Return to the Womb

Beginning in the year 1933 the reel of Nyozekan's life seems to turn back on itself and begin to unwind. After this point, Nyozekan repudiated any associations that could possibly link him, in official minds, with the illegal Communist Party. The rhetoric of class struggle drops away from his texts, to be replaced, within two years at most, by that of national integration and communitarian harmony. Themes of remembered childhood and youth reemerge in his writing (he had in fact begun to publish a serial autobiography as early as 1921).^[185] The seimeitai re-

asserted itself. Nyozekan, in short, "returned to Japan." But this time the cause of the state was the cause of the life-world. The two, once separate, were now bound together in Nyozekan's thinking as Japan moved closer and closer to war.

This thumbnail sketch, though it captures the salient features of Nyozekan's reorientation after 1933, still does not explain very much. We may not accept the judgment of Yamaryo^[*] Kenji, the senior scholar of Nyozekan's work, that Hasegawa Nyozekan "committed" tenko^[*] after 1933. But it is impossible to dispute the reorientation, or its comprehensibility in the context of Nyozekan's own experience. In "returning to Japan," he at least was returning to a world he professed to have known in reality. Yamaryo^[*] was not perverse in describing Nyozekan's tenko as a nashikuzushi no tenko^[*] : tenko on the installment plan; deliberated tenko ; tenko sans crisis. One problem comes immediately to mind, however. Yamaryo seems to begin with a postwar concept of tenko that has two implications: betrayal of the left (in practical terms, the Communist Party) sometime before 1945, and (what is crucial but left unstated) a second "reorientation" to the left, at least in the sense of a selfcritical examination of the first tenko , after 1945. Room for argument about Nyozekan's change of position after 1933 does exist. On the second point, not so much. Nyozekan made no return to the left that even approximated his position up to 1933. These questions aside, it seems to me that Yamaryo so tailors the category to fit his client that his argument is reduced to a tautology. Nyozekan's tenko equals Nyozekan's experience defined as tenko . I feel it is better to examine Nyozekan's thinking after 1933 without recourse to the postwar use of the term. Instead, let us for now take as a point of departure an observation made by the Polish historian Andrzej Walicki apropos of Tolstoy's spiritual crisis and "sudden change" in the late 1870s: "In sum, we may say that whereas [this crisis] was only a stage in the evolution of Tolstoy's ideas , it did mark a real turning point in his life ."^[186]

At what point did the pressure of his situation on his ideas and vice versa compel a conscious change in Nyozekan's life? What ideas? What sort of change? And how did this change react in turn on his ideas?

Hihan , the successor to Warera , was short-lived. Its last issue appeared on 1 February 1934. At that point, Nyozekan's reorientation was still in its initial stage—that of cutting old ties. With Hihan no longer being published, Nyozekan gave up the means he had employed since 1919 of making his criticisms heard on as close to his own terms

as possible. Thenceforth he would publish frequently (until late in the war), but now mainly in the mass circulation dailies, especially the Yomiuri , and in books. Still, demand for his essays and Zeitkritik remained, and Nyozekan published in such "highbrow" monthlies as Bungei shunju^[*] and Shiso^[*] , as before in high-powered opinion journals like Chuo koron^[*] and Kaizo^[*] , and later in Nihon hyoron^[*] .^[187] Unlike a number of well-known liberals of the 1930s and early 1940s, Nyozekan never chose to publish a purely personal "mini-journal."^[188] He continued to speak in public on panels, gave lectures, made addresses, and so forth. In point of fact, 1934 as compared to the previous year was spent in relative silence and privacy, with the exception of a short daily column in the Yomiuri . When Nyozekan began to resume a more typical public life, it was clear that the "critical period" was over.

Its last years had been marked by impeccable progressive politics. In September 1931 Nyozekan had been named chairman of the Sovieto Tomo no Kai (Friends of the Soviet Union) at the time of its reorganization into the Nisso Bunka Kyokai^[*] (Japan-Soviet Cultural Society).^[189] His article in the December Hihan on the Manchurian Incident prompted the authorities to ban the issue on the grounds that it subverted public order. The May 1932 issue of Hihan was banned for "suggestions of antimilitary and antiwar sentiment." In September and October of that year, Nyozekan presided over the founding and organizational meetings of the Yuibutsuron Kenkyukai^[*] (Society for the Study of Materialism), or Yuiken, and he continued as chairman—some say as a figurehead—for a brief period.

Early 1933 brought the deaths of Sakai Toshihiko and Yoshino Sakuzo^[*] , and the murder by police of the proletarian writer Kobayashi Takiji. In May Nyozekan, at the urging of the critic Nii Itaru, joined the philosophers Miki Kiyoshi and Tanabe Koichi^[*] in founding a group to protest the burning of books throughout Germany under the aegis of the newly installed Nazi government. The next month Nyozekan joined some three hundred artists and literary figures at an anti-Nazi protest meeting. He was among the organizers, also, of the antifascist Gakugei Jiyu Domei^[*] (Arts and Sciences Freedom League). And so on: in short, Nyozekan at fifty-eight was one of the grand old men of the interi who lent their names, energy, and sympathy to the antifascist movement on the Japanese left.

