Civilization, Modernization, Westernization: Yukichi Fukuzawa as a leader and as a critic

Taichirō MITANI The Academy

Introduction — Why did Masao Maruyama take an interest in Yukichi Fuku- zawa?

The Academy, predecessor of the , was established in 1879. The parent organization of the Tokyo Academy was the 6 or Meirokusha, the earliest voluntary association of the intellectuals of modern Japan, proposed in 1873 by a few intellectuals including Arinori Mori, and officially formed in February 1874. Most of the members of this society were, except Mori from the Satsuma Domain, like Joun Kurimoto, those who had served in various official capacities in the Shogunate, and had been dispatched to by the Shogunate. These men not only had the experience of living in those places but were also well-versed in writings in foreign languages includ- ing English, Dutch, German, and French. They were some of the brightest intellects of the old regime, having been brought up in the original Japanese culture of and scholarship, but simultaneously having a strong interest in and vast knowledge of Western cultures, and their usefulness was greatly appreciated even by the new govern- ment that came to power after the end of the Shogunate. The Meirokusha member who was appointed the first president of the Tokyo Acade- my, the position equivalent to the president of the Japan Academy today, was Yukichi Fukuzawa, one of the forerunners of modern Japan. Fukuzawa’s social status under the old regime was low, but because of his proficiency in Western languages, he was picked to handle translation and other work, on the periphery of the Shogunate’s foreign affairs department. Alongside this, Fukuzawa was also actively involved in spreading aware- ness and knowledge of among the Japanese public through his popular works, including Things Western and All the Countries of the World, for Children Writ- ten in Verse, during the final years of the Shogunate and the early years of the Meiji Period. Although holding only a low-level post in the Shogunate, Fukuzawa was a sup-

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Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835‒1901) Sokichi Tsuda (1873‒1961) Masao Maruyama (1914‒1996) porter of the last Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu’s efforts to use the model of Napoleon III to modernize his forces, and gave direction to those efforts with his slogans “civilization and enlightenment” and “rich country, strong army.” Fukuzawa, while keeping in mind that the long-term goal of Japan was to walk the path that led to the civilization of all humanity, advocated that the medium-term goal was the Westernization and moderniza- tion of the country toward the formation of a nation state. On this issue, similar thoughts were held by Amane Nishi, who once served as the brain of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshi- nobu and was later appointed the second president of the Tokyo Academy. Nishi made a French language manual for Yoshinobu to help him in his efforts to emulate Napoleon III. In 1978, almost a hundred years after Fukuzawa became a member of the Tokyo Academy, Masao Maruyama became a member of its successor, the Japan Academy. Maruyama is known for his path-breaking research on Japanese political thought in an effort to trace the historical origins of modern Japan. Maruyama’s research began with Sorai Ogyu, a philosopher and one of the top scholars who represented the apex of Japa- nese civilization from mid-17th through mid-18th centuries under the rule of the Shogu- nate. Unlike most of his contemporary scholars of Confucianism, who studied the sub- ject based on a Japanese reading of the classical Chinese texts, Sorai studied Confucian texts using the original Chinese reading and conducted extensive philological research on Confucianism. In other words, rather than studying Confucianism as a doctrine of moral , Sorai’s research had a foreign studies aspect to it, wherein he used the basic Confucian texts to objectively and empirically study ancient , the culture in

62 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization which these texts had been created. In this sense, Sorai’s studies can be placed alongside the studies of Fukuzawa, who was engaged in foreign studies targeting the countries of Western Europe — Dutch studies and Western studies — during the final years of the Shogunate. Thus, Maruyama’s research on Sorai, whose work he positioned as the har- binger of modernity in the history of Japanese political thought (similar to the position- ing of Machiavelli’s work in the history of Western political thought), lead to Maruyama’s research on Fukuzawa, who appeared 169 years after Sorai and was the ideological founder of modern Japan. What inspired Maruyama to study Fukuzawa, however, was not the external factor of Fukuzawa’s ideas, which were cultivated by an intellectual interest in modern Europe. The originality of Maruyama’s views on Fukuzawa lies in his positioning of Fukuzawa, who presented a radical antithesis to Neo-Confucianism, on the trajectory of the self-effacing development of Japanese Confucianism post Sorai. In other words, it was inevitable that Maruyama, who attempted to discover the indigenous germ of Japan’s modernization in the establishment and flowering of Sorai’s study, would eventually ar- rive at Fukuzawa, who was the most devastating critic of Confucianism and the most avant-garde proponent of modernization in his time. Maruyama’s first academic article on Fukuzawa was “Yukichi Fukuzawa’s Criticism of Confucianism” (In Overview of Scholarship at Tokyo Imperial University, Faculties of Law and Economics, April 1942). Before that, two other articles by Maruyama on Confucian thought in early modern Japan had been completed, and all three articles were presented one after the other. The first one, titled “The Special Significance of Sorai’s Study of the Development of Early Modern Confucianism, and its Relation to the Study of Ancient Japanese Thought and Culture,” was presented between February and May 1940. This was followed by the second article titled “Nature and Artifice as Contrary Institutional Perspectives in the History of Early Modern Japanese Thought,” presented in August 1942. The above ar- ticles were connected, both time wise and content wise, to the article on Fukuzawa, which was presented in April 1942. Both the articles, through their close inquiry into the doctrine of Confucianism (Edo Neo-Confucianism), which was the source of the domi- nant ideology of the Shogunate, revealed the process by which this way of thinking disintegrated, and in doing so, attempted to discover therein the indigenous germ of Ja- pan’s modernization. What these studies then encountered was the views on Fukuzawa, which went on to become a major pillar of Maruyama’s research on the history of Japa-

