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Kōtoku Shūsui and Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Fred G. Notehelfer
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Extract

Kōtoku Shūsui is generally known as a socialist and anarchist who participated in the plot against the life of the Meiji emperor in 1910 and was executed for the crime of “high treason” the following year. Such an individual hardly strikes one as a nationalist. Why deal with him on a panel that proposes to address itself to the question of nationalism? And yet, contrary to surface appearance, Kōtoku was and remained a nationalist. But his image of nationalism, and the role that this force should play in the lives of the Japanese people differed considerably from that of the Meiji leadership. It is to this image, to how it was derived, and to how it was sustained that this paper is addressed.

Type
A Symposium on Japanese Nationalism
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , November 1971 , pp. 31 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1971

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References

1 Najita, Tetsuo, “Nakano Seigo and the Spirit of the Meiji Restoration in Twentieth Century Japan,” a paper delivered at the VI Seminar on Modern Japan, Puerto Rico, January 2–7, 1968. To appear in Morley, James (ed.), Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

2 Shūsui, Kōtoku, “Shakai fuhai no genin to sono kyūji,” Shūsui bunshū (Tokyo, 1947), p. 5Google Scholar.

3 “Risõ naki kokumin,” Kōtoku Shūsui senshū, Vol. II, p. 61.

4 “Kokumin no mahi,” Ibid., p. 62.

5 Karl Mannheim pointed out some time ago in his essay on “The Problem of Generations” that each generation of children acquires a “natural” view of the world from its early impressions. “All later experiences,” Mannheim writes, “tend to receive their meaning from this original set, whether they appear as that set's verification and fulfillment or as its negation and antithesis.” Such a pattern can be discerned in Kōtoku's development. Mannheim, Karl, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1952), p. 298Google Scholar.

6 Chokugen, January 5, 1904.

7 “Genkon no seiji shakai to shakai shugi,” Rikugo zasshi, No. 223 (August 15, 1899), p. 520Google Scholar.

8 Shūsui, Kotoku, Teikoku shugi (Tokyo, 1964), p. 15Google Scholar.

9 The words are those of Jansen, Marius in Changing Japanese Attitudes Towards Modernization (Princeton, 1965), p. 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 There is an interesting parallel between Kōtoku's position on the role of the nation and some points that Leonard Krieger has made in reference to early French nationalism. For the early revolutionary, Krieger observes, the nation, although seen as essential, was regarded as such precisely because it was seen as a means through which universal values could be attained, and “these [universal values] still existed in moral ideals above their particular use by nations.” Krieger argues that it was in the radical, or Jacobin, phase of the revolution that “national feeling” graduated into “nationalism.” Under the threat of war and counterrevolution the former universal values lost their independent validity. In the process the nation which had been regarded as means came to be imbued wim all the values of the ends themselves. As a result the nation became the supreme authority in civil and political life. It seems clear that many Japanese, particularly those with strong backgrounds in Confucianism, or those who had come to identify Confucian universal ends with western universals (Christianity, liberalism, etc.), originally envisioned the role of the nation as similar to that of the early French revolutionaries. This was one of the reasons they supported the Sino-Japancse War. On the other hand, in the wake of that war, particularly with the Triple Intervention and the growing threat of Western imperialism in China, many of the same figures (including liberals like Tokutomi Sohō and Christians like Ebina Danjō) shifted their emphasis from support of the former universal goals to a support of the particular needs of the nation. In the process they may have become “nationalists” in Kriegerapos;s sense of the term, but as far as Kōtoku was concerned they had forfeited the goals of the “Restoration-revolution” and sided with those who sought to subvert the former revolutionary ideals in support of authoritarian policies and institutions. Unwilling to support such a shift Kōtoku found himself increasingly at odds with the national environment. For Krieger's position see Krieger, Leonard, “Nationalism and the Nation-State System: 1789–1870,” in Contemporary Civilization Staff Columbia College (eds.) Chapters in Western Civilization (New York, 1962), Vol. II, pp. 108ff.Google Scholar

11 Teikoku shugi, p. 25.

12 Ibid., p. 39.

13 “Shakai shugi to kokutai,” Kōtoku Shūsui senshū, Vol. II, p. 165Google Scholar. Also Teikoku shugi, p. 34.

14 Ibid., p. 15.

15 Masao, Maruyama, “Nationalism in Japan: Its Theoretical Background and Prospects,” in the same author's Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics (London, 1963), p. 143Google Scholar.

16 Yoshida, Shigeru, The Yoshida Memoirs: the Story of Japan in Crisis (London, 1961), pp. 287–288Google Scholar.