https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3189-1953
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Abstract
This article explores the historical semantic changes of the concept ‘Oriental despotism’ in modern Japan. In premodern Japanese political discourses, the term sensei (despotic rule) was already widely known among Confucian scholars via the ancient Chinese classic Zuo Zhuan. However, it was the introduction and wide circulation of Montesquieu’s De l‘esprit des lois (The Spirit of Law, 1748) in the early Meiji period that instilled in the modern Japanese language the concept Toyoteki senseishugi (Oriental despotism), a complex orientalist explanation of Asia’s authoritarian system of rules. Though first a concept that informed the Meiji authority of the civilizational hierarchy of different forms of government and warned of the need for constitutional democracy, Oriental despotism became, in the course of Japan’s growing encounters with its Asian neighbours after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), the theoretical premise of a ‘stagnant Asia’ and served as an ideological justification for Japan’s expansion in Asia. This article analyses the different perspectives, arguments, and rhetorical manoeuvres of the Japanese political and social scientists who most actively contributed to the discourse on Oriental despotism from the early Meiji period to the postwar era. It identifies four independent yet related discourses on Oriental despotism in modern Japan and argues that the influx to Japan in the 1930s and 1940s of theories on society’s modern transformation had ultimately determined how this concept would be interpreted, applied, and understood in postwar Japan.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Government of Japan, Cabinet Office, Public Opinion Polls on Diplomacy. The 2011 poll was conducted in January 2012, at <http://www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h24/h24-gaiko/index.html> (searched date: 2 October 2022).
2 Adachi Keiji, Sensei kokka ron: Chūgokushi kara sekaishi he (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1998), 32.
3 Sōgō mondai kenkyūkai ed., Tōdai nyūshi no sekaishi – kako jūnen wo seisetsu shita (Tokyo: Yūhōdō, 1958), 57.
4 Yuasa Takeo, ‘Tōyōteki sensei shugi’, in Imamura Hitoshi (ed.), Gendai shisō wo yomu jiten (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1988), 451–53.
5 Ishii Tomoaki, K. A. uittofōgeru no tōyōteki shakairon (Tokyo: Shakai hyōron sha, 2008).
6 Katō Tetsurō, ‘CIA ni tayori sugita amerika no shippai’, Ekonomisuto, 13 Jan. 2009.
7 Montesquieu, translated by Mitsukuri, Rinshō, ‘Jinmin no jiyū to tochi no kikō to takamini sōkan suru no ron’, Meiroku zasshi, no. 4, 1874.
8 Uemura Kunihiko, Ajia ha ajiateki ka (Kyoto: Nakanishi ya, 2006), 273.
9 See, Matsuda Kōichirō, Gisei no ronri, jiyū no fuan: Kindai nihon seiji shisōron (Tokyo: Keiō University Press, 2016), 11–40.
10 Richter, ‘The Concept of Despotism and L'abus Des Mots’, Contributions to the History of Concepts 3, no. 1 (2007): 12.
11 Marx, Karl, edited by Karl Kautsky, Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Stuttgart: J. H. W. Dietz, 1897), XII.
12 Matsuda noted that by the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the image of China’s despotic emperor became widespread in Europe due to the broad dissemination of encyclopaediae. See Matsuda, ibid., 38.
13 Mitsukuri Shōgo, Konyo zushiki ho, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Suharayaihachi, 1847), 5.
14 Katō Hiroyuki, ‘Tonarigusa’, In Nihon no meicho: Nishi Amane, Katō Hiroyuki (Tokyo: Chūo kōron sha, 1971), 313 − 14.
15 Katō Hiroyuki, Rikken seitai ryaku (Tokyo: Jōshūyasōshichi, 1868).
16 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Seiyō jijō shohen, vol. I. (Tokyo: Keiō gijuku Press, 1872), 4–6.
17 Ōkubo Toshimichi, Councilor Ōkubo’s Draft Opinion on Constitutional Government (November 1873). In Papers of Itō Hirobumi, I, Letter no. 503, National Diet Library.
18 For Kuga’s counter-argument against the liberals, see Matsuda Kōichirō, Kuga Katsunan: Jiyū ni kōron wo daihyōsu (Kyoto: Mineruwa shobō, 2008), 105–18.