63 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue nese political thought. There were already references to Fukuzawa and/or quotes by Fukuzawa in the two articles on Sorai mentioned above. In the first article, there was a reference to Fukuza- wa’s “The Real State of Affairs of the Old Feudal System” in connection with a section pointing out the similarities between the political system of ancient China, which had given birth to Confucianism, and the class system under the Shogunate, which had ap- plied Confucianism (The Complete Works of Masao Maruyama, Volume 1, 1996, pp. 132‒133). The second article included a quote from An Outline of the Theory of Civiliza- tion (Volume 5), which pointed out that scholars were subordinate to the authority of the regime under the Shogunate (Ibid., Volume 2, p. 5). Undoubtedly, then, Maruyama’s views on Fukuzawa crystallized from the original perspective of Maruyama, who placed an importance on the indigenous origins of Japan’s modernization. “Modern Thought” (Ibid., Volume 3, pp. 3‒5) is a short essay published in January 1946, soon after Japan’s defeat in World War II, which concisely explains Maruyama’s views on the modernization of Japan. During Japan’s war with the U.S. and European nations, which erupted in December 1941, following Japan’s successful capture of Eu- ropean colonies in South East Asia including Indochina, Singapore and Indonesia, the idea that the “modernity” of Europe and the U.S. was a goal that Japan had already “surpassed” was widely popularized. Maruyama’s essay on Modern Thought mentions this fact. The euphoric mental state of the nation, however, underwent another reversal following the country’s defeat in the war. Regarding Japan’s view of modernity follow- ing its defeat in the war, Maruyama writes as follows: “The fact that modern thought in Japan had not just been ‘surpassed,’ it had not yet even been achieved in the true sense has finally become obvious to many people....On the other hand, however, the view that history has never witnessed indigenous growth of modern thought in Japan is certainly not justified either. The present heart-stricken and wretched conditions are a hotbed for the theory that Japan has never had any connection with modernity, which is the exact opposite of the theory that Japan has already sur- passed modernity. It deprives the people of this country of confidence in being able to think for ourselves, thereby encapsulating the risk of returning to the previous simplistic equation of modern thought with Western European thought. In this sense, I think that in order to explain the modernization of Japanese thought, it is proper to focus not just on the Meiji period but also on the history of political thought in the Tokugawa period. What is more, in doing so, it is important not to fall prey to rigid dichotomies that brand

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Confucian thought as feudal while linking Dutch studies and the associated natural sci- ences to modernity, but rather to search for and find the source of modernity that contin- ues to bubble up quietly in the process of the unfolding of Confucian and/or ancient Japanese thought. The salient feature of Japan lies in the fact that the modernization of its thought does not take the form of a flamboyant rejection of feudal authority, but is rather found in the process of its continuous self-erosion of the dominant social con- sciousness.” (Ibid., p. 4) After the war, Maruyama went so far as to resurrect what at that time seemed the bur- ied and forgotten ideas of young Soho Tokutomi and Katsunan Kuga from the middle of the Meiji period (1868‒1912) by shining the spotlight on them anew. This too was based on Maruyama’s unique sense of focusing on the indigenous origins of the modernization of Japan.

1. The backdrop to Maruyama’s views on Fukuzawa during the war years

It is worth noting here that against the backdrop to Maruyama’s first essay on Fukuzawa was the reality of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The year was 1940, 2,600 years after the coronation of the first Emperor Jimmu in ancient Japanese mythology. In other words, Japan was right in the middle of a period of turmoil, with the Second Sino- Japanese War going on and showing no sign of ending, and it was against this backdrop that Maruyama turned his attention to Fukuzawa’s theories on the First Sino-Japanese War, which had taken place 45 years previously. The Second Sino-Japanese War, which had begun during the first cabinet of Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, had already en- tered its fifth year in 1941, under the second Konoe Cabinet, and there was a strong sense of impatience among the people, the , and Prime Minister Konoe to get the war under control. In his New Year Address on January 5, 1941, War Minister Hideki Tojo expressed the pessimistic view that “We have been fighting one battle after another in the mainland, with a million soldiers of the Imperial Army committed to the act, and yet we cannot foresee the arrival in the near future, of the day when the peace can be glorified” (Asahi Shimbun, January 5, 1941, evening edition). It is thought that it was against this backdrop that Maruyama developed an interest in finding out why, and on what ideological grounds, Fukuzawa, one of the founders of modern Japan, approved of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894‒95). Maruyama, it is be-

65 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue lieved, was interested in finding out the connection between Japan’s modernization, and its decision to go to war with China, the largest nation in Asia. The purpose of the Second Sino-Japanese War (the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which escalated into a war without any formal declaration of war), as set forth by the first Konoe Cabinet, was to establish a “New Order in East Asia.” The Chair titled “His- tory of Oriental Political Thought” (The third Chair in Politics and History of Political Thought) taught by Maruyama in the Faculty of Law, the (Tokyo Imperial University until March 1947) starting October 1942, was a chair that had been highly requested for a long time by many who were related to the Faculty. As the Second Sino-Japanese War progressed, the need to elucidate the cultural basis behind the “New Order in East Asia” theory was recognized, and the Chair was established under the initiative of the Ministry of in March 1939. It was, therefore, very much a product of the Second Sino-Japanese War. And the person commissioned by the Tokyo Imperial University, Faculty of Law with the task of giving the first lecture of the Chair was Waseda University Professor Sokichi Tsuda (1873‒1961). Prior to that, on Novem- ber 20, 1938, Tsuda had published his book Japan and Chinese Thought barely days after the official declaration of “the Establishment of a New Order in East Asia” as the purpose of the war in a statement by Prime Minister Konoe on November 3, 1938. Al- though Tsuda was not very well known in the journalistic world in those days, the con- tents of the book created a sensation among readers. The book compared the political thought, moral ideas, religion, literature and other aspects of China and Japan, emphasizing not the similarities but the differences between the two cultures. Tsuda rejected the concept of an “Oriental culture” to which both coun- tries commonly subscribed. Similarly, from his perspective that “history is the unfolding of people’s lives, so each life has its own history; thus two distant peoples who do not live in the same space cannot have the same history,” he rejected the idea of an “Oriental history” that subsumed the history of both the countries. “Oriental History” was the name of the chair established in 1910 by the Faculty of History, College of Humanities, Tokyo Imperial University toward the creative destruction of the “Chinese History,” and the first professor in charge of the Chair was Kurakichi Shiratori (1865‒1942), who had been like a teacher to Tsuda. Tsuda attempted to confine Oriental history to a narrower sense, or at least to exclude Japanese history from Oriental history. Tsuda’s book is made up of two parts. The first part deals with the question “How Japan assimilated Chinese thought,” while the second part debates what Oriental culture

