A Rising Unknown: Rediscovering the China in Japan’s East Asia
Chih-yu Shih
Department of Political Science
National Taiwan University
E-mail: cyshih@ntu.edu.tw
Abstract:
Modern Japanese thinkers and philosophers used to present Japan to Western nations in light
of its leadership in East Asia. On the other hand, contending schools of thought unanimously
treat China ontologically as part of East Asia. Despite their disagreement—both at the
epistemological and practical levels—concerning what East Asia should mean, the consensus
has always been that China must depend on Japan’s leadership. This is based on the
assumption that neither Japan nor China can independently cope with the West. At present,
this type of East Asian ontology, which places Japan and China in a hierarchical and
harmonious relationship, has become increasingly insufficient in evaluating China’s rise in
recent years. For contemporary Japanese thinkers, the challenge involves replacing China in
East Asia—an act which entails a simultaneous move to re-present Japan to the West, hence
A Rising Unknown: Rediscovering the China in Japan’s East Asia
Introduction: China Threat as an Intellectual Threat
Over the years, China's increasing wealth and power have caused rising concern in
Japan. Some of this concern has to do with the realist perception of a developing China which
continues to challenge the existing balance of power in Asia-Pacific. However, the realist
discourse is not adequate nor profound enough to appreciate the fact that debates on China’s
role have been historically intrinsic to the self-identification of Japan. This paper seeks to
explore the historical and philosophical sources of the Japanese concern over the rise of China
by singling out one foundational premise upon which almost all narratives seem to have
continuously rested. Specifically, for Japan to achieve its rightful place in the world, it has to
demonstrate leadership in integrating Asia into a higher level of universality that incorporates
both Asian and European civilizations. This means that China is essentially weak and
vulnerable to Western intrusion and is not ready to rescue itself from the predicament of
underdevelopment or imperialism.
To begin, there used to be a school of thought that conceived of Japan as modern and
its major component, as backward and barbaric. In another tradition, one which has existed
since the late 19th century, Japan and China had to join together to counter the imperialist West,
with Japan obviously holding the superior role. In this relationship, Japan had the duty to help
China, but it was the former which was considered the leader in the fight against Western
aggression. Both of these visions demonstrated that there was no room for a strong and
powerful China.
Upon Japan’s defeat in 1945, left-wing thinkers began to idealize socialist China as a
vanguard of history that manifested the agency of leaping over the capitalist stage of history.
However, the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent reform quickly aborted this image of a
socialist China. Right-wing thinkers re-emerged only to suffer the familiar ambivalence with
regard to Japan’s proper place in the world—a progressive Western state vs. a modernizer of
backward Asia. The situation is further complicated in that the anti-Western conservative looks
down but at the same time depends upon “backward China” in forging an integrated Asia to
defend against Western influence on one hand, and then looks to the United States qua the
West for support in order to discipline “recalcitrant China” into accepting a subordinate role in
Asia on the other. Once again, no room for a strong and powerful China exists in these
incompatible schemes.
From the above, it is obvious that the rise of China is more of an intellectual challenge
physical security. All the existing ambivalence as well as debates on China would be
meaningless if China should be rising and dealing with the West independently. Once deprived
of ambivalence and debate of this sort, which has been about what Japan should stand for in
the world, Japanese modern history would be void.
No Longer Japan’s Rise
Modern history of Japan has been one of a small, backward Asian country rising into a
world power. Post WWII history has been likewise been one of Japan rising from its defeat. It is
not surprising that the image of a rising China has attracted much attention in Japan. However,
some degree of effort is required to answer why and how Japanese writers care about this
phenomenon. To begin with, there is not much discussion about a possible Chinese invasion.
With the United States—the hegemonic power presumably always alert to, and exclusively
responsible for, the redistribution of power anywhere in the world—as an ally, why should a
dependent Japan worry about the rise of China? Nevertheless, a specific reference to the
“China threat” first appeared in the August 1990 issue of Shokun (a Bunshun series in Japan)
in the writing of defense analyst Tomohide Murai. The article discusses China’s potential threat
to peace and security in Asia-Pacific in general, hence serving as the embodiment of the US
hegemonic perspective more than anyone else’s.
concern is likely shared between Washington and Tokyo ever since both countries signed the
US-Japan Security Pact in 1960. Both major players should be interested in maintaining
regional balance of power in East Asia. Even writers in China who painstakingly explain away
this China threat feel the same way especially since they, too, subscribe to the realist mode of
analysis.1 Ironically, in Japan, subsequent discussions on the “China threat” are predominantly
economic in nature (some scholars do not see it as a threat, but as an opportunity),2 compared
with their strictly strategic counterparts in Western literature. In short, neither the interest in
defending Japan’s strategic position nor the effort to enhance its military power could
characterize the island nation’s concerns over the so-called “China threat.” This leads to the
suspicion that references to this are no more than a mere mask for something else lacking a
discursive representation other than realism.
