Nationality Act),

195kokutai, 40-41, 84-89, 94-95, 104,

106-107, 111-113, 115, 121, 201,219, 226

Komatsu Kentar�, 15, 245, 254Konoe cabinet, 202K�saka Masa’aki, 246-247, 254K�saka Masataka, 202K�toku Sh�sui, 102, 147, 199Koya Yoshio, 15, 245Koyama Eiz�, 153, 239

Koyanagi Kimihiro, 162Kozaki Hiromichi, 167, 169, 186,

188-191, 198, 207Kubokawa Tsurujir�, 256-257Kuga Katsunan, 194, 196, 219Kulturnation, 13-14, 254Kulturvölker (see jimbun minzoku),

13, 224Kumamoto Band of Christians (see

Christians), 101, 186, 188Kume Kunitake, 101Kurimoto Joun, 66Kuroda Kiyotaka, 91Kurokawa Mayori, 221Kuwata Yoshiz�, 239Kyoto School philosophers, 202, 246

Lamprecht, Karl, 230law, civil codes, 65Lenin, Vladimir, 15,Liberal School of History, 124-125,

211-212Linguel, Fr. François A.D., 98-100,

244

MacArthur, General Douglas, 115,156, 204

Maclay, Rev. R.S., 185Maebara Issei, 52, 62Maeda, Fr. Ch�ta, 98-100, 118, 244Maehara Mitsuo, 245Makihara Norio, 143-144, 172Maruyama Masao, 25-29, 86, 93-94

119, 156-158, 206-208Maruyama (“Modernization”) School,

119Masaki Masato, 230-231Mashita Shin’ichi, 157Matsubara, Hiroshi (see Suga Hirota),

24-25, 235Matsuda K�ichir�, 198Matsukata Masayoshi, 91, 197Matsumoto Hikojir�, 226-228Matsumoto Ken’ichi, 214Matsumoto Sannosuke, 92, 119Matsumoto Shinpachir�, 258Matsuura Takeshir�, 173McDougall, William, 15, 18-19, 21-

22, 152, 230, 233, 238, 254Meinecke, Friedrich, 12-15, 26Mill, John Stuart, 16-17, 131

INDEX 289

Minami Hiroshi, 157minken (rights of the people), 65-73,

81-82, 87, 90-91Minobe Tatsukichi, 104, 109, 111,

115, 125Minoda Muneki (Ky�ki), 111, 243minzoku, 2-3, 9, 15, 21, 25-26, 28, 30-

35, 67, 69, 71, 76-80, 101, 106,111, 114, 122, 134-135, 144, 148,150-153, 155-156, 158, 160-161,163, 165, 169-170, 176, 193-194,199, 204, 206-211, 214, 216-262,264-267, 271-272

minzoku chitsujo, 241minzoku-kokka (ethnic nation-state),

9-13, 22, 26-27, 31-33, 36, 38-39,56-57, 211-212, 214, 246

minzokushugi, 2-3, 26-27, 29, 31-33,82, 176. 180-181, 197, 208, 216-219, 226, 232-233, 239, 250, 263-264, 268-269, 271-272

Mishima Yukio, 121, 261Mita Historiographical Institute, 227Mitsukuri Rinsh�, 62, 64-65, 67, 70,

78, 80-82, 133Miura Shumon, 272Miwa, Kimitada, 112-113, 121Miyajima Seiichir�, 59Miyake Setsurei, 194Miyamoto Kenji, 113-114Miyazaki Mury�, 62, 64, 71, 74-80,

82, 217-218Mizuno Hiroshi, 120monarchy (see tenn�), 34-35, 58, 63,

70, 72, 83-85, 87, 89-93, 96, 98,100-109, 112-126, 136, 139, 169-170, 179; of Japan, 115, 121, 125,201, 216, 242; as k�tei, 102, 115

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat,Baron de La Brède et de, 64-65,69-70, 72

