HASEGAWA NYOZEKAN AND LIBERALISM

IN MODERN JAPAN

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Hasegawa Nyozekan in his later years making tea. Photo: Courtesy
Kenneth B. Pyle. Box: Nyozekan’s signature.

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HASEGAWA NYOZEKAN

AND LIBERALISM

IN MODERN JAPAN

MARY L. HANNEMAN

University of Washington, Tacoma

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HASEGAWA NYOZEKAN AND LIBERALISM IN MODERN JAPAN

This edition first published 2007 by
GLOBAL ORIENTAL Ltd
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Folkestone
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UK

www.globaloriental.co.uk

ISBN 978-1-905246-49-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Set in 9.5/11pt Stone Serif by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester
Printed and bound in England by Athenaeum Press, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear

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Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

Introduction

Chapter One:

Hasegawa Nyozekan

Chapter Two:

The Japanese National Character

Chapter Three: Taisho

¯ Democracy

Chapter Four:

Fascism and the Path to War

Chapter Five:

Postwar Japan

109

Conclusion

124

Bibliography

128

Index

137

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Acknowledgements

would like to thank Dr. Kenneth B. Pyle for his support and men-
torship. Dr. Toru Takemoto also has helped and supported me in

many ways over many years. I will always be grateful to Dr. William
Richardson for his guidance at the University of Washington,
Tacoma. I also thank my family and in particular my three children,
Jim, Davy and Caroline Allen. Finally, I dedicate this book to the
memory of my parents, Carl Frederick Hanneman and Donna
Stewart Hanneman.

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Introduction

ar too often, historians have likened World War II to a knife that
cut modern Japanese history in two. The subsequent American

occupation of Japan, they say, completed the surgery by removing
Japan’s “diseased” past from its present, enabling it to develop into
a political, social, and economic democracy, a healthy model of its
American doctors.

This bifurcated view of Japan’s modern history has come under

review as Japanese and American scholars alike ask whether postwar
Japan is really a product of the Allied Occupation or rather the
outcome of trends present from prewar times. This question is the
latest version of one of the central questions of modern Japanese
history, asked since the Meiji period: “How can Japan be both
modern and Japanese?” Both questions assume a strict dichotomy
between “modern” Japan, be it Meiji or postwar Japan, and its trad-
itional past. Increasingly, historians have moved beyond this over-
simplified dichotomy, showing that continuity between pre- and
postwar Japan does indeed exist.

Certainly, Japan experienced vast change in the decades follow-

ing World War II. To identify that change as being a direct result of
the Allied Occupation, however, is to ignore the dynamic set in
motion by the Meiji Restoration. Just as the Meiji Restoration was
not without its Tokugawan roots, so has postwar Japan been a con-
tinuation of trends set in motion as early as the Meiji and Taisho

periods. It is the historian’s task, therefore, to identify aspects of this
important continuity.

Journalist and liberal social critic Hasegawa Nyozekan (1875–

1969) is an illustration of the continuity in modern Japanese
history. A thoroughly “modern” intellectual, he dressed in tradi-
tional Japanese clothing throughout his life. He was a thin man,
who wore his wavy hair long, and sometimes sported a mustache.
His head was large, his face long, his jaw slightly protruding.
His rapid speech was delivered in a soft baritone.

“To follow

Nyozekan’s life,” writes intellectual historian Tanaka Hiroshi, is to
follow one hundred years of modern Japanese history.”

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journalist and colleague Oya Soichi wrote, “Because he was active
throughout Meiji, Taisho

¯, and Sho

¯wa, his was a giant presence that

left a mark on the history of modern Japanese culture.”

As a youth in early Meiji, Nyozekan received a most modern edu-

cation, attending one of Tokyo’s first English language schools
where he learned the latest in British Classical Liberal thought. This
provided him with a thoroughly liberal outlook, which stayed with
him his entire life. As Sharon Nolte explained, “Liberalism was a
cluster of ideas in prewar Japan. . . the dignity of the individual,
freedom of expression, the equality of the sexes, the legitimacy of
popular participation in cultural creation and politics, progressive
social engineering, and decolonization.”

Nyozekan embraced all of

these ideas, but his liberal strain was balanced by a deep respect for,
and love of, Japanese tradition.

After completing his formal education in British law in 1898,

Nyozekan joined the staff of Kuga Katsunan’s newspaper, Nihon,
identifying with Kuga and his call to “absorb the characteristics of
the strong countries of the West and cultivate a Japanese essence.”

Unlike many of his contemporaries at Nihon, however, Nyozekan
never repudiated the West, or liberalism, instead integrating
the liberal and nationalist strains that so characterized the modern
Japanese experience. It was this integration of liberalism and
nationalism, unusual in late nineteenth and early twentieth
century Japan and almost extinct by the 1930s, that gave Nyozekan
his unique perspective on Japanese society – a perspective that was
at once objective and subjective, critical, yet loving.

Nyozekan is important not only as an example of the link of con-

tinuity between pre- and postwar Japan; he was also part of the
process of change in Japan. Japan possesses a highly developed and
widely-read intellectual press.

Thus, as a widely-published intellec-

tual, Nyozekan wielded an unusually strong impact on the attitudes
of the Japanese public. Both before and after the war he devoted his
career as journalist and social critic to the establishment of liberal
values in Japan, and to providing an intellectual framework for the
creation of political democracy and social liberty. After his journal-
istic start with Kuga and Kuga’s colleague Miyake Setsurei, founder
of the magazine Nihonjin, Nyozekan joined the staff of the Osaka
Asahi shimbun in 1908. His career as a newspaper journalist with the
liberal Osaka Asahi was short, however: in 1918, he resigned from
the paper in protest against the Terauchi government’s repression
of the press following that year’s Rice Riots.

Cutting his ties with the newspaper world, he founded the mag-

azine Warera (“We”) in 1919, a magazine designed to provide the
kind of forum for social and political criticism he believed the news-

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papers could no longer provide. Thus, he continued his efforts to
promote the development of liberalism and democracy. By the
1930s, in the face of increased governmental repression and mili-
tarism, that struggle grew more and more difficult. After publishing
one of his most important works, Nihon fuashizumu hihan (“A
Critique of Japanese Fascism”) in November 1932, his magazine, by
then called Hihan (“Criticism”), was forced to fold in 1934. This
marked the beginning of a new and important phase in Nyozekan’s
life and career.

Shifting to more subtle tactics in the fight for liberalism, Nyozekan

began his study of the Japanese national character, a study that would
occupy him for the rest of his life. Nyozekan used his beliefs about the
Japanese character as a way to appraise, judge, and critique Japanese
society. This enabled him, during the war years, to channel his polit-
ical and social commentary into the more discreet, but not necessar-
ily less critical, form of Japanese cultural studies. This approach,
camouflaged in the colors of that era’s emphasis on Japanese nativism
(and anticipating Maruyama Masao’s later approach to criticism)
allowed him to continue his critique. In this way, Nyozekan survived
the war years while never repudiating his liberal perspective.

The Occupation and postwar period saw a revival of Nyozekan’s

influence, for now finally came the fruition of many of his liberal
ideals for Japan.

Suddenly in demand, he served in various gov-

ernment-related positions – including a position in the first postwar
sitting of the Imperial Diet – and received many honors for his
achievements. Nyozekan’s liberal and nationalist beliefs finally
seemed reflected in the society around him.

The image of a modern intellectual clothed in traditional garb

best exemplifies Nyozekan’s unique blend of tradition and moder-
nity. A liberal and a nationalist, he devoted his career to advancing
the cause of liberalism in Japan using his understanding of the
Japanese national character to evaluate Japanese society and to elu-
cidate the continuities between Japan’s past and its present. As
Nyozekan himself wrote in 1951, “It might be said, with perhaps a
little exaggeration, that a Japanese who is still living and who was
born in the early Meiji period has in his own lifetime covered a span
which stretched over two or three centuries in Europe. I am, I think,
one such Japanese.”

NOTES

Kaji Ryuichi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan,” Bungei shunju 42:8 (August,
1964) 281; Tatsuno Ryu, “Hasegawa Nyozekan ron,” Chuo koron, 50:2
(February 1935) 283.

Introduction

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Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Shakaiha janarisuto e
no michi,” Sekai, no. 482 (December 1985) 217.

Oya Soichi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no mittsu no kao,” Sandei mainichi,
(November 30, 1969) 154.

Sharon Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan: Ishibashi Tanzan and His
Teachers, 1905–1960, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)
vii.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Sekai no rekishi to jibun no rekishi: Seiyo bunka
to watakushi no ayunda michi,” Genso, 1:6 (September 1947) 8.

Herbert Passin, “Writer and Journalist in the Transitional Society,” in
Lucian Pye (ed.), Communications and Political Development (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1963) 102–103.

Oya, 155.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Japan’s ‘Cultural Democracy,’ A Challenging
Interpretation of Japanese History,” Perspective on Japan: Atlantic
Monthly Supplement, no. 1 (1955) 74.

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Hasegawa Nyozekan

orn in 1875, just seven years after the Meiji Restoration,
Hasegawa Nyozekan’s life spanned most of Japan’s modern

century. He died in 1969 at the age of ninety-three. Thus, Hasegawa
Nyozekan was truly a “witness to a century.”

But it was not just any

century: this was the century of Japan’s transition from feudal mil-
itary government to modern democratic nation. Nor was Nyozekan
just any witness: as a liberal intellectual, social critic, and indepen-
dent journalist, he not only recorded what he saw, but commented
as well. In commenting on society he endeavored to change it, to
mold public opinion and provide an intellectual basis for the
growth of liberalism in Japan.

Hasegawa Manjiro (his given name) was born the second son of

a merchant family in Tokyo’s Fukugawa District.

His father oper-

ated a lumberyard, but until his grandfather’s generation the family
had been carpenters in service to the shogun.

Thus, while

Nyozekan’s upbringing was in tune with the spirit of Meiji, through
his family and physical environment he experienced the spirit of
Edo that lingered into the new age.

Nyozekan’s family background had lasting impact on the forma-

tion of his ideas and on his writing. Growing up in Tokyo’s shita-
machi, surrounded by the “stories and laughter . . . and the realities
of life of the artisans,”

he felt close to the artisan and laboring

classes. Nyozekan himself engaged in carpentry throughout his life,
enjoying cabinet-making and seal engraving well into his eighties.

Nyozekan wrote about artisans and laborers and he wrote for them.
His later concern for labor issues can be traced to his childhood
environment, and his immersion in the study of Japanese history
and culture was motivated at least in part by a desire to explain these
things to the laboring classes whom he felt did not adequately
understand their own heritage.

Japanese intellectual historian

Tanaka Hiroshi contends that Nyozekan’s artisan background

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contributed to the realism and humanism that were fundamental to
Nyozekan’s thought.

In 1881, at age six, Nyozekan began his education. At ten, his

father sent him to live in lodgings run by Sugiura Jugo, who would
soon be a founding member of the Seikyosha, the late 1880s, intel-
lectual group that sought to forge a modern Japan through adapt-
ing Western borrowings to Japanese tradition. From Sugiura’s
lodgings he attended the Honkyo shogakko.

His elementary educa-

tion was interrupted periodically by illness, a pattern that would be
repeated during his college days.

Like his family background,

physical infirmity was a character-molding factor in his life. He
attributed his lifelong pacifism and lack of interest in the military
in part to this combination of factors: he recalled that as a youth he
“had no interest in war or military toys [and]. . . never played
wargames. When my friends played such games, I watched them
disinterestedly.”

In the same way, he attributed his “scientific atti-

tude,” “objectivity”, and “dislike for authority” to the periods of
enforced rest and recuperation during his youth, when “a day
without pain or suffering was a good day and I could expect only
fleeting satisfaction or contentment.”

Nyozekan’s central characteristic as an intellectual and journalist

was his liberalism, and this too undoubtedly began to take form
under the influence of his earliest education. Nyozekan shared the
experience of others of his generation for whom the new Western-
oriented schools played a profound role in shaping ideas and con-
sciousness.

At age of eleven, without having graduated from

elementary school, Nyozekan entered Nakamura Kaiu’s (Masanao)
Dojinsha. Here he was instructed by Nakamura, founding member
of the Meirokusha and translator of Samuel Smiles’s Self Help and J.S.
Mill’s On Liberty.

At the Dojinsha, which also emphasized Chinese

and the Chinese classics, Nyozekan was first introduced to the
English language.

It was English that would be his undoing,

however. At the age of twelve he failed the Dojinsha’s English exam-
ination and was compelled to return home.

He then entered the

Kyoritsu Gakko where he stayed until 1889, and at the age of four-
teen he entered the course in French law at the Meiji Horitsu Gakko
(now Meiji Daigaku) planning to take his father’s advice and become
a lawyer.

But already events were occurring that would draw him away

from the law. In 1888 at age thirteen, Nyozekan had published his
first piece, a short work entitled “Sozoro aruki” (“A Stroll”) in
Shonen’en (“Boy’s Garden”), a tender beginning to his career as a
journalist.

That same year, Miyake Setsurei’s magazine, Nihonjin

(“The Japanese”) was founded and Nyozekan, reading it eagerly,

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“secretly determined to become a newspaper journalist.”

When

Kuga Katsunan’s newspaper, Nihon (“Japan”) appeared the next
year, he devoured that as well. Subscribing to Tokutomi Soho’s
magazine, Kokumin no tomo (“The Nation’s Friend,” 1887) and later
his newspaper, Kokumin shimbun (“The Nation,” 1890), Nyozekan
compared Tokutomi and his Minyusha’s views to those of Miyake’s
and Kuga’s Seikyosha.

The Seikyosha’s ideas struck a responsive

chord in him, and though he had not yet met his mentors, he had
selected them.

First, however, he needed to complete his formal education. At

the age of eighteen (1893) he entered Tokyo Kogakuin (later Chuo
Daigaku), enrolling in the department of English law. His college
career was interrupted after only a year, however, when due to a
combination of illness and the loss of his father’s business, he was
forced to take a two-year break.

During his convalescence he read

extensively, pursuing his interest in psychiatry, psychology, and
criminal law, and reading Chekov and Kropotkin in English trans-
lation.

He wrote later that he treated the interval away from

school exactly as though he were still in school, and thus did not
feel it to be a particular misfortune.

He also used the enforced

vacation to pursue his writing, completing the short fictional piece
“Futasuji michi” (“Crossroads”), which he published in 1898 in
Shincho gekkan (“New Works Monthly”). The piece was well-
received: one critic later went so far as to compare him favorably to
Soseki, Tanizaki, and Akutagawa.

In 1896, after retaking the entrance exams for Tokyo Hogakuin,

Nyozekan resumed college as a sophomore.

Attending Tokyo

Hogakuin, a private university which, like other private universi-
ties, was more conducive to liberal ideas and attitudes than the
imperial universities,

Nyozekan received an education firmly

grounded in English and French philosophy, avoiding the German-
based education that was dominant in the imperial universities.

This pro-English and anti-German emphasis stayed with him
throughout his life. He graduated from Tokyo Hogakuin in 1898,
fourteenth in a class of 200.

About his college days studying law, Nyozekan later wrote, “I had

no mind to do law; it was my father’s wish that I should do so. But
my first and second years [at Tokyo Hogakuin] were absolutely supe-
rior because I had an interest in scholarly things.” Out of respect for
his father, he attempted the bar examination, but held up by a rain-
storm, he arrived late, and failed.

Nyozekan’s real interest lay in

journalism, a path his elder brother (Yamamoto Matsunosuke) was
already pursuing, having moved up the ranks from the Yamato
shimbun, which he joined in 1894, to the Tokyo Asahi shimbun,

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which he joined in 1898.

This was a course Nyozekan too hoped

to follow. He wrote:

I planned to become a newspaper journalist because I wanted to
emulate the top-ranking newspaper journalists of the day. These
people were Fukuzawa Yukichi, Suehiro Tetsucho, Kuga Katsunan,
Miyake Setsurei, Tokutomi Soho, Shiga Shigetaka: people who were
not principally academics, but people who I thought were
grounded in the insight of the journalist and the fundamentals of
scholarship. At that time I coined the phrase “critics of civilization”
for these people, and thought that I too would like to become a
“critic of civilization.” (I didn’t know that the phrase “critic of civ-
ilization” had previously come into use and thought that I had
made it up myelf.)

As a critic of civilization, Nyozekan hoped to become a journal-

ist who could “contribute to the formation of sound public
opinion.”

His mentor, Kuga, held journalism in high regard, and

believed the independent journalist played a crucial role in working
for the national interest, especially in a nation that was moving
toward democracy.

Nyozekan wanted a stake in shaping the

liberal democratic nation he believed Japan would become.

In the years immediately following his graduation from Tokyo

Hogakuin, Nyozekan found himself once again forced to recuperate
from a bout of ill-health. Although under doctor’s orders not to
exert himself even by reading and writing, he used the period to do
exactly that.

He read English and French classics by Dickens,

Thackeray, Zola, and Maupassant in English translation,

and once

sufficiently recovered, he spent much of his time reading at the
Imperial Library at Ueno.

There, he read the works of Spencer,

Hume, Spinoza, Mill, Toqueville, and others,

and was particularly

drawn to Spencer.

Spencer’s scheme of evolutionary social

progress had attracted Tokutomi Soho and Miyake Setsurei before
him, and now Nyozekan, too, found in Spencer a rich and promis-
ing prospect for Japan. His continuing interest in criminology and
criminal psychology led him to the works of Cesare Lambroso and
Enrico Ferri; he even began to study Italian so he could read these
works in their original.

During this time he read Marx and Engels

for the first time, tackling the English translation of Marx’s Kapital
and Engels’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,

later admitting

he was “no match for Marx.”

He also renewed his earlier fascina-

tion with Kropotkin, especially favoring the Russian anarchist’s
Mutual Aid and his 1899 autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionist.
Nyozekan translated the latter work in a summarized version,

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which he published serially as Rokoku no uchimaku (“An Inside
Account of Russia”) in Nihon in 1903.

But Nyozekan’s great fascination continued to be the ideas of

Kuga and Miyake and their Seikyosha.

Having received an educa-

tion firmly grounded in the Japanese and Chinese classics as well as
in Western liberal thought, it was natural that Nyozekan be drawn
to the Seikyosha ideas. The Seikyosha, founded in 1888 by Kuga,
Miyake, and Shiga Shigetaka, was committed to strengthening
Japan by adopting Western ideas and institutions. In contrast to
Tokutomi’s Minyusha, founded a year earlier and dedicated to
wholesale Westernization based on the premise that all progress was
universal and followed a universal path, the Seikyosha held that
borrowed ideas and institutions must be adapted to fit Japan.
Adapting Western imports would enable the nation to maintain its
cultural identity and thereby achieve equality in the international
community.

Integrating East and West in this way required a deep

knowledge of Japanese history, culture, and tradition. In short, to
adapt Western ideas and institutions to fit Japan required an under-
standing of the Japanese “national character.” Obviously, it
required an understanding of the West as well. Thus, Seikyosha
members could claim to be liberals in the Western mold, and at the
same time, Japanese nationalists. This liberal-nationalist position
was the philosophical foundation with which Nyozekan identified.

Nyozekan wrote about the influence Kuga had on his thinking as

a young man: “. . . for Kuga, the important point in nationalism
was liberalism. As a youth I read [Kuga’s writings] Kinji kempo ko
(’Recent Constitutional Thought,’ Nihon, December 28, 1888 to
February 28, 1889) and Kinji seironko (’Recent Political Thought,’
Nihon, July 20 to August 30, 1890) and placed myself in the Nihon
camp.” But, he continued, indicating the primacy of liberalism in
his own thinking, “If Kuga had not comprehended (rikai) liberalism
in such a way, even though I yearned [to belong to] Nihon, in all
probability, I would have abandoned the group.”

Nyozekan differed from his mentors, however, in that as Japan

moved into its early phase of imperialism, marked by the Sino-
Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, the nationalist element in Kuga’s
and Miyake’s thought became more prominent, whereas Nyozekan,
on the other hand, kept the nationalist element in balance with his
liberalism. As Japan pursued imperialist goals in Asia, many Meiji
liberals (including the Minyusha’s Tokutomi) retreated into the
belief that patriotism demanded they reject Western influence and
liberal ideas and embrace Japanese tradition. Japan’s victory in the
Sino-Japanese War in 1895 was one that even Fukuzawa Yukichi, the
model Meiji liberal, could not resist. So seductive were imperialism

Hasegawa Nyozekan

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and military victory as signs of national strength, that after the
Sino-Japanese War, “Even those who were [previously] unalloyed
liberals [became] militarists.”

Nyozekan wrote of Kuga: “As we

entered the Meiji 20s, the trend in modern Japanese history
reversed from a process toward liberalism to a process toward
nationalism, and as this happened, Kuga’s standpoint also took this
direction”. “Had I read Kuga’s ’[Gensei oyobi] kokusairon’ (’Essay on
Current Politics and the World,’ April 3–22, 1893) before joining
Nihon,” Nyozekan wrote, “I probably would not have felt in step
with my colleagues at Nihon, since it did not match my own feel-
ings at the time.”

Maruyama Masao, whose father, Maruyama

Kanji was a lifelong friend and colleague of Nyozekan’s, believed
that nationalist elements were absent from Nyozekan’s thought
from the start. In this respect, Maruyama felt, Nyozekan clearly dif-
fered from Kuga and Miyake.

Nyozekan’s love for Japan was

inspired by its culture, not directed toward its government.

But in 1902, Nyozekan joined the staff of Nihon, thus fulfilling his

youthful ambition.

In addition to Kuga and Miyake, he joined

such colleagues as Maruyama Kanji and Chiba Kamekichi, writing
for a newspaper whose circulation in 1903 was about 10,000.

The

atmosphere at Nihon under Kuga was unlike that of any other news-
paper. Differences in rank were minimized and even senior staff
members like Kuga and Miyake were addressed with the simple
“san” as opposed to “sensei.”

Nyozekan remembered Kuga as a

free-thinker who did not adhere rigidly to “isms” – he was not, in
Nyozekan’s words, an “ism-ist.”

Due to illness, Kuga resigned as editor of Nihon in 1906, and in

1907, Nihon merged with Miyake Setsurei’s magazine Nihonjin to
form Nihon oyobi Nihonjin. Nyozekan later wrote, as of the end of an
era, “I do not think an organization like Nihon shimbun, which Kuga
led, will appear again in Japan, and this makes me feel intensely
lonely.”

Nyozekan felt his association with Nihon was a turning

point in his career in journalism, one that gave him a deep aware-
ness of the problems and issues confronting modern Japan.

During his years with Nihon and Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, Nyozekan

wrote on such topics as the importance of education for women,
labor issues, criminal behavior and criminal law, and other social
issues. It was while with Nihon oyobi Nihonjin that he first began to
use the pen name “Nyozekan,” an ironic play on the idea of free
time by a man who had none.

Soon after the merger with Nihon, Nihon oyobi Nihonjin began to

face financial difficulties and was unable to retain its complete staff.
As a result, Nyozekan left Nihon oyobi Nihonjin in February 1908 to
join the staff of the Osaka Asahi Shimbun, which, at that time, had

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a significantly larger circulation than the newer Tokyo Asahi
Shimbun. Nyozekan joined the Osaka Asahi through an introduction
by former Nihon colleague Ando Masazumi who had joined the
Osaka newspaper just months earlier.

He was joined at the Osaka

Asahi by several of his earlier colleagues, including, at Nyozekan’s
recommendation, Maruyama Kanji.

Nihon colleague Chiba

Kamekichi later wrote that Nyozekan possessed a “deep under-
standing of humanity” and that editor Torii Sosen greatly admired
Nyozekan’s work from his Nihon and Nihon oyobi Nihonjin days.

Partly as a result of the carry-over of writers from Nihon and Nihon

oyobi Nihonjin to the Osaka Asahi – what Maruyama Masao called a
“human migration”

– the Osaka newspaper had a free intellectual

climate that embraced, and was the embodiment of, Japanese lib-
eralism.

The Osaka Asahi was the leading voice and opinion-maker

of the democratic and minponshugi ideals of the period of Taisho

democracy.

Nyozekan recalled that Murayama Ryohei, founder of

both the Osaka and the Tokyo Asahi newspapers, believed that the
role of the newspaper should be to bring about a democratic age.

Moreover, Nyozekan himself became a leading voice in the Osaka

Asahi and in the world of journalism. As city editor, a post he acquired
in 1914, he and editor Sosen became the guiding force of the news-
paper.

These two, wrote Kako Onia, “Led the company in judgment

and character, [and] were respected as the ’machines’ of public dis-
cussion.”

At the Osaka Asahi, Nyozekan developed his critical

approach to problems confronting Japanese society and government.

Nyozekan’s writing was not confined to the newspaper, however.

He continued to contribute to Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, and in 1909 he
published his first novel, Hitai no otoku. (“The Man with a
Forehead”)

Originally entitled simply, “?” and published serially

in the Osaka Asahi, the novel was warmly received by the critics.
Natsume Soseki, already established as a leading literary figure,
praised the book in a review in the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, declaring
that “the interest [in the book] is totally in the opinions of the
people in the book, the gathering of opinions on society, people and
learning . . . that the book presents.”

A month after the book’s

publication Nyozekan had the opportunity to meet with Soseki,
and the latter invited him to visit his literary group, the Shakaiha
bungakusha.

As Tokyo natives, “Edokko,” the two shared an affin-

ity, and Nyozekan later recalled the nostalgia he felt upon hearing
Soseki’s Tokyo accent in his adopted Osaka home.

Soseki himself

felt that Nyozekan’s development and nature resembled his own.

In 1910, Nyozekan was sent to London to report on the England-

Japan Exposition. Leaving Osaka in March, he traveled via the
Trans-Siberian Railway, stopping in Moscow and Berlin before

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arriving in London in April.

In London, while covering the

Exposition, he attended the funeral of King Edward VII.

His most

fulfilling endeavor while in London, however, was a familiar one:
reading. In his ample free time he read avidly of the English books
and newspapers available to him and was especially drawn to the
ideas expressed by British social theorist Hobhouse in The
Metaphysical Theory of the State. He was also attracted to the works
of anthropologist James Frazer, and read extensively of the various
socialists of the English school. The reading background he
acquired in England had a great impact on his own later writing
about the state, about society, and about the Japanese national char-
acter. As legal scholar Matsumoto Joji has pointed out, “. . . the
liberal aspect of Nyozekan’s character gradually expanded after
his trip to England.”

Before returning to Japan in November,

Nyozekan traveled around Europe, visiting Paris and Rome before
sailing back to Japan via the Suez Canal, with stops in Singapore and
Hong Kong.

Nyozekan published a book, Rondon (1912), about his

experiences and reflections on London.

But more serious matters occupied much of Nyozekan’s time. The

second Katsura Cabinet’s harsh anti-socialist and anti-labor
response to the Red Flag (Akahata) Incident of 1908 and the High
Treason (Taigyaku) Incident of 1910 sparked concern among some
intellectuals over the retreat from a relatively free intellectual
atmosphere to one of growing government control. Nyozekan’s edi-
torials critical of the government’s high-handed behavior in the
High Treason Incident marked the beginning of his journalistic
confrontation with the government.

The government’s handling of the Red Flag and High Treason

incidents, coupled with the Katsura Cabinet’s policy of expanding
Japanese interests in Asia created a backdrop for conflict among
members of the Osaka Asahi staff. The conflict arose between the
Seikyosha group of liberal staffers, gathered around editor Sosen (a
group which was also opposed to the political party the Seiyukai,
and believed the influence of partisan politics should not be
brought into the paper) and the “anti-liberals,” gathered around
Nishimura Tenshu.

Antipathy between the two groups intensified,

and, in March 1914, publisher Murayama Ryohei replaced editor-
in-chief Nishimura and city editor Tohen Katei, with Sosen and
Nyozekan respectively.

Hasegawa wrote that while Nishimura

commanded great respect, he was not qualified to be editor of a
newspaper whose role was to lead the fight for democracy.

The

victory of the Sosen-Nyozekan editorial policy was short-lived,
however: battle lines were drawn and would resurface in the after-
math of the 1918 Rice Riots controversy.

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Under the combined Sosen-Nyozekan leadership the Osaka Asahi

broadened its role as a force to “bring about a democratic age.”
When World War I broke out, for example, Nyozekan editorialized
that England and France would prevail over German militarism
because they possessed democratic cores. At the same time, he
expressed his belief that Japan would turn away from the German
example of social and political organization and instead follow the
example of the democratic nations.

The liberal character of the

Sosen-Nyozekan leadership was manifested too in the 1916 serial-
ization of Kawakami Hajime’s Bimbo monogatari, an indictment of
modern society and an important step in Kawakami’s progression
toward Marxism. In 1917, the Osaka Asahi staff was strengthened
by the addition of Oyama Ikuo, a leading figure in the promotion
of democratic ideals, along with Marxist economist Kushida
Tamizo.

The newspaper thus attempted to provide a foundation

for democratic ideals in Japanese society. It also provided Nyozekan
with a wide circle of liberal associates who would prove valuable
after his resignation from the Osaka Asahi.

These were colleagues who, with Nyozekan, were opposed to the

Terauchi government and its policies. They first attacked the
Terauchi government in print for its transcendental cabinet.

Reiterating its earlier complaints against the Katsura government,
the Osaka Asahi also attacked the Terauchi government’s aggressive
foreign policy. Immediately prior to becoming Prime Minister,
Terauchi had been the first Governor General of Korea, where he
instituted a policy of harsh military control over the Japanese
colony. These issues set the tenor of the conflict between the Osaka
Asahi and the Terauchi government, and, as Maruyama Masao
pointed out, established the Osaka Asahi as one of the Terauchi gov-
ernment’s primary opponents.

When Terauchi announced his

plans for the Siberian Expedition in August 1918, the Osaka Asahi
responded with an attack against this “pointless” intervention.

The announcement of the Siberian Expedition helped touch off

the Rice Riots. In stark contrast to the ecstatic public support for
Japan’s military gains of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, the
Siberian Expedition proved unpopular. Intellectuals viewed the
move as a government ploy to stir up patriotic sentiment to distract
growing popular domestic dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction that was
largely the result of post-World War I inflation and skyrocketing rice
prices. To the popular mind, on the other hand, the Siberian
Expedition served as confirmation of rumors that the government
was stockpiling rice to provision the troops.

The Rice Riots broke out in Toyama Prefecture in early August

1918, when women from a small fishing village seized the rice

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supplies of local merchants who reneged on their earlier plans to
lower prices. Unexpectedly, the minor uprising grew into a national
movement affecting nearly every prefecture.

After local police

failed to quell the disturbances, the government dispatched troops.
Thousands of civilians were arrested and 7,000 were charged. Many
lost their lives in the chaos and some of those charged in the rioting
were sentenced to death. The rioting itself ended in September, but
the repercussions continued.

Shortly after the rioting began, the Osaka Asahi came out in

support of the rioters, criticizing the government for suppressing
news about both the riots and the Siberian Expedition, which
Nyozekan and others regarded as a contravention of democratic
ideals.

On August 17, the Osaka Asahi sponsored a mass rally in

protest of the government’s attack on free speech. The well-
attended rally drew 173 representatives from fifty-three newspa-
pers.

A week later, tempers ran even higher when representatives

of eighty-six Kansai newspapers attended the “Conference of Kansai
newspapers to denounce the Terauchi government.”

In an August

26, 1918, article about this meeting, author Onishi Toshio quoted a
phrase from the Chinese Book of History, writing, “A white rainbow
has pierced the sun” (“hakko hi o tsuranuku”). In the original, the
phrase alluded to grave problems in the empire,

and the Japanese

government and the right-wing interpreted it as a threat to the
“sun,” the Japanese emperor, and as a call to revolution.

Nyozekan

refused to assert his authority as city editor to block publication of
the article, and instead the article was pulled by the government.

The government pressed charges against Onishi and the Osaka
Asahi under the Press Law of 1909, using the “white rainbow” article
as its focal point.

As evidence against the Osaka Asahi the govern-

ment also gathered “danger spots” that had appeared in Asahi
essays in the year and a half prior to the September 1918 trial. Many
of these essays bore Nyozekan’s by-line.

The Terauchi Cabinet fell

on September 29, and was replaced by Hara Kei’s Seiyukai govern-
ment, but the new government, following the same policies as its
predecessor, added its own violent tactics to the effort to control the
intellectuals and the press.

Contributing to the conflict was the

fact that many of the Osaka Asahi staffers were anti-Seiyukai.

Under the Press Law of 1909, the government threatened to

suspend publication of the newspaper and publisher Murayama was
personally threatened by a right-wing group. In the face of these
professional and personal threats, Murayama resigned as publisher
on October 15, 1918. Shortly after Murayama’s resignation,
Nyozekan too resigned. Editor-in-chief Sosen resigned as well, as did
Oyama Ikuo, Maruyama Kanji, and Kushida Tamizo.

In Tokyo,

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members of the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun resigned in solidarity with
their Osakan colleagues.

Thus, the editorial board of the Osaka

Asahi was purged in a clean sweep. According to Maruyama Masao,
Nyozekan was one of the government’s primary targets, attacked for
his anti-government essays and his supposed “anarchistic” lean-
ings.

The slew of sudden resignations broke the Osaka Asahi’s “tra-

ditional spirit” – the liberal democratic character for which it was
known.

After his resignation from the Osaka Asahi, Nyozekan

chose to pursue his journalistic career independent of any outside
affiliation. He expressed his feelings about his resignation in a letter
to Miyake Setsurei: “. . . I do not feel particular regret; I spent nearly
ten years there. I have accomplished enough . . .”

Nyozekan quit the newspaper because he understood the con-

straints on free expression created by its commercial nature.

Nyozekan, understanding the newspaper’s need to protect its
business interests, commented that ultimately, the Asahi “could not
avoid discarding its ideological commitment.”

100

Having separated

himself from the Asahi, Nyozekan remained an independent jour-
nalist for the rest of his career, protecting his own ideological inter-
ests from similar threats.

Nyozekan founded the magazine Warera (“We”) in 1919 in an

attempt to maintain a journalistic forum free from censorship from
any quarter, be it government or business. Nyozekan and his
partner, Oyama Ikuo, using their former positions of leadership at
the Osaka Asahi as springboards, founded Warera in order to con-
tinue the “strict neutrality” which they believed was the tradition
of the Osaka Asahi.

101

In his inaugural essay for the magazine,

“Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” Nyozekan declared the purpose of the
new magazine to be a “forum for the examination of society,”
stating his intention to “adhere to the principles [of a national con-
science and social justice].”

102

Nyozekan envisioned a magazine

that would not only examine society, but one that would encour-
age the expansion of liberalism. He believed politics and society
were inextricably linked, and that through this linkage, each would
influence the other. By affecting change in either realm, Warera
would have an impact on the other.

103

Nyozekan was joined in this endeavor by many of his former col-

leagues from the Osaka Asahi, who brought with them the ideals of
social justice, democracy, and the “safe nationalism” that had been
the cornerstones of the pre-1918 Osaka Asahi.

104

In addition to

Oyama, colleagues from the Osaka Asahi who joined Warera
included Maruyama Kanji and Chiba Kamekichi. Others who even-
tually became affiliated with the group were Yoshino Sakuzo,
Kawakami Hajime, and Ouchi Hyoe. Warera came to comprise a

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collection of what Oya Soichi called the most progressive “star
writers” of Japan’s intellectuals and journalists.

105

Warera continued publication until 1930 when its name was

changed to Hihan (“Criticism”). Hihan would survive for the next
four years, finally folding in 1934. As editor of these magazines,
Nyozekan enjoyed his most productive and busiest period, a time
of intellectual growth and intense scrutiny of the ever-changing
political scene.

One of Warera’s first challenges came in 1920, when its staff rallied

to support Tokyo University economics professor Morito Tatsuo in
the so-called Morito Incident. Morito was arrested and prosecuted
by the government for publishing an article discussing the “anar-
chist communism” of Russian radical Peter Kropotkin. The article
came under government fire for its sympathetic depiction of the
ideal society envisioned by Kropotkin. The trial lasted from Jaunary
to October and became a leitmotif for freedom of speech and acad-
emic freedom.

Adhering to the principles that led to Nyozekan’s resignation

from the Osaka Asahi, Warera defended Morito, devoting the entire
February and March 1920, issues to articles on intellectual freedom.
In an article analyzing the dimensions of the Morito Incident,
Nyozekan once again expressed his and the magazine’s commit-
ment to providing a forum for free speech and beliefs about the
importance of free speech to a free society.