This paper does not seek to provide more strategic insights on the region, which is
already abundant even in Japanese literature.3 Rather, by escaping from realist discourses,
this paper attempts to explore the pre-WWII root of affective anxiety existing in Japan toward
the perceived rise of China in the 21st century. This anxiety is probably not territorial by nature,
but is more likely cultural and psychological. The search for non-material explanation requires a
journey far beyond the reaches of contemporary literature polluted by the realist terminology of
an earlier era, when majority of Japanese thinkers struggled with defining Japan’s identity in
legitimate question has been about Japan’s rise premised upon China’s unsalvageable
weakness.
The a-historical tendency in realist analysis is insensible to the relationship between
China and Japan that has haunted the latter’s pursuit of independent statehood for well over a
century. Alternating between the role of Oriental leadership in the united front with China and
the role of an unattached power enjoying equality and respect in the Occidental world, the
politics of national identity in pre-WWII Japan created two different Chinas for Japan. However,
both choices were equally appalling—one being too backward to be worth any affiliation, and
the other too dependent to stand against Western intrusion or join modernity on its own. For
different Japanese narrators (as well as the same narrator during different stages or on
different policy issues), China could mean drastically different things: it is an arena where
Japan enacted world power status on one extreme, and a site of world revolution that provided
Japan various opportunities to contribute to the formation of a world proletariat class on the
other extreme.4 In any case, the China which existed in Japanese modernity before WWII did
not possess the agency for change within itself nor the ability to facilitate a rise. In other words,
the few familiar conceptual frameworks on China that once informed Japan’s identity in front of
a different “West” contain no scheme that can readily explain China’s rise today without
simultaneously displacing Japan’s self-knowledge, be it a leader, a driver, or a stranger.
challenge to Japanese self-identity other than just a call for strategic adaptation.
In the aftermath of WWII, Japan’s aborted quest for identity has left no time for its thinkers
to reconsider the role of China before Japan’s immediate and total submission to its former
enemy—the United States. Despite left-wing writers’ preoccupation with Chinese socialism
during the 1950s and 1960s, China has been viewed, in a strategic sense, as no more than a
backward neighbor. This image of a politically and economically backward China was
resurrected in Japan in the early 1980s,5 following the launch of self-criticism by the Chinese
Communist Party due to a revelation of an unbearable development record. It engrossed the
Japan that had begun to look for a return to normal statehood in the classic dilemma while
facing China—a dependent to be united in opposition to the United States or a hopeless
neighbor not to be associated.
Under these historical and identification conditions, the nascent image of a China rising in
the 21st century inevitably seeks answers to the following questions: Who indeed rises? Is the
rise of China the rise of Asia? Is the rise of China independent from Japan’s leadership? What
would Japan become by participating in China’s rise? These questions cannot be easily
avoided as those countries representing the West in Japanese eyes, clearly treating China
independently from Japan, are tantamount to forcing Japan to choose sides. The enigma
illustrates the uncertainty of Japan’s future and its anxiety toward the loss of its identity as
though. Instead, it will trace the origin and evolution of these questions historically as well as
psychologically. After all, it is the questions, not their answers, that ultimately determine Japan’s
identity.
From a Debt to a Burden
In response to the faddish Asianism which emerged in Japan toward the end of the 20th
century, Koyasu Nobukuni, a contemporary Foucaultian political theorist, derided contemporary
Japanese thinkers for their habitual quest to seek a shield for Japan as it engages “the West.”
This shield takes the form of “Asia” or its variations such as “Orient,” “Great East Asia,” and
“East Asia.”6 The shield aims to conceal the uncertainty concerning what Japan could really
represent today. The lack of self-confidence thereof ironically appeared in various assertions
concerning Japan’s leadership in East Asia. Japanese thinkers find it easier for Japan to face
the West if it could represent “Asia”—so much so that it would not be alone. This notion of Asia
typically included a backward China. As Japanese thinkers felt that Japan did not belong to the
West, its association with China only deepened the existing ambivalence. Anyone familiar with
the pre-WWII history of Japan should be familiar with such ambivalence.
Indeed, an ostensibly Western Japan joining the West to explore Asia could thereafter
avoid the identity question of Japan. In fact, the wishful approach toward Asia, once promoted
a Western power would, namely, to become “Western” by colonizing parts of Asia.7 However, it
became quite clear that this action alone was insufficient for Japanese thinkers to perceive their
acceptance by the West. On one hand, Western powers did not automatically include
modernized Japan among its members even after Japan’s victorious battle with Russia in 1905.
Coincidentally, the victory was followed by a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment in the aftermath of
the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. On the other hand, Japanese thinkers were extremely
sensitive to signs of their rejection, thus realizing that Japan had never really been Western in
the first place.
