Decisionism and Liberal Constitutionalism in Postwar Japan: Maruyama Masao’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political

ABSTRACT

This article examines the prominent Japanese postwar thinker Maruyama Masao’s critical engagement with his contemporary German legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Maruyama engaged with Schmitt’s decisionistic notion of “the political” and sovereignty since he found it useful in addressing the pathological elements of Japanese political culture, namely, the widespread political passivity and fatalistic ethos of the Japanese public. In his view, such a “decision-avoiding” political culture, which had contributed to the rise of fascism in interwar and wartime Japan, posed a fundamental threat to the viability of Japan’s postwar democracy. Although Maruyama objected to Schmitt’s authoritarian theory of political leadership, he nevertheless believed Schmitt provided important insights into the key concepts of modern politics, such as political agency and the constituent power of the people. In his efforts to foster political subjectivity and liberal individuality in postwar Japan, Maruyama attempted to strike a balance between two extremes: Schmittian normless decisionism, on the one hand, and a politically naïve liberal constitutionalism, on the other. I conclude by suggesting that the hitherto overlooked intellectual affinity between Maruyama and one of the leading Weimar-era constitutional theorists—Hermann Heller—can enrich our understanding of Maruyama’s unceasing effort to formulate and insist on the imperative role of political subjectivity and liberal individuality in consolidating liberal democracy in postwar Japan.

KEYWORDS:

• Maruyama Masao (1914–96)
• Carl Schmitt (1888–1985)
• decisionism
• liberalism
• fascism
• constitutionalism
• postwar Japan
• comparative political thought

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of the essay were presented at the First Annual UCLA Graduate Student Conference in Political Theory (April 25, 2021), the IGCS at Sogang University, South Korea (May 12, 2021), and the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association (March 10, 2022). I thank the participants and the audience for their helpful responses. I am also indebted to Aurelian Craiutu, the two anonymous reviewers, and the journal editors for their incredibly helpful feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ For Schmitt’s intellectual influence in postwar Germany, see Pankakoski, “Postwar Intellectual Schmittianism.”

² Maruyama, Wabunshū, 437.

³ For a deeper analysis of Schmitt’s critique of liberal constitutionalism, see Scheuerman, “Liberal Constitutionalism.”

⁴ See Mouffe, “Carl Schmitt.”

⁵ The influential Meiji (明治) intellectual-cum-nationalist Fukuzawa supported the Meiji government’s expansionist military policy because he held that national independence was vital to preserving personal independence. Maruyama considered Fukuzawa an exemplary liberal thinker of prewar Japan.

⁶ See Yasukawa, Fukuzawa Yukichi; Nakano, Otsuka Hisao.

⁷ Gonza, “Maruyama Masao.”

⁸ See Wang, “Respectable Enemies”; Koga, “Kāru-Shumitto.”

⁹ For more on the historical context, see Dower, Embracing Defeat.

¹⁰ See Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan; Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity; Sasaki, Nationalism, Political Realism and Democracy; Nakano, Otsuka.

¹¹ Maruyama, “The Ideology and Dynamics of Japanese Fascism,” in Thought and Behavior, 26.

¹² For a detailed account of postwar Japanese political culture, see Ishida, Japanese Political Culture; Richardson, Political Culture of Japan.

¹³ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 80ּ–81.

¹⁴ In Constitutional Theory, for instance, Schmitt emphasized that the people of a democracy, who are the bearers of the constitution-making power, “must be capable of making political decisions and acting politically” (131). And in Dictatorship, Schmitt argued that sovereign dictatorship—the bearer of the constituent power—is unrestrained even by an existing constitution as the dictatorship holds not only an absolute authority but also the responsibility to create a new constitution through its own actions (112–19).

¹⁵ For Maruyama’s active reliance on the Schmittian concept of the political, see his Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, 223–38; on Schmitt’s account of the “neutral state,” see Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 1–24; and on the Schmittian realist view of power and critique of liberal idealism, see Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 268–89.

¹⁶ Maruyama, Senchū, 39.

¹⁷ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 20. Concerning the unique political and symbolic role of the Emperor throughout the period of modernization in Japan, see Fujita, TennoōSei.

¹⁸ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 128.

¹⁹ Ibid., 84ּ–134.

²⁰ E.g., Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) developed the perspective according to which political order and principles had arisen from the autonomous acts of the ancient Confucian sages.

²¹ Ito, Commentaries on the Constitution.

²² Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 20.

²³ The conceptual distinction offered by Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s seminal book The King’s Two Bodies (1957) might be useful for understanding the unique structure of Japan’s traditional Emperor system.

²⁴ See Kasza, “Fascism from Below”; Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism; Kersten, “Japan.”

²⁵ Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism, 32.

²⁶ Kasza, “Fascism from Below.”

²⁷ Kersten, “Japan,” 527, 35.