106

Nyozekan and other

Warera staffers contributed similar articles to Kaizo, Chuo koron, and
Taiyo. The Morito Incident was merely the most visible of numer-
ous similar incidents that year in which the government invoked
the Press Law of 1909 to suppress “dangerous” thought. Oyama
Ikuo believed the Morito Incident and Warera’s response were the
start of a trend toward increased criticism of the state and social
policy, a trend that had been prohibited by the academic tradition
of the bureaucracy that dominated Japan’s top universities.

107

Nyozekan too wrote about this emerging trend in an article in
Warera entitled, “Kokka to shinri to no kosen jotai” (“The State of War
between the Nation and Truth”).

108

The war, as Nyozekan charac-

terized it, would only intensify in the coming decades, and Warera
would continue to fight.

Thus, Nyozekan used the pages of Warera to air his ideas about

various political and social issues confronting Japan. In 1921, he
published a collection of essays in a volume entitled, Gendai kokka
hihan (“Critique of the Modern State”). This was followed the next
year by a companion collection, Gendai shakai hihan (“Critique of
Modern Society”). The publication of these two books established
Nyozekan as a leading opinion-maker.

109

Taken together, the books

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attempted to examine the evolution (in Nyozekan’s phrase, the
“natural history”) of the institutions making up the state and
society,

110

offering, as one advertisement had it, “an impartial, sci-

entific critique of the state and its politics.”

111

Nyozekan relied

heavily on Spencer’s model of social evolution and progress toward
a final ideal. Thus, although they were published in the years imme-
diately following the Morito Incident, the essays offer a generally
positive assessment of the state’s ability to promote conditions nec-
essary for the growth of individual liberty and social equality. He
believed, however, that society itself must take the lead in com-
pelling the state to abdicate its power to the people.

112

The two companion books, however, contained darker under-

currents as well, revealing Nyozekan’s deep understanding of the
Japanese social and political situation. While he looked on the state
as a potentially positive force in the defense of liberty and equality,
he also realized its potential to transgress that liberty and equality
and to control society.

113

He examined, for example, the role ideol-

ogy played in the state, and argued in Gendai kokka hihan that ide-
ology was a device the state used to convince its population to
accept state control, and to thus allow the state even greater control
over society.

114

Indeed, this is exactly what Nyozekan saw happen

in the years to come as the government honed the Emperor System
ideology over the course of the 1930s.

In 1923, Nyozekan suffered a series of personal and professional

setbacks. In the spring, a bout of ill-health kept him bed-ridden for
three months. Then, in September, the Warera offices and all of its
publication materials were destroyed in a fire resulting from the
Kanto Earthquake. Nyozekan’s home in Higashi Nakano escaped
damage, however, and became a center for those of his friends and
their families who lost homes in the quake. The day after the dev-
astating earthquake, Maruyama Kanji and Koso Tsuyoshi brought
their families to Nyozekan’s house, seeking refuge from the disaster.
The Warera offices were moved from Kanda to Yotsuya and for a
time, the new offices also provided lodging for a number of dis-
placed colleagues.

115

After missing several issues of publication due to the earthquake,

Warera got underway again, as did Nyozekan. And his earlier views
on the progressive evolution of the state grew increasingly pes-
simistic as the 1920s wore on. The trend toward increasing political
liberty and social equality he had written about hopefully in 1921
in Gendai kokka hihan seemed more distant just a few years
later. In 1926, in “Kanri kokka e no shinka,” (“Progress toward an
Administrative State”), he wrote of the need for an administrative
government founded on worker-based political parties, thus calling

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for an end to the bureaucratic system that had governed Japan since
the Meiji era.

116

This kind of critical stance against the government was tolerated

in 1925 and 1926, but in a few years, Nyozekan and Warera became
the focus of increased governmental pressure. Earlier, Nyozekan
had stopped accepting advertisements in Warera, surviving on sub-
scription money alone, with the aim of bringing the magazine an
added measure of independence.

117

By the end of the 1920s,

however, the magazine was facing financial difficulties and in 1930,
Warera merged with the magazine Shakai shiso, and took a new
name, Hihan.

118

In his short inaugural essay in Hihan, Nyozekan

promised to continue Warera’s energetic critique of society, but in
doing so he betrayed a hint of weariness and even anger:

With this issue, Warera, which has continued to whip this obsti-
nate mule [society] for twelve years, discards the name that for so
long it has held as a symbol of strength. Henceforth, it will be
known by the name, Hihan.

If you have a spur, and kick the obstinate mule somewhere, will

it move? This is our problem, and the solution to our problem,
which does not change for all our work, is new vigor, new
weaponry, new methods, and, therefore, a new name.

119

After the Manchurian Incident of 1931, Nyozekan and Hihan had
to kick more subtly, as the government tightened its control over
society and escalated its suppression of the press. Nevertheless,
Nyozekan continued to pursue his progressive politics and in
September 1931 he acted as chairman when the Sovieto tomo no kai
(Friends of the Soviet Union), possibly a front organization, reorga-
nized into the Nisso bunka kyokai (Japan-Soviet Cultural Society).

120

A year later, he presided over the founding of the Yuibutsuron
kenkyukai (Society for the Study of Materialism).

121

The Yuiken,

according to Nyozekan, was purely a scholarly group, established to
make an academic study of materialism.

122

Meanwhile, Nyozekan

had to deal with governmental censorship when the May, 1932,
issue of Hihan was banned for “antimilitary and antiwar senti-
ment.”

123

Despite increased governmental control, or perhaps because of it,

in November 1932, Nyozekan published Nihon fuashizumu hihan
(“Critique of Japanese Fascism”). Initially banned, the book later
came out in heavily censored form. Matsumoto Joji recalled that,
“in order to read it, one had to endure countless pencilled-out pas-
sages.”

124

The book, as Nyozekan described it, is a group of critical

essays about the political process in Japan from 1929 to 1932,

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describing political trends that in Nyozekan’s view at the time had
culminated in the emergence of fascism with the 1931 Manchurian
Incident.

125

By publication time, Japan had witnessed not only

stepped-up hostilities in Manchuria, but also the effective end to
party government brought about by the May Fifteenth Incident. It
is clear that by the time he wrote Nihon fuashizumu hihan, Nyozekan
was confirmed in his conviction that Japan was following
world trends, presented in Gendai kokka hihan a decade earlier.
These trends, however, were reactionary rather than progressive,
and Nyozekan now saw this. Matsumoto Joji wrote, “The obstinate
mule was proceeding in the opposite direction than Nyozekan had
expected – indeed, it was beginning to run blindly [in the opposite
direction].”

126

That the mule was gaining speed became increasingly apparent

after the publication of Nihon fuashizumu hihan. A new, darker era
was heralded by the Kyoto Incident in 1933, in which Education
Minister Hatoyama Ichiro forced the resignation of Kyoto
University law professor Takigawa Yukitoki for alleged leftist sym-
pathies.

127

The incident incited the last major student movement

until after the war,

128

and according to Nyozekan, was, like the

Morito Incident over a decade earlier, an occasion for the
Mombusho to trample on academic freedom and interfere in uni-
versity politics.

129

Most significantly, it marked the expansion of the

government’s repressive measures to include not only avowed
socialists but liberals as well.

Now not only Hihan, but Nyozekan himself was suspect and, in

November 1933, Nyozekan was arrested under suspicion of mem-
bership in the Japan Communist Party. The Yomiuri shimbun head-
line blared, “Mr. Hasegawa Nyozekan arrested as communist
sympathizer this a.m. at Nakano residence.”

130

Certainly, it was his

position as editor of the critical Hihan, as well as his membership in
organizations like Sovieto tomo no kai and Yuibutsuron kenkyukai that
prompted his arrest, but the ostensible reason at the time was an
alleged contribution of two yen to the MOPR, a Soviet organization
for International Red Aid.

131

According to Japanese intellectual his-

torian Matsumoto Sannosuke, the actual story is that Nyozekan
gave funds to his friend Hososaku Kanemitsu, who himself gave the
money to the Communist Party.

132

In fact, Nyozekan himself was

not impressed with the Bolshevik record in the Soviet Union, and
had expressed his serious reservations about the dictatorial regime
in Gendai kokka hihan.

133

Nyozekan’s was just one of many such

arrests: shortly after he was taken, a number of other Yuiken
members were also arrested including Hani Goro, Konno Takeo,
Oka Kunio, Ishii Tomoyuki, and others.

134

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After a brief investigation, the police cleared him of the charge.

Simultaneously, the Tokyo nichi-nichi published a statement by
Nyozekan under the headline, “Suspicions Completely Cleared –
Nyozekan Tells His Story.” While similar in some respects, this was
not an example of the tenko that swept through the Japanese intel-
lectual community in the 1930s. In his statement he did not exco-
riate the Communist Party, nor did he condone the government’s
militaristic policies. He did not disavow his colleagues or point an
accusing finger at anyone or anything but society itself. It was, nev-
ertheless, a mild “self-criticism,” in which he described his own
behavior in the contemporary social and political milieu saying, “As
a social critic, I could not protect my critical conscience without reg-
ulating my own standards almost too rigorously. These days, society
in general is exceedingly loose, and it seems that people do not dis-
cipline their own behavior [i.e. they accept ultranationalist propa-
ganda too easily]. So that even opponents of the Communist Party
tend to find themselves playing the role of sympathizer.” But as he
told a reporter later, “I don’t really understand Marxism very well.
Especially that dialectical materialism: I can’t accept that as is.”

135

Like his friend and colleague Oyama Ikuo, with whom he shared
many ideas, Nyozekan never “went” with communism.

136

While Nyozekan’s statement after his arrest was not the about-

face that others were making at that time, his experience in the late
1930s nevertheless marked the end of his membership in leftist
organizations. Soon thereafter, in the spring of 1934, Hihan suc-
cumbed to the financial difficulties that grew out of the reactionary
tide of the times. This marked the end of Nyozekan’s fifteen years
of publishing a monthly magazine. Matsumoto Joji believed this
was a turning point for Japan, which lost a critical forum for mon-
itoring society and politics.

137

It most definitely marked a turning point for Nyozekan, whose

life of frank criticism came to an end

138

if only until after the war.

For the first time in fifteen years, Nyozekan found himself without
a forum that he himself controlled. (In 1934, however, he began a
column, “Ichi-nichi, Ichi-dai,” which ran in the Yomiuri evening
edition for six and a half years, and he continued to publish in other
journals and in books.) At the same time, it was obvious that he
lacked not only a forum for his ideas, but the freedom to express
those ideas. Thus, the events of 1933 – his arrest and release, the end
of Hihan, and the ratcheting up of governmental repression – all
combined to push Nyozekan in a new direction.

This new direction was toward the study of Japanese history,

culture and society. By turning his attention to these topics,
Nyozekan ended his sparring match with the government that had

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lasted since his time with the Osaka Asahi. In fact, however, he did
not abandon his critical stance, he instead modified the form the
criticism took, now using much more subtle means. An article pub-
lished in Kaizo in mid-1935 entitled “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento”
(“A Reexamination of the Japanese Character”) inaugurated this
new direction, and between 1935 and the end of the war he pub-
lished almost exclusively in the field of cultural studies. Writing on
the Japanese national character, he continued his battle against
fascism and militarism, arguing that the Japanese were by nature
and history a democratic and pacific people. The nationalism of his
early years with Nihon continued to have a clear influence: a nation-
alist who fiercely loved his country and its culture, he did not
confuse that with uncritically supporting the government and its
policies.

Nyozekan believed the “best way to oppose the power of violence

is with the power of the pen.”

139

While Ishibashi Tanzan turned to

the writings of Nichiren during World War II, abandoning his prag-
matic liberal subject matter in despair as a way to survive the war
years,

140

Nyozekan undertook cultural studies motivated in part by

a rereading of Motoori Norinaga. Nyozekan looked at Motoori’s
National Learning Movement as “an ideological weapon of the
national resistance movement against the bakufu” and saw his own
activity in a similar light. Later, some called the work of the last half
of Nyozekan’s life the “New National Learning.”

141

As the world squared off for war, Nyozekan retreated more

deeply into his “tactic” of subtly criticizing Japanese society and
government through cultural studies. His last overtly political and
critical acts came in September 1935 when he published a short
essay condemning Italian aggression in Ethiopia, a veiled criticism
of similar Japanese behavior in China.

142

In May 1936, just months

after the abortive February Twenty-Sixth Incident, he participated
in a round-table discussion entitled “What is Liberalism?” with
Ishibashi Tanzan, Miki Kiyoshi, and others in which he argued that
the social democracy of contemporary England was the embodi-
ment of liberalism.

143

Later in 1936, Nyozekan published a long essay entitled “The

Educational and Cultural Background of the Japanese,” in which he
presented many of the ideas developed more fully in his later work,
The Japanese National Character. In this essay, which was originally a
lecture, he analyzed the Japanese character and culture, concluding
that “Even among ourselves the essential quality of the civilization
of Japan is not always fully understood.”

144

Nyozekan complained

that the Japanese did not clearly understand their own character,
and, he implied, therefore succumbed to ultranationalism and

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militarism. Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai (The Society for International
Cultural Relations), which published “The Educational and Cultural
Background of the Japanese,” had a foreign audience in mind, and
viewed the essay as a means to “dispel the mistaken ideas upon
which many of the world’s misadventures have been based.”

145

Thus, while Nyozekan tried to resist fascism and war by explaining
the Japanese to themselves, he was inextricably drawn into the web
of explaining Japan to the outside world. Despite his intention, as
Japan mobilized its population for war, Nyozekan was inevitably
pulled into the intellectual atmosphere that accompanied the times.
The extent to which he actively or passively supported the govern-
ment and its war aims is a crucial issue that we must briefly examine
here, but which will be dealt with more fully later.

Nyozekan’s membership in the Sho¯wa kenkyukai constituted his

closest involvement in the government’s war effort. Nyozekan
served in Prince Konoe’s “brain-trust on domestic and foreign
affairs” established in 1936 after the February Twenty-Sixth
Incident to advise him on national policy in Asia.

146

As a cultural

“generalist” in the suborganization, the Bunka mondai kenkyukai
(Research Committee on Cultural Problems), he was a contributor
to, but never chief author of, some of the Association’s publications
on cultural policy.

147

For example, he helped to compile philoso-

pher Miki Kiyoshi’s Shin Nihon no shiso genri (“Principles for a New
Japan”) which attempted to legitimize the war with China by
calling for Asian cooperation under Japanese leadership. Such coop-
eration depended upon “liberating” China from Western imperial-
ism and returning Asia to Asian control.

148

Andrew Barshay argues that the ideas in Shin Nihon shiso no genri

were consistent with ideas Nyozekan presented earlier in Kaizo and
other places.

149

Indeed, some of the more benign points in the

report did reflect Nyozekan’s ideas. The report, for example, praised
the Japanese ability to absorb foreign influences, and to assimilate
conflicting ideas.

150

These are points Nyozekan makes in his studies

of the Japanese national character. But taken as a whole,
Nyozekan’s concentrated work on the Japanese character during
this time makes it clear that he was in fact building his own case
against the government’s aggressive policies in Asia. Some of the
articles Nyozekan published during this time were indeed gar-
nished with provocative titles, but as Tanaka Hiroshi points out,
Nyozekan’s consistent message was that the “Japanese should
respect the living standards of other people and the cultures of
other areas” and that the “spiritual strength” being touted by the
government at the time was something that in fact, the people
did not understand.

151

His argument in Nihon-teki seikaku, the

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centerpiece of his cultural and national character studies during
the early war years, was wholly directed against Japanese fascism
and militarism. In short, he refused to provide the answers the mil-
itary and bureaucracy wanted him to provide.

In 1939, just as the war was breaking out in Europe, Nyozekan’s

friends presented him with a refurbished farmhouse in Kamakura,
providing him with a retreat away from Tokyo. For Nyozekan, a true
“Edokko,” the Kamakura house was also a symbolic retreat from
Tokyo and the policies represented by the government – a retreat
very much in keeping with his own withdrawal from overt political
and social criticism into the realm of Japanese cultural studies.

That same year, Nyozekan founded the Kokumin gakujutsu kyokai

(Association for National Arts and Sciences) with Shimanaka
Yusaku. According to Yamaryo Kenji, “the standpoint of the group
can be summarized as ’nationalistic’ (kokuminteki), and while this is
certainly a heated word, the Kokumin gakujutsu kyokai was above
accepting the nationalism of that time; moreover, it expressed an
intent to level rational criticism against this [the contemporary
brand of nationalism].”

152

The group included many of Japan’s “top

scholars,” like Kuwaki Genyoku, Takahashi Seiichiro, Makino
Eiichi, and writer Masamune Hakucho.

153

Several members of the

Association were former colleagues of Nyozekan’s from the Yuiken,
among them Miki Kiyoshi, a central figure in the Association, as
well as a key member of Prince Konoe’s Sho¯wa kenkyukai, who had
lost favor with the government by 1941. In addition to Miki, the
group was composed of a number of men who, from the govern-
ment’s perspective, were of questionable political lineage, including
Nishida Kitaro, Tsuda Sokichi, Baba Tsunego, and others. Under
constant pressure for the Army Information Bureau, the Association
had a difficult time, but continued to meet throughout the war
years.

154

Another of Nyozekan’s colleagues in the Kokumin gakujutsu

kyokai, Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, wrote the famous wartime chronicle
Ankoku nikki. In this despairing diary he discussed his colleagues
and friends and their attitudes toward the war. Of Hasegawa, the
pessimistic Kiyosawa wrote, “. . . I visited with Hasegawa Nyozekan.
[He is a] fine man of great integrity. These kinds of fine men have
great difficulty concerning the war.” Kiyosawa identified with
Nyozekan, writing that Nyozekan, too, was soon fed up with the
war. Kiyosawa related a conversation in which Nyozekan revealed
his disgust with the war: “Those scholars who say Japan’s weaponry
is inferior are gradually being sent packing. Then they appoint
people who will mouth the official line. So there is no reason to
import knowledge from abroad. The authorities from the Meiji era,

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that noisy lot, were shut up. Now it is exactly opposite [from the
Meiji era].”

155

The latter half of the war was an especially difficult time for

Nyozekan, who responded with silence. His written output fell off
dramatically in the last three years of the war. At the end of May
1945, the fire-bombing that had begun earlier in the spring
destroyed Nyozekan’s Tokyo house, burning his library of over
40,000 volumes turning them into piles of ash he called “moun-
tains of wisdom.”

156

Nyozekan’s Kamakura retreat became his full-

time residence for the next decade.

157

With the end of the war, Nyozekan emerged from his period of

silence into a frenzy of activity. Seventy years old at war’s end,
Nyozekan was about to enter one of the busiest periods of his life.
Within months of Japan’s surrender, he resumed his life of writing.
In his first postwar essay, “Make ni jojiru” (“Taking Advantage of
Defeat”), Nyozekan wrote that the Japanese people should use their
defeat in war as an opportunity to gain a correct understanding of
liberalism.

158

Another article written soon after the end of the war,

“Minshushugi no rekishi-teki hatten” (“The Historical Development of
Democracy”), addressed the need for the Japanese to learn about the
developmental process of Western democracy.

159

After years of treat-

ing the issue of liberalism in Japan obliquely in his national charac-
ter studies, these essays developed Nyozekan’s conviction that
postwar Japan could finally provide the conditions for the growth of
liberalism.

In many respects, postwar Japan became the country Nyozekan

had envisioned in his early says with Warera and Hihan, and now,
rather than just observe and analyze, Nyozekan would be an active
participant. As one who had espoused liberal ideas in prewar Japan,
Nyozekan was called upon to be a part of Japan’s postwar democ-
ratization. One of the Occupation’s first areas of focus was educa-
tion. Nyozekan, who had written frequently on student and
education issues, was selected to serve as a member of the Japan
Education Reform Committee. This committee, in conjunction
with the American Education delegation, was to design a curricu-
lum for education that would supplant the militaristic and ultra-
nationalistic wartime curriculum that had characterized the war
years.

160

In March 1946, Nyozekan served as an Imperial appointee to the

House of Peers in the last session of the Imperial Diet. Thus, for the
first and last time, Nyozekan held an official political post, ironi-
cally in the very body that had censured him as a “dangerous
liberal” in prewar days. That same spring, Nyozekan was appointed
delegate to the National Arts Board.

161

In 1948, he was honored

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with the Award for Cultural Merit, an award Tokutomi Soho also
received. Writing about the award, Nyozekan mused, “I am not
useful in practical endeavors. Writing, writing on society is all I can
do. When it comes to cultural contributions, I ask myself why I
received this cultural award, and even I do not understand.”

162

Thus postwar Japan really did see, as Oya Soichi called it, a

“Nyozekan boom.”

163

But Nyozekan’s most important activity con-

tinued to be his writing. In his old age, Nyozekan persisted in the
goals of his youth: to observe and at the same time help shape the
society he lived in. Postwar Japan proved much more amenable to
this endeavor. Finally, Nyozekan saw Japan begin to fulfill many of
the trends he had identified and championed since the heady days
of Taisho

¯ and earlier. Women’s suffrage, the labor movement,

freedom of speech and academic freedom, the liberalization of edu-
cation – the postwar movement toward establishing these goals in
society represented the direction Nyozekan believed Japan was
heading in since he started his career at the end of Meiji. Now these
trends were coming to fruition, aided, but not caused by, the Allied
Occupation.

Much of Nyozekan’s postwar writing was concerned with the

question of Japan’s role in the international community, a question
of great relevance as Japan regained its sovereignty and forged its
alliance with the United States. Articles in Chuo koron, Kaizo, Sekai,
and other magazines and journals explored Japan’s position in the
postwar world, and expressed Nyozekan’s vision of Japan as a
neutral industrial nation, an echo of the early Fukuzawa Yukichi
and of the liberal nationalist position of his Seikyosha mentors.

164

In 1950, still living in Kamakura, he spoke with a friend about

finding land on which to build himself a house. He didn’t need to
buy the land, he said, just to rent it for twenty-five years. Asked
why twenty-five years, he explained that he was now seventy-five
years of age and planned to live to be a hundred, so twenty-five
years would be just right.

165

In fact, he never built that house for

himself: in 1953 he was given a house in Odawara by a group of
over 200 friends and colleagues.

166

He dubbed the house

“Hachioso” in honor of his approaching eightieth birthday and it
became the home of his retirement.

167

Nevertheless, he continued

to participate in the intellectual and cultural life of the country,
and entertained a wide variety of scholars, both foreign and
Japanese, at Hachioso, including Sidney Hook, Morton White,
Kenneth B. Pyle, Ishibashi Tanzan, Maruyama Masao, Ouchi Hyoe,
and others. In 1967, he published a collection of his conversations
with some of these people, Nyozekan Hachioso taidan (“Nyozekan’s
Hachioso Talks”).

168

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Nyozekan’s “retirement” was broken in 1956, when as partici-

pant in an international intellectual and cultural exchange spon-
sored by John D. Rockefeller III, he lectured throughout the United
States.

169

While in the U.S., he served an extended guest lectur-

ership at Columbia University, sponsored by the Carnegie
Foundation.

170

His travels took him throughout the United States

and in addition to New York, he visited San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Phoenix, Washington D.C., Cambridge, and Williamsburg,
Virginia, everywhere lecturing on Japanese culture. His return to
Japan took him to Montreal and through Europe, where he revis-
ited some of the places he had seen first as a young reporter for the
Osaka Asahi.

171

Upon returning to Japan, Nyozekan entered more deeply into his

retirement, spending most of 1957 convalescing from an illness.
Now advanced in age, the constitutional weakness he had suffered
since childhood was taking its toll and his niece, Yamamoto Kako,
moved into his Odawara house to serve as his caretaker. When his
health permitted, he appeared on radio and television shows for
interviews and cultural discussions. Otherwise, he adhered to a
regular schedule of writing until two o’clock in the afternoon, then
relaxing with tea and a stroll through town, often accompanied by
his niece, for twenty or thirty minutes of “idle time, away from his
thoughts.”

172

Always a dog-lover, (he professed to liking dogs better

than humans, claiming to understand them better)

173

he derived

great pleasure from his dog, a Scotch Terrier named Jack. In his old
age, he returned to his youthful background by practicing carpen-
try, customizing his house with bookshelves and other items.

By the mid-1960s, Nyozekan’s health began to decline more

rapidly, and increasingly, he confined his activity to writing. Early
in 1969, his loss of appetite resulted in dangerous weight loss, and
his doctor urged him to enter the hospital. He resisted hospitaliza-
tion, also refusing the injections prescribed by his doctor.

174

further urging, however, he entered the hospital in July, where he
died on November 10, 1969, three weeks before his ninety-fourth
birthday.

Nyozekan’s long and productive life was eulogized by Ouchi

Hyoe at funeral services several days later. Ouchi praised Nyozekan
for his lifelong “fight for democracy.”

175

Nyozekan’s life spanned

three eras of modern Japan, and through his fight against fascism
and his adherence to the belief that the Japanese were by nature a
peaceful and democratic people, he tried to construct an ideal
Japan. Nyozekan’s ideal Japan, the past and future Japan, was
depicted in his studies of the Japanese national character.

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NOTES

George Seldes, Witness to a Century: Encounters with the Noted, the
Notorious and the Three SOBs, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987).
Nyozekan’s and Seldes’s lives resembled one another in many
respects. Both were journalists who became disillusioned with the
journalism establishment and left to start their own publications
designed to serve as critical “watchdogs” of society and the media.
Both lived to advanced ages, both felt society was closer, rather than
further away from, the goals to which they had devoted their lives,
namely, greater individual liberty.

Takashima Seiei (ed.), Hasegawa Nyozekan shu, gendai chisei zenshu,
vol. 32 (Tokyo: Nippon shobo, 1961) 280.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Sekai no rekishi to jibun no rekishi, Genso, 1:6
(September 1, 1947) 7.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Aru kokoro no jijoden, in Shimonaka Kunihiko
(ed.), Sekai kyoyo zenshu (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1963) 231.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Shokunin katagi,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, (Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 107.

Kaji Ryuichi, “Kaisetsu,” in Aru kokoro no jijoden, in Shimonaka
Kunihiko (ed.), Sekai kyoyo zenshu (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1963) 433.

Tanaka Hiroshi, Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Shakaiha janarisuto e
no michi, Sekai, no. 482 (December 1985) 219–20.

Tanaka, “Hyoden,” 219.

Ikeda Hajime, Hasegawa Nyozekan “kokka shisho” no kenkyu, (Tokyo:
Yusan shuppan, 1981) 396.

Ikeda, 395.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Anchi-miritarisuto no mago,” quoted in
Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Shakaiha janarisuto e
no michi,” Sekai, no. 482 (December 1985) 222.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 226.

Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of
Cultural Identity, 1885–1895, (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1969) 10.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Nihon ni okeru riberarizumu no choryu – Kuga
Katsunan, Taguchi Ukichi kara Hasegawa Nyozekan e,” Hitotsubashi ron
97:2 (1987) 181.

Sera Masatoshi, et al., Hasegawa Nyozekan: hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku
mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 16.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 225.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 230.

Yamaryo Kenji, “Shakai hihan no kenron,” Asahi janaru (ed.), Nihon
no shisoka, vol. 3 (1963) 70.

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Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 228.

Ikeda, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 397.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 226; 228.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Watakushi no joshiki tetsugaku, (Tokyo: Chuo
Daigaku, 1987) 282.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 231.

Takashima, Gendai chisei zenshu, vol. 32, 282.

Sharon Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan: Ishibashi Tanzan and His
Teachers, 1905–1960, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)
5.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 227.

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 355–6.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 24; 26.

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 407–408.

Review of Hasegawa Nyozekan’s Shimbunron in Contemporary Japan,
XVI: 10–12 (October-December 1947) 492.

Pyle, New Generation, 93.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 28.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 228.

Ikeda, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 397.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,” 229.

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 408.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 28.

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 328.

Matsumoto Joji, “Kaisetsu,” Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5
(Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 412. Matsumoto was a legal
scholar and prewar statesman under Foreign Minister Shidehara
and main author of the first draft of Japan’s postwar constitution,
rejected by SCAP.

Pyle, New Generation, 5.

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 420.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha no janarisuto,” 222.

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 421. Emphasis added.

Maruyama Masao, “Nyozekan-san to chi-chi to watakushi: Maruyama
sensei o kakomu zadankai,” in Sera Masatoshi, et al. (eds.), Hasegawa
Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo
Daigaku, 1985) 305.

Yamaryo Kenji, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto: Hasegawa Nyozekan,” in
Shiso no kakgaku kenkyukaishu: kyodo kenkyu: Tenko, vol. 1 (Tokyo:
Heibonsha, 1959) 319.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 33.

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Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 417.

Tokyo Daigaku, “Hasegawa Nyozekan-shi o kakonde: kaiso, hoho,
Nihon bunkaron,” Shimbun kenkysho kiyo, no. 13 (1965) 74.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon shimbun to ’Kuga-san’ no insho,” Nihon
oyobi Nihonjin, 869 (September 1, 1923) 118.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 432.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha no janarisuto,” 234.

Maruyama Masao, “Nyozekan-san,” 277.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha no janarisuto,” 221.

Maruyama Masao, “Nyozekan-san,” 277.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Seiji, shakai kakumei
to kokusai heiwa o motomete,” Sekai, no. 483 (January 1986) 240.

Ito Tomihito, “Warerasha soritsu no jidai-teki kaikei,” Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu geppo, vol. 6 (June 1969) 1.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “sekai no rekishi to jibun no rekishi: shiso genron
kikan no kindai-teki henkaku,” Genso, 1:7 (October 1, 1947) 20.

Sumitani Etsudai, et al. (ed.), Osaka Asahi no hitobito: Hasegawa
Nyozekan no shakai shiso,” in Nihon shakai shugi-shi: Taisho¯
demokurashii no shiso, (Tokyo: Hoga shoten, 1963) 96.

Tanaka, “ Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 241.

Takashima (ed.), Gendai chisei zenshu, vol. 32, 283.

Natusme Soseki, Hitai no otoku yomu, in Sera Masatoshi, et al. (eds.),
Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku mokuroku, (Tokyo:
Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 200.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha no janarisuto,” 220.

Hasegawa Nyozekan quoted in Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto,”, 220.

Chiba Kamekichi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no insho,” quoted in Tanaka,
Shakaiha no janarisuto,” 221.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 43. While a student in Berlin he met with
Koizumi Shinzo, then an exchange student studying economics,
and later an anti-Marxist professor of economics. Koizumi taught,
and later debated against Nozaka Sanzo. At Koizumi’s urging,
Nyozekan read Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan ,43.

Matsumoto Joji, “Kaisetsu,” Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5, 413.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 42.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 242. The Red Flag Incident occurred
on June 22, 1908, when several red-flag bearing socialists left a
socialist meeting and were arrested by the police. Among the four-
teen arrested was Osugi Sakai. The Incident brought down the
Saionji Cabinet. The High Treason Incident of May-June 1910,
occurred when police interrogated several hundred socialists and
anarchists throughout Japan, twenty-six of whom were eventually

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charged with conspiring to assassinate the emperor. Of these,
twelve were executed.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 241.

Ikeda, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 399.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 48.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 242.

Ikeda, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 400.

Ito, “Warerasha soritsu,” 2.

Maruyama, “Nyozekan-san,” 282.

Ito, “Warerasha soritsu,”

Andrew Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The
Public Man in Crisis, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988) 151.

Oya Soichi, Kamen to sugao: Nihon o ugokasu hitobito, (Tokyo: Tozai
bunmeisha, 1953) 35–6.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu-kan: Zasshi
’Warera’ no hakkan o megutte,” in Tanaka Hiroshi (ed.), Kindai Nihon
ni okeru janarizumu no seiji-teki kino, (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo,
1982) 222.

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 152.

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 152; Tanaka, Seiji,
shakai kakumei, 243.

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 152.

Tanaka “Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu-kan,” 222–3.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 243.

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 152.

Ikeda, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 400.

Ito, “Warerasha soritsu.”

Torii went on to establish the Taisho¯ nichi-nichi shimbun, but the
paper soon collapsed.

Yamaryo, “Shakai hihan no kenron,” 69.

Maruyama, “Nyozekan-san,” 282.

Yamaryo, “Shakai hihan no kenron,” 69.

Letter to Miyake quoted in Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei, 245.

Tanaka, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu-kan,” 223.

100

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 244.

101

Yamaryo, “Shakai hihan no kenron,” 74.

102

Sumitani, “Osaka Asahi no hitobito,” 97.

103

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” in Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 361.

104

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 160.

105

Oya Soichi, Kamen to sugao, 36.

106

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Morito Tatsuo kyoju hikka jiken no ronri-teki
kaibo,” Warera, 2:2 (February 1, 1920) 83–95.

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107

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 254; see also, Oyama Ikuo,
“Shakai kagaku ni okeru kenkyu no jiyu,” Warera, 2:3 (March 1, 1920)
20–30, particularly 24–5.

108

Hasegawa Manjiro, “Kokka shinri to no kosen jotai,” Warera, 2:3
(March 1920) 7–20.

109

Tanaka, Shakaiha no janarisuto,” 221.

110

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Gendai kokka hihan in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 36.

111

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 68.

112

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 163–9.

113

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 279

114

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 170–2.

115

Maruyama, “Nyozekan-san,” 285–8.

116

Hasegawa Manjiro, “Kanri kokka e no shinka: Kokka kodo no shikeitai
no daiyon, kanrikodo no tsuzuki,” quoted in Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai
kakumei,” Sekai, no. 483 (January 1986) 253.

117

Tanaka, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu-kan,” 225.

118

Ikeda, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 403.

119

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Warera kara, Hihan e,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 377–8.

120

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 204.

121

Maruyama, “Nyozekan-san,” 294.

122

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 205.

123

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 204.

124

Mastumoto, “Kaisetsu,” 414.

125

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Nihon fuashizumu hihan in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 278.

126

Matsumoto, “Kaisetsu,” 414.

127

In 1945 Hatoyama founded the Japan Liberal Party. The Japan
Liberal Party constituted a majority in the Diet in 1946, but
Hatoyama was purged by SCAP and unable to serve as prime min-
ister. The post was filled by Yoshida Shigeru. Rehabilitated in 1951,
Hatoyama succeeded Yoshida as prime minister in 1954 and headed
three different cabinets between December 1954 and December
1956.

128

Maruyama, “Nyozekan-san,” 296.

129

Maruyama Masao, “Takigawa jiken no koro,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu geppo, vol. 4 (March 1970) 4–5.

130

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 110.

131

Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 325.

132

Conversation with Matsumoto Sannosuke, July 30, 1987.

133

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 175.

134

Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 325.

135

Yamaryo, “Aru jyushugi janarisuto,” 325, 326, 329.

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136

Sumitani (ed.), “Osaka Asahi no hitobito,” 99.

137

Matsumoto Joji, “Kasisetsu,” 415.

138

Matsumoto Joji,“Kaisetsu,” 414.

139

Tanaka, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu-kan,” 223.

140

Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 266–7.

141

Matsumoto Joji, “Kaisetsu,” 416.

142

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 115.

143

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Senchu, sengo o iki-
nuite,” Sekai no. 486 (March 1986) 314.

144

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Educational and Cultural Background of the
Japanese,” S. Sakabe, translator (Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai,
1936) 26.

145

Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, “Foreword” to “The Educational and
Cultural Background of the Japanese,” S. Sakabe, translator (Tokyo:
Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, 1936) iii.

146

James B. Crowley, “Intellectuals as Visionaries of the New Asian
Order,” in James William Morley (ed.), Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar
Japan, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971) 321.

147

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 215.

148

William Miles Fletcher III, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals
and Fascism in Prewar Japan, (Chapel Hill, University of North
Carolina Press, 1982) 112.

149

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 215.

150

Fletcher, The Search for a New Order, 111.

151

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 318.

152

Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 332.

153

Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, Ankoku nikki: Sho¯wa junananen, jugatsu kokonotsu
– nijunen gogatsu itsutsu, (Tokyo: Hyoronsha, 1980) entry for May 1,
1944, 313.

154

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 123.

155

Kiyosawa, Ankoku nikki, entry for April 3, 1945, 620; entry for July
19, 1944, 351.

156

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Maruzen to watakushi no rokujunen,”
Gakuhatsu, 49:1 (January 1, 1952).

157

Takashima, Gendai chisei zenshu, vol. 32, 287.

158

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Make ni jojiru,” Bungei shunju, 23:6
(December 1, 1945) 1–4.

159

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Minshushugi no rekishi-teki hatten,” Shukan
Asahi, (January 6, 1946) 30–4.

160

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 320.

161

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 320.

162

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 136.

163

Oya Soichi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no mittsu no kao,” Sandei Mainichi
(November 11, 1969) 155.

