Critic Shichihei Yamamoto (1921-1991) was known for his works including “Japanese and the Jews,” which he published under the pseudonym of Isaiah Ben-Dasan, and “‘Kuki’ no Kenkyu,” which roughly translates as “A study on ‘air/atmosphere.’”

Yamamoto underwent grueling experiences in the Imperial Japanese military during the Pacific War. At the starting point of his activities as a critic was the question of what had driven Japan to wage the reckless war. 

Talking of critics whose thoughts were founded on war experiences at their core, however, we are more prone to recall the names of Masao Maruyama (1914-1996) and other so-called progressive intellectuals.

They sought to ascribe the war waged by Japan to the backwardness of Japanese society in an imperial state, and therefore placed their hopes for postwar Japan on building a democratic civil society modeled after the West.

Yamamoto said, by contrast, that abolition of imperial sovereignty and transition to democratic postwar society had resolved none of the problems.

Let us ask what separated the two parties from each other.

In fact, the true question, for Yamamoto, consisted not just in the war experiences per se but also in whether anything had changed between the prewar and postwar periods.

To put it plainly, his question was about why the Japanese, who would chant slogans for hailing the emperor and demonizing the United States and Britain until the war ended, suddenly changed into hailers of Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, and hailers of democracy on Aug. 15, 1945.

The sudden change of attitude could have been attributed to the backward-country mentality of the Japanese who, one might say, lack an independent identity, lack the notion of responsibility, or tend to conform to the circumstances.

Yamamoto, however, elicited a slightly different argument, which could be summarized as follows.

JAPANESE SOCIETY DOMINATED BY ‘AIR’

The general public in Japan did not, in fact, believe from their heart, before the war ended, in hailing the emperor or demonizing the United States and Britain. The “emperor” was simply venerated as an absolute being, whom people were not allowed to criticize.

In the postwar period, absolute status was instead given to “democracy,” and postwar democracy became something that precluded all criticism. MacArthur was given absolute status during the Allied occupation of Japan (1945-1952).

MacArthur, postwar democracy, individual freedom and other values could be summarized under the name of the “United States.” While the emperor was the source of all values until the war ended, the United States replaced him as the value standard in the postwar period.

The structure, however, remains unchanged. People are now venerating something else, but they simply keep repeating their daily routine according to their customs and common sense.

Once the “emperor,” “democracy” or the “United States” has been given absolute status, however, there forms an “air” that discourages people from criticizing it. And the people are dominated by the “air” that forms there, which is a certain sort of emotional atmosphere.

And interestingly enough, people venerate these things as if they represented self-evident truths, even though most of the people have never given a serious thought to what the “emperor” is, what “democracy” is and what the “United States” represents. People foster the “air” together and conform to that “air.”

They venerate different things according to the times and circumstances. But the very act of venerating something warrants social cohesion.

What is venerated is, so to speak, a proxy of God.

Therefore, just like the hailers of the emperor did not, in fact, ever truly believe in the emperor as a living god, the postwar hailers of democracy do not truly believe in it. They simply need something that serves as God’s proxy.

And that becomes a value standard, which provides order to Japanese society and points to a direction in which Japan should be going.

UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION AS GOD’S PROXY

An advanced, universal civilization from overseas has mostly served, in Japan’s case, as that proxy of God.

From time to time, and both overtly and covertly, Japan needed a universal, overseas civilization.

That dates to the times when Queen Himiko sent a mission to the Wei Dynasty of China in the third century and the so-called five kings of Wa sent envoys to China’s southern dynasties in the fifth century.

Female Emperor Suiko followed suit by sending messengers to Sui China in the seventh century. Missions were also sent to Tang China during the Nara (710-784) and Heian (794-1185) periods.

People who embraced the advanced overseas civilization of China thus constituted Japan’s ruling class and drew on China’s authority in providing order to Japanese society and setting the direction for it.

While all this was taking place, Japan, as a marginal nation, had to compete with the advanced, universal civilization by at once learning from that universal civilization and “Japanizing” it.

Ancient Japan, therefore, introduced various forms of culture and institutions from China, including even Buddhism and an administrative system based on legal codes, but the country never subordinated itself to China’s emperors.

In that sense, Emperor Tenmu (reigned 673-686), who established the emperor system and ordered “Records of Ancient Matters” and “Chronicles of Japan” to be compiled to serve as the grounds thereof, deserves the name of the formal initiator of “Japan.”

