Modernities in Northeast Asia (Political Theories in East Asian Context) 1032505605, 9781032505602

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Part I: General Overview
1 Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia
Part II: Modernity and Tradition
2 Equality and Nationality: The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics
3 China and the Production of its Own Hybridic Modernity
Part III: Embracing and Resisting Modernity
4 The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China: Sovereignty, Connectivity, and National Awakening
5 Marginalized Science of Modernity: Statistics and Building a Nation-State Without Knowing Oneself
6 Eastern Learning (Donghak) and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea
Part IV: Redefining Modernities
7 Modernity Before its Time: China's Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization
8 How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity: A Progressive Conservative Perspective
9 Multiple Dialogues Over Modernity: Considerations on Maruyama Masao's Political Thought
10 Competing Modernities in Colony and Metropole: The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan
Index of Names
Index of Terms

Citation preview

Modernities in Northeast Asia

To form a truer portrait of Northeast Asian perspectives on modernity, this book presents a broad range of analyses from philosophical and political-philosophical scholars specializing in the region. The book considers the encounter between “Western” modernity and “Eastern” tradition not as a simple clash of cultures but as a generative and hybridizing process of negotiation. It examines the concrete manifestations of modernity in various intellectual and political movements that attempted to radically restructure Northeast Asian societies. And through these situated perspectives, it rethinks and redefines the idea of “modernity” itself, challenging and presenting alternatives to Western-centric thinking on the topic. This book will be of particular interest to political philosophers, political theorists, comparative philosophers, regional specialists in East Asia and all scholars grappling with the perplexities of global “modernity.” Jun-Hyeok Kwak is Professor of Philosophy (Zhuhai) at Sun Yat-sen University, China. Ken Cheng taught at the School of International Studies at Sun Yat-Sen University (Zhuhai), China, from 2020 to 2023.

Political Theories in East Asian Context Series Editor: Jun-Hyeok Kwak

Political Theories in East Asian Context aims to shed light on the essential theoretical issues spanning East Asia by situating them within cross-cultural frameworks that attend both to the particularity of East Asia as well as the potentially universal patterns arising from East Asia’s current issues that can be studied for the global prosperity. It reconsiders issues like historical reconciliation, nationalism, multicultural coexistence, political leadership, republicanism, and regional integration, with a view to opening the discourse of particular issues to a wider theoretical horizon. Including intellectuals in the field of political science, history, ethnic studies, sociology, and regional studies, this interdisciplinary endeavour is a deliberative forum in which we can reflect on ethical problems facing East Asia in the global era.   5 Religion and Nationalism in Asia Edited by Giorgio Shani and Takashi Kibe   6 Leo Strauss in Northeast Asia Edited by Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Sungwoo Park   7 Global Justice in East Asia Edited by Hugo El Kholi and Jun-Hyeok Kwak   8 Environmental Philosophy and East Asia Nature, Time, Responsibility Edited by Hiroshi Abe, Matthias Fritsch and Mario Wenning   9 Machiavelli in Northeast Asia Edited by Jun-Hyeok Kwak 10 Modernities in Northeast Asia Edited by Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbooks-inReligion/book-series

Modernities in Northeast Asia Edited by Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kwak, Chun-hyŏk, editor. Title: Modernities in Northeast Asia / edited by Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Political theories in East Asian context | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2023018663 (print) | LCCN 2023018664 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032505602 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032505626 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003399032 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: East Asia—Civilization—21st century. | East and West. Classification: LCC DS509.3 .M63 2024 (print) | LCC DS509.3 (ebook) | DDC 950.4/3—dc23/eng/20230422 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023018663 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023018664 ISBN: 978-1-032-50560-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-50562-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-39903-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

List of Contributorsvii PART I

General Overview1   1 Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia

3

JUN-HYEOK KWAK AND KEN CHENG

PART II

Modernity and Tradition17   2 Equality and Nationality: The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics

18

NAOKI SAKAI

  3 China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity

43

ROGER T. AMES

PART III

Embracing and Resisting Modernity67   4 The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China: Sovereignty, Connectivity, and National Awakening

68

TZE-KI HON

  5 Marginalized Science of Modernity: Statistics and Building a Nation-State without Knowing Oneself KOICHIRO MATSUDA

82

vi Contents   6 Eastern Learning (Donghak) and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea

99

YUTANG JIN

PART IV

Redefining Modernities113   7 Modernity Before Its Time: China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization

114

TONGDONG BAI

  8 How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity: A Progressive Conservative Perspective

134

DANIEL A. BELL AND WANG PEI

  9 Multiple Dialogues over Modernity: Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought

154

TAKASHI KIBE

10 Competing Modernities in Colony and Metropole: The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan

171

NAOYUKI UMEMORI

Index of Names Index of Terms

191 193

Contributors

Roger T. Ames is Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University, Senior Academic Advisor of the Peking University Berggruen Research Center, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii. He is former editor of Philosophy East & West and founding editor of China Review International. Ames has authored several interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy and culture, and his publications also include translations of the Chinese philosophical classics. His most recent monograph is Human Becomings: Theorizing ‘Persons’ for Confucian Role Ethics (2021). He has most recently compiled the new Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy with its companion A Conceptual Lexicon for Classical Confucian Philosophy, and in writing articles promoting a conversation between pragmatism and Confucian philosophy. Tongdong Bai is the Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University in China. His research interests include Chinese philosophy and political philosophy. He has two books published in English: China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (2012), and Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case (2019). He is also the director of an English-based MA and visiting program in Chinese philosophy at Fudan University that is intended to promote the studies of Chinese philosophy in the world. Daniel A. Bell is Professor, Chair of Political Theory with the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He served as Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University (Qingdao) from 2017 to 2022. His books include The Dean of Shandong (2023), Just Hierarchy (coauthored with WANG Pei, 2020), The China Model (2015), The Spirit of Cities (co-authored with Avner de-Shalit, 2012), China’s New Confucianism (2008), Beyond Liberal Democracy (2007), and East Meets West (2000). He is also the author of Communitarianism and Its Critics (1993). He is founding editor of the Princeton-China series, which translates and publishes original and influential academic works from China. In 2018, he was awarded the Huilin Prize and was honored as a “Cultural Leader” by the World Economic Forum. Ken Cheng taught at the School of International Studies at Sun Yat-Sen University (Zhuhai) from 2020 to 2023. He specializes in European intellectual history,

viii Contributors with a particular emphasis on nineteenth-century revolutionary thought. He gained his PhD and MA degrees at the Centre for European Studies, University College London, and his BA in History and English Literature at the University of Oxford. Tze-ki Hon is a professor at the Research Centre for History and Culture, Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai campus). Concurrently, he is the Dean of the faculty of Humanities and Social Science at BNU-HKBU United International College in Zhuhai. He is the author of four books: The Yijing and Chinese Politics (2005), Revolution as Restoration (2013), Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes) (2014, co-authored with Geoffrey Redmond), and The Allure of the Nation (2015). He edited or co-edited six volumes: The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China (2007), Beyond the May Fourth Paradigm: In Search of Chinese Modernity (2008), The Decade of the Great War: Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s (2014), Confucianism for the Contemporary World (2017), Cold War Cities (2021), and The Other Yijing (2022). Yutang JIN is an Assistant Professor in Political Theory (tenure-track) in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong. His primary research interests include Chinese political thought, Confucian political theory, and democratic theory. Along the matrix of interpretation/reconstruction, he specializes in Confucian scholarship and how it relates to political order, which involves the interpretation of Confucian political thoughts. In addition to interpretation, he is also interested in reconstructing Confucianism and bringing it into dialogue with Western philosophical traditions for both modern East Asia and the wider world. His articles have appeared in leading academic journals including the Journal of Value Inquiry, Dao, Philosophy East and West, Culture and Dialogue, and Comparative Philosophy. Takashi Kibe is Professor of Political Science at the International Christian University. He received his doctor degree from the University of Tübingen. His research interests are politics and religion, egalitarianism, multiculturalism, and Western history of political thought. He is the author of Frieden und Erziehung in Martin Luthers Drei-Stände-Lehre (1996), Luta no Seiji Shiso [The Political Thought of Martin Luther] (2000), and Byodo no Seiji Riron [Political Theory of Equality] (2015). His publications include “Differentiated Citizenship and Ethnocultural Groups,” Citizenship Studies (2006), “The Relational Approach to Egalitarian Justice,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2011), and “Myth-Making and Benevolent Politics in Japanese Political Modernity,” History of Political Thought (2020). He is a co-editor of Religion and Nationalism in Asia (Routledge, 2019). Jun-Hyeok Kwak is Professor of Philosophy (Zhuhai) at Sun Yat-sen University. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2002. Before joining the faculty of Sun Yat-sen University, he taught in various universities including Korea University. His research interests lie in political philosophy,

Contributors  ix contemporary political theories, and comparative philosophy. He has published numerous articles and books, including “Confucian Role-Ethics with Non-domination” (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2022), “Global Justice without Self-centrism” (Dao, 2021), “Deliberation with Persuasion” (Australian Journal of Political Science, 2021), Machiavelli in Northeast Asia (Routledge 2022), and Global Justice in East Asia (Routledge, 2021). He is currently serving as the General Editor of the Routledge Series, Political Theories in East Asian Context, and a co-editor of The Journal of Social and Political Philosophy. Koichiro Matsuda is Professor of Japanese Political Thought at Rikkyo University, Tokyo. His research interests cover pre-modern and modern Japanese political thought from a comparative perspective. His recent publications in English include “Machiavelli and the Intellectuals of Modern Japan,” in Machiavelli in Northeast Asia, edited by Jun-Hyeok Kwak (Routledge, 2022); “From Feudalism to Meritocracy?: Growing Demand for Competent and Efficient Government in the Late Tokugawa Period,” in Tokugawa World, edited by Gary P. Leupp and De-min Tao (Routledge, 2021); “From Edo to Meiji: The Public Sphere and Political Criticism in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History, edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher W.A. Szpilman (Routledge, 2018); “An Intolerant but Morally Indifferent Regime? Heresy and Immorality in Early Modern Japan” in Toleration in Comparative Perspective, edited by Vicki Spencer (2017). Naoki Sakai is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Asian Studies Emeritus and retired from Cornell University in July 2021. He has published in the fields of comparative literature, intellectual history, translation studies, the studies of racism and nationalism, and the histories of textuality. His publications include The End of Pax Americana (2022); Translation and Subjectivity (1997); Voices of the Past (1991); The Stillbirth of the Japanese as a Language and as an Ethnos (1995), and many others. He co-edited a number of volumes including Politics of Translation, special issue of Translation, with Sandro Mezzadra (2014) and The end of area, special issue of positions asia critique (2019) with Gavin Walker. He served as the founding editor for the project of TRACES, a multilingual series in five languages - Korean, Chinese, English, Spanish, and Japanese. Naoyuki Umemori graduated from Waseda University (B.A. & M.A.) and The University of Chicago (Ph.D.). Umemori’s specialty is history of Modern Japanese Political Thought, and his research interests include social theory, nationalism, colonialism, Asianism, socialism, and anarchism. His English publication includes “A Topography of Japanese Socialism: Kotoku Shusui and Global Justice” in Global Justice in East Asia, edited by Hugo Kholi and Jun-Hyeok Kwak, Routledge, 2019; “Between civilization and anti-civilization: The ideology and activism of early Asianits” in Regional Integration in East Asia: Theoretical and Historical Perspective, edited by Satoshi Amako et al., 2013; “The

x Contributors historical contexts of the high treason incident: Governemtality and colonialism” in Japan and the High Treason Incident, edited by Masako Gavin and Ben Middleton, Routledge, 2013. WANG Pei is Assistant Professor of Chinese history and culture program at the University of Hong Kong. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Zhejiang University, and she spent a year in Paris for her Ph.D. studies, visiting the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. After obtaining her Ph.D. from the Department of Philosophy at Tsinghua, she did her postdoctoral research at Tsinghua University’s Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2022, she began teaching Chinese intellectual history as an assistant professor at the School of Chinese, the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include ethics, political philosophy, intellectual history, comparative philosophy, and contemporary French philosophy (particularly the thought of Levinas). Her works include Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (co-authored with Daniel Bell, 2020).

Part I

General Overview

1 Introduction Modernities in Northeast Asia Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng

Prologue Modernity is a disputed term in Northeast Asia, which cannot be employed solely to signify the cultural upheavals and sociopolitical changes that accompanied the Western incursions of the nineteenth century. It has meant not only learning from the West’s enlightenment and technological advancements but also overcoming the West through sociopolitical and intellectual movements. And such bifurcated responses to the successive waves of modernity in the region have been articulated through distinctive sociopolitical practices within Northeast Asian countries, and they have evolved in accordance with specific times and particular contexts up to the present day. Needless to say, recent scholarly attempts to uncover the endogenous roots of modernity in the region can also be related to diverse attitudes toward the changes driven by modernity and to the variegated patterns of affirmation and disavowal that have shaped the different trajectories of modernity in the region. Concomitantly, the issue of “modernity” in Northeast Asia is interwoven with different views of history. First, it continuously resonates with what ­Reinhart Koselleck once conceptualized as a radical break in the relationship between the “space of experience” (Erfahrungsraum) and the “horizon of expectation” (­Erwartungshorizont), whereby expectations about the future become detached from visions shaped by traditional experience (Koselleck 2004, 263–275). As we can see from China’s May Fourth movement of 1919, the concept of “enlightenment” was connected to a set of evaluative ideals such as “individual liberty,” which could be used to justify an inevitable rupture between the past and the future. At this juncture, traditional norms or values in the region were thus identified with scientific or cultural immaturity that could hinder appropriate progress toward a better future. This view of history has been taken up with particular enthusiasm by those who conceive the process of modernization as “Westernization.” From this perspective, modernity frequently refers to progress toward an individualistic and rationalized society; within the Weberian framework, modern persons become detached from social ties and thereby emerge as individuals separate and independent from others, while the state adopts a much more rationalized form of governance under the rule of law. But this viewpoint may unduly render the diverse intellectual trajectories of modernity in Northeast Asia into a set of simplistic DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-2

4  Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng ­comparisons with two prescriptive components of modernity, “individualization” and “rationalization.” A consequence of such prescriptiveness is arguably found in the unquestioned ethical and political predominance of liberal democracy in Japan and South Korea. Although it has recently brought about certain constitutional debates, the liberaldemocratic model itself has not been significantly challenged to date, and the question is apparently not seen as an imperative one. Idiosyncratically, the realization of liberal democracy is still perceived by the general public of these two countries as a “modernization” project, packaged together with the issues of individual rights, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. This perception could be ascribed to various sociopolitical experiences, including the post-war American occupations of Japan and South Korea, the Cold War followed by the outbreak of the Korean War, and the trade-offs between economic development and political freedom under authoritarian regimes, particularly in South Korea. But perhaps the most important aspect to be considered, and which merits scholarly scrutiny, is the way that liberal democracy as a vision of modernity has become bound up with a kind of idealism and consequently embedded into the political psyche of the citizens of these two countries. Second, Northeast Asians have also experienced the detachment of future possibilities from past histories under “modernity” as a source of excessive disorientation or loss. Whenever hopes for a better future have lost their roots in historical experience entirely, such that the tension between past experience and future expectation has become what Paul Ricoeur calls a “schism” (1985, 215), opponents of modernization, or at least of its narrow identification with Westernization, have emerged and tried to rehabilitate the power of past experiences in Northeast Asia. Both embracing and resisting the modernity imposed by the violent incursions of Western imperialism into the region, Northeast Asian thinkers have thus attempted to return to their past through and within their intellectual configurations of modernity. In this sense, the complicated facets of modernity in Northeast Asia, which have been shaped through diverse intellectual trajectories of modernism and anti-modernism, can hardly be reduced into the terms of modern ­Western rationalism. For example, proponents of Sinicization, such as Liang Qichao, envisioned “Chinese-style modernization” as a process opposed to individualistic Western rationalism, which they perceived as a spiritually corrupting mode of civilization (Yu 2010, 161–168), while the Japanese intellectuals of the interwar Kyoto school wished to overcome modernity by restoring a commonality with traditional J­apanese culture, including its emphasis on piety (Harootunian 2000, 34–94). At first glance, the practices of nation-state building in the region would seem bound to fall on the “Westernizing” side of the equation and thus to be at odds with those anti-Westernization movements that aimed to bridge the gap between past experiences and future expectations through rehabilitating traditional values and norms. As Ayşe Zarakol points out (2011, 29–56), when non-Western states tried to join the highly stratified hierarchical order of the nation-state system that had emerged in Europe, their “modern” state-building was shaped by an assumption

Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia  5 of Western superiority. Thus, the processes whereby the modern nation-states in Northeast Asia were constructed functioned chiefly through assessments of ­Western experiences of nation-building and treated their own past experiences not as a core constituent of the nation-state but as an element of society that had to be altered for modernization to occur. However, as Prasenjit Duara maintains (1997, 51–82), the memories of past experiences were not always lost, but appropriated in the processes of nation-state building. In particular, Northeast Asian states that maintained highly homogenous cultural ties prior to their modern nation-state building were able to exploit historical narratives about past experiences to obtain a high degree of political loyalty from their peoples, binding them to the newly formed nationstates from an early stage of the nation-building process. None of the practices of nation-building in the region began and ended with a modular set of Western examples. These were merely starting points for visions of modernization into which a nation’s past experiences could be transmitted and through which a nation could ready itself to compete with other nations. Through the lens of post-colonialism, all these views of history can be regarded as manifestations of “Orientalism,” ultimately embodying a colonialist attitude. It is clear that, in the postcolonial view of history, the existence of non-Western intellectual trajectories of modernity implies anti-Westernization – a conflict that necessitates recognition of the particularistic settings of “multiple modernities” in which modernity and Westernization are not identical in Northeast Asia (Eisenstadt 2002, 27). However, given the diverse trajectories of modernity in the region, we need to acknowledge that searching for purely endogenous structures that have shaped the genuine path of modernization in the region can still end up reproducing Eurocentrism. As we can see from the large amount of research on the impact of Confucian traditions on East Asian modernization and industrialization – for instance, Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity, edited by Tu Wei-Ming (1996) – explorations of the endogenous sources for modernity in the region can hardly go beyond an explanation of non-Western responses to the impingements of the West. What they identify as endogenous sources of modernity, such as “network capitalism,” “meritocratic democracy,” and “liberal education,” still fetishize a set of core values represented by “Western modernization.” If the view of history that seeks a break from the local, traditional past can often be categorized as “conscious” orientalism, the view of history that tries to identify endogenous sources for the multiple trajectories of Northeast Asian modernization that still corresponds to the core values of Western modernization can be characterized as “unconscious” orientalism. Based on these observations, in analyzing the diverse intellectual trajectories of Northeast Asia, we will explore not only the sociopolitical and cultural encounters between East and West, but also a philosophical encounter, showing how the internal dynamics of past experiences and future expectations have contributed to the multiplicity of modernity in Northeast Asia. This implies a number of specific tasks for the present volume. First, by juxtaposing traditional Northeast Asian views of “man” and “society” with questions of modernity, which have so often been beset by the culturally biased dichotomy of Western individualism and

6  Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng Eastern collectivism, we will elaborate a set of conceptual vocabularies that are not unduly distorted by the impacts of Western modernization. Second, by examining the possibility of a non-axial history of modernity in Northeast Asia – a non-axial civilization that cannot be seen as an axial revelation of great religions in world history (Jaspers 2010[1953], 1–21), we will shed light on the authentic trajectories of modernity in Northeast Asia which can challenge the dominant approach that attributes the multiplicity of modernity to sociopolitical and cultural encounters between the impact of Western modernization and the internal dynamics of past experiences in the region. Third, by readdressing the diverse features of overcoming modernity in Northeast Asia, we will investigate the possibilities of truly overcoming modernity in the region, which cannot be simplified as a sociopolitical syndrome driven by a deep disenchantment with modernization, associated with the rise of ultra-nationalism in the region. Modernity and Eurocentrism The complexities and contradictions of global “modernity” are already evident at a conceptual or semantic level; studies of non-Western modernities, as in the present volume, must invariably wrestle with terminological issues. “Modernity” has two poles of meaning. On the one hand, it can be a purely chronological marker, denoting the present age in opposition to an earlier period. Most would agree that this sense of modernity can be translated into non-European contexts without ­Eurocentric implications. However, this translation would have limited significance for social analysis; it would amount to the unremarkable claim that people in non-European societies can also become conscious of a difference with the past and thus define their “modern” situation in opposition to an “ancient” or “classical” age. But this need not imply some liberating or disorienting rupture from all past experiences. On the other hand, “modernity” can be a historical marker, encompassing the epochal sequence of interconnected events or processes that constituted modern Western civilization – the Renaissance (individualization), the Reformation (secularization), the Enlightenment (rationalization), the French Revolution (democratization), the Industrial Revolution (development of modern capitalism), and so on. In this case, translating “modernity” into non-European contexts will clearly have strong implications for social analysis, but it is hard to see how this could be done without a violent rupture and imposition en bloc of Eurocentric models and value-judgments. In this light, we may begin to doubt whether the term “modernity” can be appropriately applied to non-Western contexts at all. After all, modernity is itself undoubtedly a concept of European provenance – derived from a Latin root and obtaining many of its connotations from French literary debates and German philosophical discourse. However, it is not without reason that the appeal of “modernity” has exceeded and transcended its Western origins like few other concepts in world history. This can be attributed to the aforementioned semantic duality of the concept. A discourse of “modernity” invariably vacillates between the purely chronological (“now”) and the historical-civilizational

Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia  7 (Renaissance-individualization, Enlightenment-rationalization, etc.,) senses of the term. Modernity never simply means “now”; it implies an evaluation of the contemporary situation according to certain historical criteria. But, equally, these criteria can never ossify into a static category, as they are continually renewed by and for new iterations of “now.” In other words, despite their obvious affinities, a theoretical discourse of modernity is distinct from a theoretical discourse of civilizational development or progress, because the former is inherently susceptible to polemical transpositions and reappropriations into new contexts. Insofar as the “present” cannot be reduced to a fixed set of characteristics, the chronological sense of “modernity” ensures a dynamic openness of meaning that continually destabilizes and renews its historical definitions and thus opens the space for non-Western modernities to be elaborated. Eurocentrism can be understood as the systematic closure of this ­ambivalence, as a flat equation is drawn between the chronological and historical meanings of “modernity.” It entails that Western civilization is not merely viewed as inherently superior or desirable, but also that it defines the “now” of world history. Hence, for the Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel, “[m]odernity appears when Europe affirms itself as the ‘center’ of a World History that it inaugurates” (­Dussel 1993, 65). Attitudes of “self-colonization,” insofar as they rest upon a self-­ flagellating consciousness of “backwardness” and the urgent need to “catch up,” are often the precise mirror image of this understanding. It seems imperative, then, to resist this ideological closure and to affirm the continual reiteration and reinvention of modernity in new contexts. In this sense, to posit “Northeast Asian modernities” is, in effect, to posit new modernities and new temporalities. This may be regarded as a central, underlying impulse of the present volume. At this point, however, we may confront the converse danger of placing too much weight on the purely chronological sense of “modernity,” unmoored from its historical content. We can again express this as a terminological problem. In questioning the primacy of the European path to modernity, several of the papers in this volume seek to apply modernity as a more pluralistic and non-prescriptive framing concept. But once the Eurocentric idea of “modernity” has been destabilized and transformed into a more inclusive, malleable, and ambivalent category, what then ultimately defines or delimits the concept? For example, if what we call “philosophical modernity” in Northeast Asia has no necessary relationship to the co-ordinates of “modern” European philosophy (Enlightenment values, individual subjectivity, scientific rationalism, and so on), and if it can furthermore adapt and incorporate elements of traditional Confucian cosmology (as a number of papers in this volume will suggest), then what exactly is “modern” about it in the final analysis? The chapters in this volume do not adopt a single, monolithic approach to this terminological problem or indeed to the broader dilemmas of Eurocentrism. Some make use of structural formulations such as “multiple modernities,” “hybrid modernity,” or the “double project of modernity” to frame their analyses, tending to suggest some kind of dialectical or dialogic relationship between Western and non-Western modernity. Another approach is to posit a minimal definition

8  Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng of modernity that strips away European specificities, leaving behind a basic shared predicament that both Western and non-Western societies have confronted in distinctive ways. For example, the formation of a coherent nation-state may be ­identified as a global problem of modernity, which many European societies achieved through liberal-democratic mobilization, but for which Northeast Asian societies have found their own distinctive pathways. Others have sought, in a spirit of pluralism, to define modernity primarily in the terms set out and understood by Northeast Asian actors themselves. None of these approaches is perfect or final; all may be subject to methodological criticism. They are perhaps best regarded as strategic and partial responses to a question that offers no ideal resolution, but which can each illuminate different aspects of a many-sided and dynamic sociopolitical conjuncture. The common thread of the chapters in this volume is therefore not a particular approach to the problematic implications of modernity and Eurocentrism, and still less a singular definition of non-Western or Northeast Asian modernity. What they can be said to share, nonetheless, is a certain vigilance or critical attitude toward the ideals and vocabulary of modernity, as the specificity of national and regional contexts necessarily and repeatedly draws attention to gaps and disjunctures between concept and reality. How these gaps can be plugged or comprehended is, again, a question amenable to diverse strategies. For the purposes of this introduction, it will suffice to highlight one key motif that, explicitly or implicitly, asserts itself across this volume as a consequence of the critical vigilance just mentioned – namely, the notion of philosophical translation as an urgent task for scholarly understanding of modernity. Broadly speaking, this volume rests upon the principle that a certain translation of the European vocabulary of “modernity” into non-European contexts is consistent with a thorough rejection of its reductionist and Eurocentric implications. It is evident, then, that such a translation cannot confine itself to an affirmative repetition of said vocabulary, but demands either a cautious and finely tuned critical operation or a creative, reimaginative labor to transpose and rearticulate ideas from one sociolinguistic milieu to another. Modernity without “-centrism” The conceptual dilemmas outlined in the previous section correspond to concrete political problems confronted by modern nations and peoples in Northeast Asia. This is most evidently the case with explicitly Eurocentric perspectives, whose limiting or damaging effect upon the sociopolitical imagination is outlined in several of the papers in this volume. Here it will also be worthwhile to highlight some corollary but less immediately obvious problems, which suggest that it is not just a matter of overcoming Eurocentrism, but perhaps of detaching the discourse of “modernity” from “-centrisms” in general. We have noted that, in rejecting prescriptive definitions of modernity rooted in Eurocentric views of world history, there arises a converse risk of reducing “modernity” to its purely chronological sense – a “now” that can float between contexts in a frictionless manner. But

Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia  9 the real danger here is that new prescriptions and idealisms can now be easily brought back into the picture, facilitated and disguised by the apparent liberation of “modernity” from Eurocentric assumptions. It is notable that several of the ­Japanese contributors to this collection have effectively performed a dual critique of two interlinked notions: the Eurocentric model of modernity and the nationalistic perception of Japan as a new spearhead of enlightened civilization in Northeast Asia. It is clear that the latter discourse (and those analogous to it in other nations) may well reproduce many of the structural and ideological pitfalls of Eurocentrism, even – perhaps especially – if it represents itself as a way of resisting or overcoming Western hegemony. Needless to say then, in detaching our understanding of global modernity from the hegemonic values of Westernization, we should also not adopt a onedimensional attitude toward modern European thought. The intellectual corpus of European modernity is sufficiently complex and indeed contradictory to offer rich counter-ideological resources for those seeking to oppose and “overcome” modernity in its Eurocentric forms. To uncover these resources is a matter of reading European modernity “against the grain” – an endeavor that can undoubtedly be aided by sensitive analyses of non-European modernities. To give one illustrative example, we may consider the thought of Karl Marx. His theory is often associated with a Eurocentric view of universal history, insofar as the development of society is conceived as passing through a series of stages, whose most advanced form had happened to arise in the “civilized” West. However, his thought also harbors an alternative treatment of modernity, based on a historical consciousness not without parallels among some of the intellectual initiators of Northeast Asian modernity. Like many German intellectuals of the nineteenth century, Marx was highly aware of Germany’s civilizational “backwardness” in comparison to post-Revolutionary France and industrialized England: “[t]he struggle against the German political present is a struggle against the past of modern nations,” as “Germany did not reach … political emancipation at the same time as the modern nations” (Marx 1976 381, 386). Crucially, his idea was not that Germany should therefore ­emulate the sequence of development passed through by those “modern” nations, but rather that a more thoroughgoing emancipation – a more radical form of ­modernity – would germinate from Germany’s very backwardness, through a kind of “latecomer advantage” in the sphere of revolution. We must ultimately recognize that in refusing to abandon the European concept of “modernity,” even in such qualified forms as “multiple modernities” or “hybrid modernity,” we imply that there is still something within the European experience that is worth translating into the Northeast Asian context, even as we reject its Eurocentric application as a universal standard. Of course, different scholars may conceive this “something” in different ways. Some may simply wish to acknowledge the fact that Northeast Asian politicians and intellectuals have consciously emulated European models when seeking to “modernize” their societies, albeit often in a conflicted fashion. Others may believe, with Dussel, that European modernity “includes a rational ‘concept’ of emancipation” that non-Europeans can happily “affirm and subsume,” once it has been separated

10  Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng from the “originary … and irrational violence” of European imperialism (Dussel 1993, 66, 76). In any case, as long as we are using its language, we cannot claim to have left the shores of Europe behind entirely. All this brings us back to the critical significance of conscientious philosophical translation when seeking to understand global modernities. We should not assume the mutual applicability or transposability of Western/Eastern or distinct national vocabularies of modernity, but nor should we peremptorily write them off as absolutely incommensurate. Through careful, critical contextualizations and inventive, imaginative recontextualizations, we may find ways of juxtaposing, cross-­examining, and combining the distinct vocabularies of modernity, to form a deeper understanding of the overall picture in all its nuanced multiplicity. As already mentioned, many scholars who posit the multiplicity of modernity are already accustomed to differentiating the trajectories of modernization in Northeast Asia from those of Westernization. However, the term “multiplicity” is indiscriminately applied to every project that identifies internal dynamics or endogenous sources for modernization in the region, even if – as we have seen – these sources virtually correspond to the familiar co-ordinates of ­Western modernization. For example, when Melissa Williams discusses the puzzle of “­Chinese exceptionalism” with respect to “political legitimacy,” she uses a culturally biased dichotomy between Western rational cultures and Eastern authoritarian cultures and thereby ultimately contradicts her initial view of the multiplicity of modernity such that “modernization is not synonymous with Westernization” (2016, 29–31). Such a dubious attitude toward the multiplicity of non-Western modernity has largely resulted from the direct importation of Western conceptual languages into the investigation of non-Western practices. Translation of the core values of Western modernization into other regions frequently evokes inappropriate analogies between different cultures and thereby leads indigenous sources of modernity to be effectively marginalized within the cross-cultural understanding of modernity. With this unconscious marginalization of indigenous sources, Western languages of modernity perpetuate a set of prescriptive values of modernization, such that the multiplicity of modernity in other regions still end up unduly devalued by the linear categories of Western modernization. As we will see in the first part of this volume, we should recognize that Northeast Asia has its own conceptual languages that cannot be translated appropriately by Western languages of modernization. For instance, before accepting the idea that the concept of “sovereignty” emerged for the first time in Europe, we need to face squarely the difficulty that the languages of Anglo-European political philosophy cannot fairly depict the Northeast Asian semantic and syntactic resources for “sovereignty” that are derived from traditional thinking about family relationships. Whereas Anglo-European languages of “sovereignty” can provide valuable insights into the question of political accountability in a contractual agreement, Northeast Asian languages of “sovereignty” emphasize the requirement of moral and ethical responsibility in an extended family relationship. To avoid truncating the Northeast Asian languages of modernity and to develop our cross-cultural understanding of the multiplicity of modernity in

Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia  11 the region, we need a self-conscious translation that goes beyond word-for-word ­transliteration. As Roger Ames suggests for the study of Chinese philosophy in general (2017), we need to provide linguistically heterogeneous audiences with a means of authentically understanding Northeast Asian practices within their own conceptual frameworks. In addition to self-conscious translation, a genealogical reading of Northeast Asian practices will enable us to find an appropriate cross-cultural map for the analysis of indigenous modernities in the region. Within this genealogical reading, even if we acknowledge that the “nation-state” is a distinctively modern idea and artifact, we should proceed to investigate the longer or broader histories of speculation about political community that culminated in the particular mode of “nation-state” as the archetypal modern collectivity. The second part of this volume offers some starting points for such a reading. By the same token, even as we admit that Northeast Asian practices of building nation-states arose later than the development of the “nation-state” in the West, we can still question whether the core ideas of the “nation-state” were developed entirely and thoroughly by European indigenous practices. For example, with genealogical reading, one can begin to claim that prototypes of the “nation-state” were developed outside of Europe at an even earlier point. One of the most provocative arguments in the third part of this volume is that the key social and political changes in European modernization resemble the sociopolitical changes in the Zhou-Qin transition period (BCE 770–221) in China. The efforts throughout this volume to avoid “self-colonization” in our investigation of the multiplicity of modernity in Northeast Asia should be differentiated from the movements of “overcoming modernity” (kindai no chokoku) in Japan in the early 1940s. Certainly, we should not oversimplify the symposium on “overcoming modernity” that took place in Japan in 1942 by equating it with Japanese ultra-nationalism during the wartime period. As Krummel argues, there were many different schools of thought that endeavored to move beyond Western modernization before the wartime period, and their visions were diverse in accordance with their intellectual backgrounds (Krummel 2021). Nevertheless, we cannot leave aside the lessons from the syndrome of “overcoming modernity” in Japan – which, furthermore, is short-sighted to regard purely as a problem of Japanese wartime history. Such a syndrome is rather a sociopolitical phenomenon that could emerge anywhere, particularly with the increasing gap between the accumulated expectations of the future through relentless modernization, and the actual experiences of daily life in the present, which gives rise to a societal crisis in which individuals feel unstable and thereby anxious about their unpredictable futures. In this sense, although we are keen to explore the possibility of overcoming modernity, we must sensitively address the combinations of “memory” and “history” that attach to modernities in the region. Much could be said about the implications of the relation between the “horizon of expectation” and the “space of experience” in the multiplicity of modernity in the region, but for our purposes here we can simply remark that breaks between expectation and experience have always been fluid, ambiguous, and multiple.

12  Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng Chapter Summaries The two chapters in the first section of this volume (“Modernity and Tradition”) address the complex and asymmetrical relationship between the imported values of Western modernity and the indigenous traditions of Confucian thought in N ­ ortheast Asia. Both share the general perspective that the predominance of Western conceptualizations of “modernity” has led political-philosophical scholarship to misinterpret or overlook the specificities of what might be termed “post-Confucian” modernity. However, the chapters put forward different views of Confucianism’s role in the development of modern society. Focusing on the Japanese context, Naoki Sakai defines Northeast Asian modernity as the process of overcoming the “feudal remnant” of “Confucian premodernity,” in order to forge new modes of social identification and nationhood. Conversely, Roger Ames emphasizes the “hybrid” nature of Chinese modernity, showing how the values of Western Enlightenment were “domesticated” through their translation into a Confucian milieu. Sakai’s chapter focuses on the Meiji-era philosopher Fukuzawa Yukichi, whose reformist writings offer an example of a repudiation of Confucian ethics in the name of “modernity.” For Fukuzawa, the Confucian emphasis on reciprocal kinship relations as the basis of social order was an obstacle to the modern social principles of “equality” and “nationality.” These two concepts are, of course, prominent in the heroic narrative of Western modernity. However, Sakai’s reading of Fukuzawa employs a Foucauldian vocabulary to interrogate these concepts in a somewhat unfamiliar way – not as political values per se, but rather as new “technologies of individuation and totalization.” The principle of equality implies individuated subjects whose identity is self-grounded rather than defined by their position within a network of relations; nationality is akin to a form of “pastoral power” through which these isolated individuals can be regathered into a community. Although Fukuzawa undoubtedly sought to emulate the modernity of ­Western societies, Sakai’s constructivist perspective emphasizes the reformation of the ­Confucian social order as Fukuzawa’s defining problematic. Sakai’s analysis also has a critical dimension, based on the premise that “nationalization” qua totalization is inseparably intertwined with “ethnicization” at the heart of contemporary racisms. The persistence rather than the overcoming of Confucian tradition is the basis of Ames’ account of China’s “hybrid” modernity. Ames begins by outlining the asymmetrical situation of cultural understanding that has developed between “East” and “West” since East Asian society was “overwhelmed” by the transplantation of Western educational institutions and values in the late nineteenth century. As a consequence of this Westernizing influence, Chinese philosophy has generally been interpreted through the conceptual lens of Western philosophy, including by Chinese scholars. However, Ames posits a countertendency to this dominance – namely, the “domestication” of Western concepts whereby their meaning has been “retooled to express a persistent Chinese worldview.” The crux of this worldview is the “zoetological” nature of Confucian cosmology, its emphasis on ecological life processes or “becomings” rather than ontological “beings” as the root of meaning.

Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia  13 Ames therefore proposes the need for a “comparative cultural hermeneutics” in which interpretations of Western and Eastern thought must take account of their divergent ontological/zoetological assumptions. Moreover, he notes that modern currents within Western philosophy have increasingly turned against the essentialist assumptions of substance ontology, and in this sense, the Confucian tradition may offer useful resources for the reshaping of Western thought. In the second section of this volume (“Embracing and Resisting Modernity”), the focus shifts from the political-philosophical ideals of “modernity” to its concrete sociopolitical manifestations. These chapters interrogate the successes and failures of “modern” development in the national histories of China, Japan, and Korea, respectively, and in different ways take measure of the distance or divergence between European and Northeast Asian modernities. Tze-ki Hon delineates a dramatic shift in Chinese attitudes toward Westernization and national sovereignty, pivoting around the 1919 Versailles Settlement. Koichiro Matsuda laments the failure to realize the modernizing potential of statistical science in nineteenthand twentieth-century Japan, as its reformist implications were stymied by political expediency and nationalistic sentiment. Yutang Jin analyzes the Donghak (Eastern Learning) movement in late nineteenth-century Korea, showing how its ­reconceptualization of key traditional values fueled a movement for social change. Hon’s thesis is that the 1919 Versailles Settlement’s decision to transfer ­Germany’s former colonies in Shandong to Japan not only provoked popular outrage in China, but also instigated a profound shift in Chinese attitudes toward modernity and its global configurations. From an idealistic embrace of the ­Western “standard of civilization” and the emerging international state system, which also entailed close integration with Japan as a “model of ‘East Asian modernity’,” China was abruptly disillusioned and began to see the global system as a vehicle of European “domination.” Hon traces this shift within one of the key discourses of China’s modern self-understanding, that of scholarly geography. Prior to 1919, Hon describes an open-ended and globally oriented mode of “earth studies” focused on transnational migrations and networks. But after the shock of Versailles, Chinese geographers became increasingly concerned with questions of territory and military strategy. For Hon, this represented a reframing of global modernity from a “hierarchy in time” (in which China was aiming to catch up with the “civilized” West) into a “hierarchy in space” (in essence, a “realist” conception of international competition over territory and resources). Matsuda’s narrative of the “unsuccessful history” of statistical modernity in Japan begins with the enthusiasm of reformist intellectuals (such as ­Fukuzawa) for statistics as a basis for rational and “civilized” governance. Matsuda’s account of the reformists’ evolving views pivots around the notion of the “laws of nature” revealed by statistics; this term has a range of connotations, at times moral and spiritual as well as scientific and deterministic, that different intellectuals elaborated in different ways. These mostly European-educated figures shared the general view, however, that statistics was an instrument of civilizational progress. This lofty ideal foundered, however, once it passed into the hands of “policymakers.” The limited implementation of statistical methods in state administration

14  Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng was met with ­resistance from established authorities and, in the case of the first national census of 1920 – given the rabble-rousing name of Kokuseichōsa (“test of national strength”) – ­prioritized the stoking of nationalistic sentiment over methodological rigor. Given the continuation of these trends to the present day, ­Matsuda suggests that the “modernity” embodied by statistical science is still yet to be ­realized in Japanese society. The Donghak movement was both a new current of “social thought” and a peasant-driven “popular movement” in late nineteenth-century Korea; according to Jin, it was also a “quintessential case of hybrid modernity.” The movement’s founding leader Choe Je-u adapted traditional morality into new social conditions in a way that, while retaining many of its fundamental cosmological assumptions, also made a number of conceptual innovations that broached “modern” notions of individuality, subjectivity, and collectivity. Jin specifically highlights three such innovations: a shift from “people” (min) to “persons” (in); the notion of the “heavenly dignity” of persons, or “persons as heaven”-; and “we-ness” (uri) as a relational form of collectivity. This reshaping of traditional thinking underlay the “emancipatory” force of Donghak as an instigator of peasant rebellions that contributed to Korea’s transition out of feudalism. Like many of the contributors to this volume, Jin finds that attending to the local specificities of national development and nationalist awakening offers a better framework for understanding Northeast Asian “modernities” than the application of universalistic Western models. The chapters in the third section (“Redefining Modernities”) present a range of arguments, grounded in the historical experiences and social perspectives of Northeast Asia, that challenge existing pieties and offer startling reinterpretations of the nature and genesis of “modernity.” Tongdong Bai provocatively claims that Chinese society underwent an initial stage of modernization as early as the third century BCE, during the transition between the Zhou and Qin dynasties. Daniel Bell and Wang Pei argue that some elements of Confucian tradition, encapsulated in the formula of “just hierarchy,” are still pertinent to life in modern societies – and can even act as a corrective to the narrowness of modern Western egalitarianism. Takashi Kibe pursues the theme of “multiple modernities” in the writings of Maruyama Masao, arguing that his engagement with modernity was inseparably intertwined with the topos of “intercultural dialogue.” Finally, Naoyuki Umemori argues that the “colonial” dimension of modernity must be recognized alongside its more vaunted “metropolitan” aspect, using the development of the Meiji-era police force as an illustration. To put forward his iconoclastic argument, which implies that aspects of Chinese modernity pre-dated European modernity by almost two millennia, Bai strictly defines “modernization” as a confrontation with the problems of a post-feudal political order. When the feudal regime collapses, political legitimacy and social bonding can no longer be predicated on the noble rituals and conventions of feudal hierarchy; new modes of sovereignty and administration must be found to govern the “large, populous states” that emerge in its wake. This is what occurred, in Bai’s view, during the Zhou–Qin transition. Defined in this way, “modernity” is stripped of many “accidental” features that are specific to the European ­experience

Introduction: Modernities in Northeast Asia  15 (although Bai does regard industrialization as a later stage of modernization where China was indeed outpaced by the West). This radical perspective has two broad implications. Firstly, it undercuts simplistic historical comparisons that characterize elements of Chinese society and politics as absolutely “pre-modern” in ­contradistinction to European (or, indeed, Japanese) liberal democracy. Secondly, it provides a critical framework for assessing China’s twentieth-century modernization, which Bai argues was misguided and prone to excess insofar as it sought to eradicate a “­feudal” past that had already been overcome in China’s history. Bell and Wang’s chapter paves the way for a productive dialogue between Confucian values and modern social practice. Their outlook is articulated at three ­levels. Firstly, against the “conventional narrative of modernity” as a unilinear path to a fixed destination, they draw on the reformist Chinese philosopher He Lin to advocate a stance of “progressive conservatism,” whereby modernizers may appropriately learn from the past as well as criticizing or overcoming it. In this spirit, they suggest that traditional hierarchies should not be blindly discarded, but in some cases can be productively “reformed” and reconciled with modern values. Finally, they examine traditional Confucian attitudes toward friendship and, in particular, family relationships as a basis for conceptualizing this kind of “just hierarchy.” Provided that a degree of flexibility and space for “role change” is introduced into such hierarchies, Bell and Wang believe that traditional values such as “filial piety” are still pertinent to modern societies, even with their moral discourse of individual freedom and human rights. Indeed, the lessons of tradition may even curb the potentially destructive excesses of absolute egalitarianism, which the authors link to the explosions of populist violence into the modern world. For Kibe, the intellectual trajectory of Maruyama Masao epitomizes a constitutive dilemma faced by intellectuals of non-Western “modernity” who wish to challenge Eurocentrism while remaining inescapably immersed in the language of European thought. Maruyama’s “struggle” with this predicament led him, at a conceptual level, to assert the multiplicity of modernity and to carefully differentiate Japanese and Western modernity in terms of distinct forms of “individuation.” However, such conceptualizations did not wholly resolve his conflicted position with regard to Western thought. Thus, Kibe argues, Maruyama’s “methodological” and “philosophical” reflections on the theme of “intercultural dialogue” formed a crucial underpinning to his engagement with modernity. This holds certain parallels to more recent works, such as James Tully’s argument for dialogue as a basis for “deparochializing” comparative political theory. However, Kibe underlines how Maruyama’s ideas on dialogue developed in a distinctive form, shaped by his cultural “interrogation” of Japanese tradition and modernity and his metaphysical reflections linking dialogue to “otherness.” In emphasizing the colonial dimension of modern nation-building, Umemori is simultaneously challenging standard narratives of Western-led modernity and the historical self-image of contemporary Japanese society. He argues that the colonial element is often excluded from comparative studies of state formation that seek to understand the “peculiarity” of Japanese modernity and its relationship to Western civilization. The formation of the Meiji-era police force was a key pillar

16  Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Ken Cheng of Japanese efforts to establish a “centralized, European-style nation-state,” and Umemori establishes that its formative principles and practices took much more from models of colonial policing – such as the British in Hong Kong – than from the metropolitan forces of Paris or London. This undermines the familiar narrative of a process of modernization spearheaded by enlightened intellectuals fresh from fact-finding missions to the great European metropolises and shifts our attention toward the Japanese colonies in Korea and Taiwan as laboratories of Japan’s modernity. Ultimately, it suggests an understanding of Japanese modernization as a form of self-colonization, whereby the Meiji state “attempt[ed] to govern their people by imitating European colonial states’ practices.” Bibliography Ames, Roger. 2017. “Better Late than Never: Understanding Chinese Philosophy and ‘Translating It’ into the Western Academy.” Ethics and Education, 12:1, 6–17. Duara, Prasenjit. 1995. Rescuing History from the Nation, Questioning Narratives of ­Modern China. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dussel, Enrique. 1995. “Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures).” Boundary 2, 20:3, 65–76. Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 2002. “Some Observations on Multiple Modernities,” in Reflections on Multiple Modernities, edited by Dominic Sachsenmaier and Jens Riedel. Leiden, ­Netherland: Brill, 27–41. Harootunian, Harry. 2000. Overcoming by Modernity, History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jaspers, Karl. 2010. The Origin and Goal of History. New York: Routledge. Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004. Futures Past, On the Semantics of Historical Time. Translated by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press. Krummel, John. 2021. “The Symposium on Overcoming Modernity and Discourse in ­Wartime Japan.” Historical Sociology: A Journal of Historical Social Sciences, 2, 83–104. Marx, Karl. 1976. “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” in Marx ­Engels Werke Bd. 1. Berlin: Dietz, 378–391. Ricoeur, Paul. 1985. Time and Narrative Vol. 3. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tu, Wei-Ming, eds. 1998. Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity, Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Yu, Keping. 2010. “‘Westernization’ vs. ‘Sinicization’: An Ineffaceable Paradox within ­China’s Modernization Process,” in Culture and Social Transformation in Reform Era China, edited by Cao Tian Yu, Zhong Xueping, and Liao Kebin. Boston, MA: Brill, 153–195. Williams, Melissa S. 2016. “Reasons to Obey: ‘Multiple Modernities’ and Constructions of Political Legitimacy,” in East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy, Bridging the Empirical –Normative Divide, edited by Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and Melissa S. Williams. New York: Cambridge University Press, 25–54. Zarakol, Ayşe. 2011. After Defeat, How the East Learned to Live with the West. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Part II

Modernity and Tradition

The chapters in this section address the complex and asymmetrical relationship between the imported values of Western modernity and the indigenous traditions of Confucian thought in Northeast Asia. All three share the general perspective that the predominance of Western conceptualizations of “modernity” has led political-philosophical scholarship to misinterpret or overlook the specificities of what might be termed “post-Confucian” modernity. However, the chapters put forward different views of Confucianism’s role in the development of modern society. ­Focusing on the Japanese context, Naoki Sakai defines Northeast Asian modernity as the process of overcoming the “feudal remnant” of “Confucian premodernity,” in order to forge new modes of social identification and nationhood. Conversely, Roger Ames emphasizes the “hybrid” nature of Chinese modernity, showing how the values of Western Enlightenment were “domesticated” through their translation into a Confucian milieu.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-3

2

Equality and Nationality The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics Naoki Sakai

Introduction It is well known that the term ‘modernity’ acquired its paradoxical and i­ diosyncratic connotation a few centuries ago. Around the eighteenth century, mainly in Western Europe ‘modernity’ began to free itself from the circular and repetitive history of ‘return’ or ‘renaissance’ and instead acquire a very different meaning. Modernity was already a periodization marker, but it also assumed a spatial or geopolitical connotation; then, the uses of this word ‘modern’ started to imply a specific form of ‘worlding,’ a strategic schematism of time and space,1 according to which people, first in Europe, and then in the rest of the world, were located, chronicled, and hierarchically classified. With the arrival of ‘modernity,’ the manner in which we represent the world to ourselves has been drastically transformed. In this respect, ‘modernity’ is inevitably a global event of new worlding in which the geographic indices, Asia, Africa, America, and so on, were newly located and inscribed in a cartographic mapping that was also called fabrica mundi.2 It goes without saying that the geographic notation ‘Northeast Asia’ is nothing but a corollary of such worlding of modernity, since the index ‘Asia’ itself is a product of this new ‘worlding.’ In my inquiry into modernity, I have been concerned with two major ­problematics. The first relates with what, some three decades ago, Stuart Hall drew attention to in terms of the ‘discourse of the-West-and-the-Rest’: the problematic concerning the mytheme of the West (or Europe) and the micro-physics of power regulating the operation of bordering which repeatedly attempts to establish the distinction between the West and the Rest; dominant in the discourse of the-West-and-theRest is an endless search for the anthropological difference between humanitas and anthropos, a difference expected to authenticate the distinction and distinctiveness of European humanity from the rest of human kind.3 It has been taken for granted that the West is essentially a geographic index. But, today, the figure, image, and identity of the West are increasingly unhinged, so to say, from the grid of cartographic mapping. Just like the racial notion of whiteness, the West does not cohere as a concept in empirical knowledge. Neither is its unity determinable by and of itself on empirical grounds. In other words, the West is increasingly dislocated in multiple senses: it is dislocated on the geographic DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-4

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  19 surface of the earth; it is dislocated with regard to the habitats of populations who are supposed to be ascribed to particular territories for residency; it is dislocated ethnically, that is, in terms of the cultural and behavioral traits of human groupings; it is dislocated with regard to the political and social privileges associated with an individual’s nationality, ethnicity, and race. The West, therefore, must be considered above all else as a mythical construct; it achieves powerful effects on us as it surrounds itself with varying and often self-contradictory properties. In short, what must be undertaken today is to expose the very process of the production of modern worlding that had been obscured in fabrica mundi. At the same time, however, we must acknowledge that the overdetermined nature of the West serves as an entry point to the general problems confronting us: anachronistic resurrections of white supremacy, the global advancement of commodification, the colonial formation of the modern international world, as well as persistent but constantly mutating racisms. On the one hand, the historical analysis of the West will provide us with a new chronology of modernity in which the transformation of capitalism was accompanied by the ethnicization and nationalization of populations; on the other, it will help us understand the changing formation of minorities. In short, an analysis of the West as a mytheme is indispensable to our understanding of racism, and antiimmigrant racism in particular, today. Yet it is important to remind ourselves time and again that what we apprehend by this mytheme is increasingly ambiguous and incongruous: it gives rise to tremendous anxiety among those who identify themselves with the West, as well as among those who identify against it; its immoderately overdetermined nature can no longer be shrouded. Just as in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the sense of ­European/the Western identity seems to have become uncertain, so that an increasing portion of population in Western Europe as well as North America openly evoke the rhetoric of white supremacy. Just like National Socialists in Germany, the Republican Party in the United States, for instance, no longer hesitates to appeal to the manifestly racist expressions and actions in public. Undoubtedly, many of their followers who regard themselves as white are infected by the anxiety over the West’s instability and ambiguity. However, this does not mean that the West has ceased to be a reality whose ­plausibility is globally accepted; our sense of the world is still directed by this historical construct. This is why the West must be understood, first of all, as a mytheme which regulates our imagination on how to configure peoples and areas on the world map hierarchically, and also functions only as one term of the binary opposition of the West and the Rest. The second problematic is about the historical transformation of the regime of individual identification. In addition to a new regime of worlding in cartographic imagination thematically addressed in the first problematic above, it means a new politics of ethnicization and nationalization; the new identity politics inaugurates the institutionalization of new legitimacy and sovereignty. Particularly significant is than introduction of the technologies of individuation and totalization in both collective and individual registers.

20  Naoki Sakai In Northeast Asia, the technologies of new individuation and totalization were apprehended mainly in the context of an historical movement to overcome Confucian ethics on the one hand and in another context of a political project to form a new collectivity called ‘nation’ on the other. Let me introduce two contrasting modes of social identity formation, ‘relational identity’ and ‘specific identity’, respectively. In terms of these two modes of social identification, I would like to apprehend the historical dynamics of modernity in Northeast Asian societies. Relational Identity and Specific Identity Since time is limited, please allow me to dispense with the first problematic in favor of concentrating on the second problematic of ethnicization and nationalization in modernity. The first question I want to address is related to the problem of how to conceptualize social justice and its conception that characterizes the arrival of modernity; or in other words, how to put forth the idea of equality against the social imaginary of the national body or kokutai (國體) In short, I am concerned with the problems of social justice and equality in relation to the scope of the modern national community. Of course, my question requires some explanation. Let me start my inquiry into equality and nationality by pointing out the topic of fairness that is often mentioned when social justice is discussed. We cannot address the question of fairness independently of a particular type of social formation in which we live, for to accept that justice means fairness is to take a step toward a commitment to equality and to the kind of universalism that implies that we are all equal qua human beings. We are not talking about fairness in a social formation in which human beings are primarily recognized in terms of their rank and status. So, my starting point is to recognize that we live in a social formation whose legitimacy consists in the principle that every human being ought to be regarded as equal. Here, please allow me a brief diversion to a particular national context. This will help, I hope, to clarify a few problems that I want to address with respect to the idea of equality on the one hand and the concept of nationality on the other. The national context I refer to is that of Japan. Historians tell us that a drastic transformation of social formation took place there around 1868, so that the principle of equality, perhaps for the first time, came into being in social formation in the islands of Japan. Prior to the Meiji Restoration, the assemblage of feudal states under which people lived in the Japanese archipelago is referred to as the Bakuhan system （幕藩体 制） in today’s history textbooks. This Bakuhan system, a feudal federation of the unifying authority of the Bakufu and the peripheral polities of domainal Han, was not a centralized system of modern sovereignty but rather an alliance of provincial Hans, each of which was recognized as a fiefdom by the ­Tokugawa Shogunate （徳川幕府） or Bakufu, the most powerful of all the domains. The continuing existence of each Han and its bureaucracy was authorized by the legitimacy of kinship lineage. The succession of political authority from one domainal lord to another was dictated by the rules of kinship legitimacy; the very division between the ruler and the ruled also was authorized by the law of k­ inship heritage.

