Short Abstract

In 1882, Nakae Chōmin translated Rousseau’s Social Contract into kanbun, rendering Rousseau’s juridical arguments using the moral and emotional vocabulary of Mencius. This work was a call to recover democracy in its Confucian past and an act of resistance to Japan’s wholesale Westernization.

Long Abstract

In 1882, Nakae Chōmin, leader of Japan’s pro-democracy movement, translated Rousseau’s Social Contract into kanbun, “importing” popular rights to Japan. Referring to the galvanizing impact his Rousseau translation had on youth, Itagaki Taisuke, leader of the Liberal Party, later wrote: “He aroused the enthusiasm of his students with his attacks on the aristocracy and criticism of the division of society into classes, so that his fame, rising like a winged horse into the sky, drew many young men attracted by his thinking to his school.” His translation was avidly read by political reformists and revolutionaries in both Japan and China, earning him the sobriquet of “Rousseau of the Orient.” However, this work can hardly be counted a “translation” in the modern sense since it is only a third of the source work and used the moral and emotional vocabulary and framework from Mencius to render Rousseau's juridical arguments.

In my paper, I complicate the notion that Chōmin “imported” democracy to Japan by examining both text and context. He always insisted that “democracy”, never a monopoly of the West, had existed in ancient China. Just as Plato held that learning is the recollection (anamnesis) of innate knowledge, not the acquisition of new knowledge, Chōmin held that the concept of democracy existed long ago but could be retrieved and recalled. Secondly, Chōmin is a prime example of the continued vibrancy and relevance of Sinitic culture in Japan in the Meiji period. He continued to study classical Chinese throughout his life, but he also used it to write and translate works of Western philosophy. Lastly, Chōmin’s thought was shaped by the world in which he lived during the bakumatsu and early Meiji periods. The semi-colonial position of Japan in the global order of the late 19th century, known in Western historiography as the Treaty Port System, had a decisive and formative impact on his writings. I will, accordingly, propose a new interpretation of his intellectual trajectory by examining them through a post-colonial framework.