66 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization really is. The book also contains segments like the following, which summarize the ideas common to both parts of the book. “An idea that is common to both parts of the book is that Japan’s culture has been given unique shape based on the unique historical developments in the lifestyle of the and is, consequently, completely different from the culture of China; Japan and China are two separate worlds with two distinct histories and two distinct cultures, so there is no such construct as an “Oriental” world that involves a cultural unification of these two worlds, nor is there such a thing as a single Oriental culture; In the past, Japan assimilated a great deal of Chinese culture in the form of cultural prop- erty, but in no way can it be said that Japan was enfolded within the world of Chinese culture; In the past, Japanese intellectuals highly regarded Chinese thought and knowl- edge, but that knowledge was very remote from the real lives of the people of Japan, and did not have any direct impact on them. My view, therefore, is that Japan and China and the lives of Japanese people and those of Chinese people are completely different.” Regarding the reason behind the cultural dissimilarity between Japan and China, Tsu- da points out that this is because “the ideas that were learned from China rarely related directly to the daily lives of the populace, nor did the intercourse between Japan and China have to do with contact between the people of the two countries.” Going a step further, he expresses his understanding of the cultural positioning of Japan at the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War in this way: “The contemporary world culture of our times has originated in the West....Japanese culture today is, in a sense, a Japanese man- ifestation of this contemporary world culture....This so-called Western culture does not conflict with Japanese culture, but exists within it and is a one facet of Japanese culture itself.” He then goes on to declare that “In contrast to Western culture and Western thought, it has to be said that there clearly exists no such thing as an Oriental culture or Oriental thought in the same sense.” Tsuda had a lot to critical things to say about the state of Japan’s China studies (Sinol- ogy) at that time. He wrote about this as follows: “One thing anyone is bound to sense deeply following the recent Second Sino-Japa- nese War is that there is an unbelievable lack of knowledge about China among Japanese people, and that the Japanese have been extremely lazy where research on China is con- cerned. The Japanese, who are so enamored of Chinese characters and of using the term “Oriental” in any sense that includes China, are extremely lacking in knowledge about China — did the recent Second Sino-Japanese War not make that very clear? And is this

67 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue not bound to be made increasingly clearer going forward? One of the reasons for this state of affairs is the fact that academic research on China, in other words Sinology, is not yet sufficiently developed in Japan.” (“The Mission of Sinology in Japan” in Central Review, March 1939, p. 4) Tsuda emphasizes that sinology should be separated from the study of Chinese clas- sics. “China-related knowledge among the Japanese seems, as a result of conventions followed over the centuries, mainly to come from the study of Chinese classics or from Confucianism, which forms the core of the Chinese classics. Confucianism is merely one aspect of the multifaceted culture of China, merely one aspect of the lives of the Chinese people over the course of history. Japanese intellectuals throughout history, however, having been raised on the diet of Confucianism, came to think of it as the en- tirety of Chinese thought and something that dominated the lives of the Chinese people, and labored under the illusion that Confucianism was the key to understanding every- thing about China.” (Ibid., p. 8) “It appears that Japanese intellectuals have a vague sense that both Japan and China are countries that follow Confucian values, and that the moral sense of the Chinese is the same as that of the Japanese, which makes them deal with the Chinese in the same way that they would deal with the Japanese, inviting disastrous results as a consequence.” (Ibid., pp. 15‒16) Tsuda cites Chinese nationalism as the most important topic within sinology. “More- over, when it comes to Japan attempting to influence China, the most important issues, issues that require the most meticulous research, are perhaps the range of matters related to the national consciousness and sentiments of the Chinese people. One of the driving forces in the world today is the idea of the nation. There is likely to be a newly strength- ened national consciousness due to various circumstances among Chinese intellectuals too, and one must be prepared for the fact that, depending on the stimulus, these nation- alistic sentiments may rise.” (Ibid., p. 16) Perhaps with slogans such as “New Order in East Asia” in mind, Tsuda then delivers the following verdict: “The most necessary preparation we can make at this point in his- tory is to take a good look at reality, make an unimpassioned observation of everything related to China, and obtain accurate knowledge about it. It is important not to idly broadcast mere claims in strong words while tending to get carried away by those claims oneself. Words can be easily thought up endlessly at the desk, but facts do not work that way, and it is important to realize this.” (Ibid., pp. 16‒17)

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Finally, Tsuda summarized the mission of Japan’s Sinology in the following words: “In order for Japan’s sinology to function as mentioned above, it is important not to be swayed by current trends of the times, or to be enslaved by prejudice. Boastfulness or decisions that are hastily patched together must be avoided, and sufficient effort must be put into areas that may not seem to have practical utility, so long as they have academic value. Every matter must be considered in a composite way based on meticulous profes- sional observations from the perspective of various fields and branches of study. And, in short, in addition to sincerely following the spirit and methods of contemporary academ- ics, the authority of academics must never be lost sight of, even as research is continued calmly and seriously based on the academic conscience. Only those who pursue research with the attitude described above can present accurate knowledge about China to the world, and make a real contribution to the task at hand.” (Ibid., p. 21) Further, underlying Tsuda’s extensive criticism of the state of Japan’s Sinology was a recognition of the predicament faced by Japanese academics as a whole (especially cul- tural sciences as a whole). “In Japan so far, true academic research and its spirit have not been respected, and the authority of academic learning has not been recognized. Conse- quently, the expenses necessary for research have not been provided, and not many scholars have been nurtured....Research done in labs has been thought useless in practi- cal matters, and unnecessary. Still, whenever a need arises, a sudden attempt to exploit scholars is made, and those who have neither any scholastic grounding nor knowledge attempt to dip their feet into academic research — it can’t be denied that such things oc- curred.” (Ibid., p. 10) The above essay was published in October 1939, and Tsuda gave a lecture on “The History of Oriental political thought” (political thought of the pre-Qin era in Chinese history) at the Faculty of Law of the Imperial University of Tokyo from October through December 1939. Ironically, this proved to be the start of a period when Tsuda himself would experience an extremely harsh form of the academic predicaments he had de- scribed starting early the following year (1940). Further, Masao Maruyama became deeply embroiled in it too. The cultural criticism of a “New Order in East Asia” pre- sented by Tsuda in his book Japan and Chinese Thought became the cause of the ordeals Tsuda had to endure in connection with his research on the Kojiki and Nihonshoki, as well as the history of Japanese mythology and ancient Japan (four of his works were either banned from publication or resulted in lawsuits being brought against him on sus- picion of violating the Publication Law).