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  21 According to historians of early modern Japanese history, the Bakuhan system suffered from frequent peasant rebellions, and peasants legitimated their insurgence in terms of semi-Confucian ideologies.4 What is remarkable about the thinking of the Tokugawa peasantry is that, among the ethical norms and virtues which they appealed to in order to justify the reason for their uprisings, the idea of equality was never included. The peasantry did not believe that the ethical value of equality could be appealed to in order to justify, rationalize, and sanction their rebellions against political authority. But as soon as the Bakuhan system was destroyed and the Meiji state was established in 1868, some rebellious peasants began to incorporate the idea of equality as a means for their legitimacy.5 In premodern societies, even prior to the Meiji Restoration, people aspire to some sense of equality. But, it is extremely difficult to determine what type of social reality that equality designated, or what sort of conduct it normalized. What is of decisive importance is that, even in so-called modern societies in which we live, it is far from easy to determine what sort of reality the term ‘equality’ ­designates and what conduct it normalizes. Perhaps it will help to distinguish between equality as an idea and equality as a concept actualized in an institutional reality. Of course, how an idea of equality is actualized in its institution is a crucial question not to be evaded, but what normativity, regularity, archetype, and rationality are involved in the process of this actualization must be dealt with elsewhere. It seems to me, however, no matter whether it is equality as an idea (an abstract universality) to be aspired to or as an institution (a concrete universality) regulating people’s everyday conduct, its ethical value requires a specific social setting, without which it cannot serve as an instance of social justice. Historically speaking, this social setting in which equality has been an accepted virtue or imperative is usually called ‘the nation.’ —I will return to the relevance of equality as an idea beyond the nation and would never claim that it cannot be actualized outside a modern type of community called ‘the nation.’ The way we apprehend what equality can mean as an institution is marked by the kind of social convention routinized in the nation-state. Therefore, it is not misleading to say that equality was actualized along with the new form of community called the ‘nation.’ At the same time, I insist, the idea of equality is, in the final analysis, a betrayal of and incompatible with the aesthetic regime of ‘nationality,’ the nation form in which feelings are nurtured for the consolidation of the nation. The problem of modernity is closely associated with how people undergo social transformation as a result of which they acquire a new mode of identification. Modernity may be discussed in multiple aspects. One of them is to represent modernity as a struggle through which old identities were discarded and new subjectivity was manufactured. This testifies to the historical truism that the words ‘subject’ and ‘subjectivity,’ in the modern sense, were never used prior to the eighteenth century in Western Europe or prior to the early twentieth century in Northeast Asia. In conceptual affiliation with the infinitesimal calculus and ecstatic and historicist temporality inherent in it — a sort of temporality perhaps best exemplified by the notion of ‘progress’ — the concept of subjectivity was newly invented. In modern societies, the modality of identification for

22  Naoki Sakai individuals was transformed so drastically that the topic of subjectivity became ­relevant in the discussion of identity. This is to say that, in so-called premodern societies and prior to modernity, the philosophical concept of subjectivity, which has played such important roles in modern historicism and Humanism, was irrelevant and without much significance. Even though the historical passages of social transformation are far from identical, there are not many social formations in East Asia—and Northeast Asia in particular—which have avoided fundamental changes and have not achieved a certain stage of commonality. In this sense, I do not hesitate to say that modernity in Northeast Asia is thorough and penetrating, so much so that it is almost impossible to comprehend social transformations in the last few centuries without regard to it. Thanks to the consequences of modernization, peoples in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have come to share in certain common regiments of ­self-­recognition, individual identification, and subjectivity. Let us not forget that many intellectuals addressed the problem of modernity in relation to Confucianism in Northeast Asia. From the mid-nineteenth century until the twentieth century, for intellectuals of this region, the problem of modernity could never manifest itself without reference to Confucian premodernity; it concerned itself with how to liberate peoples from the legacies of Confucianism, precisely because Confucianism was regarded as a representative of what obstructed the introduction of the new regiments in self-recognition, individual identification, and subjectivity. What was then called the ‘feudal remnant’ （封建的遺制） was believed to be summarily symbolized by the various traditions associated with Confucianism. However, by no means do I imply that the old mode of social relations was replaced by the new one overnight. Surely it took many decades for a nation to be established in the Japanese archipelago, China, the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan. In describing how Northeast Asian intellectuals came to apprehend the new sort of social justice, I want to underline the following theses. (I) Confucian ethics presumes a general comprehension of social relation and the mode of individual identification. (II) This comprehension of social relation and individual identity is incompatible with the new mode of individual identification that is necessary for the installation of the nation-state. (III) Confucianism cannot be reduced to a set of creeds that an individual adheres to in personalized interior life. The notion of inner life or interior privacy itself had to be invented, and this invention required a delegitimation and a destruction of the old modes of ethical conduct and social relationship. As long as it was a target of criticism, social denunciation, or delegitimation, Confucianism implied a wide variety of issues: a network of social relations, practical rules to regulate one’s behavior, social protocols, and manners that define mutual recognition between individuals engaged in a particular social transaction, rationality in knowledge production, and so forth. In short, it is misleading to comprehend Confucianism as totally reduced to the conventional notion of ‘inner faith’ after the model of Protestantism.6 This lack of ‘interiority’ is exactly the accusation that writers such as Kitamura Tōkoku (1868–1894, 北村透谷) directed at Confucianism and other ‘religious traditions’ in the East in the 1880s and 1890s. It must

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  23 be noted that such a comprehension of ‘faith’ and religious belief is premised on the transformation of the mode of identification and the invention of interiority and that the convention of ‘inner faith’ is closely affiliated with the idea of equality; equality as an idea becomes viable when the social conditions for the convention of ‘inner faith’ are made available. So, let me return to the discussion of justice in modern Japan. In its turbulent transition from the old Bakuhan system to a modern nation, the hierarchical model of social relations, set out in Confucian norms, made way for an epistemic regime of formal equality, and individual identity was recast accordingly. In 1882, fourteen years after the Meiji Restoration and some thirteen years before the annexation of Taiwan, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834–1901, 福澤諭吉), a leading social philosopher of the period, noted a radical change that had taken place in people’s morality in his On Moral Education,7 a thesis which attempts to defend new education against the critique by surviving Confucians. Fukuzawa observes that what used to be respected as social rules under the Tokugawa reign are deliberately transgressed and overlooked by people in the contemporary reign of Enlightenment. No longer does anyone pay much attention to the principle of seniority among the members of a family. An elder brother cannot automatically presume to occupy a more prominent public rank than his younger brother, unless he proves himself more knowledgeable or skillful in his profession. The Teaching of the Sage Kings about the relations between father and son, master and vassal, husband and wife, and older and younger siblings can hardly be put into practice today. Fukuzawa asserts that the basic sense of moral order, which Confucianism upholds as universally valid, is not honored at all, and he speculates that, if we were ever to resurrect a gentleman of the Genroku era (1688–1704) in present-day Japan, he would undoubtedly deplore the fact that the Way of human morality has perished in the world of darkness.8 No doubt this is a bit hyperbolic on the part of Fukuzawa for the sake of the rhetorical force of his argument. I do not think that the collapse of the Confucian habit could happen so easily in Meiji Japan. Neither do I that the old moral rule of seniority could dissipate so quickly within two decades after the Meiji ­Restoration. The point of his argument, however, does not rest on the accuracy of his empirical observation, so let us continue to follow his argumentation. Fukuzawa insists that the radical change of mores already discernible in 1882 cannot be attributed solely to the degeneration of Japanese ethics. What is significant in what may appear to be the general moral decay of Japanese society after the Meiji Restoration is that all these violations of Confucian values are totally licit and justifiable according to the newly-emerging consensus of the Japanese public. Since the opening of Japan (to the West) and the replacement of the polity, the desires of people in all corners of the country have been redirected toward progressive goals that simply cannot be shut off. This is to say the mode of public opinion has been changed once and for all, so that the function of moral education, if not entirely removed, must be fundamentally reconsidered so as to be relevant to the new historical situation. And, he continues, the solidarity of masters and vassals which used to be divided into some 300 rivaling unities or domains (Han) is now

24  Naoki Sakai integrated into a single great ‘Han or domain,’ so that the virtues of loyalty and righteousness should naturally mean something different from before. Fukuzawa criticizes conservative scholars with a Confucian background for their lack of understanding of the fact that the social formation they inhabited after the Restoration is not of the feudal, decentered polity, like the Tokugawa Shogunate; they refuse to acknowledge that they are living in the new society of a nation-state. Consequently, he claims that the old virtue of loyalty (chū 忠) is utterly irrelevant. In short, the country (kuni 國) is no longer a Han or domain; it is transformed and integrated into a nation-state. Therefore, Fukuzawa argues, the spirit of domainal autonomy has to be replaced by the doctrine of national sovereignty (kokkenron 國権論).9 Yet, it is disingenuous to conceive of this transformation of polity simply in terms of a quantitative change, from a multiplicity to oneness, from 300 governments to one, for instance. It also involves an irreversible qualitative change. The fundamental nature of ethics has changed in tandem with the installation of the nation-state: In the old days, the order of society was in the mode of co-dependency [相依るの風], with individuals being lodged in the reciprocal [aiyori aiyorare 相依り相依られ] relations of master and vassal, father and son, husband and wife, and the elder and the younger, and thus loving and respecting one another. The Teaching of the Sage Kings was established after the fact of these mutually reciprocating relations.10 Confucian ethics would, therefore, be irrelevant unless these social relations of co-dependency are cherished. In the Teaching of the Sage Kings, human beings are pre-determined in terms of their positions within those reciprocally defining relations. On the contrary, in the teaching of Autonomy and Independence (jishu dokuritsuron 自主独立論), we must first establish our self as an independent substance, attribute an exclusive value to it, and maintain all social relations based upon the priority of one’s self.11 The two teachings, Confucianism and the new ethics, are incompatible not only because they are justified on the basis of two entirely different types of governance but also because the fundamental views of the human being, the social nature of man, and the very conception of morality itself are radically different according to these two ethics. It goes without saying that these two different ethical orders continued to compete with one another throughout the Meiji period and well into the twentieth century. In addition to the massive impact of capitalist development, the struggles of these ethical orders contributed a great deal to the transformation of social formations in the Japanese archipelago and beyond. What Fukuzawa means by the teaching of Autonomy and Independence is not immediately clear; other than that, it refers to his foundational belief about the

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  25 relationship between the individual and the nation as can be found in his famous thesis, “Only when the individual is independent can the nation of such individuals be independent” (isshin dokuritsu shite, ikkoku dokuritsu suru 「一身独立して一 國独立する」).12 What is certain in his assertion about the individual’s autonomy and independence is his concern with the totality of a society in which individuals gather together to form the nation. After bypassing kinship mediation through which each individual acquires his or her concrete status in the society, Fukuzawa envisions a social formation in terms of two contrasting poles, the individual and the nation as the totality of a community. Apart from his insistence that Confucianism hinders an individual’s independent behavior and thinking and prevents people from desiring to live without relying upon others, by the teaching of Autonomy and Independence he seems to be indicating some feature, hitherto unknown, of a radically different way of conceiving social relations and individuals. This was more like a new epistemic revolution as a consequence of which the human being and social relations were newly conceived, and without which the typically modern relationship between the individual and the totality of the society could not be imagined. Of course, what Fukuzawa was genuinely concerned about was the construction of the nation in Japan, of turning multitudes in the Japanese archipelago into the Japanese nation. Today this regime is so integral to our common-sensical views of people and societies that it is very difficult for us to appreciate its newness during the early years of the Meiji period. Above all else, I must note that, to the newly-emerging nation in the 1870s and 1880s, Fukuzawa first had to preach the doctrine of individualism, the revolutionary thesis that logically the individual exists before he or she is in certain social relations. He proposed thinking of social relations and morality, starting with the premise that each individual is an independent substance, and that social relations are secondary and accidental, rather than essential, to the primary indivisibility of the individual. Presumably, Confucianism is the general title to cover a vast archive of statements as well as a group of institutions, some still evident, which arguably have existed, for the last approximately twenty-five centuries, mainly in Northeast Asia. I am not sure if the name justifiably summarizes these vast and diverse discourses. Furthermore, I am in no position to judge whether or not there is a definite set of characteristics that distinguish Confucianism from other ethico-political doctrines and practices. Therefore, what I refer to as Confucianism is very narrow even at risk of over-simplifying. Here, Confucianism is no more than an assemblage of doctrines, social conducts, moral rules, rational schemes in knowledge production, and so forth, which were understood to form some kind of heritages, under such titles as the Teaching of Zhou Gong and Kongzi (周公孔子之教), Confucian Learning (儒學), and the Teaching of the Sage Kings (先王之教), during the Meiji period or the few centuries preceding it, chiefly in Buddhist temples, domainal schools (hankō 藩校), and private academies in large cities. Of course, I do not deny its lineage with similar developments in China, Korea, Vietnam, and so forth; so, I am not concerned exclusively with ‘Japanese’ Confucianism. Or, simply put, the notion of national Confucianism, such as that of Japan or Korea, is an oxymoron in

26  Naoki Sakai Confucian discourses, even though it is quite possible to talk about a national Confucianism, today and retrospectively in the disciplines of national histories. Rather my focus is on the transformation of moral conduct under the auspices of Confucianism at the very point of transition from the Bakuhan system to the nation state. The basic values of Confucianism are defined mainly in reference to particular kinship relations, and this is one reason why the Confucian view of the social nature of the human being is frequently summarized by the juxtaposition of kinship and clannish relations: “Father and Son, Master and Vassal, Husband and Wife, the Elder and the Younger, and Friends,” the so-called Five Orders or Companies (gorin 五倫), which are believed to distinguish humans from other animals. Except for the relation of a friend and another friend—strictly speaking, even this relation is not a symmetrical one—all the threads of constant relations with which Confucian values are woven are hierarchical. The so-called Five Constancies (gojō 五 常) are moral virtues that manifest themselves on the occasions marked by these Five Orders. On the one hand, as Fukuzawa pointed out, the Five Constancies ­necessarily give rise to the system of one-sided obligations. On the other hand, these relations help define the individual in terms of webs of irreplaceable rapports and exchanges; it is claimed that, despite asymmetry, this system of Confucian Humanism as a whole serves to maintain the welfare of all involved. As the number of one’s kinship relations grows—a man is a father in relation to his son, and a younger brother in relation to his elder sister’s husband, and a husband in relation to his wife, and a vassal in relation to his superior in his clannish organization, and so on—his individual concreteness also increases. So, this concreteness is nothing but a sum total of the rules of conduct about what one has to do and how one has to act in relation to a particular person who also occupies a concrete position in webs of kinship relations. For each practical norm, the position of an acting individual is defined in relation to other individuals toward whom his or her conduct is directed or projected. In other words, Confucian Humanism works best in a social environment that is not egalitarian, where social statuses are clearly identified, and where status differences are duly respected. For Confucianism, therefore, the orderliness of society or the propriety of ideal social order lies in the stability of social ranks according to which individuals behave and in which status differences are respectfully observed. Thus, Confucianism helps us to envision the inner workings of a feudal or caste-based society, in which one’s station in life is limited by heritage, rank, and hierarchy. Equality and the Individual In discussing individuation, it is first necessary to discard the extremely confusing implications of this term ‘individual.’ And, of course, we must guard against so-called individualism, moral stance, or political ideology, endowing this word. Since the nineteenth century, the term ‘individual’ has gradually gained some façade of self-evidence; so, it has been circulated widely to designate the human being as an indivisible ontological unit, but the logical connotations of this word are extremely confusing. Supposedly ‘individual’ derives from Aristotelian logic

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  27 where things in the universe are classified according to the logical formula of individual, ­species, and genus. A group of things constitutes a genus as long as they share a common characteristic. Horses, for instance, constitute a group, genus. But, one can observe differences among the members of a genus. One group of horses are different from another; the former, for example, shares the property of blackness while the latter that of whiteness. Thus, there are black and white horses, so the genus of horses can be classified into its subsets, a species of black horses and a species of white horses. This is to say that a genus can be further divided into its subsets or species, but this process of classification reaches a limit where things constituting the species can no longer be split. This is where an individual is identified as an atomistic unity that cannot be further divided. According to Aristotelian logic, therefore, an individual is also an indivisible and supposedly the most basic component of the universe. Nowadays, few take this ontological thesis as implied in ­Aristotelian metaphysics seriously, but its legacy is still present in the basic concepts of generality and particularity. Until the nineteenth century, the classical classificatory scheme hardly applied to human beings directly except in a few exceptional cases, so that a human being was rarely designated as an individual. Yet, with the rise of capitalist liberalism, the use of ‘individual’ as the term to connote the atomistic unit of human kind has been popularized, and today the individual is used almost non-discriminatorily to designate a human being. However, this use of ‘individual’ gives rise to a number of logical contradictions. For instance, a human being is capable of reflecting on itself. Thus, man or woman is regarded as an animal separating itself from itself for his or her faculty of reflection. The concept of self-consciousness is another instance which illuminates the human being as divided from itself. In modern philosophical and psychoanalytic parlance, the term ‘subject’ is used instead of ‘individual’ so as to avoid this type of logical confusion. This is probably one reason why Fukuzawa Yukichi had to struggle in his attempts to render the English word ‘individual’ in Chinese characters. A human being is not ‘indivisible’ in the sense of ‘individuum.’ Hence, individuation implies something entirely different, and, when we explore Michel Foucault’s discussion of bio-power, we will return to the question of what is at stake in Fukuzawa’s introduction of the term ‘individual’ or ‘a single body (一身).’13 In contrast to the model of a credit card community, no individual can remain individuated in the network of Confucian ethics because he or she is connected to other individuals, each of whom occupies a different and unique position in the network of social relations, and forms some reciprocal relations with other members of the kinship or clan. Let us recall that, in the quote above from On Moral Education,14 Fukuzawa characterized the dominant social patterns prior to the Meiji Restoration in terms of ‘reciprocal [aiyori aiyorare 相依り相依られ] relations.’ In this reciprocity, an individual was never linked directly to the whole without a detailed kinship mediation. As a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult to define what constitutes the whole or totality in the discourse of Confucian ethics. In Confucianism, there is no equivalent to the collectivity of card holder members the totality of which can be clearly marked by its inside (members) and its outside

28  Naoki Sakai (non-members); the totality of network in which a person’s status or rank is determined cannot be envisioned as an enclosure or closed whole. To belong to a certain family, for instance, is always to occupy a particular position within the webs of kinship relations, and one’s particular position within them is dependent upon the person or persons one shares in ‘the instance of discourse.’ When I am with my father, I am his son; when I am with my sister, I am her brother; when I am with my teacher, I am his or her student, and so on. The system within which a person is identified—as a son, as a brother, as a student, and so forth—is built upon a series of personal relations, the relations of ‘you’ and ‘me.’ Here, the term ‘personal’ is used according to the definition of person presented by Émile Benveniste.15 I have children and, in this respect, I am a father in the personal relation with them. But, in the company of my mother, I am a son. What I am is thus dependent upon the person I am with, and how I identify myself in this modality of kinship communality is probably best expressed by the use of the honorific. In each instance of being with a certain person in the network, I must express my relationship in reference to my addressee, to someone who happens to be my interlocutor in a specific instance of discourse, by carefully selecting sentence endings, nominal words in the vocative case, and the positionality of an enunciation.16 To belong to a kinship network is nothing other than the paradigmatic determination of relational identity that my position or identity within it is reciprocally determined by whom I am with. This is exactly what Fukuzawa Yukichi referred to as the pre-modern and feudal mode of social formation in terms of ‘the reciprocal [aiyori aiyorare 相依り相依られ] relations.’ Accordingly, what allows me to enter or occupy a ­position in the network of kinship is a personal relation—what Émile Benveniste called the ‘I and you’ polarity—often marked in the act of enunciation. My identity is therefore determined only relationally not in terms of the totality of the specific group I belong to. In this respect, personal identity is primarily a relational identity in Confucian ethics, most often marked by status differences and typically designated by the use of the honorific. It is important to note that essentially there is no room for equality in this conception of the human being and social relations. The moral principle of formal equality is absent in Confucian ethics. By this, I am not saying that Confucianism does not allow for anti-authoritarianism or the encouragement of impartiality among people. Rather I suggest that the liberal idea of formal equality is not viable in the Teaching of the Sage Kings. For, in Confucianism, two people who constitute a reciprocal relation are never defined as two exchangeable entities, outside the instance of discourse in which they speak as ‘I’ and ‘you’ in the relational encounter of the addresser and the addressee. Since the individuality of each person is a consequence of many relations that a person is engaged in, no individual is conceived of as exchangeable with another, irrespective of the context of the enunciation as similar to the community of credit card holder. This is one of the reasons why Fukuzawa Yukichi, famous for his insistence upon the equality of humanity,17 believed that Confucian ethics must be repudiated in order for the very idea of equality to be introduced to the general audience in Japan. Yet, he did not hesitate to embrace racial inequality or the hierarchy of

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  29 commanding and subordinate positions developed by colonialism and capitalism. More generally, Fukuzawa never denounced social inequality or the hierarchy of positions introduced into society as a result of competition in learning, work, or the accumulation of wealth. Essentially, his idea of equality was of opportunity and meritocracy. The better-educated ought to be given higher positions than those less knowledgeable or talented; those who earn more wealth through industriousness and enterprise must be more respected than those who are less wealthy. He was not particularly concerned with the equality of consequence, but with the necessary condition for the possibility of fair competition. In other words, for Fukuzawa, the basic element for social existence in human beings was competition, an eternal race in which individual humans were to vie with one another. He absolutely endorsed the principle of formal equality, but he would not denounce the actuality of social inequality as long as it was a consequence of fair competition. However, a crucial question remains. Why was the principle of formal equality absolute for Fukuzawa Yukichi? What he attempted to achieve by endowing an ultimate value to the self or one’s single body (一身) was to open a social space in which the individual was stripped of these kinship relations. Or, more precisely, he attempted to install an epistemic regime whereby the individual could be posited as devoid of properties attributable to mutually reciprocating relations. Instead of being postulated as already and always caught in the webs of kinship relations, the human being is first posited as an autonomous individual ‘independent’ of these relations.18 Clearly, what was at stake in his argument about formal equality was that it presented the necessary condition for the possibility of a new communality called the ‘nation.’ You can probably see that this diagnosis need not be limited to the period of Japanese history subsequent to the Meiji Restoration in which the polity was transformed from the Bakuhan system into a modern parliamentary monarchy. This is a large-scale historical transition, generally referred to as modernization, in which a state sovereignty based on kinship heritage is gradually replaced by a new one that legitimates its governance by appealing to the ‘people’s will,’ usually through the mechanism of universal suffrage. The new sovereignty monopolizes its geographic territory unambiguously demarcated by national borders and postulates its inhabitants as a population consisting of an assembly of autonomous individuals. This is a territorial state sovereignty that became the basic unit of the international world, and those states, monarchies, or theocracies that failed to constitute themselves as territorial state sovereignties could be conquered, subjugated, and colonized. The colonization of those peoples and areas that could not be territorial sovereign states was in fact sanctioned by the system of international law (Jus Publicum Europaeum). As an independent and autonomous polity that is recognized by other states in the international world, it is also called a nation-state, an ambivalent synthesis of the sovereign state and the peoplehood or nation formed through individuation as well as totalization. Although there are a few governing regimes where universal suffrage is not accepted, all the polities in Northeast Asia had to go through a more

30  Naoki Sakai or less similar process to individuate and totalize their populaces, regardless of whether it was the Republicanism of South Korea, the Chinese Communist Party, the Taiwanese Guomingtang, or the Japanese Emperor System. Here, please allow me a disclaimer. I do not mean to say that a transition in the modality of an individual’s identification from the relational identity of Confucian ethics to the specific identity of nationality offers a general summary of the process of modernization in subjectivity.19 That would be an absolute misunderstanding of my argument. The principle of relational identification cannot be eliminated tout court. First of all, I cannot imagine a social formation in which relational identity is totally absent. Neither can I endorse the liberal notion of individualism to such an extent that every social relationship would be construed in terms of atomized and substantialized individuals. For, I believe that the relational identity is much more fundamental than the specific identity. Furthermore, as I will explain below, the individuation at issue concerns one modality of specific identity, an explication of which seems to require an apprehension of what Michel Foucault called ‘pastoral power.’ And the liberal notion of individualism is, in the final analysis, no more than a symbolic expression of the commodified human relationships in capitalist societies. Without personal relations, human beings are unable to learn basic sociality, and as long as they are social beings, it is impossible to eliminate relational identity in the modality of identification even in modern societies. What was brought about in Japanese society through modernization was not the total abolition of relational identity but rather the delimitation of the realm in which relational identity dominates. And this is perhaps the most important issue for Fukuzawa’s denunciation of Confucianism. The Five Constancies must not dictate the entire sphere of human affairs; they must not be valid in every moment of an individual’s life as well as in collective lives. The universalism assumed in the moral dictates of the Five Constancies should be curtailed to a clearly discernible domain, namely, ‘the sphere of privacy.’ Outside the sphere of privacy stretches the domain of the public, in which the Five Constancies are totally irrelevant. The two spheres, privacy and public commonalities, must never be confused with one another, and the transgression of the public with the private would be condemned as ‘corruption.’ Confucian ethics must be delimited and cannot apply beyond the sphere of private affairs, and when it interferes with the public sphere, it is nothing but nepotism. Thus, the domain of affairs about which Confucian ethics is qualified to speak would be confined to the modern family. From the viewpoint of modernizationists, therefore, Confucianism is typically a confusionism in ethical conducts! Let me note that Fukuzawa’s insistence upon human equality was accompanied by his demand that a person’s identification be liberated from the constraints of social rank (mibun 身分), which derives from his heritage, birth, and caste. In the public sphere of the new egalitarian society he advocated, status differences must be ignored. Only when people are conceived of as comparable indivisible units and as individuated individuals can there be a social space in which equality is properly practiced. And this social space cannot be that of the private; it exists outside the sphere in which family etiquette dictates conduct; it is a public sphere in which not the Five Orders but instead the principle of formal equality ought to prevail.

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  31 Of course, this public sphere is the nation. It goes without saying that the positing of an autonomous and independent individual definitely leads to a new way of apprehending individual identity, of an aesthetic investment in community identification, which Fukuzawa called ‘nationality’ or ‘national body (kokutai 國體).’20 The vision of modernity put forth by Fukuzawa Yukichi helps us foresee a new type of social formation in which each member is individuated and liberated from the constraints of social ranks and familial networks. But, we must also recognize that a society cannot be modernized only by liberating the members of the society from the constraints of specific identity and by individuating them. To the extent that individuals are thus rendered independent and autonomous, the ‘nation’ can only be a community of strangers. Above all, the nation is a new type of community that must not be a mechanical assemblage of individuals just like the credit card community. Emotive-sentimental aspects of this new community are undeniably important. We cannot afford to overlook how vital a role aesthetics plays in modern politics. Each member of the national community cannot remain indifferent to others; the nation must gather together all members, build a sense of collective sharing among them, and forge some feeling of affiliation to bind them together. Its members are not related to one another in the sense of family affiliation, but they must feel attached to one another as if they were siblings, as if they were born out of the same womb （同胞）. Thus, the national community must be sustained by this feeling of mutual attachment, a feeling often called ’sympathy.’ (This feeling of mutual attachment to other members of the national community is also called ‘fraternity,’ but this term excludes the female members of the nation. It is important to note that sexism is one of the basic constituent conditions for the national community.) The concept of nationality is about the totality of a national community and also individual member’s belonging to it. Nationality and National Body (國體) That ‘nationality’ and ‘national body’ are juxtaposed here is due to the fact that the word kokutai was first introduced during the early part of the Meiji period as a translation of the English word ‘nationality.’ Against those ‘imperial scholars’ who proposed implementing the superiority of Japan within the union of religion and the state, as evidenced in the words ‘a line of emperors for ages eternal’ (ikkei mandai 一系萬代), Fukuzawa argued for an institutionalized consciousness which would integrate the nation. In addition to the ‘flawless’ line of imperial succession, he insisted upon the necessity for ‘forms in which things are collected together, made one, and d­ istinguished from other entities’: Thus kokutai [the national body] refers to the gathering together of a ­species of people who share suffering as well as pleasure, the creation of a distinction between fellow countrymen and foreigners, the fostering of more ­cordial and stronger bonds with one’s countrymen than with foreigners. It is living under the same government, enjoying self-rule, and disliking the idea of

32  Naoki Sakai being subject to foreign rule; it involves independence and responsibility for the welfare of one’s own country. In the West it is called ‘nationality.’21 Moreover ‘nationality’ was to be expressed through certain emotions, namely, a ‘sentiment of nationality’ (國體之情): A sentiment of nationality may originate in the identity of race, or religion, or language, or geography. Although the reason may differ from country to country, the most important factor is for a race of people to pass through a series of social changes and embrace a common sentiment for the shared past.22 This represents a nearly exact rendering of John Stuart Mill’s explanations of ‘nationality’ and ‘the society of sympathy’ as displaced onto the situation in Japan.23 The definition of this ‘nationality’ is based upon the desire to ascribe the sense of communal belonging to one of the following features: race, the permanence of the governmental body, or language and customs. It is on the basis of these definitions that various and quite distinct discussions of the national body consequently developed in modern Japan. Furthermore, there were instances in which ‘nationality’ was translated into other such words as kokusui (國忰 national essence) and kokuseki (国籍 national registry). It cannot, of course, be concluded that Fukuzawa’s interpretation dominated subsequent views of ‘the national body’ in Japan. Yet, even today, his interpretation of nationality remains most fundamental among many other conceptions of the national body (國體). While the other judicial, theological, and historical definitions of the national body have served to justify, rationalize, or mystify the imaginary unity of the nation that is supposedly represented by the symbolic presence of the modern Emperor (tennō 天皇), it is Fukuzawa’s that presents the most articulate and persuasive apprehension of nationality in the service of the national community. In considering the problem of Japanese identity, however, it is necessary to refer to ‘nationality’ so as to understand from the perspective of the present why this notion has played such an important role as a device to produce sympathy among the Japanese nation. Fukuzawa argued that it was impossible to construct the nation without a distinction between Japanese and non-Japanese, a demarcation of insiders from outsiders. A nation is never humanity in general. A nation cannot exist unless a portion of humanity is distinguished from general humanity and identified as a subset or species of humanity. From this standpoint, he regarded ‘the distinction between fellow countrymen and foreigners’ (jita no betsu 自他之別) as absolutely essential. By discriminating against foreigners, the nation constitutes itself and sustains its internal commonality. Although Fukuzawa rejected a type of Christian image of the Emperor denoting ‘impartial and universal brotherhood’ (isshi dōjin shikai kyōdai 一視同仁四海兄弟),24 the idea that the ‘sentiment of nationality’ should accompany the expansion of the Japanese empire, and extend beyond merely the residents of the Japanese mainland, was later widely accepted. In this way, the Christian mission of ‘impartial and universal brotherhood’ was appropriated into

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  33 the prerogative of the Japanese national sovereignty, where as it came to be understood as attaining a broad universalism beyond Japanese ethnicity; the sentiment of nationality that extended beyond the residents of the ­Japanese archipelago as the Japanese empire expanded its territory and population. In the history of the modern Emperor System until the inauguration of the New Constitution in 1946, the first half of the idiom ‘impartial and universal ­brotherhood,’ that is, ‘one gaze, equal mercy’ or ‘one look, equal love’ (isshi dōjin 一視同仁) was irrevocably associated with the figure of the Emperor; ­symbolically, it expressed the very relationship between the Emperor and the individual subject, between the state and the individuated Japanese, as being between the one who provides charity and love to his subjects individually and the ones who demand such love. It was in this structure of the Emperor’s gaze that equality among the members of the nation was actualized in its emotive and sentimental senses; it was through the medium of the individual’s subjection to the One Who Sees (一視) that each individual subject was guaranteed to receive equal love (同仁). It is no accident that the figurative representation of the relationship between the Emperor and his subject—his subject was also called the Emperor’s baby (tennō no sekishi 天皇 之赤子)—showed an eerie resemblance to that of the shepherd and a stray sheep. The Judeo-Christian origin of this power structure—one of many origins of the Emperor System or Emperorism—was carefully concealed by the Japanese State bureaucracy, but its character as a pastoral power was perhaps unwittingly disclosed in a series of events that led to the official decision on the part of the United States Occupation Administration to allow the Shōwa Emperor to be exempt from charges of war crimes, immediately after Japan’s defeat.25 Although I am hesitant to attribute any causal relationship between the emergence of equality as a virtue or practical principle and the introduction of the Emperor System in the Meiji state, it is likely that the idea of equality was apprehended against the background of this figurative representation of the individual and the whole.26 From the outset in the Meiji Restoration, the Emperor System was introduced as a sort of pastoral power. I have only discussed the new sense of social justice that was actualized in Japan in the nineteenth century, but I suspect that the sort of power arrangement exemplified by the Emperor System is not unique to the Japanese history. Here, allow me to make a second disclaimer. The term ‘pastoral power’ was invented by Michel Foucault. Starting with an analysis of this power, he proceeded to an extended discussion of the bio-power (bio-pouvoir) in modern European societies.27 In his discussion of pastoral power, Foucault read the texts of ancient ­Judaism and Christianity. In due course, I would never argue that Foucault’s description of pastoral power is applicable to the Japanese Emperor System without certain modifications, to the system of modern national governmentality which is characterized unambiguously not as an ancient formation of power but as a modern one within the purview of bio-politics. In his analysis, for example, the relationship between the pastor and cohort of followers seems to be a personal one in which they are present to each other in the personal vocative of ‘I’ and ‘you.’ If one seeks an analogous situation in the modern setting, what would probably

34  Naoki Sakai come to mind are the institutions of confession in the Catholic Church and the therapy session in psychoanalysis, in which the confessor and the repentant, or the analyst and the patient, are put in personal proximity. The Emperor System is very different from this description of pastoral power precisely because, in fact, personal proximity is absent or imaginary. Instead, the sense of personal vocation is counterfeited, so to say, by the biopolitical apparatuses of reproduction—photography and printing—and the institutions of modern education in the case of the Emperor System. The individual’s relationship to the Emperor is mediated by the modern technologies of mass communication, universal national conscription, universal education, and so forth. Here, we must once again take up the problematic of individuation. Individuation is an operation of power—integral to pastoral power—that creates a mold of subjection, a setting, so to say, in which an isolated human being is placed. Here, the analogy of an individual member of the Japanese nation to a stray or lost sheep is most appropriate. It is an art or techné of subjectivation by which a person is uprooted from or stripped of all personal relations except one, namely, his or her relation with the pastor. In being a stray or lost sheep, already isolated from the flock, a person is placed in a dialogic relationship with the shepherd or the individual figure symbolically representing the group, who is willing to leave the flock and sacrifice himself for the sake of this single and lonely sheep. Not for the sake of the group as a whole but for this stray sheep alone, the pastor is willing to risk his own life. It is under the gaze of the pastor that a stray sheep acquires a sense of security and assurance. Accordingly, what Michel Foucault called ‘individuation’ has little to do with the indivisibility of the human being as an ontological atom. What is asserted by this famous biblical trope of shepherd and stray sheep is twofold: (1) a person previously engaged in a variety of relations with persons of multiple ranks and statuses, is isolated; he or she is redefined and reconstituted as a subject solely in terms of a dialogic relationship to the one, the pastoral figure of the Master. All the other relations with people beyond the pastor subsequently become irrelevant. A person becomes alone with the pastor; he or she is alienated from all the other people except one. (2) By rejoining the flock, a person resumes his or her relations with other people, but his or her relationship with them is only ancillary. By being isolated, a person belongs to the shepherd who represents and takes care of the totality of the flock. Only through the mediation of his or her dialogic relationship with the pastor does he or she resume or re-enter relationships with ordinary members of the flock. In other words, he or she directly belongs to the totality of the group by forming an exclusive relationship with the one who represents the whole, bypassing all the mediatory connections between him or her and the totality. Individuation is the mise-en-scène of this setting in which a person is alone in his or her dialogic relationship with the figure of the master. Only against the ­backdrop of this particular institutional setting that involves the operations of i­ndividuation and totalization can we appreciate the claims of equality. But, it is important to keep in mind that equality is meaningless unless a specific context of comparison is provided. No person is equal to another person in every ­ etaphysical in the aspect of his or her existence. Because the idea of equality is m

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  35 sense that, unless it is addressed in a particular context with respect to a concrete demand, it fails to be an imperative with the specific objective of being accomplished. Whenever equality is demanded, it is necessarily in relation to the problematization of a specific context. To raise the question of equality is to note the fact that a specific social context of comparison—such as the social treatment of homosexual and transgender individuals or political rights for a minority group— has been ­overlooked or deliberately repressed. Let us briefly look back at the history of equality in which the rights for equal treatment were implemented. For instance, it is only in the last few decades in some industrialized countries that equal treatment of the homosexual and the transgender people has been drawn attention to. Without reference to the problematic of social discrimination against those homosexual individuals, the question of equality is now deemed meaningless. Another example is the history of gender discrimination. Several decades ago, it was assumed that female students were less capable in natural sciences, engineering, or medicine in higher education, so that the number of female professors and doctors in these disciplines was far smaller than for male professors and doctors, even in highly industrialized countries in the world. Since the society consists of a multitude of discriminations and differentiations, it would make no sense to claim that an objective with which the idea of equality is concerned is either naturally given or self-evident. On the contrary, it is only through historical struggles that the actual content of equality can be determined and articulated to already institutionalized rights and privileges. In this sense, the idea of equality is like a blank cheque; no content or target of equality is pre-given; only through a social struggle to discover the sites of unjustifiable discrimination or inequality can we designate and identify the situation where the demand for equality is relevant. In this respect, equality is an idea rather than a concept, a potentiality rather than an actuality discussed in its generality. For Fukuzawa Yukichi, the issues concerning equality were also indices of “modernity, indices which signposted” the direction in which Japanese society was to transform into a national community inhabited by ‘equal’ individuals who belonged to the totality of the nation without a mediation of kinship, feudal ranks, or regional affiliations. Abstracted from the terms of acquaintance, one is obliged to treat an other as if there were no status difference between one and the other, as if the other were no different from a total stranger. In this sense, the nation is a community of those unacquainted or of strangers. To this extent, it conforms to the model of the credit card community. Observing the Western powers advancing and conquering peoples in the Far East and Asia at large where they did not know how to constitute their own territorial state sovereignties in the middle and late nineteenth century, Fukuzawa was convinced that, in order to evade colonization by Europeans, the most urgent task was to create a national community in which every member could behave and live as an isolated individual or as a stranger to others. In this context, let us recall Fukuzawa’s motto once again: “Only when the individual is independent can the nation of such individuals be independent.” What was meant by independence was, above all else, freedom from colonization. He took it for granted that those who would fail in the task of nation building would be colonized in due course.

36  Naoki Sakai The most crucial question to be confronted in the task of nation building lies in the dimension of aesthetics. The nation is a collectivity of isolated individuals, of a flock of stray sheep. Inevitably, the nation is a community of strangers. What is absent in this mechanistic model of community is the dimension of emotive-­ sentimental feeling in which the individual member imagines him or herself to belong to the totality of the national community. In the Emperor System, at least until the end of the reign of the Meiji Constitution in 1945, every child of the Japanese nation used to be taught at school that the photographic portrait of the Emperor connected the child herself to state sovereignty, and that to be present with the figure of the Emperor was to be present metaphorically with the totality of the Japanese nation. The old pastorate, Foucault discussed in his analysis of ancient governmentality in early Christianity, was actualized in the space of dialogic and personal proximity in which the element of socio-physical distance mattered. By contrast, the new figuration of the national community, as was actualized in Japan during the Meiji period, was deployed in the imagined space of representation, and the Emperor System was set up on a new surface in mass mediation.28 Allow me to restate my initial question: no matter whether it is equality of outcome or of opportunity, of egalitarianism, or of meritocracy, that is expected to be implemented, does the idea of equality not require a social imaginary such as ‘one look, one love’ that represents a fantastic relationship between the whole and the individual? How can one conceptualize equality as a practical principle of social justice when one deliberately avoids such a figurative representation of the whole and the individual? It is well known that Japan’s defeat in World War II and the loss of the Japanese empire came to determine the ‘sentiment of nationality’ within designated areas, on the basis of the so-called myth of the mono-ethnic society. The argument that the consciousness of ‘we Japanese’ has existed since ancient times, so often found in Nihonjin-ron (日本人論 the discourse of Japanese uniqueness) and previously in imperial history (kōkokushikan 皇国史観) that was taught at modern schools— hence seeking the origins of their own communality in the remote past—had in fact been anticipated in Fukuzawa’s (and, in due course, John Stuart Mill’s) definition of ‘nationality.’ The myth that the consciousness of ‘us Japanese’ has existed since ancient times is, in fact, the condition required for the ‘sentiment of nationality’ to be invoked. Yet, it was already predicted in the early years of the Meiji period that such a myth would be very useful in the construction of the nation and the sentiment of nationality. Nevertheless, there is one point that I must underline: Fukuzawa never assumed at all that there was a Japanese nation in the Japanese archipelago when he wrote his Outline of the Theory of Civilization, even though he was actively engaged in narrating Japanese history as ‘our history.’ He was passionately involved in the ­discussion of the sentiment of nationality, however, because he was convinced that the nation of the Japanese ought to be created, manufactured, and fabricated. The Japanese nation had yet to come. This is to say that, whereas the multitude of people were living in the territories of the Japanese state, the Japanese as a nation had yet to exist in the early years of the Meiji period.

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  37 After the loss of the Japanese empire in 1945, however, the situation was d­ rastically different. In postwar Japan, you can scarcely find any intellectual who wants to build the Japanese nation, since virtually every inhabitant of the Japanese archipelago believes the Japanese nation already exists. We understand that the Japanese nation was a historical construct, a social institution that had to be manufactured between the time of the publication of An ­Outline of the Theory of Civilization (1876) and the collapse of the Japanese Empire (1945). What must be called into question now is how fairness can be understood with regard to the figuration of the national community. As we have seen in the development of the Japanese nation for the last one and a half centuries, a portion of humanity has been segregated from humanity in general, and this portion forms a nation as the polity of the nation-state comes into existence. This is to say that the building of the national community signals the mise-en-scène of social formations in which the idea of equality is granted the status of their legitimacy.29 “ Once again, note that Fukuzawa Yukichi emphasized the difference between the two types of legitimacy, kettō (血統), legitimacy based upon kinship lineage, and seitō (政統), legitimacy of the national state sovereignty.” It has been thought that only in a society whose solidarity is sustained by the sentiment of nationality are people willing to accept the principle of formal equality in their everyday conduct. At the same time, as Fukuzawa Yukichi argued convincingly, nationality cannot be sustained unless the distinction of fellow countrymen from foreigners (自他之別) is observed. Only as long as foreigners are unambiguously discriminated against can people feel united as a nation. The national community is a political premise for the idea of equality for a species of humanity, but this community is sustained on the basis of discrimination against foreigners, against other portions of humanity. Accordingly, Fukuzawa concluded that a community based upon nationality promises its members two things: One is that we are all equal qua human beings as long as ‘we’ are members of the national community. The other is that we must be distinguished from all those who are not members of the national community; the principle of equality must not be extended to non-members of the national community. In other words, what John Stuart Mill called ‘the society of sympathy’ among its members cannot be sustained unless it is also ‘a society of antipathy’ against foreigners.30 The Society of Sympathy and the Speciation of Humanity Finally, I would like to return to the issues of social justice and equality in relation to the scope of the national community. In modern societies, the idea of social justice is almost always associated with a sense of fairness, and inequality is typically perceived as a classical case of unfairness. Unless one can expect to be treated fairly, one would not willingly participate in the affairs of a community or belong to it. Unlike societies dictated by the rules of relational identity, one is not born into a network of familial relations and acquaintances in the nation that is, a community of strangers. Egalitarianism that characterizes the national community, therefore, is obtained at the expense of the social connectivity facilitated by acquaintance. Regardless of whether

38  Naoki Sakai you are acquainted with an interlocuter or not, you are expected to treat this person with whom you are engaged as an equal, as if he or she were a total stranger, or inversely as if this stranger were somebody very close to you like a sibling. Commonly, we regard the attitude of fairness demanded by the idea of equality as one of the distinguishing features of the modern national community or nation. Even though, in actuality, equality is only rarely practiced within the national community, and though people hardly adopt the attitude of fairness to other members of the same nation, it is expected that any individual member be fair to and sympathetic with other members of the same nation; a nation cannot be effectively constituted unless the idea of equality is respected universally within it. As Fukuzawa Yukichi predicted, nation building would necessarily fail if the idea of equality is not universally accepted by the individuated individuals of the national community. As soon as equality is articulated to the national community in this way, however, we are inevitably confronted with a question. What about foreigners or outsiders to a given nation? Are we not expected to be fair to people who do not belong to the nation? The idea of equality itself is not limited to the insiders of the national community, but it seems that the institutionalized form of equality applies only to insiders. As Fukuzawa clearly saw it, nationality cannot be sustained unless the distinction of fellow countrymen from foreigners (自他之別) is observed. But, how can one distinguish one’s fellow countrymen from foreigners, as the nation is a community of strangers? How can one draw a line between one kind of stranger and another, for, after all, one’s countrymen and foreigners are all strangers? It seems that now we are confronting a serious problem inherent in the constitution of the modern national community. Since I have already exceeded the given limit for my presentation, please allow me to indicate rather than explicate how the problem arises with regard to the modern community of ‘nation’ as I have analyzed it. I would like to end this paper with a quotation from a classical work by Étienne Balibar: If it is necessary to include in the structural conditions (both symbolic and institutional) of modern racism the fact that the societies in which racism develops are at the same time supposed to be ‘egalitarian’ societies, in other words, societies which (officially) disregard status differences between individuals, this sociological thesis (advanced most notably by L. Dumont) cannot be abstracted from the national environment itself. In other words, it is not the modern state which is ‘egalitarian’ but the modern (nationalist) nation-state, this equality having as its internal and external limits the national community and, as its essential content, the acts which signify it directly (particularly universal suffrage and political ‘citizenship’). It is, first and foremost, an equality in respect of nationality.31 Notes 1 To my knowledge, the concept of ‘worlding’ was first coined by Martin Heidegger in his Being and Time with regard to his analysis of ‘being-in-the-world.’ In the 1930s,

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  39 Tanabe Hajime, who studied with Heidegger in Germany in the late 1920s, critically ­appropriated Heidegger’s analytic of dasein and developed the concept of ‘schema world.’ (図式世界). According to Tanabe, ‘worlding’ thus acquired the specific connotation of ‘being-in-the world through a certain schematism.’ 2 According to Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, the concept of fabrica mundi was mobilized by people including Gerardus Mercator, the first ‘scientific’ cartographer, in the title of his Atlas sive cosmographicae meditations de fabrica mundi et fabricate figura (1595). In Mercator’s Atlas, the term fabrica mundi “comes to denote the ‘proportion,’ the ‘order’ or ‘texture’ of the world the map is supposed to represent.” The use of the expression fabrica mundi “signals the cartographer’s awareness of the fact that representing the world on a map also means producing it.” Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method or, the Multiplication of Labor (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013: 30–33). 3 For more explication of humanitas and anthropos, see Naoki Sakai, “Theory and Asian humanity: on the question of humanitas and Anthropos”, Postcolonial Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2010: 441–464. 4 For instance, Yasumaru Yoshio 安丸良夫 conducted an impressive analysis of revolutionary subjectivity by studying peasant ideology and peasant rebellions during the Tokugawa period. Nihon no kindaika to minshū shisō (日本の近代と民衆思想 ­Japanese Modernization and People’s Thought; Aoki Shoten, 1974). 5 Hirota, Masaki discusses the emergence of equality as a socially accepted principle in his introduction to Nihon kindai shisō taikei: sabetsu no shosō (日本近代思想体 系：差別の諸相 Modern Japanese Thought Series: Aspects of Discrimination, Tokyo: ­Iwanami Shoten, 1990). 6 It is well known by now that the concept of religion was newly introduced into Japan during the Meiji period. As to the historicity of the concept of ‘religion’ and its association with colonialism, please refer to Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion – Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). About the critique of religion and Religion Studies, see Isomae Jun’ichi （磯前順一）, 『宗教概念あるいは宗教学の死』 (The Concept of Religion and the Death of Religious Studies; Tokyo University Press, 2012）; and in English see his Religious Discourse in Modern Japan: Religion, State and Shinto (Brill, 2014). 7「徳育如何」 (Tokuiku ikaga On Moral Education) originally published as a series of articles in Jiji Shinpō 『時事新報』 in 1882, in Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, vol. 5 Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1959: 349–364. 8 Ibid., pp. 357–358. 9 Ibid., p. 362. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12『学問のすゝめ』(Gakumon no susume Recommendation of Learning) in Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, vol. 3, pp. 42–47. 13 Today in Japan, the individual is usually rendered kojin (個人) in the case of a person, or kotai (個体) in the case of a non-human. Fukuzawa made many attempts to translate ‘individual,’ and this rendering (isshin 一身 meaning single body) is one of them. 14 See note 9 above. 15 In his study of pronouns in Indo-European languages, Émile Benveniste introduced an important distinction between the shifters of ‘I’, ‘you,’ or ‘we,’ and the so-called third person pronouns. Every enunciation about the third person assumes the conditions of possibility of the polarity of I and you, for the third person is in principle somebody absent in the instance of discourse. From this, Benveniste concluded that the third person pronoun should not be regarded as personal. Confucian ethics relies upon the instance of discourse in which the I and you polarity is virtual, even though, in the Confucian classics, the first and second pronouns are not very often explicitly pronounced.

40  Naoki Sakai See Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971: 223–229). 16 The third person acts under the conditions of the possibility of this polarity between the first and second persons. Benveniste argues, “I signifies ‘the person who is in uttering the present instance of the discourse ‘containing I’ This instance is unique by definition and has validity only in its uniqueness … I can only be identified by the instance of discourse that contains it and by that alone.” You, on the other hand, is defined in this way: “by introducing the situation of ‘address,’ we obtain a symmetrical definition for you as ‘the individual spoken to in the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance of you.’ These definitions refer to I and you as a category of language and are related to their position in language.” Ibid. 17 For instance, the preface to 『学問のすゝめ』 and Chapter 10 of 『文明論之概略』 (Bunmeiron no gairyaku) Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1962: 229–265. (An Outline of the Theory of Civilization, David Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst III trans. Reprinted, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009: 225–260). 18 For an excellent historical analysis of the similar point, see Craig Calhoun, “Nationalism and Ethnicity”, Annual Review of Sociology (1993), p. 229. 19 Elsewhere, I have written about relational identity and specific identity. For more extensive discussions of these concepts, please refer to: Shizan sareru Nihongo · Nihonjin (『死産される日本語·日本人』, Stillbirth of the Japanese as a Language and as a Nation; Shinyōsha, 1996), pp. 166–210; Kibō to kenpō (『希望と憲法』, Hope and the Constitution; Ibunsha, 2008), pp. 85–148; “The Body of the Nation: the Pastorate, the Emperor System, and the Society of Sympathy of Japan’s Intellectual ­Modernization,” in Alain Brossat, Yuan-Horng Chu, Rada Ivekovic, and Joyce C. H. Liu (eds.), Biopolitics, Ethics and Subjectivation (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2011), pp. 91–120 (a Chinese translation of “The Body of Nation and the Society of Sympathy: Pastorate of Emperor System,” trans. Wei Yin trans, Router: A Journal of Cultural Studies, 11 (Autumn 2010), pp. 10–35). 20 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no gairyaku 『文明論之概略』岩波書店， 1962: 37 (An Outline of the Theory of Civilization, op cit.: 30.) I allow myself to modify the English translation by David Dilworth and Cameron Hurst of An Outline of a Theory of Civilization when necessary. 21 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no gairyaku 『文明論之概略』 Ibid. in Fukuzawa Yukichi Zenshu, vol. 3, op cit. (An Outline of the Theory of Civilization, David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst trans.) 22 Ibid., p. 37. I modified David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst’s translation, Fukuzawa Yukichi’s “An Outline of a Theory of Civilization” (Sophia University, 1973), p. 23, to show the connections between Fukuzawa Yukichi’s and John Stuart Mill’s arguments. 23 Concerning such central notions of nineteenth-century liberal representative government as ‘national feeling,’ ‘national character,’ and ‘the society of sympathy,’ See: John Stuart Mill, “Considerations of Representative Government,” in John Stuart Mill, ed. H.B. Acton (London: Everyman’s Library, 1972), pp. 187–428 (first published 1861). 24 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no gairyaku 『文明論之概略』 p. 237、op cit. (English translation, p. 177). Note that, although Fukuzawa rejected this characterization of the Emperor, the idea of isshi dōjin (一視同仁、 literally, ‘one look, equal love’)— connoting that every subject is absolutely equal before the Emperor, and the Emperor’s love does not ­discriminate—was adopted to determine the relation of the Emperor to his subjects from the outset of the modern Emperor System. The expression of isshi dōjin has appeared repeatedly in governmental ordinances and publications since the first year of Meiji. For more detailed discussion on the use of the expression of isshi dōjin and social ­discrimination in modern Japan, see Hirota Masaki, “Kindai nihon shakai no sabetu no kōzō”『近代日本社会の差別の構造』 (The Structure of

The Emergence of Modern Identity Politics  41 Discrimination in Modern Japanese Society), in Nihon kindai shisō taikei, vol. 22, pp. 436–516. For a discussion of the Japanese Emperor System as a displaced Christianity, see Kuno Osamu （久野収） and Tsurumi Shunsuke （鶴見俊輔） Gendai Nihon no shisō『現代日本の思想』(Contemporary Japanese Thought; Iwanami Shoten, 1956: 126–129) in particular. 25 The anecdote that the Emperor volunteered to sacrifice himself for the sins committed by the Japanese people was skillfully manipulated by General Douglas McArthur’s staff. In order to pardon Emperor Hirohito for his war crimes, it was necessary to present him as a respectable and docile figure in their publicity campaign. SCAP (the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers)’s publicity for the justification of the Emperor System was scripted on the basis of the episode of a self-sacrificial pastor involving shepherd and sheep herd. 26 Hirota Masaki, for instance, attributes the emergence of the idea of equality to the institutionalization of the Emperor in what he calls the system of one emperor over myriads of subjects (ikkun banminsei 一君万民制). See Nihon kindai shisō taikei, op cit. 27 Michel Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, cours au Collège de France, ­1977–1978 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2006: 167–259). English translation: Security, Territory, Population, Lectures at the College de France, 1977–1978, Graham Burchell trans. (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007: 163–253). 28 The use of the photographic picture started in 1874, six years after the Meiji Restoration. In 1891, the preservation of the Emperor’s photograph at each school was legislated by the Japanese state. In the 1920s, the Hōanden, a small building on school campuses in which the photographic pictures of the Emperor and the Empress were enshrined, became institutionalized in education in many parts of the Japanese empire. Among many outstanding historical works on this topic, let me refer to the following from which I learned much: Taki Kōji, Tennō no shōzō 『天皇の肖像』 (The Portrait of the Emperor; Iwanami Shoten, 1988); Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and Yasumaru Yoshio, Kindai tennōzō no keisei 『近代天皇制の形成』 (The Formation of the Image of Modern Emperor; Iwanami Shoten, 1992). 29 “Once again, note that Fukuzawa Yukichi emphasized the difference between the two types of legitimacy, kettō (血統), legitimacy based upon kinship lineage, and seitō (政統), legitimacy of the national state sovereignty.” 30 See: John Stuart Mill discusses the functions of sympathy and antipathy in the formation of the nation in Chapter 4, Representative Government, in Utilitarianism, on Liberty, Consideration on Representative Government, op cit., pp. 139–145. 31 Étienne Balibar, Race, Nation, Class – Ambiguous Identities, co-authored with ­Immanuel Wallerstein, Chris Turner trans., London: Verso, 1991: 49–50. Bibliography Asad, Talal, 1993: Genealogies of Religions—Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press). Balibar, Étienne, 1991: Race, Nation, Class—Ambiguous Identities, Chris Turner trans. ­London & New York: Verso. ——. 1994: “Racism as Universalism,” in Masses, Classes, Ideas, trans. James Swenson (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 191–204. Benveniste, Émile, 1971: Problems in General Lingustics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gable, FL: University of Miami). Calhoun, Craig, 1993: “Nationalism and Ethnicity,” Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993), pp. 211–239.

