Paper presented at “Democratizing IR” Conference (National Sun Yat-Sen University, 11-12 March 2009) Rethinking the Project of Overcoming the Western ‘Universalism’: A Hegeian Trap?
Hiroyuki TOSA(Kobe University, JAPAN)
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war's end in 1995, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama gave a statement as follows.
‘During a certain period in the not-too-distant past, Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly those of Asia. In the hope that no such mistake will be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humanity, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology.’
In the same year, Seisuke Okuno, one of the right-wing politicians of the LDP, said as follows.
‘At the time of the birth of the state of Manchukuo, there was a slogan such as “Five Races under One Union (gozoku kyowa)”. Japanese, Korean, Manchurian, Chinese, Mongolian. These five races lived together. Later we rushed into the War with the US. Then I thought that we would construct the Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. That was for the stability of Asia. We had to liberate Asians from the white colonial rule. That also became our slogan. Although we were defeated as a result, all Asian countries were liberated(Okuno and Dore 1995).’
This is one of the typical ‘reckless remarks’ that have been harshly criticized by neighboring Asian countries. Okuno and other right wing politicians including Shinzo Abe and Taro Aso (both of who became prime ministers later) proposed ‘reckless remarks’ intentionally in order to criticize the so-called ‘masochistic view of history (jigyaku shikan)’ including Murayama’s message. Next they formed the ‘Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform’ in 1996 and the ‘Group of young Diet members for thinking the future of Japan and historical education’ in 1997. By using these platforms, they tried to rewrite their national history along the chauvinistic line while denying their own responsibilities for the past human rights abuses such as the ‘comfort women’ issue under the former Japanese empire.
Almost one decade later, the revisionist urge emerged again. On October 2008, Toshio Tamogami, Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) Chief was dismissed due to an essay he published, arguing that it is a false accusation to say Japan was an aggressor
nation during World War Ⅱ and that it was rather drawn into the war by Chang Kai-shek and Franklin D. Roosevelt, which had allegedly been designed by the Comintern. He was sacked due to his own belief in a ridiculous conspiracy theory, but questions persist over how such a vocal revisionist was appointed ASDF chief to begin with. In the first, Tamogami was appointed the ASDF chief at a time when Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet promoted ‘a departure from the post war regime.’ According to the Japan Times, the government is liable for setting the stage where such views could be publicly stated(Hongo 2008). In other words, the revisionist view denying the responsibility for the World WarⅡand the human rights abuses during that period still continues to linger on as a hidden script in spite of official dismiss.
With regard to the politics of denial of human rights abuses under the Japanese Empire, we can explain it as an unconscious defense mechanism for coping with guilt, anxiety, and other disturbing emotions aroused by ‘reality’. According to Stanly Cohen, the official and mainstream denial of human rights abuses usually takes the forms of following responses: 1) outright denial (It doesn’t happen); 2) discrediting (the organization was biased, manipulated or gullible); 3) renaming (Yes, something did happen but the state did not involve in it or it was not massacres); 4) justification (anyway it was morally justifies)(Cohen 2001, 76-116). We can observe this kind of politics of denial in the case of ‘comfort women’ issue in the context of re-emergence of the Japanese neo-nationalism.
In addition, we notice the traces of the idea of Pan-Asianism during the 1930s and the 1940s in Okuno and other revisionists’ remarks. It is easy to refuse flatly their remarks as thoughtless, but we cannot ignore the fact that their revisionist view of the Pacific War has appeared intermittently in Japanese society as representing some political unconsciousness. In addition, we cannot dismiss their view of the Pacific War completely because the war seemed to have the dual characters, the invasion against Asian countries and the war between imperialist powers. Although the idea of Asianism as the project of overcoming the Western modernity was ruined completely, the desire to overcome the Western ‘universality’ still remains as political unconsciousness of these historical revisionists. In order to understand such a political unconsciousness, we need scrutinize the problematique of the idea of Asianism as a project of overcoming Western modernity or Anglo-American ‘universalism’ again.
Related to this point, some new-left intellectuals recently use Carl Schmidt’s texts in order to criticize Anglo-American neo-liberal global order(De Benoist 2007). Although we know the negative aspects such as Schmidt’s ideological contribution to the Nazism and his anachronistic nostalgia for the classical European international public order, Schmidt precisely pointed out the problem inherent in the Anglo-American
universalism that its global order tended to aggravate the absolute antagonism by treating its enemy as absolute evils. In this respect, some of Schmidt’s criticism against Anglo-American ‘universalism’ seems to be still relevant.