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164

Hasegawa Nyozekan, et al., “Zadankai: Nihonjin o susumubeki michi,”
Kaizo, (October 1, 1951) 48–63, esp. 60–1.

165

Omori Isamu, “Hyaku-sai,” Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu geppo, vol. 1
(October 1969) 3–4.

166

Conversation with Tanaka Hiroshi, July 29, 1987. According to
Kenneth B. Pyle in a conversation on June 26, 1991, Nyozekan’s
Odawara house was a country villa originally owned by Yamagata
Aritomo. That Nyozekan would inhabit the house of Yamagata, the
chief architect of the Meiji military, is somewhat ironic.

167

Fukuoka Seiichi, “Hachioso no ki,” in Sera Masatoshi, et al., Hasegawa
Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo
Daigaku, 1985) 225.

168

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 325. Also, Fukuhama Tatsuo (ed.),
Nyozekan Hachioso taidan, (Tokyo: Sogo tosho, 1967).

169

Haru Matsukata Reischauer, Samurai and Silk: A Japanese and
American Heritage, (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1986) 334–5.

170

Yamamoto Kako, “Oji Hasegawa Manjiro,” in Sera Masatoshi, et al.,
Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku mokuroku, (Tokyo:
Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 241.

171

Takashima, Gendai chisei zenshu, vol. 32, 288.

172

Yamamoto, “Oji Hasegawa Manjiro,” 244.

173

Honda Kiyoshi, “Inu no suki-na Nyozekan,” Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu geppo, vol. 2 (December 1969) 4.

174

Yamamoto, “Oji Hasegawa Manjiro,” 242.

175

Ouchi Hyoe, “Okina okina ga inakunatta: Hasegawa Nyozekan no
koto,” in Sera Masatoshi, et al., Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso
to chosaku mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 175–6.

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The Japanese National Character

he 1930s marked a professional turning point for Nyozekan.
When government repression curtailed free expression in the

middle of the decade, Nyozekan turned his attention away from
overt political and social criticism and focused on the study of the
Japanese national character. His first essay on the subject, “Nihon-teki
seikaku no saikento” (“A Re-examination of the Japanese Character”),
was published in Kaizo in 1935 when he was sixty years old.

Even

prior to the publication of this article, however, Nyozekan relied on
his ideas on the national character to illustrate his beliefs and opin-
ions on politics, society and culture.

Nyozekan continued writing about the national character

throughout the war and postwar years, using his assessment of the
Japanese national character to critique Japanese politics and social
developments. Writing about the very political and social dynamic
that would ultimately severely limit his freedom of expression, in
1932 he published Nihon fuashizumu hihan (“Critique of Japanese
Fascism”). In this book, he leveled an attack against the growth of
what he clearly saw as a Japanese brand of fascism encompassing the
intertwined elements of political repression at home and military
aggression abroad. The book, initially banned and later released in a
highly censored form, attacked the trend toward chauvinistic
nationalism, violent and reactionary politics, military aggression,
and territorial expansion.

In Nyozekan’s estimation, these trends

had come to fruition in the 1931 Manchurian Incident and the gov-
ernment’s submission to the military fait accompli. Motivated to
pursue national character studies by his opposition to these trends,
he focused his critical efforts against them. But because open criti-
cism of the government was no longer tolerated, he expressed his
criticism subtly, via his national character studies. While Japanese
fascism was his immediate focus, the more fundamental aim in his
character studies was to demonstrate to the Japanese people their

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national legacy of a liberal spirit. With this underlying goal, the
message in his writing on the national character changed little from
prewar to postwar, despite the drastic change in Japan’s objective cir-
cumstances.

Nyozekan’s character studies form the core of his

thought, and just as he used his study of the national character to
adjudge his society, a review of his work in this area provides a
means of understanding his views on Japan’s course through the
Meiji, Taisho

¯, and Sho

¯wa eras.

The roots of Nyozekan’s character studies lay in the atmosphere

of change that surrounded him in his youth. The enormous social,
cultural and political change heralded by the Meiji Restoration’s
disbanding the military government and adopting a constitutional
monarchy created an intense pressure to understand the real Japan
that lay beneath these myriad changes. The answer to the question
of identity was of utmost importance to Japan, the answer was key
to the nation’s future. Thus began the quest to define the Japanese
national character. The Seikyosha, Nyozekan’s intellectual forbears,
and its rival group, the Minyusha, were among the first to embark
on this search. Later, firmly established in his own career,
Nyozekan also focused his attention on the meaning of the
Japanese national character and used these studies as a way to
analyze, evaluate, and critique the changes Japan was undergoing
during his own lifetime.

Members of both the Seikyosha and the Minyusha felt compelled

to define the national character, or kokusui, a phrase coined by Shiga
Shigetaka of the Seikyosha, to mean “national essence” or “nation-
ality.”

None questioned that Japan possessed a unique national

character: the problem was to define it.

In the face of Western impe-

rialism in East Asia, defining the Japanese character was considered
necessary to preserving national autonomy. Kokumin no tomo, the
Minyusha magazine, editorialized, “If a nation knows itself – its
strong points, its shortcomings, its goals, its means – then it will be
able to act independently.”

Likewise, Kuga Katsunan of the

Seikyosha claimed, “The best defense for the Japanese is ‘national
self-knowledge.’ ”

While both groups agreed that understanding the Japanese char-

acter was crucial to preserving the state, they disagreed on the exact
nature of the national character and how the information should be
acted upon. Tokutomi Soho and his colleagues in the Minyusha
(founded in 1886) believed self-knowledge was a necessary first step
toward eradicating all traces of the national character and that only
by eliminating all vestiges of this character, which he said was “. . .
unprogressive . . . acquiescent . . . irrational,”

could Japan hope to

survive as an independent nation in the modern world. The

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backward traits of the past must be swept away to make room for a
future of progress and independence, fundamental values of the West
that members of the Minyusha believed had enabled it to advance.
Thus, the Minyusha called for the wholesale Westernization of
Japanese society.

The Seikyosha on the other hand, acted on their knowledge of

the Japanese character quite differently, believing instead that the
national character must be preserved. The Seikyosha, established in
1888, about a year after the Minyusha, was also concerned with
strengthening the nation and protecting its independence, but
aimed to do so by stemming the tide of unfettered adulation and
imitation of the West. Theirs was not a backward or reactionary
vision – indeed, Seikyosha members too hoped for a future of
progress and independence, a nation that could stand up to the
West. But they believed this would not – in fact could not – be
achieved at the expense of the Japanese identity. Thus, the
Seikyosha prescription for Japan included borrowing from the West,
but demanded that Western borrowings be made compatible with
Japan’s culture and heritage;

be made compatible, in short, with

the Japanese national character. The Seikyosha magazine, Nihonjin,
expressed this in an 1889 article: “We differ from those who rashly
believe that preservation of the kokusui means merely preservation
of old things inherited from our ancestors and who mistakenly
believe that we want to resist Western things and close the road to
innovation and progress.”

Nyozekan’s own Seikyosha heritage

was clearly evident when he echoed this in 1933, writing, “No
progress whatsoever is possible through rigid adherence to a simple
traditional outlook, but equally impossible is progress without any
basis in tradition.”

Seikyosha members agreed on this position, but held no similar

unanimity of opinion on what exactly constituted the Japanese
national character. The Seikyosha “manifesto,” “Yohai kokusuishugi
o shodo suru” (“Advocating a Doctrine of National Essence”), pub-
lished in 1889, defined kokusui as an “intangible spirit,” the “special
property of one country,” and something that “could not be copied
by another country.”

But failing to take the “manifesto” to its

logical conclusions, the Seikyosha shied away from defining exactly
what that “intangible spirit” was. Nevertheless, individual members
of the group did attempt to provide their own descriptions of the
national character and how it was formed. These are worth investi-
gating because they form the backdrop to Nyozekan’s own later
investigations of the Japanese national character.

It proved far easier to explain how the national character was

formed than to describe it exactly. For Shiga, a central Seikyosha

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figure, the national character resulted from the influence of the
natural environment and the cultural patterns that emerged from
man’s relationship with the environment.

But Shiga found it diffi-

cult to actually define the Japanese national character, at best offering
only a vague description, saying it was “. . . diametrically opposed to
the West’s,” which he said was “. . . selfish, commercial and merce-
nary.” The Japanese national character, he reported, was rooted in
“harmony.”

Like Shiga, Miyake Setsurei believed the national character was

formed by the natural environment, the “geography, climate and
soil, and features of . . . [the] . . . land.”

But Miyake’s argument

had a twist: the Japanese were descendents of the Mongols, and,
therefore, he reasoned, the natural environment that had shaped
the Japanese character was in fact Mongolian. In so doing, he
accounted for Japanese traits which, when held in comparison to
the West, were negative. He also provided an outlet for change,
necessary in light of Japan’s Meiji era challenges: since the
national character arose in a foreign place, the Japanese, now in
their own environment and having developed their own history
and culture, had an opportunity to change it. And Miyake felt
there were indeed aspects of the national character that demanded
change. For the most part, he accepted the judgment that the
Japanese were encumbered by a “lack of perseverance. . . frivo-
lousness. . . content with small success. . . constant imitation,”
and that they were “. . .people haughty toward those below and
currying to those above, untutored and lecherous; people who
find no enjoyment in reading . . . lacking in . . . self-reliance and
imagination; people who break promises, who lack camaraderie
and are difficult to unite; people who lack inventiveness.”

Nevertheless, Miyake believed an effort could be made to “increase
[the Japanese peoples’] inventive nature, preserve qualities of
sturdy honesty, and nurture the spirit of independence.”

In this

way could the Japanese national character be salvaged, strength-
ened, and saved.

Kuga Katsunan’s view of the origins of the Japanese national

character was more specific to Japan than either Shiga’s or Miyake’s.
Kuga believed the national character arose out of Japanese history,
but in particular that “. . .the culture of Japan derived from
the Imperial Household. . .[and]. . . the Imperial Court.”

The

Japanese national character as defined by Kuga then, contained the
values and ethics catalogued most succinctly in the Imperial
Rescript on Education: “filial piety, brotherly affection, marital
harmony, and the loyalty of all to the Imperial Throne.”

Therefore, according to Kuga, one of the most distinctive features

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of the Japanese national character was the national unity and social
harmony that grew out of the unique relationship between ruler
and ruled.

These ideas had fascinated Nyozekan as a youth; this was his

intellectual heritage. From this background, Nyozekan went on to
develop his own views of the Japanese national character, and, as
mentioned earlier, even called his inaugural essay on the subject a
reexamination of the Japanese national character.

Although his

views often conflicted with those of his early Meiji mentors, his
investigation, like theirs, was motivated in part by trying political,
social, and cultural times. Nyozekan too believed that understand-
ing the national character was the key to charting a positive course
for the future. In 1938, he wrote: “Japanese civilization since the
Meiji era has raised countless new, vastly complex questions to test
the modern Japanese. If they are to deal with them successfully, the
vital need is a strict appreciation of the traditional characteristics of
Japanese civilization, and a conscious determination to preserve its
virtues and remedy its shortcomings.”

An earlier warning, written

in 1935, was even more pointed:

In politics. . . there is no little food for thought, especially as a
certain section of the nation seems to be inclined to imitate what
is happening in the country which is in the least favorable posi-
tion in Europe. To point out clearly the merits of the Japanese
national character as shown in history will prove immediately
useful to the Japanese themselves as well as to foreigners interested
in Japan and its people.

As did his mentors, Nyozekan referred to the Japanese national

character as a yardstick for understanding contemporary social and
political trends throughout his career as a critic. By the mid-1930s,
Nyozekan was searching for a way to continue his life as a writer and
critic of Japanese society despite increased governmental control of
the press. The story of Nyozekan’s career since his Osaka Asahi days
was one of trying to work around government repression to buy for
himself, and his public, a measure of freedom of thought and
expression. In 1918, he left the Osaka Asahi in protest against the
Terauchi government’s handling of the Rice Riots and started the
magazines Warera and later Hihan, both intended to function as
forums for the free expression of ideas. After the publication of a
heavily censored version of Nihon fuashizumu hihan in 1932, and his
arrest in 1933, the sixty-year-old Nyozekan continued to seek an
outlet for social commentary and criticism. When he decided to
pursue character studies exclusively, it was in part because he had

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lost his previous arenas of activity

and now needed a “safe” way

to critique society.

In 1938, Nyozekan published his major work on the subject of

the national character, Nihon-teki seikaku (“The Japanese National
Character”). The book went through nine printings between
December 1938 and September 1941, selling 112,000 copies in
these years just prior to the outbreak of the Pacific War.

In 1966,

the book gained a readership abroad when it was selected by
UNESCO for publication in a series of works on modern Japanese
philosophy, and translated into English as The Japanese National
Character: A Cultural Profile.

Yamaryo Kenji believed that Nyozekan coined the phrase Nihon-

teki seikaku, which itself contained an implicit criticism of the
government and its policies – Nyozekan was finding a method of
“engag[ing the government] in battles in the same arena.”

The

phrase became popular around the time Nyozekan published his
1935 article in Kaizo. Bemused by the extent of the phrase’s popu-
larity, Nyozekan recounted the story of a teacher who told his class,
“The food with the strongest Japanese character is konnyaku.”

What then, did Nyozekan mean by the term “national charac-

ter”? How was it formed, and how did it influence the thought and
behavior of the Japanese people? After first looking at the forces
Nyozekan believed shaped the national character, we will look at his
approach to the study of the national character. Finally, and most
importantly, we will analyze his use of the subject as a weapon
against the government.

Like his early mentors, Nyozekan also believed Japan possessed a

national character all its own.

The national character was in turn

reflected in individual character, and in “Nihon-teki seikaku no
saikento” he wrote that a nation’s character “fundamentally con-
trols the mental and behavioral tendencies of [a] people.”

The

influence of a nation’s character is difficult to escape as it “forms the
fixed disposition of a people’s consciousness and behavior to the
extent that it can be called fundamental.”

In the same essay, Nyozekan discussed the formation of a nation’s

character, which he said is “not predetermined like the instincts of
animals, but is cultivated by long history, and grows in concert with
the development of social and cultural forms.”

While most coun-

tries do not have a past spanning thousands of years, in the case of
Japan, a country with a “continuous history built over thousands of
years,” that character grew out of an extremely long history.

Thus,

“because the national character arises out of complex surroundings,
like the individual character, it is completed gradually by
repeated errors, failures, and countless tests; again like the individual

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character, it eventually comes to have a particular fixed tendency in
its way of coping with its surroundings and with history.”

Having

developed over a long period of history, the Japanese national char-
acter, he wrote, “continue[s] to hold aspects of ancient, medieval,
and modern culture in the present day.”

The “complex surroundings” out of which national character is

formed include interrelated natural, economic, political, and social
conditions that exact a certain response from the people. Japan’s
natural environment, according to Nyozekan, contributed to a
character that was moderate and rejected extremes. The Japanese
environment, unlike that of the Chinese – a familiar frame of refer-
ence for Nyozekan and his readers – proved familiar rather than for-
bidding, approachable rather than awesome; the country’s
landscape, he wrote, “foster[s] a feeling of mildness, delicateness,
and intimacy.”

The temperate climate in which the bulk of the

population lived reinforced this overall lack of extremes, creating a
“garden-like mildness and gentleness,” that “kept people from
becoming either hot-tempered or cold-blooded.”

Moreover,

because Japan was an island nation, all things operated on an
exceedingly small scale. Islanders, he wrote, cannot entertain
ridiculous dreams, they cannot build large empires like those that
exist on large continents.

This intimate natural environment

inspired the Japanese people’s closeness to nature, which in turn
reflected the diversity and balance Nyozekan believed were charac-
teristic of Japanese civilization.

Economic conditions, many of them closely related to natural

conditions, also shaped the national character. Nyozekan wrote
that because flat land for building and farming was scarce in Japan,
life operated on a very small scale.

Traditionally, the economy had

also operated on a small scale, as demonstrated by family farms
worked in intensive agriculture. Japan lacked the large-scale agri-
culture characteristic of European serfdom. In Japan, Nyozekan
noted, legal codes restricted the enlargement of personal property.

As reflected in its agriculture, the Japanese economy emphasized
quality over quantity.

As a result, economic conditions, like

natural conditions, reinforced the rejection of extremes, and tradi-
tionally, the country had no “unequal amassing of wealth on a large
scale.” Nor, on the other hand, did the country suffer widespread
poverty.

Political factors, too, affected the course of development of the

Japanese national character, exerting a unique influence. Most
influential was the fact that the Japanese achieved national unifi-
cation through peaceful means. This peaceful unification,
Nyozekan wrote, was a “national heirloom” for the Japanese,

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because it was accomplished “not by means of arms, but by diplo-
matic negotiations.”

No large wars of unification took place,

nor

was unification forced by an outside power, real or imagined.
Nyozekan described the opposition between the early Izumo and
Yamato clans, noting that the country was never divided into com-
peting states, and that the clans ultimately united in their belief in
a common ancestor.

Based on a common belief in family ties, this

peaceful unification was both cause of and caused by the racial
homogeneity of the Japanese. Thus, political and social unity rein-
forced one another, and the imperial family, whose resulting posi-
tion was unimpeachable by military might, became the focus of
national unity.

Even writing in the charged atmosphere of prewar

Japan, Nyozekan explained the origins of political unity not by
resorting to spiritual or mythological terms, but with reference to
the historical and anthropological information available to him.

Finally, social conditions also played a part in shaping the

national character. The Japanese state coalesced out of the “sponta-
neous integration of primitive races,”

and from this integration of

races developed the Japanese belief in a common ancestor. But
Nyozekan disputed this belief, writing that in fact, there was “no
such thing as a common ancestor.”

Thus, Nyozekan viewed the

integration of the Japanese people as a prosaic and peaceful process
and spurned the idea, hallowed by the prewar and wartime gov-
ernment, of Japan as a family state. Nevertheless, Nyozekan con-
ceded that this fallacious belief, combined with a high degree of
racial homogeneity, had in the past prevented social strife and pro-
moted national unity.

In addition to racial homogeneity, Nyozekan believed the

Japanese possessed an extraordinary cultural homogeneity as well.
Very early in its history, Japan possessed a national language, and
soon after entering the historical era (i.e. the Yamato period, in the
sixth century), the Yamato dialect had spread nationwide – a stark
contrast to Europe, which, through Latin, achieved a “national”
language only in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

This lin-

guistic homogeneity promoted national unity and harmony, and
served to spread a common culture throughout the country.

Not only was a common culture spread across the nation, but it

was spread across the classes, Nyozekan argued, and he, therefore,
termed Japan’s traditional society a “classless” society, noting
numerous examples of cultural forms that were practiced by people
of all classes. The poetical forms waka, renga, and haiku were all
written and recited by aristocrats and commoners alike. “In short,”
Nyozekan wrote, “the lower classes appreciated upper class
culture,”

and “even though cultural forms were born of the upper

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classes, they pervaded the lower classes.”

Japan possessed a

uniquely homogeneous society, and the “classless” quality of the
culture led Nyozekan to call Japan a “cultural democracy,”

concept that became a cornerstone of his effort to promote democ-
racy in Japan.

These natural, economic, political, and social conditions, in com-

bination with historical developments, produced a unique Japanese
character. Both before and after the war, Nyozekan explored the
nature of this character, developing his polemic against fascism in
Japan and supporting the native growth of liberalism. Through his
research, Nyozekan arrived at an understanding of the Japanese
national character as being “almost self-contradictorily diverse.”

Contradictions exist in the character of any nation: in the late
1890s, Frederick Jackson Turner described the American character
as “ruggedly individualistic,” while just fifty years earlier, Alexis de
Toqueville found Americans to be a nation of conformists.

But

Nyozekan believed it was precisely this kind of contradiction that
gave a nation its strength. The more diverse a nation’s character, the
more capable it would be of evolution and development. The
diverse elements of a national character are called upon to cope
with the demands of different periods. Nyozekan noted that “. . .
one or the other of these opposing characteristics is always to the
fore in the history of the nation, depending on which of them is
more necessary in the particular historical setting of the time.”

These contradictions notwithstanding, Nyozekan believed a

certain steady core of qualities made up the Japanese character;
qualities that constituted the “most permanent aspects of the
Japanese character [and were] preserved throughout [various his-
torical] changes.”

In both prewar and wartime writing on the

subject, he developed his view of a Japanese national character
whose core consisted of such qualities as liberalism, pragmatism,
realism, tolerance, internationalism, and pacifism: qualities that
meant the Japanese national character was naturally opposed to the
fanatical nationalism and militarism of Japanese fascism. Nyozekan
derived these conclusions from studying Japanese history, culture,
art, and literature. And yet, perhaps he needed only to study
himself: the qualities he ascribed to the Japanese character seem an
apt description of his own character. Possibly not realizing how
strongly it may have applied to his own work, he wrote in 1938: “A
Japanese discussing the psychological make-up of his own race
tends accordingly to stress those aspects which he possesses himself
and to overlook the other aspects.”

For Nyozekan, one of the overriding features of the Japanese

character was its grounding in everyday life. “To me,” he wrote, “the

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most important thing for humankind [ningen ni totte] is everyday
life.”

From Nyozekan’s perspective nearly all of the features of the

Japanese character emerged out of the day-to-day existence of the
people. Calling Japanese civilization a “civilization of actual life,”
he pointed to the arts for a graphic example of this, noting that “all
the fine arts of Japan are intended for use in everyday life.” The tea
ceremony demonstrates this, as does Japanese painting, which,
Nyozekan noted, is designed to enhance an overall setting, not to
stand alone as an independent aesthetic. Thus, a scroll was hung in
a tokonoma not to draw attention to itself but to contribute to the
mood of the room or the occasion. Nyozekan contrasted this with
the German aesthetic “which considers art to be the expression of
an independent life of its own.”

Thus, Nyozekan implied that the

importance of this feature lay in part in its rejection of German ways
and ideology, a veiled but pointed reference in the political atmos-
phere of the late 1930s.

Grounded as it was in everyday life, one of the central features

of the Japanese national character was realism. “The mainstream
of Japanese thought,” he wrote in 1935, “has always been realistic
in spirit and never detached from objective circumstances.”

making his point, Nyozekan drew on examples from Japanese
literature, arguing that from the earliest times, Japanese literature
displayed a very modern realism.

Here Nyozekan revealed the

influence of Motoori Norinaga, whose eighteenth century study of
the ancient Japanese texts emphasized the ineffability of nature,
but also the stark realities of human life.

As an example of this,

Nyozekan, relying on Norinaga’s study of the Kojiki (Records of
Ancient Matters), pointed out that the ancient history recorded in
the Kojiki is “matter-of-fact history in no way distorted by ideol-
ogy.” Moreover, he wrote, again following Norinaga (and again by
extension attacking contemporary ideology and its German roots),
the gods of Japanese mythology were very human, lacking “the
heroic qualities of those in the legends of other countries.”

The

Manyoshu, an eighth century collection of nearly 4,500 poems, also
demonstrated the realistic character of the Japanese, and
Nyozekan pointed to the spontaneity of its poetry, which
expressed “ordinary personal sentiments.”

Nyozekan also singled

out the Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji) as evidence of the
Japanese tendency toward realism. Like Norinaga, who in his study
of the Genji monogatari, entitled Tama no ogushi, wrote that the
work was a realistic depiction of human life,

Nyozekan too

looked on the realism in the Genji monogatari as an example of the
traditional realism of the Japanese national character. Not only did
it depict reality in a straightforward manner, it was written in the

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colloquial language, bringing it that much closer to the everyday
life of the people.

The realism of the Japanese character influenced the people in a

number of ways, Nyozekan believed, contributing to the Japanese
tendency to reject extremes and embrace balance in all things.
Reinforced by the moderate natural conditions of the Japanese
islands, Japanese realism contributed to the Japanese aesthetic taste
for simplicity and naturalness. When nature is overwhelming, man
is faced with the choice of either submitting to it or overcoming it,
Nyozekan wrote; the moderate conditions in Japan allowed the
Japanese simply to accept nature as it was.

This then, gave the

Japanese their temperate and balanced character. In a 1935 article,
however, Nyozekan conceded that “there are individual extremists
and limited sections that lean too far in one direction or the other,
but the nation as a whole has succeeded in keeping to a golden
mean, helped by the mutual restraints the two extremities exer-
cise.”

Thus, he implied, the true character of the Japanese rejected

the extremism demanded by Japanese fascism and opted instead for
the moderation of Anglo-American liberalism.

Indeed, as he wrote

after the war, Nyozekan felt that “Japanese civilization possesses an
English-style characteristic of standing between the extremes of
progressivism and conservatism,” and that the Japanese intuitively
sought out English-style civilization.

Rejecting extremes, the Japanese character developed a quality of

restraint and “control of feeling” which Nyozekan felt was another
of the fundamental principles underlying Japanese culture. The
“characteristics of moderation, simplicity, and restraint [have been]
apparent since ancient times” and were displayed, for example, in
the self-control and discipline valued in samurai culture. For
Nyozekan the significance of this self-restraint lay in his hope that
moderation would ultimately prevail even in the heated political
climate of the 1930s. He wrote in 1938 that “A not inconsiderable
portion of the Japanese are prone to occasional impulsive or fanat-
ical attitudes, yet not once so far have such lapses into extremity
caused confusion at any vital point in history. At really crucial
times, the Japanese have always maintained their self-restraint and
ability to think again.” At these crucial points in Japanese history,
he wrote, “the conciliatory outlook, born of patience and self-
control . . . [wins]. . . the day over the more impetuous, exclusion-
ist outlook.”

Another important corollary of the Japanese tendency toward

realism was the accompanying rejection of idealism. Again
Nyozekan referred to the Japanese national character’s grounding
in everyday life. Nyozekan viewed the Japanese grounding in reality

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as so thorough and deeply rooted that the nation even lacked a phi-
losophy. The Japanese people, he wrote in a 1962 essay entitled
“Tetsugaku no nai bunmei koku” (“A Civilized Country without a
Philosophy”), stress action over philosophy.

“How we think is, in

short, how we live,” he wrote; for the Japanese people, Nyozekan
believed, action molds thought.

Without a philosophy, the

Japanese people instead possessed “an innate fondness for practical
manifestations of philosophy in every activity of life, even if they
have made but little progress in the pursuit of philosophy as an ide-
ology.”

Once again, Nyozekan distinguished contemporary Japan

from Germany, rejecting the abstract idealism of German philoso-
phy. Nyozekan pointed out that “In Japan there has been no meta-
physics of conceptual philosophy, except what has been handed
down to us, in the past, from China and India, and, today, from
Germany.”

The Japanese, in their lack of philosophy, mirrored the

British, who also had never developed their own philosophy.
Nyozekan felt that British thought was “grounded in the realities
and experiences of life,” and cited Bertrand Russell, who called
British philosophy a “philosophy that negates [hitei suru] philoso-
phy.”

Thus, he believed, the Japanese were especially in tune with

the English character and culture, and naturally inclined toward lib-
eralism.

While Nyozekan disparaged the post-Meiji borrowing from

Germany, he felt that cultural borrowing itself, and the adoption
of foreign imports, were very much a part of the Japanese charac-
ter. In “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” Nyozekan emphasized just
how fundamental was this feature of the Japanese national char-
acter: “. . .our national character, more than displaying an exclu-
sionary tendency based on strong reaction to the needs of a
particular situation, is grounded in the tendency toward assimila-
tion that has been fostered over a long history.”

With this ten-

dency to assimilate came an openness that enabled the Japanese to
recognize and accept features of foreign civilizations that were
superior to their own. At the same time, however, the strong
national character of the Japanese allowed them to maintain their
own cultural uniqueness in the midst of foreign borrowing. The
echo of Nyozekan’s early Seikyosha mentors reverberates here, as
he writes of the Japanese ability to “absorb foreign cultures without
the loss of its national consciousness.”

In a 1936 article, he

reached back to Japanese antiquity for an example of this ability,
noting the side-by-side existence of Chinese-style Buddhist
temples with native Japanese tradition as reflected in Shinto
shrines.

In a more modern example, from the 1960s, he pointed

to the coexistence of the kimono and the “mini-skaato” (which

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young women wore, he noted, “some centimeters above the
knees”)!

The combination of old and new, native and foreign, “blended

together like two scenes of a twice-exposed photograph,” reflected
the polarity that existed as part of the Japanese national character.

This polarity bespoke the strength of the Japanese character:
“Instead of losing their individuality under a burden of foreign
ideas, [the Japanese] have been able to strengthen it by controlling
the circumstances under which the foreign ideas have been
absorbed.” The strength of the Japanese national character, then,
provided a creative component in the assimilation of foreign
culture, as the Japanese “utilized their leaning toward imitation to
develop what is inherent in themselves.”

The resulting adapta-

tions made the native developments far more important than the
foreign borrowings.

A particularly apt example of this ability to

adapt foreign elements to Japanese culture came from the literature
of the court women of the Heian era. The female authors of such
works as the Genji monogatari and Makura no soshi were educated in
the Chinese classics and Chinese characters. Taking this as their
point of departure, they developed not only a phonetic script that
was vastly more suited to the Japanese language than were Chinese
characters, but a whole literature that was uniquely Japanese in
subject and outlook.

Thus, the assimilative quality of the Japanese

national character had a creative component. Nyozekan wrote that,
in much the same way, the creative tradition of borrowing meant
that the rapid modernization of the Meiji era was in no way out of
character for Japan.

In this way, Nyozekan relied on his Seikyosha heritage, writing

about the creative potentialities of foreign borrowing, but recognizing
the need to adapt that borrowing to the Japanese tradition. Most
importantly, however, in pointing out the assimilative character of the
Japanese, Nyozekan was arguing against the trend toward fascism that
swept Japan as he immersed himself in national character studies. For
Nyozekan, the real significance of defending the openness and toler-
ance of the Japanese was the implied argument against the national-
ism and virulent exclusionism of the late 1930s.

A plea for

international liberalism and coexistence emerged in Nihon-teki seikaku:

The long-standing tendency of the Japanese to combine in one
age, or in one individual, both the traditional and the modern is
a trait of Japanese civilization which should perhaps be welcomed
as a model for the national culture as a whole. If the ability to live
in harmony with others without losing his own individuality is
the most desirable quality for the individual in society, then surely

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the most desirable civilization is that which demonstrates the
same capacity.

Indeed, Nyozekan believed Japan possessed the ability to live in

harmony within the international community, and he bolstered
this belief with his views on the Japanese national character. Japan’s
rapid adoption of foreign, especially Western, culture since the
Meiji era, was an indication of its “strong disposition toward inter-
national sociability.”

As Nyozekan wrote, “Nationally, racially,

and religiously, the Japanese people are absolutely not intolerant.”

This openness, and “international sociability,” provided a basis

for Nyozekan’s belief that the Japanese were an inherently peaceful
people. In an article entitled, “Nihonjin no heiwasei to rakutensei,”
written seven months after Japan’s surrender, he acknowledged the
international assessment of the Japanese as a bellicose people. But
once again pointing to the diverse nature of the Japanese character,
he wrote that “while the Japanese had a bellicose side, they pos-
sessed an extremely peaceful side as well.”

Nevertheless, it was the

peaceful aspect, Nyozekan felt, that dominated. As pointed out
earlier, for Nyozekan, Japan’s peaceful unification under the Yamato
clan set the tone for the fundamentally pacifistic character of the
Japanese.

Turning also to the Manyoshu and the essentially non-

militaristic nature of its poetry, he reinforced his conclusion that
the Japanese were basically a peaceful people.

Thus, once again,

Nyozekan made evident his view that Japan’s quest for domination
in Asia was an aberration from the norm established by the Japanese
national character.

These were Nyozekan’s views of the Japanese national character.

But they were views which, containing his arguments against
Japanese fascism, he necessarily presented subtly. In the late 1930s,
Nyozekan’s primary motive in studying the Japanese character was
to continue to fight against the ultranationalism and militarism of
Japanese fascism. He had not abandoned his goal of fighting for lib-
eralism in Japan, but he had certainly lost ground. By the mid-
1930s, he found his aim was a matter not simply of fostering
liberalism, but of trying to remove the major obstacles to liberalism
that had developed. In Nyozekan’s estimation, liberalism remained
a valid system, and the West, with the exception of Germany, whose
philosophy he had always rejected, remained a valid model. He
wrote in a 1935 essay, “There are Japanese who would pretend that
they have nothing to learn from the West except what pertains to
material civilization. But in my opinion they are sadly mistaken.
The spiritual culture of the nations of Europe and America is still
teeming with products born of a fine traditional spirit.”

Thus, not

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only did Nyozekan use his national character studies to level an
attack against Japanese fascism, but more fundamentally, as a way
to continue his struggle to promote liberalism in Japan.

When Nyozekan narrowed his focus on national character

studies, he “entered the enemy’s own ring.”

As the government

propagated the ultranationalism of Japanese fascism, presenting its
military aggression in Asia as a “mission,” Nyozekan fought an
intellectual war against the government, using ideas from his
national character studies as weapons. His struggle was indeed an
intellectual one, as he used his own ideas to counter those put forth
by the ruling bureaucracy. While recognizing the importance of pre-
serving the Japanese character, in 1938, he called into question the
government-sponsored mythology of Japanese superiority, writing,
“The sense of superiority accompanying tradition is itself a working
of . . .[an] . . . unconscious mental process. It goes with the neces-
sity of the preservation of the culture, which, however it [the sense
of superiority] may seem to be the result of intellectual judgment,
is not really so in fact.” He continued his criticism using English
conservatism to veil his actual target, writing that, “Although the
tradition [of conservatism] undoubtedly has its value as part of the
national character, English pride in it stems less from an intellectual
assessment of its worth than from an irrational, almost psycholog-
ical need.”

100

The ancient Japanese texts, the Kojiki and the Manyoshu, provided

him with some of the intellectual ammunition he needed in his
opposition to government propaganda. Through research into
these texts and into Japanese history and culture, Nyozekan sought
to define the Japanese national character and thus highlight the dis-
parity between original Japanese beliefs and sentiments and the
“artificially constructed thought of the governing bureaucracy.”

101

He hoped to convince the Japanese people (and perhaps reassure
himself) that the original Japanese nature differed dramatically
from the image the government was promoting. In this way,
Nyozekan carried on in his calling as a “man of ideas” and a man of
conscience.

As mentioned earlier, the influence of Motoori Norinaga is clear

in Nyozekan’s work, and he was inspired to devote himself to the
tactic of character studies in part by a rereading of Norinaga.

102

Norinaga (1730–1801) was one of the founders of the eighteenth
century National Learning Movement that called for a renewed
study of the ancient Japanese classics. Nyozekan’s first extensive
reading of Norinaga was in the early years of Taisho

¯ and this reading

informed his views well in advance of his first works focusing
exclusively on the national character.

103

The National Learning

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Movement led the restoration of Shinto in the late 1700s, although
it remained for one of Norinaga’s followers, Hirata Atsutane
(1776–1843) (who Nyozekan pointed out was “often described as a
degenerated Motoori Norinaga”

104

), to develop this into the narrow

chauvinism that rejected all outside influence.

105

The National

Learning Movement also provided a foundation for government
propaganda in the 1930s, another reason for Nyozekan’s interest in
it. But more importantly, Nyozekan saw in Norinaga a man with
whom he shared a goal: to sift out of Japanese culture, history, and
literature what was genuinely Japanese and what was “adulter-
ated.”

106

Nyozekan endeavored to do the same: he wanted to “re-

excavate” Japan.

107

In his effort find the true Japanese character, Nyozekan, like

Norinaga, turned to the Manyoshu for part of his investigation. In
his 1933 article, “Manyoshu ni okeru shizenshugi” (“Naturalism in the
Manyoshu”), Nyozekan analyzed the poetry of the Manyoshu,
viewing the compilation, like Norinaga, as an expression of native
Japanese sentiment largely uncolored by foreign influence, “not
dominated,” he wrote elsewhere, “by any artificial perfect moral-
ity.”

108

Building on this, he developed his subtle protest against con-

temporary social and political trends pointing out that, “among the
fifty poems composed by members of the Imperial House . . .very
few are suggestive of moral or politico-social instruction,” and that
“the collection contains nothing exciting the military spirit or stim-
ulating patriotic sentiment.”

109

In his 1935 article “re-examining” the Japanese national character,

Nyozekan used the same tack of analyzing the Japanese past as a
means of telling contemporary Japanese about themselves. His
message was at odds with the aggressive militarism and ultranation-
alism that was being expressed in Japan’s policies in Manchuria,
China, and Korea. He wrote: “. . .in ancient days, the Japanese people
developed an extremely tolerant international spirit, and thus in
today’s world can take pride in having this ancient culture . . .
[that is] . . . exactly opposite from the isolationist character of the
Tokugawa period.” “Tokugawa isolationism,” Nyozekan wrote, “was
not the product of any religious or racial prejudice inherent in the
Japanese character but rather grew out of government efforts to
promote it as a political necessity.”

