The Character of the American Dream

Nagayo Homma

The American Dream, as definedby James Truslow Adams, has been not justa dream of materialaffluence, but also a dream of the self-fulfillmentof each individual.Indeed, as AngelloPellegrini ex- plains,there have been two American dreams-the collectiveand the individual,apart from the dream of the New World as El Dorado or an earthlyparadise. John Winthrop'slay sermon on "a City upon a Hill"has symbolizedthe American Dream of the collectivekind, whileBenjamin Franklin'sAutobiography has representedthe Ameri- can Dream on the individuallevel. On both levels-theindividual and the collective-theAmerican Dream has had an apocalyptic character-anend of the old and a beginningof the new. We may, therefore,approach the American Dream as a visionof paradoxical tension.The very successof buildingcommunity-for example,the Bible Commonwealth of colonialMassachusetts-as a viablesocial and economicorder has oftenbeen decriedas a betrayalof theoriginal dream. The faithin progresson the one hand and the apocalyptic ideologyof American Protestantismon the otherhave run through the developmentof American societyas contrapuntalthemes. The historyof American literaturehas been, in a sense,a history of the paradox of the American Dream as the American Nightmare. For examples, we can cite Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Celestial Railroad,"Nathanael West's "A Cool Million,"and of course,F. Scott Fitzgerald'sThe Great Gatsby. But perhaps the profoundest nay- sayers against the American Dream were and Mark Twain. Defying the despair of these literaryfigures, however, the non-WASP immigrants of the latenineteenth and the early twentieth centuriesheld on to the American Dream, although the image of the Promised Land changed from America as a melting pot of human races to America as a societyof ethnic pluralism. Popular culture in America has been closelyconnected with the idea of the American Dream, as indicatedby studiesof advertisingduring the Depression and of popular novels during the affluentyears of postwar America.

215 In the early 1980s President Reagan seemed to have restored the national faith in the American Dream, but the decline of the tra- ditional orientation toward future generations and the blurring of reality and illusion in American politics accelerated by President Reagan's own actions seem to be making the future of the American Dream dim once again.

H. Richard Niebuhr'sThe Kingdom of God in America Revisited:The ReligiousDimension of the American Dream

Shoichi Oshimo

Since early colonialtimes, religionhas been so closely related in various ways to the development of American cultureand one of the featuresof itsrelations to cultureis seen in the fact that religion served as a prolificsource of the American dream. Therefore,through the effortto explore how religionstirred successive aspirations of the American dream, we can clarifyan important part of the char- acterof American culture.But, at the same time,we may be involved in a difficultyof discerningreligious elements when aspirationsare transformed into the achievements of the secular world. "By devotingitself to the American dream," as William A. Clebsch emphasized, "religionhas been not only ambidextrous but ambivalent as well." Therefore, we should make an effortto comprehend the religiousdimensions of the American dream insteadof separatingthe religiousaspects-the sacred from secularachievements, the profane in the pursuit of the dream through the history of the American people. According to H. Richard Niebuhr we may admit that such dimensions as with which we are to deal are reveaied through the dynamic relationsbetween religionand culture or more precisely "Christand culture." Niebuhr sought to discover in The Social Sources of Denomi- nationalism (1929) the nature of the relationof religionto culture. Although this book has become a classicin the sociologyof religion in America, he was not satisfiedwith that approach. The sociological approach "seemed relevantenough to the institutionalizedchurches"

216 but he wished to explain "the Christianmovement which produced these churches." It is in this movement that Niebuhr tried to find the unity which American Christianitypossesses despite its many demoniational varieties.He also triedto explain in this movement "thisfaith which is independent ,...and which molds cultureinstead of being molded by it." These attempts were to be realizedin his The Kingdom of God in America (1937). The thesisof this book is that the idea of the kingdom of God had been dominant idea in the development of American Christianity, even though the idea had not always menat the same thing. "Ameri- can Christianityand American culturecannot be understood at all," he declared, "save on the basis of faithin a sovereign,living, loving God." Emphasizing the important role played by the idea of the kingdom of God in the mid-thirtiesNiebuhr suggested that thisidea seemed closely relatedto the American dream. We are surprisedto find thatNiebuhr's understanding of American religioushistory was so deep that it need not be modified by the resultsof continualrevisionism over half a century. At the same time it should be remembered that his understandingwas not only based on a scholarlyeffort of researchbut reflecteda sinceresearch for the American Dream.