Mori Arinori, 54-55, 57, 67, 91, 133Mori K�ichi, 235M�ri Takachika, 60Morse, Edward S., 221Motoda Nagazane (Eifu), 96-97Motoori Norinaga, 39Motoyama Yukihiko, 194-195Mulford, Elisha, 190Müller, Adam, 12Müller, Max, 224

Muir, Ramsay, 15-18, 21, 230, 233,238, 246, 254

Murofushi Takanobu, 216Murota Mitsuyoshi, 70-71, 135, 217-

218

Nabeyama Sadachika, 234-235Nagamine Hideki, 135Nagasaki, as distinct minzoku, 238Nagashima Matao, 24, 234Nagata Kiyoshi, 245Nait� Chis�, 221Najita, Tetsuo, 62Naka Hisao, 241Nakae Ch�min, 62, 66, 133, 138, 168,

177-185, 192, 207, 218Nakamura Ky�shir�, 229Nakamura Masanao (Keiu), 95-96,

100, 127, 132, 134, 167Nakano Seiichi, 14, 24, 247-248Nakasone Yasuhiro, 124, 210-211,

262-264, 269, 271-272Nakatani Takeyo, 21, 233Nakayama Ky�shir�, 229Nakayama Tadayasu, 49Nanbara Shigeru, 252-253, 262nashonarizumu (English load word

for nationalism), 3, 29-31, 267-268,271

nation, etymology of, 5-6, 20-21, 38-39

nation-state (see kokumin-kokka,minzoku-kokka), 36-38, 39, 56-57128-129, 169, 171-172, 176, 191,202, 211-212, 214, 225-226, 230-232, 246, 260, 272

national anthem (see Kimi-ga-yo),214

national flag, (see Hi-no-maru), 214,272

National Spiritual Mobilization (seekokumin seishin s�d�in), 202

Nationality Act (see Kokuseki H�),148

nativism, 39, 41-43, 55, 87, 89Naturvölker (see shizen minzoku), 13,

224Neuman, J., 15Nihonjinron (discourse on being

Japanese), 160-162, 209-210, 262Niijima J�, 101

INDEX290

Nipponshugi (see Japanism), 223Nishi Amane, 71, 132Nishi Masao, 24, 234Nishikawa K�jir�, 147, 199Nishikawa Nagao, 169, 196-197, 252Nishimura Shigeki, 171, 178Nishio Kanji, 212Nishitani Keiji, 202Nitobe Inaz�, 168Nomura Yasushi, 61Novalis, 12,

�e Shinobu, 136�e Taku, 136Oguma Eiji, 98, 114, 221, 223, 251Ogy� Sorai, 183�hara Shigetoku, 57�hira Masayoshi, 209�i Kentar�, 62, 66Oka Masao, 237, 240, 255-256�ki Takat�, 53-54, 69�kubo Toshimichi, 47, 140, 216;

1878 assassination of, 216�kuma Shigenobu, 52, 73, 90-91,

175, 179, 192Orikuchi Shinobu, political theology,

110Oshikawa Masayoshi, 97�ta Takeo , 235�tsuka Hisao, 156�yama Ikuo, 151, 228, 231�yama Iwao, 91Ozaki Hotsumi, 248Ozaki Yukio, 104, 168Ozawa Ichir�, 269-271

patriotism (aikokushugi, aikokushin),20-21 28, 31-32, 98, 101-102, 159,175, 185-186, 199

People’s Rights Movement, 13, 28,63-64, 66, 72, 74-75, 77-78, 87,105, 109, 133, 143-144, 146, 177,187, 194, 196-197, 217, 223

Perry, Commodore, 31, 37, 41-46,174

Pillsbury, William B., 15, 18-19, 21,233

Pittau, Joseph, 85Pyle, Kenneth B., 211, 263

race, and nationality, 7-8, 16-17, 19-20, 26-27, 31, 184, 205, 224-225,233, 237, 244, 246, 250-251, 254