In the same way, we need reexamine some Japanese intellectuals’ counter-hegemonic discursive practices during the inter-war period such as the idea of Pan-Asianism or Overcoming Modernity. Their discursive practices are interesting in some respects in spite of their problematic role in justifying imperial wars during the 1930s-40s. They provided some hints for the critique against the Western hegemony. On the other hand, they also suggested difficulties with the project of overcoming the Western modernity. For Japanese intellectuals at that time, the important task is to design the alternative international order against the ‘universal’ West. In order to develop the dialectical sublation (Aufheben) between the East and the West, they speculated its possibility in the idea of regionalism.
That kind of idea seems to still relevant as the US hegemony is now taken over gradually by the Chinese emerging power. In other words, the project of overcoming the Western modernity is still in progress. In this respect, it might be necessary to examine the problematique inherent in that kind of project. Before scrutinizing the problematique in the Japanese project of overcoming the Western modernity, it is necessary to re-confirm the origins of the Hegelian absolute Orientalism, the Japanese intellectuals tried to challenge. In the first part, we reexamine the Hegelian absolute Orientalism. Next, we review the idea of Pan-Asianism and its problematique by focusing on the right wing Kyoto school’s discursive practices.
1. A Reversal of Superiority: The Emergence of Western ‘Universality’
It is well known that Hegel’s teleological view of history in his “Philosophy of History” was the first systemic thought of Western ‘Universalism’. In this lecture, Hegel asserted that the essence of Spirit is Freedom and that Universal History is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially(Hegel 1956, 17-18). With regard to the Orient, he wrote as follows.
‘The Orient have not attained the knowledge that Spirit---Man as such---is free; and because they do not know this, they are not free. The only know that one is free(Hegel 1956, 18).’
In addition, he wrote as follows.
‘The History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning. ---History performs no circle round it, but has on the contrary a determinate East, vis., Asia. Here rises the outward physical Sun, and in the
West it sinks down: here consentaneously rises the Sun of self –consciousness, which diffuses a nobler brilliance. The History of the World is the discipline of the uncontrolled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a Universal principle and conferring subjective freedom. The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is
Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third Monarchy(Hegel 1956,
103-104).’
These famous passages indicate the teleological view of the history that the rationality would gradually advance against the irrationality and would achieve the freedom for all. As Hegel himself wrote that our mode of treating history is theodicean (a justification of the ways of God)(Hegel 1956, 15), his teleological view is closely related with his Christianity. So the struggle with the Oriental despotisms has special meaning such as crusaders. Hegel explained about it by quoting the case of the Wars with the Persians as follows.
‘Greater battles, unquestionably, have been fought; but these live immortal not in the historical records of Nations only, but also Science and of Art—of the Noble and the Moral generally. For these are World-Historical victories; they were the salvation of culture and Spiritual vigor, and they rendered the Asiatic principle powerless. --- In the case before us, the interest of the World’s History hung trembling in the balance. Oriental despotism---a world united under one lord and sovereign---on the one side, and separate states---insignificant in extent and resources, but animated by free individuality---on the other side, stood front to front in array of battle. Never in History has the superiority of spiritual power over material bulk---and that of no contemptible amount---been made so gloriously manifest(Hegel 1956, 257-8).’
For Hegel, the Oriental despotism represented the irrational pre-modern to be overcome by the Spirit of the Freedom. Among them, the most pre-modern polity was China. Hegel tried to classify the Oriental despotism as follows.
‘The third important form---presenting a contrast to the immovable unity of China and to the wild and turbulent unrest of India---is the Persian Realm. China is quite peculiarly Oriental; India we might compare with Greece; Persia on the other hand with Rome(Hegel 1956, 113).’
In Hegel’s view, Chinese civilization marked the lowest level of world-historical development while European civilization was positioned at its highest level. It is easy to criticize his absolute Orientalism putting the Chinese into the category of ‘the people without history’. Here we had better pay an attention to the fact that his
kind of Eurocentric worldview still now overshadows the policy makers’ and political commentators’ discourses such as ‘the return of history’(Kagan 2008). In addition, it is noteworthy that Hegelian Orientalism was just one of byproducts of European modernity and was not so old. Before Hegel, Sinophobism had not been dominant. Some European intellectuals rather had Sinophilic sentiments. For example, Baron Gorrfried von Leibniz expressed positive view about China in his Novissima Sinica (Latest News from China) as follows.