42  Naoki Sakai Foucault, Michel, 2007 [2006]: Sécurité, territoire, population, cours au Collège de France, 1977–1978 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2006). English translation: Security, Territory, ­Population, Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978, trans. Graham Burchell (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Fujitani, Takashi, 1998: Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageant in Modern Japan (­Berkeley: University of California Press). Fukuzawa, Yukichi, 1959 [1876]: Bunmeiron no gairyaku 『文明論之概略』, in Fukuzawa Yukichi Zenshu, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1959). English translation: Fukuzawa, Yukichiati “An Outline of the Theory of Civilization,” trans. David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1973). ——. 1959a: Gakumon no susume 『学問のすゝめ』, in Fukuzawa Yukichi Zenshu, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). ——. 1959b: Tokuiku ikaga, 『徳育如何』, in Fukuzawa Yukichi Zenshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Hirota, Masaki, 1990: 広田昌希, Nihon kindai shiso taikei: Sabetsu no shoso, 『日本近代 思想体系：差別の諸相』 (Modern Japanese Thought Series: Aspects of Discrimination (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Johnson, Chalmers, 2001: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books). ——. 2005: The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books). Jun’ichi, Isomae, 2003: 磯前順一, Kindai nihon no shukyo gensetsu to sono keifu, 『近代 日本の宗教言説とその系譜』 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003). English translation: Religious Discourse in Modern Japan: Religion, State and Shinto (Brill). ——. 2012: Shukyo gainen aruiwa shukyogaku no shi, 『宗教概念あるいは宗教学の 死』(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press). Kuno, Osamu 1956: 久野収 and Tsurumi Shunsuke 鶴見俊輔, Gendai nihon no shiso, 『現代日本の思想』(­Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Maruyama, Masao, 1952: 丸山眞男 Nihon seiji shisoshi kenkyu, 『日本政治思想史研 究』(Tokyo University Press). English translation: Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1974). Mill, John Stuart, 1972: “Considerations of Representative Government,” in John Stuart Mill, H.B. Acton ed. (London: Everyman’s Library). Sakai, Naoki, 1996: 酒井直樹, Shisan sareru nihongon·nihonjinn, 『死産される日本 語日本人』(The Stillbirth of the Japanese as a Language and as an Ethnos) (Tokyo: Shinyo-sha). ——. 2008: Kibo to kenpo, 『希望と憲法』(Tokyo: Ibun-sha). ——. 2011: “The Body of the Nation: The Pastorate, the Emperor System, and the Society of Sympathy of Japan’s Intellectual Modernization,” in Alan Brossaet, Yuan-Horng Chu, Rada Ivekovic, and Joyce C. H. Liu (eds.), Biopolitics, Ethics and Subjectivation (Paris: L’Harmattan), pp. 91–120; [國體與同情社會：天皇制牧養、Wei Yin trans., in Router: A Journal of Cultural Studies, 11 (Autumn 2010), pp. 10–35. Taki, Kōji, 1988: 多木浩二, Ten’no no shozo 『天皇の肖像』(The Emperor’s Portrait) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Yoshio, Yasumaru , 1974: 安丸良夫 Nihon no kindaika to minshu shiso, 『日本の近代化 と民衆思想』(Tokyo: Aoki Shoten). ——. 1992: Kindai ten’no-zo no keisei,『近代天皇像の形成』(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten).

3

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity1 Roger T. Ames

Introduction Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, China along with the other East-Asian cultures, overwhelmed with Western modernity, constructed a new conceptual vocabulary largely drawn from the Chinese classics that would enable these traditions to synchronize their own cultural past and their aspirations for the future with the foreign language of Western modernity. The institutions and curricula of Western education were imported wholesale into the East-Asian academy, giving Asian scholars access to the apparatus for the production of new knowledge, but at some cost to their own cultural and political identities. The consequences of this effort are still very much with us as this language of Western modernity continues to be the medium through which East-Asian traditions are conceptualized and theorized abroad, and in its translated form, within their own scholarly literature as well. But the story is more complex. One way forward to an understanding of China’s own emerging hybridic modernity is to reflect on the way in which this newly constructed Chinese language vocabulary of Western modernity like Buddhism and Marxism is being sinicized and “domesticated.” Concepts that originally spoke and stabilized a modernity grounded in substance ontology and its dualistic worldview, are being retrofitted to express the aspectual, correlative assumptions privileged in what we might call Confucian “zoetology” (shengshenglun 生生論) or “the art of living.” Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon in this cultural encounter is that at the same time East Asia was importing its version of the language of Western modernity, Nietzsche’s announcement that “God is dead” was the death knell of substance ontology within the contemporary Western narrative. Indeed, the process language being developed to replace a foundationalism John Dewey called the philosophical fallacy has in important degree become resonant with the vocabulary of Confucian philosophy. Reflecting on the traditional term zhengyi 正義 that came to be used as a translation of the Western notion of “justice” as our case study, we discover that in the contemporary Western narrative, the commentary on justice following in the wake of John Rawls and his abstract, principled, and contractarian “theory” of justice is being abandoned in favor of a holistic interpretation of this same term as it is found within Confucian process thinking. DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-5

44  Roger T. Ames “Rethinking China:” An Asymmetry in Cultural Comparisons The contemporary Chinese philosopher, Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽, keenly aware of the persistent and pernicious asymmetry in the way we go about making comparisons between Chinese and Western cultures, has tasked both Chinese and Western scholars alike to “rethink China” (chongsi Zhongguo 重思中國) (Zhao 2011, 1). That is, he is exhorting us to take China on its own terms and allow it to have its own voice, its own perspective, its own methodology, and its own logic. Zhao’s contrast here is with the all too familiar approach of examining or scrutinizing China from some external perspective (jiantao Zhongguo 检讨中国). Zhao’s exhortation comes in the wake of a Confucianism that was introduced into the Western academy through a Christian vocabulary and thus converted into an “Eastern Religion” identity it has assumed in our Western bookstores, libraries, and academic curricula. At the same time, in the second half of the nineteenth century, East Asian countries imported wholesale the entire European and American educational apparatus and its curriculum and retrofitted their own vernacular languages with the conceptual and theoretical structures of a Western modernity. To speak Chinese today is to some degree to speak Western modernity; to speak Confucianism is to some degree to overwrite this tradition with cultural importances not its own. We have to be clear here. Zhao’s “rethinking China” is certainly to recover a distinctively Chinese perspective from its own canonical texts that will enable China to advance its own ideas and take responsibility for its own role in shaping a global future. Taking its own cosmological assumptions into account, however, is not to encourage a subjective as opposed to a objective perspective. When we go to the Confucian texts, the sense made of an “objective” standard is not some antecedent, abstract principle that can be applied as a norm to any particular situation exclusive of subjective concerns. Indeed, perhaps it is the ambitiousness of the dualistic realist notion of objectivity that has given the term a seemingly derivative meaning: that is, having an objective in some undertaking in the sense of setting a goal or purpose for it. It is this holistic and inclusive understanding of objectivity as an “objective” that is primary in the Confucian tradition. Such an understanding is suggested by the Chinese loanwords from modern Japanese of “objective” and “subjective” as zhuguan 主觀 and keguan 客觀 respectively: literally, the perspective of the host and the guest as they defer to each other in service to the best possible outcomes (Liu, 1995, Appendix B). Even though these perspectives are different, zhuke is a gerundive yinyang correlative dyad rather than a dualism with each aspectual term deferring to and being integral to the other as the relationship unfolds. “Rethinking China” thus conceived is relational: for us, it is “thinking with China,” and for China, it is “thinking with the world community;” together it is deferring to each other in search of an optimal symbiosis in our shared purposes. The Christianization of Confucian Philosophy This troubling asymmetrical relationship in reading China through an external lens at the expense of a Chinese perspective has its history. On the Western side, wellintended Christian missionaries bent on saving the soul of China introduced this

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  45 ancient Chinese culture into the Western academy by translating it into the vocabulary of their universal faith, ascribing to Confucian culture most of the accouterments of an Abrahamic religion. Early on, traditional Chinese philosophical texts were translated into English and other European languages by missionaries who used a Christian vocabulary to transform these canonical texts wholesale into the liturgy of an Eastern religion. James Legge (1815–1897), the great Scottish translator of the Chinese classics on whose broad shoulders the following centuries of Western sinology have been built was himself a missionary in the field. As such, in selecting the vocabulary as equivalencies for Chinese terms, and in his interpretation of the tradition broadly, he self-consciously appealed to the theology of the anti-Hobbesian Joseph Butler (1692–1752). In translating tian 天 as “Heaven,” dao 道 as “the Way,” yi 義 as “righteousness,” li 禮 as “ritual,” ren 仁 as “benevolence,” and so on, Legge’s Confucianism was made increasingly familiar to his Christian audience. In his interpretation of Mencius, for example, he wondered aloud about why Mencius did not just use “God” instead of the ambiguous term, tian, and concluded that Mencius’s understanding of a benevolent human nature was almost precisely the same as that of the theologian Butler in his Sermons on Human Nature (Legge 1960, 448n1; Girardot 2002). It is thus that when we go into European and American bookstores and libraries to find translations of the canonical texts of Chinese philosophy such as the Analects of Confucius (Lunyu), the Mencius, the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and so on that were all translated by Legge, we find that these same titles are cataloged and shelved under the curious rubric of “Eastern Religions” rather than being included in the more respectable philosophy section. And when we venture into the highest seats of learning in these Western countries, we find that Chinese philosophy is being taught, if at all, in the Religion and Asian Studies departments rather than within the sanctum of the discipline of Philosophy itself. As a consequence of this cultural reductionism, Confucian philosophy has in important degree been quite literally “converted” into a pseudo-Christianity that at its best can only ape the original. From a Western point of view, Confucianism has thus been perceived uncritically as a tradition lacking our philosophical bona fides while at the same time being derivative of our own religious sensibilities. Hence without fear of substantial loss, it can quite comfortably be conceptualized within the framework of our Abrahamic religions if not ignored altogether. The Wholesale Synchronizing of Asian Languages with Western Modernity Kwong-loi Shun has made much of how this cultural asymmetry has shaped the way in which comparisons have been and continue to be framed in the scholarship on the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions: [T]here is a trend in comparative studies to approach Chinese thought from a Western philosophical perspective, by reference to frameworks, concepts, or issues found in Western philosophical discussions. (Shun 2009, 470)

46  Roger T. Ames But this theorizing of China in terms that are not its own is not simply the déformation professionnelle of Western philosophers; it has its Chinese history as well. As Shun in describing the cultural asymmetry continues: This trend is seen not only in works published in the English language, but also in those published in Chinese. Conversely, in the contemporary literature, we rarely find attempts to approach Western philosophical thought by reference to frameworks, concepts, or issues found in Chinese philosophical discussions. (Shun 2009, 470) Shun is observing here that the cultural asymmetry we find in the Western literature on Chinese philosophy is just as marked and egregious when we turn to Chinese language publications. As Shun has remarked, this entrenched asymmetry is as true of contemporary East-Asian intellectuals as it is of their Western counterparts. East-Asian scholars certainly continue to speak and write in their own vernacular languages, but these are languages that have been transformed to an important degree by their encounter with the vocabulary and conceptual structure of a dominating Western modernity. How in East Asia has this asymmetrical situation come about? In the middle and late nineteenth century, the apparatus of Western education was transplanted wholesale to reconfigure East-Asian education to its very core. The institutions of European and American education—from the public-school system through to the university as an institution complete with their disciplinary taxonomies and curricula—­were imported in whole cloth into the East-Asian cultures of Japan, China, Korea, and Vietnam. First, the Meiji Japanese reformers and then the Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese intellectuals, at once enamored of, and overwhelmed by Western modernity, created their own Sinitic equivalencies drawing largely from traditional Chinese literary resources, to appropriate and give voice to the conceptual and theoretical language of the imported Western academic culture. The vocabulary of modernity with its liberating enlightenment ideas was translated into, and transformed fundamentally, the vernacular languages of East Asia. This recent history has prompted these cultures themselves, then and continuing today, to theorize their own traditions through a largely Western conceptual structure (Liu 1995).2 The Confucian Domestication of Buddhism and Marxism But there is more to this story. China’s appropriation of Western modernity might prompt us to reflect back on the first wave of Western learning when in the Han dynasty Buddhism made its first appearance in China. At this time, Buddhism, using Friedrich Schleiermacher’s term, was “domesticated” in the Chinese intellectual world in a process often described as geyi 格義, or “aligning meanings.” Geyi was a process of correlating the vocabulary of this newly imported religion and philosophy with the language of the indigenous traditions of Daoism and Confucianism. In the fullness of time, the concern arose that this method of interpreting Buddhism

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  47 through Chinese categories was responsible for a fundamental distortion of Buddhist philosophy because it elided important philosophical distinctions between an Indic Buddhism and China’s own traditions. Efforts were thus made to allow the tradition to speak on its own terms. This interpretive turn is fairly represented by Kumārajīva and his translation team at the capital Chang’an in the fifth century who as a way of overcoming the geyi ambiguities introduced in the earlier appropriation of the Buddhist canons, developed a system for discussing the texts and establishing standard terms for translating them. In this process of amplifying the influence of these texts, Buddhist doctrine had such a profound effect on Confucian philosophy that the neo-Confucianism of prominent thinkers such as Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming cannot be properly understood without registering the many significant Buddhist influences. At the same time, however, with the evolution of the Huayan, Sanlun, and Chan traditions, a distinctively Chinese form of Buddhism interpreted through the indigenous process cosmology made explicit in the Book of Changes (Yijing 易經) became integral to the Chinese philosophical narrative itself. Again, we might reflect on the more recent experience of the Chinese importation of Marxism. When early in the twentieth century factions of the political leadership decided to appropriate Marxism as a state ideology, counsel was solicited from the Soviet Union, which had just gone through its own communist revolution. Russian advisors, appalled by the absence of a proletarian class in China, told the Chinese revolutionaries in effect to call on them again when they had developed a wage-earning, industrial workforce. Undaunted by the absence of the ostensive “essential conditions” for the successful introduction of Marxism, Mao Zedong organized the peasantry as the Chinese working proletariat, thus adopting the Marxist ideology in a Maoist form that over time moved increasingly away from a theoretical Marxism and its abstract principles, and closer to the practical realities of Chinese society and culture. For example, Mao’s customized version of dialectical materialism rejected the absolute determinism of economic principle in early Marxism and instead discerned a yinyang interdependence between economic conditions and the cultural superstructure. The theoretical pretensions of Marxism gave way to localizing historicist and particularist sensibilities familiar within the traditional understandings of Confucianism. Further, by selectively promoting those elements of Marxism that condemned the disharmonious effects of competition and private property, Mao while advocating a cultural revolution was actually increasing the gravitas of basic, underlying Confucian values. And however much the nuclear family was impacted by Marxist communal ideals, the family as a model for the larger society, and the paternalistic character of virtuous rule that follows from this model, remained intact. There is little evidence that contemporary “socialist values with Chinese characteristics” that include their own understanding of democracy, freedom, and equality, have in fact abandoned any significant continuities in the tradition’s own persistent yet evolving Confucian orthodoxy. The political leadership of contemporary China maintains many of the same characteristics that have dominated Chinese government since the Han

48  Roger T. Ames dynasty—namely, the nation and world understood as simulacra of family, the promotion of a filial respect for the virtuous ruler as the parents of the people, and the consequent heavy reliance on personality in its conception of the political. In China, social and political order continue to be construed as an optimizing harmony achieved through broad, personal participation in a ritually-constituted community, where the idea of consensual “right thinking” far from being a sterile uniformity, is understood as being commensurate with the Confucian mantra of “optimal harmony in difference rather than uniformity” (he’erbutong 和而不同). The point is that, as with the appropriation of Buddhism, this latter-day importation of Marxism as another wave of Western learning, has produced a decidedly Confucian version of this Western heresy. Tian Chenshan in his recent monograph, Chinese Dialectics: From Yijing to Marxism, provides a rigorously reasoned and compelling argument that the dialectical sensibilities of Chinese Marxism are distinctively Chinese, informed as this ‘modern’ Marxist way of thinking is by persistent cosmological assumptions recovered from the canons of Chinese philosophy, especially the open-ended “continuity through change” (biantong 變通) dialectic endorsed by the Book of Changes (Tian 2005). An Emerging, Distinctively Confucian Modernity I have observed that the structures and curricula of Western education were imported wholesale into the East-Asian academy, allowing Asian scholars access to the apparatus of new knowledge production, but at some cost to their own identity. Early on in the 1930s, the Cambridge rhetorician I.A. Richards, reflecting on the most fundamental problems of translation between these traditions, worries that understanding China on its own terms has “a practical urgency” because … before long there will be nobody studying Mencius into whose mind philosophical and other ideas and methods of Western origin have not made their way. Western notions are penetrating steadily into Chinese, and the Chinese scholar of the near future will not be intellectually much nearer Mencius than any Western pupil of Aristotle and Kant. (Richards 1932, 9) But is this true? Or as with examples such as the importation of Buddhism and Marxism, is China in fact producing its own domesticated form of Western modernity? Angus Graham (but not everyone) is persuaded that different populations within always changing cultural milieus appeal to different concepts and ways of thinking and living.3 For Graham, getting at such conceptual differences is not an easy task: That people of another culture are somehow thinking in other categories is a familiar idea, almost a commonplace, but one very difficult to pin down as a topic for fruitful discussion. (Graham 1990, 360)

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  49 In the ongoing transformation of the concepts of Western modernity into its own Chinese version of that modernity, we have an even more complex problem than how to parse different cultures thinking in different categories. We now have cultures ostensibly thinking in the same categories, but with these same categories having different meanings. In reflecting on meaning itself, Gottlob Frege has given us the distinction between sense and reference, between denotation (Bedeutung) and connotation (Sinn). The example Frege provides to illustrate the nuance needed to distinguish between what is, in fact, a “reference” to the same object, Venus, when it invokes the different meanings of “the morning star” and “the evening star.” Given the very different and complex “senses” of morning and evening, these two terms referencing the same object give it two very different meanings. For Frege, meaning as “sense” requires we acknowledge the narrative function of language wherein the social and political context as well as the feelings invoked therein are always integral to the meaning of a term. We might invoke this distinction between sense and reference in the project of cultural translation. As with the cases of Buddhism and Marxism, when one culture has translated and imported the categories of another culture into its own academy, the referent concept might seemingly be the same object, but rather than retaining its original meaning, the sense made of these terms is a function of context and usage. Although East Asia has constructed an elaborate vocabulary to synchronize their cultures with Western modernity, this new language as it is being deployed today, rather than expressing the original Western meanings, is being transformed into its own decidedly sinosized version of modernity. The terms created explicitly to express a Western conceptual vocabulary have willy-nilly over time been retooled to express a persistent Chinese worldview. As a Western modernity is being transformed into something distinctively Chinese, the question is how do we “get at” and make sense of its alternative meaning? Aristotle and his Substance Ontology: A Place to Begin My method would be to appeal to a comparative cultural hermeneutic to best recover those uncommon philosophical assumptions that in their difference could serve us as a point of departure. G.W.F. Hegel in his Introduction to his Encyclopaedia Logic reflects at great length upon the question: Where does philosophy begin? Where does the inquiry start? And in this reverie, he concludes that because philosophy “does not have a beginning in the sense of the other sciences,” it must be the case that “the beginning only has a relation to the subject who takes the decision to philosophise” (Hegel 1991, 41). Aristotle before Hegel also took the subject to be his starting point. In the Categories as the first text in the Aristotelian corpus, Aristotle in his best effort to provide a full account of something, taking “the man in the marketplace” as his example, asks the ontological question “what?” as his means of recovering the subject of predication. You have to have an “it” before you can say anything about it. The classical Greeks give us a substance ontology grounded in “being qua being”

50  Roger T. Ames or “being per se” (to on he on) that guarantees a permanent and unchanging subject as this substratum for the human experience. With the combination of eidos and telos as the formal and final cause of independent things such as persons, this “substance” necessarily persists through change. In this ontology, “to exist” and “to be” are implicated in one term. The same copula verb answers the twofold questions of first why something exists, that is, its origins and its goal, and then what it is, its substance. This substratum or essence includes its purpose for being and is defining of the “what-it-means-to-be-a-thing-of-this-kind” of any particular thing in setting a closed, exclusive boundary and the strict identity necessary for it to be this and not that. The question of why something exists is answered by an appeal to determinative, originative, and indemonstrable first principles (Gk.arche, L. principium), and thus provides the metaphysical separation between creator and creature. The question of what something is is answered by its limitation and definition and provides the ontological distinction between substance and accident, between essence and its contingent attributes. In expressing the necessity, self-sufficiency, and independence of things, this substance or essence as the subject of predication then constitutes the logic of knowing. It tells us, as a matter of logical necessity what is what, and is thus the source of truth in revealing to us with certainty, what is real and what is not. As the contemporary philosopher Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽 avers, this kind of substance ontology defining the real things that constitute the content of an orderly and structured cosmos … provides a “dictionary” kind of explanation of the world, seeking to set up an accurate understanding of the limits of all things. In simple terms, it determines “what is what” and all concepts are footnotes to “being” or “is”. (Zhao 2116, 147)4 The Book of Changes and Its Zoetology: An Alternative Place to Begin In the Book of Changes, we find a vocabulary that makes explicit Confucian cosmological assumptions that are a stark alternative to this classical Greek substance ontology, providing the interpretive context for the Confucian canons by locating them within a holistic, organic, and ecological worldview. This cosmology as an immediate empiricism begins not from “being per se” but from “living” (sheng 生) as the motive force of change itself and gives us a world of boundless “becomings;” not “things” that are, but “events” that are happening. The ontological intuition that “only Being is” is at the core of Parmenides’s treatise On Nature and is the basis of the ontology that follows from it. To provide a meaningful contrast with this fundamental assumption of on or “being” we might borrow the Greek notion of zoe or “life” to create the neologism “zoe-tology,” a term that might translate into modern Chinese as 生生論 shengshenglun, “the art of living.” The “Great Commentary” to the Book of Changes 易传 states that 天地之大德曰生 “the greatest capacity of the cosmos is life itself.” Again, in describing the unfolding confluence

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  51 of vital “way-making” (dao 道), it observes that 生生之謂易 “it is the ceaseless generating and procreating of life that is meant by ‘change.’” Change itself is defined denotatively and thus specifically as procreative living and growing within which the birthing of things takes place genealogically in medias res. Seeing that the complex and ambiguous concept of “change” (yi 易) is thus defined in the Changes generically as the “ceaseless generating and procreating of life,” we can thus infer that in this Book of Changes ecological cosmology, such autopoietic, transactional change occurs synchronically in situ and diachronically in medias res as expansive and advantageous growth in all of the vital, situated relations that constitute experience. Zhao Tingyang suggests as much in the contrast he establishes between the “dictionary” definition of the world afforded by Greek ontology, and in Confucian cosmology that provides … an explanation of the “grammar” of the world, striving for a coordinated understanding of the relationships—between heaven and humankind, humankind and things, and humans and humans—by which all doings are generated, with a special emphasis on the mutuality of relationships, and the compatibility of all things. (Zhao 2116, 147–148)5 Grammar understood in this way as an art of letters rather than as a science is the ultimate source of meaning. The mutual interest expressed in the transactions among things in their constitutive relations grows and “appreciates” them in the sense of adding value to both themselves and their worlds. Just as human flourishing arises from positive growth in the relations of family and community, cosmic flourishing is isomorphic as an extension of this same kind of transactional growth but only on a more expansive scale. Indeed, human values and a moral cosmic order are both grounded in life and its productive growth and are thus continuous with each other as complementarities.6 Distinguishing a Human “Being” from Human “Becomings” The starting point in this zoetological cosmology then is that life in association is a fact. In beginning from the subjects of philosophizing, nobody and nothing does anything by itself. Since the very nature of life is associative and transactional, the vocabulary appealed to in defining Confucian cosmology is irreducibly dyadic and collateral: always multiple, never one. Everything is at once what it is for itself, for its specific context, and for the unsummed totality. Thus there are always vital correlative yinyang 陰陽 tensions within any process of change, describing the focus and resolution that makes something uniquely what it is, and that by virtue of its vital relations, what it is becoming. Since any one thing exists at the pleasure of everything else, the question of why things exist is explained by what they mean to each other. And the ontological necessity of defining “what is what,” is replaced by the possibilities each thing affords everything else for growth, innovation, revision, and redefinition. Hence the self-sufficiency of the individual human “being” stands

52  Roger T. Ames in contrast to human “becomings” who in their interdependent lives, must always be plural as they quite literally “make” each other. Important to an understanding of this vocabulary is the gestalt shift from the Greek noun-dominated thinking with its world of independent human “beings” and essential “things,” to the Confucian gerundive assumptions about the always eventful nature of interdependent human “becomings” living their lives within their natural ecology. It is the difference between a leg and walking, between a body as a corpse and a human story. In thus turning to the human experience specifically, persons are not defined in terms of limitation, self-sufficiency, and independence, but ecologically by the growth they experience in their intercourse with other persons and their worlds. Referring to the contrast that Confucian cosmology has with Aristotle’s doctrine of “things” and their external relations, Graham opines that in Chinese thought … things appear not as independent but as interdependent… and the questions that isolate things from each other have no primacy over those which relate them. (Graham 1990, 395) Graham is saying here that in this Confucian cosmology, the what question that would tell you what something “is” and the other erstwhile second-order questions that would reveal how this particular thing is correlated with its environing others are in fact two first-order aspects of the same phenomenon. Said another way, the individuality and uniqueness of something, far from being exclusive of its relationships, is constituted by the achieved quality of those first-order relations. This is but to say that the difference between personal identities and their narratives is simply a matter of foregrounding this focus or that field. Our persons and our narratives, rather than entailing some means and end distinction between a given potential and its actualization, between an innate nature and its reduplication in practice, are in fact one and the same thing. From Transcendental Universalism to Ecological Holism Transcendent universalism within classical Greek philosophy rationalizes the human experience by reducing the many to the one. All human beings have the selfsame, identical formal (eidos) and final causes (telos) that define them as what they are. Human beings are thus equal, discrete, and independent entities, with contingent relationships among them being second-order, external relations. In the late nineteenth century, the Western philosophical terms ‘transcendent’ and ‘universal’ that define human subjects in this way were translated into Chinese as chaoyue 超 越 and pubian 普遍 respectively. But in contrast to the Greek ontological meaning of transcendence and universal that tells us “what is what” about the human “being,” the Confucian “sense” of chaoyue and pubian thinking as located within its zoetological interpretive context has assumed a different meaning. Rather than a transcendent universal that would reduce the many to the one, the sense of these

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  53 terms has been transformed into the holistic, aesthetic meaning captured by Tang Junyi 唐君毅 in his notion of yiduobufen 一多不分, “the inseparability of one and many” (Tang 1991, 15–17).7 Tang Junyi would insist that this protean expression as a radical and unbounded contextualism is a distinctive and generic feature of the Chinese ecological cosmology. It locates human “becomings” as vital and specific foci that have implicated within each of them a boundless field of relations. It thus restates in a different language the focus-field conception of persons, where each self-conscious person, and each impulse in the life of each person, has implicated within it the boundless “many.” This holography as a defining feature of Chinese natural cosmology is fundamental to our understanding of the relationally-­ constituted, focus-field conception of persons made explicit in Mencius when he says, “the myriad happenings of the world are all implicated here in me.”8 Confucian Scholars Speaking Western Modernity on Their Own Terms To illustrate this process of an emerging Chinese modernity as a domesticated form of its Western counterpart, I will introduce as a representative example the distinguished scholar Guo Qiyong 郭齐勇 and his student, Li Lanlan 李兰兰. In an article entitled “An Appreciative Critique of Roger T. Ames’s Notion of Confucian Role Ethics,” Guo and Li provide a detailed, largely accurate account of what I have proposed: namely, that the idea of “role ethics” is the best way of thinking about Confucian moral philosophy. While most generous in their summary, these two scholars are not persuaded by all of my arguments. In the final section of their paper subtitled “The Limitations of the Notion of Confucian Role Ethics,” they offer several reservations, insisting that … in speaking of Confucian ethics itself, there is no question it includes a sense of “universalism” (pubianzhuyi 普遍主義). As confirmed by many scholars such as Feng Youlan, Tang Junyi, and Zhang Dainian, when Confucianism deploys its social structures, it includes both a concrete dimension and a search for both the “universal” (pubianxing 普遍性) and what is “ultimate” (zhongjixing 終極性). (Guo and Li 2015, 47)9 In addition to using the term pubianzhuyi which was created to translate the Western notion of “universalism,” Guo and Li and many other scholars are comfortable using the Chinese translation of the related English term “transcendence” as chaoyue 超越 to describe the important asymmetrical relationship between human beings and tian 天 (tianrenheyi 天人合一). Guo and Li argue that … in Confucian conceptual thinking, tian has both a “transcendent” (chaoyue 超越) reference as well as denoting its relationship to human beings. Human beings revering tian in sacrifices to ancestors, and emulating tian indicate that for the ancients the transcendent tian could descend into the human

54  Roger T. Ames world…. Terms such as tian itself, “the mandate of tian” (tianming 天命), and “the way of tian” (tiandao 天道) that serve as ground for Confucian ethics all have a transcendent and ultimate dimension. (Guo and Li 2015, 47–48)10 I would make three initial responses to the critique these two philosophers bring to my understanding of Confucian ethics. First, I am keenly aware that the criticisms formulated here by Guo and Li in their response to the notion of Confucian role ethics are shared by many Chinese scholars who have voiced the same or similar concerns. Secondly, I believe that the specific disagreements that Guo, Li, and other scholars have are in important measure, a matter of “sense and reference” that requires an appreciation of the narrative context of the same concept. I take our seeming disagreement to be a problem of language that arises when, in moving between the zoetological process cosmology persistent within Confucian philosophy as its interpretive context on the one hand, and the substance thinking that goes back to the ancient Greeks on the other, there is clear equivocation in the way in which we are understanding our philosophical terms. This problem is no different from the confusion that occurs when tian 天 is conventionally translated as “Heaven,” a term frequently used in its English-language context as a metonym for the Abrahamic notion of God. Having decided on “Heaven” as the translation for tian, we have to resist eliding the profound distinction between a Confucian tian that has an interdependent, contrapuntal relationship with humankind (tianrenheyi 天人合一), and the Abrahamic conception of a wholly independent, self-sufficient, and thus transcendent God. And thirdly and most importantly, when I insist on the irrelevance of the Western form of transcendent universalism in my understanding of Confucian ethics, I would take what Guo and Li are calling this “limitation” to in fact be the strength of this Confucian vision of the moral life. The language of “universalism” and strict “transcendence” as it has been expressed in both Western philosophy and theology has a long history of being strident, exclusive, oppressive, and condescending. Because appeals to universalism do not brook alternatives or exceptions, such claims have often stood as an uncompromising and dogmatic assertion of unconditional truth. Chinese history remembers it well when the efforts of Catholic missionaries bringing their One True God to China ended with the Rites Controversy in Rome in which the Holy See ultimately denounced Confucian li 禮 and forbade further debate, a ban that lasted until 1939. Confucian ethics on the other hand, grounded as it is in a radical empiricism and the contextualism that comes with it, offers us a more modest and intuitively persuasive way of thinking about how to get the most out of the human experience. For Confucian ethics that can be fairly described in Tang Junyi’s language of “the inseparability of one and many” (yiduobufen 一多不分), any abstract generalization must necessarily be qualified by its contextualizing conditions. Confucian role ethics begins from an acknowledgment of the interdependence and continuity persons have with each other, and with their various environments. Such an ethic is expressed through deference paid to others (shu 恕) that must follow from just

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  55 such an acknowledgment, and through the conscientiousness (zhong 忠) needed to pursue and realize maximal growth in relations. This aspirational growth made possible through such deference is captured in a commitment to work toward an optimizing symbiosis in the quality of their relations (he 和). While these Chinese terms pubian and chaoyue have their own very limited and specific textual histories, they are first and foremost recent additions to a Chinese academic vocabulary formulated as equivalencies for Western modernity’s notions of the “universal” and “transcendent” respectively.11 To the extent that we must acknowledge pubian and chaoyue are translations of the original Greek and now English terms, we encounter a fundamental problem. Ontological terms such as “universal” and “transcendent” are the ultimate ground of dualistic thinking. When used in a strict philosophical sense they reference an unchanging, intelligible reality that resides outside of time and space. As unconditional and absolute claims, they stand independent of any particular context. Such notions are the ground of the dualism, objectivism, and foundationalism that have been a signature of much of pre-Darwinian Western philosophy. Indeed, it is precisely this transcendent universal as the single, inviolate, and self-sufficient reality that has been the driver for the tradition’s quest for certainty, promising us an unchanging object of apodictic truth. Historically, these assumptions were again reinforced in the Western narrative when the Church Fathers translated the conceptual structures of Greek philosophy into the language of theology, and when the transcendent universal came to reference the singular, independent, and self-sufficient Abrahamic God. But Guo and Li in reading the Chinese translation of my Confucian Role Ethics, understand the terms pubian and chaoyue not as referencing the Western terms, “universal” and “transcendent,” but are making sense of them according to the current use of these terms within the Chinese academy and its own zoetological assumptions. What is the meaning of pubian as used within the context of Confucian process cosmology? It is the difference between “universal” in the strict philosophical sense, and the sense of what is general and shared in common. Rather than referencing some independent, originative, determinative, and thus transcendent universal, pubian describes the overarching, ubiquitous, all-encompassing, and continuous aspect of the human experience that complements its concrete, multifarious, and particular characteristics. Pubian expresses the “one” in the complementary and vital relationship captured in Tang Junyi’s cosmological postulate of the inseparability of the one and its many (yiduobufen). In the Confucian interpretive context, this complementary, aspectual distinction between one and many is given a concrete image in the language of dao 道 in its relationship to the myriad things or events (wanwu 萬物), the unbounded, and continuous wholeness of experience and the “insistent particularity” (de 德) of each of the events that constitutes it. This one and many distinction is again there in the overarching tian in its “inseparability” (heyi 合一) from the earth (di 地) and from the human world (ren 人) as well. While terms such as “universal” and “transcendent” taken strictly assert the independence of some ultimate principle from the world of flux and flow, Confucian notions such as dao and tian far from introducing a “God’s-eye-view” or a

56  Roger T. Ames “view-from-Nowhere,” are resolutely processual, and are invariably being construed from one perspective or another within the flow of experience. Thus, the “one” continuous aspect we call dao or tian can only be understood by reference to the multifarious and always evolving content of experience as “many.” And again, each of the uniquely “one-of-a-kind” things integral to the overarching dao and tian is at the same time inseparable from the “many” others within their own unique and ever-evolving contexts. When pubian is used to describe Confucian values, it quite properly celebrates the wide-ranging and broad application such values have to the human experience in general, and thus are better translated as “common or shared values” than as “universal values.” Again, and importantly, what I would take to do the work of erstwhile “ultimacies” (zhongji 終極) in Confucian thinking, rather than referencing the boundary conditions of some unchanging ideal, is the shared aspiration within family and community to optimize the creative possibilities available to human “becomings” within their evolving natural, social, and cultural worlds. The aspiration after such “ultimacies” animates the best efforts of persons to achieve and sustain this superlative harmony (he 和) as what might be called an optimizing symbiosis (gongsheng 共生). Stated the other way around, were Confucianism to actually have “universal” values or were tian actually to be “transcendent” in the strict Greek sense, the categories of explanation in Confucian philosophy would reside within a two-world cosmogony, and would necessarily be dualistic in the separation of reality from appearance, and being from becoming. Rather than the correlative dyads such as yinyang 陰陽 and an inclusive vocabulary such as “inseparability” (heyi 合一) ubiquitous in the Confucian tradition, we would encounter the familiar dichotomous and exclusionary language of some ontological reality trumping mere appearance, and some impersonal rationality dismissing both affect and opinion. The clear absence of dualistic thinking in Confucian philosophy is a sure sign that transcendental universalism in its classical Greek visage has little relevance for this cosmology or the philosophical assumptions that follow from it. But as long as Guo and Li intend the meaning of the Chinese terms as they are understood within the Chinese interpretive context, they are making sense of Confucian cosmology in a way I would endorse without reservation. I would agree with Guo and Li that Confucian philosophy is fundamentally holistic and thus by definition, inclusive. It is certainly not relativistic in the fragmenting and pernicious sense that decontextualizes self-sufficient things, and in so doing, makes them into multiple absolutes. I would also argue that “if it is not relativism then it must be absolutism” is not a choice we have to make. Confucian philosophy’s alternative to a pernicious relativism is not what would be a Confucian variation on this kind of discredited absolutism. Instead, Confucian philosophy offers us an inclusive pluralism captured in the core values of relational equity and achieved diversity: that is, the pursuit of a “superlative and inclusive harmony out of difference” (he’erbutong 和而不同). At the same time, it eschews the kind of “homogenizing uniformity” (tong 同) we would associate with a transcendent universalism in which the “many” reduce to the “one.” Simply put, such an ontological univocity

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  57 that comes in the door with transcendental universalism is anathema to Confucian pluralism. There is one further point that needs to be made. The kind of transcendental universalism derived from Greek philosophy has long been out of favor within the Western narrative itself, being deemed the fallacious assertion that there is a single, final, and unchanging Truth behind the multiplicity of things. We must be cognizant of the fact that in ascribing such an ontological framework to Confucian cosmology, we are insinuating into this tradition a worldview that over the past century and more has been under assault within the corridors of Western philosophy itself, and is now considered broadly to be the underlying cause of a persistent and yet misleading way of thinking we are doing our best to get past. Indeed, the revolution currently taking place within the Western philosophical community might be fairly described as an attempt to set aside the metaphysics of transcendent universalism, cast off the logic of the changeless that attends it, and repudiate the dualistic assumptions that follow from it. This internal critique has been and continues to be waged within professional Western philosophy under the many banners of process philosophy, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, postmodernism, pragmatism, neo-Marxism, deconstructionism, feminist philosophy, and so on. It takes as a shared target what Robert C. Solomon has called “the transcendental pretense” that begins from the concept of a universal human nature and the Transcendental Self, and has many other iterations: universalism, idealism, rationalism, foundationalism, objectivism, formalism, logocentrism, essentialism, the master narrative, onto-theological thinking, the metaphysics of presence, “the myth of the given,” and so on (Solomon 1988, 1). Western philosophers today are largely intent on repudiating these familiar reductionistic “isms” that have emerged over time as putatively novel choices on the merry-go-round of systematic philosophy. A Case Study: Tracking a Convergence between zhengyi 正義 and ‘Justice’ We have seen that contemporary Chinese scholars are making sense of the Chinese language translations of English terms such as “transcendent” and “universal” in a way that has redefined them to be consistent with their own interpretive context. But the story does not end here; in fact, it runs full circle. That is, as I have noted above, within the Western narrative itself entrenched metaphysical assumptions such as transcendent universalism have been problematized and are being broadly repudiated as fallacious thinking. Said another way, the Western narrative has taken a sharp turn away from substance ontology to embrace a zoetological way of thinking. Can we then anticipate a gradual convergence of these two philosophical traditions? We might set up a test case to see if this is true. Zhengyi 正義 is a traditional Chinese term currently being used to translate the Western conception of “justice.” It provides us with a specific example that might tell an interesting story. The term zhengyi, unlike pubian and chaoyue, was not specifically deployed to translate a distinctively Western philosophical term. As an expression that dates back to the Han dynasty, it has had a life of its own and is thus

58  Roger T. Ames saturated with its persistent philosophical assumptions. By first locating and understanding zhengyi within the holistic cosmology of its own Confucian interpretive context, we can speculate on how a distinctively Confucian conception of “justice” has been understood within this tradition itself as a basis for comparing it with the current understanding of justice within the Western philosophical discourse. We might begin with the two terms that are combined to constitute the expression, zheng 正 and yi 義. Zheng as what is right and what ought to be done in a particular context, means “proper conduct.” Translating it as “proper” rather than “correct” or “right” respects the reflexive nature of judgments within this ecological cosmology in which agent and context are mutually entailing. What is important in our understanding of this term is that zheng as a description of what is most appropriate in a particular situation has the connotation of “proper” rather than being a realist claim to be objectively right independent of the subject. The Shuowen lexicon defines zheng as shi 是: “this,” “what is to be affirmed,” and “what is deserving of approbation.” It is correlated with the singular demonstrative pronoun that is reflexive in referencing a particular thing within the specific context of the speaker. What recommends the translation of zheng as “proper” is that along with other words such as “appropriate,” “propriety,” and “property,” “proper” is derived etymologically from the Latin, proprius with its core meaning of “making something one’s own.” The substance and depth of zheng, beyond merely formal regulations, is thus dependent upon an inclusive process of personalization within a particular context. The classical Chinese term yi 義 has conventionally been translated into English as “righteous” or “righteousness,” a palpably biblical allusion suggesting compliance with some external ethical standard, some Divine Will. However, this classical Chinese notion viewed both etymologically and within its own interpretive context suggests it is better rendered “optimal appropriateness.” Morality thus understood is the effort to negotiate what is best in one’s particular circumstances, where one’s own interests and the interests of one’s natural, social, and cultural environments must all be considered. Yi is thus resolutely situational, inclusive, and pragmatic. In the modern language, the binomial zhengyi 正義 carries with it a decidedly holistic sense of justice that resists a reduction to the objectivism of abstract principles. With the commitment to the inseparability of one and many (yiduobufen) in Confucian cosmology, zhengyi must include broad concern for partiality as well as any abstract emerging standard of impartiality. Equity for each unique person can only be respected and diversity among them achieved by giving full affordance to both particularity and impartiality rather than choosing between them (Sen 2009).12 That is, rather than invoking some transcendental standard or some faculty of impersonal reason as the single warrant for claiming impartiality—a strategy that is necessarily hobbled by the contingencies of always specific circumstances—­ Confucian philosophy proffers an alternative understanding of impartiality true to its commitment to holism. This being the case, rather than a conception of justice rendered properly blind by appeal to an abstract principle as it is applied to equal and thus abstract individuals, a notion of relational equity must do the work of accommodating both particular instances and the generalizations that can be made from them.

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  59 Such an inclusive holism would mean zhengyi is associated with “forms of life” as they are defined by specific patterns of ritual propriety (li 禮) achieved within historical continuities and always specific circumstances more than with any reduction to an abstract, principled understanding of positive law. Again, rather than invoking a rational calibration on the scales of evidence that will enable it to achieve a binary “right or wrong,” “guilty or not guilty” closure, the pursuit of zhengyi would be a continuing, emergent, and always imperfect process inclusive of multiple perspectives and relying heavily on moral imagination for its compass. With an optimizing symbiosis (gongsheng 共生) being its “objective” and highest value, such a conception of justice can only be provisional and a matter of degree. Rather than being elevated and reified or institutionalized as an abstract, complete theory, its origins for the most part would lie in a response to perceived instances of injustice. Again, thus resisting any persistent formal definition as a concept or principle, zhengyi would reference a quality of agreement achieved through an emergent consensus among a population: literally (L. con + sentire) “shared feeling” in real-time. Is this speculative reconstruction of zhengyi within the Confucian interpretive context consistent with the real-life experience of Chinese people? The contemporary Taiwan scholar, Chang Wejen 張偉仁, has spent a lifetime reflecting on the subject of law in traditional China, and in asking the question of how Chinese people have understood and valorized justice, he concludes … the Chinese believe that for a social problem, facts could be seen in different perspectives, especially if one observed their historical developments; when many other factors, including human relations and feelings, were taken into consideration, it was nearly impossible to get a clear, black and white picture. Therefore in many instances, the parties to a dispute did not seek absolute justice, believing that it was not achievable or even desirable; they preferred peaceful coexistence to formal justice that separate them into winners and losers. (Chang 2010, 247) In the wake of the Western academy’s repudiation of substance ontology and its transcendental universalism that began in the late nineteenth century, we are able to track an ongoing convergence between this traditional Confucian understanding of zhengyi and an evolving transformation of the Western conception of “justice” in its own political discourse. It is now half a century since John Rawls published his epochal A Theory of Justice seeming at a stroke to bring to an end a 150-yearlong dearth of original works in political philosophy within the Western narrative (Rawls, 1971). Following this publication, the topic of justice, long neglected by philosophers, became an issue of great moment and concern. Robert Nozick followed Rawls fairly quickly with Anarchy, State and Utopia, a libertarian response to Rawls’s liberal theory (Nozick 1974) that was only the first among an avalanche of other substantive works on “justice,” with the most influential being those of Michael Walzer, Derek L. Phillips, Elizabeth H. Wolgast, Susan Moller Okin, Robert

60  Roger T. Ames C. Solomon, and most recently, Amartya Sen and Michael Sandel (Walzer 1983; Phillips 1986; Wolgast 1987; Okin 1989; Solomon 1995; Sandel 2009; Sen 2009). A compounding commentarial tradition on these works and others has ensued and continues apace today. Even though transcendental universalism has been largely repudiated within the Western narrative, its long shadow has still survived in different forms. Although Rawls does not subscribe to either the mythology or the metaphysics of principled justice, his influential “theory of justice” with its “original position” and its “veil of ignorance” offers us an ambitious strategy for deriving a set of antecedent, fixed, objective, and impartial principles that would be contractually appealing for everyone independently of any personal, historical, or cultural context (Rawls 2001).13 Rawls’s abstract principles can ostensibly be applied to do the same heavy lifting as any other traditional formulation of justice as an abstract ideal. We can argue that in the discourse on justice that follows Rawls’s rational theory, there is an incremental attempt to put Humpty Dumpty together again by reinstating what this abstract theory has excluded from consideration. For example, Michael Walzer is properly critical of the distance an abstract Rawlsian approach has to the real world, and responds by defending political pluralism, a thick notion of the self, and a complex understanding of equality: In a world of particular cultures, competing conceptions of the good, scarce resources, elusive and expansive needs, there isn’t going to be a single formular, universally applicable. (Walzer 1983, 79)14 Susan Moller Okin in her influential work Justice, Gender, and the Family offers a compelling argument that the contemporary institution of family with its hierarchical structure of roles saturated by a pervasive gender bias is fundamentally unjust. And as she properly claims, given the crucial importance of family as the veritable “school of justice” in the moral development and education of our children, the assumption that we can construct a just society on such a tenuous foundation is untenable. This being the case, it is at once undeniably true and at the same time, deplorable that most scholars who would offer us a theory of justice think they can get away with either ignoring family or idealizing it to the extent that its partial concerns locate it beyond the scope of ethics (Okin 1989).15 Amartya Sen in the Idea of Justice is critical of many contemporary theorists of justice—his own teacher, Rawls, first among them. Philosophers such as Rawls, in presupposing that justice is to be found in the application of principle, take what Sen describes as a “transcendental” approach to the theorizing of a perfect conception of justice. He describes such scholars as being “arrangement-focused” rather than “realization-focused.” That is, these theorists are indeed theorists concerned to define institutional justice as a perfect, independent standard that can then be mechanically applied for fair adjudication and who do not give sufficient regard to the actualizing of justice in the lives of real people. At the end of the day, Sen is resistant to the universalistic, univocal, and exclusive claims that undergird such

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  61 theories of justice made anemic by their total reliance on abstraction at the expense of the concrete human experience. He offers instead what he describes positively as an “incomplete” notion of justice that abjures the need for a perfect standard before it can be applied, arguing that our starting point should be to proceed with urgency in addressing many of the blatant cases of injustice upon which there is broad agreement within the world community. Robert C. Solomon in his A Passion for Justice insists the seemingly endless attempts of philosophers to formulate some abstract “principle,” “theory,” or “idea” of justice has in fact deflected the discussion away from its proper focus on immediate experience. He argues … there is no coherent ideal of justice. Justice claims are always contextual and presuppose a local set of conditions and considerations.” For Solomon, the irreducibly contextual nature of morality and moral development arises from the fact that human beings are irreducibly social in our native instincts. He would insist that … what is natural in us is our sense of being-with-others, not just in affection and dependency but in that our sense of ourselves and our interests is, from start to finish, tied up with other people. What is natural in us, I want to argue, is neither self-interest nor global benevolence but reciprocity. (Solomon 1995, 104). Perhaps it is Elizabeth Wolgast in The Grammar of Justice who in observing that it all starts with family, has moved the Western discourse on justice most decidedly in a Confucian direction. Wolgast applies a Wittgensteinian understanding of the grammar of concepts such as justice as “forms of life” to argue that the emotional responses we have to immorality are themselves bedrock in their meaning with no further need for explanation. She insists that … we learn morality and the moral vocabulary together, and come to have a sense of injustice at the same time… [W]e not only learn behavior and meanings together but learn them very young. (Wolgast 1987, 212) Not only is it that language “meshes with life,” but in Wolgast’s work she underscores the necessary and symbiotic roles within the family of both parents and children in cultivating their moral competence together through a shared sense of shame: The connection of a young child with her parents is not simply between an authority and an underling; it is a complicated, reciprocal relation in which the child’s behavior reflects back on the parent both as parent and person, and the parent’s example, both in expression and in action, serves as a pattern

62  Roger T. Ames for the child. Morally speaking, you might say that they are mutually dependent and symbiotic, even though the child is in other ways dependent and immature. In highlighting the parent‍‍—child reciprocity in cultivating their moral agency, Wolgast explains what she takes to be Aristotle’s curious remark that only virtuous persons brought up in good habits are competent to discuss ethics, a remark perhaps made less curious because Confucius says the same thing.16 For Solomon, Wolgast, and Confucius too, we develop our sense of what is moral not from the application of some ideal, but practically and incrementally from earliest childhood within our families in the feelings we share as we respond to perceived instances of immorality. The growth of moral meaning and behavior generally and a sense of justice specifically, takes place locally in the ecologies of family and community. Conclusion My argument in this chapter has been that within the Western academy Confucian philosophy has been distorted and misread to an important degree by the conversion of this tradition through the Christian vocabulary used to translate it. At the same time, within the Chinese academy itself, the wholesale construction of a Chinese-language version of Western modernity has led to a theorizing and conceptualizing of Confucian philosophy through a vocabulary that is not its own. But by appealing to the examples of the Chinese appropriation of Buddhism and more recently of Marxism, we can anticipate that while the influence of Western learning on Confucian thinking has certainly been significant, at the same time there has been a process whereby the vocabulary of these initially alien traditions has been domesticated to become a distinctively Chinese version of the original: a Chinese Buddhism, a Chinese Marxism, and now a Chinese modernity. The metamorphosis of Western transcendent universal into Confucian chaoyue and pubian thinking are just two examples among many that can illustrate this point. Others that immediately come to mind are bentilun 本體論 as a translation of “ontology” that far from referencing a specific theory of being as “substance” or “essence,” has come to mean generic traits of experience. Another most revealing term is wenhua 文化 as a translation of “culture” that in Chinese refers to a human contrapuntal, profoundly aesthetic, and open-ended relationship with the environment without being freighted with the original teleological assumptions built into the metaphor of “culture” as it is found in agriculture or horticulture.17 But perhaps the most interesting turn in this saga is that within the contemporary Western narrative, the process language being developed to replace the now discredited transcendent universalism is in important degree becoming resonant with the vocabulary of traditional Confucian philosophy. In place of Platonic formal definition, Aristotelian causal thinking, and Cartesian rationalism that all privilege the precision of clear and distinct ideas in their quest for objective certainty, vocabularies of process, change, particularity, metaphor, creative advance, and indeed productive vagueness have come increasingly into vogue. Simply put, an important

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  63 direction in contemporary Western philosophy is the attempt to think process and to cultivate the practical wisdom needed for philosophy to be relevant to an alwayschanging world order. And the good news for comparative philosophy is that these recent developments in mainstream Anglo-European philosophy are themselves giving rise to an interpretive vocabulary that promises a more productive dialogue with a Chinese philosophical tradition that never denied the reality of change or process in the first place. Notes 1 A portion of this paper was excerpted and reworked from a draft of monograph that has subsequently been published as Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020. 2 The complexity and the politics of this process of synchronizing the East Asian languages with the vocabulary of Western modernity, and the role that the Chinese literary tradition served as a resource for constructing this vocabulary, has been discussed in considerable detail by Columbia professor Lydia H. Liu 劉禾. See Liu (1995). 3 Zhang Longxi, for example, in his commitment to pursuing intercultural understanding, is quite critical of those of us (singling out Jacques Gernet as one primary example) who would describe the tension between Christianity and Chinese as not only one “of different intellectual traditions” but also “of different mental categories and modes of thought.” See Gernet (1985, 8). Zhang becomes impatient when “the cultural difference between the Chinese and the Western is formulated as fundamentally distinct ways of thinking and speaking, as the ability, or lack of it, to express abstract ideas.” Zhang does not recognize that in his giving abstract and theoretical ideas pride of place as a higher order of thinking, he is advocating for Western philosophical assumptions that are not only absent in the classical Chinese tradition, but in fact are under assault as specious within Western philosophy’s own ongoing, internal critique (Zhang 1999, 44). 4 Zhao (2115, 147): … 是对世界的“字典式”解释，试图建立界定万物的决定理解， 简单的说，就是断定“什么是什么，”一切观念皆为“在／是”(being/is) 的注脚。 5 Zhao (2116, 147–148): … 是对世界的“语法式”解释，力求对万事所生成的关系(天 与人，人与物，人与人)的协调理解，尤其重视关系的互相性或万事的合宜性. 6 In canonical texts such as Focusing the Familiar (Zhongyong 中庸) and the Classic of Family Reverence (Xiaojing 孝經), human values such as “sincerity, resolution” (cheng 誠) and “family reverence” (xiao 孝) are elevated to cosmic status, acknowledging that human beings have cosmic force as co-creators. At the same time, these human values are imbricated in erstwhile cosmic ideas such as “way-making” (dao 道) and “coherence” (li 理) that are inclusive of a decidedly human aspect. 7 We might summarize the radical contextualism entailed by this cosmological postulate as “one is many, many one,” insisting as it does that everything is relevant to anything, and anything to everything. Simply put, it is the assumption that in the compositing of any “one,” there is implicated within it the unbounded, contextualizing “many.” 8 Mencius 7A4: 孟子曰：萬物皆備於我矣。 9 Guo and Li (2015, 47): 從儒家倫理本身來看， 無疑包含著普遍主義的情懷， 很多學者如馮友蘭、唐君毅、張岱年等都曾指出， 儒家建構社會性時有具體的 一面， 也有普遍性和終極性的追尋。 10 Guo and Li (2015, 47–48): 在儒家的思想觀念里，「天」 作為超越的存在 與人之間的關聯一直存在， 敬天祭祖、人法天等說明古人認為超越性的「 天」 是可以下貫於人的. . . 儒家倫理的背後有「 天」、「 天命」、「 天道」的支 撐， 具有超越性、終極性的一面. 11 I would like to thank Lydia H. Liu 劉禾 for helping me think through this issue, and for the important work she has done in alerting us to the persisting problem of contemporary

64  Roger T. Ames Asian scholarship using the vocabulary and theoretical framework of Western modernity as its own voice. 12 The spirit of the “capabilities approach” developed for the economics of welfare by Amartya Sen in the mid-1980s and referenced in his Idea of Justice shares this same concern that real justice must respect particularity. 13 In fairness to Rawls, there is his later work represented by Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, that might be taken as an awareness of some of Sen’s concerns. 14 Walzer expands upon these “thicker” ideas in Walzer (1994, esp. pp. 33ff. and 98ff.). 15 Okin frames the problem well, but her erstwhile solution to eliminate gender is disappointing. While she seeks to rectify the patently unjust institution of family upon which so much of social justice is built, and on which justice ultimately depends, she offers a thin Rawlsian-inspired attempt to apply the principle of justice to a family of autonomous individuals in order to establish equal opportunity among them. Indeed, Okin’s ostensive solution is in fact an integral part of the problem itself, requiring as it does the retention of a foundational individualism as central to the definition of what it is to be a human being, while relying exclusively upon a principled understanding of justice as the instrument for effecting a just world. 16 “Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. … Hence anyone who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just and generally, about the subjects of political science must have been brought up in good habits.” Aristotle 1984 (1094b–1095b). See Analects 4.3 子曰：「唯仁者能好 人，能惡人。」 The Master said, “It is the consummate person (ren) alone who has the wherewithal to properly discriminate in cherishing some people while despising others.” 17 A second way forward in the construction of a distinctively Confucian modernity beyond the scope of this present paper is to identify areas of cultural self-colonization, and to find the alternative language needed to allow the tradition to speak on its own terms. Confucian “a-theistic” religiousness, for example, needs to be explained through the core value of “ritual propriety in roles and relations” (li 禮) rather than by appeal to artificially constructed equivalencies for a transcendent “God” that was never Chinese in the first place. Confucian ethics again needs to be expressed through its own vocabulary of dao 道, de 德, ren 仁, yi 義, xin 信, zhi 知, zhong 忠, shu 恕 and so on, rather than shoehorning it into Western concepts. De 德, for example, does not equate with arete, but has its own content. Bibliography Aristotle. 1984. “Metaphysics.” In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1729–1867 Chang, Wejen. 2010. “Classical Chinese Jurisprudence and the Development of the Chinese Legal System.” Tsinghua China Law Review, Vol. 2, no. 2 (Spring), 207–272. Gernet, Jacque. 1985. China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures, trans. J. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Girardot, Norman J. 2002. The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage. Berkeley: University of California Press. Graham, A. C. 1990. Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press. Guo, Qiyong 郭齐勇 and Li Lanlan 李兰兰. 2015. 安乐哲《儒学角色伦理学》学说的折 评 [An Appreciative Critique of Roger T. Ames’s Notion of Confucian Role Ethics]. 哲学 研究 [Research in Philosophy] no. 1, 42–48. Hegel, G. W. F. 1991. The Encyclopedia Logic. Indianapolis, IN/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.