But it was Nyozekan's association with Yuiken and the remaining micro-organizations associated with the JCP that figure more closely in

his ostensible tenko^[*] . We have already mentioned his chairmanship of Yuiken. In the eyes of the Home Ministry the organization (which had an initial membership of about forty) was designed to "contribute to the expansion and strengthening of the Japanese Communist Party and the Comintern." Thus the claim of its chairman that it was "purely scholarly" in its concern for materialism was "deeply suspect" and the organization's movements were needful of the authorities' "closest attention." This Yuiken received. It is worth noting that the Marxist philosopher Kozai Yoshishige, a Yuiken and Party member, considers that by the time of Yuiken's founding, the Party had been so decimated that it had neither the personnel nor the organization to support the luxury of a "cultural policy." "The Party did agree," however, "that such an organization was necessary," and Communists such as Tosaka Jun and Hattori Shiso^[*] were indeed among Yuiken's founders and driving figures. Still, Nyozekan was undoubtedly sincere in his statement that the society's study of materialism was meant to be purely scientific. But it was not long before ideological disputes arose, even among the Communists themselves. These were serious enough that non-Marxist members such as Nyozekan ("I don't really 'get' Marxism. Especially dialectical materialism: that I can't swallow whole."),^[190] and unorthodox Marxists like Miki soon felt alienated. Despite Tosaka Jun's "asceticism"—his efforts to preserve Yuiken's intellectual autonomy and hence ensure its survival—the organization was so split internally, and police harassment so severe, that it became insupportable. It is difficult to say what Nyozekan's contribution to Yuiken was exactly, apart from the figurehead value of his name, and possibly a role as gadfly; he was, after all, a materialist of a kind. The society's genuine advances in the dissection of Japanese ideology and in formulating a Marxist theory of technology cannot be denied. But since Nyozekan's direct involvement in the theoretical debates seems to have been slight, we shall, regretfully, pass over them here. Yuiken disbanded voluntarily in 1938, just as "academic Marxists" such as Ouchi Hyoe^[*] , Arisawa Hiromi, and Wakimura Yoshitaro^[*] found themselves arrested and headed for prison in the second "Popular Front" incident in February of that year. Nyozekan, of course, along with Miki and many others (whose names will soon reappear) had long since ceased to have any association with Yuiken.^[191]

One indication of the atmosphere in which Yuiken operated from the beginning ought to suffice. In March 1933 Nyozekan spoke at a public lecture meeting called to commemorate Yuiken's founding six months

earlier. Held at the Bukkyo Seinenkan^[*] (Buddhist Youth Hall) in Hongo^[*] , the meeting was attended by a number of university and higher school students. One of these was Maruyama Masao:

I was just finishing my sophomore year at Ichiko^[*] , and went to the meeting from my dormitory. Hasegawa Nyozekan, who was chairman of the society, addressed the gathering. He began with a statement of Yuiken's purpose as an organization. "[The members of Yuiken] strive constantly to undertake the scholarly study of materialism, and as such neither take any political action nor hold to any fixed political purpose." What he said—or more accurately tried to say—next is interesting. "Rather it seems these days that it is those who speak from 'idealist' or 'spiritual' standpoints that have taken on a distinct political coloring—." The instant Mr. Hasegawa delivered himself of this statement, the commander of the Motofuji Police Station, who had been seated, in uniform, to the left of the rostrum, picked up the sword he had propped between his legs, and pounding it on the floor, shouted that the meeting was over. At the same moment a contingent of chin-strapped police—there were so many of them you had to wonder where they had all come from—rose abruptly from their seats scattered throughout the hall, and glowered at the audience. The commander strode up to the rostrum, moved Mr. Hasegawa aside, and in severe tones declared, "I hereby order this assembly to disperse." People were stunned; the meeting had barely gotten under way! Still they had little choice but to make their way to the exit. As they streamed out, plainclothes officers of the Special Higher Police [Tokko^[*] ] who had been waiting there for them began to direct the police in making arrests. "Take this man. That one." I had the honor at this time of being pointed out for arrest.^[192]

The second half of 1933 brought the tenko^[*] declarations of Sano Manabu and Nabeyama Sadachika. The Party, already laboring under the direction of a Comintern that "understood nothing of conditions in Japan,"^[193] now lost its domestic leadership. The "moderate" 1927 theses of Bukharin had been superseded in 1932 by new theses that, while reaffirming the need for a bourgeois democratic revolution first (the tennosei^[*] , in other words, was acknowledged to be "absolutist"), also prescribed illegal methods as the key to shaking the imperialist regime. Remember that the USSR's heightened fears of a Japanese threat in the wake of the occupation of Manchuria were being translated into the Comintern's instructions to its client Party. And, as E. H. Carr points out, while direct communication between the Comintern and the "struggling rump" of the JCP was virtually nil after 1933, the 1932 theses had been widely disseminated. The stand members of the left took on the issue of legality versus illegality of Party methods was thus a key indication of allegiance in the eyes of both the Party and the police. The

issue had come to a head in the Omori^[*] Bank Robbery Incident of 6 October 1932. Three khaki-clad Party members—initially thought to be army officers—stole 32,000 yen from the Kawasaki Daiichi Bank in a desperate attempt to obtain funds for Party operations. (The plan was unknown to all but one member of the Central Committee.) The robbery "badly discredited the . . . Party in the eyes of the public and seriously damaged its prestige among its own members," notably Sano Manabu. The government took full advantage of the incident and subsequent trial to portray the Party as a nest of gangsters. Beginning that same October, and continuing throughout 1933, police arrested the leadership, displaying stunning brutality in the treatment of its prisoners. By fall 1934 the authorities had demolished the Party's professional revolutionary core^[194] and were free to concentrate on theoreticians, and, increasingly, on non-Marxist sympathizers. Noro Eitaro^[*] (an example of the former) was a leading Kozaha^[*] theorist and historian who had been the guiding figure in the debates on Japanese capitalism during these years. He was arrested at the end of November 1933, and died in custody the following February. He was thirty-four.