Consequently, Japan would have to rely on backward China to jointly compose a unified
Asia, one which is strong enough to face the imperialist West and modern enough to win its
respect. If Asia is to be authentic, cultural essentialism must be at work.8 However, this notion
of essential Asia could be dangerous to Japan since it was Hegel’s designation of Oriental
despotism to Asia as a whole which prompted earlier Japanese thinkers to painstakingly
distinguish Japan from China. The allusion of a culturally essential Asia could absorb Japan
into Hegel’s Orientalized backwardness and stiffness.9 The effort to transform weak China into
a strong Asia imposed such a burden on Japan. In fact, if not for its perceived rejection by the
West, pre-war Japanese leaders would not have bothered with it.
The aborted escape from Oriental despotism led to two types of ambivalence. The first
being rejected combined with the determination to eventually “beat the West.” The other
ambivalence locked Japan in a dilemma between distancing itself from a backward China or
establishing intimacy with China as a partner in the united front against the West. The
combined desire to turn Western and distance itself from China contrasts sharply with the
grievance toward the West amplified by its intimacy with China.
The notions of Asia and East Asia have never been clearly separated in concept.
Geographical objectivity transcended Japan’s presumed debt to China—a nation that has acted
as a mentor to the Japanese civilization. In both geographical Asia and East Asia, Japanese
thinkers were able to assert modern subjectivity vis-à-vis a fixed territory. In a number of
narratives, East Asia has come to include a geographical and cultural territory reaching as far
as India.10 India fascinated Japanese thinkers as part of the Orient long before the rise of
militarism in Japan,11 indirectly indicating that China was initially a civilization rather than a
geographical concept. It was only when Japan returned to Asia to assume its leadership did
China become a piece of territory, allowing the emergence of Asianism as a civilization that
Japan best represented in its bid to overtake China. East Asianism therefore replaced the
Orient during this transition.
The contemporary historian Stefan Tanaka explains this transition in detail. He recorded
how Shiratori Kurakichi (1865-1942), who established the Tokyo School of thought, invented
juxtaposing the Oriental heaven with the Occidental heaven, so that the Orient and the
Occident could be equal. He proceeded by taking Confucius out of the China context and
making him East Asian, hence establishing equality between Confucian Japan and Confucian
China. Following this argument, Japan eased “out” of China and simultaneously became equal
with each individual Occidental country.12
In comparison, Shiratori was ambitious in his desire to conquer the West conceptually.
This he achieved by asserting that Japan was the only country knowledgeable in both Oriental
and Occidental philosophies, therefore serving as the ultimate symbol of universalism. A similar
ambition has repeatedly appeared in subsequent narratives, such as those of the late Nishida
Kitaro (1870-1945), the founding father of the Kyoto school of philosophy, who read
universalism into Japanese selfhood through a Western self-conception in his philosophy of
nothingness, and Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977), a well-cited cultural critic, who contended that
Asia should be no more than a scheme to incorporate Europe into a universal Japanese
mindset. The same ideas have been echoed in the widely cited works of Mizoguchi Yuzo, a
contemporary China specialist, who connected Japan to the universal world through
discovering a China from non-Japanese and non-Western perspectives.13 In any case, East
Asia remained a troublesome identity despite generations of thinkers’ efforts to turn it into an
asset to achieve universalism. After all, China is not part of the West. If China had not been a
The civilization debt dissolved once Japanese thinkers began treating China as a
territorial piece to be assimilated into universal Asianism. Euro-centric views such as linear
historiography, modern nationalism, and class struggle, among others, demonstrated that there
existed Japanese thinkers with enough materials to manipulate China as a territory awaiting
universal meaning. Indeed, Japanese thinkers have been actively and confidently engaged in
the East Asian China compared with the Oriental China. Naito Konan (1866-1934), for example,
“discovered” that the far advanced local culture in China has reached its aging period, and as
such called for the injection of young blood to transform it to a modern state. While Miyazaki
Toten (1871-1922) wanted to turn China into a revolutionary country, Yoshino Sakuzo
(1878-1933), in contrast, hoped for a democratic China, and further, Kita Ikki (1883-1937)
aspired for a nationalist one.15
These ideologically separate reformation schemes shared an epistemologically external
position of observing and guiding, made possible only when China existed objectively in the
eyes of a universal Japan. Similarly, Japan could own the objectified Chinese territory in
geographical East Asia without the fear that it will be dragged into the backward Chinese
civilization. In this regard, they all colluded with the Fascist government in writing China into an
object to be civilized by Japan and using it for the sake of building a respectable East Asia. As
Contending Schools and Their Epistemological Collusion
Many well-known Japanese thinkers have openly stated their fondness of Chinese culture.
