Nationalism, Political Realism and Democracy in Japan

The thought of Masao Maruyama

Fumiko Sasaki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138857360
• eBook ISBN: 9781136313783
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Masao Maruyama was the most influential and respected political thinker in post-WWII Japan. He believed that the collective mentality, inherent in the traditional Japanese way of thinking, was a key reason for the defeat in WWII and was convinced that such thought needed to be modernized. In this book Fumiko Sasaki argues that the cause of the prolonged political, economic and social decline in Japan since the early 1990s can be explained by the same characteristics Maruyama identified after 1945.

Using Maruyama's thought Sasaki explores how the Japanese people see their role in their nation, the democracy imposed by the US, and the relationship between power and international relations. Further, Sasaki also considers what the essence of national security is and how much it has been forgotten in current Japanese political thought. The book solves the puzzle of how Maruyama, a teacher of political realism who emphasized the importance of power, could insist on the policy of unarmed neutrality for Japan's national security, and in doing so, illuminates how traditional Japanese thought has impacted development in Japan.

Despite his status within Japan, there are few English language books available on Maruyama and his thought on national security. This book therefore will be an essential resource for students and scholars of Japanese Politics and Political Thought.

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Introduction

Masao Maruyama

This book studies the trends of Japanese nationalism, political realism and democracy by examining national security through the thought of Masao Maruyama (1914–96), the most influential Japanese post-WWII thinker, whom a French journalist compared to Jean Paul Sartre of France.¹ Certainly, Maruyama, just like Sartre, represented the values and issues that characterize an era called “Post-WWII in Japan.”² The examination in this book is important because despite the influence of Maruyama, and despite his focus on national security, his thought on national security has not been studied academically at all. Primarily, this book will solve the puzzle of how Maruyama, a teacher of political realism who emphasizes the importance of power and its calculation in politics, could insist on the policy of unarmed neutrality for Japan’s national security. But eventually, it will compel us to reconsider what the essence of national security is and how it has been forgotten in current Japanese political thought.

Maruyama insisted on such a policy because it was the only one based on modern nationalism and political realism that he believed were the bedrocks of national security. In reality, however, they were absent among the Japanese public. Therefore, Maruyama directed his efforts to establish them as the fundamental measure to make Japan secure. This book will explain, first, how he developed his thought on national security and how he considered modern nationalism and political realism to be the two bedrocks of national security, second, how he cultivated these two elements promoting awareness, and finally, the result of such an attempt. Examining his thinking will boldly highlight characteristics of traditional Japanese nationalism and political thinking while contributing to a contemporary discussion of both. Though this book certainly traces Maruyama’s, as well as Japan’s historical paths, it also helps us understand Japan today. The conclusion will lead to an explanation of why she has been in an economic and diplomatic slump since the early 1990s, provides a perspective on what is necessary for a fundamental recovery, and challenges the Japanese people to reexamine the US–Japan Alliance.

Maruyama and Japan’s unarmed neutrality

Maruyama, a pivotal figure of the post-WWII Japanese intellectual world, performed various roles: a political scientist, a historian of Japanese political thought, an activist of democratization of Japanese politics, a thinker of nationalism, a modernizer of Japanese society and a strategist of national security. In each field he excelled and, more than any other individual, had the greatest impact on Japanese society as well as the intellectual community. Due to his unprecedented influence on postwar thought, a number of studies have been done on his ideas at home and abroad, prompting one scholar to refer to it as the “Maruyama Paradigm.”³ The focuses of such studies are mainly related to his ideas regarding democracy, modernity, the history of Japanese political thought, and only recently, nationalism. Non-Japanese studies have also taken up similar themes, although there is an added emphasis on the relationship between the state and the individual, perhaps to understand Japanese society more thoroughly through his thought. These studies have clarified Maruyama’s thinking and the significance of its meaning to Japanese society. Nevertheless, presumably the most intriguing question about his thinking has not yet been solved: how was it possible for Maruyama to write intensively on political realism and, at the same time, to insist on unarmed neutrality for Japanese national security, especially during the Cold War when most counties were compelled to be heavily militarized or be incorporated into a military alliance? Put another way, how was it possible on the one hand to tirelessly teach power as the core of politics, while on the other hand to assume that Japan could survive with neither alliance nor armament?

The absence of ready explanations to these questions indicates that no detailed and comprehensive study of Maruyama’s thought on national security – his political realism in a broader spectrum – has been available. References to his ideas on the subject are generally ideological: while his passionate disciples praise his thought on unarmed neutrality, Maruyama’s opponents condemn it as utopian or unrealistic – both of which are mostly without scholarly examination.⁴ Few studies of Maruyama are academic or scientific. Some scholars properly mention his political realism, but they do not really analyze how his thought led him to advocate unarmed neutrality.⁵ This book will fill the vacuum. It will illustrate how a policy alternative of keeping Japan unarmed and neutral is based on Maruyama’s political realism. This book will demonstrate that such an alternative is not grounded on cosmopolitanism, universalism, optimism of the Enlightenment, moralism, utopianism, defeatism, nor internationalism – the very things of which Maruyama was accused. This book will rather illuminate how it is based on political realism and rationalism and his comprehensive and wide-ranging Western political thought. In fact, his argument for the alternative was overly rational.