‘Perhaps Supreme Providence has ordained such an arrangement, so that as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be brought to a better way of life. ---Now the Chinese Empire, which challenges Europe in cultivated area and certainly surpasses her in population, vies with us in many other ways in almost equal combat, so that now they win, now we(Leibniz 1994, 45-46).’i
In this way, Leibniz believed that the Chinese exhibited a higher level of civility and law than the West in some respects. He therefore saw them as the likeliest candidates for conversion to Christianity. In addition, he expressed his interesting view through comparing the China with the West as follows.
‘In the useful arts and in practical experience with natural objects we are, all things considered, about equal to them, and each people has knowledge which it could with profit communicate to the other. In profundity of knowledge and in the theoretical disciplines we are their superiors. ---
The Chinese are thus seen to be ignorant of that great light of the mind, the art of demonstration, and they have remained content with a sort of empirical geometry, which our artisans universally possess. They also yield to us in military science, not so much out of ignorance as by deliberation. For they despise everything which creates or nourishes ferocity in men, and almost in emulation of the higher teachings of Christ (and not, as some wrongly suggest, because of anxiety), they are averse to war. They would be wise indeed if they were alone in the world. But as things are, it comes back to this, that even the good must cultivate the arts of war, so that the evil may not gain power over everything. In these matters, then, we are superior(Leibniz 1994, 46).’
Leibnitz’s view that Chinese relatively military weakness derived from its high level of civilization is very interesting. However, as Leibnitz had warned and the following history indicated, its military weakness invited the outside evil to invade China. Simply speaking, as the West beat China militarily, Sinophilism disappeared and Hegelian absolute Orientalism took the place of it. But there had been various kinds of views on China among European intellectuals before Hegelian absolute Orientalism
became dominant. Voltaire and Quesnay also joined in Sinophilists. Even Adam Smith saw China as being ahead of Europe along the same development trajectory but he is not as full of admiration as Leibnitz or Voltaire. Smith wrote about China as follows.
‘The great extent of the empire of China, the vast multitude of its habitants, the variety of climate, and consequently of production in its different provinces, and the easy communication by means of water carriage between the greater part of them, render the home market of that country of so great extent, as to be alone sufficient to support very great manufactures, and to admit of very considerable subdivisions of labour. The home market of China is, perhaps, in extent, not much inferior to the market of all the different countries of Europe put together. A more extensive foreign trade, however, which to this great home market added the foreign market of all the rest of the world; especially if any considerable part of this trade was carried on in Chinese ships; could scarce fail to increase very much the productive powers of its manufactures of China, and to improve very much the productive powers of its manufacturing industry(Smith 1976, 680-681).’
As Giovanni Arrighi pointed out in his recent book(Arrighi 2007, 59), this criticism simply expresses the opinion that an alleged Chinese neglect of foreign trade prevented the natural Chinese path from fully running its course. Nowhere does Smith suggest that China should have followed the European path. On the contrary, the main thrust of his advice to European statesmen is to steer the course of development in their own countries towards the natural path. Smith is still a far cry from Hegelian absolute Orientalism. Furthermore it can be said that Smith had predicted the emergence of China.
Even Montesquieu, who gave influences upon Hegel’s view on China, did not take the absolute Orientalism. Indeed we can observe Orientalist elements in Montesquieu’s books. However if we read his texts like the Spirit of the Law carefully, we can notice differences between Montesquieu’s Orientalism and Hegel’s absolute Orientalism.
‘Many things govern men: climate, religion, laws, the maxims of the government, examples of past things, mores, and manners; a general spirit is formed as a result. To the extent that, in each nation, one of these causes acts more forcefully, the others yield to it. Nature and climate almost alone dominate savages; manners govern the Chinese; laws tyrannize Japan; in former times mores set the tone in Lacedaemonia; in Rome it was set by the maxims of government and the ancient mores(Montesquieu 1989, 310).’
While Montesquieu emphasized the negative aspect of China such such as tyranny in the following sentences, he did not reach the stage of absolute Orientalism yet. He just did the comparison with China and emphasized the instability of its absolutism in
order to promote the reform of the French monarchy. His claim was quite simple. The monarchical and the republican types were politically stable, whereas despotic government was politically unstable. The reason why the former two types of state were stable was that they each incorporated a distinct balance of power.