²⁸ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 36, 52.

²⁹ Ibid., 36–37, 65.

³⁰ Maruyama read Schmitt’s work in an original German edition. Gonza, “Maruyama Masao,” 5.

³¹ Maruyama, “Politics as a Science in Japan,” in Thought and Behavior, 236 (emphasis added).

³² See Schmitt, Concept of the Political, 25ּ–27.

³³ Schmitt, Political Theology, 5.

³⁴ See ibid., 33ּ–34.

³⁵ Maruyama, Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, 207.

³⁶ Ibid., 232.

³⁷ Maruyama, “Nihon No Shisō,” 224ּ–52 (emphasis in the original).

³⁸ Maruyama, “Seiji-Gaku,” 6ּ–7.

³⁹ Maruyama, “Nature and Invention in Tokugawa Political Thought,” in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, 240.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 237ּ–38.

⁴¹ For more on this, see Scheuerman, Carl Schmitt, 87ּ–88.

⁴² Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 2–7.

⁴³ Schmitt, The Leviathan, 48, 56, 72ּ–74.

⁴⁴ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 3.

⁴⁵ Schmitt, Parliamentary Democracy, 6.

⁴⁶ Maruyama, “Tegami,” 322ּ–24.

⁴⁷ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 3ּ–5.

⁴⁸ Maruyama, “Ningen to Seiji,” 217ּ–21.

⁴⁹ Maruyama, “2-bu Tsuiki,” 28.

⁵⁰ Mill, “On Liberty,” 72.

⁵¹ Maruyama, Bunmeiron, 151ּ–54.

⁵² Scheuerman, “The Fascism of Carl Schmitt,” 107ּ–9.

⁵³ On Weber’s emphasis on political participation, see Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy.” On his focus on personality, see Weber, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science.”

⁵⁴ Ibid., 121, 25ּ–26.

⁵⁵ Maruyama, “Nashonarizumu, Gunkoku-shugi, Fashizumu,” 285ּ–86.

⁵⁶ Maruyama, “Tsuiki,” 173.

⁵⁷ Schmitt, Parliamentary Democracy, 6ּ–7.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 13, 26.

⁵⁹ This term seems to be an appropriation of “commodity fetishism” used by Karl Marx.

⁶⁰ Maruyama, “Nihon No Shisō,” 225ּ–26 (emphasis in the original).

⁶¹ Schmitt, Three Types.

⁶² Maruyama, “Shihai to Fukujū,” 53.

⁶³ Schmitt, “Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations.”

⁶⁴ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 285.

⁶⁵ Müller, Contesting Democracy, 27ּ–32.

⁶⁶ See Schmitt, State, Movement, People, 9ּ–11, 48.

⁶⁷ Maruyama, “Ningen to Seiji,” 220.

⁶⁸ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, 289.

⁶⁹ Maruyama, “2-bu Tsuiki,” 20.

⁷⁰ This essay is important because it shows Maruyama’s sincere commitment to the tradition of Western liberalism while remaining critical of some of its elements.

⁷¹ Maruyama, “'Genjitsu' Shugi,” 195.

⁷² Schmitt, State, Movement, People, 48.

⁷³ Maruyama, Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, 325.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 323ּ–25.

⁷⁵ As Scheuerman points out, politics was essentially conflictual for Schmitt. On this point, see Scheuerman, Carl Schmitt, 50–51. In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt argues that the political must rest on its ultimate distinction between “friend and enemy” and that the “distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation.” Understanding this concept of the political was essential for him to “preserve one’s own form of existence” from the adversary’s attempt to “negate his opponent’s way of life” (26–27).

⁷⁶ The biographical information of Heller offered in this section is primarily based on the reliable account by Dyzenhaus in “Hermann Heller: An Introduction.” For the contemporary relevance of Heller’s legal and political theory, see Scheuerman, “Hermann Heller.”

⁷⁷ Lammers, “Democracy and Fascism”; Llanque, “Heller and Republicanism”; Malkopoulou, “Heller on Politics.”

⁷⁸ Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, xvi.

⁷⁹ Maruyama, “Shihai to Fukujū,” 53ּ–54.

⁸⁰ Heller, “Political Democracy and Social Homogeneity,” 261.

⁸¹ Llanque, “Heller and the Republicanism,” 23.

⁸² Dyzenhaus, “Hermann Heller: An Introduction,” 1130ּ–31.

⁸³ Heller, “Political Democracy and Social Homogeneity,” 258.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Min-hyeok Kim

Min-hyeok Kim received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University, USA. His dissertation examines how modern Western political ideas were adopted and appropriated in postwar Japanese society via the thought of Maruyama Masao. He works mostly on political theory, the history of political thought, East Asian intellectual history, and comparative political thought. His essays have been published in Global Intellectual History, the Asian Journal of Political Science, and the Japanese Journal of Political Science.