Maruyama’s argument for unarmed neutrality challenges another conventional evaluation. It is of seeing post-WWII Japanese foreign policy as politically realistic and skillful. Almost all scholars so far agree with such a view based on the fact that despite its total devastation during WWII, Japan came back in a few decades as the second largest economy in the world. They ask how an unrealistic foreign policy could lead Japan into becoming so successful. They particularly regard Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida as a truly realistic and insightful politician, because he is the founder of post-WWII foreign policy that is widely regarded as the main source of Japan’s unprecedented economic success. His policy of relying on the US for Japan’s security and maintaining only light armament allowed the country to focus on economic recovery and development. This approach became the orthodoxy of Japanese foreign policy as well as Japanese political realism. With the benefit of hindsight, who today would not be highly respectful of Yoshida’s policies? Yet Maruyama stood squarely against such policies and insisted that they were not realistic. Examining Maruyama’s political realism and his argument for unarmed neutrality will put the legitimacy of calling post-WWII Japanese foreign policy as realistic under serious reconsideration.

This book will answer the paradoxical question of why a realist could insist on unarmed neutrality. In the process, it will analyze closely the wide-ranging scope of his thought, including his concepts on democracy, nationalism, political realism and modernization. In the end, this book will demonstrate that despite his image of the champion of democracy in Japan, his devotion to democratization was actually for his higher goal. He ultimately aimed to establish Japan where her people can exercise freedom, dignity and human quality. But for Japan to be such, she had to be secure, because when a state is insecure, they cannot exercise those qualities. People can live as human beings only as the constituents of a modern state whose primary purpose is to guarantee such qualities to them.⁶ Maruyama insisted that modern nationalism and political realism were the most fundamental and indispensable elements for national security. Since both factors have at their core individual thinking, he tried to encourage people to think independently.⁷ It is important to note that this logic might properly be flipped around as well. To this end, only the people who are determined to maintain a strong state are most likely to maintain independent thinking, because securing a nation requires people to be politically realistic and have modern nationalism, both of which are based on such thinking. In this way, maintaining independence was, for Maruyama, an ongoing and eternal movement that would not only provide people the condition for life with human quality, but also motivate them to maintain independent thinking.⁸

He might have properly developed these views from his experiences of a devastating war and a totalitarian military regime, in addition to his study of politics that enabled a deep and considered deliberation. These were views forged from the fires of catastrophic events and the intellectual challenge of forming a Japan strong enough to guarantee her people the freedom to pursue happiness and to fulfill one’s potential. This book will demonstrate how all of the threads of his thought, on political realism, democracy, and nationalism in particular, were woven into a tapestry of a strong Japan.

Keeping in mind Maruyama’s ultimate goal, this study will also indicate that Japanese democratization has not been as successful as often claimed, whose result was the prolonged period of economic, internal and external weakness commencing in the early 1990s. It will provide a different perspective on what democratization should be while also challenging the popular conception that Japan is the most successful example of non-western democratization by the US. Examining the process of Japanese post-WWII democratization is essential if one is to expose the fundamental flaws in imposing democracy on an unprepared people as is suggested in Maruyama’s.

The composition of this book and key concepts examined

Composition of this book

This introductory chapter highlights the main goals and key concepts are defined. These concepts are examined in the following chapters. It is then important to review Maruyama’s credentials so as to allow readers to understand his significance, and be confident that the magnitude of his influence was sufficient for one to comfortably learning about Japanese society through his thought. Specifically, his background, his eminent achievements in four fields of political science, the history of Japanese political thought, democratization of Japanese society and national security, as well as his roles in the Japanese intellectual history will be detailed.

Chapter 2, “Analyzing the causes of the Fifteen Year War,” focuses on the war that spanned a period of fifteen years from an incident with China in 1931 until the end of WWII, referred to as the Fifteen Year War. This war reveals how Maruyama sought to identify what led pre-WWII Japan to initiate a war in which she was scathingly defeated. This chapter then examines how he reached the conclusion that the cause was a lack of modern nationalism and political realism. Believing that these two elements were the bedrocks of national security, he initiated an effort to establish them in Japan.

Chapter 3, “Creating modern man: the basis of national security,” expands on the theme of Chapter 2 by discussing Maruyama’s definition of modernity, outlining why Japanese society was not modern and then explaining why and how the Japanese people needed to be modernized. It further examines why he thought one’s perspective of reality was critical to a modern way of thinking. This chapter explains why the very essence of national security is independent thinking. This last statement is the key concept of Maruyama’s security thought, and henceforth of this book.