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2. The wartime significance of Maruyama’s views on Fukuzawa

What was this “Confucianism” that Fukuzawa targeted for criticism? In what form did it exist and how did it function in feudal society under the Shogunate, in which Fukuzawa spent half of his life? “Yukichi Fukuzawa’s Criticism of Confucianism” (1942) presents Maruyama’s views on the above. Maruyama considers the form in which Confucianism existed in Japan not in terms of a doctrine or theory, but as a socially widespread “thought model” (Denkmodelle) or a “standpoint” (Aspektstruktur), which are ideas put forth by Karl Mannheim as concepts in the sociology of knowledge. Maruyama’s view is that it is only in the form of a thought model or a standpoint that Confucianism can be recog- nized as the dominant ideology in feudal society under the Shogunate. Needless to men- tion that Maruyama’s two essays on the history of Confucian thought were also written based on this view. The aspects of Confucianism that Fukuzawa criticized, which were the target of Maruyama’s analysis, also related to Confucianism as a thought model or standpoint dispersed widely in society among people of diverse social standings, often unconsciously. Maruyama’s understanding of Confucianism in this sense is in sharp contrast to Tsu- da’s understanding of Confucianism. In his Japan and Chinese Thought, Tsuda says, “Confucianism and other ideas had nothing to do with the lives of ordinary people....The knowledge of intellectual classes may have been dominated by Chinese thought, but this does not in any way indicate that the lives of ordinary Japanese people were guided by Chinese thought.” He goes on to present his own theory that “The moral lives of the Japanese cannot be understood through the lectures of scholars whose main aim was to expound the moral laws of China; it is through art and literature that they have been expressed.” Tsuda the historian, who wrote A Study of Japanese Popular Thought as Expressed in Literature (1916‒1918), was convinced that literature alone is an expres- sion of the real lives of people. Maruyama was, of course, strongly conscious of this empirical view of Confucianism that Tsuda had. His positioning of Tsuda’s theory is expressed in his remark that “Dr. Tsuda takes, perhaps, the most negative view of the influence of Confucianism on Japa- nese culture.” Maruyama had to demonstrate anew why Confucianism functioned as the dominant ideology in feudal society under the Shogunate. It was for this reason that Maruyama, in writing his first article on the history of Confucian thought, treated the

70 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization subject not in terms of the doctrine or theory of Confucianism (Edo Neo-Confucianism), but entirely as a style of thought. He attempted to discover the indigenous and intrinsic origins of the modernization of Japan by tracing the self-effacing development of Con- fucianism in Japanese society. He then positioned Fukuzawa, who was an embodiment of it, as the founder of modern Japan. An important point worth paying attention to in Maruyama’s essay on Fukuzawa writ- ten during the war is Maruyama’s attempt to link Fukuzawa’s consistent criticism of Confucianism throughout his life to the First Sino-Japanese War. In this regard, Maruyama writes as follows: “Fukuzawa, who was a lifelong opponent of the extremely exclusionistic trends dur- ing the late , was at the same time a strong lifelong advocate of anti-Korean and anti-Chinese foreign relations. It is worth noting that it was none other than Fuku- zawa’s anti-Confucianism that integrated these two apparently conflicting positions into a unified purpose in Fukuzawa’s psyche.” (Maruyama. The Philosophy of Yukichi Fuku- zawa, edited by Hiroaki Matsuzawa, Iwanami Bunko, 2001, p. 30). “For Fukuzawa, China and Korea seemed to be the final strongholds of the conservative and reactionary forces that stood in the way of the global spread of civilization and enlightenment, which he considered historically inevitable....It was extremely natural, therefore, that when Japan’s diplomatic relations with Qing dynasty finally deteriorated, all the energy of Fukuzawa’s traditional resistance to domestic Confucian trends was diverted to manifest itself in the form of hostility toward China, the land of Confucianism.” (Ibid., p. 31) The aforementioned document should be read in conjunction with the other essay on Fukuzawa written by Maruyama during the war, titled “Fukuzawa’s ideas of social sys- tems and people.” This essay places emphasis on Fukuzawa’s basic principle regarding the formation of social systems — that social systems should be wholly premised on the individual autonomy of their subjects. According to Maruyama, “Fukuzawa could not even imagine an independent nation in the absence of individual autonomy. If a nation is no longer an external compulsion for the individual, it must be realized only through the medium of the intrinsic independence of character.” (The Complete Works of Masao Maruyama, Volume 2, Iwanami Shoten, 1996, p. 221). Fukuzawa’s criticism of Confu- cianism was essential for achieving what Maruyama describes as “individual autonomy” and “intrinsic independence of character” (in Fukuzawa’s words, “independence and self-respect”). What Maruyama focused on and supported was not Fukuzawa’s advoca- cy of the First Sino-Japanese War, but the ideological grounds for it — autonomy and

71 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue independence for the common man achieved through the means of criticizing Confu- cianism. Consequently, there was no conflict in saying that a “New Order in East Asia,” centering on the lands of Confucianism, was the purpose opposite to that of the First Sino-Japanese War. In this sense, the two essays on Fukuzawa written by Maruyama during the war resonated and were in agreement with Tsuda’s cultural antithesis to the idea of a “New Order in East Asia,” and his pointing out that the “New Order in East Asia” ideology was factitious.

