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The Instability of Japanese National Identity and the Advent of the New Meiji State

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The Instability of Japanese National Identity and the Advent of the New Meiji State The instability of Japanese national identity and the advent of the new Meiji state Sunyoung Koo Yonsei University * Paper to be presented at the ISA Hong Kong 2017 June 15-17, 2017 ** This is an incomplete manuscript. Please do not cite or quote without the author‘s permission 1 The instability of Japanese national identity and the advent of the new Meiji state Introduction What does it mean by being a normal state in Japan? If it seems to be extremely easy to answer, it would indicate most people were entrapped in a textbook perspective drawn by most international relations theory. As easily guess, Japan is keen to rearm their country just the same as other countries have been. Japan is disaffected with the Peace Constitution now that their sovereignty, they deem, was infringed by blocking their access to military force as a means of waging war. Japan thinks it does not make sense to have the Constitution enforced by GHQ, not the one that they made on their own. Even so, why do people think Japan‘s argument does add up? That is because most international relations theory is based on the commonly held view that leads us to choose ‗black or white‘ by enumerating several conditions that should be met to be a sovereign state. When it comes to a normal state, the widely shared concept of sovereignty—clearly cut territory recognized legally in the international society should be governed by an independent state free from arbitrary interventions by other states—becomes the yardstick. If the ideal is impeded, we come to suspect its sovereignty. Nonetheless, I argued the concept of sovereignty is ideal. The ideal cannot be a normal state for the most part. If so, there would be no demarcation between the ideal and the reality. (Then, the ideal loses its value.) As Krasner pointedly offers criticism by terming sovereignty as hypocrisy1, it is not rare to see that sovereignty is violated by a state or the international society. Then, it might be not that reasonable to assume that Japan is not normal. Japan is quite normal. However, Japan keeps agonizing over that issue. Then, it turns out that Japan is normal in light of the concept of sovereignty itself, but still not normal judging from ‗the ideal‘ to which Japan is resorting. If we can grasp what ideal Japan harbors in their mind, we will be able to understand what it exactly means by being a normal state in Japan. It is not simply a matter of whether they become unfettered by the Peace Constitution so that they can rearm their country. A deeper layer is waiting for us to be dug up so as to know what Japan really wants. The deeper layer will be untouchable if we stay in the sphere of the Japanese modern politics. In the first paragraph, I constantly made my argument, ignoring who is the subject that keeps complaining the lack of normalness in Japan as a sovereign state, as if Japan is the completely united one backed up by a clearly and widely shared Japanese identity. I said Japanese identity because the definition of a normal state cannot be made in the vacuum but closely related to their identity. (A normal state is obviously an identity. It seems tautology.) In this regard, tracing back to the origin of a Japanese identity becomes the first step. If the subject given the right to create an identity is one person, there might be no conflicts. If the subjects involved in that process were in harmony, or were given a firmly constructed ground called ethnies2, it may be a cinch. However, it was not the case for Japan. From now on, I want to show the origin of the instability of Japanese identity by looking back to the Tokugawa era. I said the origin of its instability which means this feature did not lose its effect going through the transition to the modern age. Quite the contrary. The one factor actually became the basis of Japanese identity, or to say more correctly, the core of Japanese identity. A diachronic approach will be taken in order to reveal how the instability has been exerted influence on the process of creating Japanese identity. What really happened during the Meiji Restoration? 1 See Krasner, S. D. (1999). Sovereignty: organized hypocrisy. Princeton University Press. 2 I borrowed the term and the notion from Smith, A. D. (1991). National identity. University of Nevada Press. 2 Westernization must be the first thing that might come across people‘s mind. Of course, it is not off the point. When Japan had been threatened by the Commodore Perry to open their ports, and thereafter when they resolved on reconstructing Japan, the West became arguably the touchstone. However, we should be careful not to be caught in a trap shown up here. The fact that people seizing power at that time in Japan thought the West should be the touchstone does not mean that the West became the ideal for them to pursue till the end. At no time was the West the ideal. Simply put, Japan just wanted to get a ticket to be accepted as an equal player in the international system working by a different rule called the international law3. Should they succeed in making western countries sure that Japan is civilized enough to be an actor in the world, the position of the West as the touchtone would be degraded. There is no denial that Japan introduced western technologies, institutions and ideas at a rapid pace. But, we need to see a big picture, not being blind by the fact mentioned right before. When say Japan had their heart in chasing the West, the basic idea hidden behind that is that Japan was incorporated into the international system driven by the West. Incorporation has a nuance that Japan was able to be accepted as a member in that system by making them like the West at the expense of their own values, tradition, I mean, Japaneseness. Then, we can guess here. What happened during the Meiji Restoration was revolution. Mandelbaum, M. shares this line of thought: The Meiji Restoration, which began in 1868—so called because it nominally restored the emperor to supreme power—was in fact a revolution. It transformed a traditional society, the economic and social relations of which resembled those of feudal Europe before the fifteenth century, into a modern state with an industrial economy, a formidable army and navy, and an efficient national bureaucracy; and it did so in the span of a few decades. This is the most remarkable accomplishment by any nation in modern history.4 Yet, in my view, it was unlikely. Of course, it was likely that Japanese society had gone through so many reforms, but unlikely that Japan had been transformed to a totally different society akin to the West. Nor should it be overlooked that we tend to see the international society as the sovereign state system sharing the very same concept of sovereignty that is definitely originated from the West. Even English School scholars fully sensitive to functions of different institutions and ideas backing up that in each state do not take into account what path Japan went through and how differently in the transition period. A forerunner of English School, Bull, H. is also obsessed with the idea: the international society to which non-European powers came to adhere was not one made in a Europe isolated from the rest of the world, but grew up concurrently with the expansion of Europe into other continents over four centuries, and was marked by this experience……Yet it cannot be denied that the role of the Europeans in shaping an international society of worldwide dimension has been a special one. It was in fact the European powers and not the powers of Asia, Africa, or the Americas that came to occupy a dominant position in the world as a whole. It was in fact their conception of an international society of juridically equally sovereign states that came to be accepted by 3 Japan needed to be escaped from the tributary state system either mentally or substantially. So, they dared to replace their own norms with the international law to be seen as a ‗civilized‘ state in light of the western standard. See Suzuki, S. (2009). Civilization and empire: China and Japan's encounter with European international society. Routledge., p. 141. 4 Mandelbaum, M. (2003). The ideas that conquered the world: Peace, democracy, and free markets in the twenty-first century. Public Affairs., p. 80. 3 independent political communities everywhere as the basis of their relationships.5 This mention is understandable given the concept of the international society he kept studying. According to him, the international society is an anarchical society wherein each sovereign state has interests in common and share common values taking responsibilities required to protect them.6 To flip over the reverse, it means the international society cannot work in the absence of consents of other states to the common interests, values and rules. However, as a matter of fact the reality has shown the international society is always dysfunctional. Not to mention IS, Brexit, annexation of Ukraine by Russia and so forth, fluctuations in the international society have constantly taken place. Then, I am wondering if we can confidently argue that all states are in harmony being tied with common interests, values and ideas in the international society. I am not saying the international society is impossible. What I am saying is that the international society might not exist as Bull, H.
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