This was the situation when Nyozekan's number came up. One morning during the same week in November, Nyozekan was taken in custody to the Nakano Police Station (he had moved to Nakano from Yotsuya in 1926). There he was interrogated by a detective dispatched by the Tokko^[*] for that purpose. Nyozekan was suspected of having paid, through Hososaro Kanemitsu (former chairman of the Ronoto^[*] ) some hundred yen to MOPR (Mezhdunarodnaya Organizatsiya Pomoshchi Revolutsioneram)—International Red Aid.^[195] Blankets and personal belongings were brought. Nyozekan was released sometime after midnight. The major papers carried the story of the arrest, since Nyozekan (according to the Tokyo Nichinchi ) was a "central figure" in Yuiken. Other arrests of Yuiken associates followed: Funaki Shigenobu, Oya Soichi^[*] , Tosaka Jun, Kaji Ryuichi^[*] , Oka Kunio. Thus it was not Nyozekan the individual, not the liberal, but the Yuiken associate and "communist sympathizer" whose activities the authorities sought to interdict.^[196]

The details of the Tokko's investigation, which concluded some three weeks later, are unavailable. But the result was public. On 15 December the Tokyo Nichinichi announced: "All Suspicions Cleared Up: Nyozekan Quietly Tells His Story."

I have always respected the law. In the past I have acted, and [I] expect to continue to act in the future, in accordance with my motto: Never break the law. If you break it, pay the penalty. Of course, being human I cannot guar-

antee that I will never break the law, but if I did I would never ask the authorities to look the other way. I would be prepared to accept a fair judgment. As a social critic I could not preserve my critical conscience without an attitude toward daily life of an almost too rigorous self-regulation. These days society has grown altogether too lax. People seem to make no effort to apply discipline in their actions. So it happens that even opponents of the Communist Party tend to find themselves playing the role of sympathizer. For the sake of ideology [shugi ], friend leads friend into error; the young deceive those who came before them. Outrageous behavior of this sort has grown all too common. What will become of our society if friends can no longer trust each other and neighbors come to suspect one another? We Japanese still enjoy cohesion as a people, but will we be able to [continue to do so] the way things are going? This is a fundamental problem, greater than that of the Party or any other issue! Where does responsibility lie for this state of affairs? It lies in particular with the flaws in our moral education up to the present. This is what thinking people [shikisha ] ought to pay heed to.^[197]

It is hard not to smile at this statement. Here is Nyozekan the "elder" blaming the system for his being trapped into "playing the role" of communist sympathizer—not that this was the real issue, of course. One wonders who is accusing whom. The statement is characteristic in its indirection, its deflection of responsibility. Nyozekan was anxious to portray his action as that of a generalized subject (I the people?), responding to institutional ills: the state pounding its mailed fist, the Party forcing its adherents to degrade human ties in the name of ideology. Nevertheless, the statement does mark a turning point in Nyozekan's life. Despite its artfulness, the statement contains a clear repudiation of the illegal JCP and its methods and purpose. Nyozekan's declaration of fidelity to the law was, I believe, sincere. He was not bending over backward completely, though he did wish to mollify the police. He owed nothing to the Party—quite the contrary. And his long-standing doubts about vanguard activity were a matter of record. In any case, Nyozekan's memberships in leftist organizations lapsed. A planned contribution to the Nihon shihonshugi hattatsushi koza^[*] (Lectures on the history of the development of Japanese capitalism, 1932)—on the influence of the Restoration on later social thought—was left unrealized.^[198] At the same time, Nyozekan did not embrace the official Japanism. He wrote no selfcriticism beyond the statement quoted above. Most important, he never denounced his associates. All in all, one may say that Nyozekan, at the moment of his arrest, faced an unappetizing choice: cut loose from any association with illegality, make a feint to the right, or not play the public game at all. But was it possible to make a mere "feint" to the right?

Is Yamaryo^[*] correct in saying that public repudiation of the JCP was, psychologically and symbolically, a permanently debilitating blow to Nyozekan's critical capacity? As of late 1933—early 1934, it was still impossible to say. But one can agree with Yamaryo that Nyozekan did make a "proto"-tenko^[*] , in the sense that his renunciation of the left was permanent. The ties were cut.

But as Yamaryo himself points out, Nyozekan's reorientation was a drawn-out process. And obviously no single text can stand as "proof" of tenko (assuming that one accepts the implied problematic). It is rather a question of a total life-text. Let us approach the matter from a different angle. How did Nyozekan understand the concept of tenko at the time? What sort of process did he think it was? Now admittedly, with his tendency to generalize the subject, it is sometimes difficult to tell where "Nyozekan" begins and ends. When is it legitimate to infer that he is referring (obliquely) to himself and his convictions? Always? Never?

The July 1933 issue of Hihan contained a collection of short "selftributes" to the journal from its writer-readership. In large part they lionized Nyozekan himself. As one contributor put it, he was "an oasis in a time of emergency," a bastion of sanity, critical sense, and so on. In the same issue, Nyozekan published a mini-essay on the subject of tenko (this in the aftermath of the Sano-Nabeyama bombshell). Here Nyozekan argues that nations, not individuals, undergo tenko : the entire history of Japan is a series of tenko , necessary steps back prior to a vault forward. Note where Nyozekan lays the stress. While he sees clearly that tenko represents a drawing back (as of a bow string), his interest lies with the vault forward that ultimately results from tenko . Thus, the importation by the Soga of continental systems of thought and government for "Westernization" that later culminated in the Taika Reforms had been preceded by the Shintoist reaction of the Mononobe to the introduction of Buddhism. The efflorescence of the early Meiji period had been preceded and made possible by the sonno joi^[*] movement. Proposals for a modern constitutional system came only after the defeat of reaction in the 1873 debate over whether to "chastize" Korea—and from within the defeated party. These three movements, each of vital importance in the nation's history, represent three tenko . And now after the invasion of Manchuria, another was at hand:

The Japanese capitalist form of state, now approaching completion [kansei ] has in this worldwide final phase [of capitalism] arrived at the point where to

support itself it must make a further capitalist leap. This has, as was to be expected, required an "anticapitalist" reaction. The present-day Mononobe have not been content to insist that all images of Buddha be cast into the canals of Naniwa. They have taken up arms themselves [gunjiteki seiryoku o katsudo^[*] seshimeta ].

