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When Philosophy Meets History The human being : when philosophy meets history. Miki Kiyoshi, Watsuji Tetsuro and their quest for a New Ningen Brivio, C. Citation Brivio, C. (2009, June 9). The human being : when philosophy meets history. Miki Kiyoshi, Watsuji Tetsuro and their quest for a New Ningen. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13835 Version: Not Applicable (or Unknown) Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the License: Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13835 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). The Human Being: When Philosophy Meets History Miki Kiyoshi, Watsuji Tetsurō and their Quest for a New Ningen Chiara Brivio Cover: René Magritte, Le visage du génie, 1926-27, Musée d’Ixelles, Bruxelles (after G.O. Ollinger-Zinque and F. Leen (eds), Magritte 1898-1967, Ghent, Ludion Press, 1998, cat. 51). Printed by Wöhrmann Print Service, Zutphen, The Netherlands The Human Being: When Philosophy Meets History Miki Kiyoshi, Watsuji Tetsurō and Their Quest for a New Ningen PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P.F. van der Heijden, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 9 juni, 2009 klokke 13.45 uur door Chiara Brivio geboren te Morbegno, Italie in 1980 Promotiecommissie: Promotoren: Prof. dr. C.S. Goto-Jones Prof. dr. R. Kersten (Australian National University) Overige leden: Prof. dr. H.D. Harootunian (New York University) Prof. dr. A. Schneider Prof. dr. S. Stuurman (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam) Ad melioram Let my shoes lead me forward, please bring me some luck Jenny Wilson Contents Abbreviations 10 INTRODUCTION 11 I. NEW CHALLENGES FOR OLD DISCIPLINES 20 Intellectual History and Philosophy 20 Methodology Before 23 Three Methods 26 History of Philosophy 30 II. THE BIRTH OF NINGEN 32 Founding the Human Being in the 1920s-1930s Before Europe 34 The European trip: Miki Kiyoshi in Marburg (1923-24) 37 The Discovery of Pascal: Miki Kiyoshi in Paris (1924-25) 41 An Analysis of the Human Being in Miki: Medianity (1) 43 An Analysis of the Human Being in Watsuji: Medianity (2) 46 Betweeness as Innovation 49 Miki Kiyoshi: a New Human Being 54 Watsuji Tetsurō: the Human Being as a ‘Political Being’ 64 Conclusions 69 III. NINGEN AND SOCIETY 71 The Influence of Marxism in the 1930s Marxism in Japan 73 Watsuji and Marxism 75 Miki Kiyoshi’s ‘Humanistic’ Marxism 80 Watsuji and Japanese Society 90 The Return to the Pascalian Moment 96 Conclusions 103 IV. NINGEN AND THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 105 History and the Nation: the 1930s and the 1950s Time and Consciousness 110 Anthropology and Ideology: the Role of Consciousness 118 Angst and Humanism: the Renovation of the Human Being as ‘Type’ 121 Miki’s Politics 127 Watsuji’s Philosophy of History 129 National Seclusion and National Particularity 135 Conclusions 139 V. NINGEN AND MODERNITY 141 Before and After the War: the 1940s and the 1950s 8 The Road to Technology 145 The Acting Subject 148 Technology and Society 152 The Return of the Present 159 Miki as State Intellectual 161 Before the ‘Reverence’ 164 Watsuji’s ‘Mythicized’ Emperor 166 The Symbol Emperor 173 Conclusions 177 VI. NINGEN AND IDEOLOGY 179 The Escaton of the War and the Failure of a Destiny State of the Field 179 Escaton and Destiny 182 The Shōwa Research Association 186 Towards the ‘Intellectual Principles of the New Japan’ 188 The ‘Principles’ 193 Watsuji and the Kokutai no Hongi 198 The Way of the Japanese Subject 200 The American National Character 204 Conclusions 208 CONCLUSION 209 BIBLIOGRAPHY 215 Samenvatting 238 Acknowledgements 242 Curriculum Vitae 244 Index 245 9 Abbreviations KHZ Kawakami Hajime Zenshū, 36 vols., Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1982-1986. MKZ Miki Kiyoshi Zenshū, 20 vols., Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1966-1986. TJZ Tosaka Jun Zenshū, 6 vols., Tokyo, Keisō Shobō, 1966-1979. WTZ Watsuji Tetsurō Zenshū, 27 vols., Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1962-1992. Conventions Japanese names follow the standard Japanese convention of having the family name followed by the given name (e.g. Miki Kiyoshi, Watsuji Tetsurō). Translations from the original texts are mine when otherwise stated. 