China and the Production of Its Own Hybridic Modernity  65 Legge, James (trans.) 1960 rep. The Chinese Classics, Vol 2. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press. Liu, Lydia H. 1995. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books. Phillips, Derek L. 1986. Toward a Just Social Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, edited by Erin Kelly. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Richards, I. A. 1932. Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.; New York: Harcourt, Brace. Sandel, Michael. 2009. Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Sen, Amatrya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Shun, Kwong-loi. 2009. “Studying Confucian and Comparative Ethics: Methodological Reflections.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 36, no. 3 (September), 455–478. Solomon, Robert C. 1988. Continental Philosophy Since 1750: The Rise and the Fall of the Self. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1995. A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Tang, Junyi 唐 君 毅. 1991. 唐君毅全集 [Complete Works of Tang Junyi]. Vol. 11. 台北： 學生書局. Tian, Chenshan 田辰山. 2005. Chinese Dialectics: From Yijing to Marxism. Lexington Books. Chinese translation 中国辩证法：从易经到马克思主义. 北京: 中国人民大学 出版社, 2008. Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1994. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press. Wolgast, Elizabeth H. 1987. The Grammar of Justice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Zhang, Longxi. 1999. “Translating Cultures: China and the West.” Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches, edited by Karl-Heinz Pohl. Leiden: Brill, 29–46. Zhao, Tingyang 趙汀陽. 2011. 天下體系：世界制度哲學導論 [The Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of World Institution]. 北京：中国人民大学出版社. ———. 2016. 惠此中國 [The Making and Becoming of China: Its Way of Historicity]. 北京：中信出版社.

Part III

Embracing and Resisting Modernity

The chapters in this section focus on shifts from the political-philosophical ideals of “modernity” to its concrete socio-political manifestations. These chapters interrogate the successes and failures of “modern” development in the national histories of China, Japan, and Korea, respectively, and in different ways take measure of the distance or divergence between European and Northeast Asian modernities. Tze-ki Hon delineates a dramatic shift in Chinese attitudes toward Westernization and national sovereignty, pivoting around the 1919 Versailles Settlement. Koichiro Matsuda laments the failure to realize the modernizing potential of statistical science in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan as its reformist implications were prevented by political expediency and nationalistic sentiment. Yutang Jin analyzes the Donghak (Eastern learning) movement in late nineteenth-century Korea, showing how its reconceptualization of key traditional values fueled a movement for social change.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-6

4

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China Sovereignty, Connectivity, and National Awakening Tze-ki Hon1

Prologue Focused on the First Sino-Japanese War (1894‒1895), Shogo Suzuki calls our attention to the predicament that Chinese and Japanese leaders have faced since the mid-nineteenth century. On the one hand, to join the international community, they must transform their countries politically and economically to meet the “standard of civilization” set down by the Western powers. On the other hand, to succeed in the international community, they must challenge its “rules of the game” that are designed to hamper the competitiveness of newcomers.2 Driven in turn by what Suzuki calls the “light side” and “dark side” of the Eurocentric global system, ­Chinese and Japanese leaders are put in a situation where they must be simultaneously pro-Western and anti-Western, partners and rivals.3 In East Asia, this process of socialization began after the First Opium War (1838–1842) when the European powers forced their way into the region and secured their interests by obtaining concessions and extraterritoriality. While different in many respects, China and Japan shared a similar path in which they had to substantially change their political and economic systems to gain recognition as members of the international community.4 Thus, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, multilateralism was at the core of the two countries’ foreign policies. For China, Japan’s success in ending extraterritoriality in 1894 and in forming an alliance with Britain in 1902 proved that the multilateralism of the international structure was effective in keeping peace in the world and in allowing mobility in the global system. Hence, from 1895 to 1915, China saw Japan as a model of “East Asian modernity” and sent thousands of its bright students to study in Japan. To highlight this close relationship between China and Japan, Douglas Reynolds calls these ten years “the golden decade” of Sino-Japanese relations.5 The period was golden not only because it was in sharp contrast to what happened later when the two countries went to war in the 1930s and 1940s. More importantly, it was golden because China and Japan were closely tied to a network of cultural and technology sharing to build an “East Asian modernity.” What drove this cultural and technological network was the belief that East Asia (encompassing China, Japan, and Korea) was a region with a unique culture and history that could achieve DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-7

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China  69 a modernity equal to, but different from, Europe and the United States. A striking characteristic of this network was that it was centered in Japan rather than in China, practically destabilizing the Sino-centric tributary system that had been dominant in East Asia for centuries.6 The “golden decade” ended abruptly in 1915 when the Japanese government presented the Twenty-One Demands to Yuan Shikai, demanding a guarantee for its interests in Shandong after Japanese soldiers took over the German colonies in that province. The Shandong issue snowballed into a major international controversy when WWI ended. At the Versailles Settlement of 1919, the Great Powers gave the former German colonies in Shandong to Japan. Subsequently, that decision caused a popular uproar in China, especially student protests in Tiananmen Square in ­Beijing, later known as the May Fourth Movement. In his seminal work China and the Great War, Xu Guoqi suggests that the ­Versailles Settlement ended Chinese idealism about the openness of the international system. After learning that the Great Powers had given Japan the former German colonies in Shandong, the Chinese realized that the global system was nothing but a vehicle for the European powers’ domination.7 In this chapter, I will trace this momentous change in China from multilateralism to “anti-imperialistic nationalism” by comparing the discussions of China’s role in the world in four journals: Dixue zazhi 地學雜誌 (Journal of Geographical Studies, 1910–1937), Shidi xuebao 史地學報 (Journal of Historical Geography, 1921–1926), Shixue yu dixue 史學與地學 (History and Geography, 1926–1928), and Yugong banyuekan 禹貢半月刊 (Chinese Historical Geography, 1934–1937). The comparison will show that China’s self-definition within the global system of nation-states underwent tremendous changes in the 1920s and 1930s after the Versailles Settlement. In the 1910s when Zhang Xiangwen 張相文 (1866–1933) founded the first Chinese geographical organization, Zhongguo dixue hui 中國地 學會 (Chinese Geographical Society) in the Beijing-Tianjin area, and published the first Chinese geographical journal, Dixue zazhi, China was in the process of adopting what Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen called “the myth of the nationstate.” It is a myth because it assumes that “cultural identities (nations) coincide with political sovereign entities (states) to create a series of internally unified and essentially equal units.”8 Adopting the European arguments for social evolution and open competition, many Chinese concluded that forming a nation-state was the only way to survive in the age of imperialism and colonialism. For them, the nation-state was a “measurement of civilization” in the early twentieth century, and China had no choice but to adopt this political form in order to join the “civilized community.”9 In the 1920s, however, this belief in joining the civilized community by participating in fair and open competition was greatly challenged. Disillusioned by China’s unfair treatment in the Versailles Settlement of 1919, the Chinese ended what Xu Guoqi calls “an age of innocence” in international relations.10 Rather than aspiring to be a member of the civilized community by adopting the Western political and social systems, the Chinese discovered that the nation-state system

70  Tze-ki Hon was dominated by the Western powers eager to protect their own interests at all costs. During the eight years (1921–1928) when Shidi xuebao and Shixue yu dixue were published in Nanjing, the Chinese realized that Westernization alone would not win them recognition in international affairs. Instead, they focused on recovering national sovereignty through diplomatic negotiations and treaty revisions.11 They believed that although the nation-state system was controlled by a small number of the Western powers, the system was legally fair when dealing with questions of national sovereignty as expounded in Wilson’s Fourteen Points.12 In the early 1930s, as the threat of the Japanese encroachment intensified, the Chinese changed yet again their perspective on the nation-state system. Instead of viewing the nation-state system as an advanced stage of human evolution, they saw it as the tool of imperialist powers to dominate the world. As Prasenjit Duara points out, this shift from joining a global evolution to protecting China’s geo-body fueled anti-imperialist nationalism in China.13 In the 1930s, no other academic journal expressed anti-imperialist nationalism more clearly and forcefully than Yugong banyuekan, which publicly condemned the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and urged the Chinese to protect their country with blood. The Globe as Open Space Like other journals in China at the beginning of the twentieth century, Dixue zazhi (published by the Chinese Geographical Society) participated in building the national school system. In announcing the publication of the journal, the leaders of the Chinese Geographical Society were explicit in expressing their intention to use Dixue zazhi to unravel the “relationships among the nation-states” (guoji 國際). For this reason, in Dixue zazhi the term dixue 地學 literally meant studies (xue) of the earth (di). It included the geological studies of rock formation and the location of mountain ranges, maps of countries and cities, meteorological studies of weather patterns, new mining techniques, and global systems of commerce, communication, and cultural exchange.14 In short, the scope of dixue is the globe, and its content is how the globe is connected through various natural and human networks. This global scope of dixue is clearly shown in Xiong Bingsui’s 熊秉穗 article “Zhongguo zhongzu kao” 中國種族考 (A Study of the Chinese Race). On the surface, the article appears to be another attempt to support the alleged migration of the Chinese from Mesopotamia. Commonly known as “Sino-­Babylonianism” or “Xilai shuo” 西來説, the theory promoted by Terrien de Lacouperie ­(1845–1894) in the 1890s argued that the Chinese were descendants of the Bak tribe who migrated to China from Mesopotamia in prehistoric times.15 Textual support for his argument came from the Yijng 易經 (Book of Changes), the first of the Confucian Five Classics (wujing 五經). Based on a meticulous comparison of the Yijing hexagrams and the cuneiform writings of Mesopotamia, he concluded that the Yijing was a Babylonian dictionary, containing the hidden code of an advanced civilization outside China.16 In the early 1900s, Lacouperie’s argument was introduced to the Chinese through the summaries of Shirakawa Jirō 白河次

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China  71 郎 and Kokubu Tanenori 國府種德 in Shina bunmei shi 支那文明史 (History of Chinese ­Civilization, 1900). Preposterous as it may seem from today’s perspective, ­Lacouperie’s argument was warmly accepted by cultural nationalists such as Deng Shi 鄧實 (1877–1945), Huang Jie 黃節 (1873–1935), Liu Shipei, and Zhang ­Taiyan 章太炎 (1869–1935), who promoted Sino-Babylonianism in Guocui ­xuebao 國粹學報 (Journal of National Essence, 1905–1911) in support of an antiManchu revolution. Their fervent nationalism and nativism notwithstanding, they saw Sino-Babylonianism as an effective weapon in mobilizing the Han Chinese to topple the Manchu government.17 Contrary to the writers of Guocui xuebao, Xiong Bingsui 熊秉穗 did not use Sino-Babylonianism as a political weapon. To make his point, he flatly rejected Deng Shi and Huang Jie’s argument that the Han Chinese were “descendants of the Yellow Emperor” (Huangdi zisun 黃帝子孫).18 Instead, Xiong saw a deeper meaning in Lacouperie’s Sino-Babylonianism. Rather than proving an unbroken racial genealogy from the Yellow Emperor to the contemporary Han Chinese, SinoBabylonianism revealed the complex networks of human migration that began in prehistoric times and continued to the present. For Xiong, the migration of the Bak tribe to China was merely an example of the constant movement of people across Eurasia. “All major races in Asia,” Xiong wrote, “were originally migrants from other places; it is a universal law that migrants create strong races.”19 For Xiong, what the “universal law” (gongli) shows is that migrants are much more determined to succeed in difficult conditions. Not only do they have to adapt and adjust to the new environment, they also have to compete with the local natives in controlling lands and resources. It was therefore their will to succeed that explained why the Bak tribe could settle in China. Similarly to the Aryans in India, Xiong suggested, the Bak tribe became the rulers of China because of their competitiveness and military prowess, clearly shown in their historic defeat of the tribe of Chi You 蚩尤 in Banquan 板泉.20 Thus, for Xiong, the migration of the Bak tribe to China was an episode of global significance. First, it demonstrated that since prehistoric times there had been constant movement of people from continent to continent, forming multiethnic communities in various parts of the world. Because of the high volume of migration, racial mixing in the midst of racial competition had been the driving force of history. Second, for contemporary Chinese, the migration of the Bak tribe underscored the importance of coming to terms with the age of imperialism and colonialism. As the Europeans were migrating to Asia in droves through imperialist expansion and colonial rule, they would soon be the new rulers of Asia if the natives could not match their competitiveness and military prowess. On this score, Xiong saw a direct parallel between the migration of the Bak tribe in the past and the migration of the Europeans in the present. The same global scope is also found in Bai Yueheng’s 白月恆 article “Liding xingzheng qu beikao” 釐定行政區備考 (Notes on Dividing the Administrative Districts, 1912). At first glance, the article appears to offer historical information on dividing Chinese districts (xingzheng qu 行政區). It seems to address the pressing needs of the new Chinese Republic to redesign its administrative system.

72  Tze-ki Hon Yet, unlike other political essays, Bai approached the question of political administration from a theoretical perspective. Throughout human history, Bai suggested, constant attempts had been made to match natural geography with human geography. From tribes to imperial states to nation-states, Bai found continuous efforts to make political boundaries mirror natural boundaries. When a political boundary follows “the division in mountains and the unity in rivers” (shanli shuihe 山離水合), he said, it renders what is invisible visible, making the natural boundary clear and concrete. When a political boundary allows an effective use of natural resources, he asserted, it brings “peace to the country and prosperity to the people” (guotai minan 國泰民安).21 In China, Bai argued, throughout history, Chinese political leaders had made many attempts to match human geography with natural geography. From the “Nine Provinces” (jiu zhou 九州) in antiquity through the prefectures-counties (jun xian 郡縣) in ­Qin-Han China to provinces (sheng 省) in Ming-Qing China, different systems of political division were created to cope with the changing size of the Chinese territory and the different demands for natural resources. Apparently, some systems were more effective than others, but none was totally successful in matching human geography with natural geography. For this reason, Bai considered the success of the 1911 Revolution as an important opportunity for rethinking and remaking the political divisions of China. “After the momentous change in the political system [after the 1911 Revolution],” Bai wrote, “we now have to pay attention to restructuring the administrative districts.”22 But unlike in the past, the goal of restructuring administrative districts was not to give the central government more control over the country. Rather, it was to make certain that political divisions would reflect the characteristics of natural geography and thereby contribute to a more effective use of natural resources. The new political system, Bai suggested, should “model after nature” (biao zhun zai hu tian 標準在乎天), with due consideration of what nature could or could not offer.23 The Unjust World after World War I A decade later, in 1921, this awareness of how human decisions are largely conditioned by the physical environment became the main theme of another journal, Shidi xuebao. Based in Nanjing, Shidi xuebao was jointly published by the ­History and Geography Departments of Southeastern University (Dongnan daxue 東南 大學). Led by an eclectic group of scholars including foreign-trained scientists (e.g., Xu Zeling 徐則陵 and Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨), late-Qing philologists (e.g., Liu Yizheng), and graduates of Southeastern University (e.g., Miao Fenglin 繆鳳 林 and Zhang Qiyun 張其昀), Shidi xuebao was a professional journal aimed at scholars in the academy and educated elites in society. By combining history with geography, the editors of Shidi xuebao claimed that they were creating a hybrid discipline that would give a comprehensive account of “human development” (renshi zhi tuibian 人事之蛻變).24 The calm and measured tone notwithstanding, the editors of Shidi xuebao were deeply worried about China’s role after WWI. Disillusioned by the decision of the

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China  73 Allied powers to transfer the German colonies in Shandong to Japan, they saw the Versailles Settlement of 1919 as an attempt by Britain, France, and Italy to preserve their power. Despite the promise of national liberation and national sovereignty in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, they saw the creation of the League of Nations as a ploy of the Western imperial powers to stop non-Western countries from gaining national independence. For these reasons, they argued that historical geography was not only an academic pursuit but also a forum for public debate on “contemporary problems” (xindai wenti 現代問題).25 Of the writers of Shidi xuebao, the meteorologist Zhu Kezhen was the most vocal in explaining the contemporary relevance of historical geography. In an article reporting developments in post-WWI Europe, Zhu condemned the Versailles Settlement.26 To drive home his point, Zhu wrote another article detailing the transfer of power from Germany to Japan in Qingdao, Shandong. In the article, he showed how a decision that was made behind the closed doors in Versailles had disastrous consequences for the Chinese people. By revealing how unjust the world had become after WWI, Zhu underscored the importance of studying historical geography. He argued that with better knowledge of the territorial boundaries of the country, the Chinese diplomats would not have committed careless mistakes in signing international treaties, such as what Li Hongzhang did in ceding Taiwan to Japan in 1895. Nor would the Chinese people be misinformed about their own country when Western scholars deliberately spread erroneous information about their country.27 This concern with how historical geography would help China protect its national sovereignty from Western imperialist powers was common among many Chinese scholars after 1919. For instance, contributors to Dixue zazhi also changed their view of the global system. They publicly condemned the Versailles Settlement and constantly encouraged the Chinese to be aggressive in demanding their lost territories. In the early 1920s, Zhu Kezhen’s second point was particularly poignant when misinformation was indeed a means of winning political gains. A case in point was the Washington Conference in 1921, where nine nations, including Japan, met in Washington, D.C., to negotiate their interests in the Pacific and East Asia. In addition to naval treaties signed between the United States, Britain, and Japan, the status of Manchuria was discussed as part of the sphere of influence of Japan in East Asia. Not being given a prominent role at the Washington Conference, the Chinese saw a repeat of the Versailles Settlement where decisions were made about China without consulting them. In responding to what appeared to be another loss of territorial sovereignty, Miao Fenglin wrote an article discussing the political uses of historical geography. In the article, he devoted an entire section to discussing ­Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria. Using historical documents such as the Yugong (Tribute to Yu), Miao asserted that Manchuria had been part of Chinese territory for thousands of years.28 Here, we see a sea change in the Chinese perception of the global system of nation-states. In the 1910s, they saw the system as a collection of hybrid networks of physical and human connectivity, facilitating labor migration, capital movement, and information sharing. In the 1920s, however, they saw the

74  Tze-ki Hon system as patches of “geo-bodies,” dividing the earth into distinct territorial units ­safeguarded by armed forces. Two examples clearly show this change of focus. One is Zhao Xiangyuan’s 趙祥 瑗 article “Pianma wenti de yanjiu” 片馬問題的研究 (A Study of the Question of Pianma, 1922).29 In the article, Zhao traced the complicated history of the ­Chinese southwest and Burma. Particularly, he centered on the relations between Yunnan and Burma, including migration, trade, and cultural links. But Zhao’s goal was not to retell the past but to use the past to define China’s interests in Indo-China, where Britain and France were the major players. With respect to Burma, the question was China’s stance regarding the British influence on that country and what the Chinese government could do to forestall further British expansion into Chinese territories such as Yunnan.30 Similarly, in Miao Fenglin’s article “Zhongguo shi zhi xuanchuan” 中國史之宣傳 (The Propaganda of Chinese History, 1921), he was deeply concerned with Westerners’ use of history in advancing their interests in China. Besides a discussion of the Washington Conference as mentioned earlier, he wrote at great length on the alleged north–south division in Chinese history. He linked the discussion to the Westerners’ plans for dividing China into two halves along the Yangzi River and supporting the status quo of two Chinese governments based in Beijing and Nanjing. In the article, he used historical evidence to prove that the north–south division was temporary throughout Chinese history. It appeared only twice, during the Age of Division (316–589) and the Southern Song period ­(1127–1279), and in both instances, the division ushered in a long period of unification in the country.31 Again, similar to what he did in discussing the Washington Conference, Miao directly addressed the Western audience. “If the westerners know about these facts,” he wrote, “even if they will not do anything substantially in helping to unify the north and south, they will modify their view of China.”32 A result of this shift of focus was the emphasis on how the Chinese land produced the Chinese people. Described by Xu Zeling 徐則陵 as the “­naturalistic-materialistic interpretation of history” (ziran wuzhi lishi guan 自然物質歷史觀), the new approach had two goals. First, it highlighted the characteristics of the ­Chinese geographical environment, explaining how Chinese mountains, rivers, plains, seashores, and waterways were different from those of other countries. Second, it underscored the uniqueness of the Chinese people, who grew up on a land that was so different from other places.33 Ultimately, this stress on environmental determinism was to underscore the integrity of the Chinese territory and the distinctiveness of the Chinese, thereby producing an image of a bounded China with a homogeneous people. Marking the Nation’s Territory If indeed the Chinese people are shaped by the Chinese land, one question that remained unanswered in Shidi xuebao and Shixue yu dixue was the exact size of the Chinese territorial boundary. On the one hand, the writers of the two journals knew that China was much bigger than where the Han Chinese lived. For example, Zhang Qiyun introduced readers to northwestern China by translating Aurel Stein’s Ruins

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China  75 of Desert Cathay. In the article, he highlighted the close relations between the “­Chinese” in northwestern China and the Muslim communities in Central Asia.34 On the other hand, from historical texts, the writers of the two journals knew that the territorial boundary of China had changed over time. It began in the Yellow River Valley in antiquity, expanded to the Yangzi River and Pearl River Valleys during the Qin-Han period, and reached its present size (including Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, and ­Xinjiang) during the Qing period.35 Then, which “China” in the past would be the basis for defining the territorial boundary of modern China? Would it be the cultural homeland in the ancient past or the multiethnic empire of the Qing? If one adopted the former, China would be smaller, confined to the Yellow River basin, the Yangzi River basin, and the Pearl River basin. If one adopted the latter, China would be bigger in territory but much more complex and complicated in terms of race and culture. Founded in 1934, Yugong Banyuekan attempted to define Chinese territorial boundaries when they were under the Japanese threat. In the journal’s “Statement of Publication” (fa kan ci 發刊詞), Tan Qixiang highlighted environmental determinism. Witnessing both the loss of Manchuria and the gradual expansion of Japanese influence on North China Plain, Tan saw the possibility of the end of Chinese history. He believed that China would soon be turned into a colony of Japan, as Korea and Manchuria had been in 1910 and 1931, respectively.36 Compared with the writings of Miao Fenglin and Zhu Kezhen of the early 1920s, Tan’s statement reveals a further politicization of historical studies. In the 1920s, although there was already nascent interest in environmental determinism, the discussion of the “link between land and people” was still confined to the academic community, focusing on the ancient concepts of the “nine provinces,” the historical unity of Northern and Southern China, and the development of cities and rivers. Certainly, Miao Fenglin and Zhu Kezhen were not shy from relating their discussions of geography to contemporary political affairs such as the Versailles Settlement and the Washington Conference. Nonetheless, there was no fervent call to protect the national territory or emotive exhortation for mapping the national boundary. Unlike them, Tan Qixiang was deeply concerned with the security of China. He was worried that the Chinese nation would soon be absorbed into the rapidly expanding Japanese Empire as Korea and Manchuria had been. By calling attention to the political implications of the term “China Proper,” he cautioned his fellow countrymen that the Japanese were making plans to annex Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, where few Han Chinese lived. Although the Qing government had fallen, he asserted, its territories belonged to the Chinese legally and historically. Of the writers in Yugong Banyuekan, Feng Jiasheng 馮家昇 (1904–1970) was the most articulate in spelling out the strategic values and political implications of historical geography in times of national crisis. In a series of essays on the historical geography of Manchuria, Feng underscored the importance of “the study of the borders” (bianjiang zhi xue 邊疆之學).37 In discussing the loss of Manchuria to the Japanese, Feng put the blame on the Chinese. It was their ignorance of their national boundaries, Feng insisted, that led to the loss of the territories. On the surface, Feng’s argument seems to hearken back to the old theme of social evolution of the 1910s, where knowledge and cultural achievements determined

76  Tze-ki Hon the rise and fall of a nation’s power. However, Feng’s argument differed from the turn-of-the-century social evolution in one area. Rather than equating knowledge with the sociopolitical system of the nation-state, Feng understood knowledge as learning the geo-body of the Chinese nation. For this reason, Feng was explicit in linking historical geography to national defense. Understood as “the study of the borders,” he saw historical geography as a tool for defending Chinese territorial sovereignty and countering hostile imperialist expansion. For a long time, our scholars have not paid any attention to the study of the borders. They don’t know that what they neglect is exactly where foreign scholars are spending all their energies. Foreign scholars are so eager to study our nation’s borders because of geopolitics. The prime examples are the studies of Manchuria in Japan and Russia, the studies of Mongolia and Xinjiang in Russia, the studies of Xinjiang and Central Asia in Britain, and the studies of Yunan and Guangdong in France. In each of their specialized areas, foreign scholars have made important contributions. Yet, their studies ultimately serve the interests of their nations, preparing for an expansion into our country. Therefore, we will continue to suffer if we depend on their studies in resolving the border problems.38 In Feng’s eyes, historical geography was a national strategic study. It was not merely about rock formation, mountain ranges, weather patterns, or waterways. Rather, it was at the center of the political struggle between the imperialists and the nationalists. Whereas the imperialists deployed historical geography as a pretext to intrude into others’ territories, the nationalists mobilized historical geography to defend their nation’s territorial sovereignty and national interest. Like guns and tanks in battle, historical geography provided ammunition for both sides to win the war on claiming lands. In the hostile world of imperialism and colonialism, the ones who produced better results in the study of historical geography would be the ones who controlled more lands. If indeed the Chinese had lost the battle over Manchuria, Feng warned his ­countrymen that they should focus their attention on the next round of battle—the struggle over East Asia. Before the Sino-Japanese War [of 1894–95], Japanese scholars created a learning called ‘Korean Studies.’ Shortly afterward, Korea was annexed [to the Japanese Empire in 1910]. Before the Russo-Japanese War [in 1904–5], Japanese scholars created a learning called ‘Manchurian and Korean Studies.’ Shortly afterward, Liaodong province had fallen. Before the September 18th event, Japanese scholars created a learning called the ‘Manchurian and Mongolian Studies.’ Shortly afterward, the four provinces [in Manchuria] were annexed. Nowadays, the Japanese are energetically promoting East Asian Studies. Looking at the direction of their sword, it is clear our country is in grave danger. Let’s see who will be the rulers of East Asia. Countrymen, it is time to wake up!39

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China  77 Partly a heuristic device to mobilize readers, the last sentence in the quote (“­Countrymen, it is time to wake up!”) highlighted the Chinese acute sense of vulnerability. At a time when the nation-state system was unable to resolve the contradictions between national independence and imperialist expansion, and between national sovereignty and the domination of colonial powers, “anti-­imperialistic nationalism” became an effective tool of mobilization. Within the country, it offered the raison d’être for asking citizens to defend their nation and to make selfless sacrifices. Eloquently expressed by Gu Jiegang and Shi Nianhai in their account of Chinese boundaries, the purpose of historical geography now became “not to let enemies take away an inch of our land.”40 Epilogue This study shows that for many Chinese of the early twentieth century, the ­nation-state system was full of contradictions and incongruities. On the one hand, it presented itself as a “measurement of civilization” in a hierarchy in time denoting human progress from barbarism to civilization. As a measurement of civilization, it invites everyone—Africans, Asians, Europeans, Muslims—to join the global march for “liberty, fraternity, and equality.” On the other hand, especially after WWI, the nation-state system promoted a hierarchy in space in which strong nations were allowed to acquire lands and resources without regard to the territorial sovereignty of weak nations. It created a contradiction between the lofty goal of safeguarding the national independence of all legitimate nations and the harsh (if not dark) reality of the imperialist powers continuing to invade and occupy the lands of weak nations. As shown in this study, it was this tension between a hierarchy in time and a hierarchy in space that was central to the changes in the modern Chinese conception of Japan. When the Chinese understood the nation-state system as a hierarchy in time for human evolution, China would join the community of nation-states by modeling itself on Japan’s “East Asian modernity.” When the Chinese understood the nation-state system as a hierarchy in space for acquiring wealth and land, they saw Japan as an aggressor and a competitor. With this understanding, we must look at Chinese nationalism more carefully. Before we blame the Chinese for narrowing their horizon and adopting a victim mentality, we should first examine the nationstate system, which is still strong today despite predictions of its demise after the Cold War. Bibliography Bai, Yueheng 白月恆. 1912. “Liding xingzheng qu beikao 釐定行政區備考” (Notes on Dividingthe Administrative Districts), Dixue zazhi 地學雜志 7–8: pp. 1a–1b. Bai, Weichu 白眉初 (Bai Yueheng 白月恆). 1928–1930. “Pianma kou” 片馬考” (Studies of Pianma), Dixue zazhi 2 (1928): pp. 161–182; 1 (1929): pp. 16–28; 2 (1929): pp. 153–170; 1 (1930): pp. 35–50; 2 (1930): pp. 162–181. Bull, Hedley, and Adam Watson, eds. 1984. The Expansion of International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

78  Tze-ki Hon Dixue Zazhi editors 1923. “Pianma jiashe zhong zhi Yuanan tongtian” 片馬交涉中之雲南 通(A Collection of Telegrams about the Negotiation over Pima), Dixue zazhi 3–4: pp. 3–4. ——. 1929. “Pianma jiashe zhong zhi Yuanan tongtian,” Dixue zazhi 1: pp. 16–28; 2: pp. 153–170. Chow, Kai-wing. 1997. “Imagining Boundaries of Blood: Zhang Binglin and the Invention of the Han ‘Race’ in Modern China,” in The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan, ed. Frank Dikötter, pp. 34–52. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. de Lacourperie, Terrien. 1892. The Yh-king and Its Author. London: D. Nutt. ——. 1893. Western Origin of the Western Early Chinese Civilisation. London: Asher. Dikötter, Frank. 1992. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Duara, Prasenjit. 1997. “Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900 1945,” American Historical Review 102.4: pp. 1030–1051. ——. 2003. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Feng, Jiasheng 馮家昇. 1934. “Wode yanjiu dongbei shidi de jihua 我的研究東北史地的 計劃” (My Plan of Studying the History of the Northeast), Yu Gong banyuekan 禹貢半 月 1.10: p. 2. ——. 1935. “Dongbei shide yanjiu zhi yiyou chengji 東北史地研究之已有成績” (The Results of the Study of the Northeast), Yugong banyuekan 2.10: p. 2. ——. 1936. “Riren duiyu wo dongbei de yanjiu jinkuang 日人對於我東北的研究近況” (Recent Development in the Japanese Studies of our Northeastern Region), Yu Gong banyuekan 5.6: p. 6. Fitzgerald, John. 1996. Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gong, Gerritt W. 1984. The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Gu, Jiegang 顧頡剛 and Shi Nianhai 史念海. 1938. Zhongguo jiangyu yange shi 中國疆域 沿史 (An Account of the Changes in China’s Territories). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan. Han, Ziqi 韓子奇 (Hon Tze-ki). 2008. “Jinru shijie de cuozhe yu ziyou—Ershi shiji chude Dexue zazhi,” 進入世界的挫折與自由—二十世紀初的《地學雜誌》, Xin Shixue 新 史19.2: pp. 156–166. Hon, Tze-ki. 2010. “From a Hierarchy in Time to a Hierarchy in Space: Meanings of SinoBabylonianism in Early 20th Century China,” Modern China 36.2: pp. 139–169. ——. 2013. “Technology, Markets, and Social Change: Print Capitalism in Early Twentieth Century China,” in Print, Profit, and Perception: Ideas, Information, and Knowledge in Chinese Societies, 1895–1949, edited by Pei-yin Lin and Wei-pin Tsai. Leiden: Brill. Iriye, Akira. 1988. China and Japan in Global Setting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kirby, William C. 1997. “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era,” China Quarterly 150.2: pp. 439–441. Lewis, Martin W. and Kären E. Wigen. 1997. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Little, Richard. 2009. Introduction to Shogo Suzuki, Civilization and Empire, China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society, pp. xiv–xvi. New York: Routledge. Lu, Weizhao 陸惟昭. 1922. “Zhongdeng Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu bianji shangli 中等中 國歷教科書編輯商例” (Examples for Editing Chinese History Textbooks for Middle School), Shidi xuebao 史地學報 1.3: pp. 21–41.

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China  79 Miao, Fenglin 繆鳳林. 1921. “Zhongguo shi zhi xuanchuan中國史之宣傳” (The Goal of Chinese History), Shidi xuebao 1.2: pp. 209–213. Peng, Minghui 彭明輝. 1995. Lishi dili yu xiandai Zhongguo shixue 歷史地理與現代中國 史學. Taipei: Tongdai tushu gufan youxian gongsi. Reynolds, Douglas R. 1993. China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University. Shen, Songqiao 沈松橋. 1997. “Wo yi wo xue jian xuan yuan: Huangdi shenhua yu wanqing de guozu piango” 我以我血荐軒轅 :黄帝神话与晚清德國族建構, Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 台湾社会研究季刊 28.2: pp. 1–77. Suzuki, Shogo. 2009. Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society. New York: Routledge. Wang, Longzhang 王龍章. 1923. “Pianma wenti 片馬問題” (The Question of Pima), Dixue zazhi 地學雜志1–2: pp. 147–155. Xiong, Bingsui 熊秉穗. 1911–1912. “Zhongguo zhongzu kao 中國種族考” (A Study of the Chinese Race), Dixue zazhi 地學雜志18 (1911): pp. 1a–12b; 3–4 (1912): pp. 1a–10a. Xu, Guoqi. 2005. China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Xu, Zeling 徐則陵. 1921. “Shi zhi yizhong jieshi 史之一種解釋” (An Interpretation of History), Shidi xuebao 史地學報 1.1: pp. 1–7. Zhang, Qiyun 張其云. 1923. “Xiling diya xiyu xintu zhi” 西靈地雅《西域新圖誌》 (The Spirit and Graciousness in the Western Region: On New Maps of the Western Area), Shida xueba 史地學報2.3: pp. 109–112. Zhu, Kezhen. 1921. “Ouzhou zhanhou zhi xin xingshi” 歐洲戰後之新形勢, Shidi xuebao 1.1: p. 163. ——. 1922. “Qingdao jieshou zhi qingxing” 青島接受之情形, Shidi xuebao 2.2: p. 90. Zhao, Xiangyuan. 趙祥瑗. 1922. “Pianma wenti de yanjiu” 片馬問題的研究” (A Study of the Question of Pianma), Shidi xuebao 史地學報 2.4: pp. 109–121.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter appears in “From Trust to Mistrust: Sino-Japanese Relations after the Versailles Settlement” in Beyond Versailles: The 1919 Moment and a New Order in East Asia, edited by Tosh Minohara and Evan Dawley (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), pp. 43–60. Additional research and editing for this chapter were done after I moved to Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. I thank the Research Centre for History and Culture, Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai campus) for providing the research facility. I also thank Guangdong Provincial Government for providing financial support under the program: “广东省高水平大学建设计划（重点学科建设高校） (2021–2025年）重点学科研究中心与科研团队项目”. 2 Shogo Suzuki, Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 1‒10. 3 For the significance of Suzuki’s argument, see Richard Little’s introduction to Civilization and Empire, pp. xiv–xvi. 4 The classic works on the common path of socialization are Gerritt W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) and Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). For a historical reflection on China’s and Japan’s internationalization, see Akira Iriye, China and Japan in Global Setting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 5 Douglas R. Reynolds, China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (­Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1993), pp. 1‒39.

80  Tze-ki Hon 6 Elsewhere, I discuss the significance of this East Asian network of knowledge and technology sharing. See Tze-ki Hon, “Technology, Markets, and Social Change: Print Capitalism in Early Twentieth-Century China,” in Print, Profit, and Perception: Ideas, Information, and Knowledge in Chinese societies, 1895–1949, edited by Pei-yin Lin and Wei-pin Tsai (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 92‒113. 7 Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 74–77. 8 Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 8. 9 For a discussion of how the standard of civilization shaped international relations during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). Elsewhere, I have discussed how the Chinese responded to the standard of civilization. See Han Ziqi 韓子 奇 (Hon Tze-ki), “Jinru shijie de cuozhe yu ziyou—Ershi shiji chude Dexue zazhi,” 進 入世界的挫折與自由—二十世紀初的《地學雜誌》, Xin Shixue 新史學 19.2 (June 2008): pp. 156–166. 10 Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War, pp. 15–16. 11 William C. Kirby, “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era,” China Quarterly 150.2 (1997): pp. 439–441. 12 For an account of Chinese fixed feelings about the nation-state system after WWI, see Xu Guoxi, China and the Great War, pp. 244–277. 13 Prasenjit Duara, “Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900– 1945,” American Historical Review 102.4 (October 1997): pp. 1030–1051; Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 1–40. 14 In the first year of its publication, Dixue zazhi carried a large variety of articles including articles about rock formation, weather patterns, mining technology, the opening of the Suez Canal, and the railroad system. See especially Dixue zazhi 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4. 15 Terrien de Lacourperie, Western Origin of the Western Early Chinese Civilisation (­London: Asher, 1893), pp. 1–8. 16 Terrien de Lacourperie, The Yh-king and Its Author (London: D. Nutt, 1892), pp. v–xix; Western Origin, pp. 16–19. 17 Kai-wing Chow, “Imagining Boundaries of Blood: Zhang Binglin and the Invention of the Han ‘Race’ in Modern China,” in The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan, ed. Frank Dikötter (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), pp. 34–52; Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 116–123; John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 67–88; Shen Songqiao 沈松橋, “Wo yi wo xue jian xuan yuan: Huangdi shenhua yu wanqing de guozu piango” 我以我血荐軒轅:黄帝神话与晚清德國族建 構, Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 台湾社会研究季刊 28.2 (1997): pp. 1–77; Tze-ki Hon, “From a Hierarchy in Time to a Hierarchy in Space: Meanings of Sino-Babylonianism in Early 20th Century China,” Modern China 36.2 (2010): pp. 139–169. 18 Xiong Bingsui, “Zhongguo zhongzu kao 中國種族考” (A Study of the Chinese Race), Dixue zazhi 18 (1911): pp. 1a–12b; 3–4 (1912): p. 1a. 19 Xiong Bingsui, “Zhongguo zhongzu kao,” Dixue zazhi 18 (1911): p. 3b. 20 Xiong Bingsui, “Zhongguo zhongzu kao,” Dixue zazhi 3.3–4 (1912): p. 10a. 21 Bai Yueheng, “Liding xingzheng qu beikao 釐定行政區備考” (Notes on Dividing the Administrative Districts), Dixue zazhi 7–8 (1912): p. 1a. 22 Ibid., p. 1b. 23 Ibid. 24 In referring to human development, the writers of Shidi xuebao deliberately avoided using terms that implied linear progression (e.g., jinhua 進化). Instead, they used terms such as tuibian 蛻變 (transform and change) and yanhua 演化 (evolve and change) to

The Meanings of the 1919 Moment in China  81 stress the continuity in change in human civilization. For the meaning of yanhua, see Miao Fenglin, “Zhongguo shi zhi xuanchuan” 中國史之宣傳, Shidi xuebao 1.2 (1921): pp. 209–213. 25 Shidi xuebao editors, “Bianji daoyan” 編輯導言, Shidi xuebao 2.1 (1922): pp. 1–2. 26 Zhu Kezhen, “Ouzhou zhanhou zhi xin xingshi” 歐洲戰後之新形勢, Shidi xuebao 1.1 (1921): p. 163. 27 Zhu Kezhen, “Qingdao jieshou zhi qingxing” 青島接受之情形, Shidi xuebao 2.2 (1922): p. 90. 28 Miao Fenglin, “Zhongguo shi zhi xuanchuan,” p. 212. 29 Showing how greatly territorial boundaries had dominated the discussion of historical geography, Dixue zazhi also gave prominent coverage to the historical significance and national interest in the “Pianma Question.” See Wang Longzhang 王龍章, “Pianma wenti” 片馬問題, Dixue zazhi 1–2 (1923): pp. 147–155; “Pianma jiashe zhong zhi ­Yuanan tongtian” 片馬交涉中之雲南通電, Dixue zazhi 3–4 (1923): pp. 3–4; 1 (1929): pp. 16–28; 2 (1929): pp. 153–170. On the Pianma controversy, see also Bai Weichu 白 眉初, “Pianma kou” 片馬考, Dixue zazhi 2 (1928): pp. 161–182; 1 (1929): pp. 16–28; 2 (1929): pp. 153–170; 1 (1930): pp. 35–50; 2 (1930): pp. 162–181. 30 Zhao Xiangyuan,“Pianma wenti de yanjiu” 片馬問題的研究, Shidi xuebao 2.4 (1922): pp. 109–121. See also Peng Minghui 彭明輝, Lishi dili yu xiandai Zhongguo shixue 歷 史地理與現代中國史學 (Taipei: Tongdai tushu gufan youxian gongsi, 1995), p. 131. 31 Miao Fenglin, “Zhongguo shi zhi xuanchuan,” p. 212. 32 Ibid., p. 212. For similar reasons, Liu Yizheng criticized Liang Qichao for discussing the north–south division in Chinese history. See Liu Yizheng, “Xu.” 33 Xu Zeling 徐則陵, “Shi zhi yizhong jieshi” 史之一種解釋, Shidi xuebao 1.1 (1921): pp. 1–7. 34 Zhang Qiyun, “Xiling diya xiyu xintu zhi” 西靈地雅《西域新圖誌》, Shida xuebao 2.3 (1923): pp. 109–112. 35 Lu Weizhao 陸惟昭, “Zhongdeng Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu bianji shangli” 中等中國 歷史教科書編輯商例, Shidi xuebao 1.3 (1922): pp. 21–41. 36 Ibid., p. 2. 37 Feng Jiasheng, “Wode yanjiu dongbei shidi de jihua” 我的研究東北史地的計劃, Yu Gong banyuekan 1.10 (1934): p. 2. 38 Feng Jiasheng, “Dongbei shide yanjiu zhi yiyou chengji” 東北史地研究之已有成績, Yugong banyuekan 2.10 (1935): p. 2. 39 Feng Jiasheng, “Riren duiyu wo dongbei de yanjiu jinkuang” 日人對於我東北的研究 近況, Yu Gong banyuekan 5.6 (1936): p. 6. 40 Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 and Shi Nianhai 史念海, Zhongguo jiangyu yange shi 中國疆域沿 革史 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1938), p. 4. The original line is, “雖一寸山河， 亦不當輕易付諸敵人.”

5

Marginalized Science of Modernity Statistics and Building a Nation-State without Knowing Oneself Koichiro Matsuda

Introduction At the end of the Tokugawa regime, the young scholars Nishi Amane and Tsuda Mamichi were dispatched to the Netherlands to study Western law, economics, and other social sciences, including the basic elements of statistics. After returning to Japan, they attempted to apply their knowledge to legislation and education under the new Meiji government. Fukuzawa Yukichi, a famous advocator of “civilization theory,” exhibited a keen interest in H. T. Buckle’s statistical interpretation of social change and in Francis Galton’s “eugenics”. Sugi Kōji and Kure Ayatoshi, who worked in the government’s statistics bureau, were committed to elaborating the analytical description of society using statistics. Since then, proposals for establishing a national institution for statistics as an indispensable part of government have been submitted more than a few times. In the earlier stage, the utility of statistics for government was for practical administrative goals, such as estimating the demographical situation and economic trends. Later, at around the turn of the century, concerns with social problems such as public health and public morals were merged in the advocacy of the promotion of statistics. However, most of their attempts to promote statistics encountered difficulties in inducing policymakers to understand the meaning and utility of statistical methodology as a part of the science of government. Instead, ironically, the statistical survey of society was appropriated for the consolidation of nationalistic sentiment. As Ian Hacking suggested, statistics could be used as a scientific tool to fortify the representation of collective identities such as “class” and “race” (Hacking 2015; Kertzer and Arel 2002, 5–8). The magnetism of nationalism exerted a pull in every critical phase of the development of statistics in Japan. That said, not a few exceptions appeared in history. There were attempts to bring “modernity” to political decision-making through the social scientific method of Selbstbeschreibung (self-description) of Japanese society. This chapter will trace the unsuccessful history of the challenge of “modernity.” Law of Heaven and Public Mind In his prominent work on the history of statistics, Ian Hacking stated that “every country was statistical in its own way” (Hacking 1990, 33). Statistics have been DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-8

Marginalized Science of Modernity  83 recognized not only as a science of observation but for the adjustment, ­maintenance, and refortification of the social system as an interactive system of various elements and the roles of agents. When a group of young Japanese intellectuals encountered statistics in the mid-nineteenth century, the very first step of Selbstbeschreibung, to borrow Niklas Luhmann’s term (Baraldi et al. 2021, 209–212), of the state of Japanese society was undertaken. This chapter will focus on the introduction, adoption, and elaboration of statistics in Japan. It will help us fathom the appropriation of “modernity” in modern Japan’s political and intellectual arguments. Mass observation is indispensable for inferring what is called the law of nature. Aggregating a large quantity of data is the foundation of statistics to make inductive inference possible. The central government’s nationwide population census in Japan that began in 1721 was called shigo aratame (子午改, Survey in the years of the mouse and the horse) because the Tokugawa government carried out the census every six years thereafter. The shōgun Tokugawa Yoshimune took the initiative, but the aim and method of the survey were not indicated clearly. According to one samurai official of Kumamoto, it was Ogyū Sorai (荻生徂徠 1666–1728, a prominent Tokugawa Confucian scholar) who proposed the nationwide survey of the life situation of the common people (Kakizuka 1811, 197; Sekiyama 1958, 69). The results were nothing more than compilations of reports with low veracity from the offices of regional domain lords based on the records made by local officers and village headsmen. Also, the samurai class and their servants were not included in the survey (Cullen 2006; Dropper 1894, 260; Sekiyama 1958, 64–86). After the Meiji government took power, some officials in the government advocated the establishment of a specialized agency for handling the national survey and statistical analysis because they learned from Western books or direct experience abroad that precise knowledge of the social and economic situation of the people was essential for “civilized” government. Still, the idea of creating a responsible central institution at a high level in the government did not obtain enough support from political leaders. Statistics was introduced by intellectual pioneers who studied in the Netherlands, such as Nishi Amane (1829–1897) and Tsuda Mamichi (1829–1903). They recognized that statistics, as a science of government, did not only concern the skill of gathering social data but also brought in a new perspective to define critical numerical indices, assess causal relationships of variable elements, and evaluate the result of policy implementation. It was essentially different from a simple calculation of survey results, such as counting population or calculating rice production. A method of setting up indicators of “civilization” was the discovery of “modernity” for them. Tsuda Mamichi studied in Leiden under Simon Vissering (1818–1888), ­professor at the University of Leiden in 1862. Vissering was known for his ­significant contribution to the development of statistical science in the ­Netherlands (Randeraad 2010, 154), and he taught elements of political economy

84  Koichiro Matsuda to Tsuda (Ōkubo 2014, 102). Vissering’s lecture notes taken by Tsuda contain a remark: [Statistics is] the science that clarifies the facts and principles of the actual state of mutual aid among people to live together in one, several or every country. This state under study is called human society, or human association. (Tsuda 2001 [1874], 224) The phrase “mutual aid among people to live together” was the translation of “maatschappelijke leven” (social life) that Tsuda learned from Vissering. We can detect a tinge of Confucian moralistic understanding from this expression. The phrase “mutual aid, 相生養, aiseiyō” has to be taken from a Chinese classic, Han Yu (韓愈 768–824)’s Yuan dao (原道) (Ivanhoe 2009, 134), but also possibly from Ogyū Sorai’s Bendō. Ogyū Sorai used the phrase “mutual kinship, mutual love, mutual livelihood, mutual completion, mutual assistance, mutual nourishment, mutual protection, and mutual help” （相生相成相輔相養）to illustrate the beginning of the social condition for human beings by the act of the Sage Kings (Tucker 2006, 146). When Tsuda came across the concept of maatschappelijke leven, it can be presumed that Ogyū Sorai’s formulation of the beginning of society would be helpful in putting the idea into an intelligible explanation for Japanese readers. Tsuda’s note described that, through statistics, one could link the recognition of social conditions to the law of nature. As the scientists of astronomy have observed the motions of celestial bodies and discovered heaven’s law that rules them, statisticians will discover the laws of nature [natuurwetten] that govern our life and work through examining the facts of human social life with aiseiyō [mutual aids]. (Tsuda 2001 [1874], 226) Tsuda used the word “tenritsu” (天律, literally, the law of heaven) to translate the Dutch term “natuurwetten.” In Tsuda’s note, the law of heaven was closer to the scientific “law of nature” rather than the ethical or legal “law of nature.” Natuurwetten was an ambiguous word containing both scientific and ethical implications. Tsuda wrote, “statistics aims to detect doubtlessly evident facts, to take what is good and leave what is bad, and to change as much as possible the habits which are inimical to practical reason, even if they have prevailed for a long time” [italics mine] (Tsuda 2001 [1874], 225). Tsuda’s colleague, Nishi Amane, who also studied with Tsuda in Leiden under Vissering, shared this view and placed natuurwetten as the foundation of legal justice. Every existence between Heaven and the Earth has to follow the immanent law of nature 天法 endowed in itself. Human beings also have their characteristic nature 性 to comply fully with the law of nature. It is the task of legal

Marginalized Science of Modernity  85 philosophy to discern the generally adaptable law of nature and establish measures for the implementation of it in society [人世交際相生養, literally, “people socializing with and aiding one another to live together”]. (Nishi 1961[n.d.], 315) In this passage, Nishi also used the phrase “mutual aid 相生養” (Ōkubo 2014, 58). The inviolable law of nature out of necessity (天法) was closely linked to what Nishi called “immanent human nature 性”. Nishi wrote: “What is the origin of law? I would say it originated from the force of necessity in people’s daily lives[….] Human nature essentially contains the elements of making law and abiding by it” (Nishi 1961 [1881 or 1882], 146). Studying and describing the state of society through the statistical method had to be a step toward discovering the law of nature. This concept of the law of nature contains both descriptive and prescriptive implications, and neither Tsuda nor Nishi dared to distinguish these two elements. Statistics could show the universal rule of history that the efforts of human beings cannot change or avoid, but, at the same time, it shows the immanent value in human “nature.” While the prescriptive element in the idea of the law of nature was emphasized in their arguments, at this stage, they did not know about the methods for how to form a hypothesis and how to test significance. Therefore, they had to discover the law of nature by adopting Western theories or just intuition, rather than conducting scientific testing of whether such a “law” could be verified. Progressivism and Determinism At the early stage of the Meiji period, an exploration of the sociological and psychological implications of statistics was conducted by Fukuzawa Yukichi ­ (1835–1901). He mentioned the utility of statistics and presented an example showing that even the strength of the sense of justice could be measured in a quantifiable way. Some may say that the examples of evil people’s insincerity are limitless, but not all people are like this—Japan has been a just country, in which from ancient times there have been many examples of loyal retainers who have given their lives for their lords. To this I answer that so it was. We have not been without examples of loyal retainers since ancient times. But their number has been so small that the accounts do not tally. The Genroku Period, for example, can be called the period when the flower of chivalry was in full bloom. At that time there were forty-seven loyal samurai in the Akō clan with its 70,000 koku income. In a domain of 70,000 koku there were about 70,000 people. If there were forty-seven in 70,000 there should have been about 4,700 in seven million. But chivalry also declined with the changing of the seasons of history, as people also say, and truly, too. Therefore deducting thirty percent from the supposed chivalry of the Genroku Period, for seven million people the proportion should be about 70% of 4,700, which is 3,290.

86  Koichiro Matsuda If the present population of Japan is about thirty million, the number of loyal people should be 14,100. A child of three can calculate that this number is not enough to protect present-day Japan. (Fukuzawa 2013 [1872–6], 84) In his masterwork An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, Fukuzawa referred to H.T. Buckle’s positivist theory of civilization and emphasized the utility of statistics in terms of “advances in learning.” As the Englishman Buckle wrote in his History of Civilization in England, if we consider the spirit of a nation as a whole, it is amazing how we can find a determinate pattern in it…. Hence, probable patterns within a country cannot be discerned from one event or one thing. Actual conditions can only be determined by taking a broad sampling and making minute comparisons. This method is called statistics in the West. It is an indispensable method for investigating and evaluating human affairs. Modern Western scholars, relying completely on this method, have made great advances in learning. If we chart the figures for land area and population, the prices of commodities and wage rates, and the number of the married, the living, the sick, and those who die, the general conditions of a society will become clear at a glance, even things one ordinarily cannot calculate. For example, I have read that the number of marriages in England every year follows fluctuations in the price of grain. When grain prices go up, marriages decline, and vice versa. The ratio can be predicted unerringly. Since no Japanese has made such tables of statistics, we have no accurate idea of such patterns in Japan, but the number of marriages must certainly fluctuate with the price of rice and barley. (Fukuzawa2008 [1875], 64–66. The emphasis in the original) In Victorian Britain, Buckle was usually depicted pejoratively as “the great proponent of statistical determinism” (Hacking 1983, 465; Hacking 1990, 123). However, ­Fukuzawa evaluated highly Buckle’s argument that the dynamics of “the spirit of the nation” and “the general conditions of a society” must be clarified by sampling the external behavior of individuals, charting the figures, and identifying the “determinate pattern” (定則 teisoku). A question remains whether Fukuzawa associated the “determinate pattern” of collective spirit with the universal law of nature and accepted “determinism.” Also, whether Fukuzawa recognized a philosophical problem of antagonism between free will and determinism is not clear. At least, however, as the quotation above shows, he was strongly impressed by statistics as the “method” of “evaluating human affairs.” Fukuzawa’s interest in the “determinate pattern” implies a departure from Tsuda’s idea of tenritsu (the law of nature) in the sense that the methodological thinking of pattern-finding and the ethical value of the law of nature were carefully distinguished (Ishii 2013, 29–34).