19 John W. Burgess, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 12–13.
20 Hasegawa Manjirō, Gendai kokka hihan (Tokyo: Kōbundō shoten, 1921), 434.
21 For the influences of German state theory in Japan, see, for example, Takii Kazuhiro, Doitsu kokkagaku to meiji kokusei: Shutain kokkagaku no kiseki (Kyoto: Mineruwa shobō, 1999).
22 See, Kido Takayoshi’s diary on 20 November 1873, Nihon shiseki kyōkai (ed.), Kido Takayoshi nikki, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1967), 45.
23 The quotation of Yijing is based on James Legge’s translation, see Legge (trans.), I-Ching, Book of Changes (New York: Dover Publication Inc., 1963).
24 Murase, Seiji tetsugaku no shomondai (Tokyo: Ganshōdō shoten, 1922), 67–9.
25 From the late 1880s until the outbreak of WWI, Japanese adherents of the new German Historical School (scholars associated to the Verein für Socialpolitik) were the mainstream of Japan’s economic sciences. In 1896, a salon-like study group took shape to discuss the Prussian Factory Acts (Gewerberordnung) and after two years developed into the ‘Association for Social Policy’. Its regular participants, mostly economic students at Imperial University and Tokyo Commercial College, were convinced that the state should achieve a high degree of power concentration to fundamentally transform the overall social and economic organizations for the benefit of the poor and the lower class. See, Sumiya Etsuji, Nihon keizaigakushi no hitokoma: Shakai seisaku gakkai wo chūshin toshite (Tokyo: Nihon keizai hyōron sha, 1958).
26 See, Rōyama Masamichi, Seijigaku no ninmu to taishō: Seijigaku riron no hihanteki kenkyū (Tokyo: Ganshōdō shoten, 1925).
27 Ishida Takeshi argued that the origin of the Japanese discourse over social problems was to be dated back to the establishment of the ‘Association for Social Policy’. See, Ishida, Nihon no seiji to kotoba (Ge): ‘Heiwa’ to ‘kokka’ (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1989), 173.
28 The increasing popularity of the periodization of Nationalökonomie in Japan from 1900 also helped reinforce the belief of the universality of historical development. Sano Manabu, an economic historian who later became the leader of the JCP, applied theories of Friedrich List, Roscher, Hildebrand, Schmoller, and Bücher and described the human economic evolution as a path from self-sufficiency via a traditionalist economy to capitalism. See, Sano, Nihon Keizai shiron (Tokyo: Waseda taibunsha, 1922), 13–14.
29 Hatada, Chūgoku sonraku to kyōdōtai riron (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963), vi–vii.
30 For the transnational entanglements of this debate, see, Joshua A. Fogel, ‘The Debates over the Asiatic Mode of Production in Soviet Russia, China and Japan’, The American Historical Review 93, no. 1, (1988), 56–79.
31 Association of Marxist Orientalists, translated by Hayakawa Jirō, Ajiateki seisan yōshiki ni tsuite (Tokyo: Hakuyōsha, 1933).
32 For the circulation of Mad’iar’s and Wittfogel’s writings in Japan, see Yufei Zhou, ‘Senzen senchūki nihon no ajia shakairon ni okeru “ajiateki na mono”: Gainen no keisei to imi no hensen’, Nihon shisō shigaku, no. 48 (2016), 173–90.
33 See, for example, Mad’iar, Ocherki po ekonomike Kitaia (Moscow: Izd. Kommunisticheskoi Akademii, 1930); Wittfogel, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chinas – Versuch der wissenschaftlichen Analyse einer grossen asiatischen Agrargesellschaft. Erster Teil: Produktivkräfte, Produktions- und Zirkulationsprozess (Leipzig: C. L. Hirschfeld, 1931).
34 Hirano Yoshitarō, ‘Shina kenkyū ni taisuru futatsu no michi’, Yuibutsuron kenkyū, no. 20 (June 1934), 5.
35 Kantō kempeitai shireibu (ed.), Zaiman Nikkei kyōsanshugi undo (Tokyo: Gannandō shoten, 1944), 214.
36 See Andō Hideo, ‘“Ajiateki seisan hōhō” to Uittofōgeru – chirigakuteki yuibutsuron ni rikkyaku suru ajiateki tokushitsu no tenkai’, Tōa 7, no. 4 (1934), 116–25.