Naito, for one, never denied his admiration for China, which also led to his worry that Chinese
culture has not been able to keep up with the times. As the founder of the Kyoto School of
China Studies, Naito theorized an evolutionary track which uniquely belonged to China. He
argued that China has been the first in the world to move out of the medieval stage during the
Song dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) He based his well-founded observation upon the widely
overlooked structural change which occurred during this dynasty, whereby the permanent
decline of feudal families and their deviant forms enabled the court to face society directly
without the median strata.16
Naito’s historiography is therefore different from Shiratori’s in the sense that the latter
worked from a positivist proposition which applied universally, while Naito promoted a
seemingly China-centric perspective. Scholars following Naito’s thoughts debate about the
period-dividing method. Their disagreement points to a shared assumption that Japan was able
to overtake China’s historical evolution, allowing it to look back and determine when and how
Chinese history ceased to evolve.17 On this last point, probably to their own surprise, the K
school and the Tokyo school are actually in accordance.
yoto
Note that both received funding from military establishments to conduct research in China,
their views of China and intervention in the form of deciding what caused China’s stagnation
presupposed Japan’s responsibility in China. In addition, China’s lack of agency for change
was taken for granted in their otherwise incompatible historiography. Naito sympathized with
China to the point that he theorized the shift of cultural center from China to Japan as a
justification of the latter’s role in rejuvenating its aging neighbor.
Naito’s sympathy for China’s static and backward situation existed in other thinkers’
attitude toward China as well. Yoshino Sakuzo, the aforementioned leading democratic writer of
the time, could not help but support the imperialist “21 Demands” brought before the Chinese
government under Yuan Shikai in 1915, even though he later sided with the anti-Japanese
sentiment in China during the May 4th Movement of 1919.18 Fondness, sympathy, and the
desire to initiate intervention mutually reinforced one another.
In contrast to fondness, aversion existed among the best-known thinkers, serving as
another dominant theme in their dealings with China. As compared to what the National
Scholarship School had been proposing prior to Meiji, Fukuzawa was actually quite late in
catching on to this trend. Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), one of the few still widely mentioned
classic thinkers, led in the reformation of the Japanese language, urging the immediate sifting
of Chinese hieroglyph out of a pure Japanese phonetic in order to reach an unpolluted
Japanese origin.19 It should be no surprise that Motoori was the father of the national language
Chinese Han characters became symbols of backwardness, and newspapers began to apply
as much Romanic phonetic as possible.20 Fukuzawa, who endeavored to rescue Japan from
Oriental history21, was actually a latecomer in this field.
Aversion also led Shiratori’s student Tsuda Soukichi (1873-1961) to deconstruct Taoist
philosophy in an effort to disassociate classic Shinto records from their arguably Taoist origin.
Following Shiratori’s positivist methodology,22 Tsuda placed Taoism within a historical staging
theory so much so that Japan was limited to simply following a universal step if evidence had
shown that parallels indeed existed between China and Japan. His effort to demystify
Confucius similarly freed Japan from the tradition of Sinology, allowing contemporaries to
re-evaluate Confucius from a modern perspective.23
Tsuda’s approach contradicted somewhat with Motoori’s. His positive universalism
disconnected Japan from China, as well as from the Occidental world. Japan became a mere
“universal” country instead of a nation suffering from either cultural indebtedness to China or
cultural borrowing from Europe. He went on to deconstruct the classic texts of Shinto, which
Motoori as well as his teacher Shiratori cherished, hoping that the Japanese emperor could
become a secular institution. Ironically, Tsuda’s aim to secularize Shinto resulted in
harassments by right-wing Shinto believers before it later won him respect from right-wing
politicians after the war. Despite these incompatible personal experiences, aversion toward
However, once the aversion approach appeared ineffective, various forms of Asianism
aiming to re-associate China and Japan emerged in the beginning of the 20th century.24 This
re-association appeared in various forms, including the utopian and socialist form of activism.
Miyazaki, who once supported the first Japan-China war in 1894, later believed it would take a
revolution in China to make the world change. At the same time, a revolution in Japan would
have no impact upon the world. Ozaki Hotsuki (1928-1999), another socialist sympathetic with
China, criticized the exploitation of China by Japan in his bid to revive the intimacy between the
two nations.
On the other hand, Miyazaki’s teacher Tokutomi Soho (1863-1957), once a populist,
subscribed to the concept of fundamentalist nationalism. He treated China as a place which
Japan had to own in order to effectively oppose Western intrusion.25 In comparison, the
aforementioned Kita aimed to strengthen China by promoting revolution and nationalism in the
country. He believed Japan’s defeat of Russia in 1905 contributed to the subsequent 1911
Republican revolution in China. Furthermore, Kita opposed the imperialist “21 Demands” and
instead entertained the idea of an Asian Monroe Doctrine.26 Needless to say, his disagreement
with others rested upon the shared premise of a weak and vulnerable China.
To Accommodate the Rise of China
aforementioned views on China flourished in all directions. However, Post-WWII scholarship
questioned the vulnerable character of Taisho democracy in light of intellectuals’ submission to
the Fascist government during the ensuing Showa period (1926-1989). The climax of
intellectuals’ surrender to nationalism was the holding of the notorious meeting in 1942 in the
name of “overcoming modernity,” in which Kyoto school philosophers as well as left-wing and
romanticist writers stood behind the launching of the Pacific war.27 Post-war reflections blame
the weak characters of these thinkers without attending to the epistemological collusion that
discursively cleared the barrier that could have held Japan’s invasion of China.28 Thinkers of
various Asianisms faced little difficulty in supporting the Fascist government’s Great East Asian
Co-prosperity Sphere, which also regarded weak China as part of East Asia ready for the
gospel of Asianism in a common battle with the so-called West.