He thus helped develop an imperial state that was modeled after China but was uniquely Japanese.

What, then, about the Tokugawa Shogunate of the Edo Period (1603-1867), which helped develop an original culture through a policy of national seclusion?

The Tokugawa Shogunate needed an ideology for maintaining a class society and lord-vassal relations. And that was Confucianism introduced from China and the Zhu Xi school of Neo-Confucianism, in particular.

Zhuism gives absolute status to social order grounded on a loyalty-based lord-vassal relations. That came in handy for maintaining the shogunate system.

That, however, gave rise to a curious twist.

In China, the ruler of the nation is the emperor, who governs it under the mandate of heaven. And the legitimacy of his government is warranted by the heavenly mandate.

If that idea is applied to Japan, the legitimate ruler of the country should not be the shogunate but should be the emperor in an unbroken line of succession. The shogunate is only governing the nation by mandate under the emperor’s authority.

And that became a cause for the royalist movement of the closing days of the Edo Period, which ended up overthrowing the shogunate.

If that is the case, one could say the imperial sovereignty of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) was brought about, in fact, by the Edo Period “Japanization” of Zhuism, the Chinese school of scholarship (see “Arahitogami no Sosakusha-tachi” (Inventors of the living God), a Yamamoto book).

The Meiji Era was, needless to say, an age of Japan’s modernization modeled after the West.

China was replaced by the West as the advanced, universal civilization. Japan embarked on the modern times by learning from the West, and “Japanizing” it, very diligently in all fields.

The West became the source of values for Japan. The imperial state of the Meiji Era came into being through the somewhat reckless idea of likening Japan’s “living god” to a constitutional monarch of the West.

With the imperial sovereignty dismantled after the war, the United States provided basic order to the Japanese state and set the direction for it. The democratic “United States” replaced the “emperor,” who had been a living god, to become the pseudo-sovereign of Japan.

The United States symbolized an advanced, universal civilization. Japan found a way to set the direction for itself by learning from, and Japanizing, that universal civilization exclusively.

GLOBAL WORLD WITHOUT FIRSTHAND SENSE

What, then, serves as the standard of values for us today?

The world entered an age of so-called globalism following the end of the Cold War. We have taken the “global world” as our provisional value standard. One could argue the United States has been reshaped into the global world.

That now represents the universal civilization, to which Japan is a marginal nation.

This being so, public opinion in this country is driven by experts and journalists well-informed about international affairs, who tell us what is taking place elsewhere in the world. An “air” is fostered by the cliche, “Don’t fall behind the global trend.”

We have thus jumped into an innovation race in domains including artificial intelligence, quantum technology, space development, life science and environmental technology, and we have ended up being engulfed in a fierce competition between states, which is being brought about by global capitalism.

Nobody, however, can perceive a “global world civilization” with a firsthand sense, no matter how much it may be venerated.

We are certainly being exposed today to information that comes from all corners of the world, and our necessaries of everyday life are being procured by supply chains from around the globe. But the firsthand sense that we get from our daily experiences is by no means directly linked to a global world civilization.”

To put it plainly, the general public is certainly venerating something called a global world, but nobody believes in it any more than anybody ever did so in the emperor or in democracy.

And the global world civilization in question is now showing holes here and there and has fallen into dysfunction.

NO GOAL TO OVERTAKE

At few other times in Japan’s history did we probably ever lose sight of a value standard, which would warrant national cohesion and indicate the direction in which Japan should be going, to such an extent.

The Japanese approach of taking an advanced, universal civilization from overseas as a yardstick, and learning from it and Japanizing it to maintain national order and values, has almost become meaningless.

Roughly speaking, that probably accounts for why, in today’s Japan, politicians have lost their sense of orientation, bureaucrats have lost their clout, and intellectuals and journalists have lost solid language.

Come to think of it, however, that probably also means an emancipation from the disquieting psychological premise, which has remained there consistently throughout Japan’s long history, that we have to overtake an advanced overseas civilization.

Neither China, the West, the United States nor a global world serves as a value standard any longer. We have no goal to overtake.

That being so, we probably have no choice today but to use our hands to redraw our own image of Japan in the future.

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Born in 1949, Keishi Saeki, a Kyoto University professor emeritus of economics and social thought, has written reviews on various matters from the standpoint of conservatism. He has authored books including “Saraba, Yokubo” (A farewell to desire). Saeki is also supervising editor of “Hiraku,” a thought periodical.