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And Modernity Volume 5 | Issue 2 | Article ID 2350 | Feb 02, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Postwar Japanese Intellectuals' Changing Perspectives on "Asia" and Modernity Oguma Eiji Postwar Japanese Intellectuals’ Changing In recently defeated Japan, the most compelling Perspectives on “Asia” and Modernity issues of the day were modernization and democratization. These, in turn, were matters By Oguma Eiji indivisible from the problem of how to represent Translated by Roger Brown the “West” and “Asia.” As one might expect, contemporary intellectuals advocated Japan’s critical intellectuals, whose views on democratization and modernization modeled on Asia Oguma Eiji analyzes in the context of “Western modernity,” and were inclined to look Japan’s postwar history, were quite influential at askance toward “backward Asia.” This least through the 1970s. They regularlyinclination, however, was related in a number of published not only in books but in monthly ways to the historical context of the day. magazines read by hundreds of thousands and newspapers with circulations in the millions. As To begin with, during the war criticism of Oguma shows, their perspectives on Asia and “Western modernity” was severe. The Pacific modernity have fluctuated in response to Wara cast Western imperialism as the enemy and variety of factors, including most prominently touted “Asian liberation.” Moreover, during the 1930s it had become common currency among Japan’s relations with the U.S. but also in intellectuals to criticize the modern ideal of response to the changing course of Asian “civil society” that, following Hegelian revolutions. philosophy and Marxism, they viewed as essentially synonymous with “capitalist In 1950, Shimizu Ikutaro, one of Japan’s most society.” For this reason, former Marxists who popular intellectuals, commented that, “now, converted to supporting the war joined others once again, the Japanese are Asians.” [1] For during the conflict to criticize “Western intellectuals disoriented by defeat in World War modernity” in the name of “world historical II and reduced to economic impoverishment, philosophy” and to advocate the “overcoming of Japan was no longer one of the Western powers modernity.” [2] For this reason, phenomena but merely one of the minor countries of “Asia.” such as authoritarianism with the emperor at From that point forward there emerged in the apex and a controlled economy were modern Japanese history a repeatedpraised as evidence of the “overcoming” of confrontation between competing inclinations to “modern individualism.” learn from the West and to reassess “Asia” and tradition. Having until now researched post-Meiji However, the actual conditions of the war theories of Japanese ethnicity minzoku( ) and revealed the shallowness of Japan’s colonial policies, in this paper I wish tomodernization. Nor was this simply a matter of concentrate on what “Asia” meant to postwar Japan’s scientific, technological and productive Japan’s “progressive intellectuals.” capacity being inferior to that of the United States and the countries of Europe. Total war In the wake of defeat clearly exposed problems of organization and 1 5 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF mentality, as well, beginning with intense rivalry scholars, men of letters, and critics, among, and nepotism within, the Army, Navy, were captivated by an epochal and civilian bureaucracy. These realities of atmosphere wherein the so-called wartime society were a far cry from the ideal modern spirit was most notorious, as if types of modern rationalism that were that word were the fundamental root of envisioned by intellectuals. Moreover, owing to all contemporary evil, and all that the democratization policies of American remained was to “overcome” it. One can occupation forces under the command of only with difficulty imagine these men’s General Douglas MacArthur, the supposedly feelings of wretchedness and absurdity “overcome” ideal of liberal democracy as in present-day Japan we are being experienced a revival. initiated into the ABCs of modern civilization by General Douglas MacArthur …. Under the spell of a vulgar historicism which dictates that what comes later is always more progressive than anything that had appeared earlier, our intellectuals bowed before the “world historical” significance of fascism. And now they stand perplexed before the “world historical” victory of the democratic ideal that was supposed to have been overcome. [3] Maruyama was not the only one to note such a change. Literary critic Hirano Ken, who in 1942 had advocated “overcoming modernity,” after the war participated in the founding of the journal Kindai Bungaku (Modern Literature) out of the “desire to make a fresh start premised on the establishment of modernity.” [4] Maruyama Masao, 