The psychological linkage between imperialist expansion and Asianism is a response to
the anxiety caused by the rejection from Western modernity. With Asianism, Japan was able to
face the West with a certain degree of confidence, lacking when left alone. China and Korea
served as the first targets that stimulated Japanese militarists into practicing leadership to
“group” Asians together. Therefore, the pursuit of an East Asian sphere empowered the once
unconfident Japan. On the other hand, Orientalism embedded in Shiratori’s legacy demoted
China into a prospective site for Japan to build the East Asian Empire.
modernization, no other alternatives had ever envisioned a powerful China. Sixty-three years
after the defeat of Japan’s East Asian Sphere, the rise of China would still overwhelm the more
nascent versions of Japan’s East Asianism, leaving Japan of 2009 in double jeopardy. First,
there would be no backward China awaiting Japan’s leadership. The distinction between China
and Japan would obscure into the opposite direction. Instead of China serving as the supplier
of resources to Japan qua the East Asian sphere, the sleeping dragon absorbs investment from
Japan to facilitate growth primarily within its national territory.
Second, a China whose leaders begin to speak on behalf of Asia would make Japan
appear neither Western nor Asian. The reference to the rise of China threatens to disclose the
hypocrisy of Japan’s pledge to either Western modernity or Asian identity. Takeuchi is worth
noting for pointing out Japan’s loss of subjectivity when trying to modernize in the past 100
years. He labeled Japan to be no more than a “model” student who followed, but never
innovated and who was caught, in postcolonial cultural critic Homi Bhabah’s words, at the
“unhomely” place of “in-betweenness”—a half-way house toward modernity but never there and
yet never a way available for the loser to return.29 Takeuchi’s own model was China,
represented by his peculiar reading on Lu Xun, a May Fourth leader later portrayed as a
national hero by the Chinese Communist Party. Takeuchi believed Lu Xun exemplified how
China could keep its subjectivity intact by not surrendering to Western modernity, nor idly
Nevertheless, Takeuchi dreamed of a new space in Asia which would represent nothing
except a method of self-denial. To be Asian is not to be Western, not to be Japanese, and not
to be anything that becomes tangible, specific, or concrete. Echoing Nishida’s philosophy of
nothingness, Takeuchi’s Asia is a place of nothingness where the Japanese could engage in
self-reflection, meaning self-denial. It is through this method of self-denial and self-reflection
that he wished to rejuvenate the lost sense of subjectivity and, of course, to reach true
universality by transcending the particularist West disguised by pseudo-universalism.31
Takeuchi did not belong to the categorical pre-war left-wing writers. These writers
nevertheless share with him a sense of guilt, and also liking, toward China. Some of these
scholars joined the overcoming of modernity before the war; the military silenced the rest. After
the war, the occupation forces came to emancipate the silenced intellectuals, only to be
received by the extremely submissive right-wing politicians who worried about revenge from the
left. These right-wing politicians remained in the government and quickly took advantage of the
Korean War to consolidate their footing in politics.
This could have been one of the biggest ironies in history. The left-wing forces, liberated
by the occupation forces, continued their anti-imperialism moves against the occupation forces;
right-wing war criminals, escaping punishment, cooperated with the occupation forces that
defeated them. When the United States shifted its focus from preventing the regeneration of
quickly fell in love with China, which the United States confronted.
However, the vision of a socialist Asia never came true. After the beginning of the Cold
War, no left-wing intellectuals were still as confident as Ozaki or Miyazaki in their time to pose
as China’s teacher. The end of the Cold War was no blessing to the left wing, either. It was
quite the contrary: the rise of China could be a death rope for anyone serious about a socialist
Asia because China has been able to entice the impression of rising due to its apparent shift
toward capitalism for the time being.
The right wing fares no better intellectually as the struggle between the West and Asia
persisted after the conclusion of the Cold War. In fact, the right wing had already fired its first
shot at the United States during the heyday of Japan’s boom according to Ishihara Shintaro’s
best seller Japan That Can Say No.32 The United States was the enemy, yet it was also the
right wing’s dependable shield that fends off possible vengeance ostensibly from China, but
actually from the left. Self-contradiction of this sort disallowed Japan from Asianism and bred
frustration and discontent toward the United States. The backward image of socialist China
must have looked so familiar to the right wing that it could resurrect the aborted dream of the
East Asian sphere. In less than 20 years, however, the image of a rising China replaced the
backward China and ruined every possible step toward a united Asia.
For Japan in pursuit of normal statehood rid of its defeat by the West, China would have
status, which paradoxically depends on the cooperation of the United States qua the West.