Will the history of Japanese capitalism, with this reaction, now shrink back into feudalism, or will it by a "turnabout" [tenko^[*] ] to imperialism make a great leap forward? The matter is now "under consideration."^[199]

Leaving aside the particular, and pressing, question Nyozekan is addressing here, let us note again the key point in his concept of tenko The main thing is not to look back at what has been renounced, but ac the—partly unintended—progressive consequences. "The significance of conservatism," Nyozekan had written many years earlier, "lies in the fact that it creates the primary condition for progress." His argument about tenko is a refinement of this position.

Let us now take a leaf from Nyozekan's book and "degeneralize" the subject from nation to individual: Nyozekan had, after all, argued that the interi were fully conscious of their social role. They must, then, be prepared to take a stand. If Nyozekan left the left behind, to what "reaction" did he ally himself? And if that alliance was to serve as pressure on the springboard to progress, what sort of progress did he envision?

The "reaction," it is fair to say, was the cause of the seimeitai , the unpolitical world of everyday life. Nyozekan for a time stepped back from the explicitly public world. He signaled this opting out with a translation, in the final issue of Hihan , of a telling passage from the Analects :

Tzu-lu, Tseng Hsi, Jan Yu, and Kung-hsi Hua were in attendance. Confucius said, "You think that I am a day or two older than you are. But do not think so. At present you are out of office and think that you are denied recognition. Suppose you were given recognition. What would you prefer?" Tzu-lu promptly replied, "Suppose there is a state of a thousand chariots, hemmed in by great powers, in addition invaded by armies, and as a result drought and famine prevail. Let me administer that state. In three years' time I can endow the people with courage and furthermore enable them to know the correct principles." Confucius smiled at him as if flattered.

"Ch'iu, how about you?" Jan Yu replied, "Suppose there is a state the sides of which are sixty or seventy li wide, or of fifty or sixty li . Let me administer that state. In three years' time I can enable the people to be sufficient in their livelihood. As to the promotion of ceremonies and music, however, I shall have to wait for the superior man."

"How about you, Ch'ih?" Kung-hsi Hua replied, "I do not say I can do it but I should like to learn to do so. At the services of the royal ancestral

temple, and at the conferences of the feudal lords, I should like to wear the dark robe and black cap [symbols of correctness] and be a junior assistant."

[Turning to Tseng Hsi,] Confucius said, "How about you, Tien?" Tseng Hsi was then softly playing the zither. With a bang he laid down the instrument, rose, and said, "My wishes are different from what the gentlemen want to do." Confucius said, "What harm is there? After all, we want each to tell his ambition." Tseng Hsi said, "In the late spring, when the spring dress is ready, I would like to go with five or six grownups and six or seven young boys to bathe in the I river, enjoy the breeze on the Rain Dance Altar, and then return home singing." Confucius heaved a sigh and said, "I agree with Tien."^[200]

This was not mere nostalgia. Nyozekan was tired. It must not be forgotten that he had spent the years since 1918 in a running battle with censors, police, and financial ruin. Despite all the efforts of Warera and Hihan , of the dissident interi , the forces of armed reaction at home and abroad seemed everywhere to have triumphed. The philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, with whom Nyozekan was soon to be associated in new circumstances, described the situation in contemporary terms: "Those who have been crushed by the political pressure of the fascism now current withdraw from reality and return to themselves. Just as a man, after enduring the struggle that is city life, returns beaten and wounded, fed up and weary, even disconsolate, to his home village."^[201] But "home" for Nyozekan no longer meant Fukagawa or Tokyo. He had so thoroughly generalized himself that "home" meant Japan itself. Nyozekan the public man returned to a public womb: he immersed himself in cultural studies. The shift from "criticism"—read dissent—was decisive. It was also latent. Nyozekan was, of course, conscious of the change, remarking that he felt as if a "great rock" long hidden from view had been uncovered.^[202] Indeed, no one so long under the influence of Seikyosha^[*] thinking could have failed to form an intense concern for an integrated national character and identity. Nyozekan's earliest sensibilities (as he later portrayed them) were colored by chronological and geographical out-of-jointedness; and nothing makes for an acute sense of identity like standing "alone together." In short, Nyozekan's "return to Japan" was personally authentic. Recall his huffy defense against accusations of arrivisme : "My preference for things Japanese is not new."

Its personal genuineness does not mean that Nyozekan's embrace of "home" was unproblematic. He could hardly accept the monopoly on national identity claimed by "idealists" and "spiritualists." His contempt for those who capitalized on Japaneseness for purposes of political reaction never abated. This much is implicit in the major expression

of Nyozekan's reflections on the national character, Nihonteki seikaku , a collection of essays written between 1935 and 1938 and published in that year by Iwanami. The work was clearly meant to be controversial, and, coincidentally or not, sold 112,000 copies by 1941. (To this we might contrast the 5,000 copies sold of the first [1942] printing of Nanbara's Kokka to shukyo^[*] . The latter figure, however, represents the total available at a time when paper was in exceedingly short supply, especially for academic books. Nanbara's work, in any event, was a sellout, and it appeared in at least three postwar editions.)