Marginalized Science of Modernity  87 Fukuzawa’s interest in the pattern-finding methodology seems to have directed his social thought to being more deterministic, if not fatalistic. A few years later from An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, Fukuzawa encountered a new science called “eugenics”. He showed strong interest in Francis Galton. However, it is a thoughtless act that people carefully check the pedigree of livestock or seeds of plants but pay less attention to the bloodline of human beings. I have been interested in gathering the source of genealogy and marital relations to publish a book on that topic and came across a book titled Hereditary Genius by an English scholar named Galton, which exactly caught my interest. (Fukuzawa 1881, 307) Fukuzawa’s interest in Francis Galton presents a strange impression when contrasted with the egalitarianism and progressive optimism of his earlier works. Galton advocated mathematical approaches in eugenics, such as a standard curve, correlation, and regression analysis. Fukuzawa does not seem to have fully ­mastered Galton’s method, but he was enormously impressed by the idea of quantifying human capabilities and educational effects. Fukuzawa did not remain an advocator of statistics in publication. Still, he was involved in the movement for setting up an institution for statistics in the government. He sent a list of candidates whom he estimated as competent and eligible upon a request by Ōkuma Shigenobu, a high official in the government (Fukuzawa 2001 [1879], 149–151). As a result, the Statistical Bureau was founded in 1881. However, Ōkuma, who led the project, was expelled from the government in the same year, and the Statistical Bureau did not achieve its intended function. This newly established department was finally reduced in budget and authority only four years later. Statistics as an Independent Science Exploring the “determinate pattern” became a shared interest among the i­ ntellectuals who studied Western sciences. Sugi Kōji (1828–1917), in his inauguration speech for the opening of the Statistical School in 1883, remarked: If put in a phrase, the essential element of statistics is collective experience. Only by observing considerable collective experience, can we grasp the law of nature（天法）, which, as I mentioned earlier, is the pivot of all human societies, governs the movement of social transition, and rules human life. (Sugi 1902 [1883], 111) Sugi Kōji is known as the founder of statistical science in Japan. He first studied Dutch medical science at the end of the Tokugawa period and extended his interests to military science and statistics. Sugi did not have an opportunity to study abroad, but he became fluent in Dutch and German. He had the chance to

88  Koichiro Matsuda borrow Tsuda’s notebook of Vissering’s lectures before its publication and was fascinated by the concept of statistics. He was appointed to a position in the Meiji government and worked in the administrative survey division. He planned and implemented preliminary censuses in the Suruga region and Kai region. He also established an independent school and research institute called Hyōkigakusha (表記学社, the Statistical School) in 1876, later Sutachisuchikku-sha (the ­Statistics Society) in 1878, and also started Sutachisuchikku-zasshi (The Journal of Statistics) in 1886. At the time Sugi worked in the survey office, statistics was officially called seihyō (政表, literally, “political charts”). Sugi did not regard seihyō as an appropriate translation because he thought statistics should be an independent science and not just a technical survey skill for administration. In Sugi’s memoirs, he mentioned that he was not content with the low status and insufficient staff of the statistics team attached to other significant divisions in the financial bureau (Sugi 1918, 79–80). This was partly the reason for his persistence with the romanized spelling sutachisuchikku. To make the name of statistics widely known among the public, Sugi also coined modified Chinese characters to write the word sutachisuchikku (statistics) (Figure 5.1). The significance of statistics as a science, according to Sugi, lies in its independence from the political judgment of politicians and officials with authority. In his speech for the Statistics Society in1886, he declared: Statistics is a new science of the civilized world… Scholars have allocated statistics as a part of history, geography, governmental law, politics, mathematics, or natural history…. In the present day, statistics has become an independent science which has its whole proper structure, study area, responsibility, and method…. Statistics is a practical and empirical science. It aims to discover the law of nature by examining phenomena, verifying facts, and investigating causes through its method. (Sugi 1902 [1886], 139–142). On the other hand, Sugi stressed the utility of statistics for governing the country as long as its scientific credibility was secured.

Figure 5.1  Japanese Kanji of sutachisuchikku modified by Sugi (Yabuuchi 1995, 26).

Marginalized Science of Modernity  89 The facts, meaning the numbers used in statistics, are the fundamentals of consideration and judgment in pursuing the principle of the state and the people. They have to be handled with extra precaution. No one can have the right to modify the numbers, such as rewrite one to two or vice versa. (Sugi 1902 [1886], 142–143) The most influential sources of Sugi’s knowledge about statistics were books by German professors of national economy, such as Lehr- und Handbuch der Statistik in ihrer neuesten wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung (Textbook and handbook of statistics in its latest scientific development, 1872) by Max Haushofer and Die Moralstatistik und die christliche Sittenlehre: Versuch einer Sozialethik auf empirischer Grundlage (Moral Statistics and the Christian Doctrine of Morals: An Attempt at Social Ethics on an Empirical Basis, 1868–1873) by Alexander von Oettingen. Haushofer was a national economy and statistics professor at the Technical University of Munich. Sugi used Haushofer’s book as a textbook at the school. Also, the book by Oettingen (1827–1905) possibly gave more profound theoretical inspiration to Sugi (Hayami 2009, 373; Sugi 1918, 18–19). Oettingen was not only a theologian but also a statistician and professor of evangelical theology at the Estonian University of Dorpart (Tartu). He was a unique theologian who attempted the sociological study of the moral climate of the time by applying statistical analysis. He hypothesized that the suicide rate of Protestants was higher than Catholics. The “moral” statistics tended to focus on “immoral” behavior, such as suicide, crime, or divorce, and Oettingen was one of the forerunners who attempted the combination of statistical science and moral philosophy (Ledler 2013). Accordingly, Sugi referred to Oettingen when he analyzed the cause of moral decay, crime, and the high death rate in urban areas of Japan (Sugi 1902[1890], 258–260). Sugi continued to hold his admiration for “civilization” and a conviction in the value of statistics as a moral science of the “civilized world.” Kure Ayatoshi (1851–1918), who served as a junior officer and studied statistics under Sugi, firmly asserted statistics’ practical utility for “the progress of society.” The aim of statisticians is to discover the natural principle and the way of human beings for preventing harm and seeking utility…. It is a method and also a source to infer and prove （推知証明）tenpō (天法the law of nature), which governs the progress and condition of society. (Kure 1973 [1881], 4–7) Kure’s argument about the significance of statistics was more elaborate than the arguments of the older generation to the point that he distinguished correlation and causality. Kure did not cling to the idea of the law of nature as an ethical principle but stepped forward to prove it by scientific reasoning. To reinforce his view, Kure

90  Koichiro Matsuda quoted the inaugural lecture by G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, President of the Statistical Society of London: 1 Enable us to generalize in some instances and infer from such generalizations empirical laws of society. 2 Supply us the material from which we can deduce causes and thus establish a scientific relation between certain phenomena. 3 Enable us to verify the conclusions drawn from a priori reasoning and thus establish on a sure basis the laws that govern the condition and progress of society. (Kure 1973 [1881], 7; Shaw-Lefevre 1877, 513) Kure deliberately presented “the law of nature” as the laws that govern the ­condition of society which had to be presented through scientific procedure and reasoning (Yabuuchi 1995, 104–105). Kure published a textbook of statistics for “practitioners” (jitsumuka), titled Tōkeishōsetsu, ichimei, shakaikansatsuhō (Explication of statistics or the method of social observation) in 1888. In this book, he introduced the ideas of “Massenbeobachtung” (mass observation) and “purobeeburu” (probability) as indispensable working tools for understanding the condition of society (Kure 1888, 88–89, 165). At this point, modernity began to divert from moral interests based on past arguments. Probability and Causality As mentioned earlier, the project of establishing the national statistical institution was aborted due to the lack of commitment among the politicians and high-level officials at the core of the government. Statistics was only adopted as an accessory in limited areas, such as military medicine or public sanitation. Moreover, even in those areas, the opinions of the political authority claimed priority and were regarded as more important than empirical data. A well-known case is a dispute on the cause of beriberi among soldiers. Mori Rintarō (known as Ōgai, an eminent author of “modern” novels in the Meiji period), the Army’s Surgeon General, participated in the dispute over the causes of beriberi in soldiers. Mori adopted the contagion disease theory and flatly denied the nutritional imbalance theory (imbalance between carbohydrates and proteins). Later it was established that the cause of beriberi was a nutritional imbalance involving a vitamin B1 deficiency. Instead of examining the different theories of the cause of beriberi, Mori turned his attention to the reliability of the statistical methods used in the comparative research into soldiers and sailors. Mori wanted to defend the army’s policy of the nutrition provided to soldiers in which the staple diet was polished white rice. White rice contained less vitamin B1 but was very popular among soldiers because, usually, they came from the lower class. Mori relied on his intuition (and perhaps his wishful thinking) in maintaining that the

Marginalized Science of Modernity  91 statistical survey comparing nutrition between the Army and the Navy contained a ­methodological flaw and thus less reliability. Intending to defend his theory, Mori studied a wide range of German articles on statistical methods. Mori was very ­diligent as a bureaucrat in this sense. He pointed out technical problems in the survey, such as controlling variables. According to Mori, the scholars who supported the nutrition theory confused probability with causality. A simple comparison of the nutrition of the soldiers and the sailors might show probability but not causality. Then he concluded: Here we have statistics. Here we have the probabilistic method. Quantitative induction is only usable for scholars when the experimental result cannot identify the cause. When our knowledge is deficient, statistics is an auxiliary means of science. (Mori 1974 [1889], 220) His misdiagnosis may not be to blame because, at that time, vitamins had not been discovered yet. But not a few sources show that Mori’s decision relied too unguardedly on the authority of previous German medical science and paid too much consideration to the prevailing opinion among high Army officers. His reference to the mathematical methodology of statistics was mainly used to divert or narrow the point of the dispute. Some researchers say that Mori secretly accepted the nutrition theory but avoided saying so publicly. Mori seems to have used his elaborate knowledge about the limit of medical statistics primarily to confirm his ­authoritative position in the Army (Bay 2008). By the early twentieth century, scrupulous discussions were piling up in academic circles, such as about the method of sampling, controlling variables, and tests of significance. Statistics was included in university education courses as early as 1893 and in the secondary school curriculum by 1910 (Satō 2002, 84–85). Takano Iwasaburō (1871–1949), professor of statistics at the Imperial University of Tokyo since 1903, criticized Sugi Kōji and Sugi’s followers. According to Takano, Sugi failed to build his statistics method scientifically enough. Takano advocated that statistics should not remain as the technical method of social survey for the government but statisticians must develop it into the science of exploring the general laws of social change (Takano 1944, 20). Takano at first studied statistics because he was interested in the poverty issue in urban areas and wanted to research the life conditions of the poor. He submitted a report titled “East ­London In Tokyo” in 1894, written in English, to Professor Adolph von Wenckstern, a German economist teaching economics and statistics at the Imperial University of Tokyo (Takano 1961, 64–86). This background shows that Takano was motivated by his interest in practical methods of governing urban social issues. On the other hand, however, since his study in Germany, he became strongly influenced by Georg von Mayr’s theory of statistics and social policy. However, the government still downplayed these moves in academic and ­educational arenas and usually marginalized them in policy-making.

92  Koichiro Matsuda Census and the Masses In 1885, just after the Sino-Japanese War, Louis Guillaume (1833–1924), the director of the Federal Bureau of Statistics of Switzerland sent a request to ­ the ­Japanese ­government to conduct a national census. Eventually, the first national census was carried out in 1920. The term “national census” was translated to 国勢調査 ­kokusei-chōsa (literally, “the survey of national strength”). Kokusei (国勢) appeared in Guanzi 管子, an ancient Chinese classic of the legalist school. In Guanzi, kokusei (Chinese: guo　shi) was used to describe geographical features, including the natural environment, resources, and the characters of people. Therefore, it was not necessarily associated with evaluating power or strength (Rickett 2021, 419). In Japanese texts, kokusei had been used chiefly by Confucian scholars during the Tokugawa period, more often in the sense of the strength or momentum of a country, region, or its people, and combined with the judgment of strength or weakness. The adoption of kokusei-chōsa as the translation of “national census” shows that politics obscured the legislative intent of the national census. The proponents of the census aimed to implement the “population” census to construct the fundamental data of the situation of the daily life and activities of the people. They also stressed that Western countries demanded the Japanese census, and it should be a duty of a “civilized” state to cope with the global standard of governmental tasks. However, opponents in parliament and the administration were concerned that this grand project would exhaust local officers and local people. Also, they thought the public would be skeptical about the aim of the census because, historically, nationwide surveys of the population were used for taxation. Kokusei was a useful term to promote the project because it carried an impression of national wealth or strength, which stimulated nationalistic pride even among opponents, local officers, and reluctant residents (Satō 2002, 25–36). Kokusei was a sentiment-provoking term; on the other hand, the government did not reveal how they defined kokusei. The government agency in charge of statistics neglected to specify how they would analyze or what statistical method would be applied to the survey results. Prior to implementing the national census, Takahashi Katsuhiro (1850–1917, an officer of the Cabinet Statistic Bureau) confessed their weakness in capacity for the analysis in a lecture to students in 1911. Some people complain that the Imperial State Yearbook contains no review or analysis. They have a point, but the analysis task must be done in the academic book of statistics. The state yearbooks of other countries are the same and contain no review or evaluation but only numbers…. We are at a transitional stage and have difficulties in organizing tasks. We still face challenges in the future. A witness from the Western countries told us that our statistics lag more than fifty years behind. We still have a long way to go. (Takahashi 1990 [1911], 271) Takahashi spent most of his career as a bureaucrat in the governmental survey section, though he majored in French in the early Meiji years and had no specific

Marginalized Science of Modernity  93 education in economics or statistics. At least the officials in charge realized their insufficient capacity for statistical analysis, but no one dared to solve the problem. Contrasting to the indifference to the shortage of capacity and resources for managing governmental statistics, the National Census Bureau mobilized various media to publicize the census. It even published a songbook containing 20 popular-song-styled songs specifically composed for promoting the census. They were reminiscent of Government-sponsored songs for public events at the proclamation of the Meiji Constitution or the Sino-Japanese War, which were aimed at political mobilization through entertainment. With the publicity of the national census, the government used varieties of conventional popular song formats to gain support and popularity for their new policy of scrutinizing the situations of people’s lives (Figure 5.2). The songbook included 20 different kinds of bushi (melody patterns) with patriotic lyrics such as “Like the sun rises, our nation is rising. Let’s fill out the survey slip. From towns, countries, and coasts!” Urged on by the pressure in this chapter from central government, local governments mobilized every possible means to gain cooperation from inhabitants. The government focused more on the fervent support of the public for the census than on the results and their analysis which they had to cope with afterward. Strangely, only a short time after implementing the census, the Bureau of National Census was abolished in 1922. The Central Statistical Committee was established instead but abolished in 1940—just a year before Japan declared war on

Figure 5.2 Rinjikokuseichōsakyoku, Kokuseichōsa senden kayōshū (Songbook for the promotion of the national census), Tokyo, 1920.

94  Koichiro Matsuda the US. Even during WW II, all the government’s statistical resources were nothing more than piles of separate reports submitted by ministries and agencies. During wartime, the government was incapable of centralizing the statistical resources or establishing a centralized institution to manage governmental statistics. Not only the government but also the military downplayed the role of statistics. It is well known today that in 1939, “Akimaru [army lieutenant colonel Akimaru Jiro] Unit,” a research team including Arisawa Hiromi (1896–1988) and other young and active economists (most of them aged around 40), was commissioned by the army to study the prospects for industrial capacity and natural resources once Japan went to all-out war against the United States. Arisawa, the team leader for research on the U. S. and Britain, had been successor to the lectureship in statistics at the University of Tokyo after Takano Iwasaburō. He was arrested for the Peace Preservation Law and was under suspension because of his involvement in the Popular Front Incident in 1938.1 Still, Akimaru acknowledged that Marxist economists were competent in statistical analysis. Akimaru submitted the Arisawa team’s report to the army in 1941. The report concluded that Japan could not win and the army commanders did not want to accept that conclusion. When Akimaru presented the findings to the top commanders of the army on July 11, 1941, the generals praised the report’s methodology and economic data, but still declared that “the conclusions were contrary to national policy and thus the entire project must be ended and the report burned”. (Hein 2004, 79) The Japanese decision-makers persistently depended on intuition rather than data analysis, even on the eve of the Pacific War. Soon after the defeat of Japan, the Japanese government set up the Statistics Commission, of which the chairperson was Ōuchi Hyōe (1888–1980), a Marxist scholar and mentor of Arisawa at the University of Tokyo. Ōuchi had been purged from the university during wartime. In a round table talk of the members of the Statistics Commission on the first anniversary of the Commission, participants revealed the difficulties in conducting economic surveys. A serious problem was caused by “sectionalism” between ministries. Ōuchi remarked, “Our ideals are to sentoraraizu [centralize], but in practical settings, sekushonarizumu [sectionalism] dominates” (Arisawa 1990 [1948], 634). They pointed out that each ministry was only concerned with its immediate tasks and did not share the grand design of a nationwide economic survey. Also, the central government and the local agencies had trouble communicating with each other. The inefficiency in the decision-­ making process of the government survived. Conclusions or Hindsight In hindsight, most Japanese political leaders did not pay enough attention to statistics and even did not hide their contempt for them. This may still be true today.

Marginalized Science of Modernity  95 It was recently revealed that the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) altered the numbers in the national wage survey and drew up a falsified report that concluded that wage levels had risen since PM Shinzo Abe and LDP came to power. Also, in early 2022, news media reported that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism (MLIT) had double-counted some of data when compiling its monthly construction trade data since fiscal year 2013. This probably led to miscalculating the country’s gross domestic product figures and affected the assessment of the national economy. Public opinion suspected that the MLIT did it on purpose, intending to disguise the difficult situation of the construction business (Asahi Shimbun 2021). This indicates that the Japanese government has regarded statistics as nothing more than a tool for manipulating public opinion. It has not recognized statistics as a science of understanding the condition of society and understood its utility as the basis of governmental decision-making. The Japan Statistical Society submitted a proposal to the government on the 8th of June, 2019, which reads: Under the decentralized institutions of governmental statistics, the redistribution of statistical resources among the ministries will not be put into ­practice, and coordinating functions among them do not work. Because of the disfunction of general coordination, abolishing the less valuable statistical results and setting up a new scheme of statistics useful for contemporary demands will be difficult. Adding to this, the shortage of statistics expertise has become more and more conspicuous. It is time to seriously consider structuring the statistical institution to overcome the harmful effect of the decentralized system of governmental statistics. (Nihon Tōkei Gakkai 2019, ii) This report also pointed out the lack of personnel policy of the government. In recent years, the central or local government appointed people with l­ imited knowledge and experience in statistics to positions in charge of statistics. Consequently, even when updated statistics were demanded, they could not plan a suitable project because of insufficient expertise. The background of this problem is personnel management with no regard to expertise and the abolition of the rule that stipulated staff appointments with a certificate of statistics during the 1980s. (Nihon Tōkei Gakkai 2019, 16) More deplorable is that this report was published only on the web page of MHLW, not the Prime Minister’s Office or the Diet’s. This reflection is still sectionalized within the ministry. The report has been left unattended, and no specific measure has been put on the government’s agenda until today.

96  Koichiro Matsuda It is 150 years since Western social science and statistical method were i­ntroduced to Japan. What have politicians, officials, and scholars been doing or not doing for that long time? It might not be exaggerating to say that “modernity” has been defeated by intuitional decision-making combined with a servile attitude to authority in the narrow circle of ministries or the military. If we focus on this point, Japan never knew “modernity,” and who knows if it will someday? Or has the “modernity” of Japan successfully created the servility of social sciences to politics? Note 1 The Peace Preservation Law, enacted in 1925, criminalized forming or joining a political organization with the objective to “alter the national polity” or “reject the private ­property system”. The application of the law expanded to groups of socialist and ­Marxist study groups including non-Communist academics from 1936 to 1938 (Ward 2019, xi–xii, 137).

Bibliography Asahi Shimbun. 2021. “Economic Stats Inflated for Years on Ministry’s Instructions.” December 15. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14502741. Arisawa, Hiromi, et al. 1990 [1948]. “Tōkeiiinkai isshūnen zadankai.” Tōkei, May, 1948. In Sōrifutōkeikyoku hyakunenshi shiryōshūsei, vol. 1, edited by Sōmuschōtōkeikyoku. Tokyo: Nihontōkeikyōkai. Baraldi, Claudio, et al. 2021. Unlocking Luhmann: A Keyword Introduction to Systems Theory. Geschichte. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press. Bay, Alexander R. 2008. “Beriberi, Military Medicine, and Medical Authority in Prewar Japan.” Japan Review, 20: 111–156. Cullen, Louis. 2006. “Tokugawa Population: The Archival Issues.” Japan Review, 18: 129–180. Droppers, Garrett. 1894. “The Population of Japan in the Tokugawa Period.” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 22, no. 49: 258–284. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1881. Jiji shōgen. Tokyo. ——. 2001 [1879]. “A letter to Ōkuma Shigenobu, 31 January, 1879.” In Fukuzawa Yukichi shokanshū, vol. 2, edited by Keiōgijuku. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten: 149–151. ——. 2008 [1875]. An Outline of a Theory of Civilization. The Thought of Fukuzawa. ­Translated by David A. Dilworth, and G. Cameron Hurst. Tokyo: Keio University Press. ——. 2013 [1872–1876]. An Encouragement of Learning. Translated by David A. Dilworth. New York: Columbia University Press. Hacking, Ian. 1983. “Nineteenth Century Cracks in the Concept of Determinism.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 44, no. 3(July–September): 455–475. ——. 1990. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 2015. “Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers.” In Biopower: Foucault and Beyond, edited by Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Original edition, 1983: 65–81. Hayami, Akira. 2009. Population, Family and Society in Pre-Modern Japan. Collected Papers of Akira Hayami. Folkestone, UK: Brill. Hein, Laura Elizabeth. 2004. Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in Twentieth Century Japan. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Berkeley and London: University of California Press.

Marginalized Science of Modernity  97 Ishii, Akiko. 2013. “Statistical Visions of Humanity: Toward a Genealogy of Liberal ­Governance in Modern Japan.” Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University. Ivanhoe, Philip J., et al. On Ethics and History: Essays and Letters of Zhang Xuecheng. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Kakizuka, Tōkō. 1909 [1811]. Kanshokuseidokō. In Higobunken sōsho, vol. 1, edited by Mutō Iwao. Tokyo: Kōbunkan: 105–219. Kertzer, David I., and Dominique Arel. 2002. Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Census. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kure, Ayatoshi. 1973 [1881]. “Tōkeiron.” Tōkeishūshi 2, 3, 4 (November). In Kure Ayatoshi chosakushū, vol. 2, edited by Ōuchi Hyōe et al. Nihonkeieishikenkyūjo: 4–14. ——. 1888. Tōkeishōsetsu, ichimei, shakaikansatuhō. Tokyo: Hōbunkan. Lederer, David. 2013. “Sociology’s ‘One Law’: Moral Statistics, Modernity, Religion, and German Nationalism in the Suicide Studies of Adolf Wagner and Alexander von Oettingen.” Journal of Social History, 46, no. 3 (Spring): 684–699. Mori, Ōgai. 1974 [1889]. “Igakutōkei no daigen.” Tokyo igakkai zasshi 569. February, 1889. In Ōgai zenshū. vol. 28, Iji Gunji 1, edited by Kinoshita Mokutarō et al. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten: 217–221. Nihon, Tōkei Gakkai. 2019. Kōtekitōkei no kaizen ni muketa honiinkai no kenkai to teigen. 8 June 2019. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/­ content/10700000/ 000534567.pdf. Nishi, Amane. 1961 [1881 or 1882]. “Genhōteikō.” In Nishi Amane zenshū, vol. 2, edited by Ōkubo Toshiaki. Tokyo: Munetaka shobō: 146–166. ——. 1961 [n.d.]. “Hōgakukankei danpen.” In Nishi Amane zenshū, vol. 2, edited by Ōkubo Toshiaki. Tokyo: Munetaka shobō: 314–328. Ōkubo, Takeharu. 2014. The Quest for Civilization: Encounters with Dutch Jurisprudence, Political Economy, and Statistics at the Dawn of Modern Japan. Translated by David Noble. Leiden: Brill. Randeraad, Nico. 2010. States and Statistics in the Nineteenth Century: Europe by Numbers. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rickett, W. Allyn. Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China: A Study and Translation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. Rinjikokuseichōsakyoku. 1920. Kokuseichōsa senden kayōshū. Tokyo. Satō, Masahiro. 2002. Kokusei chōsa to nihon kindai. Hitotsubashi daigaku keizai kenkyū sōsho 51. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Sekiyama, Naotarō. 1958. Kinsei nihon no jinkō kōzō: Tokugawa jidai no jinkō chōsa to jinkō jōtai ni kansuru kenkyū. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Shaw-Lefevre, G. J. 1877. “Inaugural Address of G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, Esq., M. P., President of the Statistical Society, delivered on Tuesday, the 20th November 1877,” Journal of the Statistical Society, XL, part IV (December): 509–530. Sugi, Kōji. 1902 [1883]. “Tōkeigakkō kaikōnoji.” In Sugisensei kōenshū, edited by Sera, Taichi. Tokyo: Yokoyama Masao: 105–122. ——. 1902 [1886], “Stachisuchikku no hanashi.” In  Sugisensei kōenshū, edited by Sera, Taichi. Tokyo: Yokoyama Masao: 137–146. ——. 1902 [1890], “Seishin no yōjō.” In Sugisensei kōenshū, edited by Sera, Taichi. Tokyo: Yokoyama Masao: 255–262. ——. 1918. Sugi Kōji jijoden. Tokyo: Sugi Hachirō. Takahashi, Katsuhiro. 1990 [1911]. “Teikokutōkei nenkandan.” Tōkeishūshi. 370. In Sōrifutōkeikyoku hyakunenshi shiryōshūsei, vol. 1, edited by Sōmuschōtōkeikyoku. Tokyo: Nihontōkeikyōkai: 266–271.

98  Koichiro Matsuda Takano, Iwasaburō. 1944. “Honsho no tebiki.” In Shakaiseikatsu niokeru gōhōsokusei. Translation by Takano of Die Gesetzmäßigkeit im Gesellschaftsleben: Statistische ­Studien by Georg von Mayr. 1877. Tokyo: Kurita shoten: 1–21. ———. 1961. Kappa no he. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Tsuda, Mamichi. 2001 [1874]. Hyōkiteikō. In Tsuda Mamichi zenshū, vol. 1, edited by Ōkubo Toshiaki et al. Tokyo: Misuzu shobō: 222–240. Tucker, John A. 2006. Ogyu Sorai’s Philosophical Masterworks: The Bendo and Benmei. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Ward, Max M. 2019. Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Yabuuchi, Takeshi. 1995. Nihon Tōkei hattatsushi kenkyū. Kyōto-shi: Hōritsu bunkasha.

6

Eastern Learning (Donghak) and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea Yutang Jin

Introduction: Why Donghak? There is a recent revival of academic interest in the interaction between the ­traditional philosophy of East Asia and the challenges of modernity. One example is the revival of interest in Confucianism. Scholars have shifted away from examining the compatibility between Confucianism and political modernity including human rights and democracy to exploring what Roger Ames (2020) calls the “inclusive hybrid model” that such an encounter brings about (Angle 2012; Bai 2019; Chan 2013; Tan 2003). The encounter between East and West is not simply such that Western modernity triggered social crises and responses from East Asian societies, as some previous generations of sinologists held, but that the vocabularies and concepts of modernity are domesticated and take a new shape in drastically different social and cultural contexts. Scholarly focus, however, has been overwhelmingly on major social and political powers such as China and, to a lesser extent, Japan, and there is a lack of comparative perspectives that draw on less visible but equally important societies such as Korea. Sidestepping Korean insight is tantamount to paradoxically creating a new type of hegemony when the very effort to deparochialize the canon of political theory, which has long been under the shadow of Western experience, is at stake. This chapter takes a historical approach to examine a particular social and intellectual movement called Eastern Learning (Donghak 東學/동학),1 which is a quintessential case of hybrid modernity that can shed light on the complex relationship between East Asia’s traditional thought and ideas of modernity. Donghak was an intellectual and social movement led by Confucian-inspired, unorthodox thinkers that held sway in late Joseon Korea in response to the existential crisis of traditional morality and growing influence of the West. It started out in the 1860s and culminated in a series of peasant upheavals before turning into an indigenous religion still alive in South Korean society today. After the death of the first and primary leader, Choe Je-u (崔濟愚 1824–1864), his successor Choe Si-hyeong (崔時亨 1827–1898) edited Choe Je-u’s words into the Comprehensive Book of Eastern Learning (Dongkyeong Daejeon 東經大全) and Yongdam’s Legacy (Yongdam Yusa 龍潭遺詞), which together formed the locus classicus of Donghak thought and were closely read and followed by Donghak disciplines in DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-9

100  Yutang Jin the following decades. They were written and compiled, however, with different audiences in mind. Dongkyeong Daejeon was written in Chinese characters, primarily targeting elite Koreans, while Yongdam’s Legacy was written in Korean, aimed at appealing to ordinary Koreans. The movement, after suffering several rounds of repression from the authorities, turned into peasant rebellions and later an explicit religious movement, which still survives to this day as the religion of the “Way of Heaven” (cheon-do kyo 天道教). The focus of this chapter is on Donghak as both social thought and a popular movement in the second half of the ­nineteenth century. As East Asia came to encounter the challenges of modernity through the expansion of colonialism and Western intellectual influence since the mid-nineteenth ­century, East Asian intellectuals went through a long and painful process of revamping, synchronizing, and sometimes rejecting its cultural past. Geographically located in the middle between China and Japan and long touted as the “hermit kingdom,” Joseon Korea found itself caught up in a similar situation with its neighboring countries but also experienced crises particular to its own social and political circumstances. The challenges from the West were not only socio-­economic in nature, but came from new concepts, vocabularies, and modes of knowledge production unknown to Joseon Koreans. Compounding these challenges were new forms of “foreignness” and the concomitant emergence of nationhood underlying the conditions of modernity. The threefold challenges—philosophical, socioeconomic, and national—coalesced into Korean intellectuals’ various ways of reconceptualizing and connecting with their self-understanding. The Donghak movement exhibited these three features insofar as philosophical reconstruction directly triggered a new understanding of community and socio-economic changes. Against this historical backdrop, my key argument is that Donghak creatively reconceptualized and adapted ideas of individuality, human dignity, and a new collectivity to the holistic understanding of cosmology, thereby engendering a distinctive type of hybrid modernity peculiar to its time. I further argue that these innovations were not the Donghak leaders’ idiosyncratic thought experiments but aimed at bringing about real social change at a time of great turbulence and uncertainty. I have two preliminary remarks. First, one may notice the use of such terms as “individuality” and “dignity” and question the way they are deployed in the subsequent discussion. I choose these terms because they best make sense of what was at stake in Donghak thought to its contemporary audience, and readers should not assume that these terms have exactly the same meanings as in, say, Mill’s or Weber’s writings. Second, although I do not dismiss Donghak’s contemporary relevance, my study is primarily historical as I make no suggestion that we should revert to the traditional cosmology along with its underlying assumptions. However, it has profound methodological implications for the way in which we think of social change in East Asia and more broadly the non-West today. Carving out the field of East Asian political theory and promoting a hybrid modernity that fits into the socio-political context—such as the concepts of Confucian democracy and Confucian perfectionism—is not only philosophically rewarding but also crucial to effecting meaningful social change in contemporary East Asia.

Eastern Learning and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea  101 Traditional Philosophy of Correlative Cosmology Choe Je-u’s Donghak was a direct response to the increasingly notable presence and pressure of Western influence, spearheaded by Christian missionaries and military might, in the East Asian region. Choe believed that the teachings of Catholicism, which was the predominant force of Christianity in Joseon Korea, posed not only practical challenges in terms of demonstrating technical and economic superiority but, more profoundly, spiritual and intellectual ones as they shook up the very foundation of Koreans’ cosmological understandings attributable to the Confucian tradition. Given the paramount importance of cosmology or worldviews in defining the cultural identity of a given society, the challenges Joseon Koreans faced were indeed some of the fundamental ones. Consequently, Donghak can, first and foremost, be seen as an effort to safeguard what is exposed to danger under these changing circumstances, though Donghak thinking also marked a significant departure from traditional Confucianism, as we will see in the next section. Correlative Cosmology

First, one of the primary features of this traditional cosmology, which underpins Joseon Koreans’ understandings of humans and how they relate to one another, is a holistic and correlative understanding of the world, which is directly attributable to Confucianism, as pointed out by Roger Ames (2011) and AC Graham (1989), among others. The Book of Changes, one of the ancient texts of Confucianism, provides a manual for making correlations along with seven appended commentaries detailing how they play out. The fundamental correlation is that there is no rupture between the myriad things in the universe. Rather, there is a continuity all the way down between natural, religious, and human experiences. The human realm is not marked out by norms and values entirely of its own making, but fostered in productive continuities that weave together Heaven, Earth, and humans. As Ames (2011, 52) puts it, “Confucian morality,” which is a predominant prototype of correlative philosophy, is a “cosmic phenomenon that emerges from the synergistic transactions that take place between the operations of nature and human effort.” Similarly, Philip Ivanhoe posits the “oneness hypothesis” as the distinctive character of the Chinese and East Asian philosophical traditions. For Ivanhoe, oneness does not simply claim that one is part of the larger whole, which is a trivial point to make. Rather, “the connections the oneness hypothesis advocates are those that conduce to the health, benefit, and improvement of both individuals and the larger wholes of which they are parts” (Ivanhoe 2017). This cosmology of correlative oneness, therefore, is simultaneously descriptive and prescriptive. Choe directly inherited this correlative, holistic cosmology. As he puts it, “the Creative is sublime and furthered through perseverance. The Way of Heaven is persistent” (Wonhyeong ijin choendo jisang元亨利貞 天道之常). This supreme Way of Heaven is reflected “in the continuity through the change of seasons and times,” and it also unfolds itself “every time one moves around or stands still, succeeds or fails [in one’s undertakings] (Comprehensive Book of Eastern Learning, “Essay on

102  Yutang Jin Self-Cultivation”). 2 Humans are endowed with normatively distinctive meanings, as we will see below, but they are essentially connected with Heaven and Earth as they are each essential parts of the cosmic cycles that preside over a wide array of phenomena. The precise way in which Donghak differs from what Choe calls Seohak, or Western Learning, is that the former “is born of nature” and follows the way things change in the cosmos, while Western Learning only takes the form of God that is “artificial and arbitrary” (CBEL, “Essay on Learning”). A specific example of this correlative cosmology can be found in “Songs from the Top” (Yu go-eum 流高吟) of Dongkyeong Daejeon, where Choe likens humans’ self-cultivation to towering mountains, incessant waterflows, and moon phases, all of which form a seamless whole (CBEL, “Songs from the Top”). It should also be noted that, although Choe directly inherited and closely reflected on Donghak’s mission within this correlative cosmology, there is also a visible token of Shamanism that points to a connection and communication between mythical forces and humans in Donghak thinking, which deviates from traditional Confucianism that refrains from speaking of “prodigies, force, disorder and gods” (Analects 7.21).3 For instance, Yongdam’s Legacy says that “I realized that if a person is truly committed, Heaven’s grace will fall upon him, and good fortune will come back.” Correspondingly, it enjoins people to put their “complete faith in Heaven” (Yongdam’s Legacy, “Kyohun ga”). There is, in these anecdotes, some resemblance of a personal God which can bestow good fortune on followers and the idea that faith, rather than virtue cultivation alone, is required to serve this God. But we need to caution against the view that Donghak gave up on traditional cosmology for three reasons. First, Donghak’s Heaven, even if at times endowed with some personal traits, does not reside independently outside one’s mind but is integral to one’s self-cultivation as part of the process of making sense of cosmological correlations—hence the idea that everyone has their own Heaven. Second, fortunes and misfortunes were not an artifact of the leaders but closely follow yin-yang cosmological changes extensively discussed in the Book of Changes—a Confucian classic. Finally, Shamanism is much more salient in Yongdam’s Legacy aimed at ordinary folks than in Dongkyeong Daejeon, and this lends support to U-Geun Han’s claim that the Donghak leaders instrumentally annexed Shamanism to Donghak thought to make it popular and effect real change (Han 1970). Relational Persons and Human Becomings

This cosmological understanding then points to a particular view of humans and how they relate to one another, which can be roughly divided into two aspects— humans as they are interrelated in myriad relationships and self-transformation or “human becomings.” Insofar as all under Heaven are interconnected, humans also do not remain in isolation but embody, and are embodied by, others through ethically robust relationships. Again, in speaking of human relationships, Ames and Henry Rosemont (2016, 91) invoke the language of focus-field rather than part-whole to emphasize the sense in which particulars and the totality are implicated together in the narrative of each person. In addition, human relationships

Eastern Learning and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea  103 are not only biological but ethical, meaning that they require humans’ substantive ­commitment to self-transformation. Humans are not static human beings, taken as they are in biological terms along with their wants and needs, but become human “by cultivating those thick, intrinsic relations that constitute one’s initial conditions and that locate the trajectory of one’s life force within family, community, and cosmos” (Ames 2011, 105). Consequently, self-cultivation (xiushen 修身) through observing and sublimating human relationships is the foundation of all ethical and political thinking, which constitutes a complex process of nurturing embodied dispositions and abilities which philosopher Peimin Ni (2016) calls the “way of gongfu.” Again, we see ample evidence from Donghak texts that supports its congruence and continuity with traditional Confucian morality. The whole purpose of Donghak is to restore the lost moral standards exemplified by “Heavenly virtues” (CBEL, “Essay on Spreading Virtues”). The first chapter of Dongkyeong Daejeon is entitled “Essay on Spreading Virtues” (Podeok mun 布德文), which aims to show that the ancient sages followed the Mandate of Heaven and committed themselves to self-cultivation while Choe’s contemporaries gave up on the sages’ teachings and, even worse, turned to Western Learning which didn’t refrain from using violence in order to spread its preaching (CBEL, “Essay on Spreading Virtues”). In “Essay on Self-Cultivation” (sudeok mun 修德文) Choe claims that the Heavenly Way is always consistent and has been imparted by the sages and Confucian intellectuals and further that the doctrines that he advocates for are at one with Confucius’s ethical teachings. In a brief section entitled “Maxims,” he claims that the complexity of Donghak’s Way can be summed up in three characters—“perseverance” (seong 誠), “reverence” (kyeong 敬), and “trustworthiness” (shin 信), all of which are to be grasped through human relationships in the Confucian practice of gongfu or gongbu (CBEL, “Mottos”). However, it should also be noted that the virtues Choe selected do not neatly map onto Confucian thought, as the cardinal virtues of benevolence, righteousness, and ritual propriety, which are crucial to Confucianism, disappeared altogether in Donghak thought. Donghak and Hybrid Modernity The previous discussion shows that Donghak shares substantial common ground with traditional worldviews strongly informed by Confucianism, though whether it can be seen as a species of Confucian thought is debatable. It works within the framework of correlative and holistic cosmology and interconnected human relationships. But if it just rehearsed the teachings of Confucians, especially ­Neo-Confucians whose doctrines were endorsed as the court philosophy in the Joseon dynasty, it wouldn’t have left so huge a mark on radical social change in late Joseon Korea, and its intelligibility as political thought marking a departure from traditional Confucianism would have collapsed into nothing. What matters here is, therefore, the ways in which Donghak appropriated ideas of modernity and transformed them into a form suited to a new cultural milieu. Speaking of hybrid modernity, I do not claim anything new but only point to “an inclusive

104  Yutang Jin hybrid model of cultural change wherein the heat of contestation over the centuries has fired the furnace of amalgamation and fusion” (Ames 2020, 403). The coming of new ideas was juxtaposed with, and fused into, traditional cosmological moral understandings as part of social change. In this light, the distinctive features of Donghak thinking can be appreciated through its recentering of a focus from people in the collective to individual persons in social and political thought, its understanding of persons as deserving Heavenly Dignity, and the emerging idea of collectivity as we-ness that called for a public awakening in late Joseon Korea, which I will discuss in turn. From People (min 民) to Persons (in 人)

One of Donghak’s differences from Confucianism is its departure from the ­collective people, or min, to the individual person, or in in social and political thought. Despite both min and in being present in classic Confucian texts, min forms a crucial part of Confucian political thought. Min roughly refers to the vast majority of the population whom the ruler rules over. Min rarely rise above their vulgar characters and profanity and, consequently, are to be tamed, educated, and sometimes catered to in accordance with the Way. In contrast, in has more complex meanings because this character can either refer to one’s biological status or, more commonly, the moral status of human becoming underpinned by self-­ cultivation. This distinction between min and in/ren is acutely captured by Ames and David Hall and further explained by Stephen Angle (Ames and Hall 1999, 139). Angle (2012, 41) recapitulates this distinction as a difference between “min as the ‘masses’ and ren as the ‘persons’.” The basic idea here is that the sociological concept of the people as the “amorphous mass of the commoners” constitutes the source of justification that the ruler or the junzi acts on, but they are nevertheless the blind who do not see due to the nature of the work they engage in. This emphasis on min in Confucian socio-political order further leads Loubna El Amine (2015, “Introduction”) to claim that the diminished status of ordinary people in Confucian political thought implies that the Confucian political order is neither by nor for the people, but about hierarchical visions independent of popular welfare. In stark contrast, Donghak’s focus is entirely on persons as individuals, not only in ethical but also in social and political thought. It is not that people in the collective vanish altogether from the texts; rather, persons as individuals serve as the conduit of political legitimacy in the newly configured thought of Donghak. Both in as persons and min as the people are present in Donghak texts, but in has much more weight and visibility than min. Judging by sheer numbers, in is mentioned 77 times as opposed to min, which is mentioned 7 times only in Dongkyeong Daejeon. As Choe avers, “despite myriad things being present (in the world), yin and yang strike a balance; persons are beings with the highest spirit among myriad things” (CBEL, “Essay on Learning”).4 And he goes on to discuss in detail how the correlative-holistic cosmology works for this person-centric philosophy, how it broke down, and, further, why turning to Western Learning or Seohak can only exacerbate the crisis.

Eastern Learning and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea  105 With the shift of attention to persons, Donghak very crucially recognized the value of humans as the way they are, that is, their status as biological beings, which is complementary to in’s image as ethical becomings in traditional cosmology. This recognition of biological life does not renounce the moral considerations underpinning traditional cosmology. Here enters the crucial concept of “persons as Heaven” (in nae cheon, 人乃天),5 and the corresponding notion of “persons’ hearts as Heaven’s” (cheonshim jeuk inshim, 天心即人心) (CBEL, “Essay on Learning”). The traditional way of understanding the Heavenly Mandate is turned upside down, which indicates the philosophically provocative nature of Donghak thinking. But how is it possible to grant fundamental status to biological life while being committed to standards of right and wrong? If Heaven expresses itself through biological wants and needs, then what remains of morality except for that commanded by biological life? While this question can be rather easily addressed within atomistic liberalism6 by taking biological life as the starting point and proceeding to figure out the basic rights and duties individuals owe to one another, it poses a particular challenge to the thought of Donghak as it ought to, insofar as it remains intelligible as part of morally informed correlative cosmology, also committed to humans as becomings, which seems to paradoxically require humans in Donghak to be beings and becomings simultaneously. Choe was indeed aware of this challenge, and the way in which he coped with it can be seen in the following paragraph: One asks: “persons’ hearts are Heaven’s, then how is it there are still rights and wrongs?” Choe answers: “Fate dictates whether one’s life is honorable or worthless; Steadiness dictates whether one is happy or not. In terms of the noble person’s virtue, he has the right spirit, and the steady heart, and so we can say that Heaven and Earth are unified in his virtue. In terms of the petty person’s virtue, his spirit is not in the right place and his heart always moves around, and so their fate betrays Heaven and Earth. Isn’t this the principle of success and failure? (CBEL, “Essay on Learning”) From the paragraph above, we can see that Choe reconciles human being and becoming in the idea of individualist transcendence. While humans are still distinguished by their virtues into noble and petty persons, which presupposes selftransformation and virtue cultivation, it is up to each person to cultivate their own virtue and act on their fate. The noble person opts for success because they know the right path toward success, and there is nothing one can do to help a person who refuses and so plummets to failure. One may doubt whether it is indeed true that success and failure can be seen through this moralistic lens, and there is a reason to believe that Choe deliberately framed the issue in the way he did because he intended to encourage followers to seek self-transformations through his own doctrines and organizations. Nevertheless, this shows Donghak’s effort

106  Yutang Jin to accommodate individuality as embodied in biological life in the overarching framework of human becoming. In’s Heavenly Dignity

The very idea of “persons as Heaven” is that one ought to appreciate and respect each person’s biological life though there is the guiding Heavenly Mandate aimed at imparting and cultivating virtues in persons. There is a fundamental shift of ground on which respect for persons is justified. Respecting persons is no longer based on the Mencian dictum that persons deserve respect because everyone has good human nature and therefore the potential to become sages. Rather, they deserve respect because each of them, qua humans, already has Heaven in their nature. In short, persons deserve respect no longer because of whom they can potentially become, but because of the way they are. However, this change further invites serious questions: Does this rather radical change in the justification of respect for persons imply an intellectual leap leading to an atomistic understanding of Cartesian individuals that creates an implosion within the relational understanding of humans? Why do biological persons deserve respect, after all? What is the basis in terms of which Donghak respects biological persons if there is a real possibility that they will defy the moral demands of Heaven? The fundamental basis of respect for persons in Donghak, which I call ­persons’ or in’s “Heavenly Dignity,” already manifests itself in the idea of “persons as Heaven.” Insofar as Donghak takes individual, biological persons as a foundational pillar of morality, one ought to consistently “respect persons as if they’re serving Heaven” (siin yeocheon 事人如天).7 Although there is no rupture between Heaven and humans in Confucianism, Confucians never go so far as to claim that serving Heaven and persons is one and the same. Donghak is also distinct from Catholicism, which was the major presence of Christianity in Joseon Korea, inasmuch as Heaven and persons in Donghak are interchangeable. As Choe claims, “I am Heaven the same way Heaven is me. Heaven and I are one and the same.”8 Biological life along with natural needs and wants is not just the starting point for virtue cultivation—though it is—but itself deserves profound appreciation and respect because it already contains Heavenly spirituality. If one behaves in a way that defies the virtues and dispositions mandated by Heaven, then that is an unfortunate personal choice that is ultimately destructive of one’s life. As Choe puts it, “[despite Heaven and me being the same] if the spirit is not in the right place and the heart moves out of the place, that person is acting against their own fate” (CBEL, “Essay on Learning”).9 While the Donghak thinkers are clearly aware of the possibility that personal behavior may not neatly line up with Heavenly demands, they explicitly leave moral issues to individual salvation through spiritual transformation, and it is not a matter for the state or society to dictate what an individual must do, which clearly departs from what Confucians believe. The way in which one can respect persons on the one hand and improve their morality and spirituality on the other lies in believing and participating in Donghak organizations and movements. This also shows the way in which Donghak

Eastern Learning and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea  107 creatively appropriated organizational aspects of Christianity while grafting them onto the traditional correlative cosmology. There are many mantras given to followers in Dongkyeong Daejeon that provide a glimpse of how Donghak believers seek personal health, salvation, and self-transformation. This part of Donghak also strikes many as religious in that most religions involve rituals and mantras that one ought to memorize and practice for the sake of self-transformation. However, as Kiyul Chung notes, Heaven in Donghak is inherently anthropocentric and “panentheistic” (Chung 2007, 63). It reconciles the personal and impersonal aspects of Godly transcendence, which are seemingly in contradiction, but which dovetail with the holistic and correlative cosmology discussed above. What Donghak thought rejects is self-transformation through the teachings of intellectuals and gentries within the feudal order, which contributed to the demise of the hierarchical feudal order in Joseon Korea. For the Donghak leaders, not only can the gentries not be seen as part of the solution, but they were the very source of the problem. They called into question the moral authority of yangban or the learned gentry. As Choe says in the “Song of Teaching” (kyohun ka, 教訓歌) of Yongdam Yusha, “you yangban are also humans—how can you know [better than others] the teachings of Heaven? As I turned forty, I came to realize that billions of people living on earth deserve equal dignity and respect” (Yongdam’s Legacy, “Song of Teaching”).10 Sagely figures and their purported heirs such as yangban are no longer central to moral and spiritual transformations. Rather, one ought to, and can only possibly, seek self-transformation through popular organizations and movements like Donghak. Emerging Collectivity as We-ness (Uri 우리)

Conceiving of persons in their biological individuality and respecting them with ­Heavenly Dignity show that Donghak was an emancipatory, egalitarian movement. Invoking Donghak as a new phase of Confucian thought, Sang-jun Kim (2005) claims that its emergence marks a divergence between elite and popular or folk Confucianism.11 Elite Confucianism is the Confucianism of intellectuals (shi 士), who, as ­William de Bary (1996, 14) says, were “an educated elite marked by their commitment to scholarship and the school, to public service and participation in government.” In contrast, folk Confucianism as exemplified by Donghak refers to a distinctively new phase in the evolution of traditional morality where people take on challenges and strive for the better themselves. Similar to de Bary, Donghak leaders were acutely aware that the failure of the traditional class of nobility in bringing about the Heavenly Way is not accidental but inherent in the “trouble with (elite) Confucianism” (De Bary 1996, xi). This partly reflects the social oppression and the popular revolt against it in Joseon Korea, where the vast majority of ordinary people lived as sangmin (常民/상민) and were dominated by the social and political power of yangban. Donghak also crucially reinforced and contributed to the demise of the hierarchical order by emphasizing the individuality and Heavenly Dignity of all. What we witness in Donghak’s reconceptualization and reassessment of traditional worldviews in light of new social challenges is not just a turning away

108  Yutang Jin from the collectivity of min to the relational individuality of in, but a new form of ­collectivity built on a transformed understanding of persons. Donghak is not an individualistic philosophy in either a transcendental or pragmatic, this-worldly sense. Rather, it still plays out within the parameter of a correlative, holistic cosmology aimed at effecting social change at a time of crisis and disorder. Donghak leaders constantly spoke of Eastern vs. Western Learning even though they believed that the language of East and West is not so much about the parochialism of their principles as about the locations whence they originated. Some Korean scholars call this emerging collective identity “the people” (minjung, 民眾/민중). This emerging collectivity can also be called “we-ness” (uri, 우리) exclusive to the Korean collective identity. Speaking of this “uri” idea, Sungmoon Kim connects it to the idea of “Chŏng,” which has nothing to do with liberal-individualistic values. “Nor,” as he argues, “does it directly stem from Confucian transcendental individualism or cultural heroism given its deeply intersubjective and collective (if not collectivistic) characteristics.” Kim (2008, 67–68) rightly points out that in Korean folk psychology, the line between “I” and “We” is frequently blurred. The new form of collectivity is not directly derived from min as understood in traditional Confucianism but built on relational understandings of personal individuality and Heavenly Dignity. Given that everyone now bears responsibility for social change, even a peasant with little education and pecuniary resources needs to stand up and act on the Heavenly Mandate rather than leave their fate to the whim of a learned elite.12 More specifically, this new understanding of uri played a crucial role in awakening Joseon Koreans to their collective potential and what they can do together in response to the twin challenges of social division and imperialism. First, Donghak responded to the social oppression perpetuated by the class division between yangban and sangmin and unified all Koreans in terms of their individuality and Heavenly Dignity, which considerably undermined the legitimacy of Neo-Confucianism and the appeal of Korean Confucians’ discourse on social and political hierarchy. In other words, Donghak helped to transcend social differences in anticipation of a new collective identity. Second, Donghak was a response not only to domestic problems but to threats from without, that is, the challenges of Western imperialism in the various forms of military power, economic exploitation, and religious expansion. The idea of we-ness, therefore, also fostered nationalist sentiments about that which is distinctive about Korea, which paved the way for more i­ntensive ­independence movements during the chaotic period of colonialism. Donghak and Social Change My argument shows that Donghak was not just a scholastic movement but always stayed at the forefront of a popular struggle for progressive social change. It was the aim of the Donghak leaders to break down the barrier between elite and folk culture and to foster social cohesion built on a hybrid modernity. As Sangjun Kim (2005) points out, the revolutionary potential of Donghak lies in its ability to “break down the medieval Confucian order of Korea and steer the society to a new order of modernity.” Donghak ideals never remained a figment of its leaders’ imaginations

Eastern Learning and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea  109 but were vigorously put into practice, met with hostility from the Korean court, and ultimately led to full-blown peasant movements that shook the foundations of political order in the Joseon dynasty. What happened on the ground had, of course, many causes, including economic exploitation, political repression, foreign aggression, and court power struggles, but the importance of Donghak lies in the huge popularity of its emancipatory thinking among rebellious peasants and other ordinary people. In other words, Donghak as an intellectual and religious movement was deeply intertwined with, and greatly influenced, the Donghak peasant rebellions. The leaders from Choe Jae-u to Choe Si-hyeong did not come up with their conceptualizations of Heaven and in out of thin air but carefully crafted their thought and examined their practical consequences as the grassroots movement evolved and took a new shape. In this sense, Donghak thought may not have single-handedly initiated rebellions from below, but it played a pivotal role in awakening the grassroots to their causes and initiating and facilitating armed rebellions. Donghak’s social mobilization was first acutely felt by the Joseon elite during the 1870s after the court’s crackdown on Donghak and the killing of its first leader Choe. Grassroots mobilization took the form of religious gatherings that called for the court’s redress for the repression of Donghak and recognition of the legitimacy of their causes. They gradually developed into organizations called “gatherings for repaying kindness” in early 1894, where participants not only asked for the recovery of the honor of their leader but also the restoration of social and political order through redressing domestic injustices and resisting foreign interference as part of their political demands. Armed rebellions quickly broke out in the southern provinces under the leadership of Donghak organizations. The local units of Donghak, which were called po (包) and jup (接)13 and were coordinated among the peasants, provided crucial organizational support for peasants in different regions. King Gojong of Joseon Korea and his queen Min were so terrified by the sweeping victory of the Donghak rebellions that they asked for urgent military support from Qing China and Japan, which later escalated into further complex power struggles among the imperial powers and the further chaos of Korean society. I am not, however, insinuating that the goal of the Donghak leaders was the creation of the nation-state aimed at reshaping Korea into what Benedict Anderson (2006) calls an “imagined community.” The job of what can be properly called nation-building gained momentum as the reform-minded elite (gaehwa pa 開化 派) sought after Korea as a truly independent nation-state, especially after Joseon Korea gained independence from Qing China, albeit as a result of Japanese influence. In this light, instead of saying that Donghak was a full-blown project of nation-building, it is more appropriate to say that the Donghak movement—both as a religion and a mass movement—pioneered the effort to bring Korea out of its feudal order, which in turn paved the way for conditions that ushered in a new era. Nevertheless, that Koreans consistently and proactively addressed the existential threat to Korean nationhood in late Joseon and colonial rule under Japan and formed a strong sense of national unity that can be felt up until today was no accident and had one of its important roots in the Donghak movement.

