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Paper short abstract

Oka Asajirō (1868–1944) was a zoologist who nevertheless authored extensive critiques on social issues. My paper focuses on Oka's essay "From Monkey Troop to Republic" (1924), examining the originality of his work and its position within the intellectual climate following the First World War.

Paper long abstract

Oka Asajirō (1868–1944) was a zoologist who studied embryology and genetics in Germany at the end of the 19th century, specialising in invertebrates. As a professor at Tokyo Higher Normal School, he played a significant role in designing the biology curricula in secondary education. He was also known for developing artificial languages and promoting Esperanto. Oka published books aimed at the general reader to disseminate Darwin's theory of evolution, and, despite not being a specialist in sociology or politics, authored wide-ranging critiques of social issues in journals and newspapers. The breadth of his influence is evident from the high regard by socialists such as Ōsugi Sakae, radical nationalist Kita Ikki's harsh criticism of Oka’s Lectures on Evolutionary Theory (1904), and the fact that Sasaki Takayuki, a conservative politician close to Emperor Meiji, published an essay expressing both approval and criticism.

My paper focuses on Oka's essay “From Monkey Troop to Republic” (1924) and the book of the same name (1926), which centered on this piece. Using the term “republic” in a book title during this period, coinciding with the enactment of the Peace Preservation Law, was unusual and even politically perilous. Oka conceives of the collective national entity as a type of “biological organization”. This organization evolves or degenerates according to its fitness to circumstances. He contrasted monarchical and republican forms of government, capitalist competition and communal mutual aid, elite rule and mass action, arguing that these differences represented distinct strategies adopted by the organic body of the nation to adapt to its environment. According to Oka, these strategic differences were reflected in the diversity of political systems, in competition and cooperation among members, and in the relationship between leaders and followers.

I aim to clarify the distinctive character of Oka compared to other Japanese political and social theorists, and to consider the impact of social commentary by a scientist in the post-First World War period.

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Paper short abstract

This paper proposes that Miyatake’s Minponshugi was in fact a working out of an intensifying tension between the validity of individual desires and aspirations and the prerogatives of state and Emperor, thereby exploring the proper relationship between the individual and the state.

Paper long abstract

Miyatake Gaikotsu (1867 – 1955) was renowned for his satirical and anti-establishment publications but after the success of Kokkei Shimbun he published on topics that dealt with issues related to highly individually personal matters such as gender identity. He also began to clarify his stance in relation to contemporary anarchism and socialism. After initially joining forces with Kōtoku Shūsui and Sakai Toshihiko to support their Heiminshugi with the Heimin Shimbun, he developed a more nuanced interest in participatory politics through his association with the Minponshugi (lit. “People-based” Democracy) of Yoshino Sakuzō.

This paper aims to contextualize the shift to Minponshugi in relation to Miyatake’s earlier intellectual development and public engagement while also locating his output within contemporary currents of public discourse. The paper focuses on Miyatake’s writings on individual, society, nation and state at the end of World War One, particularly the attempt to found a new magazine Minponshugi (lit. “People-based” Democracy) in 1919. Apart from contributions by prominent opinion leaders like Miyake Setsurei and Niitobe Inazō, it included a declaration from the Minpontō political party which called for a reconstruction of the relation between the people and the sovereign.

It is proposed that Miyatake’s conception of Minponshugi was in fact a working out of an intensifying tension between the validity of individual desires and aspirations and the prerogatives of state and Emperor. Miyatake had long held a fundamental distrust of the political elite, along with a distaste for distinctions based on status. The Emperor himself was a mortal human just as anyone else (indeed Miyatake would go further – the Emperor was a human with sexual desires and predilections just as anybody else). Minponshugi, in Miyatake’s take on it, articulated an attempt to clarify the proper relationship between the individual and the state based on a universality of humanity, in a society that did not treat the ruled as an interminably exploitable resource for the grand aims of Empire.

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Paper short abstract

This paper analyses the ideas on the relations between individual, society, nation and state of prominent opinion leaders Yoshino Sakuzō and Sugimori Kōjirō in the interwar years. They saw a crucial role for the well-educated individual (jinkakusha) but gave it a completely different content.

Paper long abstract

As in the democratic tide at the end of WW1 the entities of ‘the nation’ (kokumin) and ‘the ethnic nation’ (minzoku) took on a central position in the discourse on national politics and international relations, and not long after the discourse was swayed by ‘the discovery of (civil) society’ (shakai no hakken), many opinion leaders endeavoured to newly construct the relations between individual, society, nation and state.

This paper will focus on two very prominent opinion leaders of the interwar period. First of all, famous publicist and political scientist Yoshino Sakuzō (1878-1933), who is regarded as the figurehead of Japan’s prewar ‘Taisho Democracy’ and the most prominent advocate of the related minponshugi (‘people-based democracy’). And next the nowadays forgotten but in his day very influential philosopher and social scientist Sugimori Kōjirō (1881-1961), who most likely coined the term 'shakai no hakken', which in hindsight is often seen as central to the Japan of the 1920s.

On the basis of close reading of hundreds of articles and books from the whole interwar period by Yoshino and Sugimori, models are created of how individual, society, nation and state interlinked for these two publicists. These models at first show many similarities, but from the late 1920s onwards become fundamentally different structures. For me this reflects the fundamental differences in other fields I analysed previously, and make that I see a distinction between a Taishō generation and an Early-Showa generation of opinion leaders.

There will be special attention for the position of the jinkakusha, the well-educated ‘man of character’ whom they both regarded as the central pivot in the relations between the masses, society, nation and state, and whom they considered crucial for progress. However, also in the content of this function we find a fundamental difference between the notion of a man who primarily serves others (Yoshino) and the notion of a man who primarily leads others (Sugimori).