110

By extension he implied, the

contemporary government was once again promoting military
aggression and isolation from the international community as
a political necessity. Likewise, the Tokugawa suppression of
Christianity was not undertaken out of religious prejudice, he wrote,
but it too was seen as a political move to protect against imperialism:
Western missionary efforts in China were seen as the thin end of the

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wedge, to be followed by government-sponsored imperialism.

111

Thus Nyozekan believed the current government was again inciting
isolation and fanaticism by claiming a spurious “political necessity.”

In Nihon-teki seikaku, Nyozekan again looked to the past, defend-

ing liberalism by turning to the mid-Tokugawa period for a pointed
analogy to Japan’s isolation and the government-sponsored imper-
ial myth in the mid-1930s. In the mid-Tokugawa period, under the
influence of such men as Hirata Atsutane, the results of Norinaga’s
return to Japanese roots gave way to the rejection of Confucianism
and Buddhism, despite the many features of these philosophies the
Japanese had adapted to their culture. “This movement,” he wrote,
“was also [the result of] exclusion and a feeling that pressure was
being exerted by foreign countries . . . Strengthening the unity of
the nation required the resuscitation of a national consciousness;
the most natural and effective way to achieve this was to rely on the
conceptual model of a state unified around a national family, as in
ancient Japan.”

112

Now, he implied, the government was once again

responding to external pressures, this time promoting its own
narrow vision of the Japanese national character based on the
concept of kokutai and the emperor system ideology.

Believing that the true Japanese character had a natural proclivity

to liberalism, he pointed out that during the Meiji Restoration, the
Japanese people instinctively opted for English thought, and this was
due, Nyozekan believed, to the traditional character of the Japanese
and of Japanese culture. Japan naturally inclined toward “Anglo-
Saxon culture” and the liberalism it represented, he felt, because
Japan too had experienced its own “Japanese Renaissance.”

113

This

renaissance, which began in the seventeenth century under the
stable Tokugawa government, involved the “discovery of man” and
led to the development of humanism (which, however, Nyozekan
readily admitted was “even vaguer than the imprecisely-defined
humanism of the West). The Japanese Renaissance grew in opposi-
tion to the official Tokugawa Confucianism, and Motoori Norinaga
played a key role. Nyozekan explained that, for Norinaga, the ideals
of Confucianism were artificial constructs, “created with the aim of
imposing some unity of a state and society.” The newly-developing
humanism of the Japanese Renaissance “freed men and society from
the intellectual sway of Buddhism and Confucianism and treated
man and his environment as actualities in their own right,” wrote
Nyozekan.

114

As a result, Japan underwent social, political, and cul-

tural growth that provided a native tradition of incipient individual-
ism which in turn supported the growth of liberalism. In terms of its
native tradition, Nyozekan felt, Japan most resembled England
among the European countries.

115

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But Nyozekan explained that the failure of these seeds of liberal-

ism to take root immediately was due to the fact that by the Meiji
20s (1880s), the governing bureaucracy adopted German-style
thought.

116

Nyozekan believed that Japan’s subsequent descent into

war and militarism, the “un-Japanese ultranationalism of the
Sho

¯wa era,” was largely due to the country’s “conversion to an ide-

alism imported from another country and absolutely separate from
the Japanese.”

117

In the process of modernization then, the Japanese opted for

German philosophy, applying the German model in politics, the
military, and social policy. By the second decade of Meiji, the
German model had replaced the English model in Japanese politics
and culture. The phrase “Japanese spirit, which appeared in the
1930s, reflected this borrowed German model: “The words
‘Japanism’ and ‘Emperor system,’ created [by the bureaucracy] at
this time [Sho

¯wa] had no connection to Japanese myth or Japanese

psychology, but instead were just the Japanese version of German
ideology.”

118

Nyozekan later pointed out that the Japanese attempt

to borrow German philosophy resulted in the implementation in
Japan of an extremely immature philosophy.

119

In 1936, Nyozekan

again turned to Norinaga to warn against the contemporary wave
of philosophical borrowing when he wrote that Norinaga “objected
to the borrowing of Chinese and Indian philosophies. He pointed
out the meaningless nature of such neo-plagiarism by saying that
the essential qualities of the Japanese spirit rest on a foundation of
not setting up any empirical philosophical categories.” Perhaps it
was a note of confidence in the Japanese when Nyozekan contin-
ued this thought writing that “Japanese books on philosophy
[which are] direct adaptations into the Japanese language from their
original Western languages . . . are usually unintelligible even to
ordinarily intelligent readers.”

120

Thus Nyozekan, writing in the

mid- and late 1930s, rejected the Japanese turn to the German
model which began in the first decades of Meiji and was revived in
a more ideological manifestation with dire consequences in the
1930s. Nyozekan felt unequivocally that German philosophy was
antithetical to the Japanese character.

Reflecting on this situation after the war, he wrote in 1962:

It is only since the Meiji era that Japanese history swerved off the
course it had been following since ancient times. At the beginning
of the Restoration Japan had been adopting Anglo-American
culture. With Germany’s victory over France in the Franco-
Prussian War, however, Japan was attracted by the history of the
rise of this new power in Europe and from the 1880s switched

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from the pursuit of French and British culture and followed the
German pattern in the constitution, legal system, politics, educa-
tion, and academic work. The leaders in politics, the bureaucracy,
and academic life would have nothing but Germany. In Germany
at that time, the Imperial house, the Junkers, the military, and the
bureaucratic politicians were lording it over the citizens and the
Japanese authorities applied the German methods in Japan.
Following the imperialism of Germany, herself a latecomer in the
field – Japan pursued in the Manchurian Incident and the Pacific
War, a chauvinism quite out of step with the times, and so
incurred her first defeat in history.

Nyozekan’s method in his character studies clearly aimed to

promote liberalism in the face of Japan’s growing fascism. In the
1930s, this was one of the few remaining effective ways to oppose
the government. But throughout his career, his beliefs about the
Japanese national character provided him with a means of assess-
ing developments in Japanese politics and society. In the face of
growing fascism, Nyozekan clung to his vision of the Japanese
national character as inherently liberal and believed that but for
the aberration of fascism, the natural progression of Japanese
history would lead to the full development of a liberal character. In
his character studies, he tried to explain to the Japanese people the
qualities of pragmatism, realism, tolerance, internationalism, and
openness that conditioned their response to their world, and
hoped this intellectual fight against fascism would hold open the
door for liberalism in Japan.

Both before and during the war, Nyozekan engaged in a search-

ing investigation of the Japanese character, trying to achieve for
himself and for his fellow Japanese an understanding of their
nation at war, but also trying to provide himself with an outlet for
subtle criticism of the government’s aggressive policies abroad and
repression at home. To understand more fully the development of
his attitudes on the Japanese national character, Japan’s future
course, and his devotion to the cause of liberalism requires an exam-
ination of his work during one of the most active and most forma-
tive periods of his career, the period of Taisho

¯ democracy.

NOTES

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” Kaizo, 17:6
(June 1, 1935) 2–20.

A short newspaper column entitled “Nihon-teki seikaku no shiren”
(“A Test for the Japanese National Character”) (Ichi-nichi, ichi-dai,”

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Yomiuri shimbun, evening edition, January 31, 1935) is actually
Nyozekan’s first published piece using the phrase “Nihon-teki
seikaku,” predating the Kaizo article by six months. A few examples
of his use of the national character concept in earlier critical pieces
can be seen in works like “Kokka-teki kanjo to kokusai-teki seigi”
(“National Feeling and International Politics”) Chuo koron, 36:9
(August 1, 1921) 85–93; “Taisho¯ jidai no kokka-teki teiko to sono shinri-
teki tokucho” (“The Statist Tendency of the Taisho

¯ Era and its

Psychological Characteristics”) Taiyo, 33:2 (February 1, 1927)
47–52; “Kodo no taikei to shite no shakai” (“Society as a System of
Behavior”) Shakaigaku zasshi 39 (July 1, 1927) 1–15; “Shizenshugisha
to shite no Motoori Norinaga” (“Motoori Norinaga as Naturalist”)
Kaizo, 12:3 (March 1, 1930) 32–49.

Andrew Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public
Man in Crisis, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 194–6.

Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 220.

Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of
Cultural Identity, 1885–1895, (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1969) 67.

Pyle, New Generation, 84.

Kokumin no tomo, “Gaijin no yugen hatashite ikubaku no kachi aru,”
June 22, 1889, quoted in Pyle, New Generation, 84.

Kuga Katsunan, Tokyo dempo, June 13, quoted in Pyle, New
Generation, 75.

Pyle, New Generation, 36.

Pyle, New Generation, 35.

“Yohai kokusuishugi o shodo suru,” Nihonjin, May 18, 1889, quoted in
Pyle, New Generation, 70.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, The Japanese Character: A Cultural Profile, John
Bester, translator, (Tokyo: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1966) 101.

Pyle, New Generation, 70.

Pyle, New Generation, 68.

Shiga Shigetaka, “Yamato minzoku no sanseiryoku,” Nihonjin, July 3,
1888, quoted in Pyle, New Generation, 68.

Seppo Koji (pseudonym for Miyake Setsurei) “Nihon jinmin koyu no
seishitsu” Toyo gakugei zasshi, January and February, 1883, quoted in
Pyle, New Generation, 61.

Seppo Koji, quoted in Pyle, New Generation, 61.

Seppo Koji, quoted in Pyle, New Generation, 62.

Kuga Katsunan, “Kinji kenpoko,” serialized in Tokyo dempo and
Nihon, December 28, 1888 to February 28, 1889, quoted in Pyle,
New Generation, 95.

Kuga Katsunan, “Shido ron,” Nihon, November 3, 1890, quoted in
Pyle, New Generation, 127.

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Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 2.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, The Japanese Character: A Cultural Profile, 58.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “The National Character of the Japanese,”
Contemporary Japan, LLL:4 (March 1935) 550.

Ouchi Hyoe, “Okina okina ga inakunatta: Hasegawa Nyozekan no
koto,” in Sera Masatoshi, et al., Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso
to chosaku mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 180.

Matsumoto Joji, “Kaisetsu,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5
(Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 416.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, The Japanese Character: A Cultural Profile, John
Bester, translator, (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966).

Yamaryo Kenji, “Shakai hihan no kenron,” Asahi janaru (ed.), Nihon
no shisoka, vol. 3 (1963) 80; Nanbara Shigeru in conversation with
Maruyama Masao, quoted in Yoshikuni Igarashi, “The Unfinished
Business of Mourning: Maruyama Masao and Postwar Japan’s
Struggles with the Wartime Past,” Positions 10:1 (2002) 203.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Meiji, Taisho¯, Sho¯wa, sandai no seikaku,” in
Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970)
380.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon-teki seikaku,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 10–11.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku,” 2.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku,” 4.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku,” 2.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Zoku Nihon-teki seikaku,” in Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 169.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku,” 10–11.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Dento no jizoku,” “Nihon bunmei no to-go,” in
Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970)
409.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku,” 16.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Educational and Cultural Background of the
Japanese,” (Tokyo: Kokusai bunka shinkokai, 1935) 17–18.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Nihon kishitsu, (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo,
1950) 4; 3.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Shizenbi to jinkobi,” Nihon bunmei no to-go, in
Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970)
404.

Hasegawa, “Nihon kishitsu,” 4.

Hasegawa, “Educational and Cultural Background,” 18.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku,” 16.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 9.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” in Watakushi no
joshiki tetsugaku, (Tokyo: Chuo University, 1987) 127.

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Hasegawa, “Educational and Cultural Background,” 18.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” 127.

Hasegawa, Nihon kishitsu, 16, 21.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 4.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Nihon bumnei no seikaku, (Tokyo: Nihon
kokusai kyoiku kyokaihen, 1966) 11–12.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” 141.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” 128–9.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 71–3.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” 141.

Hasegawa, Nihon-teki seikaku, 21.

Hasegawa, Nihon bumnei no seikaku, 71–2.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 5.

David M. Potter, “The Quest for the National Character,” in John
Higham (ed.), The Reconstruction of American History, (New York:
Harper and Row, 1962).

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 5.

Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, 87.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nichijo seikatsu,” Chuo hyoron, 75 (April 20,
1961) 92.

Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, 27–31.

Hasegawa, “The National Character of the Japanese,” 549.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” 137.

William Theodore deBary (ed.), Sources of Japanese Tradition, (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1958) 524–35.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Japan’s ‘Cultural Democracy’: A Challenging
Interpretation of History,” in Perspective on Japan: Atlantic Monthly
Supplement, no. 1 (1955) 75.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Manyoshu ni okeru shizenshugi: Kakumei ni
okeru seiji keitai to no kankei,” in Gendai Nihon bungaku zenshu, vol.
94 (Tokyo: Shoma shobo, 1958) 300. “Manyoshu ni okeru shizenshugi
was originally published in Kaizo 15:1 (January, 1933) 68–87.
Because of its subject matter, this essay may be considered a direct
forerunner to Nyozekan’s work dealing with the Japanese national
character.

deBary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 532–5.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” 137.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 10.

Hasegawa, “The National Character of the Japanese,” 545.

Hasegawa, Nihon kishutsu, 29–30; Hasegawa, “Meiji, Taisho¯,
Sho¯wa, 365–82, passim., Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa
Nyozekan: Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” Sekai, vol. 486 (March
1986) 318.

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Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Tasusei to ryokokusei,” Nihon bunmei no to-go,
in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai,
1970) 397.

Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, 29, 34, 89, 93.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Tetsugaku no nai bunmeikoku,” Nihon bunmei
no to-go, in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shup-
pankai, 1970) 400.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Watakushi ga tetsugaku o kataru,” Riso, 65
(June 1, 1936) 127.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Modernism in Japan,” Contemporary Japan,
V:1 (June 1936) 67.

Hasegawa, “Educational and Cultural Background,” 9.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki minshushugi,” 133.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “The Nature of Japanese History,” Nihon sama-
zama, (Tokyo: Taihorin, 1962) 4.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 7.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Educational and Cultural Background,” 12.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon-teki bunka kankaku no tokucho,” Nihon
hyoron, 11:8 (August 1, 1936) 5.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Ryokokusei: Nihon bunmei no tokucho,” Chuo
hyoron, 100 (September 20, 1967) 38.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, The Japanese Character, 149; Hasegawa,
“Tasusei to ryokokusei,” 396–8.

Hasegawa, “The National Character of the Japanese,” 545.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki bunka kankaku no tokucho,” 5.

Hasegawa, “Educational and Cultural Background,” 16.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 7.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Senchu, sengo o ikinu-
ite,” Sekai, no. 486 (March 1986) 318.

Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, 61.

Hasegawa, “The National Character of the Japanese,” 554.

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 7.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihonjin no heiwasei to rakutensei,” Sekai
bunka, 1:2 (March 1, 1946) 47.

Hasegawa, “Bunka-teki no minshushugi,” 127.

Hasegawa, “Manyoshu ni okeru shizenshugi,” 304.

Hasegawa, “Japan’s ‘Cultural Democracy’,” 77.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “The Japanese and Foreign Culture,”
Contemporary Japan, IV:2 (September 1935) 228.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 315.

100

Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, 99.

101

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 315, 318.

102

Matsumoto, “Kaisetsu,” 416.

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103

Sera Masatoshi, et al., Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku
mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 116.

104

Hasegawa, “The National Character of the Japanese,” 548.

105

Tetsuo Najita, Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese
Politics, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) 58–9; deBary,
Sources of Japanese Tradition, 508–10, 540–42.

106

deBary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 509.

107

Matsumoto, “Kaisetsu,” 416–17.

108

Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, 96.

109

Hasegawa, “Naturalism in the Manyoshu,” Contemporary Japan, I:4
(March 1933) 700.

110

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 7.

111

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihonjin to shukyo,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 336.

112

Hasegawa, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” 3.

113

Hasegawa, “Japan’s ‘Cultural Democracy’,” 77.

114

Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, 131, 143,146, 144.

115

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon no hyumanizumu,” in Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 308.

116

Hasegawa, “Meiji, Taisho¯, Sho¯wa,” 375, 381.

117

Hasegawa, Nihon kishitsu, 39; “Meiji, Taisho¯, Sho¯wa,” 381.

118

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 316.

119

Hasegawa, “Tetsugaku no nai bunmei koku,” 400.

120

Hasegawa, “Modernism in Japan,” 68, 67–8.

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Taisho

¯ Democracy

he period of great change that is called Taisho

¯ democracy proved

to be one of the busiest times of Nyozekan’s life. In these early

years of his career as a journalist, Nyozekan threw himself into his
chosen calling as a “critic of civilization.” In addition to writing
books, he wrote and traveled for the Osaka Asahi Shimbun, and after
leaving the newspaper, launched two successive magazines. The
period of Taisho

¯ democracy spurred Nyozekan’s hopes of seeing the

trend toward liberalism fulfilled in Japan. But before the period was
over, his hope gave way to disillusion with the course of political
trends.

Taken at face value, and ignoring the undercurrents of authori-

tarianism present in the Meiji period (for example, the emperor-
centered Meiji Constitution), the Taisho

¯ period seemed the next

step in a natural evolution toward participatory democracy. The
period was characterized by the implementation of policies that
supported democracy, for example the move toward government
conducted by the lower house of the Diet consisting of represen-
tatives popularly elected by universal manhood suffrage. This kind
of government and society, intellectuals believed, was possible
under the Meiji Constitution and could be achieved through
gradual and peaceful change.

But the aspirations for democratic

change were not just limited to intellectuals: according to
Sugimura Takeshi, a journalist active at the time, the Taisho

¯ period

was an era during which, “In terms of the thinking of the masses,
the imported ideas of Western democracy flowed into the
country . . . this was the thread that ran through the Taisho

¯ era.”

In the international arena, the guiding principles of Taisho

¯ democ-

racy advocated an end to Japan’s aggressive policies in Asia and
urged Japanese membership in the international community. The
brief ascendancy of these guiding principles defines the period
of Taisho

¯ democracy better than dates, for this era of prewar

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liberalism extended beyond the Taisho

¯ reign (1912–26) from

which it derives its name.

Liberal currents were evident in Japanese politics as early as the

late nineteenth century. The Popular Rights Movement, for
example, “sought the establishment of a popularly-elected system
of parliamentary government (minsei giin) based on the theory of
natural rights and popular sovereignty.”

But it was the Taisho

¯ polit-

ical crisis, several decades later, which seemed to set Japanese poli-
tics on the course toward true democracy. In December 1912,
following the new emperor’s accession to the throne in July, the
army forced the collapse of the second Saionji cabinet. Despite
public outcry against the strong-arm tactics of the army, the genró
appointed Katsura Taro as Saionji’s replacement. The appointment
of Katsura, who was strongly identified with clique government,
intensified the public outcry, which coalesced into the “Movement
to Protect Constitutional Government” under Inukai Tsuyoshi and
Ozaki Yukio, former leaders of the earlier popular rights movement.
Katsura was forced out of office. Thus, the popular movement to
protest against government tactics in the Taisho

¯ political crisis

demonstrated the burgeoning liberal trends in Japanese society. By
strengthening the role of the parties, it also contributed to progress
toward two-party government, ultimately culminating in Seiyukai
leader Hara Kei’s appointment to the premiership in 1918.

The year 1918 was critical in the period of Taisho

¯ democracy for

other reasons as well. Indeed, Andrew Barshay has called 1918 the
“crucial fulcrum” of the era. That August, popular distress over
the inflation and financial dislocation of the war years erupted in
the Rice Riots. Intellectuals, notably journalists like Nyozekan,
protested for more abstract reasons: not only were they opposed to
the anti-Soviet Siberian Expedition, they were also inflamed by the
government’s repression of the press and the remote nature of
domestic politics as reflected in the persistence of “transcendental
cabinets.” But it was the nationwide popular protest over sky-
rocketing rice prices that prompted Prime Minister Terauchi
Masatake to call out 92,000 troops

that had the more immediate

impact in bringing about the resignation of Terauchi’s transcen-
dental cabinet. This resignation provided the opening for Hara’s
party government, and although the transcendental cabinet was
not yet dead, it was dying and by 1924 had expired.

The year 1925 brought another benchmark of Taisho

¯ democracy

with the passage of the universal manhood suffrage bill. The simul-
taneous passage of the Peace Preservation Law, however, took the
shine off this victory of liberal principles, and like the Terauchi gov-
ernment’s press censorship in the midst of the Rice Riots, it hinted

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at the darker side of political trends in the Taisho

¯ period.

Nevertheless, the period of Taisho

¯ democracy still had a few more

years of life. Labor made some gains in the mid-1920s and, at the
same time, the Diet enacted social welfare legislation to ease the lot
of the people. But this too, had its somber undertones: as Kenneth
B. Pyle argues, the Japanese bureaucracy, enjoying the “advantages
of followership,” passed social welfare laws in an effort to prevent
the “social diseases” they saw spreading in the West, which they
feared carried the germ of revolution. Thus, these “enlightened”
acts actually constituted a rejection of liberalism and laissez-faire
policies.

A counterpoint to these political developments was the onset of

an agricultural depression in the early 1920s. In response to depres-
sion in the agricultural sector, the government turned to its colonies
in Korea and Taiwan to supply rice for home markets, contributing
to the development of a more aggressive foreign policy.

This rice

import policy in turn worsened domestic rural conditions by pro-
viding competition with the already embattled Japanese farmer.

But economic hardship in the rural sector proved beneficial to the

military, as villagers became more easily swayed by the ultrana-
tionalist and anti-foreign propaganda promoted by the military.

Moreover, the military effectively co-opted the existing village
structure to gain a following in the countryside.

Enlisting in the

army, young villagers reinforced the military’s turn to foreign
aggression, made easier by its legal independence from civil author-
ity. This aggressive trend found expression in the 1928 murder of
Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin by young members of the
Kwantung Army who subsequently went undisciplined by the army
for their actions. This initiated a chain of events that culminated in
the Manchurian Incident of 1931. This event, and the government’s
acquiescence, signaled the end of the period of Taisho

¯ democracy,

and, for Nyozekan, the onset of Japan’s fascist phase.

Nyozekan’s career closely followed the eddies of Taisho

¯ history.

He has been called a “child of Taisho

¯ democracy,” and “a new

thinker of a new age.”

As a journalist, he belonged to the profes-

sional group most fervent in its support of the principles of Taisho

democracy.

It was during this period, when Nyozekan was in his

mid-thirties, that this career began to blossom: “During the agitated
period of Taisho

¯ democracy,” writes Kaji Ryuichi, “Nyozekan looked

fixedly at the world, thought about the man in the street, and
taking up his pen, rose to the top of the world of Japanese thought
in one stroke.”

In joining the staff of the Osaka Asahi Shimbun in 1908,

Nyozekan cast his lot with the leading liberal voice of the day.

His

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identification with the liberal character of the newspaper was
exceedingly strong. He wrote: “Just as the people of society, such as
merchants, artisans, officials, and the like have appearances and
speech that immediately identifies them with their function, news-
papers and newspapermen also possess this peculiarity . . . One
could determine which newspaper the journalist worked for accord-
ing to his appearance, vocabulary and attitude.”

The “attitude” of

Nyozekan and his colleagues at the Osaka Asahi was focused on pub-
licizing and promoting the social and political issues around which
the period of Taisho

¯ democracy turned.

Thus, Nyozekan’s defiant resignation form the Osaka Asahi in

1918, the year Barshay called the “crucial fulcrum” of the period of
Taisho

¯ democracy, proved to be a fulcrum in Nyozekan’s life as well.

Newly independent after leaving the newspaper in protest against
the government’s repression of the press during the Rice Riots, he
clung to the liberal ideals he believed the Osaka Asahi had once
embodied, and began his own magazine, Warera. As editor of
Warera, Nyozekan used its pages to express his views on the various
events and issues confronting Japan in the latter half of the Taisho

period. Although it continued publication under the name Hihan,
Warera’s demise in 1930 roughly coincided with the Manchurian
Incident of 1931, the event that signaled the end of Japan’s short-
lived experiment with liberalism in the prewar period and the onset
of what Nyozekan called Japanese fascism.

Participating in Taisho

¯ democracy as a liberal journalist, Nyozekan

was fascinated with the philosophy of the press and the role of the
newspaper in society, and in 1929 he began to write on the subject.

In Shimbunron, published in 1947, Nyozekan explored the role of the
newspaper in society, emphasizing the newspaper’s positive role in
contributing to the formation of public opinion.

He felt that as a

journalist, he was in a position to have a significant impact on
society. That role, as Nyozekan played it, was as proselytizer of
democratic principles. Tanaka Hiroshi comments that Nyozekan’s
views, arising from his dedication to both democracy and journal-
ism, were in line with James Bryce’s statement that “In a large
country, the newspaper makes democracy possible.”

Democracy

and journalism were interrelated in Nyozekan’s mind; he believed
that “. . . the healthy state of journalism and the healthy condition
of society always reciprocate, and that the healthy development of
newspapers is an indication of healthy social condition.”

The press in general, and newspapers in particular, Nyozekan

believed, could play a dynamic role in bringing about social change.
In his book, Shimbun, Nyozekan explained that the newspaper was
the “expression of social consciousness.” As this social consciousness

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was oppositional in nature, the newspaper was to express the view-
points of various opposing groups in society.

As a journalist then,

Nyozekan saw his role as one who could focus the expression of social
consciousness and be an advocate for various oppositional groups in
society: labor, women, the intelligentsia. Moreover, as members of
the Osaka Asahi, Nyozekan and other leading staffers, including
Maruyama Kanji and Sugimura Takeshi, understood their roles as
journalists as being intermediaries between the state and society,
advocates of social needs to the government. This role was even more
important in the absence of universal suffrage and social representa-
tion in government.

As Nyozekan noted shortly after his resigna-

tion from the Osaka Asahi in 1918, the authority of opinion
presented in that paper, and the sympathy it generated in the general
public, caused fear among the government, political parties, and
industrialists.

Indeed, if the government measured the threat of the leading

newspapers by circulation figures, it may have found reason to fear.
By 1917–18, shortly before the mass resignation from the Osaka
Asahi that Nyozekan led, the liberal Osaka newspaper reached one
million readers daily.

Nyozekan, even at this early point in his

career had a large audience. While with the Osaka Asahi, Nyozekan
continued to contribute to Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, and, after leaving
the paper, he also published in journals like Kaizo, Taiyo, and Chuo
koron. Because of technological advances, improved management,
and the growth of advertising, the circulation of journals like these
doubled in the early years of the twentieth century. But most sig-
nificant to this growth was the expansion of the reading public.
While these “general interest journals” certainly wielded an influ-
ence on intellectuals and bureaucratic elites, Sharon Nolte has
pointed out that “even a fairly abstruse journal like Chuo koron
could be seen in the hands of a worker or farmer during the Taisho

era.” By 1919, Chuo koron’s circulation had shot up from 5,000
copies to 120,000 copies.

While Warera never achieved these stun-

ning circulation figures, it ultimately reached a readership of 7,000.
This figure becomes more significant in light the fact that, in order
to preserve the integrity of the magazine, Nyozekan refused to
accept advertising as a means of raising revenue, instead surviving
on subscription income alone.

The liberalism that informed Nyozekan’s support for Taisho

democracy came from a variety of sources. He enjoyed a liberal edu-
cation and upbringing in the early days of Meiji, and, in his adult-
hood, studied Western thought intensively, achieving a keen
and accurate grasp of Western and especially English thought.

Nyozekan possessed a deep knowledge of the theory of liberalism as

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well as the history of its development in Europe, and this did not
fall prey to the misunderstandings that marred the possibility of its
success in prewar Japan.

These misunderstandings were explained by men like Ishibashi

Tanzan, liberal economist and editor of the Toyo keizai shimpo
(“Oriental Economic Journal”), who believed that liberalism’s
chances in Japan were severely damaged because it had arrived in
Japan on the coattails of “Western imperialism and military pres-
sure.”

But perhaps more practically, many other intellectuals and

members of the government bureaucracy came to fear the perceived
chaos of a society based on individual liberty, especially the social
dislocation they observed as an accompaniment to laissez-faire
industrial growth in the Western European countries. Even
Nyozekan’s early mentor, Kuga Katsunan, showed alarm at this
prospect, and wrote on the merits of national socialism as a means
of saving Japan from the effects of the “social disease” apparent in
the West. Many believed that liberalism in Europe “had allowed
social conditions to deteriorate until upheaval threatened,” and
they feared the same outcome for Japan.

Nyozekan did not advocate simple economic liberalism, a la

Adam Smith, but called for social liberalism as well. Tanaka
Hiroshi writes that Nyozekan progressed beyond the standpoint of
liberal democracy with its narrow economic interpretation of
liberty, and showed an awareness of social and class issues, and the
necessity for a democracy to address the needs of the workers as
well as the capitalists.

At the same time, Nyozekan warned

against social legislation “bestowed from above,” believing that a
crucial distinction existed between this, which would allow the
government to gather to itself authoritarian power, and social
policy which arose from a popularly-elected body of representa-
tives.

Like Ishibashi Tanzan, Miki Kiyoshi, and others, Nyozekan

looked to the English parliamentary system and the social legisla-
tion enacted under the British Labour Party in the 1920s as the
exemplary manifestation of liberalism, a model of social democ-
racy that Japan might try to emulate.

In this way, Nyozekan’s

understanding of liberalism in its economic, social, and political
dimensions prevented him from a similar decline into the
“comfort” of authoritarianism.

Nyozekan, who aimed to be a “natural historian of the state,” was

well-versed in the theory of liberalism and Western political theory,
having read Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu,
Mill, Smith, and Bentham.

He was most strongly influenced,

however, by two British authors, Leonard T. Hobhouse (1864–1929)
and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903).

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Nyozekan introduced the ideas of Hobhouse to a Japanese audi-

ence in the pages of Warera in 1920.

It is little wonder that the

liberal Nyozekan was drawn to the University of London sociolo-
gist, especially the ideas expressed in the books, Liberalism (1918)
and The Metaphysical Theory of the State (1918). Indeed, Nyozekan,
who valued practicality and simplicity, may have felt a certain
kinship with Hobhouse whose views he described as “plain” and
“matter-of-fact.”

In Liberalism, Hobhouse examined the elements

of liberalism and the “historical progress of the Liberalizing move-
ment,” pointing to civil, economic, social, and domestic liberty.
Hobhouse also wrote of the necessity of “control and restraint” in
preserving liberty and the right of all members of society.

Nyozekan too attached great importance to these qualities and fre-
quently wrote about the control and restraint he believed were
inherent in the Japanese national character; qualities he under-
stood to be essential to the survival of liberty.

In looking at polit-

ical systems, Hobhouse noted the vital importance of the
community’s right to “enforc[e] the responsibility of the executive
and the legislative to the community as a whole.” Nyozekan agreed,
and like Hobhouse he believed this could only be achieved through
a parliament regularly elected by universal suffrage.

Thus,

Nyozekan borrowed Hobhouse to promote his own arguments in
support of a pluralistic government and social democracy.

In Liberalism, Hobhouse also analyzed the relationship between

national and international liberty. He wrote on the basic incom-
patibility of liberalism and imperialism, noting that while a con-
quering nation that uses force to exert control over its colony may
proclaim its liberalism, it is in fact “maintaining a system which
must undermine its own principles,” and that the conqueror “for-
feits his liberty as long as he retains his power.”

These were the

very ideas that Nyozekan would introduce later as he argued against
Japanese aggression in Asia.

Hobhouse’s The Metaphysical Theory of the State, however, had an

even stronger impact on Nyozekan’s thinking, and these were the
ideas Nyozekan wrote about in his 1920 Warera articles. These
articles appeared just a year before the publication of Nyozekan’s
ground-breaking Gendai kokka hihan, a book which shows the
strong imprint of Hobhouse’s ideas.

As Nyozekan pointed out, The

Metaphysical Theory of the State was an attack against Hegelian
statism and Hegel’s “idealized exaltation of the state.”

Hobhouse

contrasted the metaphysical view of the state with the “democratic
or humanitarian view.”

While the former view, as Nyozekan

explained, holds that the “raison d’e¯tre of the state is itself,” the
latter view regards the state as a means, a “servant of humanity [that

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must be] judged by what it does for the lives of its members.”

Japan, according to Tanaka Hiroshi, the metaphysical view of the
state translated into a demand for “absolutist conversion and sub-
mission to the state based on the divinity of the emperor; [in which]
the individual became buried in the absolute nature of the state . . .
Humanity was held in contempt . . . and militarism that negated
international peace was promoted.”

Finally, Hobhouse presented

an idea that was deeply in tune with Spencerian views on social evo-
lution, writing that while the metaphysical view of the state held
the state up as the “supreme achievement of human organization,”
the democratic view of the state was that “the sovereign state is
already doomed, destined to subordination in a community of the
world.”

Thus, Nyozekan’s thinking on the nature of social change and the

relationship between the state and the individual was also strongly
influenced by his reading of British philosopher Herbert Spencer.
Nyozekan identified with Spencer, as with Hobhouse, on a personal
level. He wrote in his autobiography that from the time of his early
reading of Spencer around 1903, he felt a kinship with Spencer and
his lifestyle: Spencer too had a weak constitution, lived his life as a
bachelor, had no livelihood but writing, and was self-taught and
devoted to the life of the mind. Nyozekan’s first introduction to
Spencer came when he read “Tetsugaku kenteki,” by his mentor,
Miyake Setsurei, in 1890.

Although he read everything of

Spencer’s he could find, he was most influenced by two works, Man
versus the State (1884) and Education: Moral, and Physical (1854–59).
In 1939, in the midst of the “clamor against liberalism,” Nyozekan
wrote a book about Spencer, Supensaa, for an Iwanami series on phi-
losophy.

Like the national character studies he published around

the same time, Nyozekan used the book to criticize the fascist trends
sweeping the country, relying on his explanation of Spencer to
comment on contemporary Japanese conditions.

As editor of the London Economist in the mid-nineteenth century,

Spencer was a prominent thinker in the heyday of British Liberalism
and his cohorts included J.S. Mill and other leading liberals.

Mill, Spencer was a champion of the principle of individual rights
over state power. The state, he believed, should impose no “coercive
restraints” upon the individual except to punish crimes against
other individuals or their property.

But these principles were not unique to Spencer. He is singled out

instead as the “first philosopher of evolution”

who applied

Charles Darwin’s newly outlined theory of evolution in the natural
world to society, an application later termed Social Darwinism. In
his life of writing, Spencer focused his attention on society and the

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formation of human groups and governments which, he believed,
developed through an evolutionary process. In both Principles of
Sociology (1876–96) and Man versus the State, Spencer elucidated his
principle that the state must be based on voluntary, rather than
compulsory, cooperation. He believed that human society in
Europe, and especially in England, had evolved through what he
called the militant phase, characterized by compulsory cooperation
(e.g. military draft) and had achieved government in which “vol-
untary cooperation became the universal principle.” This had been
achieved through an evolutionary process in which the “social
structure produced by war, and appropriate to it, slowly became
qualified by the social structure produced by industrial life and
appropriate to it.”

Tokutomi Soho, leader of the Minyusha who called for wholesale

Westernization, was especially drawn to these ideas of Spencer’s,
believing that the evolutionary pattern Spencer set forth was uni-
versal. Tokutomi placed the modernizing Japan into Spencer’s
schema of the transition from militant to industrial society.
Nyozekan’s Seikyosha mentors too, especially Miyake, were taken
with Spencer’s vision of the inevitability of human social evolution.
The industrial society Spencer described was characterized by
democratic, representative government, and displayed the qualities
necessary to such a society: “humanity, beneficence, honesty, inde-
pendence, individual initiative, self-reliance, and a more qualified
patriotism.”

But Miyake was not constrained by what Tokutomi felt was the

universalism of Spencer’s message – Tokutomi’s conviction that
what was true for Western Europe would necessarily define the
Japanese experience. Miyake argued that as social evolution con-
tinued on a global scale, the nation-state, and not the individual,
became the unit of competition that propelled the process forward.
And so, while the European nations in the industrial phase had
attained the highest stage of social evolution yet accomplished,
Miyake believed it was nevertheless necessary for Japan to preserve
its own culture as a way of offering contrasting “concepts of value”
to enable the evolutionary process to continue apace.

