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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).