The State, Modernity, and the Fate of Liberalism in Prewar Japan

Abstract

The Political Histories of Western Europe and the United States over the past three hundred years illustrate powerfully how the evolution of fully functioning liberal democratic politics has been linked intimately to the presence of vigorous thinkers and activists dedicated to the pursuit of a liberal polity. The social contract theory of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the constitutionalism of Baron Charles de Montesquieu, the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith, and the reflections of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton on the challenges of competitive politics all helped to lay the groundwork for the achievement of liberal democratic politics in France, England, and the United States. Particular strains of political thought found in these and other thinkers help to account for the similarities and differences among the world's historic experiments in bourgeois democracy. French liberalism, which had no Thomas Hobbes seeking eloquently to defend monarchical absolutism, ultimately could not accommodate royal prerogative to democratic politics; and, lacking an Adam Smith to assert the primacy of economic laissez-faire, it showed no fundamental antipathy to the centralized state in its political practice. A more dramatic contrast is afforded by the fragile and short-lived democracy of Weimar Germany, nurtured in soil where G. W. F. Hegel's organic conception of the state and the doctrines of state sovereignty that legitimated the regime of Otto von Bismarck overwhelmed the contributions of Immanuel Kant and Wilhelm von Humboldt to liberal theory. In the final analysis, to be sure, the presence or absence of absolutism and its defenders, of laissez-faire economics and its rationalizers is attributable to other factors deep in the history and culture of each society. Yet, in all these cases, the historical relationship between thought and politics is clear and striking.

Regulation of soft issues in advertising in Confucian societies: a comparative examination

“…First, compared to its Asian neighbors, Japan has a much longer history of capitalist development. The Meiji Restoration ushered in the Japanese economic modernization characterized by earnest introduction of liberalistic ideas, modern technologies and Western-style institutions during the second-half of the nineteenth century (Hoston, 1992), almost 100 years before the rest of the region began its industrialization. The free market ideology fits well into the Japanese indigenous political culture, which exhibits a strong tendency to emphasize guidance by the state rather than direct regulation in relation to some transcending principles (Eisenstadt, 1995).…”

Re-Contextualizing Foreign Influence in Japan’s Educational History: the (re)reception of John Dewey

“…Este hecho tuvo profundas implicancias, que un Japón en aprendizaje occidental decidió asimilar. Swale, 27 por ejemplo, destaca un cambio desde el individualismo de John Stuart Mill al énfasis más colectivo del darwinismo social de Spencer; en tanto Hoston 28 muestra que entre los japoneses de tendencia liberal hubo un cambio marcado hacia líneas liberales, que enfatizaban una perspectiva social mayor en el individuo, rechazando la legitimidad de lo privado en relación con lo público, mas acorde con las tradiciones japonesas, de orden más comunitario.…”

Misdirected Understandings

“…To do so, kokutai evolved to serve as an orthodox argument that was gradually transmitted by way of propaganda, education or through its embodiment in a legal form (see Khan 2000;Mitchell 1973Mitchell , 1976Wray 1973). Anti-particularistic tendencies, such as liberalism and socialism, emerged and grew during the Taishô and early Shôwa periods and were perceived as threats to the kokutai and the tennôsei since they belonged to the "dangerous thoughts" (kiken shisô) which threatened to contaminate the population through the diffusion of individualist ways of thinking and behaviors (Hoston 1992;Katô 1999Katô [1974Mitchell 1992: 36-68;Nolte 1984). During the interwar period, these schools of thought in conflict with the Japanese self-understanding/representation promoted by the Taishô and Shôwa regimes were epitomized in what was called modanizumu [modernism] or even Amerikanizumu [Americanism].…”