110  Yutang Jin Conclusion This chapter has surveyed and defended Donghak as a quintessential case of hybrid modernity in late Joseon Korea that not only creatively synthesized the traditional correlative cosmology with individuality and human dignity, which formed a core component of Western-led modernity, but also showed the radical potential of how adopting such a synthesis can spur social and political change within a given society. Despite all the positive light cast on Donghak, I am not endorsing Donghak thought as a ready-made recipe for thinking of East Asian modernity today. First, many aspects of the traditional cosmological framework of Confucianism as part of a synthesis with other ideas have irrevocably fallen apart (Ci 2019). East Asian societies have moved away from their traditional past, and certain pillars of the cosmological tradition are missing today, which obviates the need to continue to engage with it as an ongoing contemporary project. Second, the use of Shamanism as a way of reconciling Heaven and persons, which was a recurrent theme of Donghak, is no longer the best strategy to engage ordinary East Asians today, who now are immersed in different mentalities adapted to different social and political conditions. Historicizing Donghak, however, is no bad move. Instead of insisting on Donghak’s perennial truth, this chapter shows the crucial value of Donghak’s key insight as to how it is possible for intellectual and cultural legacies of non-Western societies to engage with modernity. Its approach, not necessarily its substantive content, still resonates with us today. This is also not to deny that many aspects of traditional thinking that do remain and get strengthened over time—the relational understanding of persons and virtue cultivation—also speak to the relevance of the substantive parts of Donghak thought, and we need more careful empirical research on East Asian habits and mores today to cash out the full potential of this substantive part. Recently, there has been a turn to the non-West within the field of political theory aimed at diversifying and deparochializing the canon. This has partly to do with theoretical challenges, that is, the intricate philosophical conundrums faced by Western political theorists in addressing concerns raised by other intellectual and cultural traditions. It also, however, bears on the frustration felt by both theorists and practitioners alike in the process of exporting the values of liberal democratic modernity to non-Western societies and the local resistance they meet in different cultural communities. Although my focus has entirely been historical, this chapter shows that deriving a purportedly universalistic account of modernity from limited experience, often exclusive to Western societies, and applying it as a benchmark to other societies can only be met with resistance and outcry. Perhaps Korean societies (South Korea and, to a lesser extent, North Korea) today have moved further away from many features of correlative cosmology, and many of the ways in which Donghak responded to the challenges of modernity are no longer intelligible or necessary, but this case study of Donghak helps to shed light on the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in East Asia and the subtle interactions between different intellectual and social forces that can be easily glossed over in a broad-brush notion of modernity. Donghak leaders lived through a tumultuous time and hostile space where the mentioning of hybrid modernity

Eastern Learning and Hybrid Modernity in Late Joseon Korea  111 failed to gain ­traction, but we now have much better resources and ideas of how to go about hybrid modernity in East Asia. If Donghak’s substantive arguments seem remote from us, its methods and the way in which it coped with the challenges of modernity can still inform and transform our political thinking today. Acknowledgements I would like to take this opportunity to thank all participants who commented on my work in the Routledge Series on Political Theories in East Asian Context Workshop on “Modernities in Northeast Asia” hosted by the Department of Philosophy at Sun Yat-sen University (Zhuhai Campus). My thanks especially go to Jun-Hyeok Kwak for his kind invitation and thoughtful comments, Tze-ki Hon for chairing my session and offering constructive comments, as well as other participants including Daniel A. Bell, Takashi Kibe, Naoyuki Umemori, and Ken Cheng. Their comments and suggestions helped me turn this chapter into a much better one than it was before. Notes I will simply use Donghak in the following discussion. CBEL will be given in the rest of the paper. The quote from the Analects is from (Lau 2000). The original texts are “陰陽相均，雖百千萬物。化出於其中，獨惟人最靈者也.” The phrase “persons as Heaven” was not explicitly invoked by either of the two Choes, but was emphasized later by the third leader Son Byung-hee (孫秉熙, 1861–1922) as the core of Donghak thinking. 6 However, it should be noted that not all strands of liberalism have to be associated with atomistic metaphysical assumptions. 7 The language of respecting persons as if one respects Heaven was not used by Choe ­Je-u, but later formulated by Choe Si-hyeong. 8 我是天也, 天是我也。我與天都是一體也. 9 然而氣不正而心有移, 故曰‘違其命’. 10 하느님 하신 말씀 너(양반)도 역시 사람이라 무엇을 알았으며 억조 창생 많은 사 람 동귀일체하는 줄을 사십평생을 알았던가. 11 This chapter remains agnostic about whether Donghak can be classified as Confucian thought, which has long been debated by Korean scholars. I only posit here that one’s position varies depending on how one defines Confucianism and how close Donghak is to the definition one offers. 12 However, there is a debate among Korean scholars on how large the gap is between Donghak’s new form of collectivity and Confucian ones, both traditional and modern, and further how important the Donghak movement was in effecting Koreans’ new collective identity. 13 Jup first emerged as the local unit of Donghak, and as more believers joined, po was created as a higher unit leading and coordinating among jup.

1 2 3 4 5

Bibliographies Primary Sources on Donghak Choe, Jae-u, Choe, Si-hyeong ed., Comprehensive Book of Eastern Learning, 1880. Choe, Jae-u, Choe, Si-hyeong ed., Yongdam’s Legacy, 1881.

112  Yutang Jin Secondary Works Ames, Roger. 2011. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. ——. 2020. Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics. New York: SUNY Press. Ames, Roger, and David Hall. 1999. The Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China. Chicago, IL: Open Court. Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso books. Angle, Stephen. 2012. Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy. London: Polity. Bai, Tongdong. 2019. Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chan, Joseph. 2013. Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chung, Kiyul. 2007. The Donghak Concept of God/Heaven: Religion and Social Transformation. New York: Peter Lang. Ci, Jiwei. 2019. Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. De Bary, William Theodore. 1996. The Trouble with Confucianism. Cambridge, MA: ­Harvard University Press. El Amine, Loubna. 2015. Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Graham, A.C. 1989. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. ­Chicago, IL: Open Court. Han, Ugeun. 1970. “The Nature of Eastern Learning.” Eastern Academic Journal 11: 37–74. Ivanhoe, P.J. 2017. Oneness: East Asian Conceptions of Virtue, Happiness, and How We Are All Connected. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kim, Sangjun. 2005. “Eastern Learning as Folk Confucianism: From the Perspective of Confucian Modernity.” Society and History 68: 167–206. Kim, Sungmoon. 2008. “Transcendental Collectivism and Participatory Politics in ­Democratized Korea.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 11 (1): 57–77. Lau, Dim Cheuk. 2000. Confucius: The Analects. London: Penguin. Ni, Peimin. 2016. Confucius: The Man and the Way of Gongfu. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Rosemont Jr, Henry, and Roger Ames. 2016. Confucian Role Ethics: A Moral Vision for the 21st Century? New York: V&R unipress GmbH. Tan, Sor-hoon. 2003. Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction. Albany: SUNY Press.

Part IV

Redefining Modernities

The chapters in this section present a range of arguments, grounded in the ­historical experiences and social perspectives of Northeast Asia, that challenge existing pieties and offer startling reinterpretations of the nature and genesis of “modernity.” Tongdong Bai provocatively claims that Chinese society underwent an initial stage of modernization as early as the third century BCE, during the transition between the Zhou and Qin dynasties. Daniel Bell and Wang Pei argue that elements of Confucian tradition, encapsulated in the formula of “just hierarchy,” are still pertinent to life in modern societies and can even act as a corrective to the narrowness of modern Western egalitarianism. Takashi Kibe pursues the theme of “multiple ­modernities” in the writings of Maruyama Masao and suggests that Maruyama formulates the implicit basis for a pluralistic reconceptualization of modernity, despite being “immersed” in the categories of Western thought. Finally, Naoyuki Umemori argues that the “colonial” dimension of modernity must be recognized alongside its more vaunted “metropolitan” aspect using the development of the Meiji-era police force as an illustration.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-10

7

Modernity Before Its Time China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization Tongdong Bai

Introduction China had been repeatedly defeated by Western (and Westernized Japanese) ­powers for over 150 years. The common explanation for the defeat is that traditional China was pre-modern, while Western powers were modern, and the only path to salvation is modernization. This narrative is not limited to China and is common to almost all other non-Western countries and peoples. On the path to modernity, the price each country or people has paid is different. With much of tradition destroyed and the deaths of millions, China’s path to modernity is long and painful. In comparison, Japan’s path to modernity, especially in the early years, was much smoother. Why is there this difference between different countries on their path to modernity? Indeed, what is modernity? Before looking into this question, I need to make it clear that “modernity” and its variants are used in very different contexts and in very different ways. For example, all of us are modern humans, and “modern” here is used to distinguish us from the extinct archaic human species. Now we all study modern physics, which is distinguished from the kind of scientific studies before Isaac Newton. There is also “modernism” in the arts and culture. In this chapter, I will only focus on modernity in its political sense. It can be related to modern science and modernism in the arts, though I will leave the connections and “modernity” in these other contexts aside.1 However, even with regard to the question of what political modernity is, different thinkers have different answers: Equality, freedom, secularization, rational bureaucracy, nation-state, and so on. If we take the common view that Western Europe first entered modernity, we can look at the social and political changes of modernization in Western European history, and produce a list of the key features of modernity. A danger of this approach is to take some accidental features of European modernization as essential to modernity. An even worse mistake is to take a particular result of European modernization, for example, liberal democracy, as the only form of modernity. Clearly, there are different kinds of modern states, the liberal democratic, the totalitarian, and so on. “Modernity” should embrace the underlying common features of all these modernities, if we acknowledge these states as modern states. In this chapter, by identifying the key social and political changes in European modernization, I will show that these changes resemble those in a transitional DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-11

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  115 period in Chinese history, the Zhou-Qin transition 周秦之变, or the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (SAWS), roughly from 770 B.C.E. to 221 B.C.E. Despite many differences, I will show that there are profound similarities between these two transitions, and these shared features can be defined as features of modernity that are common to all kinds of modern states. I will then argue that other common features that are often attributed to modernity can be explained by these underlying changes and features. If my rather unconventional thesis holds, in addition to a new understanding of modernity and of Chinese political history, there are a few important implications. Historically, perhaps China’s painful path to “modernity” in the past 150 years is a result of China being already modern, and what it needed was not a simple modernization. Theoretically, my thesis means that the so-called pre-Qin Chinese thinkers may have offered political proposals that address the issues of modernity.2 It has been argued that the competition between different modern proposals has been settled with the victory of the liberal democratic model, which marks “the end of history.” Yet this belief has been challenged more and more in recent years. Now, if we have a different understanding of modernity and have a new set of proposals to explore, maybe we can address these challenges by offering a proposal of an ideal modern state which is better than liberal democracy. The Zhou-Qin Transition and the European Transition to Early Modernity Compared The SAWS is a transitional period from the Western Zou Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty. To understand this transition, we need first to understand the political regime of the Zhou Dynasty. It is called feng jian 封建 in Chinese, which is commonly translated as “feudalism” in English. Of course, “feudalism” is used to describe the regime in medieval Europe, and whether it (and the terms associated with it) is applicable to the regimes of Western Zhou China or even to medieval Europe is controversial.3 For lack of a better and more convenient term, I will use “feudalism” to label these regimes. More importantly, acknowledging the differences between the regimes in medieval Europe and in Western Zhou China and the possible inadequacy of the term “feudalism” in describing both regimes, I use feudalism to refer to a regime with the following features that I believe are shared by both regimes. Other than a relatively small piece of land and the people living on it, the ruler at the higher level and his government give much of the land and the people that are nominally under his rule to rulers one level lower, and give highly autonomous delegatory power to the latter, not interfering in the political affairs, such as the nominations of members of the ruling class under these delegates, of the latter. In this regime of many levels, at each level, the ruler and his delegates (on the lowest level, the ruler and his people) form a closely-knit and small community of acquaintances, and even an apparently large state is thus divided into many communities of this kind. Rulers at each level have to be nobles by pedigree. In the Western Zhou case, the original intention of this delegatory system was to gain control of a vast and hostile land and the political entities on this land after

116  Tongdong Bai the surprising defeat of the powerful Shang empire by the small state of Zhou. The ­policy was very well summarized as “enfeoffing the [king’s] relatives, and using them to protect the Zhou [king]” (Zuo Commentaries《左传·僖公二十四年》). To be clear, those who were enfeoffed were not only the king’s relatives, but also loyal and competent ministers (many were also the king’s relatives, and others were leaders of friendly tribes) and nobles of the past Shang dynasty who switched their allegiance to the new Zhou rulers. These feudal states were strategically established, often in the regions that were not well controlled by Zhou, and were often established in groups that could come to each other’s defense. This is a colonial and expansionist policy.4 After these feudal states expanded by encroaching upon the “barbarian” areas—“barbarians” are defined as those who refused to submit to the Zhou political order, their rulers did the same as the kings did, enfeoffing their own relatives and ministers. In the entire empire, the king ruled over feudal lords one level lower than him, greater lords over lesser lords, and so on. At each level, it was one master ruling over a limited number of subjects (while one’s subject’s subject is no longer one’s subject), making it possible for the master to rule through personal influence, blood relations, contracts between rulers and their subjects, and noble codes of conduct. Thus, a large empire was divided into small and close-knit communities through this pyramid-like structure (with the king at the very top), and rulers at each level had much autonomy from their lords one level higher.5 Only the nobility by pedigree is qualified as rulers of various ranks. This expansion system was very successful. The Zhou people took over a large empire rather quickly and remained in power for 400 years or so. Eventually, however, it collapsed during the SAWS. The causes may be multi-fold: The bond between these members of the king’s extended family had been weakened over generations, due to thinning of blood connections and the king running out of resources to reward his lords; the expansion of territory and the growth of population rendered regulation by noble codes of conduct ineffective; the Zhou empire expanded to the limit of its capacity at that time, making internal striving inevitable; or some other fatal flaws in the Western Zhou regime.6 In the Spring and Autumn period, the king of Zhou was given nominal homage only, and was in effect only one of the feudal lords (a very weak one at that). The boundaries of each feudal state were no longer respected, and through wars of “all against all,” seven large, independent, and “warring” states emerged. During the SAWS, the nobilitybased ruling class was disappearing, and rulers had to rule directly over states that kept becoming larger, more populous, and more mobile (because the restrictions on mobility were also disappearing with the collapse of feudalism). Without the Zhou king who served as an overlord and without the constraints imposed by noble codes of conduct, the survival of these states and their rulers depended upon their physical strength alone. The transition these Chinese states experienced during the SAWS has some profound similarities to the European transition from the Middle Ages to (Western) modernity.7 The political system of the Middle Ages was also a feudalistic, pyramid-like structure. Every level of the ruling structure was a de facto small state with few people, and the bond was also a combination of contractual, ritual, and

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  117 blood relations. This structure, too, was collapsing during the transition to Western modernity. Gone, along with the feudal system, were the noble classes and their ways of life and politics. During the SAWS, the exclusive inheritance of land by the noble class and the old communal system was abolished, and a free market in land emerged. In the West, there was the notorious English enclosure movement. The art of war also changed with the collapse of nobility-based feudalism. The military became plebeianized, and the codes of conduct of the nobles vanished. Wars served the naked needs for acquiring resources and the domination of others and became a brutal sport of head-chopping. As Qian Mu pointed out, compared to wars in the Spring and Autumn period, where the feudal order was tottering yet still in place, the wars in the Warring States period were downright brutal and ugly (Qian 1996, 88–89). Correspondingly, Europe witnessed the awesome power of Napoleon’s people’s war and large-scale killings. In this new form of war, wars were no longer confined to the nobles and came to involve everyone in a state. This makes the distinction between the military and innocent civilians far murkier than it was in the feudal ages. Even today, this still poses a serious challenge to following the Geneva Convention, because this convention is based upon a strict separation of innocent citizens from the military, and in modern warfare, all citizens become a contributor to the war machine. In short, the collapse of a nobility-based feudal structure led to a political jungle. In China, the Zhou king who was the overlord above all became one of the noblemen vying for domination (and lost). In this war of all against all, nobles of various ranks were eliminated, and the winners became leaders of newly emerging centralized states. The pyramid-like feudal structure was flattened into equal sovereign states at the inter-state level. They were sovereign in the sense that no supra-state political entity can legitimately interfere with a sovereign state’s internal affairs. In Europe, they emerged after the Westphalian treaties, and in China, although lacking an explicit concept of sovereignty, Chinese states in the Warring States period were de facto sovereign states. Of course, there are differences between the Zhou-Qin transition and the European transition to modernity. For example, there were ancient Greek and Roman civilizations before the Middle Ages, and they offered unique philosophical, political, and cultural resources to the European transition to modernity.8 On an even broader scale, Europe inherited the legacy of the “pan-Mediterranean” civilizations (which originated in the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations and were later spread across all areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea), and was in close contact with another successor of these civilizations, the Islamic civilization. Compared to the civilizations surrounding the Mediterranean sea, China was really on the edge of human civilization. Perhaps related to this fact, China was dominated by one single civilization, the “Hua-Xia华夏” civilization, at a rather early stage. This may have contributed to the imagination of the common overlord for all under Heaven, and of the continuation and unity of Chinese civilization, an imagination lacking among Europeans. There was no secular throne in medieval Europe that enjoyed the status of overlordship as high, longstanding, and stable as the office of the Western Zhou king

118  Tongdong Bai did. The Papacy was relatively stable, yet it clearly didn’t have the power and authority the Western Zhou kings had. The feudal system in Medieval Europe was not as clearly structured and organized as the Western Zhou regime. A deeper reason for this difference is that the Western Zhou version was based on a design from the top and was constructed from the top to the bottom, while the European was from bottom to top and a result of the struggles and compromises among various elements.9 This difference may have something to do with the aforementioned fact that there were multi-centers in the pan-Mediterranean civilizations, whereas there was one dominant civilization, the Hua-Xia civilization, from the Bronze Age on. The distinction between how the Chinese and European feudal systems were constructed is significant not only to the differences between these two forms of feudalism but also to the transitions after feudalism. For example, one crucial difference between Western Zhou China and Medieval Europe is not that the former was organized through kinship, and the latter was organized by contract, as is often stated, but that in the former, contracts and codes of conduct were issued from the upper levels of the feudal structure to the lower levels, while in the latter, these contracts were made from lower levels to higher levels. This characteristic of the European contractual tradition may have contributed to the emergence of constitutional monarchy in England.10 Moreover, the “messiness” of the European feudal order and the fact that Europe during the transition was far larger, with more cultural and ethnic diversity, than China during the Zhou-Qin transition, may have contributed to the fact that European states ended up taking the balance of power for granted, and managed to have two “World Wars,” among many other, smaller-scale wars without unification, while the ­Chinese warring states were eventually unified again.11 The European transitions to modernity were also accompanied by territorial expansions, colonialism, and emigrations, in the “Age of Discovery,” that dwarfed similar processes during the SAWS in China. More importantly, the scientific and industrial revolutions happened during European modernization, while they never happened in traditional China. I will come back to the last point later in this chapter. Nature and Problems of Feudalistic “Pre-modernity” and Modernity In spite of the differences, there are fundamental similarities between these two transitions. If the European transition from the medieval period to what came after is called modernization, does this mean that the Zhou-Qin transition in China was a form of modernization to some extent—to the extent that they are similar? As we saw, what is similar between these two transitions is the collapse of the feudal hierarchy based on nobility by pedigree and on kinship, rituals, and often implicit codes of conduct and personal contracts, and the collapse of the small communities of acquaintances with a high uniformity of values, and the emergence of large, populous and plebeianized states of strangers with diverse beliefs and customs. Is this, then, the nature, or an essential aspect of modernity? If it is, a key challenge brought about by modernity is how to address the fundamental political problems in the new (“modern”) setting.

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  119 To say more about this, we will have to identify all the fundamental political problems, a task beyond the scope of this chapter. Indeed, any such identification may be challenged by others for its correctness and comprehensiveness. Not in any way claiming the latter, let me identify three fundamental problems in politics: The formation and legitimacy of the ruling structure, the bonding within a political entity, and the relations between political entities. In the nobility-based feudal regime, within a political entity, only nobles could become members of the ruling class at various levels, and at each level of the pyramid-like ruling structure, there was only a small community of no more than a few hundred people who were bonded by rituals, noble codes of conduct, and contracts. That is, the community at each level is a de facto small state with a few people, or a community of acquaintances with a high uniformity of values. When a community is small, it is highly likely to have shared codes of conduct and virtues that are based on a shared comprehensive conception of the Good. Therefore, within a political entity and among political entities in the pyramid, rulers at various levels maintain order according to rituals and codes, although military and other oppressive forces may also be used from time to time. In the Western Zhou regime, the arbiter at the highest level was the Zhou king, while in medieval Europe, the ultimate arbiter was not always clear. To deal with those alien to the political pyramid, war is what is normally resorted to. The claim from the Zuo Commentaries “the important affairs of the state lie in sacrificial ceremonies and wars” (《左传·成 公十三年》), though apparently simple, is meant to address the three fundamental problems in the feudal era. In sacrificial ceremonies, nobles would take social activities (such as hunting and eating) together periodically, which would strengthen their bond with each other, and the feudal rituals and codes, in general, would further reinforce this bond. In these ceremonies, ancestors would be remembered, reinforcing the legitimacy of the rulers at each level and of the ruling hierarchy. For example, if the feudal lord of the state of Lu questioned why the present Zhou King should be the king, in the ceremonies for ancestral worship, it would be shown that the present king’s great-great-grandfather was the king, and the great-great-grandfather of the lord of Lu was made the first lord of Lu by one of the early kings. In a word, if the lord of Lu would like to maintain his legitimacy, he’d better respect the legitimacy of the Zhou king. Quarrels between the lords of feudal states would be eventually resolved by the king. Wars were really reserved for those who didn’t follow the feudal hierarchy, and they were, by definition, “barbarians.” The collapse of the nobility-based feudalism meant that the aforementioned fundamental political problems had to be answered in the newly emerging (modern?) setting. First, on the question of legitimacy, the ruler of a state could no longer appeal to ancestry through ritual ceremonies, for many of the rulers were winners of the war of all against all and were often usurpers. If he could steal power away from the legitimate ruler, why shouldn’t anyone else?! Unless the nobility is restored, the questions of legitimacy and the selection of rulers have to be answered all over again. Second, to address the issue of the bonding of the people of a state, the answer from the feudal era no longer worked. For what emerged were large and populous

120  Tongdong Bai states of strangers. This appeared to be merely a change of size, however, in politics, size matters. A simple yet often ignored fact of politics is that what was effective at bonding a small community (kinship, codes of conduct among nobles, personal contract, a shared sense of the Good, etc.) couldn’t bond a society of strangers together, unless oppressive force is constantly used.12 That is, without oppression, the plurality of values is inevitable, which is recognized by some modern European political thinkers and pre-Qin thinkers such as Han Fei Zi.13 Third, without the pyramid structure of feudalism, newly emerged sovereign states had to find a new way to deal with inter-state relations, or international relations as we understand this term today. These are the three fundamental problems of modernity or three fundamental problems in the modern setting. Different Understandings of Modernity Accommodated It should be acknowledged that what political modernity is, is a very complicated issue, and whether the above understanding is correct needs careful examination, especially against other theories of modernity. This is a task that cannot be taken up adequately in this short chapter. What I will do in the following is to address some challenges to my understanding, and show how different understandings of political modernity can be accommodated in the above understanding. On the issue of how to understand political modernity, there is a spectrum that ranges from focusing on the social, political, and economic changes at one end (the socio-political approach), to focusing on the change of ideas at the other (the idealistic approach). Although I am a philosopher by training, my own interpretation is close to the former. In my interpretation, changes in ideas can be explained by the underlying social, political, and economic changes. There are a few scholars who take a similar approach to understanding modernity, and we shall take a very quick look at one of them, the political scientist Hendrik Spruyt (2002).14 According to him, the evolution from tribal or kin-based communities to early states and to modern states is a process where ruler-ruled relations become less and less personal. Though more broad in scope, this general portrait of political evolution sits well with my own portrait of the modern state as a society of strangers.15 In particular, Spruyt argues that early states “ran wide but not deep” (2002, 131), while one of the two key features of modern states he identifies is their “capacity to intervene in their societies” (2002, 128). This is similar to what Max Weber considered key to modern states, that is, centralized rational bureaucracy. As mentioned, what emerged in the ­Zhou-Qin transition was centralized states. In fact, the contemporary scholar Francis Fukuyama argues that the state of Qin that eventually unified China and finished the ­Zhou-Qin transition “had many if not all of the characteristics that Max Weber defined as quintessentially modern” and was “a precociously modern centralized state” (2011, 125–126).16 As the discovery of the official documents from the central government in a place, Liye 里耶—a relatively remote place throughout Chinese history—reveals, the reach of Qin’s central ­government was indeed both wide and deep.

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  121 The other feature of modern states Spruyt identifies, “the principle of i­nternational legal sovereignty based on the recognition of domestic sovereignty and the juridical equivalence of states,” was also present in Warring States China, although it was not as full-blown in a legal and formal manner as in early modern Europe, which was embodied in the Westphalian treaties. Despite the similarities, Spruyt claims, Modern statehood first took form in late medieval Europe. Although early states in many regions of the world showed similar traits, the modern ­European state evolved in a unique manner… (2002, 131) However, this “European exceptionalism” may have resulted from the lack of appreciation of Chinese history. Still close to the social-political approach is the understanding that a market economy is key to modernity. In feudal times, land often belonged to the nobility, and was inherited or given out by the nobles. When the nobility collapsed, a free market in land emerged. This agriculture-based market economy, in particular, the official recognition of the free sale of land, was precisely one important phenomenon that emerged in SAWS. Other commonly recognized features of modernity can be placed between the socio-political approach and the idealistic approach. For example, some argue that equality, liberty, and the legitimacy of the sovereign are key to modernity. On equality and liberty, these are complicated concepts (equality of what and free from what or free to do what). Again, the collapse of the nobility implies that human beings are not born to be unequal and are not born to a profession anymore, and they are now born to be equal (in a way) and free to choose their own professions. These kinds of equality and liberty were justified by the pre-Qin thinkers and embodied in their theories. For example, pre-Qin Confucians believed that all human beings are equal in terms of their potential, or at least they should be “educated without class distinctions” (15.39 of the Analects), which seems to resonate with the idea of mass education that was developed in the West since the Enlightenment.17 The pre-Qin Legalist thinker Han Fei Zi introduced the idea that everyone (except the ruler) should be equal before the law. One may not be happy with the fact that he still put the ruler above the law, however, both he and European thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes had an apparently good argument for this exception: The authority of laws and institutions has to end somewhere, to avoid the problem of infinite regress, the collapse of authority, and the return to the state of war. Moreover, at an early stage of European constitutionalism, rulers were also often put above the law. Almost all pre-Qin thinkers (Confucians, Legalists, and Mohists) embraced and promoted some forms of meritocracy that are rooted in equality (equal opportunity) and ­freedom (social and political mobility). On the issue of political legitimacy, in “antiquity” (Medieval Europe and ­Western Zhou China), the right to rule also had its legitimate basis, and it often consisted of some divine will. What is new and “modern” is the rejection of the divine

122  Tongdong Bai will or the divine will as it was understood in antiquity. In Max Weber’s terms, modernity is associated with disenchantment. One obvious reason is that when the old feudal regime collapsed, the old divine will could no longer be considered to be effective or acceptable, which means that it needs to be reinterpreted or to be abandoned completely. Meanwhile, this change can be considered a consequence of other aspects of modernity: Pluralism of values and some form of equality (as the peasant rebels in the Qin dynasty asked, “Is it really the case that kings, feudal lords, generals, and ministers are a special breed?!” (Sima 1981, 229)). In the West, the search for a new foundation of political legitimacy leads to the idea of social contract and democracy. In China, “the mandate of heaven”, which is a form of divine will, might have already been humanized in Western Zhou because in a document that was alleged to be from the Western Zhou period, it was claimed that “Heaven hears through the ears of the people, and Heaven sees through the eyes of the people” (“Taishi” 泰誓 (“Great Declaration”) of Shangshu尚书 (The Book of Documents)).18 Pre-Qin Confucians, especially Mencius, developed further the idea that the legitimacy of the sovereign comes from winning the hearts and minds of the people by satisfying people’s material and moral needs.19 Of course, as mentioned earlier, there were resources from the ancient Greeks and Romans in European modernity, such as the ideas of democracy and republicanism, which were not available to the pre-Qin Chinese thinkers, and this difference could lead to different regime designs. A related topic is secularization. It is often considered crucial and unique to Western modernity, yet it may have resulted from a combination or convergence of the aforementioned fundamental changes shared by Chinese and European modernity, such as a new power structure, a demand for a new source of political legitimacy, inevitable pluralism in a non-oppressive society of strangers, the improvement of mass education, etc., and from some elements peculiar to Medieval Europe, such as religion being an important social glue in European feudalism. That is, secularization may not be a primary and essential feature of modernity, simply a derivative one. Yet another challenge to the claim that the Zhou-Qin transition is a form of modernization is the idea that individualism is really key to modernity, which is lacking in traditional China.20 The kind of individualism in question here is the one advocated by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. That is, individuals qua individuals— without any other conditions—already have certain liberties. An adequate response to this challenge needs a comprehensive investigation into Hobbes’s, Locke’s, and other theories of individualism, which is beyond the scope of this chapter. In the following, I will only give some preliminary responses. First, individualism was not foremost in Japan and Germany in their modernization processes,21 and totalitarianism, which only occurred in modernity, had no place for individuality at all.22 This seems to suggest that individualism is not a universal feature of modernity. Second, the fact that individualism is so widely spread in contemporary societies may have little to do with the advocacy of early modern thinkers such as ­Hobbes, and may rather be a result of industrialization. I will argue later in this chapter that modernity after industrialization is late modernity or modernity 2.0, and this is indeed what traditional Chinese society failed to achieve. Then, the lack

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  123 of the kind of post-industrial individuality in traditional China is not in conflict with the thesis that the Zhou-Qin transition is a transition to (early) modernity. Third, even if we accept the idea that individualism is a feature common to (early and late) modernity, we should see that there are ideas in pre-Qin thought, such as ge各, zi自, du hua独化 in the Zhuangzi, which imply a certain form of individualism. During the later Wei-Jin period, the intellectual and literary protests against ritualistic and moral restraints (礼教) are often considered a celebration of individuality. In society and in politics, the idea that an individual is solely responsible for what he can achieve had become very popular since the Zhou-Qin transition.23 Fourth, even if traditional China lacked individuality, as long as this individuality is not the sole and fundamental feature of modernity, and there are other features of modernity that had already appeared in the Zhou-Qin transition, we can still compare transitions to modernity to a very large extent. Fifth, we can acknowledge the idea that every individual should enjoy some basic respect, and he or she should have some basic rights is an important good of modernity, even if it is not essential to modernity. Traditional Chinese thought didn’t offer the kind of metaphysical foundation for such respect and rights, as Hobbes and Kant did. This doesn’t mean that we cannot make an argument for a Confucian endorsement, for example, of rights.24 Related to the issue of individualism and a few other aforementioned ideas, at the idealistic end is the Hegelian understanding of modernity. According to Heiner Roetz, the key to Hegel’s (and Habermas’s) understanding of modernity is “the principle of free subjectivity” or “free subjectivity” (Roetz 2016, 137, 2019), which, in my view, also resonates with what S. N. Eisenstadt called “the emancipation of man” (Eisenstadt 2000, 6). Hegel’s principle has three implications: “an antonym of traditionality”; the individual as the source and final authority of his or her determination; and each member of a society understanding himself or herself as a co-creator or co-author of institutional changes (Roetz 2016, 137–138). For Hegel, China remains in the grip of “substance”, the antonym of subjectivity. Substance represents the unmoved and unquestioned authority of tradition and of the given power structures… (Roetz 2019) The deeper reason is that Chinese culture is “a culture of pure immanence without transcendence” (Ibid., italics original). For example, the Chinese idea of Heaven is not transcendent, unlike the Western religion of Christianity, which Schelling called “an ‘absolute secularization of the religious principle’” (Ibid.). According to Roetz, “This paradigm of total immanence without distinctions established by Hegel has been the basis of the standard Western view of China to this day,” shared “by the Durkheim school in France,” “by Max Weber,” “by Talcott P ­ arsons in the English-speaking world,” by “the Heideggerian philosopher of language, Johannes Lohmann” (who argued that the root of China’s

124  Tongdong Bai incapability of overcoming ontological indifference lies in the structure of its language), and so on (Ibid.). Scholars who are interested in or allegedly experts on Chinese thought, such as Herbert Fingarette, Roger Ames and David Hall, Virginia S ­ uddath, François Jullien, and Jean François Billeter (who is otherwise highly critical of Jullien) also take this “immanence paradigm,” though approvingly, while Chinese dissidents and anti-traditionalists such as Liu Xiaobo刘晓 波 consider this to be a tragic defect of the Chinese (Ibid.). However, Karl Jaspers considered “Hegel’s claim that the appearance of Christ is the axis of world history” to be contributive to a “claim of exclusiveness” and “the disaster of the occident,” which led to the horror of war (Ibid.). The true axis is “the earlier birth of the ancient prophecies and philosophies in quite a number of Eurasian regions” (Ibid.). However, Jaspers’s notion of transcendence still has a religious meaning. Benjamin Schwartz further generalized transcendence as “a kind of standing back and looking beyond, a kind of critical, reflective questioning of the actual and new vision of what lies beyond” (Ibid.). Following the JaspersSchwartz revision of Hegelian subjective freedom, Roetz goes on to show that this key feature of modernity already appeared in pre-Qin Chinese thought (Roetz 2016, 2019). To be clear, referring to an earlier formulation of my China’s early modernity thesis, Roetz argues that he considers the Jaspersian Axial Age of Chinese thought (the pre-Qin period) to be an anticipation of modernity, but not modernity itself (Roetz 2016, 145–146, fn. 16 and fn. 20).25 In my view, however, the criticalness, reflexivity, or subjectivity is a feature common to all breaks from pre-existing norms, and is thus a necessary though not sufficient condition of modernity. In Roetz’s term, this subjectivity is an anticipation of modernity, and the Zhou-Qin transition is a full-blown modernization because it contains not only the feature of free subjectivity, but other features, which together would constitute modernity itself, and not merely the anticipation of it. In the elaboration of his and Jaspers’s accounts, Roetz also criticizes S. N. Eisenstadt’s multiple modernities theory. This theory might sound similar to what I am proposing in this chapter. As Eisenstadt put it, “multiple modernities” or “multiple interpretations of modernity” are an “attempt at ‘de-Westernization,’ depriving the West of its monopoly of modernity” (2000, 24). Nevertheless, he believed that Western patterns of modernity “enjoy historical precedence and continue to be a basic reference point for others” (Eisenstadt 2000, 3). It is just that other societies modernize themselves on different patterns, due to the influence of their own cultures. In contrast, I am arguing that China entered early modernity before the West did. According to Roetz, another problem with Eisenstadt’s theory is that it can be exploited by “cultural exclusivism,” whereas Jaspers’s Axial Age idea has a “historical Platonist” dimension that acknowledges an underlying universality across different patterns of modernity and thus avoids cultural exclusivism or cultural relativism (Roetz 2019). This universality is also in line with my own reading of modernity. However, the universality Roetz (and Jaspers) has in mind is a kind of openness and pluralism. On this issue, I think that Eisenstadt is correct to characterize

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  125 modernity as a tension between personal autonomy and institutional restrictions, between freedom and control (Peter Wagner’s formulation), or between “the more pluralistic conceptions of Montaigne or Erasmus” and “the totalizing vision promulgated by Descartes” (Stephen Toulmin’s formulation) (Eisenstadt 2000, 7–8). After all, the reason that is liberated in modernity has two aspects: The autonomy of an individual (one reasons by and for himself or herself) and the universalizing tendency of reason that negates individuality. This understanding of modernity may explain the fact that totalitarianism is also a uniquely modern phenomenon. Although Chinese Legalism is no totalitarianism, it does have the aspect of tight state control while it also encourages self-interested competition among individuals. Roetz considers Legalism to be modernity devouring itself.26 To me, both the openness and the control are two aspects of modernity that are in constant tension with each other. In short, I am not denying that there are some elements unique to European modernity. Rather, I am merely trying to show that there are sufficient similarities between European modernization and the Zhou-Qin transition and that some elements that are considered unique to European modernity had actually already appeared in the Zhou-Qin transition and can be explained by the social and political changes common to both transitions. Indeed, these underlying changes (from feudalism to large, populous, and centralized states), not the often referred to features such as equality and freedom, may constitute the essence or an essential element of modernity. Industrialization and Modernity 2.0 Even if my unconventional thesis about China’s early modernity is true, there is one thing I have to acknowledge: The second stage of modernity or late modernity, industrialized modernity, didn’t occur in traditional China. To be clear, the term “second stage of modernity” or “late modernity” can be misleading in that a society that enters early (pre-industrialized) modernity doesn’t necessarily evolve into one of late modernity. Late modernity may not be a simple continuation of what has already happened in early modernity, and some of the changes may be just as fundamental as those from pre-modernity to modernity. Some changes, however, though radical, may be considered a continuation of early modernity. A key change in early modernity, as I argued, is the collapse of communities of acquaintances, and the emergence of societies of strangers. There are a few ways of breaking communities of acquaintances: The mobility of the ruling class, traditional commercial and “industrial” activities, and “modern” industrial activities. The first two emerged and developed from the Zhou-Qin transition onward in China. The last one had its “seedlings” in traditional China, but what happened in traditional China was dwarfed by the European industrial revolution. With farmers coming to big cities to work, people in the lowest stratus of a society are now forced to move at a fast pace and enter a world full of what Karl Marx called alienation. So, the strangeness is far more comprehensive in late modernity, and mobility is greater than in early modernity.

126  Tongdong Bai There are other changes that accompany the above ones. Uprooted from their small villages and communities, migrant workers now become radically individualistic, not necessarily in a good sense. In spite of the Confucian promotion of education and its achievements compared to other contemporary societies, equality with regard to education entered a totally different scale after the industrial revolution. The working class needs to achieve basic literacy and other aspects of basic education in order to work in unfamiliar surroundings. These are all pushing what has already happened in early modernity to a much deeper level. However, the aforementioned three fundamental problems of modernity remain the same: Legitimacy of power in an increasingly equal world, bonding among millions of strangers who become even stranger to one another in modernity 2.0 than in modernity 1.0, and international relations in a world that lacks supra-state authority. There is one more aspect that accompanied European political modernity: The scientific revolution. This might have something to do with the ancient Greek legacy that is unique to European modernity. It might have something to do with capitalist development, especially what happened during industrialization. Or, maybe its significance has been exaggerated. I don’t think I have a treatment for this issue that is remotely adequate, and I will have to leave it there. What I wish to emphasize here is that the three problems of political modernity remain essentially the same in late modernity as in early modernity. Significance of the New Understanding of Modernity To understand the Zhou-Qin transition as a form of early modernization may offer clues to some historical puzzles. It is well documented that during the Enlightenment and European early modernity, Chinese thought had a positive impact on European thinkers. This is often understood as accidental, or as an esoteric way for European thinkers to criticize often own rulers and regimes. Yet if the Zhou-Qin transition is a form of early modernization, the pre-Qin Chinese thinkers were concerned with issues of modernity, and post-Qin China was a modern state. Then, the impact of Chinese thought and politics on European thinkers would be substantial rather than accidental.27 This understanding of the nature of the Zhou-Qin transition can also have an impact on our understanding of the history and politics of Japan. Japan before the Meiji Restoration was often compared with traditional China. It is true that Japan before the Meiji Restoration was feudalistic in the way that Western Zhou and Medieval Europe were feudalistic, and its political reality was similar to China in the Spring and Autumn period when the Zhou King lost his control over the pyramid-like feudal system. However, Japan before the Meiji Restoration was not really comparable with traditional China since the Qin dynasty. What the Meiji Restoration is analogous to, if we use Chinese history as a reference, is that the marginalized Zhou court would regain power, lead the reunification of China, and lead China into modernity by establishing a centralized bureaucracy.28

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  127 In fact, in a 1908 newspaper article (in min bao民报), Zhang Taiyan章太炎 also pointed out the similarities between Japan and feudalistic Europe, and the fact that China emerged from feudalism a very long time ago (Zhang 1999). A contemporary scholar Han Dongyu韩东育 argues that Japan’s modern capitalism is not really Confucian capitalism, as many believe, and Japanese modernization was anticipated by a re-examination of pre-Qin Chinese thought and by an elevation of Legalism over Confucianism (2003). A contemporary Japanese scholar Naoyuki Umemori makes the following observations.29 First, after the Meiji Restoration, the first modern court was partly modeled after the Ming-Qing Chinese court. Second, the creation of a national bureaucracy used a system of civil service examinations that was based on the Chinese ke ju科举 model. Third, the pre-Meiji Tokugawa regime considered Mencius’s ideas dangerous because they were revolutionary, and after the Meiji restoration, Japanese socialists appreciated Mencius’s ideas and used them to justify the concept of “revolution.” All these support my reading of the Meiji restoration.30 Because of the aforementioned mistaken analogy between pre-Meiji Japan and traditional China, some Japanese and Chinese intellectuals conclude that both Japan and China were feudalistic, and China then lagged behind in terms of modernization, making China in the first half of the twentieth century still a feudalistic society. This judgment offers an excuse for all the brutalities committed by twentieth-century Chinese revolutionaries: All the bloodshed is the necessary price or the by-product of the destruction of the pre-modern “garbage” and the construction of a modern China. More importantly, if my understanding of the Zhou-Qin transition and modernity 2.0 is correct, this also explains why China’s “modernization” in the past 150 years was so painful.31 What traditional China needed to do was to transform from modernity 1.0 to modernity 2.0, yet due to the failure to understand this, much of the effort has been about turning China into modernity 1.0 (as well as 2.0). In this effort, ironically and sadly, what traditional China had achieved with regard to modernity, such as a centralized bureaucracy and a market economy (on a pre-industrialized level), have often been jeopardized and even once annihilated.32 With regard to intellectual history, from early thinkers such as Sima Tan司 马谈 to the contemporary intellectual historians such as Sa Mengwu萨孟武, the ­consensus is that pre-Qin thought is primarily political (Sima 1981, 358; Sa 2008, 1). More importantly, as I argued, the dominant issues during the SAWS were to answer three fundamental issues of politics in a modern setting. Of course, thinkers could choose whatever topics they are concerned with, though it is likely that most would be dominated by the pressing issues of their times. However, the dominant understanding of Chinese philosophy today is that it is a form of moral metaphysics, or is primarily an ethical teaching. I suspect that this biased view is a result of the anti-tradition movement over the past 150 years in China.33 In this movement, traditional thought, in particular Confucianism, is labeled as “the garbage of two-thousand years of feudalistic despotism.” Although not as radical as this label goes, overseas New Confucians who are said to be cultural conservatives often share with the radicals the denunciation of traditional Chinese politics.34 Out of this negative attitude, overseas New C ­ onfucians ­interpret Confucianism as a

128  Tongdong Bai moral metaphysics, which not only overstates the moral-metaphysical dimension of ­Neo-Confucianism, but also completely ignores the political nature of pre-Qin and Han Confucianism.35 To be clear, I am not saying that there is no political dimension in overseas New Confucianism, but that for it, the political dimension is a by-product of and secondary to the moral-metaphysical dimension. When I assert the political nature of pre-Qin Confucianism, I mean that the moral-metaphysical dimension is at best a by-product of and secondary to the political. With the understanding that pre-Qin Chinese thought is primarily political and even modern, we can reassess many issues in intellectual history by juxtaposing pre-Qin Chinese thought with modern European thought, revealing hidden messages through the comparisons.36 Moreover, as I have argued, the political issues that may have concerned pre-Qin thinkers may still remain relevant today. Facing these common problems, pre-Qin Chinese thinkers and modern European thinkers tried to offer solutions. Some are similar to each other, and some are not. Pre-Qin Confucians, Legalists, and Mohists all advocated a meritocracy based upon equal opportunity, replacing nobles with meritocrats as members of the ruling class. The quarrels between them were about what counts as merit. In the West, modern thinkers have challenged nobility-based political regimes and introduced their form of an equality-based meritocracy. Despite the label of democracy, it is still meritocratic in that members of the ruling class are those who prove their merits through competitive elections. Indeed, the label “democracy” is misleading because if “democracy” were understood as the Athenian form of democracy, the selection of rulers should have been done by lottery, not by competitive elections. Yet the meritocratic root of modern Western democracy has been forgotten by many, making them believe that ideas such as equality and liberty have independent and fundamental values, and concealing, and even denouncing, the meritocratic elements of Western democracies. Now with democracy in crisis, perhaps we should look back on these different intellectual resources, in particular, including early Chinese thought in this pool of ideas.37 On the issue of searching for a social and political bond in the newly emerging society of strangers as well as the issue of international order, the nation-state that was first developed in Europe and the class-based solidarity developed by the Marxist can be considered answers to these issues. Later cosmopolitanism is introduced as a solution to the problems caused by the nation-state model. In pre-Qin China, Confucians introduced a theory of state identity that is based on universal and yet hierarchical compassion and the distinction between the civilized and the barbaric, which was also the basis for their theories of international relations. This is different from the models developed in the West. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, international orders that are based on Western theories are in trouble now, and again, we should investigate a broader range of proposals and see which the better alternatives are.38 To conclude, as we already saw, how to understand the nature of the Zhou-Qin transition can have an impact on our studies of history, including both history in general and history of politics, history of thought, and history of philosophy in particular. Moreover, the claim that China became modern very early on and the fact

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  129 that traditional Chinese regimes are different from some of the Western modern regimes suggest that there may be different ways of dealing with modernity. PostQin political practices in traditional China offer us rich resources for reflecting on the issue of multiple modernities. However, as I have emphasized, to say that the Zhou-Qin transition is a form of early modernization is not to deny that there are unique features of European modernity. In particular, modernity 2.0 didn’t happen in China until China was forced to open itself up to the West. Many social and political institutions in traditional China have to be adapted to an industrialized world in order to remain relevant. This is what those who defend traditional China need to understand and learn from the West. A condition for this learning is to understand the real problem with traditional Chinese politics and philosophy. Unfortunately, misdiagnosing the source of the “sickness” of traditional China, China in the past 150 years has rid itself of many good things from its tradition and failed to cure the real sicknesses. In sum, some elements of Chinese traditions cannot be adapted to the industrialized world and have to be abandoned if we embrace industrialization; some elements can and have to be adapted; and still, some others are not affected by industrialization and remain relevant to modernity 2.0. With regard to the latter two kinds of elements, if political proposals based on traditional Chinese thought are different from how similar issues of modernity are treated in the West, this means that there are different ways to deal with modernity 2.0. That is, with regard to the problem of the best regime for all human beings in a contemporary world, history hasn’t ended, and the debates of the pre-Qin thinkers have continued, only on a larger scale. Notes 1 I wish to thank Daniel Bell, Takashi Kibe, and Tze-ki Hon for compelling me to clarify this. 2 “Pre-Qin” literally means before the Qin Dynasty, which was founded in 221 B.C.E. But “pre-Qin thinkers” 先秦思想家mostly refers to thinkers during the Zhou-Qin transition, and I will use “pre-Qin” in this latter sense in this chapter. 3 See Brown (1974), Reynolds (1994), and Li (2005, 2008) for more detailed discussions (I thank Keith Knapp for bringing this issue to my attention). 4 See Qian Mu (1996, 57) and Li (2005). 5 A line from the Shi Jing that is often quoted to support the claim that traditional Chinese regimes, including the Western Zhou, were centralized. It reads, “there is no territory under Heaven that is not the King’s; there is no one on the boarders of the land who is not his subject” (《诗经·小雅·北风之什·北山》). However, if we read this poem in its entirety, we can clearly see that it is a complaint by a king’s subject that it was always he who was assigned all sorts of tasks, making him not able to care for his parents. That is, this poem is not meant to give a picture of the Western Zhou regime. This is something Mencius clearly understood, but the fact that his interlocutor misunderstood it as meaning some sort of absolutism revealed the change of political reality during the Warring States period, which resonates with my reading of the Zhou-Qin transition (5A4 of the Mencius). 6 Li (2005) has a detailed analysis of the fall of the Western Zhou empire, especially the flaws internal to its regime. 7 The issues of how the European feudal systems collapsed, whether there are differences between the collapses in the Chinese and European feudal systems, and what different implications these different collapses could have to the transitions are very important

130  Tongdong Bai and highly complicated. Although I refer to Li Feng’s works (Li 2005, 2008) about the collapse of the Western Zhou system, and readers can also look at Hendrik Spruyt’s paper on the collapse of the European medieval system (2002), my own focus is to compare ideal types before and after the transitions with one another, and will leave aside the issue of the transitions from one ideal type to another. I wish to thank Jun-Hyeok Kwak for compelling me to clarify this point. 8 For example, the interest in issues of ontology and epistemology was widely spread among ancient Greek philosophers, and was rare among pre-Qin thinkers. The former might have been merely an accident, yet through a life of its own, an accident could become necessary or “a priori,” something a later philosopher would necessarily deal with. The reflections on these issues by modern European thinkers may be not directly related to political modernity, and they may be distinctively European. Of course, these reflections may have resonated with the political changes of their times. For example, John Locke’s empiricism and 20th century logical empiricism may have been related to the political idea of equality (see Bai manuscript for more detailed discussion). Moreover, the investigation into issues of ontology and epistemology may have contributed to the rise of modern science and the Industrial Revolution, which are indeed unique to European modernity. I thank Dr. Li Yong for compelling me to clarify this point. 9 Qian Mu pointed out this profound distinction in Qian (2005, 1–3). 10 To be clear, this doesn’t mean that the messiness is a sufficient or even a necessary condition for constitutionalism. 11 Hui (2005) also argues that there are profound similarities between Warring States China and Europe during its early modernity. She further analyzes the issue of why China was eventually unified while Europe was not, an analysis which I find deeply unsatisfactory. 12 A related fact is the so-called Dunbar’s number, the number of people we human beings can maintain close contact with. It is said to be around 150 (Dunbar 1992). Although the exact number or even whether there can be an exact number is debatable, the limitedness of the number of our close contacts seems to be a rather intuitive idea. After all, we human beings evolved from small hunter-gatherer communities, and our cognitive and emotional capacities have been determined (and limited) by this long process. 13 For how some Western liberal thinkers understood the relations between pluralism and the size of the community, see Zhou (2007, 2008). Clearly, I am not saying that Han Fei Zi was a liberal thinker, rather that, like liberals, he understood the above inevitability in a large society. Indeed, he went on to argue that since values are doomed to be pluralistic, they cannot be used to bind a state together. Something else, such as rewards and punishments that are a universal “language” for all human beings, has to be used in the state machine. Then, it is the liberal pluralists who owe us an answer to the question: How is the unity of the state preserved if we only focus on the tolerance of diverse views? See Bai (2011a) for more discussions. 14 Zhao (2015) compares the state formation in Warring States China with that in early modern Europe. Although he doesn’t explicitly claim that this transition is a modernization, his descriptions of the transition are very similar to mine. 15 To understand the evolution of political organization this way also implies that this evolution is a continuous process, and the break or divide in history and in reality may not be as clear-cut as I have presented. I am very much open to this possibility. Therefore, although talking about social and political changes, I am really focusing on the ideal types. 16 However, he thinks that only political modernization, and not economic and social modernizations, happened in China during the Zhou-Qin transition (Ibid.). I don’t agree with him on this latter assessment, but I won’t discuss this in detail in this chapter. 17 For the differences between the Confucian idea of education and that of mass education, see Bai (2011b). 18 I say “might have” because whether the document that contained the above quote was from the Western Zhou period is controversial.

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  131 19 To be clear, Mencius was no democrat, and although maintaining that the people’s will offers legitimacy to the government, he also emphasized the role of the wise and virtuous in political decision-making processes. 20 I wish to thank Sun Xiangchen for making this point and compelling me to address this issue. 21 This is not to say that individualism didn’t appear in the German and Japanese modernization process. For example, Naoki Sakai discusses how the influential modern ­Japanese thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi emphasized autonomy and independence in On Moral Education (Tokuiku-Ikan徳育如何). See Sakai’s chapter in this volume. 22 I’ll say more on totalitarianism in my discussion of Eisenstadt toward the end of this section. 23 See Zhang (2014, 194–204). 24 See Bai (2019, Chapter 9). 25 In the second footnote (fn. 20), he also points out that I misunderstood him and Jaspers in my earlier formulation in that I accused them of failing to see the modern-ness of pre-Qin Chinese thought, whereas his view is that classical philosophies in the Axial Age, including pre-Qin Chinese thought, anticipate the “modern consciousness.” I stand corrected. 26 He made this point in a conversation with me. 27 Hobson (2004) discusses this impact. Xie Wenyu谢文郁 in a recent article discusses the Chinese influence on Kant (manuscript). 28 To be clear, Japanese feudalism may have been somewhere between Medieval European feudalism and Western Zhou feudalism, less messy than the former and less organized than the latter. Therefore, the analogy with the Zhou court is a flawed analogy, as most analogies are. 29 He made them at the conferences on modernity that were organized by Jun-Hyeok Kwak and led to the present volume, after I presented an earlier version of this paper. 30 It should also be pointed out that a very important new element in the Meiji Restoration is the introduction of an industrial revolution, something that was lacking in China’s early modernity. 31 Naoyuki Umemori made the following observation at the aforementioned conferences. A British diplomat Rutherford Alcock (first in China and then in Japan) in The Capital of the Tycoon argued that the difficult path of colonization (such as the Taiping rebellion) in China and India should teach the West to take a less aggressive approach in Japan. ­Instead, the West should help Japan to have a central government and deal with it directly. This suggests that the less painful path to modernity in Japan may have something to do with the more painful path in China. In his chapter in this volume, Umemori argues that in the case of policing, learning from other colonies helped Japan to modernize smoothly. 32 As mentioned, early modernity doesn’t necessarily evolve into late modernity over time. So what prevents the former from evolving into the latter? If my understanding of China holds, what would be the implications for the great hiatus between China’s early modernization and late modernization? These are all very important issues which I am ­unable to address. I thank Ken Cheng for putting these questions to me. 33 There are other reasons that the political dimension of Chinese thought is ignored. For example, Zheng Jiadong points out, “that metaphysics and ontology are the focus of modern [he means by “modern” “twentieth century”—my note] ‘Chinese philosophy’ has something do with the response to Hegel’s criticism of ‘Chinese philosophy,’ and with the reflections on problems brought up by Kant’s critical philosophy” (2004, 9). 34 The first generation of Overseas New Confucians, such as Mou Zongsan牟宗三, fled to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other places after the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949, and they then had students and followers in these areas. 35 For example, in many places, the overseas New Confucian Liu Shu-hsian刘述 先 ­repeatedly claims that there are three kinds of Confucianism: The spiritual, the

132  Tongdong Bai politicized, and the popular (for example, Liu 2001, 16, 2009, 3, 50), in which only the spiritual (i.e., overseas New Confucianism) is good, and the politicized are those who are merely lackeys for despotic rulers. Even younger generations who don’t necessarily fully identify themselves with overseas New Confucians, such as the self-described “post-New-Confucian” Lin Anwu林安梧, also holds a similarly negative attitude ­toward traditional Chinese politics (Lin 2003). 36 See, for example, Bai (2009, 2014) for two examples of such comparative works. 37 See, for example, Bell and Li (2013) for a defense of meritocracy. 38 As mentioned, Victoria Hui acknowledges the similarities between Warring States China and early Modern Europe, and she tries to answer the question why unification became the norm in China, while balance of power became the norm in the West (2005). For normative discussions of an ideal global order, see Bai (2019, Chapters 7 and 8), as well as Xu (2013).