The American Dream: The Case of Wilson

Hidesaburo Kusama

Woodrow Wilson's dream was "to found the League of Nations and to see the United Statesplaying a major role there." Most of the studiesof the "League debate" seem to have been done on the basis of the conventionalview that Wilson'sLeague of Nations ideals died at the time of the Congressionalrejection of the Versailles treaties.The writer'sinterest is to examine the impact of Wilson's League idealson the U.S. response to the United Nations,the second- generationinternational peace organization,and then to re-examine the conventional view. The present writer used to view Wilson's League idealswith Arthur S. Link's "higher realism,"but recently, feelingthat viewpoint not sufficientto explain Wilson's diplomacy,

217 he has wanted to examine Wilson's League ideals and policies from the new viewpoint of their embodying the idea of "compensation for being the model nation." In Chapter 1 Universal CollectiveSecurity, the writer insistson Wilson's originalLeague ideal,with the U.S.A. itselfas the model, expressed as early as his days as presidentof Princeton University. Wilson'sattempt to globalizethe Monroe Doctrine can be interpreted as the one that Wilson could not accept the U.S. national interest alone while Japan's possible "Asian Monroe Doctrine" was being worried about. The billto approve the Versaillestreaties was rejected after a big debate. Truman, on the contrary,trying not to repeat Wilson's failure,consulted with Senator Vandenberg, who had been criticalof Roosevelt and Hull' about every problem concerning the U.N. plans. Thus, Truman thoroughly adjusted national interests. Therefore,the U.S. undertook overallcooperation with the U.N. ac- tivities.The firstpostwar decade or so can be said to be the years in which Wilson's dream was realized. In Chapter 2 Pioneer of Multiple InternationalCooperation, the writerintroduces Wilson's internationalsocial policies, modelled on his domestic policies.The writer'sintroduction also includes Wil- sonian diplomacy as carried out by Daniels, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. In Chapter 3 National Self-Determinationand Limits, the writer points out that Roosevelt and the post-war leaders followed Wilson's progressiveprinciples and the conservativeapplication of them. In Chapter 4 U.N. Debate, the writerintroduces the views of about 20 American scholars segmenting each of the four decades U.N. activities.

A Dream of 'the Great Society': LBJ's War on Poverty Revisited

Wataru Omori

In the Spring of 1964, PresidentLyndon Johnson was impatiently settingout an ambitious agenda of his own, intended to go beyond the 'Kennedy legacy'. The Great Society message of January 1965 illustratedthis. Its pivotalprogram was 'a nationalwar on poverty'

218 Whose outcome must inevitably be 'total victory'. Johnson was en- chanted with greatness. The seven-yearspan of the Great Society program Which witnessed arise of internal conflict and violence was in truth Without precedent in American experience. Why did the program developed in such an unexpected Way? An unconditionalWar on povertyseems to symbolizethe 1960's mood whose dominant theme was invincibility.The self-confidence suffered from a touch of hubris. According to Samuel H. Beer, 'both technocracy and romanticism foster illusions of perfectibility-in one case technological perfectibility; in the other, moral perfectibility- that lead respectively to overestimates of human power and under- estimates of human perversity.' The characteristicattempt of the Great Societyto try to do too much With too few resources,moral and material,was found in the implementationof the Community ActionProgram. The authorwrote in 1973 a paper on the origin,nature, and internalcontradictions of thisgreat national effort at socialchange. In retrospecta paradox of the antipovertyprogram seems to have been found in itsaiming at 'maximum feasibleparticipation' of the poor,whose powerlessness was consideredby the professionalreformers as the principalSource of theirinability to cope with theirsurroundings and to break out of 'theculture of poverty'. The professionalreformers Within the federal governmenttried to bring about socialchange throughthe manipu- lationof the so-called'hidden process of society'. The prescriptionof the poor's participationin the controlof their surroundingsas the means of restoringconfidence and capabilityirri- tated the stubborn belief of the middle-classpeople that poverty should be attributedto individualfault and idleness.Moreover, the inevitableidnetification of the poor With the black undoubtedly in- jected an element of racialdiscrimination into the antipovertypro- gram. These factorsbore some responsibilityfor the failureof anti- poverty program fullyto match its promise. In addition,the way in which the anti-povertyprogram was im- plemented evoked furious reactionsfrom the local power structure. Under the banner of Johnson's 'CreativeFederalism' federalgrants gave the Community Action Agencies a chance to challenge local institutions.Existing local agencies stronglyopposed the direction

219 provision of grants to semi-autonomous organizations, bypassing their control.The Community Action Program was seen as effectively destroyingthe favoredstatus of localpolitical leaders. Aspiringto greatness,President Johnson could not unfortunately succeedto be a GreatMan becauseof not only the ill-fatedVietnam War but alsothe innerweakness of the Great Societyprogram.