Right-wing literature never fails to doubt China’s rise, not necessarily because there is scientific
evidence to prove the opposite, but because a place for a rising China could not be theorized
without overthrowing the familiar self-conception of Japan.33 This denial of China’s rise
suggests that the China threat is not of strategic nature, but an intellectual one. However, China
is not interested in acting in concert with Japan to oppose the West, even during difficult times.
On the other hand, the right-wing government in Japan is not ready to try out independent
subjectivity outside of the West due to its anxiety toward the domestic left wing.
Consequently, the left wing that longs for socialist Asia encounters the rise of capitalist
China, while its right-wing counterpart that sought normal statehood cannot detach itself from
dependency on the United States. China’s presumed passive membership in Asia no longer
existed as it did before the war. Despite their otherwise wide discrepancy in ideology,
opportunity, American connection, and evaluation of China, the two sides share a common
ground in their reserved attitude toward the United States and the need for alliance with China.
Moreover, the unfulfilled expectation of China to act in concert with Japan in one way or
another is further shared among contemporary thinkers and pre-war intellectuals.
Japan Still ahead in Modernity?
An additional message, which is less explicit, is that Japan was never defeated by the United
States. According to the contemporary postmodern critic Komori Youichi, on August 15, 1945,
the emperor proclaimed that the war had ended, not that the war was lost. Accordingly, the
Allied court, which gave death sentences to many war criminals whose spirits were later placed
for worship in the Yasukuni shrine, lacked legitimacy.
Left-wing intellectuals could not possibly concur. However, the deep-seated discontent
toward the United States among right-wing politicians is not very different from the frustration
left-wing intellectuals have held toward the occupation forces. The large-scale anti-American
protest against the renewal of the security pact between Japan and the United States in 1960,
which profoundly inspired Takeuchi, further added to the feeling of frustration. The repercussion
touched off a series of moral disarrays in the field of China studies, leading to a heated debate
among China scholars if it would be morally acceptable to receive financial support from the
Ford Foundation.34
Mizoguchi, the aformeioned China expert, accuses most Japanese thinkers, right and left
wings alike, of committing excessive self-involvement when looking at (or looking for) China.
He uses analogy to illustrate the misperception of China among its Japanese watchers.
Assume that Japan were a frog, a two-legged creature growing into a four-legged one. It would
naturally expect that China, by the time it matures, would have four legs too. Assume that
mistakenly takes the mature chicken as a tadpole.35 Mizoguchi urges his readers to get rid of
Japan from their mind when viewing China in order to avoid guilt and imperialism, both
embedded in the recent history of Japan-China relations. If Mizoguchi represents critical
reflection from the left, Maruyama Masao (1914-1996) could be one from the right.
This does not mean that Maruyama, probably the best known post-war liberal and a close
ally of Takeuchi in denouncing Japan’s superficial modernity, could provide a perspective on the
rise of China. The liberal, whom his anit-West friend Takeuchi refused to criticize, was himself
critical of Japan. Instead of seeing Japan as a model student of the West as Takeuchi
portrayed with grievance, Maruyama denounced Japan as a poor student. He insisted that
Japan learned only the institution but not the spirit of modernity, at best practicing a kind of
corporal (or dead) modernity.36 His cherished reference is Western liberalism,37 and hence
there is no need to promote Japan’s superiority using China. Together with Mizoguchi, their
obviously different standpoints prescribe for Japan a similar ontological solution in coping with
China. In brief, China should not be part of Japan’s self-conception.
Specifically, both Maruyama and Mizoguchi disagreed that Japan continued to lead in
modernization. There is no such notion of a backward China that could be useful for the
establishment of Japan’s modernity. However, majority of Japanese thinkers seem to think
otherwise. They find re-association with China attractive. The problem for them is that Japan is
necessary in making the integration of Asia a viable option for Japan.
In conclusion, the image of a rising China threatens Japanese thinkers far beyond those
of strategic nature. It is an epistemological threat that overthrows the long-held assumption of
Asia under Japan’s leadership. Over half a century under the occupation forces, right-wing
intellectuals have developed a kind of discontent toward the United State, which is similar to
the grievance the pre-WWII Fascist government once had toward the West. However, there is
no longer a China to be taken for granted today, and there would be no Asia to back up Japan’s
confidence to face the United States.
Likewise, Japan is neither ready to pursue a higher level of universalism by representing
both the Orient and the Occident simultaneously. The perceived rise of China denies Japanese
thinkers the legitimacy to claim representation for Asia (or East Asia), where China assumes an
active role of participation. Furthermore, China’s participation in globalization makes it a
contestant rather than a dependent. China is in a stronger position to synthesize the Orient and
the Occident into some type of universalism, one that Mizoguchi finds the Japanese are
themselves eager to join. In addition, an internationally established China achieves a better
relationship with the United States, making it less possible for Americans to discipline China
into accepting Japan’s leadership of Asia. Washington would rather deal with Beijing directly
than through Tokyo and its Asia.
to support Japan’s pursuit of equality with the West, Japan would be reduced to the Orient and
lose its independent identity completely. The familiar ambivalence toward the West as both
destiny and enemy or toward China as a dependent ally and a backward Other disappears.