Through his own reading, and through the influence of his

Seikyosha mentors, Nyozekan carried these liberal beliefs with him
as he embarked on his career as a journalist and as Japan experi-
enced the period of Taisho

¯ democracy. These attitudes formed the

bases of Nyozekan’s thought and action during this frantically busy
time of his life.

As a member of the Osaka Asahi Shimbun in the early years of

Taisho

¯ democracy, Nyozekan found a perfect niche for himself, a

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liberal journalist writing for Japan’s leading liberal newspaper. From
this arena, Nyozekan presented his ideas to the largest readership of
any daily newspaper.

Reflecting on his work at the Osaka newspa-

per in 1959, Nyozekan wrote, “As a reporter for the Osaka Asahi, my
job was to keep a fixed eye on the government, and in so doing, I
was [considered] a suspicious character (chui jimbutsu).” He found
this role, in the beginning at any rate, “very gratifying.”

Fixing his eye on the government, he wrote in support of the

demands for democracy that characterized the Taisho

¯ era. Chief

among these was the demand for representative constitutional gov-
ernment. Nyozekan advocated a democracy that would satisfy both
political and social demands. Since no social democracy could be
achieved without political democracy, the first necessity was the
“perfection of constitutional government.”

When the Taisho

political crisis of 1912–13 exposed the flaws in Japan’s constitu-
tional government, Nyozekan wrote an article for Nihon oyobi
Nihonjin entitled “Koshitsu kyoiku no shin seishin – Kunshu no kyoiku
ni kansuru shiken” (“The New Spirit of Education in the Imperial
Household – A Personal View Concerning the Education of the
Monarch”). In this article, he fired a salvo in the movement to
protect the constitution and ensure its operation in the contempo-
rary political milieu, criticizing the persistence of transcendental
cabinets. In a bold stroke in support of “proper” constitutional
monarchy, he wrote that it was necessary to review the “sovereign
from the standpoint of the mysterious and saintly view that sepa-
rates the emperor from the people.”

Political demands were the first hurdle for Japan early in the era

of Taisho

¯ democracy, but in addition to this, Nyozekan developed

ideas on many other aspects of the social democracy he advocated.
On the topic of feminism,

Nyozekan was ahead of his time,

writing, for example, on the “superiority of women.”

He extolled

the important historical role women played in the intellectual life
of the country, pointing to women’s role in creating a native
Japanese literature as in Genji monogatari and other literary works of
the Heian court.

In a picture book, Girls of Japan, for which he

wrote an introduction, Nyozekan pointed out that “women have
played an important part in the history of their country, not only
in politics, but in literature and the fine arts.”

The fact that women

now occupied a position subordinate to men, Nyozekan explained,
was because “women were relegated to the background of social life
when the country was placed under a military regime, and they
ceased to play, as before, their part in the cultural life of the family
and the community.”

In the Taisho

¯ era, whose women’s move-

ment was dominated by the group Bluestocking, led by Hiratsuka

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Raicho, Nyozekan advocated that women become active, participa-
tory members of Japanese society and government. In calling for
women’s suffrage as he did, Nyozekan was indeed ahead of his time;
most who agitated for expanding the franchise disregarded women.
As Nyozekan explained, “That the activists in the regular election
movement disregard women is something no one feels more
urgently than I, and soon this deficiency must be rectified.”

In Gendai shakai hihan, published in 1920, Nyozekan examined

the division of the sexes and the role this had in shaping society.
He wrote that, as in the animal world, the division of labor in
human society has been determined by women’s reproductive
role.

This role placed women in a central and powerful position

in society, Nyozekan believed. But in capitalist society, dominated
by the “imperatives of the production process,” Nyozekan felt this
model no longer fit, as men and women alike had the same rela-
tionship to the industrial society. In industrial society, women, like
men, sold their labor in the market; childbearing was merely an
additional role women were required to play.

Thus, Japan’s indus-

trialization provided a more profound explanation for the decline
in the position of women than did the earlier militarization of
society. In Japan’s industrializing society, Nyozekan felt that
“society’s center of gravity [was] shifting from women to men.”

(It is striking that he believed society’s center of gravity had ever
been female.)

Examining the role women played in the new industrial society,

Nyozekan’s concern for women, his “fueminizumu,”was part of his
larger concern with labor in general. Nyozekan attributed his iden-
tification with and concern for labor to his childhood spent among
the artisans of Edo.

Just as he advocated the vote for women,

Nyozekan believed it vital to the interests of the working class to
enact universal suffrage and create a truly representative parlia-
ment. Necessary for securing these and other gains were labor
unions, which Nyozekan believed must be recognized. It was only
when the laboring classes gained political power that the social
needs of the people could be properly addressed without the danger
of expanding the authoritarian power of the government.

The

solution to this problem, Nyozekan believed, “lay in the gradual
adoption of cooperative management of labor and capital.”

Nyozekan enjoyed his niche as a journalist with the Osaka Asahi,

and used the opportunity to express his liberal views to the utmost,
as seen in his positions on various issues developed during his
years with the paper. But, by the late nineteen-teens, there sur-
faced trends in Japanese politics that would take Japan in a new
and ominous direction. At the same time, Nyozekan too shifted

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directions in his career and in his thinking. The year 1918 proved a
critical turning point.

Nyozekan entered the period of Taisho

¯ democracy believing, in

Spencerian fashion, that the process of social evolution would grad-
ually and peacefully move Japan toward social democracy that in
turn would democratically and equitably answer the needs of the
various groups in society. Events of the late nineteen-teens,
however, led Nyozekan to reflect on and change this assessment.

In August 1918, high rice prices led to the outbreak of rioting in a

small village in Toyama prefecture. Led by women, the rioting unex-
pectedly spread across the country and the government responded
by sending troops to restore order. In the popular mind, high rice
prices resulted from the government’s stockpiling rice to provision
troops for the Siberian Expedition of the same month.

The rioting

indicated the withdrawal of popular support for military operations
that had characterized Japan’s 1904–5 war with Russia.

Soon after the rioting began, the Osaka Asahi announced its

support for the rioters, and criticized the government for its sup-
pression of news about the riots and about the Siberian Expedition.
Nyozekan and many of his colleagues at the newspaper viewed the
government’s suppression as an attack against democratic ideals in
general and the Osaka Asahi’s support for democratic ideas in par-
ticular. When Onishi Toshio

¯, of the Osaka Asahi wrote an article

about the intellectual protest against government censorship and
repression, he quoted the Chinese Book of History writing, “A white
rainbow has pierced the sun” (“hakko hi o tsuranuku”), which in the
original alluded to problems in the empire. The Japanese govern-
ment, however, interpreted the phrase as a threat to the emperor
and a call to revolution, immediately demanding that publication
be stopped.

When Nyozekan, as city editor, refused to stop publi-

cation, the government stepped in and pulled the article, bringing
charges against Onishi and the Osaka Asahi.

In preparation for the

September 1918 trial, the government gathered Osaka Asahi articles
from the previous year and a half which it also deemed dangerous.
Many of these articles were Nyozekan’s.

In October, when the

government threatened to suspend publication of the Osaka Asahi
for violating the Press Law of 1909, the editor, Murayama Ryohei,
resigned. Shortly thereafter, Nyozekan resigned in protest and was
joined by other staffers including Torii Sosen, Oyama Ikuo, and
Maruyama Kanji.

Thus, the Rice Riots of 1918 pitted the government bureaucracy

and the liberal intellectuals, most heavily represented in the ranks
of journalism, against one another. This disturbance, and the gov-
ernment’s authoritarian response, led Nyozekan to abandon his

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consensual view of politics and society and to begin to view society
as an arena of conflict. This move to the conflict model of society
was common among liberal intellectuals in the middle years of
Taisho

¯. The conflict model, in Ralf Dahrendorf’s words, held that

social “coherence and order are founded on force and constraint,
on the domination of some and the subjection of others.”

The vol-

untary cooperation that was, according to Spencer, supposed to be
characteristic of industrial society, was no longer apparent, and
Nyozekan’s assurance that Japan’s transition to liberal democracy
was well underway began to crumble.

This new assessment of society, and Nyozekan’s alarm at the

authoritarian turn in Japanese politics, fueled his desire to establish
a new forum for the discussion of liberal ideas. As a result, in
February 1919, Nyozekan, with the help of Oyama Ikuo, founded
the magazine Warera. The new conflict model of Japanese society
found its clearest expression in the pages of this new magazine. In
series of articles for Warera, Oyama Ikuo laid the theoretical ground-
work for the new concept of society, writing, “struggle among social
groups is the motor of evolution . . . and the origin of political and
social inequality.” Human society, Oyama argued, was composed of
discrete groups competing with one another to advance their own
interests. In the extreme form, the outcome of this competition was
war. But the struggle also led to the formation of the state, as the
stronger group asserted its power over the weaker, cementing its
domination in law and building a government. In contemporary
society, the competing groups were in fact classes and thus, Oyama
believed, “the state became the means by which the dominant class
exploited the weak economically.”

The conflict model informed Nyozekan’s thinking as well, and

provided the intellectual basis for his writing in Warera. This mode
of thinking was readily apparent in his sometimes bitter and cynical
inaugural essay for Warera entitled “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e.”
Nyozekan opened this article, which set the tone for the new direc-
tion in his thought, with a statement that not only reflected his new
attitude but hinted at how dramatic the awakening was for him:
“Leaving our mother’s womb, shivering in the chilly atmosphere
and issuing a piercing cry, we are made to unconsciously experience
the fact that human life is nothing but desperate struggle and
effort.” But it was not a meaningless struggle, as he wrote in the
same essay: “Throughout human history, it has always been that
this struggle and effort alone is the basis of progress and improve-
ment.”

This hopeful chord, struck in what is otherwise a bitter essay,

was a reverberation of Nyozekan’s adherence to the ideal of

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constitutional government, despite his cynical view of the essen-
tially coercive nature of government. In “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera
e,” which appeared soon after his resignation from the newspaper,
he wrote, “. . . as argument is unavoidable, people who cannot use
their tongues will use their fists.” Nyozekan insisted on the impor-
tance of securing constitutional government in Japan: “. . .what
we countrymen should be working for among ourselves, is that the
political liberty that was established in the Western nations, will
develop here. This is a demand that precedes all other demands in
substance. If the demands of a great number of people are estab-
lished in an orderly manner, there will be no anxiety about the
peace of our country in squeezing perfection from constitutional
government.” He believed that the Japanese must not only be
allowed to exercise their political rights, but must be educated as
to how to do so.

At the same time, Nyozekan could not ignore the growing repres-

sion and reaction of the government as expressed in its response to
the Rice Riots and other incidents. He intended Warera to carry on
the tradition of the Osaka Asahi, destroyed by the government’s
reaction to the Rice Riots, of being an outlet for free expression and
an example of “appropriate” nationalism or as Nyozekan himself
expressed it, “safe (‘anzen-naru’) nationalism.”

Nyozekan was con-

cerned about repression at home, and as these signs were reinforced
by Japanese colonial ambitions on the international scene, which
he argued, like Hobhouse, were incompatible with democracy at
home,

Nyozekan, his attitudes colored by the darker character of

the conflict model, became increasingly alarmed.

Nyozekan’s alarm began to find expression in the pages of Warera

from its first issue, and it was in “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” writes
Tanaka Hiroshi, that Nyozekan fired his first shots in his battle
against ultranationalism. Nyozekan’s “safe” nationalism, like his
liberalism, formed a cornerstone to his life as an intellectual.
Nyozekan’s nationalism “mixed political liberty, social equality,
and international peace,” and reiterated the minponshugi goal of cre-
ating a governmental structure that would enable popular partici-
pation in politics.

His was a nationalism, he explained in Aru kokro

no jijoden, “born of Japanese history . . . modern democratic nation-
alism.”

Matsumoto Sannosuke has argued that this “democratiza-

tion of nationalism” may have been the most important intellectual
contribution of Taisho

¯ democracy. At the same time, however, it

also became one of Taisho

¯ democracy’s most severe limitations for

it failed to adequately address the issue of the relationship between
the state and the individual and the state assumed preeminence
over the individual.

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Nyozekan decried the extreme nationalism he feared was gaining

ground, that which he felt grew out of “feudalistic and reactionary
thinking in which there is no democratic view.”

Nationalists of

this ilk, Nyozekan wrote, “used the will of the emperor and dressed
the monarch in the absolutist clothes of inviolable sanctity.”

This

brand of nationalism, Nyozekan wrote in “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera
e,” was an “anti-foreign nationalism” that fostered the attitude of
“believing absolutely in my country.” This nationalism viewed the
state as transcendent and insisted on the belief in “single and peer-
less moralistic values that transcend the interests of [other] states.”
Moreover, he continued, this extreme nationalism maintained that
there was “extreme danger to the peace of the nation and to
harmony in social life,” which he cautioned was in itself “extremely
dangerous.” Already in 1919, Nyozekan warned the nation of the
“physical and spiritual isolation in which [Japan was] entrapped.’’

One of the first battles the magazine fought against this strident

nationalism came in the Morito Incident. The 1920 Morito Incident
revolved around the arrest of Tokyo University economics professor
Morito Tatsuo who by writing an article sympathetic to anarchistic
communism, had violated the newspaper law. His ten-month trial
reiterated all the basic themes of the earlier Osaka Asahi Hikka
Incident that had led to Nyozekan’s resignation from the paper. In
the Morito case, academic freedom was added to the themes of
freedom of speech and discussion. Nyozekan and his colleagues at
Warera took the opportunity presented by the Incident to attack the
government from their own forum and published a wide variety of
essays in support of Morito and calling for freedom in the academy
and for the press.

The article in question in the Morito case was an essay on Piotr

Kropotkin’s anarchism entitled “Kuropotkin no shakai shiso no
kenkyu” (“A Study of Kropotkin’s Social Thought”) which in fact
never advocated anarchism. It was published in the Tokyo
University Economics Department journal, edited by Ouchi Hyoe.
Nyozekan criticized the Mombusho for its demand that the distrib-
ution of the journal be halted. He also criticized the Ministry for
failing to support academic freedom. He refused to accept the gov-
ernment’s position that Morito was a government official by virtue
of his position at the imperial university who was therefore bound
to refrain from research or writing that might be contrary to
national interests.

Academic freedom, Nyozekan maintained,

should have no state-imposed limits.

While supporting Morito, Nyozekan nevertheless criticized

Morito and his colleagues at Tokyo University for submitting to gov-
ernment pressure so readily and cooperating with the government

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in withdrawing the journal. He was also critical of Morito, who had
been suspended, for going ahead and resigning his professorial post.
Why, Nyozekan asked, did the professors not wage a legal battle
before meekly complying with the government’s demands?

Nyozekan felt their behavior simply highlighted the encroachment
the government had already made into free thought and discussion.
He wrote:

In this incident, although the government may not be aware of
having given hints, the ‘withdrawal’ [of the journal] before the
‘prohibition’ and the ‘temporary retirement’ [Morito’s resigna-
tion] before the ‘prosecution’ – does not the independent treat-
ment of these matters in themselves show the growing unease [of
the general public]?

In championing Morito’s cause, Nyozekan’s essays in Warera

again showed his insight into the seriousness of the challenge to
Japan’s fledgling democracy: he believed that the weakness of the
battle over the Morito Incident presaged the fate that was to befall
civil and intellectual liberty in general in the years to come. Indeed,
the case foreshadowed the case of legal scholar Minobe Tatsukichi,
an oft-cited example of Japan’s mid-1930s descent to fascism.
Minobe, a proponent of the famous “organ theory,” resigned from
Tokyo Imperial University in 1934 and was driven from the House
of Peers the following year as a result of accusations that his theory
demeaned the emperor. In his case too, his position at Tokyo
Imperial University set him up for attack as an “official” of the gov-
ernment. And yet fifteen years prior to the Minobe case, Nyozekan
identified these repressive trends in the government’s action against
Morito and wrote, “In the current state of affairs among the
Japanese, the explanation [for the suppression of the press as in the
Morito case] is that the publication of left-leaning research will
destroy public peace.” “Of course,” he went on to explain, “ ‘public
peace’ is a subjective [thing],” and therefore he implied, was not to
be determined by the government.

Nyozekan’s confrontation with the government in the Osaka

Asahi Incident and the Morito Incident worked a profound
change in his thinking, which, as we have seen, resulted in his
viewing social and political changes through the lens of the con-
flict model. By the early years of the 1920s, these experiences and
the new direction in his thinking led to the publication of two
major works. With the publication of these books, Gendai Kokka
hihan (1921) and Gendai shakai hihan (1922), Nyozekan’s reputa-
tion as a leading opinion maker was established.

Using his

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Spencerian background, Nyozekan looked at the institutions of
the state and society and how they evolved, attempting what he
called in the preface to Gendai kokka hihan a “natural history of
the state.”

Both volumes consisted primarily of essays first pub-

lished in Warera and demonstrate Nyozekan’s new critical stance
as he directed his attack against the bureaucracy, the political
parties, and the very structure of the government. Nyozekan’s
thinking in these books, according to Matsumoto Sannosuke, was
“representative of the intellectual in battle against established
modern ideals and values,” and as such was “a step ahead of his
time.”

The ideas Nyozekan presented in these books stayed with

him throughout the Taisho

¯ period.

In Gendai kokka hihan, the crumbling of Nyozekan’s belief that

liberal democracy might grow naturally out of contemporary
Japanese social and political conditions was evident as was his
awareness of the growth of the dangerous nationalism he identified
earlier in his essay “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e.” With stark clarity,
he targeted the bureaucracy and the political parties as the major
obstacles to the progress of democracy in Japan and blamed them
for, in Hegelian fashion, placing the state above the individual and
promoting the metaphysical theory of the state.

Noting this fundamental flaw, Nyozekan denounced contempo-

rary political regulations established by the bureaucracy as
“nothing but a process by which to shift mass politics to absolutism
by the few.” The bureaucracy, however, was only partly to blame;”
he cited the political parties as the “engine of absolutism.” “Today’s
politicians,” he wrote, “become merchants carrying out the will of
merchant nations, and can be seen as running amuck as capitalists
and political managers.” Capitalism in Japan was sick, Nyozekan
believed, because it functioned to negate politics.

The failure of capitalism in Japan meant that democracy failed to

find fertile soil, and, for this too, Nyozekan blamed the bureaucracy
and the political parties. Relying on his knowledge of the history of
Western democracy, Nyozekan noted that in Europe, the bour-
geoisie was at the forefront of the construction of the modern
democratic state. In Japan, on the other hand, the bureaucracy and
political parties led in building a modern state. Attempting to
emulate the West and thus ensure Japanese national strength, the
parties protected capitalism. But protecting capitalism in this way
was unnatural, coming as it did from above rather than being
fought for from below as in the West. This unnatural protection of
capitalism, Nyozekan believed, gave rise to militarism and led to the
devaluation of the twin pillars of democracy, a national assembly
and public discussion. In this way, Japan tried to copy the West, but

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the move toward capitalistic democracy was led by the government,
not the citizenry. Japan, in trying to copy the West, built a structure,
but the structure lacked a soul. In the midst of its crisis of modern-
ization, the Japanese state turned to repression as a means of pre-
serving its power. The ideological foundation to this repression was
the Hegelian philosophy of the metaphysical state and the con-
struction of the emperor system. Nyozekan wrote: “When it is nec-
essary to control a majority, rather than controlling its will
mechanically, it is necessary to cause the majority will to become
the same as that of the despot.”

Nyozekan’s criticism of capitalism and view of conflict as the

central dynamic of social and political life certainly contributed to
the authorities’ identification of him as a Marxist, an identification
that later led to his arrest under suspicion of membership in the
Communist Party. But Nyozekan was neither a Marxist nor a com-
munist, and despite his harsh criticism of the modern Japanese state,
he was not opposed to the state itself nor did he advocate revolution.
Indeed, Nyozekan recognized the necessity of the state, which he
believed could play a part in bringing about social democracy.

100

Maruyama Masao noted that, “In the end, Hasegawa Nyozekan never
became a communist. Although he had an economic view of history,
he disliked the language of dialecticism.”

101

Oya Soichi agreed with

this assessment, writing that, “As a thinker, Nyozekan at one time
indicated an inclination toward Marxism and socialism, but in the
end, he did not tune in with this.”

102

In Nyozekan’s estimation, the role of the modern state was to

provide the proper environment for the growth of liberty and
equality.

103

For this to happen, a functioning parliament was nec-

essary, one in which political parties were truly representative of
their constituency. But their constituency must also comprise all of
the Japanese people, and so Nyozekan advocated universal (and not
just male) suffrage and the legalization of labor unions.

104

Made

representative in this way, the constituents would be the people, the
“working masses,” who, in their alignment with political parties,
would provide the needed counterbalance to the otherwise over-
whelming bureaucracy.

105

Throughout Gendai kokka hihan, Nyozekan recognizes the state as

part of a larger whole, which is society.

106

Thus, his 1922 work

Gendai shakai hihan continues many of the themes he began in
Gendai kokka hihan, a point which he acknowledged in the preface
to the work. The book, Nyozekan wrote, presents an examination
of the “process of the development of a consciousness based on a
particular class composition,” and looks at “the realities of the
process of social evolution.”

107

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The process of “social evolution,” Nyozekan believed, was an

ever-repeating cycle of destruction and recreation: Every institution
in society evolves because it “contains the organic components of
its own collapse,” and out of this collapse the institution is once
again created.

108

In constructing this model of the process of social

evolution, Nyozekan relied on his Spencerian convictions, but also
on the conflict model he adopted in the years immediately before
the publication of the book. Thus, in Gendai shakai hihan, he exam-
ined the “realities of life” by “delv[ing] into the meaning of
class.”

109

Setting himself apart from the Marxists, Nyozekan viewed class

not in narrow economic terms, but rather saw class as a function of
broader currents in society including culture, economics, and poli-
tics. Class, according to Nyozekan, consisted of people grouped
together by virtue of their way of life.

110

Despite his broader view of

class, however, Nyozekan wrote in Gendai shakai hihan that
throughout history, society had been divided into two extreme
groups, the propertied and the property-less classes. But he wrote
that while many factors influenced the differences between the
classes, the primary differences boiled down to “an issue of spare
time and spare money.”

111

Thus, while “property” in Nyozekan’s

schema was primarily material, it was not exclusively material, and
his expanded class view included the intangible aspects of culture
that separate groups, like spare time and leisure.

The division of society into classes gave rise to class culture,

Nyozekan wrote, and at the core of the existing system was the
“alienation of the human nature of the property-less class by
the propertied class.” Because the “superior” (yushu) class dominates
the culture, it determines the character of the culture.

112

For

Nyozekan this meant that society was dominated by a few, while for
the masses, “human desires and the enjoyment [pleasures] of life are
not granted.”

113

In a society whose culture was determined by the propertied

classes, where “spare money and spare time” enabled them to meet
their physical and psychological needs, the laboring masses were
denied the ability to meet these needs. Again Nyozekan departed
from the Marxists by refusing to accept the idea that work was beau-
tiful or soul-satisfying. Some kinds of labor, Nyozekan insisted, were
simply physically exhausting and mentally dulling, and nothing
could change this fundamental fact. “There is no question,” he
wrote, “that coal mining is unpleasant and oppressive work . . . In
a society in which the material and spiritual aspirations of human
life are strong, one cannot after all hope that those who mine coal
will do so with mechanical indifference.”

114

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Believing that the pain of labor could never be overcome in any

system, Nyozekan nevertheless felt that a system of government
and society could be devised that would bring workers and work
more into line with society at large and by which their needs and
desires could be more adequately fulfilled. This system would
require that “those who bear the most pain hold the most
power.”

115

As we have seen, however, Nyozekan rejected the goals

and methods of the Marxists and counseled against revolution.
Most importantly, he never advocated worker-ownership of the
means of production. He believed instead that workers’ problems
could be solved with “mutual management by workers and capital-
ists,” such as was practiced in industrialized countries in the
West.

116

In criticizing the collusion between government and

capital in Japan, Nyozekan saw the need for greater influence for
workers. But he believed this influence must first be political. In the
conclusion to Gendai kokka hihan, however, Nyozekan advocated
the “legal and peaceful” development of worker-based political
parties so that the political system would truly represent the bulk of
the population and “give rise to democratic politics [in Japan] as in
the West.”

117

In Gendai shakai hihan, too, Nyozekan looked to liberal democ-

racy as the goal and answer for Japanese society. The views he
expressed in his two Critiques continued to guide his thinking
throughout the remaining years of the period of Taisho

¯ democracy.

But these ideas were responsible for his being the object of increased
governmental pressure and isolation as a liberal intellectual in the
late 1920s.

Later in life, looking back at the Taisho

¯ period and assessing the

movement for democracy that blossomed in Japan during that
brief time, Nyozekan realized that the conditions for democracy
in Japan were simply not right. In an interview in 1965, he admit-
ted that Taisho

¯ democracy was a “translated democracy” (honyaku

demokurashii).

118

By the Taisho

¯ period, he wrote, the Meiji “intellec-

tual and ideological quest for freedom and democracy” led to a
“blind adherence to ‘democratic’ theories by the intellectual class,
theories which, as far as the roots of Japanese society were con-
cerned, belonged to the future and were quite divorced from
reality.”

119

As he explained in his 1950 autobiography, Aru kokoro no

jijoden, “in terms of world history, the Taisho

¯ democracy movement

was two or three centuries late.”

120

In other words, Japan, having

failed to create the social, political, economic and intellectual foun-
dations of liberalism in the Middle Ages, when European society
was changing in this direction, was not ready for the imported
liberal ideas when they arrived in the Meiji period. Even by the

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Taisho

¯ era, much change had to be accomplished before liberal

democracy could establish roots in Japan.

Nevertheless, the Taisho

¯ period proved an important legacy for

the development of liberal democracy in postwar Japan, and, as
Sharon Nolte pointed out in Liberalism in Modern Japan, “To a sur-
prising extent, Taisho

¯ reformers anticipated the direction of postwar

society.”

121

Nyozekan too believed that the Taisho

¯ period provided

an important basis for future democracy and that the democratiza-
tion of Japan under the Allied Occupation “followed a course which
the history of the modernization of Japan and of the Japanese them-
selves would have taken anyway if left to its natural tendency.”

122

But Japanese history did not follow a smooth course from the

Taisho

¯ period. Before Nyozekan and his countrymen would see

democracy fulfilled in Japan, they would have to endure the descent
into fascism and war.

NOTES

Sharon Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan: Ishibashi Tanzan and
His Teachers, 1905–1960, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987) 169.

Sugimura Takeshi, “Jidai to shimbun”, Sekai, no. 103 (July 1954) 171.

Tetsuo Najita, Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese
Politics, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) 162–4.

Andrew Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public
Man in Crisis, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 20, 148.

Kenneth B. Pyle, “The Advantages of Followership: German
Economics and Japanese Bureaucrats, 1890–1925,” Journal of
Japanese Studies, 1:1 (Autumn 1974) 127–32, 142.

Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the
Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981) 51.

R.P. Dore and Tsutomi Ouchi, “Rural Origins of Japanese Fascism,”
in James William Morley (ed.), Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971) 198.

Richard J. Smethurst, A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism:
The Army and the Rural Community, (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974) xix–xx.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, in Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 278.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Shakaiha janarisuto e no
michi,” Sekai, no. 482 (December 1985) 219; Yamaryo Kenji, “Aru
jiyushugi janarisuto: Hasegawa Nyozekan,” in Shiso no kagaku
kenkyukai: kyodo kenkyu: tenko, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1959) 319;

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Matsumoto Sannosuke, Kindai Nihon no seiji to ningen: sono shiso-teki
kosaku, (Tokyo: Kobunsha, 1966) 133.

de Bary (ed.), Sources of Japanese Tradition, 719.

Kaji Ryuichi quoted in Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto e no michi,” 218.

Ito Tomihito, “Warerasha soritsu no jidai-teki kaikei,” Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu geppo, vol. 6 (June 1969) 1.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Shimbun, (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1928) 18.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Seiji, shakai kakumei
to kokusai heiwa o motomete,” Sekai, no. 483 (January 1986) 241.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 278.

Tanaka Hiroshi, Hasegawa Nyozekan no Shimbunron, Part 2, Shimbun
kenkyu, no. 425 (November 1986) 76. Tanaka found that Nyozekan
wrote over eighty pieces – books, essays and articles – on the subject
of the press, most dealing specifically with the newspaper.

Review of Hasegawa Nyozekan’s Shimbunron in Contemporary Japan,
XVI: 10–12 (October-December 1947) 492.

Tanaka, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no Shimbunron,” Part 2, 77.

Review of Shimbunron, 492.

Hasegawa, Shimbun, 4–5.

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 147–8; Sugimura, “Jidai to shimbun,”
179–82, esp. 171, 173.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” in Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 369.

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 147.

Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 24.

Sera Masatoshi, et al., Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku
mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 61; Tanaka Hiroshi,
Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu-kan: Zasshi Warera no hakkan o
megutte.” In Tanaka Hiroshi, (ed.), Kindai Nihon ni okeru janarizumu
seiji-teki kino, (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1982) 225.

Maruyama Masao, “Nyozekan-san to chi-chi to watakushi,” in Sera
Masatoshi, et al., Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku
mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 303–305.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 315.

Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 336.

Pyle, “Advantages of Followership,” 131; 42.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Nihon ni okeru riberarizumu no choryu – Kuga
Katsunan, Taguchi Ukichi kara Hasegawa Nyozekan e,” Hitotsubashi
ron, 97:2 (1987) 164–5.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 251.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 314.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no ‘kokka kan’ – Seio kokka genri
no juyo to dojidai shiteki kosatsu,” in Nenpo seijigaku: “Nihon ni okeru
Seio seiji shiso” shoshu, (March 1975) 176.

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These articles were: Hasegawa Manjiro, “Hegeru-ha no jiyu ishi setsu
to kokka – kagaku-teki kokka kan ni taisuru Hobuhausu-kyoju hihan o
shokai su,” Warera, 2:1 (January 1, 1920) 26–36; Hasegawa Manjiro,
“Zettai-kokka setsu ni taisuru shakaigaku-teki hihan: Hobuhausu-kyoju
no zettai koku setsu no hihan,” Warera, 2:2 (February 1, 1920) 39–50.

Hasegawa Manjiro, “Zettai-kokka setsu” 50.

Leonard T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (New York: Holt and Co., no date)
21; 21–45; 40.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, The Japanese Character: A Cultural Profile, John
Bester, translator, (Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1965)
29–30, 89–90.

Hobhouse, Liberalism, 45; “Hasegawa Nyozekan no shakai shiso,” in
Nihon shakai shugi-shi: Taisho demokurashii no shiso, (Tokyo: Hoga
shoten, 1963) 97.

Tanaka, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no ‘kokka kan’,” 176.

Hobhouse, Liberalism, 42–3.

See, for example, Hasegawa Nyozekan, Kokka kodo ni okeru sakkaku:
Manshu jiken ni okeru hyogen,” Hihan, 2:11 (December 1, 1931) 77–91.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 68.

Hasegawa Manjiro, “Hegeru-ha no jiyu setsu to kokka,” 27.

Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State, 137.

Hasegawa, “Zettai-kokka setsu,” 40, Hobhouse, The Metaphysical
Theory of the State, 137.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 250.

Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State, 137.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Aru kokoro no jijoden, in Shimonaka Kunihiro,
(ed.), Sekai kyoyo zenshu, (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1963) 408.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 123.

Yamaryo Kenji, “Nyozekan to Supensaa,” Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu
geppo, vol. 7 (July, 1970) 8.

According to Sharon Nolte in Liberalism in Modern Japan, Machida
Chuji, who founded the liberal Toyo keizai shimbun (“Oriental
Economic Journal”), was also influenced by Spencer and modeled
his journal after Spencer’s. (Nolte, 15).

Albert J. Nock, “Introduction,” in Herbert Spencer, Man versus the
State, (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1940) vii.

Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, (Cleveland: Meridian
Books, 1951) 178.

Herbert Spencer, Man versus the State, (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton,
Printers, 1940) 58–62.

Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of
Cultural Identity, 1885–1895, (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1969) 39–42, 150–51, 39.

Pyle, The New Generation, 151.

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In 1909 the circulation of the Osaka Asahi was 30,000, according to
Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 38.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 39.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 248.

Quoted from Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Koshitsu kyoiku no shin seishin –
Kunshu no kyoiku ni kansuru shiken,” Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, no. 613
(September 1, 1913) 61–73 in Sera, 46.

Nyozekan used the word “fueminizumu” as furigana attached to
characters reading “joshi hon’I in Gendai shakai hihan” (Senshu, vol.
3, 226) and later used the same furigana with the characters for
“joshi shugi” in “Anchi-fueminisuto to shite no Banado Sho,” Kaizo,
12:9 (September 1930) 2–17.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Joshi no yuetsu,” in Shinjitsu was kakuitsuwaru,
Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969)
22.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “The Character of Japanese Women,” in
Contemporary Japan, VIII:5 (July 1939) 665.

Review of Hasegawa Nyozekan, Girls of Japan, in Contemporary
Japan, IX:4 (April 1940) 491.

Hasegawa, “The Character of Japanese Women,” 665.

Nihon shakai-shugi shi, 97–8.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Gendai shakai hihan in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 222–3.

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 182.

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 223.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Shokunin katagi,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 107; Tanaka,
“Shakaiha janarisuto e no michi,” 219–20.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei” 251.

Nihon shakai-shugi shi, 98.

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 151.

Tanaka, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu kan,” 222.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 243; Barshay, State and Intellectual,
152.

Ikeda Hajime, Hasegawa Nyozekan ‘kokka shiso’ no kenkyu, (Tokyo:
Yusan shuppan, 1981) 400.

Peter Duus, “Liberal Intellectuals and Social Conflict in Taisho

Japan,” in Victor Koschmann and Tetsuo Najita (eds.), Conflict in
Modern Japanese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1982) 412.

Peter Duus, “Liberal Intellectuals and Social Conflict,” 425–6,
426–7, 427.

Hasegawa, “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” 347.

Hasegawa, “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” 365, 367, 365.

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Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 247; Hasegawa, “Osaka Asahi kara,
Warera e,” 367.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 247.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 246, 249, 247.

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 350.

Matsumoto Sannosuke, “Taisho¯ chishikijin no shiso-teki tokucho,” in
Kindai Nihon seiji shiso, vol. 2, Hashikawa Bunso and Matsumoto
Sannosuke (eds.), (Tokyo, 1972) 172.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 246.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Ware ga gendai seiji ni okeru sekai-teki teiko,”
in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai,
1969) 261.

Hasegawa, “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” 354, 355, 355.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei.”

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 255.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Morito Tatsuo kyoju hikka jiken no ronri-teki
kaibo,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Kurita shup-
pankai, 1970) 409.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Morito Tatsuo kyoju hikka jiken,” 405, 406.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto e no michi,” 221.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Gendai kokka hihan, in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 36.

Matsumoto, Kindai Nihon seiji shiso shi, 181.

Hasegawa, Gendai kokka hihan, 96, 83.

Hasegawa, Gendai kokka hihan, 255–6, 241, 256.

Hasegawa, Gendai kokka hihan, 271, 225.

100

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 166.

101

Maruyama, Nyozekan-san to chi-chi to watakushi, 301.

102

Oya Soichi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no mittsu no kao,” Sandei Mainichi,
(November 30, 1969) 155.

103

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 166.

104

Nihon shakai shugi shi, 97–8.

105

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 167.

106

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 167.

107

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 14.

108

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 14.

109

Matsumoto, Kindai Nihon seiji shiso shi, 182.

110

Matsumoto, Kindai Nihon seiji shiso shi, 182

111

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 21, 22.

112

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 22, 46, 22.

113

Matsumoto, Kindai Nihon seiji shiso shi, 182.

114

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 116–17.

115

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 139.

116

Nihon shakai-shugi shi, 98.

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117

Hasegawa, Gendai shakai hihan, 275.

118

Tokyo daigaku, “Hasegawa Nyozekan–shi o kakonde: kaiso, hoho,
Nihon bunka-ron,” Shimbun kenkyusho kiyo, no. 13 (1965) 78.

119

de Bary (ed.), Sources of Japanese Tradition, 893–4.

120

Hasegawa, Aru kokoro no jijoden, 224.

121

Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 341.

122

de Bary (ed.), Sources of Japanese Tradition, 891.

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Fascism and the Path to War

n a 1932 column in the Yomiuri shimbun, Nyozekan reflected bit-
terly on the killing of his beloved dog, Tochi, writing, “It befits a

fascist age that Tochi, who knew only love and no hatred, should
be killed.”

