Japan And Asian Modernities by Raud

Author:Raud [Raud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780710311030
Google: Y3ssBgAAQBAJ
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Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2007-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Pacific War as a philosophical war

If conservatives could be satisfied that the effects liberalism of the previous decades was being rectified by the mid-1930s – a repudiating process in both domestic and foreign affairs that sought to correct ‘damage’ – then 1937 can be seen as a crucial year signifying an affirming process that sought to push the conservative vision forward in both foreign and domestic policies. Overseas, under the Prince Konoe Government, Japan began the China War to attempt a ‘final solution’ to the ‘China Problem’. Domestically, the Ministry of Education published the Kokutai no hongi (The Fundamental Principles of the National Essence), which formally established the (conservative) official definition of Japan’s national essence over which liberals and conservatives had fought the previous decade. The document signified not only the government’s aim to direct people’s thinking, but also the end of the decades-long illiberal struggle to define Japanese civilization.

The Kokutai no hongi explicitly criticized ‘Europeanization’ and ‘ideologies of the Enlightenment’ along with rationalism, positivism, and what its authors called the ‘deadlock of individualism’. In order to counteract these influences, two things needed to happen: (1) there needed to be a deeper understanding of the ‘intrinsic nature of Occidental ideologies’, and (2) people needed to grasp ‘the true nature of [Japan’s] national entity’. People needed to embrace anew the virtue of loyalty to the organic family-state and to the divine emperor. This required properly understanding individuals as subjects, and that the individual gained value through connection to the state:

When citizens who are conglomerations of separate individuals independent of each other give support to a ruler in correlation to the ruler, there exists no deep foundation between ruler and citizen to unite them. However, the relationship between the Emperor and his subjects arises from the same fountainhead, and has prospered ever since the founding of the nation as one in essence. … We must sweep aside the corruption of the spirit and the clouding of knowledge that arises from setting up one’s ‘self’ and from being taken up with one’s self and return to a pure and clear state of mind that belongs intrinsically to us as subjects, and thereby fathom the great principle of loyalty (KNH 1937:79, 82).

According to the Kokutai no hongi, the individual, then, was one in essence with the state, the former owing the latter for his origins. The individual was nothing when separated from the state. The proper understanding of the Emperor, the state, and the ‘self’ that had been lost due to the influence of Occidental individualist ideology needed to be regained. What is evident here is the Hegelian notion that states play the preeminent roles in the movement of history. The Japanese subject’s existence was validated only through social and philosophical entities greater than the individual self, ultimately the throne and state. The official state document made clear what did not lead to a healthy Japanese culture:

No true culture should be the fruit of abstract individual ideas alienated from the State and the race.

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