37 Yokokawa, ‘Shina ni okeru nōson kyōdōtai to sono isei ni tsuite’, Keizai hyōron 2, no. 7 (1935), 82–3.
38 Shimizu, Shina shakai no kenkyū (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1939), 137–8.
39 Miki Kiyoshi, Gakumon to jinsei (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1942), 122–3.
40 From May 1935 to July 1937, Wittfogel carried out his fieldwork in China. See, K. A. Wittfogel, New Light on Chinese Society: An Investigation of China’s Socio-Economic Structure (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1938).
41 K. A. Wittfogel, ‘Die Theorie der orientalischen Gesellschaft’, in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Jahrgang VII (1938), 118.
42 Moritani Katsumi, Tōyōteki seikatsuken (Tokyo: Ikuseisha kodōkaku, 1942), 38.
43 Moritani Katsumi, ‘Ajiateki seisan yōshiki’, in Shina mondai jiten (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1942), 10.
44 Tachibana Shiraki, Hosogawa Karoku, Hirano Yoshitarō and Ozaki Hotsumi, (Round Table Talk) ‘Tōyō no shakai kōsei to nisshi no shōrai’, in Chūō kōron, 55, no. 7 (July 1940), 52.
45 Ozaki Hotsumi, ‘Shina shihonshugi hattatsu ryakushi’, in Ajia mondai kōza, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1940), 26.
46 For the Kainō-Hirano debate, see Hatada Takashi, ‘Chūgoku sonraku kenkyū no hōhō – Hirano/Kainō ronsō wo chūshin ni shite’, in Fukushima Masao (ed.), Gendai ajia no kakumei to hō – Niida Noboru hakase tsuitō ronbunshū II (Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 1966), 10.
47 Hirano Yoshitarō, Dai ajiashugi no rekishiteki kiso (Tokyo: Kawade shobō, 1945), 8.
48 See, Vogelsang, ‘Conceptual History: A Short Introduction’, in Oriens Extremus, vol. 51 (2012), 9–24.
49 Nagai Kazu, ‘Sengo marukusu shugi shigaku to ajia ninshiki’, in Furuya Tetsuo (ed.), Kindai nihon no ajia ninshiki (Tokyo: Ryokuin shobō, 1996), 673.
50 Institute of Pacific Relations: hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-second Congress, second session on the Institute of Pacific Relations, Part 10, 3612. For the details of the IPR hearings, see Robert P. Newman, Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China. University of California Press, 1992.
51 In his testimony, Wittfogel alleged that Norman was a member of a Communist study session run by Moses Finkelstein in his apartment.
52 Hani Gorō, ‘Noruman no shi’, Rekishigaku kenkyū, no. 208 (June 1957), 50–2.
53 Hirano Yoshitarō, ‘Ji Chaoding sensei no omoide’, Ajia keizai shunhō, no. 548 (August 1963), 8.
54 Yuasa Takeo, ‘Uittofōgeru to watashi’, in Gary L. Ulmen, translated by Kamei Tomu, Hyōden uittofōgeru (Tokyo: Shinhyōron, 1995), 877–8.
55 Ishii Tomoaki, Chūgoku kakumei ron no paradaimu tenkan – K. A. Uittofōgeru no “ajia teki fukko” wo meguri (Tokyo: Shakai hyōron sha, 2012), 30.
56 Karatani’s book review on Ishii Tomoaki, K. A. uittofōgeru no tōyōteki shakairon (Tokyo: Shakai hyōron sha, 2008), in Asahi Shimbun, 22 June 2008.
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Yufei Zhou
Yufei Zhou is Lecturer of Modern Intellectual History and Social Thought at Teikyo University in Tokyo. Her research focuses on the history of social policy and social thought in modern East Asia. She has published a number of articles in Japanese, English, and Chinese on how the core concepts in the political and economic sciences were introduced and localized in the East Asian context. Her first monograph ‘Discovering “Oriental Society”: Karl August Wittfogel and the East Asian Intellectuals’ is forthcoming under contract with Routledge.