Bidding farewell to his dog, Nyozekan also abandoned

his Taisho

¯ era hopes of seeing the trend toward democracy fulfilled

in Japan. Rejecting the Taisho

¯ path toward democracy, Japan in the

1930s instead pursued a path of repression at home and military
aggression abroad. As domestic and international tensions height-
ened, the repressive and aggressive tendencies that lay beneath the
great superficial change of Taisho

¯ boiled to the surface.

The 1930s were transitional years not only for Japan but for

Nyozekan as well. Reflecting on Japan’s crisis, in 1932 Nyozekan
published Nihon fuashizumu hihan (Critique of Japanese Fascism).
While heavily censored, the book was published nevertheless. In
just a few more years, however, the attitudes and opinions
Nyozekan presented so frankly in Nihon fuashizumu hihan would no
longer be tolerated.

This would be made dramatically apparent with Nyozekan’s

arrest in 1933. His arrest and the demise of his magazine, Hihan, a
year later, made the mid-1930s a turning point for Nyozekan.
Although never committing tenko as a liberal, Nyozekan’s ability
to pursue his life of criticism was inevitably affected by govern-
ment repression and the wave of tenko that swept the Japanese
intellectual community in 1933. After 1935, Nyozekan shifted his
tactics from open critique of the government to an “indirect
attack” via national character studies.

Using this method of criti-

cism, Nyozekan continued his life as a journalist and “critic of civ-
ilization” throughout the war years. Yet even this approach began
to give way to silence. As the crushing weight of fascism and war
bore down on the free expression of dissenting views, the volume
of his writing dwindled in the first years of the war. Nyozekan

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found himself truly living out his dictum of “Danjite okonawazu”
(“Be firm in not taking action”).

In March 1930, Warera, which Mizushima Haruo, the first editor

of Kaizo called the “school of Nyozekan,” was published for the last
time.

After ten years in publication, the magazine, which to ensure

its own independence relied entirely on subscription money,

faced

insurmountable financial difficulties. To retain a forum for his ideas,
in May 1930, Nyozekan merged the magazine with another, Shakai
shiso, and called the product Hihan.

Following a tradition he began

with the founding of Warera, he penned an essay to mark the estab-
lishment of the new magazine entitled, “Warera kara Hihan e.

In this essay, which revealed a less patient and angrier attitude

than the earlier “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” Nyozekan lamented
that in spite of vast superficial change, the foundations of Japanese
society had in fact changed very little. While the “mo-bos” and mo-
gas” of Japan’s version of the Jazz Age expressed their free-spirited
individualism on the dance floor, political outlets for such expression
remained limited. The new age of democracy Nyozekan envisioned
during the Taisho

¯ era had not come, despite his efforts to spur it

along in the pages of Warera. “Looking at Japanese society in the last
ten years from one angle,” Nyozekan wrote, “brings to mind the
physiologist’s assertion that the human body is entirely renewed
every seven years; looking at it from another angle, one is reminded
of the biologist’s assertion that absolutely no change whatsoever can
be seen in the body of the ant from the Ice Age to the present.”

Nyozekan was a biologist: Japanese society had not changed in any
fundamental way.

Nevertheless, in Hihan, Nyozekan was still searching for a way to

change society, and he retained hope that it could indeed be
changed. He likened society to an obstinate mule, one that Warera
had “continued to kick . . . for twelve years.” Now, Nyozekan wrote
in 1930, the effort to foster change in society required “new work,
new weaponry, new methods,” and thus, “a new name,” Hihan.

“Warera kara Hihan e” also betrayed a certain weariness that had

crept into Nyozekan’s approach. Yes, he would continue to “kick”
society, but “will it move?” he asked. The Nyozekan who inaugu-
rated Hihan was a more mature (he was fifty-five years old) and less
idealistic man than the one who began Warera ten years earlier. As
Ouchi Hyoe said in his eulogy for Nyozekan in 1969, “He tried to
construct an ideal Japan.”

By 1930, however, that idealism was

severely tested. Indeed, there was less to be idealistic about. The
trend toward extreme nationalism, with its repression at home and
aggression and militarism abroad that Nyozekan had identified in
Warera’s opening essay were now, ten years later, becoming more

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pronounced. In the first issue of Hihan he wrote of the “generally
reactionary trend in the world today,” and thus while Warera’s
battle had been to move society forward Hihan had simply to try to
keep society from losing ever more ground to the forces of reac-
tion.

In this struggle against reaction, Nyozekan critiqued the Japanese

government and bureaucracy from the standpoint of liberal democ-
racy, and his primary focus was the ultranationalism he saw develop
in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

As this nationalism grew ever

more pernicious, Nyozekan’s approach began to change. He later
wrote: “[My] essays critical of the course of Japanese politics shifted
of their own accord into a ‘critique of Japanese fascism.’ ”

Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome sparked prompt interest in

fascism among Japanese scholars, but for five years Japanese
research into fascism went no further than an investigation of its
development in Italy. In 1927, Akasaka Seishichi broke the barrier
and published an article entitled, “Fuashizumu to Nihon” (“Fascism
and Japan”). A year later, Nyozekan wrote his first piece to focus
specifically on fascism in Japan. The article, “Reisei ni shikoshite
fuashizumu o keikai seyo” (“A Level-headed Warning about
Fascism”), examined the police round-up of communists in March,
1928, and the subsequent dissolution of the Ronoto (Farmer-Labor
Party) under the invocation of the Peace Preservation Law. In the
article, Nyozekan’s fears that fascism might easily develop in Japan
were grimly apparent.

The subsequent establishment of a new

bureau within the Home Ministry invested with controlling the
police and for monitoring speech and assembly, and myriad other
aspects of the people’s lives, gave heavy weight to Nyozekan’s
assessment.

Signs of government repression at home were mirrored in events

abroad. On July 1, 1930, Nyozekan and Hihan sponsored a round-
table discussion on “Imperialism and Colonial Policy (“Teikoku-
shugi to shokumin seisaku”), anticipating the ultimate outcome of
the Manchurian Incident that occurred slightly over a year later.

Portents of Japan’s ambitions in Manchuria had been apparent to
discerning onlookers like Nyozekan for several years. In the spring
of 1927, Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi’s “Positive Policy” outlined
Japan’s continental interest, emphasizing the country’s stake in
Manchuria as separate and distinct from its interests in China itself.
The policy, therefore, stressed the need to keep Manchuria outside
of Chinese jurisdiction, a status that was threatened by Chiang Kai-
shek’s recently completed Northern Expedition. To protect Japanese
interests in Manchuria, Tanaka sent troops to the Shandong penin-
sula in the summer of 1927. The Kwantung Army bolstered the

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regime of warlord Zhang Zuolin, endangered by Chiang’s drive to
unify China. But staff officers of the Kwantung Army, hoping to find
Zhang’s son Zhang Xueliang more amenable to Japanese interests
and also wishing to widen hostilities in the area and thereby push
Japan’s advantage in Manchuria, conspired to murder the warlord
with a bomb in June, 1928. Hostilities did not ensue, however, and
within six months Zhang’s son joined the Guomindang in resisting
the Japanese. The Tanaka cabinet fell as a result of its handling of
the affair, but most important to Japan’s future was the fact that the
staff officers who perpetrated the incident went unpunished.

Two years later, staff officers undertook a similar attempt to

expand Japanese influence in Manchuria, engineering an explosion
on the South Manchurian Railway outside of Mukden on September
18, 1931. The Kwantung Army blamed the bombing on the Chinese
and moved swiftly to occupy the area. Although the government in
Tokyo weakly endeavored to call a halt to the plot, it was incapable
of doing so. Unable and unwilling to control its army, the govern-
ment responded by accepting the Army occupation of Manchuria
as a fait accompli. Within months, Japan established the puppet
state of Manchukuo. When China took its case to the League of
Nations and Japan was censured by the Lytton Commission Report,
Japan simply withdrew from the League, taking a fateful step
toward international isolation that Nyozekan had warned against
in “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e” in 1919.

The Manchurian Incident held sinister significance for

Nyozekan, who saw in it the culmination of the trend toward
fascism in Japan. The Incident forms the pivotal event around
which his Nihon fuashizumu hihan revolves.

According to

Nyozekan, in the six months prior to the Incident, conditions in
Japan conformed to the systematic fascisization of the country.

Nyozekan strongly believed that conditions within a nation were
directly reflected in its relations with the outside world. A nation
that did not respect the will of its own people could never respect
the will of the people of another nation.

Showing his opposition

to the Hegelian theory of the metaphysical state (an attitude that
had guided his writing during the Taisho

¯ era) Nyozekan decried the

contemporary form of Japanese nationalism that exalted the state
over the individual and held to his belief that the conquest of other
peoples was anathema to the good of the state.

Writing in Hihan shortly after the Manchurian Incident, Nyozekan

traced the history of Japan’s aggressive stance in Asia, noting that
signs of Japan’s ambitions long predated the course of events
that were unfolding in Manchuria in the early 1930s. He observed
that Japan’s aggressive policy toward the rest of Asia had roots that

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reached as far back as Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s attempted subjugation
of Korea. The trend became particularly pronounced from the middle
of the Meiji period, after which “the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-
Japanese wars were the outgrowth of our continental policy,” he
wrote.

For Nyozekan, these antecedents to the Manchurian

Incident were proof that it was a long time in coming.

In November 1932, Nyozekan published Nihon fuashizumu hihan

(Critique of Japanese Fascism). Before this book appeared, Hihan had
already been banned twice for “disrupting public peace and
order.”

Nihon fuashizumu hihan, which consisted primarily of

essays previously published in Hihan, Chuo koron, Kaizo, and Keizai
orai, first appeared on November 20, 1932. Nyozekan wrote in the
preface to the book that “. . . these days . . . there is no room left
for argument,” and indeed, on November 24, the government
banned the book from distribution.

Finally, three weeks later, it

was reissued in a heavily censored version, filled with “x”s to block
out words and phrases the government found objectionable.

Unlike the few other books being published on fascism at that

time, Nihon fuashizumu hihan was, Nyozekan explained, “more than
an abstract discourse on fascism itself . . . [but rather a] compre-
hension of the concrete manifestations of Japanese political phe-
nomena.” As we have seen, for Nyozekan the concrete
manifestations of Japanese fascism lay in the Manchurian Incident
and its aftermath. The Manchurian Incident represented, finally,
the outbreak of open military aggression. There was no denying,
Nyozekan wrote, that “in Manchuria, our country’s systematic
aggression” was readily apparent.

“The action of military power in

Manchuria,” he plainly stated, “is fascism.”

This kind of naked

military aggression abroad constituted one of the primary charac-
teristics of fascism

and for Nyozekan highlighted his belief that

international military aggression was absolutely incompatible with
domestic liberty. Nyozekan’s identification of fascist trends and the
opening shots of war fits well with what Japanese historians now
call the “Fifteen Year War.”

Within Japan itself, the repercussions of the Manchurian

Incident set the stage for the further development of fascism. In
1932, the May Fifteenth Incident signaled the end of the party cab-
inets whose advent in 1918 held such promise as a sign of expand-
ing democracy. Planning a coup d’état to destroy the political
parties and other democratic institutions and thus “restore” direct
imperial rule and an intimate relationship between the emperor
and the people, ultranationalist elements among young naval offi-
cers assassinated Seiyukai Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi and
attacked Seiyukai headquarters. Although the coup attempt failed

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to establish the so-called “Sho

¯wa Restoration” and all participants

were arrested, the government was lenient in dealing with the con-
spirators. Replacing Inukai was Saito Makoto, former governor-
general of Korea (1919–27 and 1929–31). Saito put in place a
“cabinet of national unity” with representatives from the military,
bureaucracy, and parties, thus ending the practice of party cabinets.

In Nihon fuashizumu hihan, Nyozekan once again expressed his

dismay over party politics in Japan, writing that the party system
had never developed beyond a mere mechanical structure and was
incapable of truly serving the people. So for Nyozekan, cooperative
government, as displayed in this “revival of cooperative cabinets,”
was devastating to parliamentary pluralism and was another
primary component in the fascist state.

How did fascism, marked by military aggression abroad and polit-

ical repression and “cooperative government” at home, develop in
Japan, Nyozekan asked. At the core of Nyozekan’s analysis of
Japanese fascism was his view of Japan as a late-developing capital-
ist country. Nyozekan began Nihon fuashizumu hihan with a short
analysis of Italian fascism. Japan, he wrote, closely resembled Italy
in that it was “still not sufficiently developed as a capitalist state.”
Enlisting a theme he first began ten years earlier in Gendai kokka
hihan, Nyozekan contended that because the government’s role in
Japan’s capitalist development was writ large, the formation of an
independent and oppositional bourgeoisie was impeded. Nyozekan
explained that in a country in which capitalism has had a late start,
the formation of classes and class influence that could represent the
interests of the “small and middle capitalists,” which were the core
of bourgeois democracy (burujoa demokurashii), was retarded. The
small and middle capitalists were deprived of political influence. In
the early throes of democratization in Europe, the institution of par-
liament was formed, Nyozekan wrote, “to destroy the dictatorship
of the aristocracy.”

In Japan or any late-developing capitalist

country, however, the link between monopoly capitalists and the
government created an overwhelming force, one which “small and
middle landowners and small and middle capitalists” failed to
oppose and which overpowered this would-be bourgeois, making
way for the development of Japan’s fascist state.

Under these con-

ditions a properly functioning parliamentary system could never
exist. Nyozekan believed that parliamentary development in Japan
had stopped short, forming merely the structure of the institution
yet lacking the inner workings to make it work. Continuing the
denunciation of party politicians in Japan that he began in Gendai
kokka hihan, Nyozekan wrote, “professional politicians are merely
tools for the struggles of the capitalists.”

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In Nyozekan’s view, fascism did not preclude the existence of a

parliament, it merely required that the parliament not function as
a body representing competing interests in society, thus denying
the working class any political power. Indeed, Nyozekan described
Japan’s fascism as “legal” (koho) or “cold” (korudo) fascism. This kind
of fascism, “more self-possessed and gradual” than Mussolini’s
fanatical fascism,

was not established via a violent coup to over-

throw the existing authority, but was built within the power struc-
ture itself. Party politicians and the bureaucracy gradually overran
independent political forces within the country and, Nyozekan
found, co-opted various rural political groups making them an inte-
gral part of the fascisization of the country.

The parties, which

might have been the mechanism for leading the struggle for politi-
cal power between the bourgeoisie on the one hand and the aris-
tocracy and bureaucracy on the other, were merely the “engine of
the struggle for advantage between one group of capitalists and
another.”

The very elements in society that, with the political

parties might have opposed the authority of the government in its
collusion with monopoly capital, viz. the small and middle capital-
ists, failed to do so because they feared the possibility of chaos and
disorder. The left provided the only example of opposition, but dis-
approving of their methods, the small and middle capitalists
instead opted for law and order and themselves became part of the
fascist movement.

In the methodical development of “cold” fascism, all was done in

the name of national unity. The government handled the conspira-
tors in the Manchurian Incident with leniency, and, unable to
control its army in the field, Tokyo went along rather than admit to
itself or reveal to others any lack of national unity. While the gov-
ernment prosecuted the conspirators in the May Fifteenth Incident,
they were widely regarded as patriots and they also received lenient
treatment. Saito’s “cabinet of national unity” brought an end to
party cabinets and eliminated even what might have been a loyal
opposition.

The fanatical nationalism and call for unity that marked Japan’s

response to the domestic and international crises of the late 1920s
and early 1930s recalled a similar response to the crises of the late
nineteenth century. Consciously or unconsciously, Nyozekan recog-
nized a repetition of the pattern that led to Japan’s wars with China
and Russia that spanned the turn of the century. In Nihon fuashizumu
hihan he warned with chilling accuracy that, “In Japan’s case, the
danger of the Manchurian Incident moving toward a second world
war and a demand for the general mobilization of the population is
clear.”

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A recurrence of war was possible in a world that ignored its

history. In exploring reasons for the genesis of fascism in Japan,
Nyozekan maintained that Japan had failed to learn the lessons of
World War I. While for the Western democracies World War I was a
moral battle to preserve democracy against dictatorship, Japan,
Nyozekan said, joined the Allies in the war blindly, lacking any con-
sciousness of the moral issues that motivated their comrades in
arms. When the end of the war brought the establishment of the
League of Nations, and an attempt to translate the ideal of “self-
determination” into reality, Japan, Nyozekan believed, remained
tied to nationalism, imperialism, and militarism.

This argument, made originally after the end of World War I, con-

tains the roots of Nyozekan’s belief that it was Japan’s status as a
late-developing capitalist nation that contributed to the conditions
for fascism. As we have seen, as a result of late-developing capital-
ism, the Japanese government was able to assume huge power in
conjunction with monopoly capitalists. But in addition, because
Japan was undergoing capitalist development a century later than
the West, it was simply out of step with much of the world. While
the West pursued its colonial ambitions in the nineteenth century,
Japan fought to avoid the fate that befell China. When, at the end
of the century Japan emerged as a nation seeking equality on the
world stage, it too sought to expand its territory. Whether it was the
engine of monopoly capitalism that drove Japan in its territorial
ambitions, as Nyozekan believed, or whether Japan was again
simply modeling itself after the Western pattern of imperialism, by
the time Japan pursued this approach, the rules had changed. And,
by this time, Nyozekan wrote, the world no longer held any virgin
land for colonization. As a result, Nyozekan pointed out, Japan
battled both China and Russia over Korea, and after these wars,
went on to Manchuria to force its rights there.

Japan engaged in

this aggressive military pursuit of territory precisely as the West was
phasing out of it. Thus, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Japan’s
aggression in Asia went against the grain of the newly-evolved
Western (excluding German) ideals of international justice and
liberty. As a result, while Japan fought in Asia, the Western world’s
hostility provided a perfect rallying point for national unity. Out of
step with the West, Japan fought first a spiritual, and, by 1941, an
actual, war against the West.

Modern Japan was not only out of step with the West, but, in a

sense, it was out of step with itself. In the course of modernization,
many Japanese felt the country had broken its link to the past.
Nyozekan wrote, “Around the time of the Russo-Japanese War,
Japan’s brilliant ‘present’ had no connection to the recent past. . .

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tomorrow was isolated from yesterday.”

The rapidity of change led

to an identity crisis in the late nineteenth century,

and once again,

in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Japanese were questioning them-
selves and their role in the world. Out of the “chaos” of Taisho

democracy, many perceived a need for a return to order. The plain-
tive question was, “Is our country beginning to fall apart, and if so,
what can be done about it?”

The answer, for many, lay in the

authoritarianism of fascism.

The question of identity was not merely personal, but institu-

tional as well. Japan’s identity as a democratic nation was not
secure. This, too, contributed to Japan’s fascisization. “In a country
in which general democracy is not fixed,” Nyozekan wrote, “fascism
may easily develop.”

In Nyozekan’s estimation, Japan in the early

1930s was indeed a country in which democracy was not fixed.
Japan’s status as a late-developing capitalist country also explains
the lack of a clear identity. In trying to catch up in capitalist devel-
opment Japan broke with its past. But the break was not complete,
for without a foundation for the growth of a modern bourgeois
democracy, such as characterized the West, Japan harked back to the
past, creating a hybrid government and economy that was modern
in form, but which at the same time, “retained the remnants of
feudal military government.”

The schizophrenic nature of the hybrid was revealed in the Meiji

Constitution. The Constitution recognized representative govern-
ment, but at the same time it severely limited the authority of the
Diet. The emperor’s power outweighed that of the parliament. The
Privy Council too, Nyozekan wrote, “was a curio of feudal govern-
ment [that possesses] more power than the parliament itself.”

The

independence of the military high command, which was not
responsible to the Diet, was another peculiarity of the political
structure laid out by the Meiji Constitution, and demonstrated the
persistence of feudal institutions into the modern age.

Nyozekan showed how the contradiction between liberalism and

authoritarianism – between a democratic future and the feudal
past – which characterized Japan’s political institutions and its eco-
nomic structure was laid in place in the 1880s and surfaced in the
late 1920s and early 1930s. The lack of understanding of liberalism
that underlay the creation of these institutions emerged with
serious consequences for Japan’s turn to fascism. In the 1890s, after
Japan’s early Meiji immersion in liberalism, more and more
Japanese intellectuals came to view liberalism as a foreign import, a
product from the West, and, as such, according to Takayama
Chogyu (1871–1902), editor of Taiyo, “totally incompatible with
our national polity and national character.” By the late 1880s and

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early 1890s, the era of progressive change that marked the early
Meiji period “gave way . . . to an era of narrow-minded, aggressive
nationalism.”

Fukuzawa Yukichi himself, the very model of a

modern liberal in the 1870s, retreated from liberalism and
embraced militarism after the Sino-Japanese War in 1895.

(Fukuzawa’s “change of heart” was in fact foreshadowed as early as
1874 when he wrote, for example, that Japan should “emulate the
spirit of Western civilization to preserve Japan’s national polity.”

Liberalism, he hinted even then, should not be prized for its own
protection of the individual, but rather in order to strengthen the
nation.)

Just as international concerns at the turn of the century – the

Sino-Japanese War and later the Russo-Japanese War – prompted a
retreat from liberalism, the combination of international and
domestic tensions in the late 1920s and early 1930s prompted a
similar withdrawal. Nyozekan’s view of liberalism was not muddied
by misunderstandings like Fukuzawa’s, but he was well aware of
these misunderstandings in others, and saw how this contributed
to the development of fascism in Japan.

In Nyozekan’s analysis then, fascism in Japan grew out of the

country’s status as a late-developing capitalist country. As a late-
comer to capitalism, following in the footsteps of the industrialized
countries and trying to catch up, collusion between government
and capital was strong. No bourgeois democracy developed.
Parliamentary and party politics failed to truly represent the
Japanese people. According to Nyozekan, this was the genesis of
“cold” fascism. Also contributing to fascist development in Japan
was the absence of a clear national identity. Combined with an
incomplete understanding of liberalism, domestic and international
tensions created the conditions under which these circumstances
could lead to fascism.

The repression of dissent by degrees, in keeping with the gradual

establishment of “cold” fascism, began with the elimination of rad-
icals, as in the 1928 round-up of communists and labor unionists
that Nyozekan wrote about in “Reisei ni shikoshite fuashizumu o
keikai suru.” In May 1933, Education Minister Hatoyama Ichiro
forced Kyoto University law professor Takigawa Yukitoki to resign
his post for alleged leftist sympathies. As he had in the past,
Nyozekan used the pages of Hihan to register his protest against the
Mombusho’s intrusion on free speech and academic freedom.

Nyozekan’s arrest in November 1933 demonstrated that the scope

of the government’s repression had extended to liberals, even
though Nyozekan was ostensibly arrested for communist connec-
tions. Early in the morning of November 22, eight days before his

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fifty-eighth birthday, Nyozekan was summoned to appear at the
Nakano police station where he was questioned by a detective from
the Metropolitan Police Headquarters. One might speculate that
Nyozekan faced this situation with his characteristic cool resigna-
tion – preparing him for the possibility of an indefinite stay, friends
brought him a blanket and some clothing. Nyozekan was released
after midnight and allowed to return home although the investiga-
tion continued into December.

The pretext of Nyozekan’s summons to the police station was a

two yen contribution he had ostensibly made several months
earlier to a Soviet organization for international red aid, MOPR or
moppuru.

Matsumoto Sannosuke writes that Nyozekan was

arrested for a contribution to the Japan Communist Party, but
reports that Nyozekan actually gave money to his friend, Hososaku
Kanemitsu, who gave the money to the JCP.

Whatever the pretext for his arrest, the authorities targeted

Nyozekan for a broad range of activities and associations rather
than for any one specific act. As Nyozekan himself later pointed
out, because of his line of work, he was a “suspicious character.”

Two activities in particular must have stood out as red flags, so to
speak, to the authorities. One was Nyozekan’s position as chair-
person of the Sobieto tomo no kai (Friends of the Soviet Union)
which became the Nisso bunka kyokai (Japan-Soviet Cultural
Association) at the time Nyozekan assumed the post in September
1931. It is not clear whether the Sobieto tomo no kai was a “front
organization” set up by the Comintern, but Nyozekan’s association
with this group does not chime with his liberalism. Nyozekan may
have had various motives for joining such a group, among them
the fact that the Soviet Union was at that time one of the main
forces of anti-fascism in the world. Within the next year-and-a-
half, Nyozekan was at the core of a group of intellectuals who
formed a variety of anti-fascist and anti-Nazi organizations includ-
ing the Gakugei jiyu domei (Arts and Sciences Freedom Alliance).

His participation in the Sobieto tomo no kai not only clashes with
his liberalism, but also with his harsh criticism of the Soviet regime.
His criticism was not the bitter disappointment of one whose
hopes for a new Utopia had been dashed, nor did he accept the
basic assumptions of Bolshevism but find its execution lacking.
Instead he criticized the dictatorship imposed in the Soviet Union
by the Bolshevik leadership, writing, for example, in Gendai kokka
hihan in 1922 that “In Russia, after the tsar’s despotism (sensei) has
come Lenin’s despotism.”

Thus, Nyozekan’s association with this

group, his “friendship” with the Soviet Union, was not based on
admiration for that regime, nor any conviction that Japan should

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somehow emulate the Soviet Union. It did, however, arouse the
suspicion of the authorities.

Most importantly, it was Nyozekan’s position as chairman of

the Yuibutsuron kenkyukai (Society for the Study of Materialism) in
the fall of 1932, that made him an object of suspicion to the police
and contributed to his arrest. The name clearly suggests a Marxist
connection, but the group was, according to Nyozekan, a “free orga-
nization” to study materialism and devoted to “independent
research and mutual exchange.”

Maruyama Masao remembered

attending a meeting of the Yuiken as a high school student and lis-
tening to Nyozekan explain the association’s aims. The Yuiken,
Nyozekan said, “Has no connection to any political movement, but
is an association entirely [dedicated] to the scholarly study of mate-
rialism and academic research.” Nyozekan’s declaration was sincere,
and not made merely for the benefit of the police representative
attending the meeting who, upon hearing these words, stood up,
pounded his sword on the floor and shouted, “The speaker must
stop!”

Asked about the Yuiken in an interview in the 1960s, when

an admission of Marxist beliefs would have merely shown that
Nyozekan was finely in tune with the intellectual community, he
reiterated that the Association’s study of materialism was purely
academic and had “no connection [to Marxism].”

Nevertheless,

according to the police, Nyozekan was the “heart of the Yuiken”
and for this reason alone, was suspicious.

By the time of Nyozekan’s arrest, Tanaka Hiroshi argues, the press

had been virtually silenced (and had silenced itself) on liberal issues,
viewing liberalism as more dangerous than fascism.

Many liberals

were sufficiently distressed by Japan’s situation that they aban-
doned their liberalism and opted for fascism. In June 1933,
Nabeyama Sadachika and Sano Manabu, leaders of the Japan
Communist Party issued statements from prison disavowing their
adherence to communism and publicly proclaiming their alle-
giance to the government orthodoxy. This began a wave of similar
repudiations of the faith, known as tenko, that had a startling effect
not only on radicals, but on the Japanese left in general.

Sano and Nabeyama touched off a storm of tenko, dramatically

changing the intellectual climate that spread across Japan in the last
half of 1933. Tenko, this strange intellectual phenomenon of 1930s
Japan, was a turning away from past beliefs, a repudiation, specifi-
cally, of communism. In addition to turning away from commu-
nism, tenko also signified a public acceptance of the government
ideology that promoted ultranationalism, aggressive militarism,
and the emperor system. In short, tenko in its strict sense amounted
to a solidification of Japanese fascism as former communists cast

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away their beliefs and gave allegiance to their state and emperor and
all this stood for. More widely construed, however, tenko could
simply mean the active or passive repudiation of any belief at odds
with the government orthodoxy. Thus, even liberals, through their
action or inaction, might commit tenko by abandoning their former
beliefs and taking up with the government. We must analyze
Nyozekan’s own response to this dramatic “about face” in the intel-
lectual world, and his reaction to his own arrest. In light of the wave
of tenko, that many Japanese intellectuals were engaging in at this
time, did Nyozekan too commit tenko?

Japanese intellectual historian Yamaryo Kenji believes that

Nyozekan did in fact commit tenko, but that it was a gradual process
initiated by his arrest in 1933. Yamaryo argues that after 1933
Nyozekan began to turn his back on the principles that had guided
him in his life as a critic. Nyozekan’s tenko did not come as a sudden
revelation, but was a drawn-out and less dramatic process whereby
“little by little [his] principles were buried in a mountain of sand.”

The end of Hihan in 1934 and Nyozekan’s involvement in the study
of the Japanese national character were steps in this process,
Yamaryo believes.

Tanaka Hiroshi, on the other hand, writes that Nyozekan did not

undergo tenko, that his case “does not fit [into the category of]
tenko.” Tanaka argues that the new direction Nyozekan took after
1933 “did not constitute a disavowal of his principles but was a way
of continuing his criticism prudently and legally.” He even specu-
lates that because of the effectiveness of this new direction “the
authorities were stamping their feet with vexation [that they had
ever arrested him].”

Accordingly, we have two conflicting theories. How did Nyozekan

respond to the intellectual metamorphosis of mid-1933 and his
arrest later that year? We shall see that he did not commit tenko. He
stood by his principles, but found new ways to express them.

In July 1933, one month after Nabeyama’s and Sano’s startling

declarations, Nyozekan published an article in Hihan entitled
simply “Tenko.” By this time, Nyozekan had experienced the effects
of the censor’s pen in his Nihon fuashizumu hihan and two issues of
Hihan had been banned. His essay on tenko was therefore oblique in
its approach and criticism. Nyozekan chose to put tenko into an his-
torical context, declaring that “ ‘Tenko’ is not just a craze of the
eighth year of Sho

¯wa [1933],” but that “history – especially Japanese

history – is the history of ‘tenko’.” He saw tenko as the necessary
retreat prior to a leap that ultimately propelled society forward. In
Japanese history, he believed, tenko had been a vital historical force.
Tenko, Nyozekan wrote, is “like the athlete in the running high

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jump – before the leap comes the [momentary] withdrawal.”
Nyozekan cited numerous instances of national tenko that had been
decisive in shaping Japanese history. The Buddhist-inspired Taika
reforms had been preceded by the reactionary Shinto revival of the
Mononobe clan. The Meiji Restoration, too, was preceded by a
period of insular xenophobia.

Each example of national tenko Nyozekan cited showed that in

his estimation, Japan’s period of reaction was always manifested as
anti-foreignism, a rejection of outside influence: jingoism, which
he equated with “jimmu-goism.”

In 1935, Nyozekan wrote about

the tenko that preceded the Meiji Restoration:

On the eve of the Restoration of 1868, when a wave of anti-
foreignism plunged the whole nation into great excitement, those
few Japanese with presence of mind kept themselves apart from
the general furor and sought to study Western sciences and the
world situation. They alone proved able in the years that followed
to stand at the helm of the nation in a manner that won for them
distinction in upholding the traditional national spirit of twenty
centuries’ duration.”

Japan’s current stage of reaction, or tenko, Nyozekan believed, was
the crisis of a capitalism whose anti-foreign military aggression, he
hoped, might somehow be the prelude to another leap forward.
Nyozekan closed his essay with a question: “. . . will the ‘tenko’ to
imperialism prompt a leap forward?”

Obviously not valuing

imperialism for its own sake, Nyozekan put it in the context of
world history, viewing it as a possible reaction that would precede
the establishment of social democracy in Japan. Western imperi-
alism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resulted
in the conflagration of World War I, which in turn opened many
areas of the world to an expansion of democracy. Nyozekan had
abandoned his hope that Japan’s path to democracy would be
smooth – indeed, the path would be rough, but Nyozekan hoped
he might be one of “those few Japanese with presence of mind”
who could help the country on its way to the establishment of
democracy.

Like the wave of tenko, Nyozekan’s arrest forced him to reflect on

what was happening to him and to his country. On December 12,
1933, about three weeks after his arrest and release, Nyozekan pub-
lished an essay in the Tokyo nichi-nichi shimbun under the headline,
“Suspicions Completely Cleared – Nyozekan Tells His Story.” As
Nyozekan’s first public statement after his arrest, his first public
reaction to coming face to face not just with the censor, but with

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the government itself, the message is important. Did it signal a
repudiation of his beliefs?

Nyozekan began the short essay by declaring himself “essentially

a law-abiding person.” Indeed, he was, and he believed that criti-
cism of the government, such as he engaged in, should and must be
entirely legal. He was arrested as a communist sympathizer, but in
the essay he denied connection with the Communist Party.

As he

had never been a member of the JCP, nor embraced communism or
Marxism, this can hardly qualify as tenko in the strict sense.
Nyozekan was not a student of Marxism, despite his connection to
the Yuiken, which had aroused the authorities’ suspicions, and after
the war he reported that he had never supported or approved of
Marxism. In fact, because he believed that Marxism and liberalism
were antithetical,

any repudiation of Marxism and of the Japan

Communist Party was surely not a denial of former beliefs but
support for the liberalism that guided his thinking.

Though he believed that liberalism and Marxism were antitheti-

cal, Nyozekan wrote in the article that “[These days] even oppo-
nents of the Communist Party find themselves playing the role of
sympathizer.”

From Nyozekan’s perspective, those who were crit-

ical of the government in any way naturally found themselves allied
with the communists. Those who defended free speech, for
example, found themselves defending the communists’ right to free
speech. Although Professor Takigawa was not in fact a communist,
this was the role Nyozekan and Hihan had assumed in defending
him in the Kyoto University Incident, a role not unlike that of
Edward R. Murrow, for example, during the McCarthy era in the
United States.

Nyozekan also used the article to attack the government for

imposing a state of repression on society that was eroding human
relations and destroying the community. “What will happen to
society as a whole if friends cannot trust their fellows and neighbors
are suspicious of one another?” Nyozekan asked. Recall the govern-
ment’s intrusion into Nyozekan’s private interaction with a friend,
when he gave money to Hososaku Kanemitsu, who gave the money
to the JCP. That which was private had become public. Nyozekan
continued, “The Japanese are still cohesive, but will they continue
to have this cohesion? This is a major problem, more fundamental
than that of the communist party.”

The government’s intrusion

into private life was threatening society itself.

No, these two important 1933 articles did not constitute

Nyozekan’s tenko. He was not a communist, despite his affiliations
with communist associates and associations and so, in writing these
articles, he was not turning against anything he had previously held

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dear. In writing them, he certainly did not repudiate his liberalism,
but in fact used the opportunity to once again level criticism against
the government. Just as important, Nyozekan never espoused the
government ideology. But it was Nyozekan’s turn to character
studies after the demise of Hihan that most clearly shows he did not
commit tenko but maintained his critical stance against the govern-
ment.

While the wave of tenko in 1933 and his arrest did not foster a

tenko of his own, 1933 was perforce a turning point for Nyozekan.
His arrest effectively ended his career as editor of his own magazine,
a phase of his life that had lasted for fifteen years. A scant three
months after his arrest Hihan folded, publishing its last issue in
February 1934. The magazine had been facing financial problems
for some time.

Amidst government repression and a dwindling

audience for Nyozekan’s message of liberal dissent, the magazine
simply could not continue. As the war years approached, Nyozekan,
who lost this and other forums for expression, encountered finan-
cial difficulty as well.

Because of his modest bachelor lifestyle,

however, his needs were few and this hardship was bearable. It also
meant that he never felt he had to toe the line ideologically simply
in order to support himself.

Now, at age sixty, Nyozekan began a new phase in his life. For the

first time in fifteen years Nyozekan was without a journalistic stage
that he controlled himself. He continued to publish in the major
intellectual journals like Kaizo and Bungei shunju, and he began a
column in the Yomiuri shimbun, “Ichi-nichi, ichi-dai,” which lasted
through 1940. But repressive conditions and his lack of editorial
control meant that Nyozekan lacked his earlier freedom to write
frankly about the issues that concerned him. In light of his (and
Japan’s) new situation, Nyozekan needed a new approach.

The first indication of what this new approach to his critique of

Japanese government and society would be was contained in his
June 1935 article entitled, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento” (“A
Reexamination of the Japanese Character”).

With this article,

Nyozekan launched his investigation of the Japanese national char-
acter. Using the oblique method of criticism he developed in this
investigation, Nyozekan maintained his position of dissent against
the government and defense of liberalism throughout the difficult
war years.

A clear connection exists between the criticism in Nyozekan’s

character studies and his earlier, more open criticism. His new
approach actually continued a line of thought he began in Nihon
fuashizumu hihan in 1932. Nyozekan devoted an entire section of
that book to an examination of “Japanism” (“Nihon-shugi”).