3. Fukuzawa after the Meiji Restoration and Maruyama after WWII — Part- ing ways with the old regime and journey to intellectual autonomy

One thing that Fukuzawa and Maruyama shared in common was the fact that they bid farewell to the old regimes (the ancien régime) following the Meiji restoration and WWII, respectively, and then went on to become independent thinkers. With its emer- gence, Fukuzawa gave his support to the administration of the last Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu (rather, his effective administration, including both the period when Yoshi- nobu was Shogun and the time before that when he was Shogun’s guardian). He agreed with Yoshinobu’s modernization line, which aimed to reorganize and strengthen the Shogunate, and with the policies and ideologies of the group of enlightened bureaucrats who were promoting it. As already pointed out, Fukuzawa’s “civilization and enlighten- ment” and “rich country, strong army” emerged as slogans that gave direction to the Shogun’s modernization efforts. Fukuzawa’s view in those days was that, in order to promote civilization and enlightenment, it was important to preserve the policy stance and regime of Tokugawa Yoshinobu (i.e., the dictatorship of the Shogun) modeled after that of Napoleon III in . Fukuzawa even went so far as to envisage a scenario of the military defeat of the Choshu Domain in defiance of the Shogun, and loans from France premised on this. Incidentally, following the Meiji Restoration, though the new administration inherited the old regime’s modernization line without any changes, and most of the old regime’s bureaucrats were absorbed into the new regime, Fukuzawa decided on an entirely differ- ent path for himself. He broke away from his affiliation with the government and set out to become an independent thinker. Fukuzawa wrote about this in the fourth section of his work An Encouragement of Learning titled “On the Duties of the Scholar.” He explained in this section that for a nation to progress on the path of civilization, in addition to the

72 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization efforts of the government itself, the activities of independent thinkers who stand separate from the government are necessary, and expressed his determination to step up and take on this role himself. Moreover, as a base from which to operate as an independent think- er, in place of government-affiliated institutions such as the “Banshoshirabesho” (Insti- tute for the Study of Western Books) under the old regime of the Shogunate, Fukuzawa sought out institutions that were independent of the ruling authority, such as the Tekiju- ku, to which he had previously voluntarily been affiliated, and the Keio Gijuku, which he himself had founded, and what he called “voluntary associations” like the Meiroku- sha, of which he was a founding member. In this way, the path that Fukuzawa chose following the Meiji Restoration was very similar to the path that Maruyama chose following WWII. The similarity is between the process leading up to Fukuzawa’s publication of An Encouragement of Learning (1872‒) and the process leading up to Maruyama’s publication of his essay titled “The Logic and Psychology of Ultra-nationalism” (May 1946). Before and during the war, Maruyama had not been opposed to everything about the old regime under the Meiji constitution. In particular, of the various ideologies of the old regime, he had a relatively high opinion of its constitutionalism. He is also thought to have recognized the political significance of the “senior retainer ideology” (or what Maruyama called the “senior retainer liberalism,” which was shared by the moderates in the old regime and represented by the Imperial staff), mainly because it was the target of right-wing radicals such as the revolting offi- cers of the February 26 incident. Maruyama, however, became increasingly more critical of the senior retainer ideolo- gy (senior retainer liberalism) after the end of the war. Because of this, like scholars such Shigeru Nambara, Kotaro Tanaka, and Yasaka Takagi, whom he respected throughout his life, Maruyama drew a line between his own political position and that of scholars who had plotted to end the war by attempting to influence senior statesmen who wielded influence over the Emperor. This group of scholars had thought that an early end to the war could only be brought about by building on the senior retainer ideology upheld by those who were close to the Emperor. They had also expected that the Imperial Cabinet, dedicated to upholding the senior retainer ideology, would play a role in containing the political turmoil expected to follow once the war ended. Needless to mention that the Imperial Cabinet did come about in the form of the Cabinet of Prince Higashikuni Na- ruhiko after Japan’s defeat in the war. The reason Maruyama became critical of the senior retainer ideology was because it

73 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue was a highly context-dependent ideology extremely lacking in any real substance. Look- ing at it through the lens of history, it was not an ideology that brought about a certain reality, but rather simply followed along with current realities. Moreover, the moderates who upheld this ideology were extremely weak as a political entity, and Maruyama con- cluded that they were incapable of being a politically unifying force in the postwar years. Incidentally, Fumimaro Konoe was the real nucleus of the Prince Higashikuni Na- ruhiko Cabinet, who attempted to make the senior retainer ideology the new starting point of Japan following the war. In order to accomplish this, Konoe tried to establish a new inner circle of unofficial advisors around himself. These attempts by Konoe are thought to have extended even to Maruyama. In fact, Maruyama did meet with Konoe at the Prime Minister’s official residence along with Koutaro Tanaka and Masaaki Kosaka, and even mentions it in his memoirs. The day was October 4, 1945. On this day, before meeting with Maruyama and the others, Konoe traveled to the General Headquarter of the Allied Forces and met with the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (in Ja- pan) General Douglas MacArthur. On this occasion, Konoe communicated his under- standing of the situation based on the senior retainer ideology to General MacArthur and put forward a political proposal. The proposal was that it would be wise if the Imperial Household, which had been the nucleus of the old regime, were kept at the center, the so-called feudal powers and family combines were preserved, and the democratization of Japan were to be carried out under this setup in a gradual manner, step by step. According to Konoe, leftwing forces were behind the military cliques and extreme nationalists who had brought about the war; and the feudal forces and family combines, centered on the Imperial Household, played the role of keeping in check the military cliques that were being puppeteered by the leftwing forces. However, now that the mili- tary cliques had fallen, the leftwing forces behind them had emerged to the fore and taken their place. Konoe communicated to MacArthur his understanding that left un- checked, Japan could easily turn communist. Perhaps the reason Konoe emphasized the threat of the left to MacArthur was because he was still suffering from the trauma of the Sorge incident, which had taken place in circles quite close to himself during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Konoe’s understanding of the situation at this time is exactly the same as the understanding he had expressed in his written “address to the throne” sub- mitted exactly six months before Japan’s defeat in the war, on February 14, 1945, in which he advised the Emperor to end the war early. “More than defeat in war, what is of greater concern is the communist revolution that is bound to take place following defeat

74 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization in war” — this is exactly the same concern Konoe voice to MacArthur following Japan’s defeat in war. It was following this meeting with MacArthur that Konoe met with Maruyama. At the meeting, MacArthur told Konoe that what Japan needed most at this time was a revision of its constitution, an initiative he encouraged Konoe to work on by gathering liberals around him. Konoe had been tormented by anxiety that he may be arrested and put away in jail on war crime charges, but he heaved a sigh of relief at MacArthur’s words. His luck, however, changed for the worse soon after, when he was named a war crim- inal not quite two months later. Early in the morning on the day scheduled for his arrest and imprisonment, Konoe committed suicide by poison in his home, Tekigaisou.