Chapter 4, “Establishing political realism: guidance to national security,” examines how Maruyama defines political realism, why this concept is important for national security and why he thought Japanese politics did not have realism. In essence, this chapter analyzes Maruyama’s belief that a nation should understand the reason of a state, the logic of politics and pragmatism. These elements are required to build a strong state.

Chapter 5, “Advocating unarmed neutrality,” is a case study. It reviews the critical time that Japan was to regain her independence after the period of US occupation and the people needed to determine a security policy for themselves. Maruyama insisted on unarmed neutrality. This case study is essential to understanding more thoroughly Maruyama’s security thought by analyzing why and how he concluded that unarmed neutrality was the only security policy consistent with political realism and modern nationalism. His failure to guide Japan toward this objective reveals the Japanese people’s lack of modern nationalism or political realism, and their lack of desire to attain these attributes. Rather, this very gap between what the people had and what he wanted to see demonstrates the very nature of his political realism in contrast to traditional Japanese political realism.

Chapter 6, “Defending democracy: a prerequisite of national security,” is a second case study with the focus being on the political crisis in 1960 when the US–Japan Security Treaty was set to expire and the Japanese people were to decide whether to renew it or abandon it. Maruyama again powerfully advocated an unarmed and neutral Japan. His logic and insistence at this critical time helps deepen the understanding of his thought on national security through his view of the relationship between national security and democracy, as well as between national security and modern nationalism. Further, the examination of why Maruyama once again failed to lead the nation toward unarmed neutrality demonstrates the nature of Japanese democracy.

Chapter 7, “Conclusion: predicting the second defeat,” first examines why Maruyama, a self-conscious political realist, founded his thought on what should exist, not what existed. This choice clarifies the very core of his thinking. This concluding chapter then explains how the popularity of Maruyama fluctuated depending on the prevailing condition of Japanese society, ending with an analysis of why attention on him has been increasing over the last two decades. The analysis of why his thought has attracted more attention today suggests that the necessity of what he insisted, modern nationalism and political realism, have finally been acknowledged in, at least, academia. Given that he predicted the second defeat, the Japanese people ought to pay attention to his thinking in order to define a path to recovery.

Key concepts examined

Although this book primarily examines the question of why a political realist insisted on Japan to be unarmed and neutral to be politically realistic, it requires the reader to be familiar with the concepts of “modernity,” “nationalism,” “democracy,” in addition to “political realism.” Each requires attention because they are all interconnected and interdependent such that each is indispensable to all others. Further, Maruyama’s interpretation of each of these concepts makes his thought distinct and provides insight into the circumstances in which he developed his thought and conditioned it.

The theme inherent in Murayama’s approach to these concepts tends to be reflected more generally throughout this book: nationalism in Chapter 2, modernity in Chapter 3, political realism in Chapter 4 and nationalism, democracy and political realism in Chapter 6, but not exclusively. Despite the expanded perspective in the main body of this book, a brief overview of each concept and the significance thereof follows.

Modernity

Maruyama’s definition of modernity is specific: it is a modern way of thinking. The concept of modernity is the very foundation and undercurrent of the thought of Maruyama, and as such, also of this book. Maruyama considered that nationalism, political realism and democracy are all based on a modern way of thinking. That is, democratization and establishing nationalism are possible only after modernization.

Modern man believes that man is the only subject who creates values of everything other than himself, so that nothing has a priori value until and unless he gives value to it. This view was well symbolized by René Descartes’ statement “I think therefore I am.” The core of modernity was, henceforth, the independent thinking of man. This understanding of modernity is not too far removed from the commonly referred definition of modernity by Max Weber, rationalization and disenchantment of the world. It is understandable that Maruyama relied deeply on Weber in developing his thought. He considered that Japan’s pre-WWII way of thinking was based on Confucianism and, as this was not modern and needed to be eliminated, Maruyama became one of the most influential advocates of modernity – shutaisei in Japanese – in war-torn Japan.

Although almost all Japanese intellectuals who devoted themselves to the recovery of war-torn Japan shared Maruyama’s view of modernity, it was not necessarily the commonly accepted view globally. There are three characteristics of modernity highlighted below. First, modernization is oftentimes material not psychological.⁹ This point becomes obvious when evaluatin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations of the books/collections of Masao Maruyama
• 1 Introduction: Masao Maruyama
• 2 Analyzing the causes of the Fifteen Year War
• 3 Creating modern man: the basis of national security
• 4 Establishing political realism: guidance to national security
• 5 Advocating unarmed neutrality
• 6 Defending democracy: A prerequisite of national security
• 7 Conclusion: Predicting the second defeat
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index