Huck's Dream, Twain's Despair

Shoji Goto

James M. Cox, criticisingLeo Marx's view of Huck's journey as a quest for freedom, writes that it "is not at any rate a quest." A quest is, according to Cox, "a positivejourney, implying an effort, a struggleto reach a goal. But Huck is escaping. His journey is pri- marily a negation,a flightfrom tyranny,not a flighttoward freedom," Cox's view, that Huck is primarily escaping from tyranny, has opened up a new horizon for us in approaching Mark Twain's world. Certainly,both Huck and Jim are escaping. Huck is escaping from his father,and Jim from his owner. For instance,Huck triesto escape from the log hut where he has been locked up. One day, he finally finds an old rusty wood-saw, and then goes to work to saw out a sectionof the bottom log big enough to let him out. Huck takes all the coffee,sugar, whisky, bacon, and ammunition, as well as the bucket and the gun. He disturbsthe ground a good deal crawling out of the hole, so he fixesit as well as he can from outsideby scat- teringdust all around. Then he shoots a wild pig, fetchesit to the cabin, hacks into its throat with the ax, and lays it down on the ground to bleed. Huck drags it to the door, through the woods and down to the river,into which he dumps it. In short,he createsthe impressionthat he has been murdered in his father'sabsence. A man who triesto escape needs cunning. He has to be sly and artful,to cheat, deceive,and hoodwink others. When Huck goes to the town to findout what is going on there,he dressesup likea girlby wearing a calico gown he has stolen. As Cox writes,Huck "lies,steals, and and in general participatesin as many confidence tricksas the King and the Duke." Huck says of himself that he belongs to the same

220 family as those confidence men. In the closingchapters, Tom and Huck make a romanticplay of deliveringJim from captivity,going to "allthat trouble and bother to set a freenigger free! What frauds,what lies!In addition,what manifestationsof power. Power, accordingto Michel Foucault,is immanent;it lieseverywhere, not becauseit controlseverything, but becauseit arisesfrom everywhere.Power comes from below, not from above. That is what Huck is escapingfrom. In ChapterXXI, Huck findsthat he would do the rightthing "but deep in me I knowed itwas a lie."Both power and lyingare inherentin Huck's conscience and in God. Huck says,"a person'sconscience ain't got no sense,... It takesup more room than allthe restof a person'sinsides, and yet ain'tno good, no how. Tom Sawyer he says the same." Mark Twain was surethat people's conscience and ideasof God were lies. It was clearto Nietzsche,Twain's contemporary, too. Nietzsche "saw and felt...the lie of nineteenthcentury," Cox writes. According to Nietzsche,"the holy lie thereforeinvented (1) a God who... strictlyobserves the law-book of the priests...(3) conscience in man as the consciousnessthat...God himself speaks through it when it advises conformity with priestlyprecepts... (5) truth as given, as revealed, as identicalwith the teaching of the priests..." The originof thisholy lie,Nietzsche believed,is the will to power. As for Mark Twain, it is because "he knew that official religions,national claims to truth,moral interpretationsof history, the Christianconscience, and even God himself were lies"that he createdHuck, who is always escapingfrom everywhere and everything, stayingnowhere. In other words, Huck is a nomad with that despair deep down in his heart which arisesfrom the impossibilityof his dream over "the average men" of the West, not to mention the Jims and the Indians. Foucault, in his "Preface" to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-CEdipus, says that we have to be nomadic in order to escape from the power inherent in us all-in our heads, in our usual be- havior. Deleuze adds that drifting or incessant movement means a defection from a certain territory. From theseearnest concerns with nomadism, drifting,and escap- ing,we cannothelp thinkingthat Huck is indeedalive in us, in our presentsociety, as an index and stimulusto a new knowledgeof both

221 ourselves and our world. Huck is a nomad in our time, in our world.