Bibliography Bai, Tongdong白彤东 2009. “How to Rule without Taking Unnatural Actions (无为而治): A Comparative Study of the Political Philosophy of the Laozi”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 59, No. 4, 481–502. ——. 2011a. “Preliminary Remarks: Han Fei Zi—First Modern Political Philosopher?”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 1, 4–13. ——. 2011b. “Against Democratic Education”, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Vol. 43, No. 5, 615–622. ——. 2014. 恻隐之心的现代性本质—从尼采与孟子谈起 [“Nietzsche, Mencius, and Compassion as a Modern Virtue”] 世界哲学 [World Philosophy], No. 1, 110–119. ——. 2019. Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. Princeton, NJ: Princeton ­University Press. ——. “The Cushing Thesis and Underdetermination”, unpublished manuscript. Bell, Daniel and Li Chenyang (eds.) 2013. The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Elizabeth A. R. 1974. “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 79 No. 4, 1063–1088. Dunbar, R. I. M. 1992. “Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates”, Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 22, No. 6, 469–493. Eisenstadt, S. N. 2000. “Multiple Modernities”, Daedalus, Vol. 129, No. 1, 1–29. Fukuyama, Francis. 2011. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Han, Dongyu韩东育. 2003. 日本近世新法家研究 [Studies of Modern Japanese New ­Legalism]. 北京：中华书局 Hobson, John M. 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press. Huang, Guanmin黄冠闵. 主体之位：唐君毅论哲学与教化的基础 [The Place of the Subject: Tang Junyi on Philosophy and Moral Cultivation], unpublished manuscript. Hui, Victorial Tin-Bor. 2005. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Li, Feng. 2005. Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 2008. Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

China’s Zhou-Qin Transition as an Early Modernization  133 Lin, Anwu林安梧. 2003. Dao Misplaced—The Fundamental Problem with Chinese P ­ olitical Thought. Taipei: Xuesheng Shuju. Liu, Shuxian 刘述先. 2001. 儒家思想开拓的尝试 [Attempts to Explore Confucian Thoughts], edited by Zheng, Jiadong 郑家栋. 北京：中国社会科学出版社. ——. 2009. 论儒家这些的三大时代 [On the Three Epochs of Confucian Philosophy]. 贵 阳：贵州人民出版社 Qian, Mu 钱穆. 1996.国史大纲 [Outlines of the History of China]. 北京：商务印书馆. ——. 2005. 国史新论 [New Discussions of the National History (Second Edition)]. 北京： 三联书店. Reynolds, Susan. 1994. Fiefs and Vassals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Roetz, Heiner. 2016. “Closed or Open? On Chinese Axial Age Society”, Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasien Forschung (Bochum Yearbook of East Asian Studies), Vol. 39, 137–169. ——. 2019. “On Subjectivity and Secularity in Axial Age China,” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, 17, Leipzig University. Sa, Mengwu萨孟武. 2008. 中国政治思想史 [History of Chinese Political Thought]. 北 京：东方出版社. Sima, Qian司马迁. 1981.史记 [Records of the Grand Historian]. In The Twenty-Five ­Historical Records. 上海：上海古籍出版社. Spruyt, Hendrik. 2002. “The Origins, Development, and Possible Decline of the Modern State”, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 5, 127–149. Xie, Wenyu谢文郁. 2010. 康德的“善人”与儒家的“君子 [Kant’s ‘Better Man’ and Confucian ‘Exemplary Person], Journal of Yunnan University (Social Sciences Edition) [云南 大学学报（社会科学版）], Vol. 10, No. 3, 65–77. Xu, Yingji徐英瑾. 2013. 演化心理学对《1844年经济学—哲学手稿》之‘异化’观的‘祛 魅’ [Disenchantment of ‘Alienation’ in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844—From the Perspective of Evolutionary Psychology], Xueshu Monthly [学术月 刊], No. 6, 54–63. Zhang, Taiyan章太炎. 1999. 代议然否论 [“On Representative Government”], in章太炎学 术文化随笔 [Zhang Taiyan’s Scholarly and Cultural Essays] (edited by Zhang Yong张 勇), Beijing: China Youth Press, 128–141. Zhang, Zhaoyang张朝阳. 2014.中国早期民法的建构 [The Structure of Civil Laws in Early China]. 北京：中国政法大学出版社. Zhao, Dingxin. 2015. The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History. ­Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zheng, Jiadong郑家栋. 2001. 中国哲学’的‘合法性’问题 [The Issue of ‘Legitimacy’ of ‘Chinese Philosophy], originally in 世纪中国 [Shiji Zhongguo], http://www.Confucius 2000.com/poetry/zgzxdhfxwt.htm (Accessed on May 6, 2013) ——. 2004. ‘中国哲学史’写作与中国思想传统的现代困境 [Writing ‘History of Chinese Philosophy’ and the Modern Dilemma of Traditional Chinese Thought], 中国人民大学 学报 [Renmin University Journal], No. 3, 2–11. Zhou, Lian周濂. 2007. 政治社会，多元共同体与幸福生活 [Political Society, Plural Communities, and Happy Life], 第12届中国现象学年会会议论文 [Proceedings of the 12th Annual Meeting of Chinese Phenomenology Society]. ——. 2008. 最可欲的与最相关的—今日语境下如何做政治哲学 [The Most Desirable and the Most Relevant—How to do Political Philosophy in Today’s Context], 思想 [Thought], Vol. 8, 237–253.

8

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity A Progressive Conservative Perspective Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei

A Progressive Conservative Perspective The conventional narrative of modernity is that it’s a one-way track to a final destination. Whether it’s Hegelian freedom, Marxist communism, or liberal ­ democracy, progress toward a universal end point involves shedding traditional values and old ways of thinking along the way. He Lin’s “A New Review of the Five Human Relations,” written at the height of the anti-Japanese war in 1940, questioned this conventional narrative.1 He recognized that distinguishing between the Old and the New is the simplest way to justify ethical values: Old is bad, and New is good. This view, inherited from the West, also became dominant in China. But He cast doubt on the assumption that “old ideas” need to be abandoned and that “new ideas” represent the new Zeitgeist. Instead, He argued that a true independent spirit involves not just criticizing the inappropriate parts of traditional ideas, but also the unreasonable parts of new ideas. And we must innovate based on the old. As He put it: “Grasp the essence of traditional concepts and be the carrier of national culture. Understand the true meaning of popular ideas, and represent the Zeitgeist.”2 We need to break out of the dichotomous view that old is tradition and new is modern: “We must find out the latest modern spirit from the review of the traditional concept.”3 We must innovate from tradition and criticize the dogmatic parts of tradition, while also criticizing the dogmatic part of popular ideas and learning from the spirit of the times. Double criticisms of past and present and double affirmations of past and present: We call this method “progressive conservatism.” Progress involves both criticizing and learning from the past, as well as criticizing and learning from the present. And there will be different paths for different societies. Instead of one final destination for all peoples, there will be multiple modernities without any clear end points, with each society constantly rethinking and improving based on a critical approach to past and present. In C ­ hina’s case, it means looking to its own history for inspiration while learning from new ideas, all the while maintaining a critical spirit toward both past and present. We wholeheartedly endorse He Lin’s “progressive conservative” perspective [PC for short]. What might it mean in a contemporary context? At minimum, it means endorsing the principle of equality of basic moral and legal status for citizens. Ancient Chinese thinkers argued that scholar-officials should be exempt DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-12

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  135 from criminal punishment,4 but no contemporary Confucian seeks to revive such forms of inequality before the law. We also endorse the view that human beings, regardless of background, are equally entitled to what Michael Walzer terms “thin” human rights: rights not to be tortured, enslaved, murdered, and subject to ­systematic racial discrimination.5 But the PC perspective does more than endorse equality before the law in criminal cases and basic human rights. On the one hand, it means sympathy for the traditional egalitarian causes of the political left, including an aversion to extremes of wealth distribution; more rights for the productive classes; more support for poor countries that unduly suffer the effects of global warming; equality between men and women; and equal rights for same-sex couples. In our view, many of the social hierarchies traditionally viewed as natural and just are neither natural nor just, and we can and should challenge those hierarchies: by revolutionary means, if necessary.6 On the other hand, the PC perspective shares a conservative attachment to, if not reverence for, tradition, and we recognize that some traditional hierarchies—among family members, citizens, states, humans and animals, and humans and machines—are morally defensible. We do not argue for blindly reaffirming and implementing hierarchies that may have worked in the past.  But suitably reformed—so we will argue—they can be appropriate for the modern world Is Social Hierarchy Always Bad?7 In a purely descriptive sense, a hierarchy is a relation that is characterized by (a) ­difference and (b) ranking according to some attribute. Social hierarchies tend to have a normative dimension: They are social systems in which there is “an implicit or explicit rank of individuals or groups with respect to a valued social dimension.”8 But we need further normative justification to argue that societies should value those dimensions. In English, the word “hierarchy” has come to have pejorative connotations because we now think that most traditional ways of ranking people or groups are not justified from a moral point of view. Whatever the drawbacks of traditional forms of hierarchy, the effort to combat all forms of hierarchy is neither possible nor desirable. Complex organizations and societies need some form of hierarchy and will outcompete and outlast those that seek to abolish all forms of hierarchy. History bears out this prediction: Efforts to consciously build large-scale organizations or societies without hierarchies have failed miserably. Edmund Burke famously criticized the French revolutionaries for seeking to equalize relations of command and obedience in the military and predicted such efforts would lead to the rise of “some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, [and who would] draw the eyes of men upon himself [and become] the master of the whole republic.”9 In China’s Cultural Revolution, the effort to stamp out social hierarchies similarly led to mass violence and populist tyranny. In contemporary China, the populist legacies of the Cultural Revolution still poison the political atmosphere, aided by the internet that allows anonymous masses to hound

136  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei social undesirables into submission. In the United States, the populist backlashes against elites empower strongmen such as Donald Trump with scant regard and respect for traditional constraints on political power. So, the effort to combat all forms of hierarchy will not only fail; it may lead to something even worse from a moral point of view. In short, the choice today is not between a society with no hierarchies and one with hierarchies but rather between a society with unjust hierarchies that perpetuate unjust power structures and one with just hierarchies that serve morally desirable purposes. Perhaps the idea of just or morally justified hierarchies seems difficult to digest at the conscious level, especially from a modern perspective. But we generally take hierarchies of esteem for granted: Nobody doubts that Lebron James deserves his trophy as the Most Valuable Player in the 2016 NBA playoffs by virtue of his achievements on the basketball court. And whatever the disputes about the moral worthiness of particular Nobel Peace Prize winners, few object to the principle that we can and should reward those with great moral achievements of some sort. In China, the government honors adults who are filial to their elderly parents; we can argue about the choices, but it seems hard to object to the principle of honoring those who can set a good model for others.10 What’s more controversial is the claim that morally justifiable social hierarchies should structure our social lives on an everyday basis, including our relations with loved ones. That’s what we will argue in this article. Our target is the view that all social relations should be equal. The flip side of this view is that unequal relations are fundamentally unjust: as Jean-Jacques ­Rousseau lamented in his Confessions, “I felt, more than ever, from repeated experiences, that associations on unequal terms are always to the disadvantage of the weaker party.”11 So, those who care about the interests of the weak—i.e., all sensitive, progressive-minded people—should affirm the ideal of equal social relations at all times in all walks of (social) life. In the contemporary world, this ideal is often expressed in everyday (English language) speech: Think of nine-year-olds who want to be treated as equals.12 More surprising, perhaps, the blanket defense of social equality is increasingly defended by sophisticated political theorists. In the first few decades after the publication of John Rawls’ groundbreaking book A ­Theory of Justice (1971), Western political theorists were mainly concerned about the nature of things to be distributed equally (is it income, resources, welfare, capabilities, or something else?) and debates about the most defensible egalitarian distributive principle (should it be pure equality, the difference principle, sufficiency, or something else?).13 More recently, some theorists—let’s call them “social egalitarians”—argued that this focus on distributive principles is too narrow and neglects the broader agendas of actual egalitarian political movements. As Elizabeth Anderson put it, “What has happened to the concerns of the politically oppressed? What about inequalities of race, gender, class, and caste?”14 Nor did political theorists obsessed with the just distribution of privately appropriated goods, such as income, or privately enjoyed goods, such as welfare, pay attention to the concerns of gay and lesbian people who seek the right to get married and the disabled who seek access to reconfigured public spaces and campaign against

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  137 demeaning stereotypes. To remedy the problem, social egalitarians argue that equality should refer first and foremost to an egalitarian ideal of social relations: Various goods should be distributed in order to secure a society in which people are related as equals. The focus on social inequality allows political theorists to critique the unjust social hierarchies that have plagued and continue to plague human societies, “including slavery, serfdom, debt peonage, feudalism, monarchy, oligarchy, caste and class inequality, racism, patriarchy, colonialism, and stigmatization based on sexuality, disability, and bodily appearance.”15 So far, so good. As political progressives, we welcome this focus on social relations and applaud the critique of the unjust social hierarchies that have oppressed and stigmatized the large majority of people in past history.16 But it doesn’t follow that equal social relations are necessarily just and that hierarchical social relations are necessarily unjust. As Joseph Chan explains, one could argue that traditional hierarchies “are problematic not because they undermine equality, but because they deprive people in the lower ranks of such hierarchies of the opportunities to pursue wellbeing and develop virtue, and they do so on ascriptive grounds that are morally irrelevant and hence unfair. Rejection of these hierarchies may not necessarily lead to endorsement of equal social relationships or rejection of other hierarchies. One could imagine hierarchies that are relatively free from the ills of these historical examples and capable of promoting the wellbeing and virtue of the lower ranked.”17 We’d like to add that not all historical hierarchies are necessarily unjust. We should be open to the possibility that some traditional forms of hierarchy were morally justified and they can serve as inspiration for thinking about just hierarchy in the modern world. We expect that our defense of “just hierarchy” will resonate with the considered political intuitions of readers who share our PC perspective, with the implication that traditional hierarchies, properly reformed and updated for modern societies, can serve progressive political goals. But we recognize that the PC perspective may sound paradoxical to Western readers.18 How can one be committed to both traditional values rooted in the past and to progressive values that point to a different (and better) way of doing things in the future? The mainstream narrative of modernity in Western societies is that traditional hierarchies expressed and institutionalized unjust values such as racism, sexism, and aristocratic privilege. Modern enlightened thinkers criticized traditional hierarchies and put forward strong arguments in favor of social equality and individual freedom that set the moral standard for future progress. There remains a large gap between the ideal and the reality, but hardly anybody openly argues for a return to the bad old days of rule by white men from aristocratic families. The default moral position, in the eyes of most Westerners, is a commitment to social equality and deep skepticism of the value of traditional hierarchies. In the twentieth century, the emphasis on social equality— between friends, comrades, and spouses—also became mainstream in Chinese thought and practice. The imperial system broke down in 1911, and Westerninfluenced intellectuals blamed Confucian-style hierarchies for China’s backwardness.19 The tradition of anti-traditionalism culminated in the Cultural Revolution, a disastrous attempt to abolish all forms of hierarchy from social life. Today, it is widely recognized by both government officials and leading intellectuals that

138  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei China’s way forward needs to draw on both conservative and progressive values: The default moral position in contemporary China often favors social ­hierarchy,20 and the question is how to make those hierarchies serve socially and politically progressive goals In a Chinese context, the PC perspective often takes the form of traditional ­Confucian values modernized for contemporary society. Arguably, the PC perspective has been central to the Confucian tradition. Early Confucian thinkers criticized rulers on the grounds that they oppressed and impoverished ordinary people. In this sense, they were political progressives. But rather than invoking new or future-oriented values as a moral standard for criticizing present-day injustices, they invoked standards from a golden age in the past that expressed morally desirable hierarchies in a harmonious society. But how might a contemporary Confucian interpret human relations in ways appropriate for modern progressive sensibilities? As always, he or she would turn to the past for inspiration. Perhaps the first “modern” instinct is to promote forms of social equality and the traditional relation between friends is the most promising relation for such reinterpretation.21 It’s the one social relation that does assume equal status, except in extreme circumstances that deviate from the default position of social equality. Even conceptions of friendship that allow for differences in personalities prescribe comparable ­treatment, without any ­differences of power or ranking. Friends are both moral and social equals. As it turns out, a Confucian scholar and radical social critic named He Xinyin (1517–1579) did value friendship as the highest form of social relation that could also serve as a model for other social relations. But was he correct to do so? He Xinyin has been praised as a pioneer of the “Chinese enlightenment.”22 In the waning years of the Ming dynasty, He spent two years trying to avoid arrest by the imperial court. He was helped by his close friends, but the authorities caught up with him, and he died in prison in the fall of 1579. His last wish was to be buried next to his close friend, the scholar Cheng Xu. This “final act” created an uproar at the time because it contravened the Confucian norm that the dead should be buried next to their relatives, thus earning He the epithet “crazy Confucian” (狂儒). In his own mind, however, He was not “crazy”; rather, he aimed to provide a morally desirable interpretation of Confucian ethics. He did not reject the five cardinal interpersonal relations of Confucian ethics: Between parent and child, there should be affection; between sovereign and minister, righteousness; between husband and wife, attention to their separate functions; between old and young, proper order; and between friends, fidelity. But whereas traditional Confucians valued the first four hierarchical relations—with special value on the parent and child relation as the most “natural” and the starting point for all the others23—He argued that the relation between friends, founded on equality, was the highest form of social relation, which should serve as the standard for structuring other human relations. Even seemingly hierarchical relations should be infused with the spirit of egalitarian friendship. For example, the relation between teacher and ­student should be a mutual learning process, with both interacting as equal teachers (相师) and friends (相友).24 And what made the sage rulers of the past so successful is that they interacted with ministers, younger siblings, and even their own children as though they

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  139 were equal friends and teachers of each other.25 He traces the origin of his theory to Confucius himself: Only friendship could assemble all the talented under Heaven.… That’s why the Confucian orthodoxy could be traced back to Confucius in the Spring and Autumn period.… The Dao of friendship was revealed to Confucius by Heaven, so that he could reach the highest good.26 But He was an innovator, not just a transmitter. He was the first Confucian thinker to argue that friendship is the highest form of social relation and that friends should be both teachers and students learning equally from each other. And he was the first to argue that the ideal of equal friendship should serve as the standard to evaluate other social relations.27 But is the ideal of equality between friends really the ­highest—most desirable—form of social relation? He’s idealization of friendship is more common in the history of Western ­philosophy. A recent book on the relation friendship between the eighteenth-­century thinkers David Hume and Adam Smith paints a moving depiction of their deep friendship. Both Hume and Smith valued friendship as the highest social good: Hume held that “friendship is the chief joy of human life,” and Smith proclaimed that the esteem and affection of one’s friends constitutes “the chief joy of human life.”28 Moreover, their own friendship constituted the very highest form of friendship, with two friends motivated by virtue and excellence: “a stable, enduring, reciprocal bond that arises not just from serving one another’s interests or from taking pleasure in one another’s company, but also from shared pursuit of a noble end: in this case, philosophical understanding.”29 In the Western tradition, the archetype of ideal friendship can be traced to Aristotle. In Aristotle’s view, there are numerous kinds of friendship in the real ethical world. He used the word “friendship” as a metaphor to discuss (1) the relation in a family, for example, friendship between parents and children and between husband and wife; (2) unequal relations, such as the friendship between rulers and subjects and between elders and the young; and (3) friendship in a community, for example, friendship among travel companions and friendship among soldiers.30 But the different kinds of friendship are not equal in moral worth. Some are motivated by utility, some by pleasure, and the highest and rarest form—such as the friendship between Hume and Smith (Aristotle himself does not offer any examples)—is motivated by virtue or excellence, with two equals who seek the ethical life in common: “Perfect friendship is the friendship between good people and similar in virtue.”31 For both Aristotle and He, the highest human relation is characterized by two equal friends sincerely committed to the other’s good and who jointly partake of the ethical life.32 The sixteenth-century philosophy Michel de Montaigne endorsed Aristotle’s ideal of friendship between equals but he denied that other forms of friendship are possible. For Montaigne, two people who are not equals cannot be friends: Given the big gap between father and son, for example, it is more appropriate for the son to respect his father.33 Montaigne also reversed Aristotle’s view that love, as an excess of emotion, has a character similar to perfect friendship. For Aristotle, love

140  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei is as extreme as “perfect friendship,” and it is equally rare: One cannot have many true friends, just as it is only possible to love one person.34 For Montaigne, however, love is inferior to friendship. The intensity of love and friendship are not the same, and the “chaleur douce” of friendship is more long lasting than the strong erotic passion of love: As soon as love enters the territory of friendship (where wills work together, that is), it languishes and grows faint. To enjoy it is to lose it: its end is in the body and therefore subject to satiety. Friendship on the contrary is enjoyed in proportion to our desire: since it is a matter of the mind, with our souls being purified by practicing it, it can spring forth, be nourished and grow only when enjoyed.35 Friends are soul-mates, not body-mates, and body and soul should be kept separate. That’s not to say soul-mates can’t share their souls, just as lovers share their bodies. For Montaigne, the highest form of friendship involves the merging of souls, so that equality becomes sameness. Montaigne was speaking from personal experience with his dear friend Étienne de la Boétie: I know his soul as well as mine.… Everything actually being in common between [us]—wills, thoughts, judgments, good, wives, children, honor, and life—and [our] relationship being that of one soul in two bodies, according to Aristotle’s very apt definition, [we] can neither lend nor give anything to each other.36 From a normative point of view, however, the merging of souls is questionable. The twentieth-century French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas agrees with Montaigne that friendship between equals can merge into sameness: My friend and I, we define each other by the relation between us. He is a soul mate, another me (alter ego). Oreste and Pylade are a related pair. The pair of friendship is like the marble and the groove where it rests. According to the mythology of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, being double [l’être double] would rather be friendship than love. In friendship, every dynamic is absent: friends possess each other.37 True friends speak with one voice, one heart, and one mind, and experience the same emotions: “In his position, I feel my friend’s emotions again through my own sentiment, feel happy for his happiness, and mourned for his pain.”38 Like the person who has found the other half in the mythology of Aristophanes, two friends do not have separate identities. But for Levinas, sameness is not something to be celebrated. Quite the opposite. When “friends possess each other,” they exercise power [“puissance”] over each other, which can easily lead to violence. Here Levinas inverts Montaigne. Far from being inferior to the relation of friendship, the relation of love (what Levinas terms “eros”) is superior precisely because it

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  141 preserves a distance between self and other that can never be conquered. As long as the distance exists, the relation between self and other can never be a relation of power. Lovers do not seek to complete each other, but to deepen their relation.39 So, who’s right? We can accept Levinas’ critique of Montaigne’s ideal: Identities should not be merged. Who wants to be controlled by a “friend” who claims to think the same things and experience the same emotions as me? But good friends need not—and should not—have the same identity (if anything, lovers are more likely to merge their identities in unhealthy ways). They can be equal but different, each helping the other to improve her/himself and to flourish in her/his own distinctive way. We can also accept Levinas’ point that lovers should maintain their separate identities. But here too, he goes too far. What would it mean to completely do away with power relations? Drawing on a wide range of findings from the animal world and human societies, the cultural anthropologist Christopher Boehm argues that humans have an innate tendency to dominate as well as an innate tendency to resent being dominated.40 Hierarchy is a ubiquitous feature of human relations, and it is unrealistic to wish it away. That’s not to say we can’t have the equality of friendship, but any social relation also needs to make room for hierarchy, and the task is to distinguish between good and bad forms of hierarchy and to promote social relations that have more of the former. Justifying Age-Based Hierarchies between Family Members We spend much of our time interacting with our intimates. Lovers, family ­members, and friends give meaning to life, and it’s almost unbearable to imagine a life (only) with strangers. Yet it takes only a moment’s thought to realize that we do not often interact with intimates on a basis of equality. A parent can freely criticize a five-year-old child who does the wrong thing, and while the parent should not be immune to criticism, nobody thinks the child is an equal when it comes to judgments about what kind of life to lead. In China and other countries that value filial piety, it’s common for adult children to defer to the views of an experienced and wise elderly parent. The idea that there is a hierarchy between elders and younger people is central to Chinese culture. Mencius (known as Mengzi in Chinese) and Xunzi, for example, notwithstanding totally different starting points about human nature, both agree that there should be age-based hierarchical rankings between people.41 Throughout Chinese history, this idea was institutionalized by means of laws and informal norms that empowered the elderly in a variety of economic, social, and political ways.42 Still today, the Chinese political system is structured so as to ensure that top decision-makers have decades of experience: Since 1989, nobody under 50 has assumed positions in the standing committee of the politburo. Age-based hierarchies are rooted in the idea of filial piety (孝). We ought to revere elderly members of the family, and then extend that reverence to elderly people as a whole.43 Note that filial piety does not simply refer to the idea that children ought to (generally speaking) obey their parents. Every known society accepts a hierarchy between parents and children. Parents, due to superior knowledge and morality, have power over children, but parents are supposed to use that power to

142  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei help children develop into flourishing adults. What happens when children reach adulthood, say, around 18 years of age? In the West, the assumption is that adult children and their parents are then equals, and hierarchical relationships are no longer justified. In China, the assumption is that parents continue to have some form of unequal authority over adult children, and adult children are supposed to serve their elderly parents. They are not equals, even when both are adults. What justifies age-based hierarchies between adult children and elderly parents? Confucian thinkers often invoke the argument that filial piety is distinctive to human beings.44 Animals, like humans, often care for their children, but they typically do not care for their elderly. Even if the claim that filial piety is distinctively human is correct, we still need to justify a move from descriptive fact to normative injunction (the ability to develop intricate means of inflicting pain may also be distinctive to humans, but it’s not a good thing). It’s also worth asking what, if anything, hinges on the descriptive fact: If filial piety is a good thing, and if it turns out that some animals do care for their elderly, we should praise those animals rather than give up our commitment to filial piety.45 So Mencius’s argument can’t be the whole, or even the main, story. Another argument is more recent: Filial piety is central to Chinese culture and if we care about maintaining Chinese culture, we should care about maintaining filial piety.46 But clearly filial piety has changed over the years. The days when elderly parents controlled the family income and property are long gone; now, adult children typically support their elderly parents. And fewer and fewer people live with their elderly parents. Elderly parents have far less say in family decisions compared to families in imperial China. Clearly elderly parents are becoming more and more disempowered. Whether this trend is good or bad is a separate question, and we need more arguments to defend the claim that (what’s left of) age-based hierarchies should be maintained, if not reinforced in the future. What, then, are the arguments in favor of age-based hierarchies between adult children and their parents? There are six arguments that, together, constitute a strong case for age-based hierarchies. The first argument, more closely tied to the family, invokes the value of reciprocity. Our parents cared for us when we were children, and adult children have an obligation to care for elderly parents when they are older and frail. That seems fair. In the West, adult children often serve their parents, but it’s viewed as a matter of choice. Not in China: Adult children must serve their adult parents, a norm that is often reinforced by legal means.47 Yes, the state will need to play a greater role in providing elderly care in the future (given that many single children need to support two adult parents), but the ideal of providing care for elderly parents is not likely to lose its normative force in the foreseeable future. And some social practices that express reverence for the elderly are still widely followed in China: For example, adult parents typically get first dibs at communal dishes at the family table. Still, the idea that we have an obligation to serve our parents does not necessarily translate into an argument that elderly parents should assume leadership roles in hierarchical relations with their adult children: We also have an obligation to care for our house pets, but the pets are not our masters. So, we need more arguments to justify age-based hierarchies within the family.

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  143 The second argument invokes the value of learning from experience. This a­ rgument is not distinctive to humans. Female red deer, for example, do not fight for dominance of the herd. The leaders are usually older, and they lead because the followers “recognize the experience that comes with age.”48 But humans can do even better: They can consciously commit themselves to learning in a way that broadens their intellectual horizons. Learning is a never-ending process of accumulating knowledge: As Confucius put it, “A person who is constantly aware of what has yet to be learned and who, from month to month, does not forget what has been learned, can be said to truly love learning” (19.5).49 Since reading and studying is a time-consuming process, the elderly are more likely to have had the time to read and study with a view to improving their lives. Hence, adult children need to defer to the intellectual judgments of elderly parents, other things being equal. But other things are rarely equal. In disciplines such as mathematics or physics, the best intellectual work is often done by thinkers in their twenties or thirties. And today, youngsters often need to teach elderly parents (and grandparents) about uses of modern gadgets essential for navigating the social and virtual worlds. Whatever intellectual authority the elderly may have had in the past has been eroded by the youthful virtuosos of Silicon Valley and Shenzhen. So, we need still more arguments for age-based hierarchies within the family. The third argument invokes the value of emotional intelligence.50 From a ­Confucian standpoint, it seems obvious that emotional intelligence—meaning social skills such as self-awareness, self-regulation, and the ability to understand others—normally increases over time. As we age, we experience different roles (such as dealing with bosses, colleagues, and subordinates in the workplace) and deepen our experience in particular roles (a community organizer with ten years experience should be more effective than a brand-new organizer), and thus, we increase our ability to understand and cooperate with different kinds of people for the purpose of achieving desired ends, so long as we maintain the quest for self-improvement and our desire for social interaction. As it turns out, scientific research bears out this Confucian insight: “One thing is certain: Emotional intelligence increases with age.”51 Fredda Blanchard-Field’s research compares the way young adults and older adults respond to situations of stress and her results show that older adults are more socially astute than younger people when it comes to sizing up an emotionally conflicting situation. They are better able to make decisions that preserve an interpersonal relationship.… And she has found that as we grow older, we grow more emotionally supple—we are able to adjust to changing situations on the basis of our e­ motional intelligence and prior experience, and therefore make better decisions (on average) than do young people.52 Other research shows that older adults seem particularly good at quickly letting go of negative emotions because they value social relationships more than the ego satisfaction that comes from rupturing them.53 In short, we have good reason to empower elderly parents in the family context—to give them more voice, and let

144  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei them decide in moments of emotional conflict—because they are more likely to have superior social skills. On the other hand, a sociopath with superior social skills can “read” people and manipulate them for immoral purposes more ­effectively than an incompetent and insensitive person. So, we need still more arguments to justify age-based hierarchies within the family. The fourth argument invokes the value of moral growth.54 One of the most widely quoted sayings from The Analects of Confucius is the brief account ­Confucius gives of his own life: At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning; at thirty, I took my stance; at forty, I was no longer perplexed; at fifty, I realized the ‘ways of the universe’; at sixty, my ear was attuned; at seventy, I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the boundaries. (2.4) In contemporary China, the saying has been somewhat distorted: For example, 30-year-olds take Confucius to be saying that they should be established in their careers. But Confucius himself is tracing his own progress of moral growth: His capacity for moral judgment improves, and he can act better, morally speaking. Why does he think morality improves with age? The text is not so clear, but one reason for believing that the elderly have greater capacity for moral judgment is that they are less likely to be enslaved by sexual desire. Confucius notes that he can give free reign to his heart’s desires at the age of 70, meaning that there is less of a conflict between what he wants to do and what he should do. Why would Confucius say that? Elsewhere in the Analects, Confucius notes despairingly that he “has yet to meet anybody who is fonder of virtue than of sex” (15.13). But Confucius is addressing his own students, and he may not say the same thing to an older crowd. That is, as sexual desire diminishes with age, there may be less conflict between the desire for sex and the desire to do good. This is not to imply that the desire for sex is entirely extinguished for elderly people, but it is easier to control and subordinate to moral principles (compared to male adolescents!). That said, the phenomena of sexual abuse and harassment do not, sadly, have an age limit, so we need still more arguments to defend age-based hierarchies among adult family members. The fifth argument invokes the value of economic equality. Zhang Taisu argues that seniority-based social hierarchies in early modern China served to safeguard remarkably persistent socioeconomic equality. Qing and Republican property institutions often gave greater economic protection to the poorer segments of society than comparable institutions in early modern England: the comparatively ‘egalitarian’ tendencies of Qing and Republican property institutions stemmed from the different ways Chinese and English rural communities allocated social status and rank. Hierarchical ‘Confucian’ kinship networks dominated social and economic life in most Chinese villages. Within these networks, an individual’s status and rank depended, in large part, on his age and generational seniority, rather than personal wealth.

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  145 This allowed many low-income households to enjoy status and rank highly ­disproportionate to their wealth.55 In other words, age-based hierarchies at the family and village level actually ­promote economic hierarchy at the societal level: If people are given power because of their age, not their wealth, the state is less likely to enact policies that benefit the rich, and the overall effect will be to equalize the distribution of wealth (relative to societies that do not empower the elderly). Of course, such policies were based on patriarchal assumptions that we reject today: Only the elderly men had substantial power in traditional China. But a gerontocracy without gender bias would still equalize wealth, so in principle, it’s a good idea to strive empower elderly men and women in the family and the local community (assuming that we worry about radical inequalities of wealth distribution). The bigger problem is practical. Zhang objects to the “socialist” road to economic equality on the grounds that it involves too much coercion in the form of strong state regulation and aggressive wealth distribution from the top. Empowering the elderly in families and local communities could achieve the same end without nearly as much coercion. But it’s hard to imagine the Chinese Communist Party reviving such “feudal” practices from the past. And it’s even harder to imagine such pro-gerontocracy reforms in democratic Western societies without a history of empowering the elderly. It is abstractly conceivable that, say, extra votes for the elderly could mitigate the power of wealth in the United States,56 but the rest of the society is almost certain to object strongly to such measures. The sixth argument invokes the value of harmony. Harmony in the Confucian sense of peaceful order and respect for diversity depends on the idea that there is a “decider” who has the authority to make the final call in cases of conflict.57 Without a “decider,” conflicts that cannot be solved by love and peace are likely to spin out of control, as factions fight for victory, thus undermining social harmony. In politics, the “decider” would be, ideally, a public official with superior ability and virtue and a proven track record of good performance. Families are not (and should not be) meritocracies to the same extent: They are supposed to be run on love and informal norms, and it would be absurd to subject elderly parents to a battery of tests before they can assume positions of power in the family.58 But it does make sense to empower the family member who is (1) owed thanks due to previous love-infused work on behalf of the family, (2) more likely to have the most knowledge, (3) more likely to have superior emotional intelligence, and (4) more likely to be in control of his or her sexual urges. Elder members of the family are more likely to instantiate these desiderata (counter-examples may readily come to mind, but it’s a question of tendencies). Empowering family elders is also likely to promote more economic equality in the political community. Hence, on balance, there is a good case for empowering the elderly members of the family, with the consequence that adult children typically need to defer to their elderly parents in cases of conflict. Still, we need to reiterate our opposition to hierarchies that become frozen and impervious to change. So, do we need to worry about fossilized age-based

146  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei hierarchies in the family? Not really. For one thing, younger family members on the bottom of the family hierarchy can and should criticize powerful elders who commit moral wrongs. In the Confucian tradition, even young children have an obligation to criticize parents who commit moral wrongs, though it must be done in an appropriate context. The Qing dynasty classic “Rules for Students” (弟子规)— still widely taught in China’s primary schools today—suggests three steps to the young child: First, use persuasion; if that doesn’t work, then wait until the parents are happy, and try again; if that doesn’t work, then try weeping and wailing, ­working on the parent’s emotions; and if that doesn’t work, then the child needs to accept the parent’s will (including the use of physical punishment, which we do not endorse).59 There is still inequality between parent and child—these conditions of critique do not apply in the case of the parent criticizing the child who commits a wrong—but clearly there is no injunction of blind obedience on the part of the child. Plus, it makes sense to say that the child needs to obey the parent at the end of the day, if none of the tactics are successful (other than extreme situations, the final option should not be to run away or change families). But does it make sense to say that adult children have to defer to elderly parents in cases of conflict? In the past, elderly Chinese parents arranged the marriages of their adult children, and few young people want to bring back those days. But it’s still common, and widely accepted for elderly parents in China to set up meetings with potential marriage mates for their adult children, and there is also an expectation that parents be consulted before the marriage deal is closed. Being the “decider” does not necessarily mean exercising veto power in all aspects of family life. It might mean that adult children have an obligation to consult elderly parents when they make decisions, whereas elderly parents do not have the same obligation to consult with adult children (e.g., if elderly parents decide to get remarried). Such unequal social practices may seem dubious in the West, but they are taken for granted in Confucian-­influenced China. Another reason not to worry is that roles in age-based hierarchies, by definition, change over time. The child will become an adult, and then an elder, who will eventually have the same authority over adult children that her or his own parents had.60 In that sense, age-based hierarchies are fundamentally different, and more legitimate, than race- or gender-based hierarchies that are fixed for eternity. Moreover, the hierarchy between adult children and elderly parents often ends up with a complete role reversal. Beyond a certain age, the elderly parent often loses the capacity to make decisions due to physical and mental deterioration. In the case of Alzheimer’s patients, elderly parents literally regress over time, to the point that they become like helpless babies. At that point, there is a complete role reversal, with adult children taking charge of the decision making.61 In traditional China, most people did not live long enough for Alzheimer’s to manifest itself, which may help to explain why role reversal in the family was not discussed in Confucian texts. And in the future, we will hopefully discover ways of slowing down, if not eliminating, cognitive and physical decline. But for the moment, we can expect that the hierarchical relation between adult children and their elderly parents will often be characterized by complete role reversals over the long term.

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  147 We do not mean to imply that the traditional Confucian justifications for h­ ierarchical relations between family members should serve as the standard for assessing hierarchical relations in the family today. Traditional Confucians also tried to justify a hierarchical relation between wife and husband that is morally indefensible from a progressive perspective.62 We do think that Confucian-inspired justifications for age-based family hierarchies, properly adjusted to contemporary norms of gender equality, are still relevant today. But there may be an additional worry. If age-based hierarchies are justified, does it follow that we should revive the Confucian-style hierarchical bond between elder and younger brother, modernized so that it refers to the hierarchical bond between elder and younger sibling, regardless of gender? Our response is that it depends on the age gap. Daniel is 11 months older than his younger sister, and while he occasionally invokes the Confucian need for deference to elder siblings, he has not been effective in asserting his authority over his sister. Perhaps the age gap with his sister is too small for the advantages of age difference to kick in. But the elder sibling may have a legitimate claim to unequal power in the family if there is, say, a 20-year gap between the two siblings. An elder sibling with decades of experience is more likely to have superior knowledge, social skills, and virtue, and is owed thanks if he or she cared for the younger one. So, age-based hierarchies in the family may be extended beyond the child–parent relation, but only if the age gap approximates the same age gap as that between child and parent. Epilogue In short, age-based hierarchies between family members may involve role changes if not complete reversals: That’s key to their moral legitimacy. Other forms of hierarchical social relations may need other justifications, however.63 In this article, our main aim has been to open the possibility that hierarchical social relations can be morally justified from a PC perspective. In a Chinese context, it means not just affirming the ideal of equality between friends, but also the ideal of age-based hierarchies between family members. Such ideals may not be widely shared in other societies, but we should allow for the possibility that different modern societies will be shaped differently by traditional values in different social contexts. The revival of Confucian values, including the reaffirmation of hierarchical family values, is a reality in China, and those values can be justified if they are informed and constrained by a PC perspective. To end, we’d like to reiterate our point that social hierarchies in modern societies are not fixed and may change over time. At minimum, it means a certain degree of freedom of speech so that current hierarchies can be questioned and re-examined, especially by those at the bottom of social hierarchies. The traditional Confucian idea of self-cultivation (自我修养) and constant re-examining and self-questioning (“吾日三省吾身”) provides a basis for modern ideas of freedom of speech, but the relation to modern day freedoms must be made explicit if not legally codified. In the case of filial piety, there is a strong case for maintaining the traditional agebased hierarchy, as we have argued. But given that the reality so often deviates

148  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei from the ideal (for example, some parents are awful to their children which means that adult children have less of a reciprocal obligation to care for their parents as they age), and given that we need to protect the freedom of speech that questions traditional hierarchies and allows for new interpretations, we do not favor legally enshrining the norm of filial piety. At most, the state can provide benefits such as tax breaks that make it easier for adult children to realize the value of filial piety, but the state should not force adult children to be filial. Notes 1 We would like to thank Jun-Hyeok Kwak, Takashi Kibe, Bai Tongdong, Ken Cheng, and Chen Jinxue for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. And we are grateful to Princeton University Press for permission to publish extracts from Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei, Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (Princeton University Press, 2020). Chapter 1. 2 贺麟：“五伦观念的新检讨”，原载《战国策》第3期，1940年5月1日，后收入贺 麟：《文化与人生》，商务印书馆，2015年版。 3 贺麟：“五伦观念的新检讨”，原载《战国策》第3期，1940年5月1日，后收入贺 麟：《文化与人生》，商务印书馆，2015年版。 4 The great Warring States Confucian thinker Xunzi argued that “from scholar-officials (士) upwards, all must moderate through ritual and music; the commoners and the “hundred clans” (百姓) must be restricted through law and methods [of rule]” (富国). The Han dynasty text Book of Rituals expressed a similar view that “common people and downwards should not be restricted by ritual and scholar-officials and upwards should not be subject to punishment” (礼记·曲礼上). In the Song dynasty, there was an implicit norm that spared scholar-officials from humiliating bodily punishments and execution, whereas common people were subject to such legal punishments (Ding Chuanjing, ed. 宋人轶事汇编 [Edited Collection of Anecdotes from the Song Dynasty] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), 7–8. Thanks to Yuri Pines for references. 5 Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 6 In other words, we work with a values-based idea of modernity. Modern societies tend to be industrialized, heavily urban, and open to the rest of the world. But what makes societies modern in a positive sense is that they express values such as commitment to basic human rights. If, say, North Korea manages to modernize in the industrial sense but without a concomitant to human rights, it is not modern in our sense (or in a sense that’s morally defensible). 7 The next two sections draw on Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei, Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton ­University Press, 2020), ch. 1. 8 Joe C. Magee and Adam Galinksy. “Social Hierarchy: The Self Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status.” The Academy of Management Annals 2 (2008): 354. 9 Burke, Edmund. Select Works of Edmund Burke, Vol. 2: Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1999). A few years later, Napoleon did precisely what Burke feared (thanks to Jay Boggis for the reference). 10 More precisely, it is not controversial to reward acts of ‘moral merit’ with reactions of praise and admiration and symbolic trophies, but it is much more controversial to ­reward them with money. See Tim Scanlon, Why Does Inequality Matter (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 2018), ch. 8. 11 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions. Trans. by J.M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1953): 476. 12 In Chinese, by contrast, young children and teenagers rarely argue for equal treatment. 13 For a defense of the “doctrine of sufficiency” and a critique of economic egalitarianism, see Harry J. Frankfurt, On Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  149 14 Elizabeth S. Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (January 1999): 288. 15 Elizabeth S. Anderson, “Equality,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, edited by David Estlund (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 40. 16 For an argument that “progressive Confucians” also have good reasons for resisting oppression, see Stephen C. Angle, “Vicious Oppression, Valuable Deference, and Provisional Hierarchy: A Contemporary Confucian Perspective,” paper presented at the ­Hierarchy and Equality Workshop, sponsored by the Berggruen Institute held at ­Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, March 2016. 17 Joseph Chan, “Democratic Equality or Confucian Hierarchy?” paper presented at the Hierarchy and Equality Workshop sponsored by the Berggruen Institute held at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, March 2016. This paragraph draws on Chan’s paper. 18 Canada may be an exception: the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a leading political party from 1942 until its dissolution in 2003. Our use of the term is not meant to endorse or overlap with the center-right political outlook of that political party. 19 In addition to He Lin, an important exception is Liang Shuming (1893–1988) who expressed commitment to both traditional and socialist values. 20 Consider the way teachers address each other in Chinese universities: usually they address each other as “Teacher X” or “Dean X”, even among close friends. In Western universities, by contrast, professors and university leaders usually address each other on a first name basis, regardless of social hierarchy. On the other hand, Chinese professors might also address administrators as “Teacher X,” perhaps as a legacy of the revolutionary tradition when all were “comrades.” In contrast, it is rare for a university professor in the West to refer to an administrator with the (honorific) label “teacher” or “professor.” Here too, we see the PC perspective at work in China. 21 In our book Just Hierarchy, we emphasize that modern societies must also express a commitment to pluralism in the sense that different forms of hierarchical relations are appropriate for different social relations (we look at five social spheres and we argue that different principles ought to justify the different kinds of social relations). We do not argue for a ranking of social relations that could provide guidance in cases of conflict, but our Confucian sensibilities tend to prioritize relations between intimates, with obligations weakening as the relations become more distant (on the other hand, if, say, advanced machines threaten to upend the hierarchy of humans over machines to the point of exterminating the human species, then we’d favor prioritizing maintaining the hierarchy of humans over machines even if it undermines other valued forms of social hierarchy). 22 Tian Wenjun, “何心隐新论” [A new analysis of He Xinyin’s thought], Wuhan Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban) 5 (1986): 15–21. 23 Zhang Xianglong, 家与孝： 从中西间视野看 [Family and Filial Piety: From the ­Perspective of Chinese and Western Thought] (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2017). 24 He Xinyin. 何心隐文集 [Collected Works of He Xinyin] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1960): 27–28. 25 Ibid., 38. 26 Ibid., 65. 27 The Tang dynasty Confucian thinker Han Yu did argue for an interactive relation between teacher and student “弟子不必不如师， 师不必贤于弟子” [The students don’t have to be inferior to the teachers, and the teachers don’t have to be more virtuous and capable than the students], but he didn’t go so far as to claim that students and teachers can learn equally from each other or that the relation between teacher and friends, as modeled on the ideal of equal friendship, is the highest form of social relation. 28 Quoted in Dennis C. Rasmussen, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton ­University Press, 2017): 5.

150  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei 29 Ibid., 6. 30 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book VIII, 12, 7, 9. 31 Ibid. For a critique of Aristotle’s view, see Alexander Nehamas, On Friendship (New York: Basic Books, 2016). According to Nehamas, “Experience shows that morality is often irrelevant to, or even in conflict with, our love for our friends … not only do we love our friends despite their shortcomings but, sometimes, we love them because of them: Think of the self-importance or the forgetfulness that makes your friend so dear to you and so irritating to everyone else” (p. 27). He also points to the example of the movie Thelma and Louise “whose uncomfortable, well, moral is that friendship and immorality are often bound together” (p. 189). In China, there is a rich tradition—both literary and real—of criminals bound together in brotherly friendship. But the fact that immoral people can be good friends does not detract from Aristotle’s point that two equal friends bound by the common pursuit of virtue is a morally higher or more desirable form of friendship. 32 He’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of ideal friendship, however, are not identical. For He, the Confucian-inspired view of the good life is a quest for constant self-improvement, and friends learn from each other for the purpose of moral and intellectual improvement. For Aristotle, ideal friends must already be perfectly virtuous to befriend each other, so friends do not learn or improve from befriending each other. 33 Michel de Montaigne, On Friendship, trans. M.A. Screech (London: Penguin Books, 2004): 3. 34 Aristotle, Nicomachaen Ethics, Book VII, 1158a10. 35 Ibid., 6. 36 Quoted in Nehamas, On Friendship, 46. New research provides some evidence for ­Montaigne’s subjective experience of merging with his friend: “Scientists have found that the brains of close friends respond in remarkably similar ways as they watch a series of short videos: the same ebbs and swells of attention and distraction, the same peaking of reward processing here, boredom alerts there. The neural response evoked by the videos … proved so congruent among friends, compared to patterns seen among people who were not friends, that the researchers could predict the strength of two people’s social bond based on their brain scans alone.” See Natalie Angier, “You Share Everything With Your Bestie: Even Brain Waves,” New York Times, April 16, 2018. 37 Emmanuel Levinas, Eros, Littérature, et Philosophie (Paris: Éditions Grasset, 2013): 173–174. 38 Ibid., 192. 39 Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité (Paris: Le livre de poche, 1990), 22. For more extensive discussion, see Wang Pei, A Study of Eros and Individuation in Levinas’s Early Philosophy, Ph. D thesis [in Chinese], Tsinghua University, 2016. 40 Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Boehm draws the political implication that successful and long-lasting human societies involve some form of hierarchy along with mechanisms that limit abuses of power. In the modern world, national democracies where the rank-and-file band together to dominate their potential master along with institutionalized checks on power are most “in tune with human political and social nature” (Ibid., 255). Boehm dismisses Marx’s ideal of communism because human hierarchical tendencies are too strong to allow dominant competition to evaporate and the state to wither away, but he does not consider the possibility that hierarchical political meritocracies with checks on power may also be desirable and realistic in modern large-scale societies (see Bell and Wang, Just Hierarchy, ch. 2). 41 Mencius 长幼有序 (Teng Wen Gong I); Xunzi 长幼有差 (4.14–4.15). 42 In 1915–1919, however, the New Culture Movement inverted the traditional veneration of the elderly “young people were perceived to be relatively uncorrupted by old traditions and hopefully not yet infected by a diseased culture and a sick society.” See ­Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, 3rd ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1999): 15—a view that culminated in the Cultural Revolution’s violent

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  151 effort to destroy the Four Olds. With the rise of China’s economic and political strength and the revival of respect for tradition, such views are not widely held today. 43 Mencius (Liang Hui Wang I). 44 See Zhang Xianglong, 孝意识的时间分析 [A temporal analysis of the consciousness of filial piety], Journal of Peking University 43, no. 1 (2006): 14–24. 45 As it turns out, crows were praised for expressing the virtue of filial piety in traditional Chinese culture on the grounds they brought food to elderly parents who could not provide for themselves (Alan Chan and Tan Sor-Hoon, Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History (London: Routledge, 2004): 59). For Confucian thinkers, however, filial piety is not just about providing for material needs: It must be accompanied by respect for elderly parents and emotions of love and care. 46 Tang Wenming, 人伦理念的普世意义及其现代调适 [The universal significance of the “Ren Lun” concept and its modern adjustment: On the defense and reconstruction of the Wu Lun principles by modern Confucian scholars], Morality and Civilization 6 (2015): 5–12. 47 It’s similar in other countries with a Confucian heritage: In Singapore, parents can take their adult children to court if they fail to provide material support, a law that is justified with reference to the value of filial piety (see http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/ articles/SIP_1614_2009–11–30.html). 48 Peter Wohlleben, The Inner Life of Animals (Vancouver/Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2017): 114. 49 The opening chapter of the Xunzi, “An Exhortation to Learning” makes a similar point. The line “Learning must never stop” is memorized by all Chinese students preparing for the national university entrance examinations. 50 This paragraph draws on Daniel A. Bell, The China Model (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016): 95–96. 51 Daniel Goleman, “What Makes a Leader?” in On Leadership (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press), 2011: 8. 52 Stephen S. Hall, Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience (New York: Vintage Books, 2010): 228–229. 53 Ibid., 255. 54 This paragraph draws on Daniel A. Bell, China’s New Confucianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008): 153. 55 Zhang Taisu, “Social Hierarchies and the Formation of Customary Property Law in ­Pre-Industrial China and England,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 62 (2014): 71. We do not mean to deny that such egalitarian policies had costs, for example, they may have delayed industrialization because accumulation of land may be necessary for the accumulation of wealth that allows for an industrial revolution. 56 On the other hand, the elderly often seem to act in “selfish” ways in democratic societies, supporting policies that benefit the elderly at the cost of future generations, and ­providing more formal and informal power to the elderly may exacerbate these tendencies. 57 See Fang Zhaohui, “三纲真是糟糟粕吗?” [Are the “Three Cardinal Guides” really so worthless? Re-examining the historical and practical significance of the Three Cardinal Guides]. Tianjin Social Sciences 2 (2011): 48–49; Tang Wenming, 人伦理念的普世意 义及其现代调适 [The universal significance of the “Ren Lun” concept and its modern adjustment], Morality and Civilization 6 (2015): 9. 58 It would also be absurd to subject family elders to formal measures designed to minimize nepotism and corruption. In imperial China (as well as today), public officials were assigned to posts outside of their home communities to decrease the likelihood of nepotism and corruption, but it would be inhumane to assign powerful family elders to different families. 59 http://tsoidug.org/dizigui_trans_simp.php: 24–27. 60 There may be exceptions to the rule: For example, a parent may be a permanent caretaker of a severely disabled child with a relatively short life span. Such arrangements

152  Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei can be morally justified if they are informed by love and care and free of oppression and domination. But hierarchies between intimates who, at some point in time, develop into adults with the capacity to reason typically involve shifting hierarchies. 61 It could be argued that role reversals induced by Alzheimer’s disease are not morally justified because they are not voluntary on the side of the parent. But an elderly parent at an early stage of Alzheimer’s can “sign on” to this kind of role reversal in advance. In any case, we do not mean to imply that all role reversals need to be voluntary: In the case of shifting “night-time hierarchies,” for example, the role reversals may not be voluntary at the time they take place, even if both parties might need to endorse them after the fact if pressed to do so. 62 In traditional China, however, the dominance of husbands over wives was accompanied by high status in the family for mothers: The value of filial piety served to increase women’s status when she becomes a mother because a son would typically defer to his mother. 63 See our book Just Hierarchy, chapters 2–5.

Bibliography Anderson, Elizabeth S. 1999. “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics, 109(2): 288. Anderson, Elizabeth S. 2012. “Equality,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, edited by David Estlund. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 40–57. Bell, Daniel A. 2008. China’s New Confucianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bell, Daniel A. 2016. The China Model. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bell, Daniel A. and Wang, Pei. 2020. Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burke, Edmund. 1999 [1790]. Select Works of Edmund Burke, Vol. 2: Reflections on the Revolution in France. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Chan, Alan, and Sor-Hoon Tan. 2004. Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History. London: Routledge. Ding, Chuanjing. 1981.宋人轶事汇编 [Edited Collection of Anecdotes from the Song Dynasty]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Fang, Zhaohui. 2011. “三纲真是糟糟粕吗?” [Are the “Three Cardinal Guides” Really so Worthless? Re-examining the Historical and Practical Significance of the Three Cardinal Guides]. Tianjin Social Sciences, 2: 48–49. Frankfurt, Harry J. 2015. On Inequality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Goleman, Daniel. 2011. “What Makes a Leader?” in HBR’s 10 Must Reads On Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press: 1–22. Hall, Stephen S. 2010. Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. New York: Vintage Books. He, Lin [贺麟]. 2015 [1940]. “五伦观念的新检讨”，文化与人生，北京：商务印书馆. He, Xinyin. 1960. 何心隐文集 [Collected Works of He Xinyin]. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1990. Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité. Paris: Le livre de poche. Levinas, Emmanuel. 2013. Eros, Littérature, et Philosophie. Paris: Éditions Grasset. Magee, Joe C., and Adam Galinksy. 2008. “Social Hierarchy: The Self Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status.” The Academy of Management Annals, 2: 354. Meisner, Maurice. 1999. Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic. 3rd ed. New York: The Free Press. De Montaigne, Michel. 2004. On Friendship. Trans. M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books. Nehamas, Alexander. 2016. On Friendship. New York: Basic Books.

How Tradition Informs Chinese Modernity  153 Peter, Wohlleben. 2017. The Inner Life of Animals. Vancouver/Berkeley, CA: Greystone Books. Rasmussen, Dennis C. 2017. The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1953. The Confessions. Trans. by J.M. Cohen. London: Penguin Books. Scanlon, Tim. 2018. Why Does Inequality Matter. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tang, Wenming. 2015.“人伦理念的普世意义及其现代调适” [The Universal Significance of the “Ren Lun” Concept and Its Modern Adjustment]. Morality and Civilization, 6: 5–12. Tian, Wenjun. 1986. “何心隐新论” [A New Analysis of He Xinyin’s Thought]. Wuhan Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban) 5: 15–21. Walzer, Michael. 1994. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Zhang, Taisu. 2014. “Social Hierarchies and the Formation of Customary Property Law in Pre-Industrial China and England.” The American Journal of Comparative Law, 62: 71. Zhang, Xianglong. 2006.“孝意识的时间分析” [A Temporal Analysis of the Consciousness of Filial Piety]. Journal of Peking University, 43(1): 14–24. Zhang, Xianglong. 2017. 家与孝： 从中西间视野看 [Family and Filial Piety: From the Perspective of Chinese and Western Thought]. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company.