The Japanese national character depicted in Nihonteki seikaku , while dynamic and evolving, still manifested certain traits conspicuous for their "modernity": realism, pragmatism, restraint, rationalism (not abstractionism), and tolerance. Futhermore, Nyozekan argues, in each period of Japanese history, constructive popular energy has been the dynamic force in the growth of culture. For this popular life, the imperial institution has been, until modern times, virtually irrelevant.^[203] In 1938 Nyozekan chooses to imply this irrelevance through omission rather than declare it openly. But it is not hard to find more explicit hints at the point in his earlier writings: his debunking, for example, of patriotism in the Critique of Modern Society , or the treatment of kokutai in the Critique of Japanese Fascism . It is this aspect of Nyozekan's exploration of the national character that has led some critics to reject Yamaryo^[*] Kenji's thesis that Nyozekan "committed" tenko^[*] . Iida Taizo^[*] , for example, finds in Nyozekan's public valorization of a "stateless" Japanese society a valid expression of "resistance" to the overweening presence of bureaucracy and military power. He suggests further that this tendency in Nyozekan's thought can be traced back to the period immediately following the Kanto earthquake. The mob violence and massacre of Koreans in Tokyo and Yokohama came as a deep shock and disillusionment to Nyozekan. The disillusionment and shock were double: the violence was the work of everyday people, and the government did nothing to prevent it, in fact took advantage of it in order to murder a number of socialists and anarchists. But, rather than convincing Nyozekan of the need for a genuine social revolution, the terror drove him to idealization of a free and natural communitas uncorrupted by tribalism and the will to power. However, as Iida stresses, the change was gradual and revealed itself only in subtle ways. And it certainly did not lead Nyozekan into apoliticism.^[204]

So far, so good. But how long could this "passive" resistance last? Had not Nyozekan, through his audacious choice of problem, made

himself vulnerable to those forces he sought to counteract? Nyozekan's choice of problem, as Yamaryo^[*] says, is a problem in itself. Yamaryo cannot have meant that the choice of "Japan" was ipso facto a problem: The work of Tosaka Jun (Nihon ideorogii ron , 1937); Nagata Hiroshi, ( Nihon hokensei^[*] ideorogii and Nihon tetsugaku shisoshi^[*] , both published in 1938); Hani Goro's^[*] studies of the Restoration; and of course Maruyama Masao's essays, written between 1940 and 1944, in Nihon seiji shisoshi kenkyu^[*] (1952) all come to mind as evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it was Nyozekan's conceptualization that caused the difficulty. Why Japanese "character"? Did not this approach reflect some deep conservatism? Still, if we isolate Nihonteki seikaku , we can agree with Iida that Nyozekan remained the cagey urbanite, mocking the exceptionalist orthodoxy in its own language. But Nyozekan does not equal this single text: if we consider also his organizational affiliations of the same period, we can clearly see that Nyozekan's "urbanity" and critical detachment were themselves mobilized as Japanese society was prepared for an East Asian war after the China Incident. So the real question becomes: given mobilization, how much or how little?

In Nihonteki seikaku , Nyozekan embraced a "modern"—rational, tolerant, realistic—Japan, one very much of a piece with his longstanding position on the basically more humane tenor of life in a society free of ideology. At the same time, however, Nyozekan had put on the "flip side" of the Nihon fuashizumu hihan . For in his writing after 1938, Japan has (or is ) a cause. It is one needful of rational criticism to be sure, but primary; needful of tolerance and realism, yes, but primary. He had taken a crucial step. "Japan" had been a nation woven into an international society whose members were all subject in one way or another to capitalist production. Each nation had taken its own path, but in a broad sense all faced the same task: to restructure the production and distribution of wealth so as to place control in the hands of those who actually produced, who sacrificed themselves. But now the international task had become the national cause. It began as an effort to make Japan "understood." But Nyozekan went further, seeking to be among those who actually defined the cultural dimension of the cause. Japan was to be the subject of action. The question was no longer "What should be done about Japan?" Now it was, "What should Japan do—in China, in East Asia, in the world?"

Ironically, Nyozekan's very openness must have led him into mobilization. He came to emphasize the virtually innate harmony of the Japanese, the absence of cultural divisions and class conflict—indeed

even of class itself. Five years earlier he might have attempted to expose the ideological genesis of such an assumption. But no longer. One corollary of the emphasis on the realism and rationalism of Japanese culture, found also in Nihonteki seikaku , is identification of the two. Because the Japanese are a realistic and rational people, things are the way they should be and vice versa. Hitherto, such a claim might have reflected Nyozekan's clear sympathy for a "humane anarchy"^[205] in society. The seimeitai was best left to itself. The state in particular had no business fooling with the "real" world. But in what is perhaps the key shift, or deemphasis, in Nyozekan's writing after 1938, this perception of the state as extrinsic, even dangerous, begins to waver. This is not a matter of the printed word alone. In this respect, the record up to 1945 is equivocal. Less so was Nyozekan's association with the Showa Kenkyukai^[*] (Showa^[*] Research Association).^[206]

The Showa Kenkyukai was nothing if not an attempt to wed the social consciousness of the interi with a concomitant desire to exercise actual authority in the state. Konoe Fumimaro's brain trust, founded in 1936, sought to provide the prince and the reformist technocrats and military figures associated with him with a workable plan for a way out of the China quagmire, for the "reintegration" of the Japanese economy and broader economic development in East Asia, and for the mobilization of the Japanese people in the service of these ends. In part this was a last-ditch attempt to channel state authority into a new center, one that could prevent the fruitless dispersion and contention for power among upper- and lower-echelon civil and military officials, party men, and extraconstitutional figures. Some way of "rationalizing" Japan's widening aggression abroad, in the context of attempts to resolve the entrenched problems (especially in agriculture) of the nation's dual-structured economy, was obviously necessary. At the same time, involvement in the association did not preclude a desire among some members to work for "creditable . . . and humane" ends through a revitalized state.^[207] As organizations , after all, the parties were no longer a factor.