Although it is certain that Hegel was influenced by Montesquieu’s negative view on China, the formation of Hegel’s absolute Orientalism needed more important preconditions. One of them was the reversal of superiority between the East and the West in many respects including economy. Another was the transformation of European polities from the absolute monarchy to the bourgeois democracy. These transformation preconditioned Hegelian philosophy of teleological history based upon absolute Orientalism(Hung 2003; Blue 1999). As power relations between the East and the West changed, the ideas about the East and China were also rearranged along the Orientalist line.
Although both the absolute Orientalism and Sino-centrism shared a similar cognitive center-periphery structure, they are quite different from each other. While Sino-centrism was more static symbolic order, Orientalism is just byproduct of the Western modernity. If the power relation between the East and the West is reversed again, the Orientalist perception will disappear. But as far as the West keeps its relative superiority against the East, the latter has no choice but to struggle with the Eurocentric ‘universalism’ by any means. That struggle ironically looks like a famous dialectic between the master and the slave that Hegel depicted in his Phenomenology of Mind. How can the colonized or semi-colonized periphery achieve its freedom against the Western domination based upon quasi-universalism? In the beginning of the 20th century, Japan, which deserted from the peripheral status of Chinese tribute-trade relations and became the only imperial power among the non-western societies, tried to overcome the Western modernity not only in the material dimension but also in the ideal dimension. The political thought of Pan-Asianism in Japan was the philosophical challenge against the western superiority. Here we re-examine the idea of Asian regional sphere trying to transcend the Western nationalism and imperialism.
2. The Project of Overcoming Modernity and Pan-Asianism as Rhetoric
Pan-Asianism was a political challenge overcoming not only Asian pre-modernity but also European modernity. It was also a philosophical venture aiming at sublation (Aufheben) in the dialectical opposition between the East and the West. But that philosophical venture gradually degenerated into the rhetoric justifying Japanese imperial domination in Asia and/or the fig leaf concealing the reality of abused modern violence such as Japanese military invasions of neighboring countries.
Horizontal Pan-Asian solidarism had been positioned at the opposite of the slogan of ‘Casting off Asia, and joining the West (datsua nyuo)’ in the first period of the
Meiji Era. But as the latter became stronger than the former, Japan could not restrain imperialistic violent impulse that was immanent in the project of western modernization and plunged into the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1931 and finally into the Pacific War in 1941. In that process, the idea of Asianism became just a rhetoric concealing the reality of these wars. We can see its almost finished product in the arguments about the so-called ‘overcoming modernity’ii.
According to the dominant interpretation concerning the development of Asianism in Japan, there are three stages(Oka 1961). In the first stage, the movement aiming at the horizontal Asian solidarism emerged responding to the Western impact. In the second stage, as the slogan of “Casting off Asia” became dominant responding to the tense geopolitical game with China around the Korean peninsular, the idea of Asianism became feeble. In the third stage, the idea of Pan-Asianism re-emerged as a dominant ideology justifying Japanese imperialism in Asia during the 1930s.
After the defeat at the Pacific War, the pro-US realist strategy such as ‘Casting off Asia, and joining the US alliance’ became quite dominant in the Japanese conservative mainstream policy makers. Then some critical scholars rediscovered the idea of horizontal Asian solidarism in order to criticize pro-American policy(Sakai 2007, 234-281). In this sense, the dominant theory depicting three stages of Asianism might be a by-product of the ideological struggle between the pro-American right and the pro-China left in the Japanese societies during the Cold War era. In other words, the theory of the three stages of Asianism might reflect the left intellectuals’ desire idealizing the original Asianism. But even if we admit the influence of the Cold War on the theory of three stages, it is difficult to deny that the original idea of Asianism was rather horizontal and that it transformed to a rhetorical fig leaf concealing the reality of Japanese imperialism in Asia. Indeed, as Japan began to involve in the Second Sino-Japanese war and the Pacific War, the idea of Asianism was utilized as a an important keyword for overcoming Hegelian philosophy of history.
It was the so-called Kyoto Schooliii that tried to deny Hegelian philosophy of history by presenting a new philosophy of history and to justify the Pacific War by its peculiar rhetoric. On how to overcome Hegelian philosophy of history, Masaaki Kosaka(1900-1969), one of the right wing Kyoto School scholars, wrote as follows.
