■ Source: “Japanese Approaches to the Cultural Revolution,” CCP Research Newsletter 2 (Spring 1989), 21–25.

Japanese Approaches to the Cultural Revolution: A Review of Kokubun Ryōsei’s Survey of the Literature

What follows is an extended review of an excellent summary of Japanese writings on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China and the changes in China since the death of Mao Zedong and the purge of the “Gang of Four” in Kokubun Ryōsei’s “The Present State of Japanese Research on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Problems Areas.”1 Professor Kokubun of Keio University is one of the few genuinely recognizable political scientists of China in Japan. Although still young, he has already amassed an impressive list of publications, including two articles in English. This piece appeared in a Keio University publication. Kokubun makes no pretense of covering the many hundreds of Japanese books, articles, and media editorials concerning the Cultural Revolution. For example, the National Diet Library has published a listing in its monthly bul- letin of 700–800 items published in Japanese for a period of less than two years (January 1900–October 1967).2 Kokubun gives several other, equally lengthy, listings published in Japan. He notes at the outset that the whirlwind of events in China—from the Cultural Revolution to the Lin Biao affair, the anti-Lin Biao, anti-Confucius campaign, the Tiananmen incident, the death of Mao, the arrest of the “Gang of Four,” and the rehabilitation of Liu Shaoqi—have dramatically changed Japanese assessments of the Cultural Revolution and considerably under- mined approaches adopted earlier to contemporary Chinese history. He sees five general evaluative stances taken by Japanese scholars toward the Cultural Revolution. The first includes those who analyzed the Cultural Revolution within a Marxist framework and praised it uncritically. Such people

1 Kokubun Ryōsei 国分良成, “Nihon ni okeru Chūgoku bunka dai kakumei kenkyu no genjo to mondaiten” 日本における中国文化大革命研究 の現状と問題点, Sanshokuki 三色 旗 409 (April 1982), pp. 2–6. 2 “Chūgoku bunka dai kakumei ni kansuru hōbun bunken mokuroku” 中国文化大革命に関 する邦文文献目録 [Bibliography of documents in Japanese concerning the Cultural Revolution in China], Kokuritsu kokkai toshokan geppō 国立国会図書館月報, (80–82).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004285309_035 544 Japanese Approaches to the Cultural Revolution supported the “class struggle” to topple Liu Shaoqi and others suspected of “taking the capitalist road.” Now that the Chinese have reversed the verdict on the Cultural Revolution, advocates of this position, such as Suganuma Masahisa, author of The Cultural Revolution,3 and many others, find them- selves in a serious quandary. Kokubun says that they have chosen one of three options: “They can keep pace with the [new] Chinese line; they can remain silent about the Cultural Revolution; or they can consistently hold onto their earlier views” (p. 3). Suganuma, for example, has taken the first route and admitted the errors of his earlier ways. But, this is not enough. Kokubun notes that “the issue is not resolved in this manner [that is, by admission of past mistakes]. We need a reexamination of the whole scholarly attitude of these people” (p. 4). Indeed, we do. It may be a religion to them, but there is no rea- son that confession should exonerate people who were complicit in one of the great crimes of the Twentieth century. Others in this first group include: Ando Hikotaro4 and Fujimura Toshiro.5 The second Japanese approach to the Cultural Revolution also adopted a Marxist framework of analysis, but used it to criticize events in China. These people argued that the Cultural Revolution was either a simple power strug- gle or Mao’s effort to enforce his dictatorial control; and Liu Shaoqi’s plans for socialism, they claim, were more correct than Mao’s. This position closely parallels the stance taken by the Japan Communist Party which split with the CCP in 1966. As a representative work of this strain, Kokubun cites: Kawazoe Noboru and Inumaru Giichi, The Cultural Revolution in China: Its Origins and Contradictions.6 From their perspective, the “main aim” of the Cultural Revolution “was to establish and strengthen an unlimited dictatorial control of Mao’s clique based on a deification extraordinaire of Mao Zedong” (p. 4). It was, they conclude, “anti-democratic, anti-socialist, anti-Marxist, and anti- Leninist.” Nonetheless, they also argue that while the Cultural Revolution was a (manipulated) mobilization from above, it also embodied a participa- tory movement of the masses from below. Just what elements of a popular

3 Suganuma Masahisa 菅沼正久, Bunka dai kakumei 文化大革命 (Tokyo: San’ichi shobo 三一書房, 1967). 4 安藤彦太郎 5 藤村俊郎 6 Kawazoe Noboru 川添登 and Inumaru Giichi 犬丸義一 Chūgoku no bunka dai kakumei, sono kongen to mujun 中国の文化大革命—その根源と矛盾 (Tokyo: Aoki shoten 青木 書店, 1968).