The failure of the association in all these aspects has been analyzed by Japanese and foreign experts and need not detain us here. But it is important for our purposes to note that the association was widely suspect from the start owing to the leftist background of its most brilliant members. Miki Kiyoshi, whose attempts to place Japan's aggression in China in a legitimate philosophical and world-historical framework formed the nucleus of the New Order's cultural policy, is only one prominent example. And it is significant, though not surprising, to find

that with Konoe in eclipse after 1941, Miki soon fell out of favor. He resumed contact with the left. Arrested for harboring a suspected communist, Miki died in prison shortly after the end of the war.^[208] His death, coming when it did, crystalizes the dilemma of public outsiders who were drawn into state service after the left had been decimated.

Nyozekan's case is similar to Miki's in that for the first time in his life, he found himself a servant of power—or would-be power. His activity in the association centered on cultural policy. As a member of the Bunka Mondai Kenkyukai^[*] (Research Committee on Cultural Problems), a suborganization of the association, Nyozekan seems to have served as a "generalist." And, since he was a close observer of Chinese politics, his opinions were particularly valued. Nothing published or circulated by the association bears Nyozekan's name as chief author, but it is a fact that he contributed to the synthesis of cultural principles designed to guide the New Order, Miki Kiyoshi's Shin Nihon no shiso^[*] genri (1939).^[209] Articles by Nyozekan published in Kaizo^[*] and elsewhere somewhat earlier are in any case congruent with the general thesis of the Principles . This held that Japan, as the only successful modern power in Asia, had ipso facto the opportunity, right, and duty to use its unique position to force subject peoples out of their Western captivity; to create a postcapitalist "cooperativist" order with Japan as the natural nucleus and source of industrial, political, and cultural expertise. To be sure, Nyozekan was aware of the issue of Chinese nationalism, but he seems to tie it in with the expansion of Chinese capitalism rather than to recognize in it a broader phenomenon. Indeed, for him, regionalism and geographically differential modernization ("China is a Commonwealth without an England"), rather than external interference, were the greatest problems facing China. Thus he discounts the possibility that Japan might be a factor in unifying China in a way permanently disadvantageous to itself.^[210] A modern aggressor must believe that if successful it will convince those it has conquered that it rules in obedience to some higher principle. Nyozekan had to have accepted this myopia, at least enough to have joined in synthesizing the association's cultural program. (He did not have the heart of a saboteur.) And that meant accepting the corollary, that an activist state was needed at home to mold the masses to the ends that inspired the association's formation. Nyozekan was also a member of the Showajuku^[*] (Showa^[*] Academy). Founded in 1938, the academy (according to its statutes) sought "to contribute to the formation of leading figures [shidoteki jinkaku^[*] ] equipped with [the] spirit, knowledge, and experience necessary for the total fulfillment of

the historical mission, now in process of realization, of the New Japan." At the same time, genuine chauvinists at the fringe of both organizations found Nyozekan—in fact all the "ex-leftists"—to be undesirable; this we know from the diary of that quintessential servant of power, Yabe Teiji.^[211] The point, however, is not the impact Nyozekan had or did not have, but that he, like Miki, Sassa Hiroo, and Saigusa Hiroto—all early departees from Yuiken and association members—was mobilized. If others found him questionable, so be it. Nyozekan was prepared to serve, and in a limited capacity, he did.

In addition to his involvement in the association, Nyozekan took part in two other organizations. Here he was more prominent, and his tenure of greater duration. To take the latter first: in June 1942 Nyozekan joined the Bungaku Hokokukai^[*] (Society for Patriotism through Literature), as honorary chairman of the Criticism and Essay section. He had been recommended for this position by Kuwaki Gen'yoku and the Min'yusha^[*] historian Takekoshi Yosaburo^[*] . In April 1944 Nyozekan was named chairman, in which capacity he remained, presumably until the organization's dissolution. It seems to me that Nyozekan's membership in the society means comparatively little: one must consider the date. It was probably incumbent on anyone without independent wealth or patronage to join in order to keep publishing. It may not be unfair to regard joining the society as akin, mutatis mutandis, to joining the Soviet Writers' Union. For some Japanese it may even have been a kind of professional lifesaver, not unlike the Federal Writers' Project during the New Deal, again mutatis mutandis.

The other affiliation is more revealing, since it was unofficial and wholly voluntary. In mid 1939 Nyozekan helped to found the Kokumin Gakujutsu Kyokai^[*] (League for the National Arts and Sciences).^[212] Conceived by Shimanaka Yusaku^[*] , president of the prestigious Chuo Koronsha^[*] , the league numbered among its charter members some twentysix luminaries of the Japanese intelligentsia. The group's intent was to promote "cultural science"—read internationalism, objectivity, and free inquiry—from a refined "national" (kokuminteki ) standpoint. With its appeal to the "masses" (via the state) on the one hand, and on the other to the interi as dispensers of Western (cosmopolitan) enlightenment, the organization managed to bring together under its aegis a varied cast. There were former members of Yuiken (just as in the Showa Kenkyukai^[*] ) such as Miki Kiyoshi and the mathematician Ogura Kinnosuke; journalists such as Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, Abe Ken'ichi, and Ryu Shintaro^[*] (Ryu^[*] , of course, had authored the association's economic "bible," Nihon Kei -

zai no saihensei , and was an admirer of the theory of Italian fascism); and eminent philosophers and scholars such as Watsuji Tetsuro^[*] , Nishida Kitaro^[*] , Kuwaki Gen'yoku, Tsuda Sokichi^[*] , Yanagida Kunio, and Koizumi Shinzo^[*] . Creative writers such as Shimazaki Toson^[*] and Masamune Hakucho^[*] were also enrolled. And so on. Clearly no such mélange of personalities and approaches could be brought together to serve a single, clearly articulated principle. The tension was implicit in the league's statement of purpose, and by and large the "internationalist" impulse suffered. But this was owing in no small measure to attacks from without, first from rightists led by Minoda Muneki, on Tsuda Sokichi; and later, in 1943, from the army, which was alarmed at the presence of Miki Kiyoshi on the membership rolls.