The inheritor of Konoe’s political role following his death was Shigeru Yoshida (13 years Konoe’s senior) and the intellectuals who cooperated with him. Thus, it was Yo- shida, who had helped Konoe write his “address to the throne” during the final stages of the war, who helped link the old regime with the new postwar Japan in place of Konoe. Maruyama, however, did not take the path of Yoshida and the intellectuals who cooper- ated with him. In other words, he did not take the path to becoming a part of the inner circle of unofficial advisors to the government. Rather, he joined the “shomin daigaku” (People’s University), which had been established in Mishima city, Shizuoka, soon after Japan’s defeat in war, as a volunteer tutor. In this way, Maruyama bid a clean farewell to the old regime and chose the path to becoming an independent thinker, and this was made clear in his May 1946 essay titled “The Logic and Psychology of Ultra-national- ism.” This essay did not, of course, directly target senior retainer ideology for criticism. The criticism was directed at ultra-nationalism, and therefore, indirectly, at the old regime’s ideology, especially the senior retainer ideology (or as Maruyama called it, the senior retainer liberalism), which was the root cause of that ultra-nationalism. Maruyama’s implication, according to my understanding, is that senior retainer liberalism can never bring about spiritual order to postwar Japan, that it can never be the womb that produces the entity that will support postwar Japan. In other words, the writing of “The Logic and Psychology of Ultra-nationalism” was the process by which Maruyama bid farewell to the senior retainer liberalism of the pre-war and war years, and he himself described it as the process of “conversion.” This process is comparable to the process by which Fuku-

75 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue zawa distanced himself from the old regime’s ideology (which may be called Shogunate retainer ideology) following the Meiji Restoration.

4. The path both men walked as leaders of political amateurs

The political tradition of any nation has two parts. The first part comprises political pro- fessionals (those who are politicians by occupation), while the second part comprises political amateurs (those who are not politicians by occupation). Political reality (espe- cially in a democracy) is influenced not just by the professionals, but also by the ama- teurs. It need not be said that the latter are as essential to the creation of a political tradi- tion as the former are.

The former need to organize themselves (for example, in the form of a political party) in order to have an identity. The latter also need some level of self-organization in order to acquire an identity of their own (an identity as politically active members of the pub- lic, or the active demos). For this reason, the latter also need a leader — a leader of po- litical amateurs, as opposed to a leader of political professionals. A leader of political professionals needs political power, but a leader of political amateurs needs authority enough to have social influence. Fukuzawa was the first leader of political amateurs in modern Japan. Fukuzawa thought that it was important to raise the quality of the political amateurs in Japan in order to accomplish the country’s medium-term goal of individual autonomy of the peo- ple, and willed himself to take on the role of leading political amateurs. Fukuzawa was a most self-aware leader of political amateurs, with a very strong sense of mission. When he explained in Section 4 of An Encouragement of Learning that “Some persons must take the initiative in practice to show the people where their aims should be.” he was emphasizing the need for a leader of political amateurs in Japan post the Meiji Restora- tion, and assumed the responsibility of it himself. This was the reason Fukuzawa, fol- lowing the Meiji Restoration, broke away from the old retainers of the Shogun who had joined the new government, and chose the path to becoming an independent thinker. Fukuzawa placed importance on scholarship (particularly the kind of scholarship that had resulted in the creation of Western civilization) and written expression as the tool for communicating opinions formed on the basis of that scholarship, as some of the qualities required in a leader of political amateurs. These were the factors that would contribute

76 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization to the social authority necessary in any such leader. Such leaders, therefore, had to be persons who could guide their followers through the power of their scholarship. In other words, Fukuzawa’s verdict is that only “the scholars of Western learning” could take on the role of such leaders. On the other hand, he did not consider that a person who was nothing more than a scholar of Western learning was qualified to be a leader, as he had serious doubts about the values of many scholars of Western learning, regarding whom he had the following to say: “I am skeptical about contemporary scholars of Western learning. It seems they only consider government jobs and are unaware of the option of working in the private sector. They seem only to dream of climbing up to important posts within the government, oblivious to the various possible ways to contribute outside the government. In the end, therefore, they have been unable to extricate themselves from the bad habits of scholars of Chinese learning in wanting merely to subordinate them- selves to the government. They may wear the outer garb of Western scholars, but in substance, they remain scholars of Chinese learning. Let me explain with an example. Most scholars of Western learning today are government officials, with extremely few of them working in a private sector....Even famous scholars seem to be restricted by the attitude that they cannot work unless it is with the government....This is true even of scholars who are renowned for their brilliance, so it is only natural that the majority of ordinary citizens would follow in their footsteps.” (Section 4 of An Encouragement of Learning, Volume 3 of The Collected Works of Yukichi Fukuzawa, Reprint, Iwanami Shoten, 1969, pp. 51‒52) Continuing on, Fukuzawa reveals his intention to take on the role of a leader of po- litical amateurs (people outside the government) as follows. “The government cannot be taken as the sole beneficiary of promoting civilization and maintaining national indepen- dence. Nor are we to rely on the scholars of Western Learning. Therefore I feel I can take it upon myself to lead the way for both the foolish Japanese people and for those Western scholars....There may be some who will regard my doings as their model. If this is so, it should be my responsibility now to lead the way for the people.” (Ibid., pp. 52‒53) Fukuzawa, who thus took the initiative to become a leader of political amateurs, placed importance on writing skills as a means of communication. Regarding the origins and distinctive features of his own writing style, Fukuzawa says in 1897, “My writing style, more than anything else, is widely judged to be quite simple and readable, and I myself have no doubts about this. I would like to explain the reason behind my develop- ing this style of writing. Forty or more years ago, I was a student of Dr. Koan Ogata’s

