Nishida Kitarō and the Question of Japanese Fascism

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Nishida Kitarō and the Question of Japanese Fascism Nishida Kitarō and the Question of Japanese Fascism Martin Bastarache Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree in History Department of History Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Martin Bastarache, Ottawa, Canada, 2011 Abstract There has been considerable debate within the field of Japanese intellectual history with respect to the influence of Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945) on the ideological foundations and philosophical justification of Japanese fascism. One of the most influential Japanese thinkers of the twentieth century and widely considered to be the father of modern Japanese philosophy, his contemporary relevance is considered to be at risk should these accusations be true. As such, contemporary scholars have attempted to show how Nishida’s philosophy was decidedly anti- fascist, and that he was in fact opposed to the actions of the wartime regime. However, as this thesis will argue, by considering Nishida’s philosophy within the larger historical context of global modernity one can see that his contemporary relevance lies in just that which allows one to consider his thought as fascist, his critique of modernity. Nishida was reacting to the transforming social and cultural landscapes that had followed the modernization of Japan initiated by the Meiji Restoration (1868). As a result, he attempted to posit a transhistorical ideal of Japanese culture, embodied concretely in the Emperor that could withstand the social abstractions of modernity. However, it was ultimately his failure to grasp his own conditions of possibility in the very modernity that he was critiquing that pushed his thought increasingly to the right, helping to fuel and legitimize the emerging fascist ideology. ii Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 The Politics of Nishida Kitarō: A Historiography ...................................................................... 5 Approaching the Question of Nishida and the Ideological Foundations of Japanese Fascism: Some Methodological and Theoretical Considerations ............................................................ 16 Chapter 1: Is It Really Fascism? Fascism and the History of Wartime Japan ........................... 21 Modernity, Romanticism, and the Origins of Fascism ............................................................. 25 Fascist Romanticism ................................................................................................................. 29 The Politics of Fascism ............................................................................................................. 32 Fascist Moments ....................................................................................................................... 34 Japan’s Incomplete Modernity: Maruyama’s Theory of Japanese Fascism ............................ 35 Fascism and Japan: The Failure of a Concept? ........................................................................ 47 Fascism and the History of Interwar Japan: A Substantiated Connection ............................... 51 Chapter 2: Philosophy at the End of the Meiji: Zen no kenkyū and The Origins of Nishida tetsugaku ....................................................................................................................................... 58 Contextualizing Nishida’s Intellectual Development: The Meiji Educational Reforms and the Emergence of Philosophy in Japan ........................................................................................... 60 Beyond Kant and Hegel: Nishida and the Influence of German Romanticism ....................... 68 Approaching the Early Nishida: Zen no kenkyū and the Beginnings of Nishida Testugaku .. 74 Pure Experience and the Fascist Aesthetic: The Critique of Rationality and the Sacrifice of the Self in Zen no kenkyū ............................................................................................................... 76 Chapter 3: Philosophy at War: Nishida and the Fascist Aesthetic, 1923-1945 ........................... 93 Before the Rise of Fascism: Nishida’s Geijutsu to Dōtoku and the Aestheticization of Morality..................................................................................................................................... 95 Nishida tetsugaku in the Wartime Period ............................................................................... 104 Saving Asia from the West: the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and Japanese Fascist Ideology .................................................................................................................................. 105 Nishida and the Wartime Ideology: the Myth of Japanese Uniqueness and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere ...................................................................................................... 110 Conclusion: Reconsidering Nishida’s Contemporary Relevance in Light of his Relationship with Japanese Fascism ........................................................................................................................ 119 iii Historicizing Nishida’s Logic of the Place of Absolute Nothingness in Light of His Relationship with Japanese Fascism ....................................................................................... 122 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 126 iv Introduction In July of 1942, in the midst of the Pacific War, a number of Japan’s leading intellectuals held a symposium entitled “Overcoming Modernity.” Led by the literary critic Kamei Katsuichirō1 (1907-1966), the participants debated a number of different topics centered on the theme of overcoming modernity, from the “west within us” to the “possibilities for the present- day Japanese.” In the ensuing postwar discourse, this symposium has come to be seen as one of the best illustrations of the philosophical justification for Japanese fascism during the wartime period.2 However, to view the symposium in this way runs the risk of overlooking what had been the culmination of decades of concern regarding the modernization of Japan that had weighed upon the minds of many intellectuals throughout the early twentieth century. In retrospect, the modernization of Japan seemed all but inevitable by the mid-nineteenth century. The arrival of Commodore Perry and his “black ships” in 1853 demanding Japan open their borders and trade with the West, coupled with the colonization of much of continental Asia by Western powers had created a sense of urgency to either modernize or risk colonization. 1 Throughout this thesis Japanese names will be given in the traditional order of family name first. 2 This point is well illustrated in the preface and introduction of Richard Calichman’s translation of the symposium, Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008). 1 Within fifteen years of Commodore Perry’s arrival, the Tokugawa Shogunate could no longer maintain the power it had held since 1603 and despite numerous concessions was eventually overthrown in what is known as the Meiji Restoration (1868). Under the banner of “Eastern ethics and Western science,” the newly formed Meiji government enacted a process of rapid modernization.3 These efforts were initially met with strong support, military victory over China in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) was seen as an early indication of Japan’s successful effort to modernize, and made them the dominant power in Asia. A decade later, Japan’s defeat over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) further supported these claims and marked Japan’s emergence as a global power. However, the initial success of Japan’s modernization could not overshadow the fact that by the early twentieth century the ideological, social, and cultural landscape of Japan had been radically transformed by the totalizing nature of capitalist modernity. As a result of these transformations, modernization increasingly came to be seen as the “westernization” of society, signified by a move towards a mass culture of consumption driven by hedonistic desire rather than the traditional values and social relations of pre-modern Japan.4 The perceived loss of tradition that had accompanied these changes led to a general sense of crisis that swept over Japan throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Ultimately, it was fascism, with its promise to solve the antinomies of modernity at a more concrete level that emerged as the response to this period of uncertainty. 3 The phrase “Eastern ethics and Western science” (translated from the Japanese tōyo no dōtoku, seiyō no gakugei) was made famous by the Edo scholar Sakuma Shōzan (1811-1864) and utilized by the Meiji reformers. This quote comes from Tsunoda Ryūsaku, et al., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1958), 607. 4 Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 49. 2 Therefore, by the time the participants of the 1942 symposium had come together to discuss the situation facing Japan, they were doing so against the backdrop of decades of intellectual discourse that had attempted to confront the fragmentary nature of capitalist modernity. While one can
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