The league managed, nevertheless, to meet regularly until 1945, and to hold lectures and publish a series of monographs. Some of these works, like Ogura Kinnosuke's Senjika no sugaku^[*] (Mathematics in wartime), were repudiated by their authors after 1945: "It speaks all too clearly to my abject submission to the powers-that-be."^[213] Alone among its members, Nyozekan was (according to Yamaryo^[*] ) catholic enough in his background, interests, and talents to embody the group's purpose and enjoy the confidence of all involved. It is characteristic of him that he remained enthusiastic until the end, and certainly had no cause after 1945 to regret any of his public acts as a member.

There was, to be sure, a range of feeling among the members as to the eventual outcome of the war. The journalist Baba Tsunego was possibly the most pessimistic. Next came Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, forced to confine his forebodings to private conversations and to his now famous diary, Ankoku nikki . What Kiyosawa had to say about Koizumi Shinzo, whom he found hopelessly sanguine about Japan's prospect, probably would apply to many among his confreres. "I had thought him a harderheaded liberal. Instead," Kiyosawa wrote, "he seems to be afraid to think things through to the end."^[214]

As for Nyozekan, we might rather say, following Yamaryo, that living the situation, the here-and-now of war everywhere, was all. Though he was invariably acute in discerning the contradictions and stupidity of that situation—not, significantly, its tragedy—Nyozekan was not given to prediction or to dramatic shifts in temperament or opinion. This was characteristic, perhaps, of a man who viewed words and ideas as following after and looking at, rather than creating or changing, reality. This quality of hanging back is evident even in Nyozekan's most propagandistic and programmatic writing of the middle years of the Pacific

war. Even here, one finds the distinct and complex layering of voices that reflects his development; the inability to yield entirely to an irrational "ideal" or a conviction unsupported by the evidence of "life." I shall close my account with a brief consideration of two of these wartime texts.

"The Greater East Asia War," Nyozekan proclaimed in April 1942, "has as nothing else caused the whole world to recognize anew the national [minzokuteki ] superiority of the Japanese."^[215] The immediate cause of Japan's crusade lay not in any inherent aggressiveness on the nation's part. Far from it: after long efforts at what Nyozekan calls "Amaterasu diplomacy"—"to assuage with words"—the nation found to its dismay that its pacific character remained misunderstood and belittled by the Western powers. Japan had no choice now but "to pluck up [its enemies] like young reeds, crush them, and send them flying in the wind."^[216]

Nyozekan assumed the task, in this connection, of setting forth the true, and obviously unappreciated, source of the nation's superiority. This lay not in weaponry or machines but in its dynamic character—a theme common to, but hardly the exclusive domain of, Japan's war propaganda. Indeed, it seems very much a part of present-day Nihonjin ron . The main lines of argument have been introduced earlier, in the discussion of Nihonteki seikaku . We may note here one major, though unsurprising, difference in the argument. In the earlier work, Nyozekan had conspicuously avoided reference to the imperial house, or to politics in general, as a central concern of, and spur to development in, Japanese ethics and intellectual life. Now, with the entire nation (minzoku ) involved, and to all appearances headed for victory in, a world war, Nyozekan feels compelled to identify the continuity of the imperial presence as the dynamic core of the nation's political being. It is this presence that distinguishes the modern Japanese from all other constitutional systems. Characteristically, Nyozekan quotes Kuga Katsunan's Kinji kenpo ko^[*] (1888) to make the point. This saves him from having to rely on any of the current highly illiberal and antiparliamentary "theorists" of the kokutai in making his pledge of allegiance. Furthermore, Nyozekan's gesture to orthodoxy is deliberately kept within political bounds. The "imperial prerogative from which the constitutional system proceeds" (Katsunan) is used in a "liberal" manner. It is not the font of value or coeval with all that is Japanese. Rather, the imperial institution is used as an analogy for the constant self-renewal of Japanese culture. Japan has not discarded its past, political, social, or aes-

thetic. But "pastness" is not its own justification. Rather, it is their continuing and immediate contribution to the national life and character that has guaranteed the vigor of past cultural products. Japan is not an antiquarian nation. In fact (as Fukuzawa had first argued) Japan has always been modern in the sense that the products and spirit of the past have never been "idealized" or frozen, but have served—the past-aspresent—to make Japanese society a single evolving whole.^[217]

However, Nyozekan avers, the single evolution of Japan (mandated in large part by ethnic homogeneity and geography) has never meant the repression of natural human complexity. Here we see the Spencerian moment in his thought, healthy as ever. Nyozekan does not deny the presence in Japanese history of sometimes severe conflict. But this conflict—such as that which caused the fall of the Tokugawa—has taken place within the context of a long, upward evolutionary development toward harmony through complexity. No political or social strife in Japanese history has ever been severe enough to shatter the underlying unity of the people; this is a point of tremendous pride for Nyozekan. In fact, the national character may be said to be "nuclear," and hence extremely conservative. That is, each period of emerging differentiation resolves into integration through a renewal of the springs of identity. In what Yamaryo^[*] Kenji calls the "spatialization of history"—understandable in Japan's case, where the geographical determinant is so powerful—Nyozekan alludes constantly to a return to national self-as-place. To be Japanese means to live as Japanese. Nyozekan asserts that no abstract "human being" can exist in Japan: "For a Japanese, all [other] Japanese are part of the Japanese ethnos [minzoku ], that is, of the Japanese nation, the clan [shizoku ], the family; whether as sovereign or subject, parent or child. He cannot conceive of them otherwise than as actual human beings living their lives within the territory of Japan."^[218] Japanese mythology and philosophy support this sense of belonging. They are entirely specific. Indeed, Nyozekan adds, the great universal philosophizing nations—Greece and India—have "died out." Specificity is strength. Science (i.e, abstract thinking), too, is pursued in Japan not for its own sake but for practical purposes. For this reason it serves, as does the quotidian art of the shokunin , to integrate the people rather than to divide them. The summit of Japanese creativity is reached in the realm of the intuitive and practical.^[219] Art is life; life is to be "crafted." With this spirit (Nyozekan uses the word seishin ) Japan has embarked, unwillingly, but now with total dedication, on an effort to display its character.