‘The principle of the Oriental philosophy is nothingness. On the other hand, the principle of the Western philosophy is existentiality based upon the nature, the Gold, or the human. Here is uniqueness in the nothingness of the Oriental philosophy. ----
Although Japan, China, and India had intense cultural exchanges with each other, they didn’t form the one world yet. In the east, we could not find the progressive development which the West had experienced from the ancient Greek civilization to the medieval, the modern civilization. India is fantastic, China is realistic, and Japan is natural. Although each has a distinctive feature, all of them have the common base such
as nothingness. That is one of reasons why Hegel thought Oriental history as pre-history of the world history (Vorgeschte der Weltgeschichte). The East did not experience the Western type of development. But it does not mean that the East has neither principle nor history. The Oriental history was the foundation of the word history as well as its pre-history. So the oriental history did not surface. However the world is now involving the East as well as the West. So it is reaching at the stage of the one-world. A rapid current of the world history began to pour from the East as though a dam inside the East had broken. Japan now has to take initiatives for promoting this kind of change in the world order(Kosaka 2002 [1937]).’
It seemed that Kosaka challenged against Hegelian philosophy of history by using the peculiar rhetoric of the Kyoto school (Kitaro Nishida and his epigones). As Wataru Hiromastu, one Marxist philosopher, harshly criticized, the arguments by the right wing Kyoto School including Kosaka look like a castle of ideas in the air and their keywords such as ‘Oriental nothingness’ are no more than rhetoric(Hiromatsu 1989, 57). However they tried to justify the Pacific War by mobilizing this kind of vague rhetoric as possible as they could. As the Persian War had been a decisive battle between the East and the West for Hegel, the Pacific War had the same meaning for the right wing of the Kyoto school. But this decisive battle, needless to say, was neither a battle between the tyranny and the democracy nor an imperialistic war. For them, that was a decisive battle though which the new world order would be organized.
For example, Iwao Takayama(1905-1933), another scholar of the right wing Kyoto school, justified the Pacific War as follows.
‘Although the idea of liberalism, which became a main principle of the Modern European society, aimed at harmonizing the reality with the ideal, the actual liberalism estranged the former from the latter. On the one hand, the free competition leads to a world where the weak are victims of the strong and the inequality deteriorates. On the other hand, the principle of the free will is believed as an ideal of the formal morality. Thus the principle of liberalism led to the disorganized coexistence of the hollow ideal with the reality of naked power politics. It did not realize any moral power that could bring the eternal peace to the world(Takayama 2001 [n.d.], 376-377).’
According to him, ‘the Anglo-Saxon world order’ would collapse sooner or later and would be replaced by the new world order. Related to the new order, Takayama said that it would neither a confederation of states nor modern empires but it would be ‘the specific world (Tokushuteki-sekai)’ such as the so-called co-prosperity sphere
(Kyoei-ken) or the large block (Groß Raum, Koiki-ken).(Takayama 2001 [n.d.], 396-397)
‘Statism and one-worldism (cosmopolitanism) have coexisted in the modern world-history. The principle of state sovereignty leads to statism while the principle of individualism leads to one-worldism. However we are now facing new historical conjunctures that we cannot understand by these principles. It is the phenomena of the co-prosperity sphere or the expansive region. The venture to construct the Asian Co-prosperity Sphere as well as the European large block is a part of the new world order. The Asian Co-prosperity Sphere is the moral order by realizing and extending outward the morality immanent in the states. Other large blocks will follow this path. Thus the abstract confrontation between statism and one-worldism will disappear. The place of the modern states will be taken by the new states that connect with the co-prosperity sphere or the large block(Takayama 2000 [1944], 246-247).’
This kind of idea of the regional community, such as the East Asian Community (Toa kyodotai), had already been proposed by Kiyoshi Miki (1897), Hotsumi Ozaki (1901-1944), and Masamichi Royama (1895-1908) who were members of the Showa Research Association (Showa kenkyukai) during the 1930s. Simply speaking, the idea of the East Asian Community was invented and refined to legitimize the second China-Japanese War after the so-called China Incident of 1937. They attributed to China Incident “world-historical significance” both philosophically and politically. In the same way, the right wing Kyoto School including Takayama attributed the Pacific War “the world-historical significance” by borrowing the idea of regionalism beyond nationalism and imperialism in order to justify the Pacific War and the Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.
For example, Royama explained that the idea of the East Asian Community ventured to overcome the limit of the Western modernity such as nationalism. After pointing out that the Western nationalism cannot provide the ultimate principle for the world peace, he wrote as follows.