The resulting impossibility to suffer the familiar ambivalence as well as engage in familiar
debates is more threatening than the inability to find a resolution to either ambivalence or
debates. To those who think on behalf of Japan, this loss of ambivalence is why the rise of
1 YAO Wenli, “Building Together the East Asian Mansion of Security” (gong zhu dongya
anquan daxia), Riben Xuekan (Japan Journal) 5 (2002): 1-17; WANG Gonglong, Redefinition of US-Jappan Alliance Revisited” (dui ri mei tongmeng zai-dingyi de zairenshi) Riben Xuekan (Japan Quarterly) 5 (2002): 18-31; XU Wansheng, “Japan-US Alliance and the Tendency toward Greater Military Power in Japan” (rimei tongmeng yu riben de junshi da guo hua qingxiang), Dangdai Yatai (Contemporary Asia-Pacific) 4 (2004): 10-11; CHIU Kun-hsuan, “Structural Realiism and the Environment of Communist China’s Great Power Diplomacy” (jiegou xianshizhuyi yu zhong gong da guo waijiao geju) Tung Ya Chi Kan (East Asia Quarterly) 30,3 (1999.7): 23-38; FAN Guoping, “No way Beyond Realism” (xianshizhuyi bu neng chaoyue), Kaifang Shidai (Open Times) http://www.opentimes.cn/ (2004.10.18); WANG Ping,
“Sino-Japanese Relations, from Idal to Reality” (zhong ri guanxi cong lixiang dao xianshi), Huanqiu Shibao (Global Times) (2005.02.03)。
2
See, for example, OHAME Kenchi, The China Impact (Japanese) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2002).
3 See the review by CHAO Chian-min and HE Si-shen, “Debating Priority between China and
the United States in the Japanese Foreign Policy” (riben waijiao zhong youguan zhong guo huo mei guo youxian de zheng lun) Wenti yu Yanchiu (Issues and Studies) 43, 1 (2004.1.2):
83-104.
4 In between, there are other narratives proposing for China some institutional reformation,
cultural renovation, complete colonization, nationalist revival, and so on.
5
ISHIKAWA Shigeru, “Sino-Japanese Economic Cooperation,” China Quarterly 109 (1987): 21.
People’s Press, 2004).
7 HSU Chie-ling, “Fukuzawa’s views on Civilization and Escape from Asia” (fuze yuji de
wenming guan yu tuo ya lun), Lishi yuekan (Historical Monthly) 184 (May 2003): 34-43.
8 For more discussion, see Naoki Sakai, “Subjectivity and/or Shutai and the Ascription of
Cultural Differences” (zhuti yu/huo zhuti ji wenhua chayi zhi mingke) (trans.) LIAO Hsian-hao, Chung Wai Wenxue (Chinese and Foreign Literature) 30, 12 (2002.5): 150-195.
9 KOYASU Nobukuni, East Asian Confucianism (dong ya luxue) (trans.), Chen Weifen (Taipei:
Himalaya Foundation, 2005), Ch. 9, On East Asia, ch. 9.
10 OKAWA Shumei proposed the inclusion when he wrote about the spirit of the three countries,
see Wang Ping, Asianism in Modern Japan (jindai riben de yaxiyazhuyi) (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2004), pp. 266-9; ARITAKA Iwao made similar proposal, see WANG Xiangyuan, Cultural Invasion of China by Japan (riben dui zhongguo de wenhua qinlue) (Beijing: Kunlun Press, 2005), especially the discussion on Oriental Historiography in the second part.
11 OKAKURA Tenshin, The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Arts of Japan
(London: John Murray, 1903).
12 For more discussion, see Stefan TANAKA, Japan’s Orient: Reading Pasts into History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
13 James W. HEISIG, Philosophers of Nothingness 9 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
2001), pp. 8-9; TAKEUCHI Yoshimi, What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi (ed. & trans.), Richard F. CALICHMAN (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 52.
14 For more discussion, see HSU Chie-lin, “Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Views on Civilization and
Escape from Asia” (fuze yuji de wenming guan yu tuo ya lun), Lishi Yuekan (Historical Monthly) 184 (2004.05): 34-43 and CHOU Chian-kao, “Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Welcome of and Resistance to the Chinese Culture” (fuze yuji dui zhongguo wenhua de ying yu ju) Lishi Yuekan (Historical
15 For a comprehensive literature review, see NOMURA Koichi, The Views on China in Modern
Japan (jindai riben de zhongguo renshi) (trans.), ZHANG Xuefeng (Beijing: Central Bureau of Translation, 1999).
16 The most discussed work is probably, NAITO Torajiro, The History of Chinese
Historiography (zhongguo shixue shi) (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1949).