The second and final text to be considered comes from late 1943. Nihon kyoiku no dento^[*] (The tradition of Japanese education)^[220] merits our attention for one chief reason, its equivocal attitude toward the state. In part the work was a contribution to the wartime effort to create a more efficient educational system. It was time, Nyozekan felt, to counteract the "Western" tendency toward "useless" abstraction and overspecialization, and, by implication, the invidious separation of mass from elite in society. Nyozekan proposed that Japanese society be "deschooled" (to use Ivan Illich's term). Education happens not only in school, but in life. And life meant work and home. All of life's "places" (ba ) should be transformed into sources of social education. This is not only a matter of changing perceptions, but of institutional mobilization and decentralization. Nyozekan never denies the need for a requisite degree of specialized training, or for the analytical frame of mind that supports it (true for any industrial society, whether at war or not). But, he suggests, the Education and Armed Service Ministries need not be the only dispensers of education. Indeed, he implies, such education as they do dispense may even obstruct genuine "social" learning. Every ministry—Agriculture, Commerce and Construction, Welfare—and organization, public and private, ought to involve itself. The responsibility should be shared, diffused.^[221]

What appears on the one hand a proposal to save the state's resources by redistributing the cost of cannon fodder, and to expand the role of the state to boot, can also be seen as a criticism of the institutions that have created the need for cannon fodder in the first place. "Social" education could not help but be more pacific; the more deeply rooted learning is in society, the less inclined young minds should be to an uncritical acceptance of official and military indoctrination.

Given the context, one must seem to bend over pretty far to make such a reading. Still, virtually all of Nyozekan's writing on state and society up to that point suggests that he took advantage of the forum offered to try and take back even a little of what the state had commandeered.

It is not my purpose at present to follow Nyozekan's public life into the postwar years. One comment here will have to suffice. Only remove references to the particular cause—or rather the means—chosen by Japan in 1941, and one finds that virtually nothing changes in Nyozekan's subsequent presentations of the national character. Indeed, Kuwabara Takeo regarded Nyozekan as basically conservative in his thinking for having clung to the concept itself. And so he was. After 1945 he remained what he had become after 1935, a conservative (but not even

remotely reactionary) "man of culture" (bunkajin ). Nyozekan never ceased to regard a deliberate caution, living from and with the past, as the trait most dominant in the Japanese national character. He continued to identify his own life with that of his fellow Japanese to an extraordinary degree. What he idealized in his own past-as-present, he idealized in that of the nation as a whole. Although we are assured by Ouchi Hyoe^[*] that Nyozekan was a "very private person," his projected personality assumed a direct continuity between self and the society he represented as a public man. Nyozekan's shift after 1938 from outsider to insider meant an ever stronger identification of society and nation. And though his period of state involvement was brief, the identification was permanent: there was no tenko^[*] , no return to dissent, after 1945.

Recall the embarrassment Nyozekan admitted when in 1937 he "discovered" in himself a visceral chauvinism. This aspect of "national" (indeed, not only Japanese) character—the explosive, state-sponsored xenophobia that has made of nationalism "the starkest political shame of the twentieth century"^[222] —seems to have merited but little of Nyozekan's attention after 1945. True, he threw himself into the "reconstruction" (saiken ) of the national psyche along peaceful lines after Japan's defeat. But it is a pity that Nyozekan forsook the darkness so soon. For only in its immediate aftermath, and then for the first time, could that darkness be spoken of openly. To do so, Nyozekan would have had to expose the unexcised, violent "petty bourgeois" element in his own and the "Japanese character." He would have had to "spit on himself," as (he said) any critic worthy of the name had to. But did he?

Perhaps this is unfair. Nyozekan did not, even in his propaganda, write words he did not believe. In the essay on national superiority written in 1942, and in other writings after 1945, Nyozekan recognized the absence from the "Japanese mentality" of a universalizing or transcendent impulse able to place the subject of thought outside its object.^[223] Where once he had gloried in the specificity of Japanese culture, he now lamented its tenacious grip. And he blamed the interi (himself included, says Yamaryo^[*] ) for never having developed "eyes for the universal." Thus, the Japanese reality persisted: life and place "produced" thought. Being—being Japanese?—produced consciousness. Neither before 1945 nor after did Nyozekan's worldview recognize an encompassing, immaterial "outside." He saw only coexisting material universes with distinct experiences.

Nyozekan came closest to identifying a "universal" in the Spencerian developmental premises of his early Critiques . His exposure to Marx's

analysis of nineteenth-century capitalist production allowed Nyozekan to distinguish the spurious cosmopolitanism of the bourgeoisie from the genuine international solidarity of the working class. The new capitalist powers of the twentieth century reacted to both of these phenomena with a massive display of armed nationalism. Nyozekan began a critique of this process—an effort recognized and praised by Marxists such as Sakai Toshihiko. But Nyozekan, rejecting the Soviet alternative both as a model and critical vantage point, was drawn into the reaction itself. Unable to yield to the violence it entailed, however, he sought to tease a stateless society out of Japanese history: remember that according to Iida Taizo^[*] , Nyozekan was propelled in this direction by the shocking aftermath of the Kanto earthquake. Nyozekan created a personal myth and shared it generously. As public man, it was the least he could do. As a critic, it was the most.