Front. Lit. Stud. China 2012, 6(1): 19–38 DOI 10.3868/s010-001-012-0003-8 RESEARCH ARTICLE Viren Murthy The 1911 Revolution and the Politics of Failure: Takeuchi Yoshimi and Global Capitalist Modernity Abstract Chinese historians have considered the 1911 Revolution an incomplete bourgeois revolution, especially in comparison to the more successful 1949 Revolution. On the other hand, in their famous tract in the early 1990s, Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu claimed that a rethinking of the 1911 Revolution should lead us to reject the concept of revolution altogether. In both of these formulations, as stepping stone towards socialism or demonstration that any revolution is futile, the 1911 Revolution is in some way connected to the legitimacy of capitalism. However, in post-war Japan, when Japanese intellectuals were debating the consequences of the American Occupation and Japan’s role in the Second World War, the 1911 Revolution had a different significance. Post-war Japanese sinologists often turned to the 1911 Revolution as a symbol of hope, despite its failure. Takeuchi Yoshimi was the pioneer of this intellectual trend and he argued that, unlike the Meiji Ishin, which was a pale imitation of Western modernity, the 1911 Revolution represented a unique affirmation of revolutionary subjectivity, precisely because its initial attempts at modernization failed. Takeuchi and his disciples’ discussions of how the 1911 Revolution produced subjectivity out of failure illustrate post-war Japanese sinologists employed the 1911 Revolution in debates about subjectivity and anti-colonialism. An analysis of their writings will open the way to thinking both the 1911 Revolution and its perception in Japan as it relates to the trajectory of capitalism and its discontents in the 20th century. Keywords 1911 Revolution, Takeuchi Yoshimi, Lu Xun, global capitalist modernity, politics and literature Today China is often regarded as a major player in the global system of nation-states. China-watchers, journalists and politicians constantly discuss China’s “rising” and debate whether China will become a threat to the West. In this context, threat implies that China will become a greater power than the United Viren Murthy ( ) Department of History, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1N 6N5, Canada E-mail: [email protected] Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 09:17:43AM via free access 20 Viren Murthy States. Such discussions suggest that the rise of China will leave the global-system basically unchanged, insofar as it will still be a market system; history will have merely replaced one hegemon with another. However, the texts of the famous Japanese literary critic, Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910–1977), depict a China that at once anticipates and runs counter to this view. Takeuchi’s discourse anticipates the above view because he also stresses the importance of China in world-history. But rather than signify a rival capitalist threat, in Takeuchi’s view, China appeared as a hope for a different future, a future beyond the logic of imperialist and capitalist dominated modernity. In this context, Takeuchi attempted to reread the historical significance of both the 1911 revolution and the meaning of Chinese literature as embodied in the figure of Lu Xun. In post-war Japan, when Japanese intellectuals were debating the consequences of the American Occupation and Japan’s role in the World War II, Japanese sinologists often turned to the 1911 Revolution as a symbol of a different future, despite its failure or even because of its failure. Takeuchi Yoshimi was the pioneer of this intellectual trend and he argued that, unlike the Meiji Ishin, which was a pale imitation of Western modernity, the 1911 Revolution represented a vision of revolutionary subjectivity, which included subtle mediations of language and politics. Takeuchi’s post-war discussion of the 1911 Revolution builds on his inter-war text on Lu Xun, in which he describes a dialectic between Sun Yat-sen and Lu Xun. These two together symbolize eternal revolution. In his post-war works, he attempts a synthesis of Lu Xun’s and Sun Yat-sen’s thought, in terms of the global problems of modernity. An analysis of these writings will open the way to thinking both the 1911 Revolution and its perception in Japan as it relates to the trajectory of capitalism and its discontents in the 20th century. Takeuchi claims alternative temporalities and global unevenness could possibly lead to spaces of hope for a future beyond capitalism. Since Harry Harootunian has recently discussed such spaces of hope in relation to a Marxist understanding of multiple temporalities and unevenness, I end my essay with an analysis of a recent essay by Harootunian while keeping Takeuchi’s concerns in mind, in order to further examine the complex relationships between global unevenness and hope. Takeuchi on the 1911 Revolution Takeuchi’s interpretation of the 1911 Revolution is significant for a number of