Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
This report aims to clarify whether communism itself was the target of Japan's governing elite's vigilance during the Cold War, by focusing on Seki Itaru, a legal bureaucrat who played a key role in the drafting of legislation about thought control and tracing his perception of communism.
Paper long abstract
In postwar Japan, freed from legal taboos regarding communism, intellectuals and young people had high hopes for communism, while the ruling class grew increasingly concerned about it. Previous research has concluded that this growing expectation and vigilance regarding communism, coupled with the onset of the Cold War, became a new characteristic of postwar Japanese politics. However, recent research has questioned whether this conflict was truly about communism. According to Masuda Hajime, postwar social conflict over communism was merely a different manifestation of the prewar binary opposition between liberalism and tightening regarding the ideal form of society. Following the shock of the Korean War, this binary opposition was socially restructured and came to be represented as one surrounding communism. While this hypothesis is suggestive, no empirical investigation has examined whether it also applies to the governing elite, such as conservative politicians and public security bureaucrats, who are said to have been wary of communism from an early stage. This report aims to clarify whether communism itself was the target of Japan's governing elite's vigilance during the early Cold War, and whether that target changed over time.
As a case study, this report focuses on Seki Itaru, a legal bureaucrat who played a key role in the drafting of legislation relating to thought control in Japan during the early Cold War. This report traces the changes in his perception of communism and how these changes were reflected in the legislation. The evolution of his thoughts and work as he put the targets of regulation into legal text provides clues to understanding what the governing elite were truly wary of and what they wished to restrict through legislation. This report also systematically analyzes his personal documents, which were only recently released in Japan's public archives but have rarely been used. Through this work, this report shows that although the governing elite felt threatened by communism from the beginning of the postwar era, they may have changed the target of regulation from communism to violent behavior, taking into account the binary opposition that had existed since before the war.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed): | 共産主義に関する法的タブーから解放された戦後日本では、知識人や若者が共産主義に期待する一方、支配層は共産主義への危機感を高めた。一方近年の研究は、こうした共産主義をめぐる期待と警戒の高まりが本当に共産主義をめぐるものだったのか問い直している。益田肇によれば、戦後の共産主義をめぐる社会的対立は社会のあるべき姿をめぐる解放と引き締めという戦前以来の二項対立が形を変えて現れたものにすぎず、1950年に勃発した朝鮮戦争の衝撃を受けて初めて共産主義をめぐるものとして表象されるようになったという。この仮説は示唆的である一方、保守系の政治家や治安問題関係の官僚といった、早い段階から共産主義への警戒感を持っていたとされる統治エリートにも当てはまるのか実証的に検討されたわけではない。そのため本報告は、冷戦初期日本の統治エリートが警戒していた対象が共産主義そのものだったのか、またその対象は時代とともに変化したのか明らかにすることを目的とする。 そのケーススタディとして本報告が注目するのは、冷戦初期日本で思想統制関係の法令の作成を主導した法制官僚、関之である。本報告は、共産主義に対する彼の受け止め方がどのような変遷をたどったのか、その変遷がどのように法案へと反映されたのか追跡する。規制する対象を法文として言語化していく彼の思想と作業の変遷は、統治エリートが真に警戒し、法的に規制したいと願ったものを理解する手がかりとなる。この報告はまた、近年日本の公文書館で公開されながらもほとんど使用されてこなかった彼の個人史料を体系的に分析する。以上の作業を通じ、本報告では統治エリートは終戦当初から共産主義に脅威を感じていたものの、戦前以来の二項対立に配慮し、規制する対象を共産主義ではなく暴力主義的行動へと変えていった可能性を示す。 |
Reconsidering Japan's Approaches to the Cold War