‘We must give birth to the unity of East through overcoming nationalism. However where is the power source for overcoming it? We notice the main motor in the expanding process of Japanese Nationalism over the Asian continent. --- The principle immanent in the Japanese launching into the continent is not the Western imperialism but the regionalism for protecting and developing Asia. --- As the world is now dividing into the several equilibrium regions of the organic unity combining the nature with the culture, the new world order based upon the regional community is emerging. That is not the extension of the logic of the balance of the power that had been fashionable during the 19th century. It is rather the construction of the new world civilization that would correct the unevenness of the world and provide the foundation of the welfare for each people(Royama 1941).’
the Western modernity, philosophically and politically, we should not forget that they merely legitimized Japanese imperialistic expansion in Asia. While the idea of Asian regionalism such the East Asian Community and the Co-prosperity Sphere might be the intellectual project for overcoming Hegelian philosophy of the history, it became just the ideology concealing the realities that the Japan dominated and plundered the Asia without hegemony. In sum, the harsh realities of the Japanese imperialism with the noble idea of Asianism for the new world order ironically showed the typical case of the disorganized coexistence of the hollow ideal with the reality of naked power politics.
3. The Logic of Violent Paternalism in Asianism.
Why did the project of overcoming the Western modernity degenerate into the reproduction of violence immanent in the Western nation-states and imperialistic system? One reason is that the project fell into something like a ‘Hegelian trap’ where the slaves’ violent rebellion just reproduced the master’s violence and the master-slave relation. In sum, the venture to overcome the Western modernity and to construct the new world order resulted in the unfinished dialectics without sublation because Japan resorted to modern violence and tried to become a master in Asia.
Related to this issue, Kitaro Nishida who was the founder of the Kyoto school gave an interesting comment on the prospect of the Japanese philosophy. Responding to Miki’s question, Nishida answered as follows.
Miki : We did not have our academic philosophy in Japan. If we have it in the future, how will we do it?
Nishida: We must break through the Western philosophy. Philosophy should take the academic form. Although there are Confucianism, divination lore and something like that in China, we cannot find the breakthrough from them. Buddhism has some good elements, but there is also a blockade there. So we must break through the Western philosophy and get to the heart of the matter. Why is the Japanese military now strong? It is not because of Japanese traditional military tactics, but because we learnt the Western military strategy and tactics. Why not the academic philosophy will follow the military? As we adopt the Western military strategy, we must do the philosophy in the Western way in the first. Next we must break through it thoroughly(Miki and Nishida 1968 [1935], 486).
‘Break through the West by the Western way!’ This Nishida’s message indicated where the trap was for the project of overcoming the Western modernity. As far as the inferior actors try to get the superior position by denying their own vulnerabilities, they cannot bring about sublation from the dialectical confrontation between the master and the slave. The dichotomy between the superior and the inferior might be just reversed
but the dichotomy itself remains intact. In sum, their venture to overcome Hegelian philosophy of history was caught in the Hegelian trap and the project of overcoming modernity just reproduced and strengthened the violent modern identities.
In addition, the logic of masculine paternalism intensified the violent identities. Following that logic, the right wing Kyoto school scholars emphasized that the superior Japan had the destiny or the responsibility to protect the inferior Asia from the Western imperialism. In the way, they justified the Japanese substantive domination without hegemony in Asia. For example, we can notice this kind of logic in Takayama’s sentences.
‘If we lack the critical self-reflection on our culture and the strong self-reliant spirits to support it, it is impossible to nurture the powers of the resistance against invasions by the Western great powers. But Asian countries including India lack this critical self-reflection and self-reliant spirits. China is also short of them. Only Japan has them. That is the reason why Japan has the special mission to play a pivotal role in the transformation process of the world history. In this sense, the modernization of the Japanese state in Asia should have the world-historical significance(Takayama 2001 [n.d.], 372).’
Although Takayama emphasized the necessity of the critical self-reflection, he praised the superiority of his own culture unilaterally. It seems that Takayama’s sentences fell into the paradoxical oxymoron. This kind of oxymoron was often repeated in the arguments regarding the project of overcoming modernity. While they insisted obstinately that Japanese launching into the Asian continent was different from the Western imperialism, it was actually reproducing imperialism (without formal colonies). In addition, it is difficult to deny that the backwardness of the Japanese imperialism make its violence worse. In order to camouflage the violent realities, they just repeated the logic of paternalism that Japan has the destiny to protect the ‘backward’ Asian countries by its military strength.