10 Introduction All efforts to escape the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.1 This thesis started as an investigation into the ‘how’ and the ‘to what extent’ two twentieth-century Japanese philosophers, Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) and Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960), contributed to the ideology of the Japanese wartime regime. Their backgrounds were very different; Miki was an intellectual who spent part of his life studying Marxism and who took a very innovative approach in the understanding of the concepts of ‘dialectics’ and ‘class’. Watsuji was a conservative intellectual who strove to design a new national character in the face of the crisis that he perceived ‘Western modernity’ had brought to Japan. In a sudden turn of faith, in the 1940s, Miki and Watsuji’s philosophical systems eventually coincided, when they both came to support Japan’s imperialist enterprise. The main questions therefore were how it was possible that two such different standpoints could philosophically and politically merge in such a fashion and to what extent they were bankrupted when Japan was defeated in August 1945. On a methodological level, this question was reflected in the enigma of whether philosophy and intellectual history were too intertwined to be clearly separated or whether, on the other hand, there was a need for a new methodological tool that could have overcome them both. I will therefore argue that the answer to these questions has to be found in how the concept of the ‘human being’ (ningen) was theorized and developed by Miki and Watsuji throughout their careers. I will argue that their idea of ‘medianity’ that underpins their elaboration of ningen is the most profound and fundamental flaw that brought their systems to collapse together with the regime in 1945. 2 I will also demonstrate that victory did not only fail to militarily and historically concretize, but also philosophically. The ‘faith’ that Miki and Watsuji showed in the moral destiny of Japan and that was embodied in the idea of the escaton qua victory in the Second World War did not materialize in the way they had envisioned it. Thus, their philosophical systems were destined to failure for two reasons: the human being they created was a representation of what the Japanese nation meant to them and, 1 Arendt 2004: xxvii. 2 I have coined the neologism ‘medianity’ since I could not find any other word that could convey the same meaning. Medianity is not strictly a ‘medium’ or a ‘milieu’ but it rather describes the condition by means of which the human being finds himself in ‘between’ totality and infinity, as in Miki, or totality and particularity as in Watsuji. Since it is a precise ontological location that I have not found expressed in any other thinkers, I had to invent a new word. 11 furthermore, it was spatially and temporally grounded in a Japanese locus projected towards a visionary future of victory. The Second World War, with the atmosphere of crisis that it brought along, bankrupted Miki and Watsuji’s expectations and ideas. Politically, this Japanese human being was reflected in the Japanese imperial enterprise and, in Watsuji’s case, even in the political environment of the postwar period. Despite Miki and Watsuji’s personal and intellectual differences, their theorization of ningen, their faith in the escaton and their idea of medianity made them to politically come together. I will demonstrate that what they failed to do was to stop their systems from going down the road of ultranationalism and imperialism. Instead, they simply went along with it. In order to support my hypothesis on a methodological level, I will have to employ both intellectual history and philosophy and subsume them in the history of philosophy. As a matter of fact, neither of the two will prove to be sufficiently complete for me to argue that ideas and history could collapse together. On the one hand, intellectual history, with its thrust on the contextualization of the production of a given author, could not fully answer the question of whether author and production could collude with historical reality. On the other hand, the scope of philosophy does not necessarily include the historical milieu or the historical impact certain ideas had. Thus, by sketching the historical and intellectual development of the idea of ningen in Miki and Watsuji, I will attempt to address the issue of how it is possible to solve the problem of the relationship between philosophy and history. In regard to the particular historical circumstances of the Second World War, this issue is even more pressing if we want to understand how intellectuals actively participated in the creation of the ‘banality of evil’ of WWII. State of the Field In 1994, Pierre Lavelle’s published an article on the political thought of the father of modern Japanese philosophy and founder of the Kyōto School, Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945) (Lavelle 1994). The article sparked quite a debate amongst scholars around the extent to which Nishida’s thought, and that of his students, Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962) and Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990), could have contributed to the ideology of the Japanese wartime regime. A number of critics agreed with Lavelle’s position that Nishida was essentially guilty of having 12 supported the government, whilst others proposed the thesis that his religious thought and his philosophical contribution were more important than his politics.
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