The Popular Magazines Called "Success" in the United Statesand Japan: A ComparativeStudy

Teruko Kumei

This paper aims at analyzingtwo popular magazineswith the same title of "success" in the and Japan and at compar- ing the success philosophies advocated in them. Success in lifehas been considered the very essence of what is called "the American dream." At the turn of the century,the United States was widely considered the country of opportunity; rags-to- riches storiesand how-to-succeed guidebooks had a great appeal to the imagination of the people. Orison Swett Marden, a self-made businessman who lost his fortune againstodds, began a new career as a successphilosopher with Pushing to the Front in 1894, thus ful- fillinghis long cherished dream of becoming a Samuel Smiles of America. This leading success writer of some forty inspirational works started a magazine called success in December, 1897. In Japan, inspiredby Success,a similarmagazine, Seiko (success),was launched in October, 1902, under the editorshipof the young journal- ist Shunzou Murakami. A nationwide zest for rissinshusse (rising in the world) was then drivingyoung Japanese aspirantsto join the growing competitionfor success. In its early issues,the American Success glorifiedsuccess with colorfulparables and anecdotes of the great and famous. Marden, however, bitterlycriticized the wish of Success readers to attain material success. He preached the value of "true success" of char- acter making and self-fulfillmentthrough a serious pursuit of one's calling.He warned the audience not to seek for far-away oppor- tunities,but to grasp an opportunity at hand, maintaining that in America, which he called "another name of opportunity,"no right dream of success would ever failto be fulfilled.However, probably because such successdid not always come, as his readers often com- plained,he graduallyshifted the tenor of his successphilosophy from

222 character making to the spiritual power of individuals to fulfilltheir desire in life. Murakami, his Japanese counterpart,enjoyed wider support from leading Japanese intellectualsof the time, and preached the gospel of self-helpto the nation. Without vigorous attempt at self-help, neitheran individualnor a nation could survive in that age of keen competition,the magazine warned. More concerned about his nation's traditionalaversion to money-making and physicallabor, Murakami was less criticalof the aspirationfor fame, status,and wealth than lesscritical of the aspirationfor fame, status,and wealth than Marden. Fully aware of the degeneratingeffect of the shortage of opportunity availablein Japan, he urged hanmon seinen (anguished youth) to be more adventurous and to seek greater opportunitiesabroad so that they could help the nationalendeavor to strengthenJapan and make it a great nation in the world. In order to spread this philosophy, he startedtwo other magazines: Bouken Sekai (the World of Adven- ture), and Shokumin Sekai (the World of Colonization) Success followed the vogue of muckraking of the day, and failed in 1911, but Marden succeeded to secure the financialaid from a Chicago businessman and startedThe New Success in 1918, which lasted a few years beyond Marden's death in 1924. Seiko failedin 1915, because of financialstrain caused by Murakami's new maga- zines and his aid to Shirase Antarctic Expedition.

Re-examination of F.D. Roosevelt's China Policy: 1943-1945

Shigehiro Yuasa

The purpose of this articleis to take a new look at U.S. China policy from 1943 to 1945, forcusingon Roosevelt'spositions toward the Communist-Nationalist rivalryin China. A new interpretation of Sino-American relationswill be presented in the course of re- examining the Port Arther-Dairen issue of the Yalta Accord and clarifyingthe differencein positionbetween Roosevelt and Truman. During the war period Roosevelt tried to treat China as a "big power," as envisaged in his "Four Policemen" concept. China was

223 considered to be an essential factor in the Allies' war efforts against Japan, as well as in the American post war grand design for East Asia. However, the reality of the Chinese internal situation did not seem to fit Roosevelt's concept. As John Service and John P. Davies, U.S. foreign service in China, had suggested, the future relations between the Kuomintang and the Communists in China began to throw a dark shadow over Roosevelt's initial concept. Roosevelt feared the outbreak of Chinese civil war particularly because of the fear that it would see future conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Roosevelt'snew policy toward China was shaped under these circumstances,projecting his two core thoughts on the issue:the con- trol of Chiang Kai-shek, and an unofficialapproach to the Chinese Communists. This articlesuggests that Roosevelt tried to use the issue of Port Arther and Dairen as his best card toward Chiang. Roosevelt, to be sure, consented to recallGeneral Stilwell,who had been the most vigorous advocate of a united front in China, but this did not mean that Roosevelt had returned to the formula of giving all-out aid to Chiang. In fact, even before the officialRussian request, Roosevelt decided to lease Port Arther to Russia, the thing which Chiang had feared most. This American deal with Russian in Octo- ber, 1944, was thus designed largelyto give some warning Chiang againsthis rigidopposition to the formation of a common front with the Chinese Communists. In 1945 Roosevelt confideda littlesecret to Edgar Snow. He had it in mind to send suppliesand liaisonofficers to the Communist Army as Americans drew nearer to the North China Coast and Japan. To be sure, Roosevelt, as seen in his rejectionof Mao's proposed visit to Washington, was not very desirous of forming strong tieswith the Chinese Communists, but this does not obviate the fact that Roosevelt had some positivethoughts of approaching the Communists. And the Snow episode was indeed a reflectionof Roosevelt'scontinuing hope for a united China.