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“Japanism” had fascinated Nyozekan’s intellectual mentors in the
Seikyosha. Unlike the aggressive ultranationalist version of
Japanism of the 1930s, however, the Seikyosha had embraced a
Japanism that integrated a nationalistic concern for Japanese inde-
pendence with liberal democratic values.

In looking at Japanism,

its origins and its link to fascism, Nyozekan began to formulate his
critical approach of “entering the enemy’s own ring.”

Japanism, Nyozekan saw, had not changed in thousands of years.

It was timeless and could fit into any historical context: hence its
“rebirth in twentieth century Japan.” The twentieth century version
of Japanism, Nyozekan wrote, “had not advanced much beyond its
primitive form,” and preached a narrow, nationalistic vision of the
Japanese as descendents of the gods and their country as the “land
of the gods.”

Ten years earlier, Nyozekan argued in Gendai kokka

hihan that the state used ideology as a way to legitimatize and rein-
force its control over society. In the fascisization of Japan, Nyozekan
saw this new, pernicious version of Japanism as a lure to bring the
intelligentsia into the government camp, ideologically integrating
them into the state and uniting them with the ruling elite.

Working from this intellectual foundation, Nyozekan’s national

character studies proved the most effective way for him to get his
message across during the ten years from the mid-1930s to the end
of the war; the best way to avoid government censorship while
maintaining his beliefs and his drive to write about those beliefs.
Through his national character studies, Nyozekan sought to
“maintain a mental equilibrium” apart from the “nationalist
upheaval.”

He countered the government’s Japanism and its

appeal to a mystical, spiritual, and religious-based ideology of the
state with a logical, historical argument about the Japanese
national character. In this way, he survived the war years with his
principles intact.

From 1935 until the end of the war, most of Nyozekan’s criticism

of the government was cloaked in his national character studies.
But his Yomiuri shimbun column, “Ichi-nichi, ichi-dai,” did give him
a weekly outlet in which he occasionally expressed his views on
current events. In the fall of 1935, Nyozekan wrote several columns
in response to Mussolini’s aggression in October of that year, which,
like Japan’s occupation of Manchuria, brought League of Nations
sanctions against the aggressor. Shortly before Mussolini’s invasion,
Nyozekan wrote a column entitled, “I-E wa tatakau ka?” (“Will Italy
and Ethiopia Fight?”). By directing his criticism against Italy and its
threat to Ethiopia, Nyozekan criticized Japan for its aggression
against Manchuria several years earlier. He warned that Italian
aggression in Ethiopia might be the spark to ignite a world war.

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Calling on the League of Nations to curb Italian aggression he
wrote, “A world vote is now necessary.” But he feared “a repeat of
the world’s great failure of two years ago,” referring to the League’s
failure to reverse Japan’s annexation of Manchuria.

After these columns on the Ethiopian crisis in 1935, however,

Nyozekan’s criticism was rarely even this direct. Rather than
comment on actual events, Nyozekan chose to pursue his criticism
through a more general social commentary. In November 1938,
however, he devoted an “Ichi-nichi, ichi-dai” column to a discussion
of “kokuminfuku,” the issue of a national uniform that was then
being touted. Here, he subtly promoted the value of individualism
that lay at the core of his liberal beliefs by questioning the need for
such regulation in society. “. . .Why should we change to a national
uniform? Why regulate uniformity in what is diverse?” he asked.

For Nyozekan, who dressed in traditional Japanese style, one’s
clothing was a significant expression of individuality. And interest-
ingly enough, in the late 1930s and throughout the war years,
Nyozekan seemed to wear Western dress more often, perhaps
making a fashion statement of his own to protest against ultrana-
tionalism. Robbing people of this form of expression would be to
deny them even the most basic building blocks of a liberal society.

After Japan’s 1937 invasion of the Chinese mainland, as Japan’s

war machine swung into action, Nyozekan’s criticism became more
and more enveloped in his character studies. At the same time, he
was called upon by the state to join the intellectual front of the war
effort. Now, for the first time in his life, Nyozekan found himself
thrust into league with the state when he was requested to join the
Sho¯wa kenkyukai. The Sho¯wa kenkyukai was the official “brain trust”
established by Prime Minister Prince Konoe in 1936 after the
February Twenty-sixth Incident. Just when his highly critical book,
Nihon-teki seikaku was published in 1938, Nyozekan was asked to
joint the Bunka mondai kenkyukai (Cultural Issues Research
Association), a sub-group of the Sho¯wa kenkyukai led by philosopher
Miki Kiyoshi. The group was invested with the task of formulating
a “comprehensive plan for a new Japan” to provide a philosophical
foundation for Japan’s “search for a new order” in China and the
rest of Asia.

Although faced with the task of finding a unifying philosophy for

Japanese military aggression in Asia, the group was full of members
who, like Nyozekan, had questionable political pedigrees from the
government’s point of view. As leader, Miki Kiyoshi was a prime
example. Closely associated with Marxist philosophy, he was
arrested in 1930 as a communist sympathizer. After a wartime stint
in Manila as a journalist, he lost his taste for the war effort and

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returned to his study of philosophy. Arrested again in March 1945
and imprisoned for his renewed contact with the left, he died in
prison one month after the end of the war. Despite its unorthodox
make-up, the group provided the government with a means of inte-
grating the intelligentsia into its general mobilization of the popu-
lation for war, a need Nyozekan had predicted in Gendai kokka
hihan.

In 1939, the Bunka mondai kenkyukai produced a report, Nihon no

shiso genri (“Principles for a New Japan”), which, by calling for Asian
cooperativism under Japanese direction, attempted to legitimize
Japanese aggression in China. The “Principles” called for the liber-
ation of Asia from Western imperialism, a return of Asia to the
Asians. Japan must be at the center of a new Asia, leading the way
in the development of a new East Asian Culture, just as Greece had
been the center of the ancient world.

It is impossible to divine the originators of the ideas contained in

the “Principles”: Miki Kiyoshi’s name appears as the sole author. But
it was a group effort and Nyozekan’s imprint is evident. This
imprint, however, does not damn Nyozekan as being ideologically
in tune with the Sho¯wa kenkyukai. If Japan were to become the
new cultural center of Asia, the “Principles” reads, it would have to
“create a ‘new East Asian culture’ of world significance. . . on
the basis of the cooperation of all races in East Asia.”

Because of

the “breadth of [its] heart,” this would not be difficult for Japan.
Throughout its history, the country had absorbed and adapted
foreign influence. An important and recurring theme in Nyozekan’s
Nihon-teki seikaku, which appeared just months before the report,
was Japan’s ability to borrow and adapt from foreign cultures in
developing it own culture. According to Nyozekan, this showed a
Japan whose true nature was open, progressive and tolerant:

The welcome with which the Japanese have received the incursion
of other races and other beliefs is not paralleled in the world. Over
a long history, the Japanese have advanced more as a result of their
friendly and progressive character than with the exclusive and
conservative character. For this reason, our national character is
distinguished by its assimilative tendency, cultivated over a long
history, rather than by the exclusionary tendency shown in reac-
tion to certain situations.

Thus, while it is impossible to determine just whose ideas made it
into the report, it seems that Nyozekan, in this “command perfor-
mance” with the Bunka mondai kenkyukai may have contributed his
thinking on the assimilative and adaptive nature of Japan. When he

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brought out this theme in Nihon-teki seikaku, however, Nyozekan
stressed not the narrow goal of Japan “extend[ing] its sphere of
influence over the Asiatic continent,”

expressed in the

“Principles”, but rather the Japanese ability to live in the commu-
nity of nations, a Japan that “from prehistoric times. . . has
had modern-international relations, that is, peaceful economic
exchange.”

While Nyozekan’s membership in the Bunka mondai kenkyukai

was in essence reluctant, his participation in the Kokumin gakujutsu
kyokai (Association for National Arts and Sciences) was voluntary.
Nyozekan was a founding member of this group, which was estab-
lished in early 1940 under the direction of Shimanaka Yusaku, pres-
ident of the liberal Chuo koron, which by the late 1930s was
increasingly the object of government disapproval.

The group

numbered among its twenty-six founding members intellectuals
from a wide variety of fields including former Yuiken members like
philosopher Miki Kiyoshi (also head of the Bunka mondai
kenkyukai), journalists Kiyosawa Kiyoshi and Baba Tsunego, and
author Shimazaki Toson. Its members also represented a wide
variety of political views, from Ryu Shintaro, “an admirer of the
Italian theory of fascism,”

to Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, author of the fore-

boding wartime diary, Ankoku nikki. About Nyozekan, Kiyosawa
later wrote in his diary, “. . . I visited with Hasegawa Nyozekan. [He
is a] fine man of great integrity. These kinds of fine men have great
difficulty concerning the war.”

Despite its disparate membership,

the Kokumin kagaku kenkyukai seems to have been dominated by
“these kinds of fine men.”

The aim of the group was to promote cultural research and inter-

change from a national and international point of view. The group’s
“nationalism” was very much in keeping with Nyozekan’s own level-
headed nationalism and that of his early Seikyosha mentors.
According to Yamaryo, the “national” (kokumin-teki) viewpoint of the
Kokumin gakujutsu kyokai was “above entering the nationalistic con-
ditions of the time [and] expressed an intent to level rational criti-
cism against this.” The group’s internationalist perspective was
reflected in its statement of purpose: “The new culture of modern
Japan does not aim to construct [itself] in isolation from world
culture; therefore on one hand, the association will work to intro-
duce research on the Japanese, who have attained world standards,
to foreign nations, and on the other hand, will not forget our esteem
for the excellence of Western culture which has helped the
Japanese.”

The group held lectures and published papers on various

topics. Nyozekan, for example, in keeping with his immersion in
national character studies, delivered a lecture in 1940 on “The

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Culture of Words” (“Hanashi kotoba no bunka”). Although the group
managed to continue meeting throughout the war years, it was con-
stantly harassed for its activities by the Army Information Bureau.

By the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and engaged the West in

war, Nyozekan’s outlets for expression had become extremely
limited. His Yomiuri shimbun column was defunct, and virtually all
his publications focused on the national character. And while he
maintained an outlet for himself in this way, he also increasingly
resorted to silence. In the early 1940s, the volume of his writing
dwindled dramatically and, by 1943, his output was barely a quarter
of what it had been in the heady days of Taisho

¯ democracy when he

wrote to a receptive audience in his own magazine.

In 1939, a group of Nyozekan’s friends gave him a refurbished

farmhouse in Kamakura in a belated celebration of his sixtieth
birthday (he was then sixty-four).

As government harassment

increased and the war approached, Nyozekan immersed himself
more and more into his national character studies. Just as his char-
acter studies provided him with a strategic retreat from direct criti-
cism, Kamakura provided a symbolic retreat from Tokyo and all it
had come to stand for. Though his study of the national character
was a retreat, it constituted a tactical retreat. For only in this way
was Nyozekan able to level his liberal critique against the govern-
ment and continue to fight, in his own way, to see democracy ful-
filled in Japan.

NOTES

Sera Masatoshi et al., Hasegawa Nyozekan: hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku
mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 294.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: senchu, sengo o ikinu-
ite,” Sekai, no. 486 (March 1986) 315.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 100.

Tanaka Hiroshi, Hasegawa Nyozekan no janarizumu kan, in Tanaka
Hiroshi (ed.), Kindai Nihon ni okeru janarizumu no seiji-teki kino,
(Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1982) 225.

Ikeda Hajime, Hasegawa Nyozekan “kokka shiso” no kenkyu (Tokyo:
Yusan shuppan, 1981) 403.

The essay actually appeared in the last issue of Warera, 12:2 (March
1, 1930).

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Warera kara Hihan e,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 377.

Hasegawa, “Warera kara Hihan e,” 377, 378.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: shakaiha janarisuto e
no michi,” Sekai, no. 482 (December 1985) 216.

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Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Kaidai no yue,” Hihan, 1:1 (May 1, 1930) 3.
Some of Nyozekan’s colleagues at Hihan were Kaji Ryuichi,
Matsumoto Joji and Kushida Tamizo.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hihan no jidai to Nihon
fuashizumu bunseki,” Sekai, no. 485 (February 1986) 317.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon fuashizumu hihan”, in Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 278.

Tanaka, “Hihan no jidai to Nihon fuashizumu bunseki,” 316: Akasaka’s
article was published in Gaiko jibo.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 45.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” Hasegawa
Nyozekan senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai) 355.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 278, 277–408, passim.

Tanaka, Hihan no jidai to Nihon fuashizumu bunseki, 316.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Osaka Asahi kara, Warera e,” 359.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: seiji, shakai kakumei to
kokusai heiwa o motomete,” Sekai, no. 483 (January 1986) 256.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon no burujoajii no tairiku seisaku to shima-
guni seisaku: Manshu jiken no sokumenteki kaishaku,” Hihan, 2:9
(October 1, 1931) 81.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 102. The two banned issues were
December 1931 and May 1932.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 278; Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan,
106.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 106.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 278, 343.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Jissen-teki fuassho no momoku jinko ron,” Hihan
3:1 (January 1, 1932) 100.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 278.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 337, 334.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 281, 324.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan: ‘chokokka shugi’ to ‘fuashizumu’
ni koshite,” in Komatsu Shigeo and Tanaka Hiroshi (eds.), Nihon kokka
shiso, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Aoki shoten, 1980) 310–11.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 337.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 325, 348, 279, 290 and passim.

Andrew Barshay, The State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public
Man in Crisis, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 195.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 325.

Tanaka, “ ‘Chokokka shugi’ to ‘fuashizumu’ ni koshite,” 310.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 338.

Tanaka, “Seiji, shakai kakumei,” 258.

Hasegawa, “Nihon burujoajii no tairiku seisaku to shimaguni seisaku,”
81–2, 81.

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Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Sekai no rekishi to jibun no rekishi,” Genso, 1:6
(September 1, 1947) 10.

Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of
Cultural Identity, 1885–1895, (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1969) 3, 189.

Peter Duus, “Liberal Intellectuals and Social Conflict in Taisho

Japan,” in Victor Koschmann and Tetsuo Najita (eds.), Conflict in
Modern Japanese History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1982) 415.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no ‘kokka kan’: Seio kokka genri
no juyo to dojidai shiteki kosatsu,” in Nenpo seijigaku: “Nihon ni okeru
Seio seiji shiso” shoshu, (March 1975) 197.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 316.

Royama Seito, “Kaisetsu: Hasegawa Nyozekan-shi no shiso-teki
tokucho: sono gendai kokka to seiji no hihan o chushin to shite,” in
Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969)
417–18.

Pyle, New Generation, 193, 188.

Tanaka, “Shakaiha janarisuto e no michi,” 222.

Fukuzawa Yukichi, Outline Theory of Civilization, David A. Dilworth
and Cameron G. Hurst, translators, (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1973)
ix.

Maruyama Tetsuo, “Takigawa jiken no koro,” Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu geppo, vol. 4 (March 1970) 4–5.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 110.

Yamaryo Kenji, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto: Hasegawa Nyozekan,” in
Shiso no kagaku kenkyukaishu: kyodo kenkyu: tenko, vol. 1 (Tokyo:
Heibonsha, 1959) 325.

Matsumoto Sannosuke, “Jidai no hihansha Hasegawa Nyozekan no
sekai,” 388; conversation with Dr. Matsumoto Sannosuke, July 30,
1987.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 39.

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 204, 282, 189, 204.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Gendai kokka hihan in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 128.

Hasegawa Nyoekan, “Yuibutsuron kenkyukai no soritsu ni tsuite,”
quoted in Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 330.

Maruyama Masao, “Nyozekan-san to chichi to watakushi: Maruyama
Masao sensei o kakomu zadankai,” in Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 295.
Maruyama was arrested for attending the meeting. He was ques-
tioned, mainly about Nyozekan, and soon released.

Tokyo Daigaku, “Hasegawa Nyozekan-shi o kakonde,” 78.

Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 326.

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Tanaka, Senchu, sengo o ikinuite, 314.

Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 330.

Tanaka, “Hihan no jidai to Nihon fuashizumu bunseki, 325.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Tenko,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 1
(Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969) 331.

Hasegawa, “Tenko,” 331–2.

Hasegawa, “The Japanese and Foreign Culture,” Contemporary Japan,
IV (September 1935) 226–7.

Hasegawa, Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 332.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Utagai mattaku hararete – Nyozekan-shi shizuku
ni kataru,” Tokyo nichi-nichi shimbun, (December 12, 1933) quoted in
Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 326.

Tokyo Daigaku, “Hasegawa Nyozekan-shi o kakonde,” 78.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Utagai mattaku hararete” quoted in Yamaryo,
326.

Tanaka, “Hihan no jidai to Nihon fuashizumu bunseki,” 323.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 310.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” Kaizo, 17:6
(June 1, 1935) 2–20.

Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan, 184.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o iknuite,” 315.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o iknuite” 384, 376–7.

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 171, 201.

Hasegawa, “The Japanese and Foreign Culture,” 226.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Ichi-nichi, ichi-dai: I-E wa tatakau ka?” Yomiuri
shimbun, (evening edition) September 19, 1935, quoted in Sera,
Hasegawa Nyozekan, 115.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Ichi-nichi, ichi-dai: Kokuminfuku?” Yomiuri
shimbun, (evening edition) September 18, 1939, quoted in Sera,
Hasegawa Nyozekan, 120.

William Miles Fletcher, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and
Fascism in Prewar Japan, (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1982), 112.

William Miles Fletcher, The Search for a New Order, 112.

Hasegawa, Nihon-teki seikaku, in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5
(Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

Fletcher, The Search for a New Order, 110.

Hasegawa, Nihon-teki seikaku, 65.

Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 332.

Barshay, State and Intellectual, 216–17.

Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, Ankoku nikki: Sho¯wa junananen, jugatsu kokonotsu

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kara Sho¯wa nijunen, gogatsu itsuka (Tokyo: Hyoronsha, 1980) entry for
April 3, 1945, 620.

Yamaryo, “Aru jiyushugi janarisuto,” 332.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 125, 123.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 122.

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Postwar Japan

n May 1945, Allied firebombs demolished Nyozekan’s Tokyo
home. A scant three months later, the Soviet Union entered the

war, American atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
war ended, and Japan was left ruined and devastated. Just as the
bombs were intended to destroy the country’s will to fight, the
Allied Occupation was directed toward rooting out the aggressive
ultranationalism that fueled Japan in its fifteen-year war. But if the
way of life that had permeated Japan during those years was to be
destroyed, a new one must be created, and the American goals were
to democratize and demilitarize the country. Was there a native
Japanese foundation that could provide a base for these goals? As
he had argued in his national character studies, Nyozekan believed
there was.

Nyozekan had dedicated his career to promoting the growth of

liberalism in Japan. Having remained true to his liberal principles
and committed to his course, Nyozekan found that in the postwar
years his course had become mainstream. The Japanese people saw
Nyozekan’s ideas as a native expression of the postwar order. And,
as Andrew Barshay suggests, Nyozekan’s prewar thought might be
viewed as the “ ‘prehistory’ of certain postwar trends.”

In his life

and thoughts Nyozekan is an example of the continuity that exists
between pre- and postwar Japan, but more importantly, after World
War II, Nyozekan sought to make this continuity apparent to his
countrymen. Before the war, Nyozekan worked for the expansion of
liberalism. During the war his veiled critique of the government was
aimed at keeping liberal principles alive. With the war finally over,
Nyozekan endeavored to show the Japanese the native roots of the
Occupation-directed democratization.

It was Nyozekan’s fate that his twilight years, the last quarter of

his life, would be spent during a period of great national change. He
was seventy years old when the war ended, and, as a leading elder

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in the intellectual world, he was called on to take an active role both
in directing the change his country was experiencing, and in
commenting on it. Thus, his “retirement years” found him nearly
as busy as he had been as a younger man during liberalism’s blos-
soming in the Taisho

¯ era. The postwar years saw no dramatic new

directions in Nyozekan’s thought, rather a further development, in
Japan’s changed circumstances, of the liberal ideas and ideals upon
which he had built his career.

In many ways postwar Japan represented a vindication for

Nyozekan. Not only had the country’s experience of fascism come
to a disastrous end, but with the fascist government purged, it
seemed the liberalism that Japan flirted with in the Taisho

¯ era would

be back to stay. Nyozekan was not one to gloat, but a certain satis-
faction with the situation was apparent in “Make ni jojiru” (“Taking
Advantage of Defeat”), one of his first postwar articles. “There is a
phrase that says, ‘Take advantage of victory,’ ” he wrote, “but none
that says, ‘Take advantage of defeat.’ But looking at Japan now, I
somehow feel there’s a need for this new phrase, ‘Take advantage of
defeat.’ ”

Nyozekan realized that the postwar situation offered the

Japanese the opportunity to finally develop the trends toward
democracy that were inherent within them.

The article advised the

Japanese to take the opportunity afforded them by the end of the
war to gain a proper understanding of liberalism and democracy.
“Today’s Japanese should thoroughly but carefully uncork both lib-
eralism and democracy,” he wrote. Taking this a step further, he
wrote that in a healthy political system, all sorts of ideas must be
allowed to compete and therefore urged the Japanese to learn about
communism and socialism as well.

As an observer of, and as we shall see, a sometime participant in

the change that followed Japan’s defeat, Nyozekan continued to
pursue a theme he had followed since the beginning of his career:
to understand a changing Japan and how it fits together with its
past. He also sought to understand Japan’s place in the international
community. These questions were as important to Nyozekan and
postwar Japan as they had been to his Seikyosha mentors in the
Meiji era.

With defeat came the Occupation of Japan, an essentially

American affair managed primarily by General Douglas MacArthur.
To achieve its goals of demilitarization and democratization in Japan,
the Occupation instituted far-ranging political, economic, and
social reforms. After an abortive Japanese attempt, the Supreme
Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) ordered an American re-
write of the constitution. This new 1947 Constitution retained the
emperor as a symbol of the state, but invested sovereignty in the

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people. The Diet was reformed and granted prerogatives previously
held by the emperor. The cabinet was made responsible to the Diet.
The Constitution guaranteed fundamental human rights and as part
of this guarantee, women were granted the right to vote. The
Constitution also contained the famous Article 9, whereby Japan
renounced as a sovereign right the use of force as a means of settling
international disputes. In a political atmosphere finally free from the
authoritarian contradictions of the Meiji Constitution, political
parties of all stripes were allowed and encouraged.

Operating on the premise that the collusion between government

and monopoly capital had contributed to Japan’s military aggression
– echoing Nyozekan’s argument on the development of fascism in
Nihon fuashizumu hihan – the Occupation endeavored to dissolve the
financial and industrial combines, the zaibatsu, that had dominated
the business economy. Introducing democracy into the economy, the
Occupation undertook a policy of land reform designed to reduce
tenancy and build a class of owner-cultivators. Similarly, through leg-
islation, the Occupation encouraged the growth of an independent
labor movement.

To effect democratization in society, the Occupation targeted

education, reforming it in both form and content. A single-track
system modeled on American lines was implemented to replace the
elitist multiple-track system put in place during the Meiji period,
and numerous universities were established in order to open higher
education to more people. The content of education was altered and
the militaristic and nationalistic values that had helped fuel the
Japanese war machine were replaced by civic values befitting a
democracy. The goal was to produce an independent citizenry not,
as before, a loyal and subservient subject.

Thus, the Occupation began with a vision of a peaceful, democ-

ratic Japan, an agrarian Japan that would live quietly and unas-
sumingly with its Asian neighbors. But just two years into the
Occupation, with the communists in the ascendant in China and
the deterioration in U.S.-Soviet relations, the thrust of the
Occupation changed. This “reverse course” signaled by MacArthur’s
abrupt about-face in banning a general strike scheduled for
February 1947, sought to create a stable Japan that would be a
bulwark of American strength in Asia. The Occupation changed its
goals and focused on creating an industrially – and to a lesser degree
militarily – strong Japan. To this end, many of the more radical
reforms of the first years of the Occupation were modified.

MacArthur had the strong support of Prime Minister Yoshida

Shigeru in the reverse-course policies. Indeed, Yoshida, who sought
a strong and stable Japan, supported many of the more conservative

Postwar Japan

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Occupation policies and appeared to wield a good deal of power and
influence in directing the course of the Occupation in conjunction
with the Occupation authorities. By the same token, many of the
earlier reforms, including the revised constitution and land reform,
were originated by the Japanese themselves, only to be taken up by
the Occupation authorities later.

So, while the Occupation was the

catalyst for change, the Japanese themselves in large part deter-
mined the direction that change would take. This was a point about
which Nyozekan felt strongly, writing in 1952, just as the
Occupation was ending, that the American reforms were “directed
at the liberalization and democratization of Japan.” Despite this
Occupation direction however, he believed that if left alone, “Japan
itself and the Japanese people themselves would have followed this
route and advanced in this direction naturally.”

In this light, it is readily apparent why Nyozekan viewed Japan’s

defeat and its tutelage under the Allied Occupation as an opportu-
nity of which the Japanese must take advantage. Nyozekan himself
certainly took advantage of Japan’s defeat, and ignoring his per-
sonal motto, “Be firm in not taking action” (“danjite okonawazu”),

he spent the first few years after the war’s end in a flurry of activity.
Having shied away from any direct connection to the government
even during the Taisho

¯ era, when the war ended he uncharacteris-

tically became involved in several governmental activities.

March 1946, Nyozekan became an Imperial appointee to serve in
the Upper House of the last sitting of the Imperial Diet.

In this

capacity, he would have been involved in the debate over, and rat-
ification of, Japan’s postwar constitution. Although rejected by
SCAP, the first draft of the constitution, in fact, was written by
Matsumoto Joji, a colleague of Nyozekan’s in the Hihan days.
Nyozekan resigned his post in the Diet in March 1947, making way
for a new Diet elected to conduct government according to the con-
stitution that would go into effect in May of that year.

In February 1946, Nyozekan assumed yet another position that

put him in close contact with the government when he accepted a
post with the Japan Education Reform Committee.

Nyozekan was

part of the Japanese sub-group of the Committee, which called itself
the “Japanese Committee to Cooperate with the U.S. Mission.” To
accomplish the “democratization of our education system,” read
the report prepared by the group, “change must be broad, deep, and
wide.” The Japan Education Reform Committee Report was written
by committee and therefore it is impossible to determine the indiv-
idual origin of the ideas it contains. But the contents of the Report
are compatible with ideas Nyozekan had promoted throughout his
journalistic career. In harmony with the Occupation’s goals and

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Nyozekan’s own liberal beliefs, the Report stressed the importance
of encouraging “the student’s individuality . . . in order to develop
a . . . democratic Japanese character.” For Nyozekan, who believed
the Japanese were already inherently democratic, this meant simply
removing social and political obstacles to the development of that
character, something the report also suggested by calling for the
“develop[ment] of the student [sic] spontaneous active character.”

By calling for the unionization of teachers, the Report addressed

an issue that had occupied high priority in Nyozekan’s political
agenda since the 1920s. The government, advised the Report,
“should encourage the movement [viz teachers unions] and more-
over should aid in the continued healthy development [sic].” It
pointed out the right to organize was “based on the guarantee of the
constitution.”

Japan’s new constitution was promulgated on November 3, 1946.

A year later, in commemoration of the first anniversary of its pro-
mulgation, the government awarded five citizens with the Order of
Cultural Merit. Nyozekan was among these five, which also
included Yasuda Shinzaburo, Kihara Hitoshii, Asakura Bunzo, and
one woman, Uemura Tsune. Nyozekan was honored with the
award, announced the Asahi Shimbun, for his work in furthering
democracy in Japan.

The fact that even he was able to receive the

award, Nyozekan remarked in a radio interview, was a sign of the
changed political circumstances in postwar Japan.

But asked to

what achievements he attributed his winning the award, he joked
that he “received it for achieving this advanced age despite my
sickly constitution.”

(He was seventy-two.) He commented that

he could not do much, save write: “Writing, writing on social issues
is all I can do.”

Once again invoking his personal motto of uninvolvement after

this flurry of public political activity in the early postwar years,
Nyozekan returned to his life of observation and criticism. He spent
his “retirement years,” the nearly twenty-five years between Japan’s
defeat in 1945 and his death in 1969 much as he had spent the most
active years of his career: writing.

Writing on social issues in the postwar years, Nyozekan reflected

on the Japanese past, present, and future. In his 1932 Nihon
fuashizumu hihan Nyozekan wrote about the origins and expression
of fascism in Japan. After the war he continued to reflect on this
phase of Japan’s modern development and, building on the foun-
dation of his work on the Japanese national character, he now
added cultural components to his analysis of Japanese fascism. In
his character studies, Nyozekan had always stressed the Japanese
ability to borrow aspects of foreign cultures and adapt them to their

Postwar Japan

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own culture. In the past, this borrowing came from the Chinese
continent. “Ancient Japan,” Nyozekan wrote in Nihon-teki seikaku,
“inherited its civilization from the Asian mainland. Today, Japan is
inheriting Western civilization. Japan has had to create its own civ-
ilization from these.”

Nyozekan’s investigation of the Japanese national character

implicitly and explicitly dealt with the question of how the
Japanese had faced the issue of borrowing in the twentieth century,
especially during the 1930s. In 1951, he published an essay entitled
“Doitsugaku kara Igirisugaku e” (“From German Learning to English
Learning”). In this essay he continued his examination of what he
felt was Japan’s turn to German philosophy in the 1890s, the unfor-
tunate flowering of this philosophy in the 1930s, and the return to
English-style thought in the postwar period.

Nyozekan had

attacked German philosophy since the 1920s when he criticized the
German concept of the metaphysical state in the pages of Warera.

According to Nyozekan, the intellectual trends in the postwar
period constituted a return to English, or “Anglo-Saxon” thought,
because the Japanese national character was naturally in tune with
the practical and pragmatic style it represented.

Observing the

Japanese response to the American Occupation and the changes
Japan underwent in the postwar period, Nyozekan wrote,
“The reason why the American Occupation was no problem to the
Japanese was that even in the days of Germanized Japan, the
common people had kept following British and American
culture.”

The liberal and democratic character manifested in the “English

and American mentality,” Nyozekan believed, had been a part of
the mentality of the Japanese “masses” (taishu) since Meiji. Looking
back on Japan’s early postwar years in 1968, Nyozekan commented
that the Occupation “was in no way forced [on Japan] by America
or MacArthur,” but that in light of the English-American mentality
of the bulk of the population, “MacArthur flowed with the current
and adopted policies in accord with Japan’s structure.”

Early in 1952, as the Occupation was drawing to a close,

Nyozekan published a book, Ushinawareta Nihon: Nihon-teki kyoyo
no dento (Lost Japan: The Tradition of Japanese Culture). The book was
a review of Japan’s character, culture, and society, and of the many
changes the country had experienced in the course of moderniza-
tion. The Western countries, Nyozekan wrote, constituted the
“heart” of modernization, and modernization in the West was an
“independent, active . . . organic process.” For Japan (and other
non-Western countries), whose entry into the process of modern-
ization began with contact with the West, continuity with the past

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seemed to be completely broken. This is why, Nyozekan wrote,
Japan appeared to be the “lost Japan.” In fact, however, no matter
how much a society or nation may change, that development is
never abrupt, but is always based on something within the history
and character of that particular society or nation. In reviewing the
myriad changes Japan had undergone since Meiji, and especially in
the course of the Occupation, the changes were exactly in keeping
with the path the country would have followed on its own. Thus,
Nyozekan believed that the phenomenon of modernization con-
tained certain universal elements, and he wrote that “in the coun-
tries of the world that have a history of modernization . . . the same
development can be seen.”

In Ushinawareta Nihon, Nyozekan catalogued the important

changes that had come to fruition in postwar Japan. The five great
reforms, as Nyozekan called them, included “the emancipation of
Japanese women (through the right to vote), the encouragement of
labor unionization, the liberalization of school education, the pro-
hibition on institutions that entrapped people with terror, and the
democratization of the economic structure.” As Occupation “direc-
tives” these changes came to Japan from the outside. But as we have
seen, Nyozekan believed that given time, these were precisely the
changes the Japanese would have arrived at on their own.

Nyozekan had spent his career promoting exactly this kind of
change. He had also devoted a great deal of energy to investigating
why and how Japan had been derailed from the track to democ-
racy that it seemed to be proceeding along during the early Taisho

era. In Nihon fuashizumu hihan, Nyozekan had pointed his finger
at the unhealthy collusion between government and big business
that resulted from Japan’s status as a late-developing capitalist
country, as well as the self-serving bureaucracy and the party politi-
cians who were unresponsive to the peoples’ demands. Now, he
once again reviewed Japan’s rocky path to democracy and wrote in
Ushinawareta Nihon that the push for democracy in Japan
came before the country or society could properly support it.
“Ideologically and intellectually, freedom and democracy were
mere imitations that jumped beyond the level of Japanese history,”
he wrote. Nevertheless, he maintained, the process of moderniza-
tion proceeded, and ultimately absolutism and aggressive ultrana-
tionalism were discredited by war. He wrote that “modernization
provided for the emergence of the core of the real Japanese nation
and people; a Japan that is solid, steadfast, free, and worthy of being
called a democratic nation. Besides being the external structure of
Japan’s political institutions, these are the fundamental conditions
of Japan’s civilization.”

With that external structure in place,

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Nyozekan was sanguine about the capacity of the Japanese national
character to provide the internal machinery of democracy. “So long
as Japanese history maintains the same character it has had the last
several thousand years,” he wrote, “I am optimistic about the
future.”

As the Occupation drew to a close, the question of what shape

their country’s future would take became an important issue for the
Japanese. In 1951, Nyozekan participated in a symposium entitled
“Nihonjin no susumubeki michi” (“The Path the Japanese Should
Take”). Since the Meiji period, Japan had focused on rapid indus-
trial and military development as a way of catapulting itself into the
ranks of the advanced nations. But it had done so, Nyozekan argued
in Nihon fuashizumu hihan and elsewhere, to the detriment of the
human values of liberty and democracy. Now, Nyozekan believed,
Japan must abandon its goal of being one of the world’s strongest
countries and realize that the path of military power is a thing of
the past. Instead, Japan should emulate the lesser (“jakusho”)
nations like Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, and develop itself
into a “neutral industrial country,” and one which could raise the
standards of living for its people.

An even more immediate question for the future of Japan,

however, was the conclusion of a peace treaty and the restoration
of Japan’s independence. The peace treaty and Japan’s future role in
the community of nations were inextricably linked issues. In
October 1951, Nyozekan was among a number of intellectuals and
academics asked by Sekai magazine to comment on the peace treaty
for a special issue devoted entirely to a discussion of the peace treaty
signed in San Francisco a month earlier. The issue sold out as soon
as it hit the stands and five additional issues were published.

Nyozekan’s contribution was a very brief piece entitled “Amari
monku wa ienai” (“No Real Complaints”). Nyozekan, like many
Japanese, favored the conclusion of a general peace, rather than a
separate peace that would leave the Soviet Union out as a result of
U.S. and Soviet disagreements about the nature of the treaty.

felt that the Soviets must accept the blame for the failure to achieve
a general peace,

but at the same time believed that some kind of

positive interaction was necessary between the capitalist and social-
ist countries.

With this in mind, he advocated that “the United

States and the Soviet Union . . . work out a compromise, relaxing
their nervous tension.”

As a means for relaxing this “nervous tension,” Nyozekan was a

strong supporter of the United Nations. When the San Francisco
Peace Treaty was signed, bringing the Occupation to a close and
ending Japan’s territorial claims in Korea, Taiwan, the Chinese

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mainland, and elsewhere, the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty was
signed as well. This treaty opened the “American military umbrella”
over Japan, allowing the stationing of U.S. troops and bases in
Japan. Nyozekan believed that Japanese (and indeed global) secu-
rity could best be provided through the United Nations, whose
forces, he felt, should be strengthened “to the extent that no indi-
vidual nations need their own armed forces.” Japan, he thought,
could cooperate in this by “contributing manpower and industrial
production.”

Nyozekan’s support for the United Nations was part of his faith

in the future of a world civilization. At the end of his life, Nyozekan,
looking back on the aftermath of the war, commented that the van-
quished in World War II were spared destruction by the victors
because ever since the Taisho

¯ era the world had been developing

toward the achievement of global democracy.

Nyozekan foresaw

that as this trend toward democracy grew, the United Nations
would become an organization not simply of national govern-
ments, but a union of the people of the respective nations.

Because of his Spencerian background, Nyozekan believed that

the modern world was undergoing evolution from nations to soci-
eties.

National political boundaries would ultimately dissolve and

“the Nation states of today [would] unite and become mere regions
and provinces of that world state,” he wrote of his vision in 1954.

