Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the role of ideological competition with Christianity and liberal thought in the formation of national identity in the mid-Meiji period and its lasting impact through the thought of an understudied religious nationalist group, 'The Society of the Great Way.'

Paper long abstract:

Research on the social ideology of prominent interwar reform bureaucrats and military ideologues has often failed to fully recognize the seminal impact of pre-WWI debates on religion and social ethics which, in important instances, animated the thought of the Meiji-era thinkers who influenced interwar ideologues in their youths. This social ideology was underpinned not only by evolving attitudes to "Eastern Civilization," but also to a range of concepts highlighted in contradistinction to Western Christianity and liberalism. These included attempts at redefining 'rationality' and 'faith,' as well as the question of what system of values was most conducive to full human development. This contest occurred as a part of a globally entangled resistance to the perceived hegemony of Western cultural standards. The process in Japan resulted in new understandings of state-society relations and the role of the individual citizen/subject in national politics.

I argue that important strands of nationalist thought in Japan which emerged from the backlash against the Westernizing reforms and had an influence on East Asian developmentalist thought, was more than mere ideology. Ethnic nationalist conceptions of religion and politics were at the heart of concerted efforts to construct an alternative to Western liberal conceptions of self-cultivation within moral community, socio-political ethical ideals and capitalism. In order to clarify this argument, I will introduce the thought and political action of 'The Society of the Great Way' led by Buddhist nationalist Torio Koyata and this protégé, the Shinto nationalist Kawai Kiyomaru. I will then describe the continuity and discontinuity of these views after the WWI divide through the career of army general Hayashi Senjūrō, an ardent disciple of the 'The Society of the Great Way' before joining the military. Although his religious influences have gone unnoticed, Hayashi impacted Japanese history through his assistance of Ishiwara Kanji in the Manchurian Incident and sought to present the 'Kokutai no Hongi' as national orthodoxy as prime minister in 1937. I ultimately aim to show that even in the interwar period, leading nationalist ideologues were driven by the fundamental concern of carving out a space for personal development within national development.