Ramos, Ruy, 271-272Renan, Ernest, 16, 169, 193

Saeki Keishi, 213-214Saga domain, 66Saga Uprising of 1874, 216Saig� Takamori, 47, 61, 179, 216Sa-in (Left Chamber), 62Sait� Tsuyoshi, 130, 133, 176, 218-

219Sakaguchi Takakimi, 13-14Sakai Toshihiko, 147Sakamoto Ry�ma, 48Sakamoto Takao, 38, 96, 108Sakuda Sh�ichi, 241Sakurada Momoe, 75-76Sakurai Yoshiko, 214-215Sanj� Sanetomi, 48Sano Manabu, 24sanshoku (Three Offices), 49Santo, Alessandro “Alex, ”, 271san’yo, 49, 53-54Sasaki Takayuki, 141Sat-Ch� clique, 90, 92, 105, 164Sat� Masayuki, 134, 154Satsuma domain, 47, 52, 58-60, 79,

90-91Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, 69, 107,

179, 185, 216Scheiner, Irwin, 184-185Schlegel, Friedrich, 12Schnee, Heinrich, 15Seitaisho (“Constitution of 1868”), 51,

67Seki Eikichi, 152Seton-Watson, Hugh, 7shakai, 35, 127-129, 132-135, 143-

145, 147, 149-152, 154-155, 160,163, 199, 218, 245, 265-266, 272

shakai mondai, 80, 145, 147Shibusawa Eiichi, 140Shibusawa Keiz�, 239shid� minzoku (Herrenvolk), 241Shiga Shigetaka, 194-195, 219-220Shiga Yoshio, 113-114, 155Shimada Sabur�, 168Shimaji Mokurai, 188Shimazaki T�son, 31

INDEX 291

Shimazu Hisamitsu, 47, 140Shimizu Ikutar�, 157-160, 245Shimizu T�ru, 109Shimmei Masamichi, 245, 253-256Shinmura Izuru, 239Shinto, 31, 89, 95-96, 101, 109, 117-

119, 124, 168, 196, 223-224, 226-228, 243, 273

Shinto theology, 108Shirakawa Sukenori, 49Shiratori Kurakichi, 239shizen minzoku (see Naturvölker), 13,

224Shizuki Tadao, 40Sh�toku, Prince, 38Sh�giin, 57-59Siebold, Heinrich Phillipp von, 221Sieyés, Abbe Emmanuel Joseph, 67,

78Silberman, Bernard, 89-90Smith, Anthony D., 7-8, 11, 83soccer, and nationalism, 271social outcastes (burakumin, eta,

hinin) 120, 136-137socialism , Meiji, Society for the

Study of, 102, 147, 150, 199, 203;Society for, 199, 203,

sociology, 15, 128, 145, 149, 151-152,160, 163; and nationalism, 237-240

Soejima Taneomi, 51-52, 67Sokoku, 259sonn� j�i (respect the monarch, expel

the barbarians), 89Sono Ayako, 272s�sai, 49Spenser, Herbert, 176Springer, Rudolph, 227Staatsnation, (see also kokumin) 12-

14Stalin, Joseph, 15, 17, 23-25, 28, 30,

234-235Stalinist nationalism, 22, 24-25, 29-30state, distinct from nation, 1-11, 13-15,

20-36, 235-236, 239-241, 243-244,251, 254-255, 258, 261-264, 266

statism (see kokkashugi), 94-95, 156,175, 196, 200, 203, 205, 207, 228

Suga Hirota (see Matsubara Hiroshi),235

Sugano Hachir�, 44

Sun Yatsen, and ethnic nationalism,219

Taguchi Ukichi, 71, 135, 168Taisho Political Crisis, 149-150taish� (the people, masses), 31, 35,