We can paraphrase the logic of violent paternalism into the logic of protection racket. In other words, while the master pretends to protect the slave by its monopolized violence, the former extracts the protection racket from the latter and justifies its domination. We can notice one sort of variation of the logic of protection racket in the idea of Asianism. Even the left intellectuals such as Hotsumi Ozaki and Kiyoshi Miki also adopted the same kind of logic in their argument about the East Asian Community. While they admitted that the East Asian Community should be based upon the horizontal cooperation, they also emphasized that Japan need play a hegemonic role in the community(Miki 2007 [1938], 53; Ozaki 2004 [1939], 205). We should pay an attention to the fact that their rhetoric of horizontal Asian community was not only the response to the rising anti-Japanese nationalism in China and Korea but also the camouflage to hide
the reality of Japanese imperialism. In other words, they desired to realize the Japanese hegemony by assimilating the dreams of Asian nationalism into Pan-Asianism.
The project of overcoming modernity and the logic of violent paternalism was completely ruined by the Japanese military defeat in 1945. However the myth of ‘the Pacific War for liberating Asia against the Western imperialism’ ironically survived in the conservative political forces in Japan under the protection by the American world order partly due to the beginning of the Cold War. In this atmosphere, most of the conservative people began to share the historical perception that Japan had been defeated by the US, not by Asian anti-Japanese nationalism. That kind of perception provided the conditions for the re-emergence of the historical revisionism to deny Japanese responsibilities for their wars in Asia and Pacific. Thus the myth of ‘the Pacific War for liberating Asia against the Western imperialism’ was resurrected with rising neo-chauvinistic movements during the 1990s. This backlash occurred reacting to the highlighted ‘Comfort Women’ issue that was the dark side of the Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. In addition, this neo-chauvinistic movement ironically led to the formation of Asian identities targeting Japan as the other to exclude.
Concluding Thought What was the Western modernity for those who advocated the idea of Asianism? For
example, the right wing Kyoto School scholars such as Takayama and Kosaka insisted that the atomic individualism, liberalism, and Anglo-Saxon world order based upon them had brought about various kinds of problems such as deepening of alienation and structural inequality (structural violence). According to them, the new world order should be established in order to solve these problems. In addition, as Royama pointed out, the East Asian Community would be required in order to overcome the Western modern nation-states system and nationalism. In spite of differences among their opinions about the problems of the Western modernity, they shared the view that the world was facing the crisis such as the disorganized coexistence of the hollow ideal with the reality of naked power politics.
First of all, we should not ignore the fact that those Japanese intellectuals justified Japanese imperialisms by employing quasi-academic rhetoric. However we should pay an attention to the problems inherent in the Western modernity that they had pointed out at the same time. Some of those problems still remain to be solved even now. The problematique inherent in the Western modernity including alienation and inequality now become much worse under the neo-liberal global governance. While neoliberal global governmentality promotes the homogenization of the subjectivity at the global level through its networked powers by mobilizing benchmarking system, it also promotes the politics of exclusion such as targeted governance aiming at deviant groups in the periphery. This highly disciplinary social control of the marginalized population
sometimes leads to a state of exception where the people have to endure bare lives as
homo sacer in Agamben’s words. The neoliberal governmentality creates an informal
sector at an enormous scale, which leads to the failed governance in which vicious cycles of violence becomes normal(Tosa 2008). Reacting to this kind of situation, the project of overcoming the Anglo-American liberal world order is still in progress. In other words, the project of overcoming Hegelian orientalism is still going on.
Yoshimi Takeuchi is one of the post-war Japanese intellectuals who had an awareness of this issue. In his famous speech ‘Asia as a method’ in 1960, he expressed his idea regarding the dialectics of the East and the West as follows.
‘The West would be re-engulfed by the East once again. The East would transform the West itself. The East would create universality by cultural rollback. The strength of the East would reform the West in order to elevate much higher the universal values that the West created. --- In order to further cultural rollback, the East must have its own originality. I do not think that there is such a substance in the East. But there could be something like a method, that is, a process of subjectification. Although I cannot specify it, I could call it “Asia as a method”(Takeuchi 2006[1960]).’