224 State Politics and Party Realignment -The Collapse of the Byrd Machine and Death of the Democratic Domination-

Kazumi Fujimoto

After World War II,the politicalpattern of the South has changed substantially.Changes in Southern politicshave been an important feature of U.S. politics. The Southern politicalchanges are clear;a sharp decreasein Demo- cratic presidentialvoting, gradual increase in Republican strength below the state level,the mobilizationof blacks in politicsand the emergence of a new breed of Southern politicians. However, at the same time, some Southern traditionalhabits seem to have endured in state and local politics.In essence,the politics of the Postwar South combine elements of both continuitywith the past and change. Virginia has experienced tremendous politicalchange. For ex- ample, Politicsin Virginia were dominated and controlledby the Byrd machine for more then 40 years, from the 1920's to the mid- 1960's. By 1966, however, Hary Byrd had died. His death led to break-up the Democratic organization.On the other hand, the Re- publican won strength. Virginia politicsyield a clear conclusion, party realignment struck with a vengeance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of party realignment in Virginia. The discussionbegins with an analysisof the Byrd machine. Then, some attentionwill be devoted to the divisionof Democratic party and the advancement of The Republi- can party.

Belle C. LaFollete and the Peace Movement: A Proposal for the Re-interpretationof the ProgressiveMovement in the 1920's

Nagako H. Sugimori

No one really denies the recent burgeoning study of women's his-

225 tory; its contributions to historical research have been recognized as a stimulus to widespread reinterpretation. The purpose of this paper is to present a new Viewpoint on the Progressive movement in the 1920's by throwing light on the women's movement in this decade. The paper's special forcus is Belle C. LaFollette, an active Progressive pacifist and a wife of a famous Progressive senator, Robert M. La- Follette, Sr. It is importantto recognizethat, in the 1920'swomen provided both the animating force and the mass audience for the peace move- ment. With the suffrage cause secure, after 1920 feminists turned in force toward the peace movement for a number of reasons, such as a maternal instinct for peace and a hatred of war. Among these reasons, the "maternal instinct" was most influential in inducing many women to rally together around the pacifist cause. It was assumed that women, as the bearers and caretakers of life had a special sense for its preservation. It was this maternal instinct that moved many women Voters to Vote for LaFollette, who endorsed the outlawing of war as one of his most important planks. By examining such primary sources as LaFollette'sMagazine and the Women's InternationalLeague forPeace and Freedom (abr. WILPF) Papers,I have been able to establishclearly how, in 1924, a coalitionwas formed between the Progressivesand the women pacifists.In 1924, the Progressivesnominated SenatorRobert M. LaFollette,Sr. for the Presidencyand adopteda platformwhich in- cluded the outlawingof war, long-desiredproposition of women. They alsoorganized the Women's Division,representing Progressive women of variousfields, such as art,business and the professions. It isimportant to notethe most of the distinctmembers alsobelonged to such women's organizationsas the WILPF, the NationalLeague of Women Voters,the Women's Trade Union League,and the General Federationof Women's Clubs. Among these,the WILPF had a dominantinfluence and endorsedthe "outlawryof war" most strongly. Bellestarted her own campaign tour on the 28th of September as the firstwoman whoever to take the stump for her husband'selection as President.When she spoke to women especiallyabout peace as well as her long fightfor Progressivecauses with her husband, she receivedan enthusiasticreception. She made a greatcontribution to the peace appeal among women who was thinkingof Voting for

226 LaFollette. Considering Belle'sactivities among feministpacifists as well as the Progressives,we realizewhat an important role she played in linkingthe Progressiveswith the feminist pacifists.When we rec- ognize what a significantpart women took in the Progressivecoalition of 1924, we might find a possibilityof persistenceof the Progressive movement in the 1920's in the development of the women peace movement.

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