1959 The second contextual factor has to do with reactions against the Japan Communist Party On the basis of these wartime experiences, (JCP). Hewing to Marxist theory, the party’s line defeat was followed by the call for aof criticism regarding “modernity” remained the reevaluation of “modernity.” One of postwar same after defeat. Formally, the party Japan’s representative intellectuals, Maruyama stipulated that contemporary Japan was in the Masao, had in 1936, under the influence stageof of absolutism centered on the emperor Marxism, written an essay highlighting the limits system. Accordingly, it adhered to a “two stage of “modern civil society.” However, in a short revolutionary theory,” calling for bourgeois- essay on “modern thought” published in January democratic revolution corresponding to the 1946, he asserted that, “in our country modern French Revolution, to be followed by a transition thought is far from being ‘overcome,’ for truly toward socialist revolution. For this reason, the we have not even achieved it.” Maruyama party succeeded in attracting the cooperation continued, even of liberal intellectuals who were uncomfortable with Marxism. However, the For years, supposedly respectable party criticized these same intellectuals for 2 5 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF “modernism” whenever they advocatedMoreover, the antipathy they felt for the modernization and democratization in ways that wealthy Western lifestyle of the urban middle conflicted with the party line. [5] classes meant that during the war farmers and members of the lower classes were inclined to The executive committee of the JCP was support the government’s slogan of “driving out comprised of people who had resisted the war Western culture.” The government, as well, and even spent more than a decade in prison criticized “soft” Western-style urban culture without renouncing their beliefs. Liberated after while praising farmers and laborers as “working Japan’s defeat, they garnered wide respect. warriors” who had conquered “modern However, the party also included manyindividualism.” Consequently, in the transition intellectuals who had committed “apostasy” from war to defeat the resentment harbored by (tenko) during the war and cooperated with the members of the urban middle classes toward war effort through their criticism of “Westernthe wartime government and military was modernity.” Their postwar return to the party accompanied by resentment toward the produced a tendency to avoid the issue of war villages. In 1946, a newspaper reported that responsibility. For that reason, whenpeople departing from the city to the rural intellectuals such as Maruyama Masao and villages “all feel extreme bitterness toward those associated with Kindai Bungaku engaged government officials and farmers, unanimously in a reappraisal of “Western modernity,” they stating that when the time of their death by did so in reaction against the Communist Party. starvation arrives they will expire either at the entrance to a cabinet minister’s house or on the The third factor concerns opposition between doorstep of a farmer.” [6] Thus, “government the cities and the villages. As in manyofficials” and “farmers” were loathed as the developing countries, prior to the accelerated highest and lowest manifestations of “feudal” economic growth of the 1960s, the gap between authoritarianism. cities and the countryside was extreme, and only members of the urban middle and upper During the same period, economist Otsuka classes were able to enjoy to a Western-style Hisao drew on the work of German sociologist way of life. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Max Weber to call for the cultivation of a most intellectuals hailed from those very “modern human type” of personality, asserting classes. that the mentality of Japan’s farmers resided in a state of “Asiatic feudalism.” [7] By the same However, during the period of war and recovery, token, Maruyama Masao, whose studies of Edo the urban middle class suffered the combinedthought were at once a product of his academic impact of the bombing, food shortages, and specialty and a critique of contemporary affairs, inflation while the position of villagers, whostrongly criticized the “feudal consciousness” of grew their own food and whose homes were not farmers, while advancing the idea that destroyed by bombing, was relatively improved. Tokugawa thought, having developed differently In the wake of the war, members of the urban from Chinese Confucianism, had come to middle class were forced to travel to the villages resemble that of the modern West. [8] and attempt to barter clothing and other belongings for food. The farmers, who had little This orientation toward modernization also use for city dwellers, drove hard bargains. In the produced the label of
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