17 KAO Ming-shih, Research on the Chinese History in Post-war Japan (zhan hou riben de
zhongguo shi yanjiu) (Taipei: Dongsheng, 1982); NISHIJIMA Sadao et al in LIU Chun-wen (ed.), Selected Translation of the Literature on Chinese History by the Japanese Scholars (riben xuezhe yanjiu zhongguo shi lunzhu xuan yi) 2 (trans.), KAO Ming-shih, CHIU Tian-sheng and HSIA Jih-hsing (Beijing: The Chinese Book, 1992).
18 HUANG Tsi-chin, Yoshino Sakuzo’s Knowledge and Evaluation of Modern China (jiye
zuozao dui jindai zhongguo de renshi yu pingjia: 1906-1932) (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academic Sinica, 1995).
19 See the discussion by KOMORI Youich, The National Language Critique of Modern Japan
(riben jindai guoyu pipan) (trans.), CHEN Youduo (Changchun: Jilin People’s Press, 2004); KAN Huai-chen, “Arranging Political Order and Meanings of Life in East Asia: The Case of Modern Japan’s Statist Turn” (dongya zhengzhi zhixu yu shengming yiyi de andun: yi jindai riben de guojia zhuanhuan wei li), Dharma Drum Journal of Humanities 2 (December 2005): 203-215.
20 LIN Shaoyang, The Literature and the Japanese Modernity (wen yu riben jindaixin) (Beijing:
Central Interpretation Press, 2004).
21 FUKUZAWA Yukichi, An Overview of Civilization (wenming zhi gailue) (trans.), Beijing
Translation Society (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1982), p. 137.
zhi yanjiu), in LIU Chun-wen (ed.), Selected Translation of the Literature on Chinese History by the Japanese Scholars (riben xuezhe yanjiu zhongguo shi lunzhu xuan yi) 1 (trans.), HUANG Yuese (Beijing: The Chinese Books, 1992), pp. 1-8。
23 See LIU Ping, A Study of Tsuda Soukichi (Jintian zuoyouji yanjiu) (Beijing: The Chinese
Books, 2004).
24 For more introductions, see Wang Ping.
25 For more discussion see CHEN Xiuwu, A Study of Political Thoughts and Intellectuals in
Taisho Japan (riben dazheng shiqi zhengzhi sichao yu zhishifenzi yanjiu) (Beijing: Chinese Social Science Press, 2003), especially Ch. 2.
26 For more on Kita Ikki, see HUANG Tsi-jin, Kita Ikki’s Revolutionary Complex (bei yihui de
geming qingjie) (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academic Sinica, 2001).
27 For more, see Takeuchi Yoshimi, Overcoming Modernity (jindai de chaoke) (trans.), LI
Dongmu, ZHAO Jinghua and SUN Ge (Beijing: San Lian Bookstore, 2005)
28 The Chinese literature is divided about Asianism in Japan. While some view it as there have
been different versions of Asianism, some of which are not supportive of imperialist expansion, others contend that those versions which not overtly support imperialism are, after all,
conducive to imperialism nonetheless. For some of the discussion see SHENG Banghe, “Japanese Asianism at the turn into the 20th Century from the 19th Century” (19 shiji yu 20 shiji
zhi jiao de riben yaxiyazhuyi), Lishi Yanjiu (Historical Research) 3 (2000); QI Qichang, “Exploring and Understand Japanese Pan-Asianism” (riben da yaxiyazhuyi tan xi) Lishi Yanjiu (Historical Research) 6 (2004); SHENG Banghe, Japanese Asianism and the Origin and the Evolution of the Right Wing Ideology (riben yazhouzhuyi yu youyi sichao yuanliu),
http://www.xschina.org/show.php?id=4390 (July 29, 2005), accessed December 24, 2008.
30 For more discussion, see SUN Ge The Paradox of Takeuchi Yoshimi (zhunei hao de beilun)
(Beijing: Peking University Press, 2005) Lishi Yanjiu (Historical Research) 3 (2005).
31 TAKEUCHI Yoshimi, ”Asia as Method,” in What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi
(trans.), Richard F. CALICHMAN (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 164-5.
32 ISHIHARA Shintaro and MORITA Akio, Japan That Can Say No (yige keyi shuo bu de riben).
(trans.), Liu Hsiu-ching (Taipei: Central Daily, 1990).
33 See the brief reflections by Pei-chun HAN, “Neos on the Rise in Japan,” Taipei Times
(2005.09.20): 8.
34 UBUKATA Naokichi, TOYAMA Shigeki, TANAKA Masatoshi, The Issue of Representing
History (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobo, 1966 ) 134-7.
35 The Keynote speech at the 14th Annual Meeting of Chinese Social Science Research
Society (Tokyo: 2001.12.21)。
36 SUN Ge, Preface (xu) in Maruyama Masao, The History of Japanese Political Thoughts
(riben jindai sixiang shi) (trans.), WANG Zhongjiang (Beijing: San Lian, 2000).
