Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I will analyse the writings of Nakae Chomin (1847-1901), known as the "Rousseau of the Orient", to reconsider the Japanese Enlightenment in the Meiji period.

Paper long abstract:

Enlightenment thinkers such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Kato Hiroyuki, Mori Arinori and Nishi Amane, known as members of Meirokusha, played a crucial role in the modernization of Japan. While it is true that the members of the Meirokusha were main figures in the Japanese Enlightenment, it is important to note that most of them were government officials who devoted themselves to promote the policy of the Japanese government. In The Space of Representation in the Meiji Era (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2014), Matsuura Hisaki argues that the Enlightenment thinkers in the Meiji period exercised the "public" use of reason in journals like Meiroku Zasshi, while they could not overcome the limited status of "private" use of reason as government officials, to put it in Kant's words (What is Enlightenment?). From this perspective, Matsuura continues, Nakae Chomin is an exceptional thinker for he was expelled from Tokyo in 1887 by the Meiji government because of his engagement to the social movements.

Speaking of his texts, Nakae's works such as A Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government (1887; translated by Nobuko Tsukui, Boston: Weatherhill, 1992) has a totally different style from that of Meirokusha thinkers such as Fukuzawa. Nakae was not an author who analyzes political issues straightforwardly like Meirokusha thinkers, but instead employed various kinds of "parody" to criticize the Meiji government. He sometimes published essays using a false name or employing a style of play. In A Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government, Nakae implicitly satirized imperialism under the guise of three different characters. Such a style is also apparent when we read The World of New People (1888), a text which tries to overturn the hierarchy of "people" (heimin) and "new people" (shinmin), satirizing the policy of "equality of people" (shiminbyodo) by Meiji government. Through examining these texts, I shall show the rhetoric of parody by Nakae Chomin and thus highlight another aspect of the Japanese Enlightenment.