117, 157, 161, 217, 226. 237, 254-255, 257-258, 262-264

Takahashi Tetsuya, 124-125Takamura Itsue, 110Takashima Zen’ya, 157, 208, 261-262Takata Yasuma, 15, 24, 150-152,

239-241, 245, 247-249, 253, 255Takayama Chogy�, 13, 223-226Takekoshi Yosabur�, 44, 225Takeshita (Noboru) cabinet, 123Takeuchi Yoshimi, 260-261Tanabe Hajime, 202Tanaka Akira, 43Tanaka K�tar�, 117-119, 121, 125,

234, 243-244Tanaka Sh�z�, 146-147Tanaka, Stefan,180-181Tanaka Suiichir�, 227-228Tani Kanj�, 192Tarui T�kichi, 145-146tenn� (monarch of Japan), 35, 38, 42,

83-84, 86-88, 93, 95-96, 100, 102,109-110, 112-113, 115, 117, 121,124-125, 219, 265-267, 272

Thelle, Notto, 167Theology, Liberal, 102, 198-199Tilly, Charles, 8-9Tocqueville, Alexis de, 190T�j� Hideki, 241Tokuda Ky�ichi, 113, 155Tokugawa Akitake, 66Tokugawa Iemochi, 47Tokugawa Yoshikatsu, 59Tokugawa Yoshinobu (Keiki), 48Tokutomi Soh�, 101, 168, 194, 220,

229Toma Seita, 258Torio Koyata, 61, 70Tosa domain, 47-48, 50, 59-60, 62, 70,

74, 79, 152; as distinct minzoku,238

Tosa Federation, 59-60Tosaka Jun, 235T�yama Mitsuru, 216T�yama Shigeki, 28-31, 217, 258

INDEX292

Tsuchikata Teiichi, 180-181Tsuda Mamichi, 54, 66-67Tsuda School, 121-122Tsuda S�kichi, 115-116, 120-122Tsuru Shigeto, 157Twentieth Century Research Institute,

157

Uchida Ry�hei, 217Uchimura Kanz�, 97-99, 147, 168,

223, 243Ueki Emori, 73, 168Uemura Masahisa, 97, 184, 186-188Uesugi Shin’kichi, 109, 231, 242Ukita Kazutami, 168, 225ultra-nationalism (see ch�-

kokkashugi), 25-26Uno Enk�, 153, 239US-Japan Security Treaty (see Anpo)

29, 159, 208, 260Usui Jish�, 14, 151-152, 238Utsumi Takashi, 235Utsurikawa Nenoz�, 239

Véron, Eugène, 178-179, 181-184Vigroux, Fr. Francis, 185Volk, 10, 14, 76, 78-79, 139, 141, 152,

169, 249Volk-Staat, 242

Wakamori Tar�, 121, 255-256Watanabe Osamu, 176

Watanuki Tetsuo, 152, 238-239Watase Tsunekichi, 223-224Watsuji Tetsur�, 115-117, 205-206Wilson, George M., 104Wundt, Wilhelm Max, 227

Yamada Akiyoshi, 91Yamaguchi Masao, 120-121Yamaji Aizan, 168, 225Yamamuro Shin’ichi, 64, 67, 81-82,

172-175, 191, 220, 249Yamanouchi Toyoshige, 47-48, 54-55,

57-58Yanagita Kunio, 154-155, 237, 255-

256Yanaihara Tadao, 15, 22, 243-245,

252, 262Yasuda Hiroshi, 219Yasuda Yoj�r�, 110, 119, 236-237,

243, 246, 259-260, 262Yasukuni Shrine, 124, 272-272Yokoyama Gennosuke, 168Yonehara Ken, 106, 220Yonetani Masafumi, 115Yoon Keun-Cha, 148, 170, 220Yoshida Shigeru, 118, 263, 270Yoshimoto Taka’aki, 29-32, 197-198,

229, 267-269, 271Yoshino K�saku, 160Yoshino Sakuz�, 228-229Yoshioka Tokumei, 87