What was wrong with the Japanese past venture to overcome the Western modernity? In order to further ‘Asia as a method’, what we need to do? First of all, we must pay an attention to the way how the subjectification is accompanied by the politics of exclusion. Once the East as subject is constructed against the West in order to overturn the dominant system, it cannot help creating the other inside itself through constructing its own collective identities (See the case of Tibetan issue in the context of Chinese anti-imperialism). Through this process, it tends to reproduce the violent identities of the Western modernity. As it tries to break through the Western modernity by resorting to violence, it might bring about worse political situations such as ‘domination without hegemony’ and causes the strong negativity consequently by negating the negative rather than promotes dialectical sublation. In sum, the Japanese past venture just followed that kind of path and fell into the Hegelian trap. If we respond to the logic of power politics by its logic, we will continue to be held in captivity of that logic and cannot overcome it.
Related to this point, Spivak mentioned the similar kind of thing as follows in her Other Asias.
‘These intra-national and international, economic and geopolitical divisions within our continent require the kind of critical regionalism we are taking out. If we do anything on the model of national sovereignty in the name of by now archaic nationalist struggles we are going to get replicas of the global game except now, truly in a same way, confined to our region. ---- Anti-colonial struggles are a thing of the past. You have it in
Israel and Palestine: that’s an anti-colonial struggles and the tragedy is that it does not belong to our times. We cannot take national liberation as a model of anything more. --- In the name of anti-colonialism you get the kind of national identity politics that can lead to fascism. ---- I want to a critical regionalist world, but I don’t want these slogans --- colonialism and national identity--- to be avoided for us to use(Spivak 2008, 246-249).’
As anti-colonialism just reproduces the logic of the national identity, it is necessary to avoid the simple anti-colonialism in order to avoid such a trap. If we want to overcome the logic of nationalism, we must refrain from using it and seek for the alternative including critical regionalism. In the same way, you cannot overcome the logic of power politics just by following power politics. You might be able to overturn the hierarchical power structure by pursuing the logic of the power politics but cannot transform it. Although the pundits of the Kyoto school tried to overcome the Western ‘universalism’ by emphasizing the idea of Asian regionalism, it seems that they also fell in the same kind of trap. The denial of Western ‘universalism’ just leads to the Occidentalism: ‘anti-Western Euro-centrism’(Wallerstein 2006). In order to promote a dialectical movement furthermore, it is necessary to make a negation of the negative not an affirmation. As Adorno sharply pointed out, ‘a negation of the negative is not an
affirmation itself and that to equate the negation of negation with positivity is the quintessence of idetification(Adorno 1973, 158)’. In the same way, the Japanese project
of overcoming modernity seemed to be the negation of negation with positivity. It proposed the idea of Asianism against Hegelian absolute Orientalism in order to construct the new world order. Then it just became a mirror image of the other and fell into the same kind of identity or worse one. In order to escape that trap, we need take notice of the negative dialectics that is the consistent sense of nonidentity(Adorno 1973, 5).
By the consistent sense of identity, we tend to exclude the heterogeneous other and to reproduce the violent identities. The politics of identification has taken the form of the Western nation-states system. The project of pan-Asianism for overcoming Western modernity had fallen into the politics of identification by excluding the other. We can observe the same phenomena in the case in which some Japanese conservative politicians try to exclude the narratives on ‘Comfort Women’ issue or ‘forced mass suicides [shudan-jiketsu] at Okinawa islands’ from the official war stories. In short, they easily entrust themselves with the politics of identification because they cannot put up with the uncomfortable situations with the heterogeneous other. In order to promote the project of overcoming modernity properly, we need keep the consistent sense of nonidentity by re-introducing the excluded heterogeneous narratives. By keeping the consistent sense of
nonidentity, we will be able to avoid a Hegelian trap that just follows the logic of the
negative by making a negation of the negative an affirmation and to open up the possibilities for ‘critical regionalism’ in Asia.
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i See also (Perkins 2004).
ii With regard to a part of arguments on ‘Overcoming Modernity’, see (Calochman 2008).
iii It is Jun Tosaka who used the word ‘Kyoto School’ for the first time. It is noteworthy
that Tosaka used that word in order to criticize Kitaro Nishida and Hajime Tanabe’s philosophy as ‘bourgeois metaphycis’ from his own Marxist perspectives(Tosaka 2007 [1934]). In this sense, the word ‘Kyoto School’ implied the negative connotations in the fist. With regard to the introductory English reference to the Kyoto School, see (Heisig 2001; Goto-Jones 2005).