77 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue school for at . One day, Dr. Ogata said to me, ‘When translating, restrict your language to the scope of words that you already know. Don’t use words that you have to look up a dictionary to find the meanings of. That would make your writing difficult to understand.’ Try your best to avoid language that is difficult to understand — I took this meticulous and kind-hearted advice from my teacher to heart, and have never forgotten it since. Whenever I found myself on the verge of carelessly using a dif- ficult expression in my writing, I immediately remember the words of my teacher, and make an effort to change the expression to something simpler. I owe it entirely to Dr. Ogata that my writings have always been simple in their expression, and am grateful to him to this day” (“An Introduction to the Collected Works of Yukichi Fukuzawa,” in The Collected Works of Yukichi Fukuzawa, Volume 1, Reprint, Iwanami Shoten, 1969, pp. 3‒5).

Fukuzawa, who obeyed the lessons in translation given to him by Dr. Ogata, was greatly enlightened by The Epistles by Rennyo (The Collected Works of Rennyo, edited by Kazuo Kasahara, Iwanami Bunko, 1985), the eighth generation high priest of Hon- ganji and the restorer of the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji School, whose writing style he used as a model. Regarding this, Fukuzawa says, “When I was around 17 or 18 years of age, I happened to hear my older brother talking with his friend about some text, which he praised highly saying, ‘The Epistles, written by Holy Priest Rennyo is the best among texts that include Japanese kana. It is a classic.’ That was the first I had heard about Ren- nyo’s brilliant writing. A few years after this, when I moved to Edo and tried to translate Western texts, I remembered my brother’s words. So, I purchased a bound volume of The Epistles and read it. It was, indeed, a simply written work that included Japanese kana characters, and was very easy to read. I found it so interesting that I read it thor- oughly many times over, even memorizing parts of it. If you ask me whether reading the book made me want to become a follower of Buddhism, I would have to be skeptical, but the work certainly allowed me to learn the kana-mixed writing style to a great extent, and I credit Rennyo for it.” (Ibid., p. 7) Fukuzawa did not believe in any religion, but he did believe in the social utility of religion (especially popular religion). It is obvious that he was edified by Rennyo’s writ- ings, which not only served as a model of written expression, but also suggested to him what a leader of political amateurs should be. The quote above reveals Fukuzawa’s util- itarian view of religion.

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During the Taisho democracy, which spanned the period of the First World War and extended beyond it, the political historian Sakuzo Yoshino followed the trail to becom- ing a leader of political amateurs that Fukuzawa had blazed during the Meiji period. Yoshino too recognized the separate identity of the political amateur (especially the ac- tive demos) as opposed to political professionals, and took upon himself the role of a political educator leading amateurs to self-organization. Yoshino himself stood at the point of contact between the professionals and amateurs, and while exerting his influ- ence on the political professionals (especially on the non-propertied parties that sprang up in response to the Universal Manhood Suffrage Act), remained consistently and strongly opposed to the political amateurs becoming subjugated to the professionals and forming their political substructure. After the end of the Asia-Pacific War, it was Maruyama who inherited the historical role played before him by Fukuzawa and Yoshino. Maruyama, as a critic of the political professionals, placed importance on the role of the active demos in helping the demo- cratic system overall to function, and considered it the fundamental component of post- war democracy. The individual, as an independent and self-respecting entity, was the fundamental unit in Fukuzawa’s idea of a nation state. For Maruyama, the “minorities” (self-organized units of active demos), rather than the individual, were the fundamental units of a democracy. For Maruyama, a democracy was not just the rule of the majority. His view was that the “majority” was not a monolithic entity; it had to be seen as some- thing that could be segmented into a multitude of qualitatively diverse minorities. In this sense, Maruyama’s understanding of democracy, as I see it, was that it should be seen as the “rule of the minorities” rather than the “rule of the majority.” This view of democ- racy leads to the fundamental importance of “freedom” under democracy, which, in turn, proceeds from the existence of minorities as the fundamental units of a democracy as per Maruyama’s concept. According to Maruyama, there are two types of democracy. One is a public democ- racy, as represented by the democracy that flourished in the Ancient Greek city-states (polis), while the other is a private democracy, which is premised on the assurance of freedoms under a constitutional system. Maruyama’s criticism of the political system of the former Soviet Union of the 1950s was based on the principle of a private democracy. At the time, in the late 1950s, Maruyama considered the former Soviet Union’s political system to be a type of “public democracy,” the problems of which he pointed out as fol- lows: “The Soviet style of democracy inherently has a number of problems related to the

79 Transactions of the Japan Academy, Vol. 72, Special Issue protection of the human rights of individuals and rights of minorities. This is because the majority and minority are reduced to social substance concepts, as the masses and mi- norities with privileges; and the function concept — that today’s minority could become tomorrow’s majority, and that, therefore, the rights of the minority should be respected — is not a matter that attracts sufficient interest as a problem under a majority rule sys- tem.” (“The historical background to democracy,” In The Complete Works of Masao Maruyama, Volume 8, 1959) As is quite clear from the above, in a democracy, Maruyama placed importance not on fixed minorities in the sense of a substance concept like revolutionaries, but rather on fluid minorities in the sense of a function concept. Protecting the rights of such func- tional minorities was to vitalize a democracy, and it is thought that Maruyama was con- scious of the fact that this was a role entrusted to leaders of political amateurs. Many have pointed out the depth and breadth of Maruyama’s scholarship, as well as his outstanding writing skills that helped communicate his insights based on such schol- arship. It is very clear from his writings that the man was not just a scholar but also a thinker. Maruyama wrote in such lucid language as to be intelligible not just to those in academic circles, but universally, to anyone from the intellectual community. This is the reason his writings have literary value enough to attract readers even outside academic circles, including many non-Japanese readers through translation. In addition to his ex- pertise in political science and the history of political thought, Maruyama’s writing style played a big role in helping him shape the overall political scene in postwar Japan. There is a reason why Maruyama pointed out the relative importance of the value of beauty in Japanese culture, particularly emphasizing the importance of literary history in under- standing the history of Japanese thought (Seven Questions on Freedom, SURE, 2005). Sokichi Tsuda was the one who had realized the significance of literature in the intel- lectual history of a nation early on, and Maruyama, through his scholarship and excellent writing skills proved Tsuda right in his work.