Nyozekan was well aware that the achievement of a world state

was many centuries in the future. But most important in his vision
of the future was his feeling that Japan could and would play a role
in an integrated global community, whether as a “neutral industrial
country” or a “region or province of that world state” in the cen-
turies to come. Remaining true to his Seikyosha roots, however,
Nyozekan did not envision a homogeneous world state of cultural
uniformity and lost identity. Instead, he wrote, the future held the
promise that “in the same way that the more a society advances, the
more marked becomes the individuality of its members, so will . . .
the peculiar cultures of different countries reach new stages of
development.”

Nyozekan allied himself with the Seikyosha at the start of his

career because he believed in a Japan that could be both modern
and Japanese. He embraced the modern value of liberalism, while
never abandoning the nationalism that tied him to his traditional
Japanese roots. Now at the end of his career, Nyozekan remained
firmly committed to integrating universalistic values, like liberal-
ism, with the unique identity of the Japanese. He saw a Japan that
could henceforth retain its own individuality, its own personality,
without sliding back into the narrow isolation it had suffered under

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during the war, but instead functioning as an integral part of the
world community. He translated the liberal ideal he had for society
– that society would protect the individuality of each of its members
– onto a global scale and hoped that in the future the independence
and individuality of each state would be protected while still oper-
ating together as a part of a whole.

Nyozekan’s conception of a world state in which the constituent

parts would retain their own individual character was a dramatic way
of expressing, at the end of his career, values he held in common with
liberal intellectuals of the Taisho

¯ era near the beginning of his career.

In the push for democracy that characterized the Taisho

¯ era,

Nyozekan’s friend and colleague, Oyama Ikuo, for example, had
argued in favor of the compatibility between democratic government
and Japanese notions of community. Representative democracy,
Oyama believed, was more conducive to community than was autoc-
racy, for while democracy created “a sense of common interest,”
autocracy drew sharp lines in society that divided ruler and ruled.

Here was a vision of Japan that saw both its universalistic and unique
characteristics, a Japan that was both modern and Japanese.

Like most Japanese, Nyozekan’s living conditions at the end of

the war were strained. As noted earlier, having lost his Tokyo house
to the firebombing raids in the spring of 1945, he took up perma-
nent residence in the Kamakura farmhouse that a group of his
friends had given him in 1939. By 1950, Nyozekan was ready to
leave the house, which had also suffered the general impact of the
war and which a friend characterized as “miserable-looking.”

Although he looked for some land on which to build a new home
for his retirement, in 1953 a group of over 200 of his friends and
associates gave him a house in Odawara, a country villa originally
owned by Yamagata Aritomo.

He called the house Hachioso, to

mark his upcoming eightieth birthday, and though an Edokko at
heart, he loved this house in Odawara above all his earlier homes.

At a party celebrating the gift of the house, his friend Omori Isamu
joked with him that now that he had a house he had better take
himself a bride. Nyozekan’s spirited reply to this suggestion reas-
sured Omori of Nyozekan’s youthful vigor despite his advanced
years.

Although Nyozekan never brought a bride to his new home, he

received many visitors there, and the house became something of a
intellectual salon. Guests included both Japanese and foreigners,
often Americans, and the topic of conversation often revolved
around Japanese culture and the Japanese character.

With philoso-

pher Sidney Hook, Nyozekan talked of “Japan’s cultural democ-
racy,” explaining his belief, first discussed in Nihon-teki seikaku, that

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Japan’s culture was a national one, in which the country’s various
cultural forms were spread across the general population and not
limited to small groups of the elite. Thus, while Japan had not
always possessed political democracy, it always possessed cultural
democracy.

This cultural democracy was, according to Nyozekan,

a “fortunate factor” in Japan’s ability, after defeat in war, to “reor-
ganiz[e] the nation in the direction of modern history” and to
pursue once again the spirit of liberalism that prevailed in the early
Meiji period.

Now Japan’s traditional cultural democracy could

provide a foundation for political democracy.

Some of the foreign visitors Nyozekan entertained at Hachioso

were people he had met during his five-month trip to the U.S. in
1956. Accepting the offer of a Carnegie Foundation sponsored lec-
tureship in Japanese culture from Columbia University in
February 1956, at age eighty he traveled to the U.S. for the first
(and only) time in his life.

With his friend, Kaji Shinzo, then a

visiting professor at Stanford University, Nyozekan traveled on
both the west and east coasts of the U.S. In June, he spent a month
in Europe where he went to London, Paris, Geneva, and Rome,
revisiting some of the spots he had first seen as a reporter for the
Osaka Asahi shimbun in 1910.

The trip took its toll on Nyozekan, however, and he spent most

of 1957 recovering from the strain.

This was the burden of old

age. But old age also had its advantages, enabling Nyozekan to take
the long view of the Japanese past. One article which took this sort
of long view was his 1959 “Meiji, Taisho¯, Sho¯wa: sandai no seikaku”
(“Meiji, Taisho

¯, Sho

¯wa: The Character of Three Eras”). In this

article, Nyozekan discussed the direction of Japanese history
during its rapid modernization since the Meiji Restoration. Noting
the continuities and discontinuities in modern Japanese history, he
wrote that even the three eras of modern Japan could be further
divided according to their characters. He looked at the develop-
ment in tandem of two important strains in Japanese history. One
of these strains was the Anglo-American spirit that guided the
opening years of the Meiji Restoration and continued to wield its
influence into the Taisho

¯ era, the “age of the movement toward

democracy.” The other was the authoritarian German ideology
adopted in the second decade of the Meiji era that led to the impe-
rialistic aggression of the Sho

¯wa period. Interestingly, both of these

were borrowed traditions. But Japan, as Nyozekan pointed out
many times, in its tradition of borrowing, had the ability to adapt
foreign borrowings to make them truly Japanese. As before,
Nyozekan remained clear in his own mind that it was the liberal
spirit which represented the “traditional character of Japanese

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history,” and which, though a borrowed influence, resonated with
the true character of the Japanese.

The liberal spirit of the early Meiji period, characterized by Anglo-

American culture and civilization, Nyozekan wrote, was national in
scope and “extended definitely and substantially into the life [of the
people] as a whole.” The Germanization of Japanese culture, on the
other hand, was limited to the small but, unfortunately, influential
upper echelons in the bureaucratic, academic, and intellectual
worlds. Japan’s turn to German ideology ultimately led to its defeat
in war.

Finally defeated in war, Japan was freed to return to the

liberal spirit that was in tune with its traditional character. But now,
the nation was able to reinforce that traditional liberal character in
a concrete way with the formation of democratic government.

In making this assessment of Japan’s modern history, Nyozekan

relied on the central theme that had guided his thinking and his
career: his belief in liberalism and his study of the Japanese national
character. The course of modern Japanese history and the estab-
lishment of democratic institutions in the postwar period meant
that in his lifetime Nyozekan saw come to fruition many of his
hopes for a liberal Japan that was able to retain its own national
character. Thus, less than three-quarters of a century after the foun-
dation of Nyozekan’s first intellectual family, the Seikyosha, in
1888, the group that sought to foster a Japan that was both modern
and Japanese, the nation had achieved that balance between
modernity and tradition by establishing a liberal democratic nation
that remained true to its traditional roots.

Nyozekan’s health began to fail in the mid-1960s. By then in his

nineties, Nyozekan had outlived many of his contemporaries,
despite a weak constitution that on several occasions throughout
his life forced him to spend long months in rest and recuperation.

Nevertheless, Nyozekan, perhaps driven by his sense of history,
hoped to live to be one-hundred years old.

Early in 1969, however, his health deteriorated and after much

urging, he entered Odawara Municipal Hospital in July. He died in
his sleep on November 11, 1969, just weeks before his ninety-fourth
birthday. He was attended by his niece Yamamoto Kako, who had
served as his live-in caretaker in the final years, and several other
relatives.

His funeral was attended by over 200 people, and eulo-

gies were delivered by Minobe Ryokichi, mayor of Tokyo and son of
Minobe Tatsukichi, and Nyozekan’s lifelong friend, Ouchi Hyoe.

“Nyozekan,” Ouchi said in his simple eulogy, “never let go of his
firm belief that . . . [from ancient times] . . . the Japanese had been
a democratic and peace-loving people.”

In his life and work,

Ouchi said, Nyozekan was truly an original.

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NOTES

Andrew Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public
Man in Crisis, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 225.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Make ni jojiru,” Bungei shunju, 23:6 (December
1, 1945) 2.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Ushinawareta Nihon: Nihon-teki kyoyo no dento,
(Tokyo: Keiyusha, 1952) 275.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Make ni jojiru,” 3.

Peter Duus, The Rise of Modern Japan¸ (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin,
1976) 241.

Hasegawa, Ushinawareta Nihon, 275.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Koi fu konan,” Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol.
7 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 231.

Other prewar and wartime associates of Nyozekan’s assumed govern-
ment posts after the war as well, among them Matsumoto Joji, a
former member of Hihan. Matsumoto served as Minister of State in the
first postwar cabinet of Shidehara Kijuro (October 1945 – May 1946).
Morito Tatsuo, whom Nyozekan and Warera had defended against
government censorship in the Morito Incident in 1920 became
Minister of Education in the Katayama Tetsu cabinet (March 1948 –
October 1948). The Occupation looked for individuals with long-
standing (viz., prewar) liberal track records to serve in the various
political and bureaucratic posts, so it is not at all surprising that some
of Nyozekan’s former colleagues would have been called upon.

Sera Masatoshi, Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku
mokuroku, (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku, 1985) 134.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: senchu, sengo o ikinu-
ite,” Sekai, no. 486 (March, 1986) 320; Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 134.

“JERC [Japanese Education Reform Committee] Report, 27 December,
1946: Part II: Opinion,” National Archives, Suitland, Maryland, folder
17-B, CIES, Educational Division, Administrative files, 1947–1949;
Box f5391, pp. 7, 18, 19.

JERC Report, 15.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 136; quoting from “Bunka no hi o kazaru:
Goshi ni bunka kunsho,” Asahi shimbun, November 2, 1948.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 136; quoting from “Bunka no hi o kazaru:
Goshi ni bunka kunsho,” Asahi shimbun, November 3, 1948.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nyozekan -shiki kenkoho,” Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 320.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 136; quoting from Tokyo Asahi shimbun,
August 21, 1963.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Nihon-teki seikaku, in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970) 66.

Postwar Japan

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Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Doistugaku kara Igirisugaku e: Gakumon naiyo
no jishusei no tame ni,” Chuo hyoron, 11 (January 20, 1951) 5–19.

Hasegawa Manjiro, “Hegeru-ha no jiyu ishi setsu to kokka: tetsugaku-teki
kokka kan ni taisuru Hobuhausu kyoju no hihan o shakai suru,” Warera,
2:1 (January 1, 1920) 26–36; “Zettai-kokka setsu ni taisuru shakaigaku-
teki hihan: Hobuhausu-kyoju no zettai kokka setsu no hihan,” Warera,
2:2 (February 1, 1920) 39–50, esp. 40.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Japan’s Cultural Democracy: A Challenging
Interpretation of Japanese History,” Perspective on Japan: Atlantic
Monthly Supplement, no. 1 (1955) 77; “Nihon no hyumanizumu,” in
Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970)
308.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “The Nature of Japanese History,” Nihon sama-
zama, (Tokyo: Taiho rinkakuhen, 1962) 3–4.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Meiji no taiwa,” Part One, Sogo janarizumu
kenkyu, 5:1 (January 1, 1968) 6.

Hasegawa, Ushinawareta Nihon, 2, 3, 275, 2.

Hasegawa, Ushinawareta Nihon, 275.

Hasegawa, Ushinawareta Nihon, 279, 275.

Hasegawa, “The Nature of Japanese History,” 4.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Zadankai: Nihonjin no susumubeki michi,”
Kaizo, 32:11 (October 1, 1951) 61.

“Views on Peace and Security: A Symposium,” in Contemporary
Japan, 1952, 372.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 323.

“Views on Peace and Security,” 376.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 323.

“Views on Peace and Security,” 376.

Hasegawa, “Meiji to no taiwa,” 5

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 323.

Tanaka, “Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,” 323.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “A New Cultural Era for Japan in the Womb of
Time,” Japan Quarterly, I:1 (October-December, 1954) 95.

Hasegawa, “A New Cultural Era,” 94.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Meiji to no taiwa,” Part Two, Sogo janarizumu
kenkyu, 5:2 (February 1, 1968) 33.

Peter Duus, “Liberal Intellectuals and Social Conflict in Taisho

¯ Japan,”

in J. Victor Koschmann and Tetsuo Najita (eds.), Conflict in Modern
Japanese History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982) 418–19.

Omori Isamu, “Hyaku-sai,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu geppo, vol.
1 (October 1969) 3.

Conversation with Tanaka Hiroshi, July 29, 1987; Conversation with
Kenneth B. Pyle, June 26, 1991.

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Fukuoka Seiichi, Hachioso no ki, Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu geppo, vol.
7 (July, 1970) 1.

Omori, “Hyaku-sai,” 5.

Among the guests Nyozekan received at Hachioso included
Maruyama Masao, Ishibashi Tanzan, Ouchi Hyoe, Kenneth B. Pyle,
Morton White and J.D. Goheen.

Fukuhama Tatsuo (ed.), Nyozekan Hachioso taidan, (Tokyo: Sogo
tosho, 1967) 3.

Hasegawa, “Japan’s Cultural Democracy,” 77.

Yamamoto Kako, “Oji Hasegawa Manjiro,” in Sera Masatoshi,
Hasegawa Nyozekan: Hito, jidai, shiso to chosaku mokuroku, (Tokyo:
Chuo daigaku, 1985) 241.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 142.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Meiji, Taisho¯, Sho¯wa: sandai no seikaku,”
Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu,” vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970)
365.

Hasegawa, “Meiji, Taisho¯, Sho¯wa,” 376; 365.

Maruyama Kanji died in 1954, Oyama Ikuo in 1955, and Hani
Motoko in 1957. Nyozekan delivered eulogies for Maruyama and
Hani. Yoshino Sakuzo, Kawakami Hajime and Kushida Tamizo also
died well before Nyozekan.

Omori Isamu, “Hyaku-sai,” 4.

Sera, Hasegawa Nyozekan, 148.

Ouchi Hyoe and Minobe Tatsukichi, “Choji,” in Hasegawa Nyozekan
senshu geppo, vol. 3 (January 1970) 3–5.

Ouchi Hyoe, “Choji,” Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu geppo, vol. 3
(January 1970) 3.

Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: shakaiha janarisuto e
no michi,” Sekai, no. 482 (December 1985) 216.

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Conclusion

It might be said, with perhaps a little exaggeration, that a Japanese
who is still living and who was born in the early Meiji period has
in his own lifetime covered a span which stretched over two or
three centuries in Europe. I am, I think, one such Japanese.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, 1951

hen Hasegawa Nyozekan was born in Tokyo in 1875, that city
still retained a strong flavor of Edo, with the grand daimyo

residences of Yamanote and the “floating world” of the Yoshiwara
pleasure quarters. When he died in 1969, Tokyo Tower rose from the
center of the city and the facilities of the 1964 Olympic Games
dotted the landscape. Just seven years away from feudal govern-
ment in 1875, by 1969 parliamentary democracy based on liberal
principles was firmly established. And yet Nyozekan, who contin-
ued to dress in traditional Japanese clothing throughout his life,
was in no way out of place as he moved among the hustle and bustle
of modern Japan. In his own life, Nyozekan embodied the conti-
nuity he believed existed in the history of Japan’s modern century.

From early in his career, Nyozekan was convinced that Japan’s

transition to democracy was inevitable. From his very first positions
with Nihon oyobi Nihonjin and the Osaka Asahi shimbun he devoted
himself to helping Japan along the path of this transition. Not until
the late 1920s would he realize that fascism, too, would be an
inevitable part of this process. But even as the country sank deeper
into the quagmire of aggression and isolation, Nyozekan never
abandoned his hope for, and belief in, a democratic future for Japan.
To deny democracy would have been to deny his own character.
And for the Japanese people to deny their democracy, he believed,
they too would have to deny their national character.

Nyozekan’s liberal education and upbringing in the early years of

Meiji, and the liberalism, practicality, and realism that constituted
what he called his “English outlook,”

meant that in the course of

his life, he was both a part of, and apart from, the Japan in which he
lived. During the early years of his career, writing for Nihon oyobi

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Nihonjin in the late Meiji, his liberal outlook placed him among a
small but important group of intellectuals who sought to integrate
liberal values and institutions in creating a new Japan that would
nevertheless retain its unique Japanese character, its kokusui.

By the

Taisho

¯ era, writing for the Osaka Asahi, the country’s premiere

liberal newspaper, and later starting his own magazine, Warera,
Nyozekan was in the forefront of the group of liberal intellectuals
who set the tone for the age, fostering a movement to turn away
from autocratic government and toward constitutional, democratic
government. As the prospects for liberal change faded in the 1930s,
however, Nyozekan found himself apart from the main currents in
Japanese society. Writing in Hihan and Nihon fuashizumu hihan, he
critiqued Japanese government and society and explored the
reasons behind Japan’s slide to fascism. And when swimming
against that current became too dangerous, he “treaded water” by
engaging in national character studies as a way to criticize the ultra-
nationalist government on its own terms, with its own vocabulary.

When the war ended, Nyozekan found himself once again in

tune with the general trends of Japanese society. In the postwar
period, what Oya Soichi called the “Nyozekan Boom” dramatically
demonstrates the continuity between prewar and postwar Japanese
history.

Before the war, Nyozekan represented the important

liberal intellectual element in Japan’s development as a modern
nation. With the war over, this element once again came to the
forefront. Though Nyozekan’s ideas of course developed through-
out his life, in many ways he can be regarded as a fixed point in the
compass of modern Japanese history. As the nation swerved to the
right in the 1930s, off its course, Nyozekan stayed fixed at his point,
waiting for the country to align itself once again with the liberal
principles he represented.

Nyozekan stayed fixed at his point, maintaining his liberal

beliefs, because this was his nature. He believed Japan would ulti-
mately align itself with this point because this was the Japanese
nature. The Japanese national character, he believed, was inher-
ently liberal and democratic.

Nyozekan understood that one of the characteristics of the

modern world was the increased pace of change. Thus, he believed
that Japan, in its development as a democratic nation, had traversed
in less than a century changes that Western Europe had experienced
over the course of many centuries.

It was in part Japan’s ability to

adopt and adapt aspects of other cultures, one of the central features
of the Japanese national character according to Nyozekan, that
enabled it to do so. But this feature of the national character was
not without unhappy circumstances. The liberal democracy that

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was worked out over time in the West (though not necessarily grad-
ually or without violence) came to Japan in a series of crises.

The crisis of opening to the West was Japan’s first challenge and

the Japanese response was to strengthen itself by trying to modern-
ize the country along Western liberal lines. But this could not be
done without industrialization and the rapidity of this, too,
brought crisis to Japan. Indeed, it was the need to catch up with the
West in industrial development after a late start, and the accompa-
nying collusion between government and capital, that led to the
crisis of fascism in Japan, according to Nyozekan. Even the ultimate
working out of democracy arrived under crisis conditions in Japan.
Up against the wall after defeat in war, the Occupation demanded
democratization of the Japanese – there was no alternative.

Nyozekan believed there was indeed no alternative for Japan

except democratization and that this was the path Japan had been
heading down since the Meiji Restoration.

But democracy was

Japan’s only alternative he believed, not because the Occupation
demanded it but because this was the destiny that the Japanese
character had in store for the nation. The Japanese character itself,
with or without crisis, ultimately demanded democracy.

In comparing Japan’s convulsive course to democracy with that of

Western Europe, Nyozekan was recognizing that certain universal
principles were at work. In the latter years of his career, Nyozekan
believed the world was headed toward becoming a world state, united
under one government in which each of the world’s nations would
be component states retaining their own unique characteristics. To
be thus globally united would require a strong degree of shared
values. These values would be the universal values of democracy,
where each individual, capable of thought, capable of reason, was in
turn capable of contributing to making the decisions of democracy.
And yet, in recognizing these universals, Nyozekan was in no way
predicting a future of global homogeneity. On the contrary, just as
the individual is able to develop most fully under the conditions of
democracy, Nyozekan saw a world where difference was valued and
treasured. He envisioned a world governed as one, but consisting of
many unique entities. In this way, he saw the continuity in modern
Japanese history and answered the central question of Japan’s
modern century: Yes, Japan can be both modern and Japanese.

NOTES

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Japan’s Cultural Democracy: A Challenging
Interpretation of Japanese History,” Perspective on Japan: Atlantic
Monthly Supplement, no. 1 (1955) 74.

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Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Watakushi no Igirisu-kan,” Arubihon, 1:1 (June
1, 1949) 12.

Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of
Cultural Identity, 1885–1895, (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1969) 69–71.

Oya Soichi, “Hasegawa Nyozekan no mittsu no kao,” Sandei Mainichi,
(November 30, 1969).

Hasegawa, “Japan’s Cultural Democracy,” 74.

Hasegawa Nyozekan, Ushinawareta Nihon: Nihon-teki kyoyo no dento,
(Tokyo: Keiyusha, 1952) 275.

Conclusion

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to dojidai shiteki kosatsu,” Nenpo seijigaku: “Nihon ni okeru Sei-O seiji
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no. 425 (November, 1986).

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fuashizumu bunseki,” Sekai, no. 485 (February 1986).

——, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Seiji, shakai kakumei to kokusai

heiwa o motomete,” Sekai, no. 483 (January 1986).

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Tanaka Hiroshi, “Hyoden: Hasegawa Nyozekan: Senchu, sengo o ikinuite,”

Sekai, no. 486 (March 1986).

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Sekai, no. 482 (December 1985).

——, “Nihon ni okeru riberarizumu no choryu – Kuga Katsunan,

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senshu geppo, vol. 7 (July 1970).

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janaru (ed.), (1963).

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Tenko, Shiso kagaku kenkyukai (ed.), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Heibonsha,
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WORKS BY HASEGAWA NYOZEKAN

Hasegawa Manjiro, “Hegeru-ha jiyu ishi setsu to kokka – kagaku-teki

kokka kan ni taisuru Hobuhausu-kyoju hihan o shakai su,” Warera,
2:1 (January 1, 1920).

——, “Kokka to shinri to no kosen jotai.” Warera, 2:3 (March 1, 1920).
——, “Zettai kokka setsu ni taisuru shakaigaku-teki hihan: Hobuhausu-

kyoju no zettai koku setsu no hihan,” Warera, 2:2 (February 1, 1920).

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Anchi-fueminisuto to shite no Bana¯do Sho,”

Kaizo, 12:9 (September 1930).

——, Aru kokoro no jijoden (1950). Reprinted in Sekai kyoyo zenshu,

vol. 28, Shimonaka Kunihiko (ed.), (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1963).

——, “The Character of Japanese Women,” in Contemporary Japan,

VIII:5 (July 1939).

——, “Dento no jizoku,” in Nihon bunmei no togo (1962). Reprinted in

Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai,
1970).

——, “Doitsu-gaku kara Igirisu-gaku e: gakumon naiyo no jishusei no

tame ni,” Chuo hyoron, vol. 11 (January 20, 1951).

——, Educational and Cultural Background of the Japanese

People, translated by S. Sakabe, (Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka
Shinkokai, 1936).

——, Gendai kokka hihan (1921). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan

senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969).

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——, Gendai shakai hihan (1922). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan

senshu, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, “The Japanese and Foreign Culture.” in Contemporary Japan,

IV:2 (September 1935).

——, The Japanese Character: A Cultural Profile, translated by John

Bester, (Tokyo: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1966).

——, “Japan’s Cultural Democracy: A Challenging Interpretation of

History,” in Perspective on Japan: Atlantic Monthly Supplement, no.
1 (1955).

——, “Jissen-teki fuassho no momoku jinkoron,” Hihan, 3:1 (January 1,

1932).

Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Joshi no yuetsu,” in Shinjitsu wa kakuitsuwaru

(1924). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo:
Kurita shuppankai, 1969).

——, “Kaidai no yue,” Hihan, 1:1 (May 1, 1930).
——, “Koi fu konan” (1963). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu,

vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Kokka kodo ni okeru sakkaku: Manshu jiken ni okeru hyogen,”

Hihan, 2:11 (December 1, 1931).

——, “Make ni jojiru,” Bungei shunju, 23:6 (December 1, 1945).
——, “Manyoshu ni okeru shizenshugi: kakumeiki ni okeru seiji keitai to

no kankei” (1933). Reprinted in Gendai Nihon bungaku zenshu,
vol. 94 (Tokyo: shoma shobo, 1958).

——, “Maruzen to watakushi no rokujunen,” Gakuhatsu, 49:1 (January

1, 1952).

——, “Meiji, Taisho¯, Sho¯wa: sandai no seikaku” (1959). Reprinted in

Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai,
1970).

——, “Meiji to no taiwa,” Part One, Sogo janarizumu kenkyu, 5:1

(January 1, 1968).

——, “Meiji to no taiwa,” Part Two, Sogo janarizumu kenkyu, 5:2

(February 1, 1968).

——, “Minshushugi no rekishi-teki hatten,” Shukan Asahi, 48:1

(January 6, 1946).

——, “Modernism in Japan,” Contemporary Japan, V:1 (June 1936).
——, “Morito Tatsuo kyoju hikka jiken no ronri-teki kaibo,” Warera, 2:2

(February 1, 1920).

——, “The National Character of the Japanese,” Contemporary Japan,

III:4 (March 1940).

——, “Naturalism in the Manyoshu,” Contemporary Japan, I:4

(March 1933).

——, Nihon sama-zama, (Tokyo: Taihorin, 1962).
——, “A New Cultural Era for Japan in the Womb of Time,” Japan

Quarterly, I:1 (October–December 1954).

Bibliography

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Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Nichijo seikatsu,” Chuo hyoron, vol. 75 (April

20, 1961).

——, Nihon bunmei no seikaku, (Tokyo: Nihon kokusai kyoiku kyokai-

hen, 1966).

—— “Nihon burujoajii no tairiku seisaku to shimaguni seisaku: Man-

shu jiken no sokumen-teki kaishaku,” Hihan, 2:9 (October 1, 1931).

——, Nihon fuashizumu hihan (1932). Reprinted in Hasegawa

Nyozekan senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969).

——, “Nihonjin no heiwasei to rakutensei,” Sekai bunka, 1:2 (March 1,

1946).

——, “Nihonjin to shukyo” (1959). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan

senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, Nihon kishutsu, (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1950).
——, “Nihon no hyumanizumu” (1953). Reprinted in Hasegawa

Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Nihon shimbun to ‘Kuga-san’ no insho,” Nihon oyobi Nihonjin,

vol. 869 (September 1, 1923).

——, “Nihon-teki bunka kankaku no tokucho,” Nihon hyoron, 11:8

(August 1, 1936).

——, Nihon-teki seikaku (1938). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan

senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Nihon-teki seikaku no saikento,” Kaizo, 17:6 (June 1, 1935).
——, “Nyozekan shi kenkoho” (1966). Reprinted in Hasegawa

Nyozekan senshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Osaka Asahi kara Warera e” (1919). Reprinted in Hasegawa

Nyozekan senshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Ryokokusei: Nihon bunmei no tokucho,” Chuo hyoron, vol. 100

(September 20, 1967).

——, “Sekai no rekishi to jibun no rekishi: Sei-O bunka to watakushi no

ayunda michi,” Genso, 1:7 (October 1, 1947).

——, Shimbun, (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1928).
——, “Shizenbi to jinkobi,” in Nihon bunmei no to go” (1962).

Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita
shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Shokunin katagi” (1924). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan

senshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Tasusei to ryokokusei,” in Nihon bunmei no to go (1962).

Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita
shuppankai, 1970).

——, “Tenko” (1933). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 1

(Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969).

——, “Tetsugaki no nai bunmei koku,” in Nihon bunmei no to go (1962).

Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita
shuppankai, 1970).

134

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——, Ushinawareta Nihon: Nihon-teki kyoyo no dento (Tokyo:

Keiyusha, 1952).

——, “Ware ga gendai seiji ni okeru sekai-teki teiko” (1920). Reprinted

in Hasegawa Nyozekan senshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai,
1969).

——, “Warera kara Hihan e” (1930). Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan

senshu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1969).

——, “Watakushi ga tetsugaku o kataru,” Riso, vol. 65 (June 1, 1936).
——, “Watakushi no Igirisu-kan,” Arubiyon, 1:1 (June 1, 1949).
——, “Watakushi no joshiki tetsugaku,” (Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku,

1987).

——, et al., “Zadankai: Nihonjin o susumubeki michi,” Kaizo, 32:11

(October 1, 1951).

——, “Zoku Nihon-teki seikaku.” Reprinted in Hasegawa Nyozekan

senshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kurita shuppankai, 1970).

INTERVIEWS

Matsumoto Sannosuke, Professor of Japanese Political Science and

Intellectual History, Emeritus, Tokyo University, Tokyo, July,
1987.

Kenneth B. Pyle, Professor of Japanese History, University of

Washington, Seattle, June, 1991.

Tanaka Hiroshi, Professor of Political Science, Hitotsubashi

University, Tokyo, July, 1987.

Bibliography

135

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Akasaka, Seishichiro, 86
Akutagawa, Ryunosuke, 7
Ando Masazumi, 11
Asakura Bunzo, 113

Baba Tsunego, 23, 103
Barshay, Andrew, 22, 59, 61, 109
Bluestocking, 67
Bunka mondai kenkyukai, 22,

102, 103

Chekov, Antonin, 7
Chiang Kaishek, 86, 87
Chiba Kamekichi, 10, 11, 15

Dahrendorff, Ralf, 70
Darwin, Charles, 65
Dickens, Charles, 8

Engels, Friederich, 8
Fascism, (see also Nihon

fuashizumu hihan) 100, 113,
124

Ferri, Enrico, 8
Frazer, James, 12
Fukuzawa Yukichi, 8, 9, 25, 93

Gakugei juyu domei, 94
Gendai kokka hihan, 16,17, 19,

73–7, 94, 100, 102

Gendai shakai hihan, 16, 68,

73–7.

Hani Goro, 19
Hara Kei, 14, 59
Hatoyama Ichiro, 19, 93
Hegel, George, 64, 74, 75
Hihan, 3, 18, 20, 24, 38, 61, 84–8,

93, 96, 98, 99, 112, 125

Hirata Atsutane, 49, 50
Hiratsuka Raicho, 67
Hobbes, 63
Hobhouse, Leonard T., 12, 63–5,

Hook, Sidney, 25, 118
Hososaku Kanemitsu, 19, 94,

Hume, David, 8

Inukai Tsuyoshi, 59, 88,89
Ishibashi Tanzan, 21, 25, 63, 65
Ishii Tomoyuki, 19

Japan Education Reform

Committee, 24, 112,113

Kaji Ryuichi, 60
Katsura Taro, 12, 59
Kawakami Hajime, 13, 15
Kihara Hitoshii, 113
Kokumin gakujutsu kyokai, 23,

103

Konno Takeo, 19
Konoe Fumimaro, 22, 23
Koso Tsuyoshi, 17
Kropotkin, Peter, 7, 8, 16, 72

Index

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Kuga Katsunan, 2, 7–10, 35, 37,

“Jack,” 26
“Japanism”, 99, 100

Kaji Shinzo, 119
Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, 23, 103
Kokumin no tomo, 35
Kyoto Incident, 19
Kushida Tamizo, 13, 14
Kuwaki Genyoku, 23.

Lambroso, Cesare, 8
Locke, John, 63
Lytton Commission, 87

MacArthur, General Douglas A.,

110, 111, 114

Machiavelli, 63
Makino Eiichi, 23
Man versus the State (Herbert

Spencer) 65, 66

Manchukuo, 87
Manchurian Incident, 19, 34, 60,

61, 87, 88, 90, 100, 101

Maruyama Kanji, 10, 11, 14, 15,

17, 62, 69

Maruyama Masao, 3, 10, 11, 13,

15, 25, 75, 95

Marx, Karl, 8
Masamune Hakucho, 23.
Matsumoto Joji, 12, 18, 19, 20,

112

Matsumoto Sannosuke, 19, 71,

74, 94

Maupassant, 8
May Fifteenth Incident (1932),

88, 90

Miki Kiyoshi, 21, 22, 23, 63, 101,

102, 103

Mill, John Stuart, 6, 8, 63, 65
Minobe Ryokichi, 120
Minobe Tatsukichi, 73, 120

Minyusha, 35, 36, 66
Miyake Setsurei, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15,

37, 65, 66

Montesquieu, 63
Morito Tatsuo, 16, 17, 19, 72–3.
Motoori Norinaga, 21, 43, 48, 49,

Murayama Ryohei, 11, 12, 14, 69
Mussolini, Benito, 86, 100

Nabeyama Sadachika, 95, 96
Nakamura Keiu (Masanao) 6
National Character Studies (See

also Nihonteki seikaku), 3, 21,
22, 26, 34–52 passim,
99–104, 109, 113, 114,
118–20, 125

Natsume Soseki, 7, 11
Nichiren, 21
Nihon, 2, 7, 9, 10, 11
Nihon fuashizumu hihan, 3, 18,

19, 34, 38, 84, 87–92, 96, 99,
111, 113, 116, 125

Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, 10, 11, 62,

67, 124

Nihonjin, 3, 6, 10, 36
Nihonteki seikaku (See also

National Character Studies),
22, 39, 46, 50, 99, 102, 103,
114, 118

Nishida Kitaro, 23
Nishimura Tenshu, 12
Nisso bunka kyokai

(Japan–Soviet Cultural
Society), 18, 94

Occupation, 1, 3, 24, 25,

109–112, 114–6

Oka Kunio, 19
Onishi Toshio, 14, 68
Omori Isamu, 118
Osaka Asahi shimbun, 10–16, 38,

58, 60–2, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72,
87, 124, 125

138

Hasegawa Nyozekan and Liberalism in Modern Japan

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Osaka Asahi Incident, 69, 73
Ouchi Hyoe, 15, 25, 26, 72, 85,

120

Oya Soichi, 16, 25, 75, 125
Oyama Ikuo, 13–6; 20, 69, 70,

118

Ozaki Yukio, 59

Pyle, Kenneth B., 25, 60

Russell, Bertrand, 45
Russo–Japanese War, 13, 69, 93
Ryu Shintaro, 103

Saito Makoto, 89, 90
San Francisco Peace Treaty, 116
Sano Manabu, 95, 96
Seikyosha, 6, 25, 35, 36, 45, 46,

66, 99, 103, 110, 117, 120

Seiyukai, 59, 88
Shakai shiso, 18
Shiga Shigetaka, 8, 9, 36, 37
Shimanaka Yusaku, 23, 103
Shimazaki Toson, 103
Showa kenkyukai, 22, 101, 102
“Showa Restoration,” 89
Sino–Japanese War, 93
Smiles, Samuel, 6
Smith, Adam, 63
Sobieto tomo no kai, 18, 94
Spencer, Herbert, 8, 17, 63, 65,

66, 70, 76

Spinoza, 8
Suehiro Tetsucho, 8
Sugimura Takeshi, 58, 62
Sugiura Jugo, 6

Taiyo, 92
Takahashi Seiichiro, 23
Takayama Chogyu, 92
Takigawa Yukitoki, 19, 93, 98

Tanaka Giichi, 86, 87
Tanaka Hiroshi, 1, 5, 22, 61, 63,

65, 71, 95, 96

Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, 7
Tenko, 20, 95–9
Terauchi Masatake, 2, 13, 14, 59
Thackeray, 8
Tohen Katei, 12
Tokutomi Soho, 7,8,9, 25, 35, 66
Toqueville, 8, 42
Torii Sosen, 11, 12, 13, 69
Toyo keizai shimbun, 63
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 88

Tsuda Sokichi, 23
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 42

Uemura Tsune, 113
United States–Japan Mutual

Security Treaty, 117

Warera, 2, 15, 16, 18, 24, 38, 61,

62, 70, 71, 73, 74, 85, 86,
125

White, Morton, 25

Yamagata Aritomo, 118
Yamamoto Kako, 26, 120
Yamamoto Matsunosuke, 7
Yamaryo Kenji, 23, 39, 69, 103
Yasuda Shinzaburo, 113
Yomiuri shimbun, 20
Yoshino Sakuzo, 15
Yoshida Shigeru, 111
Yuibutsuron kenkyukai, (Society

for the Study of Materialism)
18, 23, 95, 98, 103

Zola, Emile, 8
Zhang Xueliang, 87
Zhang Zuolin, 60, 87

Index

139

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Document Outline

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Hasegawa Nyozekan
2 The Japanese National Character
3 Taisho Democracy
4 Fascism and the Path to War
5 Postwar Japan
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

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