reasons. His work represents a rethinking of the significance of China in the context of anti-modernist currents in Japanese intellectual history. Moreover, this anti-modernist current could be connected to a larger global discourse of anti-modernity or anti-rationality, which emerged around the same time as the Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 09:17:43AM via free access The 1911 Revolution and the Politics of Failure 21 1911 Revolution. The 1911 Revolution, and especially the Japanese interpretations of it, coincided with anti-modern artistic trends in Europe. From this perspective, the 1911 Revolution is at once both modern, because of its aim to form a nation-state, and anti-modern. Although this essay is not about this dual nature of the 1911 Revolution, we can note here how Zou Rong and Zhang Taiyan have expressed different attitudes towards progressive history. Zou Rong, along with the Paris Anarchists, adopted a progressive vision of history and revolution. In contrast, not only did Zhang Taiyan define revolution as a return to the past, he also attempted to develop a critique of evolution based on a Buddhist theory of consciousness. In another work, I have argued that, far from expressing something uniquely Chinese, Zhang’s attack on revolution represented a larger global trend against rationalization, bureaucratization, and the idea of objective laws of history.1 This trend began perhaps in the late 19th century, but the years from 1910 to 1913 in particular have recently come to be seen as a period in which intellectuals and artists expressed a heightened sense of doubt and suspicion with respect to modernist narratives of modernity. Thomas Harrison and Jean-Michel-Rabaté refer primarily to the realm of art and music, but their ideas have a number of implications for politics.2 Their books stress how modernist music, literature and art extolled atonal and irrational themes in the years before World War I, suggesting that destruction must precede creation. In 1944, Takeuchi read Lu Xun and the 1911 Revolution in a way that underscored a concept of literature separate from developmental narratives, and also suggested a dialectical relationship between creation and destruction. Takeuchi highlights the implications of literature for politics in relation to a specific geographical region and event, namely China/Asia and the 1911 Revolution.3 The Politics of the 1911 Revolution in Takeuchi’s Lu Xun Takeuchi published his book on Lu Xun in 1944, after Japan had invaded China in 1937 and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He had already been to China and, like a number of Japanese sinologists, he had mixed feelings about 1 Murthy, 2011. 2 Harrison, 1996, Rabaté, 2007. 3 Christian Uhl has recently discussed the importance of Nishida’s work for understanding Takeuchi’s reading of Lu Xun. Nishida’s work is particularly important for us in this context, one of his most famous books, The Study of the Good, was published in precisely in 1911 and it his key concept of pure-experience, represents a critique of reification or rationalization from a standpoint before ordinary distinctions between subject and object. It is this standpoint outside of ordinary distinctions, a type of religious perspective that Takeuchi associates with Lu Xun. See Uhl, 2003. Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 09:17:43AM via free access 22 Viren Murthy Japan’s involvement in the war. He had a great sentimental attachment to China, but he had perhaps an even stronger resentment towards the United States and Americanism. On the eve of the 1911 Revolution, a few years before the World War I, Europe was the center of imperialist power, but by the time of World War II, this power was shifting toward the United States. For many Japanese intellectuals, Americanism represented a continuation of the domination of Europe, and it was thus criticized by a number of scholars, including the philosophers of the Kyoto School and romantics such as Yasuda Yojūrō. Like Takeuchi, these romantics would put forth a new vision of literature as separate from politics. However, as we shall see below, Takeuchi will inflect the romantics’ vision in such a way as to produce a new form of politics, which he will associate with China. Yasuda is worth mentioning here not only because he was once a classmate of Takeuchi and one of the leaders of the Japanese romantic school but also because he was extremely active during the 1930s and 1940s, when Takeuchi wrote his book on Lu Xun. There are some who would claim that Takeuchi’s work copies that of Yasuda and there are clearly similarities.4 Like Takeuchi, Yasuda was clearly a critic of European modernity and Americanism. Perhaps more importantly, Yasuda also propounded an idea of literature as something separate from politics. He berated proletarian literature in a manner that Takeuchi echoed to some extent in his work on Lu Xun, The danger of nationalism without feeling or emotion is that it is no different from the totalitarianism of Marxism.