Conclusion — Maruyama’s criticism of Japan’s modernization

Maruyama’s views on Fukuzawa, which evolved to take many forms, were in them- selves Maruyama’s criticism of Japan’s modernization. Maruyama defined Fukuzawa as a “liberal thinker who believed in the impenetrability of personal rights,” which he dif- ferentiates from “a democrat, whose ideology is premised on the oneness of the citizens

80 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization and the sovereign.” The former is an entity equivalent to what Maruyama calls a “private democracy,” while the latter is equivalent to his “public democracy.” As explained in a previous section, Maruyama criticized the political system of the former Soviet Union from the position of “private democracy”, i.e., Fukuzawa’s position. From the same position, he also comprehensively affirms Fukuzawa’s fundamental criticism of modern Japan, which inherited the distinctive features of Japanese civilization. Fukuzawa’s crit- icism of Japanese civilization derives from his values as a liberal who places the greatest importance on the freedom and independence of the individual. He exposes the distinc- tive character of Japanese civilization as being an “imbalance of power,” where all social values (including knowledge) have to be fit into the prevailing scheme of power. “Japan has a government, not a nation” — this was Fukuzawa’s understanding of the Japanese situation, and it was backed by his criticism of Japanese civilization based on the insight that it suffered from the chronic condition of an imbalance of power. In order to build a nation (or to build a nation by cultivating its people) in Japan, Fukuzawa assumed the role of a leader of political amateurs. Maruyama, through his revelation of the intent behind Fukuzawa’s criticism of Japanese civilization and modern Japan, just by chance made the same journey as Fukuzawa toward building a nation of people that would sup- port democracy in postwar Japan. However, Maruyama’s criticism of modern Japan cannot be discussed on exactly the same level as that of Fukuzawa. Fukuzawa, who lived during the Meiji era in the 19th century, may have had a grand vision for the future of the mankind, but the task he set himself was merely the formation of a nation state. Maruyama, who lived in postwar Japan during the 20th century, could not be satisfied with the task of rebuilding the na- tion following the war. His tasks, which were much bigger and more universal than the principles of modernizing Japan, included the establishment of postwar democracy and eternal peace. This was the biggest reason behind Maruyama’s criticism of modern Ja- pan. One of the postwar works Maruyama himself cites as a work that greatly influenced him was Tsuneari Fukuda’s Destiny of Modernity (Tozai Bunko, 1947). In the work, Fukuda compares European and Japanese modernity, writing that, while modern Europe inherited “God” from Europe during the Medieval Ages via the medium of the Protestant Reformation, modern Japan did not inherit “God” from its premodern times. What Japan inherited in place of “God” as in modern Europe, was a deified Emperor. This was the reason Hirobumi Ito, the chief drafter of the constitution, sought to make the Imperial

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Household the “axis of the nation.” Maruyama’s criticism in the postwar years of the old regime’s ideology, which placed the ultimate value on the Emperor, and his call for the establishment of a universal system of values transcending the nation to take its place, was ultimately a criticism of the Imperial system, which was the biggest result of Japan’s modernization. In his On the Imperial Household (1882), Fukuzawa said “The Imperial household is the nucleus that holds together the spirit of the Japanese people,” placing extreme importance on the Imperial system’s function of social integration. Thus, Fuku- zawa’s view of the Emperor was similar to his utilitarian view of religion that focused exclusively on its social utility. In this sense, it was different from Maruyama’s rejection of Emperor worship as a political pseudo-religion that transgressed upon the freedom of conscience and personal autonomy of the individual.

List of main translated works of Yukichi Fukuzawa and Masao Maruyama

Yukichi Fukuzawa:

Fukuzawa Yukichi on Education (English translation of selected works of Yukichi Fukuzawa), trans. by Eiichi Kiyooka, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985.

勧学篇 (Chinese translation of Gakumon no Susume (1872)), trans. by 群力 , Beijing: 商務印書館 , 1959.

The Thought of Fukuzawa 2: An Encouragement of Learning (English translation of Gakumon no Susume (1872)), trans. by David A. Dilworth, Tokyo: Press, 2012 (Reprinted edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).

文明論概略 (Chinese translation of Bunmei Ron no Gairyaku (1875)), trans. by 北京 編訳社 , Beijing: 商務印書館 , 1959. Other language versions were published in English (1973), Korean (1989) and Indonesian (1993).

The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa (English translation of Fukuo Jiden (1899)), trans. by Eiichi Kiyooka, New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. Other language versions were published in French (2007), German (1971), Dutch

82 Civilization, Modernization, Westernization

(2000). Arabic (2001), Chinese (2001), Korean (2006) and Vietnamese (2005).

Masao Maruyama:

Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (English translation of Gendai Seiji no Shisou to Kodo (1957), edited by Ivan Morris, London-New York-Toronto: , 1963. Expanded Edition, 1969. Abridged translation (Miraisha edition), 1962‒1963. Other language versions were published in Italian (1990) and Korean (1997).

Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan (English translation of Nihon Seiji Shisoshi Kenkyu), trans. by Mikiso Hane, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press / Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Other language versions were published in Korean (1995), French (abridged translation, 1996) and Chinese (2000).

Denken in Japan (German translation of Nihon no Shiso and other works), ed. and trans. by Wolfgang Schamoni and Wolfgang Seifert, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988. Other language versions were published in Korean (1998) and Chinese (including other works, 2009).

福沢諭吉与日本近代化 (Chinese translation of to Nihon no Kindaika), trans. by 区建英 , Shanghai: 学林出版社 , 1992．

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