9

Multiple Dialogues over Modernity Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought Takashi Kibe

Introduction If we examine social and political theorizing from a global perspective, two issues deserve special attention. The first is the concept of multiple modernities. At the heart of this lies a growing awareness that different societies have different experiences and diverse processes of modernity, distinct from those of Western modernity (Eisenstadt 2000). The second is the concept of dialogue. This is a key concept discussed in the field of comparative political theory. This involves a cross-cultural dialogue between Western and non-Western political theorizing because it attempts to go beyond the hitherto Eurocentric political theory and bring non-Western counterparts into discussion (Dallmayr 2004; Tully 2016).1 Thus, two questions arise. What does such a cross-cultural dialogue over multiple modernities involve when we participate in it from a non-Western perspective? What features does it present? To address these two questions, I consider Maruyama Masao (丸山眞男, 1914–1996), an influential scholar on the Japanese history of political thought. I focus on Maruyama for two reasons: first, his thought centers on modernity, attempting to understand—Western, non-Western, and Japanese—modernity and a move toward the idea of multiple modernities. Second, he refers to the concept of dialogue on several occasions. This chapter aims to reconstruct Maruyama’s struggles with modernity from the perspective of dialogue. In doing so, I develop two arguments. The first argument is that his engagement with modernity involves three levels of dialogue: transcultural, intracultural, and intrapersonal. Another argument is that they jointly highlight the transformative nature of dialogue toward multiple modernities. The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. In the first section, to set the stage for my analysis of Maruyama, I consider the current discussion on transcultural dialogue in the field of comparative political theory. In particular, I focus on James Tully’s view of dialogue and the critical responses to it, thereby drawing the insight that we need to regard such dialogue as multilayered. In the following sections, I attempt to concretize this insight by considering how M ­ aruyama engages with modernity. In the second section, I show that ­Maruyama engages in transcultural dialogue and moves toward a multiplicity view of modernity. DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-13

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  155 In the third section, I argue that his engagement with modernity leads him to an ­intracultural dialogue that critically interrogates the Japanese cultural tradition. In the fourth section, I show that at the core of his concept of dialogue lie his ideas about otherness and the self, thereby highlighting the central importance of selfdialogue for him. Dialogue in the Current Discussion James Tully, a leading political theorist of our time, argues for a dialogue approach to comparative political theory. This approach aims to generate a “comparative and critical mutual understanding and mutual judgment” (Tully 2016: 51). As he puts it, “the project of deparochializing political theory can be seen as the work of creating genuine dialogues among and across traditions of political thought and practice” (Ibid., 53). This enterprise entails “de-centering Western traditions” (Ibid., 52), which means to “recognize the parochial character of modern political theory” (Ibid., 55). Thus, “the first step in deparochializing political theories is to ‘reparochialize’ them: to recontextualize their presumptively general or universal terms back into the parochial contexts in which they make sense” (Ibid., 56). Tully elaborates on the idea of deparochialization as follows: What I mean by deparochializing is coming to realize that political theories, which are always presented in the language of abstraction and generalization (of not being parochial), are parochial – that is, partial and limited in their sense and reference. Once “we” who take these steps become aware of the limited and partial scope of any political theory, we have deparochialized our understanding of it. We are now not so parochial as to presume our local theories are general or universal in either sense or reference. This difficult form of self-awareness is the first condition of opening oneself to genuine non-imperial dialogues among different traditions. (Ibid., 60) What interests me here is the fact that Tully basically speaks of the deparochialization project in the eyes of Western scholars. This is reflected in the following remarks: A preparatory exercise is to become aware of and reflect on the problems with Western political theory and the difficulties they create for understanding other traditions (…) The first participatory step is to practice the art of “deep listening” to the political thought of other traditions. This involves cultivating an ethos of openness and receptivity to others. (Ibid., 56) At this juncture, one may naturally wonder whether non-Western scholars and those belonging to “other traditions” do not face a different preparatory exercise. The answer turns out to be affirmative if we examine the critical responses from

156  Takashi Kibe commentators on him.2 This is because any dialogue is situated in a ­specific ­context, and hence, is more complicated than Tully presents. A genuine dialogue, as conceived by Tully, is not a normal case; it is more complicated because we are not completely compartmentalized into distinct cultural traditions. For example, from the Black/Afro-modern perspective, Charles Mills (2017: 162) points out that dialogue cannot simply aim at understanding the other in other traditions, since the Afro-modern political tradition is “itself part of the Western tradition, seeking to use Western values and ideals of freedom and equality, of liberal modernity, to condemn their racially restricted incarnations.” The dialogue partner is thus not a stranger from a different tradition but “the Other” that “white Westerners are already confident that they do know, and have known for (at least) hundreds of years, with the categories and sense-making narratives to prove it” (Ibid., 161). Such dialogue should go beyond mutual understanding to include the practices of racial injustice, that is, to “require an admission of the truth” (Ibid.). Thus, transcultural dialogue leads us to question the specificity of the context in which it takes place, particularly about how we are related to Western modernity. Kaviraj (2017: 167) illustrates how dialogue is context-dependent by highlighting the impact of colonialism. As he puts it, societies such as those in India experienced “a total rupture with their past,” with the result that “the usual link between the lifeworld and epistemic practices got severed.” This means that a dialogue becomes one “between the unruptured self of the Western tradition and the ruptured self of the others.” Again, we cannot assume that dialogue partners come from different traditions; in reality, they may more or less share Western tradition. This suggests that non-Westerners cannot be completely compartmentalized into distinct traditions. This insight leads us to a crucial question: What is our own tradition and culture? Sor-hoon Tan considers this question difficult in Asian contexts. The difficulty arises from the fact that “many Asian universities have adopted western models of education and employ faculty members from Europe and North America” (Tan 2017: 170). She elaborates on this as follows: When one’s experience combines relatively westernized formal education with participation in traditional practices and informal learning of one’s ancestral culture, the assumption that one already inhabits and could move uninhibitedly between both traditions underestimates the difficulties of understanding, and therefore could prove to be an obstacle to understanding, including self-understanding. (Ibid., 171) To identify the nature and practices of a given cultural tradition is, she argues, ­difficult. It is typically a matter of interpretation, affected by “participants’ experiences and diagnoses of problems” (Ibid., 172) and hence essentially contestable. This means that cross-cultural dialogue inevitably requires critical engagement with one’s own culture and tradition. Kaviraj puts into question the view that our

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  157 cultural identity is determined by our belonging to a specific tradition and ­deploying its intellectual resources. The Indianness of modern Indian thought draws its Indianness, its h­ istorically Indian identity not from drawing on the thinking of its long past, but from experience of the short one. Modern Indian thought, to which I am a successor, is not Indian because it thinks through concepts drawn from p­ remodern Indian theory or philosophy—through Arthaśāstra or Manusmṛti or the Dābistan; it is Indian rather because it is forced to bend the concepts learnt from Locke and Mill to interpret and express the colonial experience of Indian history. It is this history which makes the thought Indian, not its past philosophical heritage. (Kaviraj 2017: 167) Thus, Kaviraj emphasizes the significance of experience as a defining moment of cultural and societal identification. Here, a cultural tradition is not a self-evident source of identity but rather something that reveals itself when consciously and critically connected with one’s experience. This suggests that non-Westerners cannot be completely compartmentalized into distinct traditions but inevitably ask themselves the following question: What kind of culture do I belong to? Evidently, this question concerns not only the understanding of one’s own ­culture but also self-understanding, thus facing the question of the self. Who am I as someone who cannot be compartmentalized into a distinct cultural unit? What is my attitude toward the traditions of my society? How do these factors affect my cultural identity? To what extent am I affected by Western modernity? Kaviraj (Ibid., 167) succinctly claims that “we have to set up the question of the self and the other in quite different ways.” This suggests that in transcultural dialogue, we engage not simply with Western modernity but rather with our own identity and relationship with Western modernity. I agree with Tully that dialogue plays a vital role in comparative political theory. At the same time, I concur with the responses of Sudipta Kaviraj, Charles Mills, and Sor-hoon Tan. All of them jointly point to the need to pay attention to specific circumstances surrounding dialogue that vary depending on concrete contexts. Specifically, in my view, taken together, they suggest that we engage in a multilayered, three-level dialogue: transcultural dialogue, intracultural dialogue, and self-dialogue. My intuitive idea is that by engaging in transcultural dialogue, we are led to intracultural dialogue, thereby interrogating the relationship between ourselves and the traditions of our societies; furthermore, intracultural dialogue leads to self-dialogue, in which we ask ourselves about our own identity in terms of traditions and Western modernity. To corroborate this intuition, I consider Maruyama’s thoughts in the ensuing sections. Struggling with Western Modernity Similar to most scholars of the social sciences in modern Japan, Maruyama’s intellectual life from his youth was influenced by Western philosophy and social

158  Takashi Kibe theories; in particular, he was interested in Neo-Kantianism and Marxism.3 I­ llustrative of his immersion in Western thought is his first prize-winning article “The Concept of the State in Political Science,” written in 1936, his third year at the Imperial University of Tokyo (MMS, I, 5–32). This article presents a panoply of major ­Western thinkers, such as—to name but a few—Hobbes, Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Mannheim. Another example is his first monograph Studies in the Intellectual ­History of Tokugawa Japan, consisting of three major articles written between 1940 and 1944. It deploys the Hegelian and Marxist framework, which emphasizes the transition from a feudal society to a modern society (Maruyama 1974). From the 1950s onward, Maruyama began to rethink the frameworks of ­Western thinkers that he previously drew on.4 Indeed, he increasingly began to regard ­Western modernity not as the sole empirical pattern, and hence model, but rather as a specific European experience. In an interview in 1964, Maruyama is emphatic about the multiplicity of modernity: “There is not a typical ‘modernization’ or THE ‘modernization’ but multiple ‘modernizations’” (MMS, VI: 54). In a similar vein, he views Western theories of modernity as based on this experience. For example, in a roundtable discussion on Marxism in 1966, Maruyama maintained that Marxist theory is based on the European historical experience of modernity and capitalism, suggesting that its empirical validity, when applied to regions outside its scope, is questionable. What Maruyama has in mind here is the Marxist theory of stage-based development. He claims that the Marxist concept of feudalism, based on European history, does not capture the features of Japanese feudalism (MMZ, VI, 296). On another occasion, he is emphatic that the Marxist framework on the transition from feudalism to capitalism is “nothing but a conceptual device to a­ nalyze European history” (MMS, XVI, 54–55).5 Maruyama’s awareness of the parochial nature of Western modernity and its social theories enabled him to develop a differentiated view of the relationship between individuals and society. It is set forth in his originally English treatise “­Patterns of Individuation and the Case of Japan.” In this work, Maruyama theorizes multiple patterns or trajectories of “individuation”—a term by which he means the emancipation of individuals from communal ties as part of the modernization process. Deploying two axes (associate–dissociate, centripetal–centrifugal), he sets forth four patterns of the relationship between emancipated individuals and the community: “individualization” (associative and centrifugal), “democratization” (associative and centripetal), “privatization” (dissociative and centrifugal), and “atomization” (dissociative and centripetal) (Maruyama 1965: 495). This scheme enabled him to analyze modern Japanese society without buying into a simplistic dichotomy between modern individualism and traditional communitarianism. He summarizes his overall observations of modern Japan as follows: Whenever the phenomenon of individuation came to the surface and attracted the attention of the general public, the behavior patterns of either PRIVATIZATION or ATOMIZATION prevailed, usually outshining the faint flickering of INDIVIDUATION and DEMOCRATIZATION. Of course it may be a feature common to the non-Western developing

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  159 countries that INDIVIDUALIZATION and DEMOCRATIZATION lag behind ­technological growth. What is conspicuous in the case of Japan is the early appearance of the P A type [a dissociative type consisting of both privatization and atomization—TK], and especially the tendency to maximize PRIVATIZATION—a tendency which in the West did not prevail until the stage of “mass society,” but which in Japan took place in the midst of a ­society still largely traditional in character. (Maruyama 1965: 524, capitalization as in original work) Thus, Maruyama observes that modern Japanese subjectivity is largely ­characterized by its dissociative tendency. He argues that this feature gave rise to “the psychological tendency to identify political and social chaos as well as lack of solidarity with individuation per se”; it misled Japanese people into viewing individualism and democracy as dissociative forces of urban life and calling for traditionalism to remedy the evil consequences of individualism (Ibid., 531). This way, Maruyama’s argument on the four patterns of individuation helps shed light on the specific trajectory of Japanese modernity, which hindered the emergence of civil associations as a precondition of democracy.6 Maruyama’s perspective, which differentiates between Western and Japanese modernity, allows him to have a differentiated view of non-Western modernity. One case in point is his changed view of the comparison between Chinese and J­ apanese modernity. In his early work Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, he juxtaposed China with Japan to make a contrast between failure and success in terms of modernization. His view of China as a backward society draws heavily on Hegel’s negative picture of it as a stagnant society (Maruyama 1974: 3–4). However, in the post-war period, he presented a different view of Chinese modernity. In his lecture notes of 1957, arguing that modernization from above was successful in Meiji Japan, whereas it was not the case in Qing China, Maruyama points to a crucial difference in consequences, as follows: In China, modernization from the above failed. This failure surely enabled imperialism to trample down the country; but since total transformation of the regime from the bottom accordingly became the only possible course of modernization, modernization from the bottom inevitably addressed the challenges of anti-imperialism and national independence—an inner ­relationship between independence movements from the bottom and revolution. In Japan, modernization from the above was the factor to maintain independence, but modernization itself took a distorted—and unbalanced— form, presents a modernization on top that left behind the bottom. Here again lies a historical dialectics. Backwardness and forwardness are not absolute. ­Backwardness at one stage becomes a factor of forwardness at next stage. (MMKB, II, 201–202) Thus, Maruyama suggests that the ease with which Japan introduced modernization ironically made it superficial, preventing it from taking deep roots in society.

160  Takashi Kibe Here, he clearly presents a view of the different paths to modernity in non-Western societies.7 Based on the above considerations, one might suppose that Maruyama finally rejected Western modernity. However, this is not the case. His engagement with Western modernity centers on the following question: What is universally valid in Western modernity? This question has two distinct implications. First, it is a question about the normative universality of Western modernity; it asks whether and to what extent the normative ideals of Western modernity are valid for Japan. Second, it is a question about the empirical validity of Western modernity; it asks whether the historical patterns of Western modernization apply to Japan. Concerning the first question, as we saw above, Maruyama finally rejects Western modernity as the only empirical model. How about the second, normative question? Does his departure from Western modernity as a universal model have some impact on his commitment to modern principles and values? Significantly, Maruyama retained the normative commitment. In his preface to the English translation of Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, Maruyama (1963: xvi) openly claims: “I am happy to consider myself a follower of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment who still holds to its ‘obsolete’ idea of human progress.” This means that although discarding a unilineal view of modernity, he holds on to modern principles and values.8 This position is illustrated by his nuanced attitude toward Walt Rostow’s modernization theory set forth in The Stages of Economic Growth penned in 1960. On the one hand, he welcomes Rostow’s theory that focuses on the functional preconditions of modernization, because it goes beyond the ideological divide of the Cold War mindset to include not only capitalist but also socialist regimes for analysis. On the other hand, he is opposed to Rostow’s “value-free” approach that does not consider the dimension of ethos in the sense of internalized and practically guiding values and norms— historically a reaction against McCarthyism’s overly ideology-based mindset. He considers the perspective of ethos indispensable—an issue that he considers vital when discussing the problem of democratizing postwar Japan. Similarly, he does not agree with Marxists who, not knowing chalk from cheese, criticize all ­modernization theories only from the perspective of their ideological roles (MMZ, VI, 289). Remarkably, Maruyama considers dialogue vital to discussions on modernity. Though disagreeing with Rostow-like scholars based on the “value-free” view of modernization, he claims that there is nothing that hinders him from “engaging in dialogue” with it and to learn considerably from it. In contrast, any “dialogue” is not possible when one camp adheres to the notion of “liberal world vs totalitarianism” and the other to “imperialism vs socialism” (MMZ, VI, 289). Dialogue over modernity thus plays a pivotal role in his endeavor toward the multiplicity view of modernity; its role is of methodological importance in encouraging cross-cultural discussions over modernity and its different experiences. This suggests that Maruyama’s engagement with modernity can be better understood as a transcultural dialogue that aims to elucidate its multiplicity. His transcultural dialogue with Western modernity is transformative as well, as it leads him to shift

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  161 from a unilinear to a multiplicity view of modernity. Any unilinear—Marxist and non-Marxist—­theory of modernization should be changed to provide a sufficient account of n­ on-Western experiences of modernity. Interrogating His Own Culture Maruyama’s transcultural dialogue with Western modernity necessitates an engagement with Japanese society and culture. This is because his engagement with modernity is essentially twofold: on the one hand, he interrogates Western modernity in terms of its universal applicability; on the other hand, he needs to identify the elements that inflect Japanese modernity, a task whose necessity is enhanced by his move toward the multiplicity view of modernity. As I present below, his engagement with Japanese modernity involves dialogue in multiple ways. His engagement with Japanese cultural traditions is characterized by a ­distanced attitude. This is illustrated by his stance that admits no presumptive superiority to indigeneity. In his treatise “Japanese Modernization and Indigeneity” of 1968, Maruyama points out that the paired terms, such as indigenous–foreign and ­endogenous–exogenous, are normally based on a value judgment that something indigenous is “self-directed” (主体的) and hence more valuable than something foreign that is imported and hence less self-directed. This value judgment is, he maintains, oblivious of “a natural truth” that “it is through stimulation from and sparking encounter with a culture of the totally different other that any endogenous culture makes innovations and great strides” (MMS, IX, 371; cf. MMZ, VI, 91, 94). Free from any presumption in favor of traditional Japanese culture, he thus considers cultural encounters as a self-transformative moment. I call this Maruyama’s stance on Japanese society and cultural detachment. Normally, we are attached to our own cultures and traditions. Tully (2016: 61) considers this attachment problematic: “Attachment forecloses genuine dialogue.” For Tully detachment is an important element of transcultural dialogue, helping us distance ourselves from our traditional cultures. In Maruyama’s case, however, detachment serves a different primary purpose: he detaches himself from his own culture to enter not into a transcultural dialogue but into an intracultural critical dialogue to identify the features and problems that inflect Japanese modernity. What, then, does Maruyama identify as such features and problems? He tackles this question in his work Japanese Thought in 1961. He epitomizes his core argument as follows: In our country, there has not been formed a core or a coordinate axis, which thoroughly gives interrelationship to notions and ideas of all times and in relation to which all intellectual positions—even though through negation— historically situate themselves. (MMS, VII, 193) What he considers crucially lacking here is an accumulative process through ­confrontation and interrogation that finally leads to the formation of an intellectual

162  Takashi Kibe coordinate axis. He calls the forming of coordinate axis “tradition” in a proper sense of the word. In his view, there is no “tradition” in this sense in Japanese cultural tradition. As this has an oxymoronic intonation, he calls the absence of this axis Japanese “tradition” in a specific, qualified sense. This peculiar “tradition” has three grave consequences. First, it allows Japanese culture to introduce heterogeneous ideas without head-on confrontation and critical engagement. Second, it supports the relatively swift process of modernization “from the above,” due to the lack of strong resistance from tradition (Ibid., 198). Third, it leads to the sheer unrelated coexistence of thought traditions, which Maruyama calls “disorderly coexistence” (雑居的無秩序) (MMS, VII, 242), bringing about the simultaneous coexistence of premodern and modern ideas—a major characteristic of Japanese modernity (Ibid., 198). In his view, the unrelated coexistence of different ideas is problematic, because it does not automatically translate into cultural development. Only when heterogeneous ideas engage with each other is there a chance to develop a new culture or—in his terminology—“hybridity” (雑種) that presents “new individuality” (Ibid., 243). He thus points to the possibility of forming a new, hybrid culture through cultural encounters. This means that Maruyama is free from a compartmentalizing view of culture that firmly binds each one to a specific unit of culture. He does not endorse the view that we are so much bound to a specific cultural tradition that we can neither distance ourselves from it nor have the possibility to create something hybrid and, hence, new. In this context, the concept of dialogue takes on a methodological significance. This is because Maruyama traces the lack of “tradition” in the sense of “coordinate axis” back to the absence of dialogue. In Japanese Thought, he suggests this insight by claiming that despite the existence of “dialogues within schools of thought or religions,” it is exceptional to observe those cases in which “different positions confront each other on common ground and bring forth new developments through the confrontation” (MMS, VII, 193)—evidently the latter cases standing for dialogue in a genuine sense. Maruyama explains this idea in his unpublished treatise “Passion for ‘Something’,” presumably written in 1959: “[t]hat dialogue between ideas does not take place presents a ‘tradition’ in which Japanese thought is not traditionalized” (MMB, III, 373). Why? Maruyama’s answer is the rapid process of Japanese modernization. In Japanese Thought, he points out that in modern Japan, “while traditional statuses declined, the formation of spontaneous associations and the development of voluntary communications were hindered, so that social bases of meeting and discussion remained immature” (MMS, VIII, 40). The result was that individuals were compartmentalized into small units (organizations, localities, and social networks) such that communication took place only within those units. Maruyama calls such compartmentalized spheres of communication “octopus pots” and modern Japan an “octopus pots society,” where communications are too compartmentalized to develop across the society (MMS, VII, 155–166). This way, Maruyama’s deployment of dialogue is methodologically significant, as it offers an analytical perspective to shed light on the core problem of Japanese society and culture: the lack of dialogue that gives rise to the absence of a cultural coordinate axis.

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  163 There are other aspects to his concept of dialogue. The methodological i­mportance of dialogue is immediately related to its practical, social transformative relevance: it serves as a remedy for the identified problematic feature. In his view, it is only by attempting to have a structural understanding of the Japanese intellectual past that “he is in a position to freely search for possibilities towards future in Japanese tradition” (MMS, IX, 115). Thus, his intracultural dialogue was a precondition for him to be aware of the transformative possibilities of cultural traditions. Moreover, his intracultural dialogue with Japanese culture was self-critical and self-transformative. He understands his engagement with Japanese culture as “self-critique,” because he is painfully aware that Japanese cultural tradition deeply influences himself (MMS, IX, 113). His intracultural dialogue is addressed not only to the Japanese society but also to himself.9 At this juncture, one might wonder whether his argument for the practical importance of dialogue to remedy the malaise of Japanese society is inherently dialogic. This question concerns the self-referential nature of Maruyama’s claims. It would be fatally inconsistent and self-contradictory to shield oneself from open discussions and contestation while insisting on the need for dialogue. Maruyama does not explicitly speak of his critical engagement with Japanese society and culture through dialogue. However, this engagement is dialogic in nature in two ways. First, his attempt to grasp the problematic structure of Japanese culture as the “tradition” without dialogue is an interrogating dialogue. Second, detaching himself from tradition, he presents a distinct critical voice, thereby promoting dialogue on Japanese culture. In fact, Maruyama (MMS, IX, 116) declares in the postscript of Japanese Thought that he intends his critical argument on Japanese culture to provoke “vigorous criticism” and “different views”—clearly an attempt to initiate intracultural dialogue. This means that dialogue assumes a performative character in this context. His concept of dialogue is performative because, by insisting on the need for more dialogue, he is practically supportive of dialogue. Otherness and Self-Dialogue In the previous section, I characterized Maruyama’s critical engagement with ­Japanese society and culture as intracultural dialogue. A few questions emerge at this point: What does he think of the nature of dialogue? What ideas underlie his emphasis on dialogue? In the following section, I address these questions from two perspectives: otherness and self-dialogue. In Maruyama’s view, dialogue is connected to otherness. In dialogue, opponents are not “enemies to be annihilated” but “antagonists who are necessary to come closer dialectically—dialogically—to an objective truth” (MMS, VIII, 52). Our dialogue aims not only to approach some truth but also to understand dialogue partners. Maruyama often places emphasis on the “internal understanding of the other” (「他者」の内在的理解)(MMK, VII, 195). In his view, one condition of intellect is “the ability to understand others internally” (MMK, V, 296). What does it mean to understand others internally? When understanding others i­nternally, Maruyama thinks, we attempt to understand them “from the inside,” that is, from

164  Takashi Kibe their own perspectives (MMS, X, 358; XI, 173)—an act that resists projecting our own ­presumptions onto them. In other words, this act presents an endeavor to “understand the other in terms of otherness, while persistently acknowledging the other as such” (MMS, IX, 44). Quoting from Carl Schmitt’s Ex Captivitate Salus, ­Maruyama emphasizes the need to “grasp any other groups, any other human beings in terms of otherness” (Maruyama 1998: 242; MMS, IX: 44; cf. Schmitt 2015: 13).10 Constitutive of internal understanding of the other as otherness is “a sense of otherness” (他者感覚), which Maruyama often emphasizes (MMS, XI, 172–75; X, 359; IX; MMZ, IV, 248).11 He uses the term to refer to our awareness that ­others— including groups, societies, and cultures of different times and places—are ­distinct beings irreducible to our own pregiven frameworks. In Maruyama’s view, a sense of otherness is closely linked to another normative attitude, tolerance. Sensitivity toward otherness entails “acknowledging dialogue partners as being equal to myself but distinct from myself” (MMZ, VII, 280).12 Put differently, it is the acknowledgment of both human equality and individuality or, as Takeshi Ishida (2005: 22) aptly puts it, the “diversity and universality of humanity.” This twofold acknowledgment leads us to tolerance, which means respecting modes of life different from mine—a virtue Maruyama attributes to Takeuchi Yoshimi, as he claims in a memorial speech for his friend (MMS, X, 358). At this juncture, we have a caveat. Though being emphatic about the need to understand the other in terms of otherness, Maruyama is aware of “how difficult it is in reality to put oneself in someone else’s shoes.” He warns against too easy an identification with the experiences of others and asserts that it easily results in paternalism and intolerance. The difficulty of understanding others is a compelling reason why “it should be equally acknowledged that every person has a right to speak about one’s own unique experience by oneself and is entitled to make claims based on it by oneself.” Underlying this claim is his recognition that “each one’s experience belongs solely to oneself, so that others can neither act as spokesperson for it nor easily sympathize with it” (MMS, VI, 152–53; cf. Ishida 2005: 24–25). Recognizing the difficulty of understanding others, therefore, enhances the need for dialogue, far from diminishing it. Thus, dialogue entails, so to speak, the act of othering; we treat others as distinct from ourselves. Indeed, this act aims not at marginalizing dialogue partners but at striving for a genuine understanding of them, free from superficial understanding or misunderstanding influenced by one’s own biases, presumptions, and pre-given familiarity. Importantly, Maruyama thinks that dialogue thus conceived concerns not only the issue of otherness but also that of the self. In his view, engaging in dialogue with others deeply affects us; it brings about multifaceted transformative experiences. First, dialogue leads to “relativize oneself, one’s own culture, thereby sharpening one’s eyes for self-critique” (MMZ, VII, 280). Maruyama explains how such a relativization process occurs, as follows: To understand the different other internally means to situate the other inside my own mind and hence makes a dialogue in my mind possible; it enables me

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  165 to detach me as it has hitherto been from myself. This is a paradox. ­Housing the other in my mind opens a way to my intellectual independence. (MMZ, V, 304) He thus considers dialogue vital for developing our thinking: “An idea confronts with a different idea on the basis of common intellect and thereby further develops its own thought—this is what dialogue between ideas means” (MMB, III, 373). Dialogue has this self-transformative potential, owing to its two features: it “relativizes all ideas” and enables an “interrelationship” between them (Ibid.). In this context, the intrapersonal kind of dialogue becomes significant. In other words, dialogue with others entails another dialogue within one’s mind. In dialogue, we introduce unfamiliar ideas into our mind, triggering a dialogue within; it is not merely the introspective examination of new ideas but my dialogue with myself, which Maruyama calls “self-dialogue” or “intrapersonal dialogue” (自己 内対話). Self-dialogue is intrinsically connected with dialogue with the other, as he puts it: “Dialogue has duality in opening the self to the other and at the same time articulating the self towards the other. This is to say that dialogue brings about self-dialogue as interactive outcome” (MMB, III, 374). Maruyama regards selfdialogue as a constitutive element of understanding the other; as he puts it: Self-dialogue means to place in mind something I do not like, to imagine as if I myself liked it, and to have dialogue with my natural ego from this point of view. This is nothing but what understanding others in terms of otherness means. (Maruyama 1998: 252) Therefore, self-dialogue is not monological. In this dialogue, we engage in ­otherness, that is, other voices, so that it is polyphonic. One might think that self-dialogue is merely a by-product of dialogue with others. This quote suggests that when leading a dialogue with otherness, we simultaneously engage in self-­ dialogue. However, Maruyama places great emphasis on self-dialogue, considering it a fundamental condition for any dialogue to be meaningful. In his diary, he made the following noteworthy remarks: More domestic communications than international ones, more intrapersonal communications than domestic ones! How come one who does not have dialogue within oneself can believe in progress through communication? (Ibid., 252) Self-dialogue is thus understood to be a basic condition for dialogue with others and, hence, to be the top priority among various kinds of dialogue. This reminds us of Hannah Arendt’s remarks on dialogue in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt emphasizes the importance of self-dialogue in her discussion on solitude. All thinking, strictly speaking, is done in solitude and is a dialogue between me and myself; but this dialogue of the two-in-one does not lose contact with

166  Takashi Kibe the world of my fellow-men because they are represented in the self with whom I lead the dialogue of thought. The problem of solitude is that this two-in-one needs the others in order to become one again: one unchangeable individual whose identity can never be mistaken for that of any other. For the confirmation of my identity, I depend entirely upon other people; and it is the great saving grace of companionship for solitary men that it makes them “whole” again, saves them from the dialogue of thought in which one remains always equivocal, restores the identity which makes them speak with the single voice of one unexchangeable person. (Arendt 1973: 476) Arendt claims that self-dialogue is a condition without which “the loss of one’s own self” emerges; losing “trust in himself as the partner of his thoughts” leads to the loss of “capacity for thought” (Ibid., 477). Self-dialogue is thus a necessary condition for thinking. Arendt’s view of dialogue provides two important clues for understanding Maruyama’s view of intrapersonal dialogue. First, we can understand Maruyama’s case for the priority of self-dialogue in line with Arendt’s view: it points toward the importance of the dialogue between me and myself as the condition for “capacity for thought.” As observed above, Maruyama claims that the function of the intellect is to understand others in terms of otherness. If we combine this with his case for self-dialogue, we may modify his claim as follows: the function of intellect to understand others in terms of otherness can only fully develop when we lead the dialogue with our own selves. Second, intrapersonal dialogue is not self-sufficient. Arendt is sure that self-­ dialogue—the dialogue of “the two-in-one” in her terminology—cannot replace real contact with others, which helps us restore our total integrity and identity. In The Life of the Mind, Arendt (1978: 200) maintains that it is impossible for “the solitary business of thought, which operates in a dialogue between me and myself” to “reach the We, the true plural of action.” How about Maruyama’s view of selfdialogue in this respect? To be sure, he does not fully develop his idea about why self-dialogue needs to relate to the common sphere of action. However, as we saw above, he is aware that our understanding of the other remains incomplete, so we should listen to his/her real voice—a ground for why we cannot perpetually move within self-­dialogue. Considering his emphasis on communication through voluntary associations, which he claims has failed to fully develop in modern Japan, and the importance of dialogue in such communication, Maruyama clearly thinks that we should depart from self-dialogue to participate in real dialogue with other people. In summary, this section considers how Maruyama’s concept of dialogue is underpinned by his philosophical ideas about otherness and self-dialogue. They jointly explain why Maruyama conceives of dialogue as self-transformative. Arendt’s considerations help us better understand why Maruyama regards dialogue as a crucial condition for our thinking and, parallelly, why it is not self-sufficient but in need of real communication with others if it is to be both individually and socially transformative.

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  167 Conclusion We are now in a position to answer the two questions raised in the introduction: What does such cross-cultural dialogue over multiple modernities involve when we participate in it from a non-Western perspective? What features does it present? Concerning the first question, the above considerations show that ­Maruyama’s transcultural dialogue involves three levels: transcultural, intracultural, and intrapersonal dialogue. First, his engagement with modernity leads Maruyama to a transcultural dialogue with Western modernity, which centers on the empirical validity of the Western model and the normative validity of the values characteristic of Western modernity. This dialogue helped Maruyama develop a multiplicity view of modernity, which means that the experience of and reflection on modernity are essentially plural. Second, this transcultural dialogue leads us to the intracultural kind of dialogue to critically engage with cultural traditions of Japanese society. Third, addressing the question of what is necessary for a genuine dialogue to take place, particularly in Japan, Maruyama engages in the issue of self-dialogue, which he claims to be a necessary condition for dialogue with the other as otherness. Both transcultural and intracultural dialogue are meaningful only when accompanied by self-dialogue. The reason our critical engagement with modernity requires not only transcultural dialogue but also multilevel dialogue is clear. To identify peculiar processes and features in non-Western modernity, transcultural dialogue with Western modernity necessarily leads to interrogating how modernization impacts a given non-Western society with its culture, as well as how society reacts to it and inflects it—questions requiring intracultural dialogue. Finally, the idea of multiple modernities entails intrapersonal dialogue for several reasons. First, both transcultural and intracultural dialogue pose self-reflexive questions about where I stand between Western and non-Western modernities, what relationship with them characterizes myself, and who I am when engaging with the issue of modernity. In Maruyama’s case, this self-dialogue entails a set of questions: What do I consider empirically or normatively in Western modernity? What do I regard as characteristic of, and problematic about, Japanese modernity? Concerning the second question, my considerations show the transformative nature of Maruyama’s three-level dialogue. Transcultural and intracultural dialogue are transformative in aiming to identify what makes Japanese modernity distinct from Western ones, thereby contributing to correcting the unilinear view of modernity; they are self-transformative with respect to Japanese society by initiating dialogue that is crucially lacking. Maruyama’s idea of self-dialogue is transformative because it highlights the need for such dialogue and the importance of the self as the site of the initial dialogue, which precedes the other two. Leigh Jenco, a leading scholar in the field of comparative political theory, criticizes the type of dialogue that focuses not so much on “learning something new, or of joining or building differently-centered communities,” which results in keeping intact “the lines between ‘them’ and ‘us’” (Jenco 2015: 45–46). Instead, Jenco calls for a type of engagement that involves “transformative, cross-cultural work” (Ibid., 27). I share Jenco’s

168  Takashi Kibe worry about such a problem into which transcultural dialogue may fall. However, this does not apply to Maruyama’s three-level dialogue. My considerations show that they move toward transformative and self-transformative work. In a nutshell, the point of his idea of dialogue is to go beyond the lines between “them” and “us,” creating something new and hybrid. A further task emerges from the points discussed in this chapter. It remains to be seen what dynamic interactions are involved in the three levels of dialogue engaging with modernity—a task not fully pursued in this chapter because its main purpose is limited to sketching the three-level dialogue in Maruyama’s thought. I submit that such a task contributes to shedding light on how different experiences of modernity impact our engagement with Western and non-Western modernities, otherness, and the self—a promising approach toward multiple modernities. Abbreviations MMB MMK MMKB MMS MMWZ MMZ

Maruyama Masao, Maruyama Masao Besshū, ed. Tōkyō Joshi Daigaku Maruyama Masao Bunko, 4 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2014–. Maruyama Masao, Maruyama Masao Kōgiroku, 7 vols. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1998–2000. Maruyama Masao, Maruyama Masao Kōgiroku Bessatsu, 2 vols. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2017. Maruyama Masao, Maruyama Masao Shū, 17 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995–1997. Maruyama Masao, Maruyama Masao Wabunshū Zoku, ed. Maruyama Masao techō no kai, 4 vols. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 2014–2015. Maruyama Masao, Maruyama Masao Zadan, 9 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998.

Notes 1 For a critical view of the dialogue-based approach, for example, see Jenco (2007: ­743–45; 2015: 42–47). I address this aspect in the concluding section. 2 Here, I focus on the comments in the special issue of the Journal of World Philosophies, Summer 2017. 3 For his autobiographical retrospect, see MMS, X, 313–322. 4 Elsewhere, I have considered this process in a more detailed way (Kibe 2023). 5 We find a similar view among postcolonial thinkers. For example, Sudipta Kaviraj (2015: 16) claims that he ceased to believe that “the European past showed us the image of our future.” For an elaborate discussion of Marxism from the perspective of postcolonialism, see Kaviraj (2018). 6 For his view of voluntary associations and social pluralism as a key factor of a wellfunctioning civil society, see MMS, VIII, 80. Though rejecting the stage-based view of modernity, he held, throughout his life, to a view of social differentiation and pluralism as a key condition of modernization (cf. MMB, I, 334; MMS, XIV, 122)—one of a few instances in which Western modernity plays an exemplary role for his empirical and normative understanding of modernity.

Multiple Dialogues and Considerations on Maruyama Masao’s Political Thought  169 7 I suppose that Maruyama’s changed view of China owes much to the influence of Takeuchi Yoshimi (竹内好, 1910–1977), a Sinologist known for studies and translations of Lu Xun. In his memorial writing on Takeuchi, Maruyama (MMB, III, 233) admits that he accepted Takeuchi’s (1980: 12–14) critique of 1949 that Maruyama saw only the temporal difference between the Japanese and Chinese cases of modernization, but not the qualitative one (cf. Fukuda 2000: 46；Kurokawa and Yamada 2020: 115). 8 While being committed to what he considers universally valid principles and values in Western modernity, he does not buy into Western modernity as it has been. For him, the validity of norms and values can be disconnected from the question about their historical origin. He thinks that these norms, when accepted as universally valid ones, transcend the geographical and temporal aspects of their emergence (MMZ, VII: 111–112). For him, therefore, it is not the entirety of Western modernity but its normative dimension that presents something universally valid in its experience. 9 It is a distinct question whether Maruyama consistently deployed the dialogic approach to have a differentiated view of Japanese tradition. I have elsewhere critically examined this question (Kibe 2023). 10 This phrase originally comes from Karl Mannheim. However, when quoting it in his work Ex Captivitate Salus, Carl Schmitt slightly modified it (cf. Mehring 2017: 121–122). 11 For Maruyama’s notion of “a sense of otherness,” see Ishida (2005: 2–35). Maruyama regards the lack of a sense of otherness as a persistent problem of modern Japan. In 1995, eight months before his death, he lamented that a sense of otherness and hence dialogue with the other continued to be wanting in Japanese society (MMWZ, IV, 248). 12 Maruyama, therefore, holds a view that a sense of otherness is a crucial condition ­without which a sense of human rights cannot easily develop either (MMS, XI, 175).

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt. Arendt, Hannah. 1978. The Life of the Mind. New York: Harcourt. Dallmayr, Fred. 2004. “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 2 (2), 249–257. Eisenstadt, S. N. 2000. “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus, vol. 129 (1), 1–29. Fukuda, Kanichi. 2000. Maruyama Masao to sono jidai [Maruyama Masao and His Time]. Tokyo: Iwanami. Ishida, Takeshi. 2005. Maruyama Masao tono taiwa [Dialogue with Maruyama Masao]: Tokyo: Misuzu shobo. Jenco, Leigh. 2007. “What Does Heaven Ever Say? A Methods-centered Approach to ­Cross-cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review, vol. 101 (4), 741–755. Jenco, Leigh. 2015. Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2015. “On the Advantages of Being a Barbarian,” in The Invention of ­Private Life: Literature and Ideas. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 11–21. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2017. “A Response to James Tully’s ‘De-parochializing Political Theory’,” Journal of World Philosophies, vol. 2, 164–169. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2018. “Marx and Postcolonial Thinking,” Constellations, vol. 25, 3–17. Kibe, Takashi. 2023. “The Shackles of Universal History and the Road Not Taken: Ambivalent Possibilities’ in Maruyama Masao’s Thought,” Journal of Social and ‘­ ­Political Philosophy, vol. 2 (1), 45–59. Kurokawa, Midori and Yamada, Satoshi. 2020. Hyōden Takeuchi Yoshimi [A Biography of Takeuchi Yoshimi]. Tokyo: Yūshisha.

170  Takashi Kibe Maruyama, Masao. 1963. Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Ivan Morris. London: Oxford University Press. Maruyama, Masao. 1965. “Patterns of Individuation and the Case of Japan: A Conceptual Scheme,” in Marius B. Jansen (ed.), Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 498–531. Maruyama, Masao. 1974. Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Maruyama, Masao. 1998. Jikonai taiwa [Dialogues with Myself]. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō. Mehring, Reinhard. 2017. Carl Schmitt: Denker im Widerstreit. Freiburg and Munich: Alber. Mills, Charles. 2017. “Dialogue in Black and White,” Journal of World Philosophies, vol. 2, 160–163. Schmitt, Carl. 2015. Ex Captivitate Salus. 4th ed. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Tan, Sor-hoon. 2017. “Whose Traditions? Which Practices?” Journal of World Philosophies, vol. 2, 170–173. Takeuchi, Yoshimi. 1980. Gendai chūgokuron [On Modern China], in Takeuchi Yoshimi Zenshū, vol. 4. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shobō, pp. 3–176. Tully, James. 2016. “Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond: A Dialogue Approach to Comparative Political Thought,” Journal of World Philosophies, vol. 1, 51–74.

10 Competing Modernities in Colony and Metropole The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan Naoyuki Umemori Introduction In the late nineteenth century, when Japan established a modern nation-state in its own territory, the European powers were at the height of their colonial expansion into Asia. The Meiji Restoration took place amid the dense network of colonies and settlements of the European powers. The fear of being colonized induced the Japanese elite to initiate a quasi-revolutionary social transformation from a feudal kingdom to a modern nation-state (Najita and Harootunian, 1988). For Japanese people, modernity meant the whole experience associated with this massive social transformation. With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Meiji elite initiated establishing a centralized European-style nation-state. For this purpose, the Meiji elite imported many ideas from “the West,” ranging from abstract ideologies to concrete technologies. Such new knowledge was called “civilization” and often equated with “Westernization” (Fukuzawa, Dillworth, and Hurst, 1970). This was because such new knowledge was thought to have been brought about by contact with the civilized societies of Europe and the United States. This way, the common sense that modernization was Westernization became firmly established in Japan. However, this conventional historiography overlooks that two different “Wests” confronted the Japanese elite. Indeed, as symbolized by the itinerary of the Iwakura Mission, they came into contact with the civilization of America and Europe by crossing the Pacific to the east and brought back a great deal of knowledge from there (Kume, 2009). However, the Western powers were expanding their colonies and settlements in Asia, which extended west across the sea from Japan. There were two Wests with which Japan had contact at that time: the West representing civilization and the West representing colonialism. While the former is regarded as the primary model for Japan’s state formation, the impact of contact with the latter has been left unexplored in previous studies. Even if we assume that modernization indeed implicated Westernization in Japan, “which West” is still a crucial question when delineating the complicated implications of “modernity” in East Asia. In this chapter, I attempt to shed new light on modernity in East Asia by analyzing the influence of colonialism in the process of Meiji state formation. For this purpose, I focus on the process of the establishment and transformation of DOI: 10.4324/9781003399032-14

172  Naoyuki Umemori the police system in Japan. Why do the police matter? Because as Max Weber ­indicates, the police, along with the military, are the most critical apparatus of the modern state, characterized by a monopoly of violence (Weber, Gerth, and Mills, 1965). In the case of Japan, whose modernization process was rapid and condensed, the contrast between the modern and the early modern in terms of policing is more salient. Under the Tokugawa regime, two commissioners, Minamimachi Bugyo and Kitamachi Bugyo, together with 290 officers (50 yoriki and 240 doshin), were assigned to maintain public order in Edo, which was already a city of one million. In reality, various communities, divided by status and region, autonomously took on an essential part of maintaining public order (Ishii 2012; Kasama 1991; Kato 1994; Minami 2005). However, when the Meiji government established the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department in 1874, it had a staff of 6,000. This was comparable to the Paris police of the same period (Westney, 1982). The size of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police manifested the character of the modernity that the Meiji state attempted to pursue. In addition to that, the Meiji state is believed to have developed a unique police system, the influence of which is felt even today. Many comparative scholars of Japan have recognized the unique role of the police in Japanese society. Underlying this interest is the everyday observation that few countries have police forces as intrusive in people’s daily lives as Japan. The evaluation of this phenomenon has been mixed. Some argue that it is an essential factor in Japan’s exceptionally low crime rate, and it is hailed as a key to the country’s success. By others, it is regarded as a manifestation of state paternalism and is harshly criticized as an indication of the immaturity of civil society. Despite the diversity of evaluations, many Japanese scholars agree that the police play a crucial role in contemporary Japanese society. They demand rigorous discipline by international standards, both from the residents as policing objects and from the police officers as policing subjects (Katzenstein 1996; Vogel 1979; Wolferen 1990). I will use the term “excessive discipline” to summarize the characteristics of the Japanese police that have captured the attention of these observers. In the following discussion, I will pursue a history of the excessive discipline that characterized Japanese modernity by focusing on the process of establishing the police in Japan. For that purpose, I will divide my arguments into three parts. In the first section, I attempt to reconceptualize the matrix of comparative state formation by incorporating the comparison between the nation-state and the colonial state. The existing scholarship compares nation-states and overlooks their historical and theoretical connections with colonial states. However, when considering the nature of the modern state in Japan, comparisons and ties with the colonial states that surrounded it should not be ignored. In the second section, I show that the Meiji elite intentionally collected the information necessary for their nation-building not only from Europe and North America but also from their colonies and settlements in East Asia. I introduce two research reports regarding the police: one was conducted in Europe, and the other was in East Asia. By comparing these two reports, I show the Meiji elite understood that the Western powers developed a system of controlling people in their

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  173 colonies that was qualitatively different from the one in their metropole. For them, the information from the colonies was beneficial because Japanese people as the object of policing were more similar to the local Chinese in the Western colonies or settlements than the civilians in European metropoles. In the final section, I clarify the implications of the convergence of colonialism and modernization by an overview of the nature of the police in Taiwan and Korea established by Japanese colonists. An Epistemological Matrix of Comparative State Formation The characteristics of a state become apparent only by contrasting it with other states. Therefore, any discussion of a state, whether explicitly or implicitly, includes the object of comparison within it. This is equally true when discussing the nature of the Japanese state. Many researchers have argued variously about the “particularity” of the Japanese state. Still, such stipulations cannot be derived solely from the intrinsic characteristics of the Japanese state but rather depend on the comparison between the Japanese state and its putative model. Historical studies of the formation of the modern Japanese state have been ­primarily explored within the framework of “national history” in Japan. This does not mean, however, that such studies have been conducted without comparisons with other states. Rather, whether it is Marxist research, which became dominant since the 1920s, or modernization theory, which was introduced from the United States in the postwar period, a comparison between Japan and the advanced ­Western nation-states such as Britain, France, the United States, and Germany has been the focus of interest (Moore 1966; Silberman 1993). In those studies, how much Japan “deviated” from its putative models or how much Japanese history “converged” with their histories was discussed and theorized (Dower, 1988). Through the comparison between nation-states, Japan was generally characterized as a “peculiar” case. But the “peculiarity” of the Japanese state, as defined through this comparison between nation-states, was ultimately nothing more than a shadow of the historical experience of the advanced Western nations. It is only recently that the importance of the perspective of “empire” has been emphasized in place of abstract comparisons between nation-states. Imperial history emphasizes that the formation of their colonies accompanied the establishment and development of modern nation-states in the West and Japan. This perspective involves the spatial expansion of the analytical unit. In his work on the British ­conquest of India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the American anthropologist Bernard Cohn stated the principle that metropole and colony must be regarded as a single field of analysis. It is worth noting as a statement of direction (Cohn, 1996). The spatial expansion of the unit of analysis provides a perspective called comparative imperialism or comparative colonialism, as opposed to “national” history based on comparisons between nation-states. Those new perspectives problematize the characteristics of colonial rule by an empire in contrast with the ones by the other empires. In other words, colonial states came to be included as an integral

174  Naoyuki Umemori unit of analysis in comparative state formation. Historically speaking, the colonial government was always cautious of the specificities of its colonial rule in comparison with other colonial governments. Let’s take modern Japan as an example. We can see its imprint in the thinking of Hara Takashi, who hesitated at the time of Taiwan’s possession as to whether Taiwan should be governed by (British style) “colonialism” or (French style) “internal extensions” (“Two Drafts of the Taiwan Problem”) (Hara 1970, 32–34). Comparing different colonial states was a crucial part of current Empire studies, which have enlarged the perspective of comparative state formation by adding two axes of comparison. The first is comparing the government in the metropole and the ones in the colonies within the same Empire. For example, Cohn’s analysis of British rule in India reveals how British rule at home and its colonial rule in India developed interrelatedly (Cohn, 1996). In the same way, Japanese scholars have problematized how much the rule of the Governor-General of Taiwan or that of Korea was different from the government in mainland Japan. We can categorize those studies as comparing nation-states and colonial states within the same Empire. The second is comparing the governments in different colonial states within the same Empire. For example, in this dimension, we can problematize how ­Algerian and Indochinese rule in the French Empire, Philippine, and Puerto Rican rule in the American Empire, and Taiwanese and Korean rule in the Japanese Empire were different from each other. A representative example of this type of research is George Steinmetz’s The Devil’s Handwriting, which focuses on the various policies in the different colonies within the German Empire (Steinmetz, 2007). ­Okamoto Makiko also analyzed the differences in Japanese rule in Taiwan and Korea by focusing on the recruitment and mobility of officials within both colonial governments (­Okamoto 2008). We can categorize those studies as comparing different colonial states within the same Empire. The traditional national history retains the perspective of comparison between different nation-states. In contrast, contemporary Empire studies develop the comparison of colonial states in two dimensions: the comparisons between nationstates and colonial states within the same Empire and the comparisons between colonial states within the same Empire. By drafting this epistemological matrix of comparative state formation, we can bring to light a dimension that has been underresearched or even ignored: the comparison between a nation-state and the colonial states belonging to a different Empire. More specifically, researchers have not attempted to problematize, for example, the formation of the Meiji state in comparison with European colonial rules in East Asia. We cannot legitimatize this omission because, as I mentioned above, Japan began to form a modern nationstate within the dense network of colonies and settlements of the European powers. Suppose we should regard metropole and colony as a single field of analysis, as Cohn suggests. In that case, the relationship between the state formation in mainland Japan and Western colonial rules in East Asia should not be ignored. So far, imperial studies have revealed how various “experiments” conducted in the colonies were fed back to its metropole. We should not limit our perspective regarding

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  175 the circulation of technologies only within the same Empire. We should assume that Western colonial rules affected not only their governances in their metropole but also the Japanese ones. I attribute the reason why this perspective has not been fully explored to unconscious biases caused by nationalism and Orientalism both in Japan and in the West. In Japan, as is typical of Shiba Ryotaro’s “switchboard theory,” people preferred to believe that only through its ingenuity, hard work, and talent was Japan able to achieve the feat of catching up with Western civilization in such a short time (Shiba, 1995). Yamamuro Shinichi attempted to overcome Shiba’s nationalist perspective and envisioned the history of ideas in which Asia was the single field of study. However, it is still assumed that Japan was the “nexus” of modernity in Asia (Yamamuro, 2017). In place of such a Japan-centered perspective, I propose a history of ideas that takes the colonies of East Asia as the nodal point of modernity. On the other hand, for Eurocentric Western scholars, who were accustomed to treating Japan as a part of the “Orient,” seeing the traces of their colonialism in the Meiji state was a dangerous scenario that could lead to critical reflections on their involvement in colonial dominance in East Asia. Thus, when they recognized non-Western aspects of Japanese society, such as an excess of discipline, they tended to attribute them unconditionally to the action of culture and tradition (Bayley 1991; Vogel 1979). The collusive relationship between the Meiji state and Western colonialism is an “inconvenient truth” for both Japan and the West. Therefore, any attempt to compare the colonial state with modern Japan has been suppressed almost unconsciously. Suppose the Meiji state formation was influenced not only by existing state forms in Western metropoles but also by their practices of colonial domination in East Asia. In that case, we must examine the formation of excessive discipline in the itinerary from the West through colonies in East Asia to Japan. What Is Policing? Many scholars have traced the origins of the Japanese police system to Continental Europe, particularly the French police system. In 1872, the Meiji government sent Kawaji Toshiyoshi, the Vice Inspector of the Police Bureau, to Europe and made him research the police systems in France and Belgium. After finishing his research there, Kawaji returned to Japan and submitted a proposal to reform the Japanese police system. In this event, historians have recognized a decisive role in establishing the modern police system in Japan because the Metropolitan Police Office was established in 1875 according to the institutional design in this proposal (Westney, 1982). This is why the Paris police have been considered the model of the Japanese police system. Thus, many scholars have regarded the creation of the police system in Japan as a classic example of smooth, rapid, catch-up modernization that took advantage of the country’s latecomer status. This common-sense narrative underestimates the enormous gap in perception between Japan and the West regarding the concept of police. The epistemological

176  Naoyuki Umemori gap was manifested in translating the term “police” in the early Meiji period. When the Meiji leaders recognized the necessity of introducing a police system in Japan, they realized that no one had enough information about the “police.” The following materials written by a Japanese intellectual reveal the atmosphere at the dawn of the police system in Meiji Japan quite vividly. The author is ­Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), one of the most influential intellectuals of modern Japan. In his autobiography, Fukuzawa explained how he came to ­participate in the project. The city of Tokyo was still using a system of military patrol, and soldiers of various clans marched along the streets with guns on their shoulders. The practice was very unsightly—it made Tokyo seem to be continually in a battle area. The government was planning to adopt a Western police system, but being unable to secure exact information on its organization, one of the officials called on me one day to ask me privately to make a study… I collected several English books on civic government and translated the portions dealing with police systems, making a book out of it which I presented to the prefectural office. (Fukuzawa and Kiyooka 1992, 218) In October 1870, Fukuzawa submitted a document on the Western police ­system to Tokyo prefecture. It was titled “Torishimari no ho” (The Rules of Policing) and is known as one of the earliest efforts by a Meiji intellectual to introduce the concept of the police based on Western materials. Interestingly, Fukuzawa used the ­Japanese word “torishimari” to translate “police.” The term “keisatsu,” which today means police, did not yet exist in Japanese. Torishimari no ho was an abridged translation of the article on police in The New American Cyclopedia, a ­16-volume encyclopedia published in New York in 1866–1867 (Ota, 1975). The New American Cyclopedia defined the police as “a judicial and executive system and an organized civil force for the preservation of order and the enforcement of the laws (Ripley and Dana, 1872, 442).” Fukuzawa called the readers’ attention to the implication of “civil force” in this definition. After translating the definition word-for-word, Fukuzawa added the following note. “A civil force means a force that is not military—jomu no kenryoku ha heiryoku ni arazaru wo iu—(Fukuzawa 1963, 54).” By locating the essence of the police power in its “civil” character, Fukuzawa emphasized that it should be understood as a new form of power, not to be confused with traditional military force. In Fukuzawa’s text, a “civil force” was explored with the following implications. By this terminology, Fukuzawa showed that police power intervenes in ordinary citizens’ daily lives much more aggressively than any previously existing form of governance. In this document, Fukuzawa located the unconventional character of the police force in its “surprisingly many” duties. He enumerated the duties performed by the police in contemporary Western countries as follows: securing the safety of traffic; repair of dangerous structures; superintendence of the cleansing and lighting of the city; removal of public nuisances; repression

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  177 and punishment of all offences against the public peace; the maintenance of good order in and supervision of public amusement and resort; the inspection of weights, measures, and food; precautions against accidents, casualties, and epidemics, and measures in mitigation of them if they occurred; the delivery of passports, residence, and licenses, and repression of beggary and vagrancy; supervision of drinking and gaming houses and of prostitutes; dispersion of crowds; policing of religious worship and of printing and bookselling; oversight of theaters, powder mills, saltpetre works, and storehouses of arms; regulation of the highways, public health, and fires, inundations, and accidents; superintendence of commercial exchanges, taxes, provision markets, and prohibited wares; protection of public monuments; regulation of the fees of health officers and veterinary surgeons, removal of sick persons and corpses, recovery of drowned persons, and care of the public pounds (­Fukuzawa 1963, 56; Ripley and Dana 1872, 443). By introducing these minute duties precisely as they appeared in the source, Fukuzawa showed the categorical difference between the Western police system and Tokugawa security practices. Fukuzawa’s list of police duties showed the intimate relationship between the development of police power and civil society. David Bayley explains the historical transformations of police duties as a function of the modernization of society. Through comparative and historical analyses of the police system, Bayley discovered the intimate relationship between social development and the nature of police work. As “societies become more industrial and urban and less agrarian and rural, police will deal with more service and fewer crime-related requests (Bayley 1985, 131).” This explanation accounts reasonably well for the order of the police duties that appeared in Fukuzawa’s list. In it, “traffic regulation” was placed first, while such a traditional police duty as “the repression and punishment of all offenses against the public peace” was mentioned only fifth. In this regard, Fukuzawa’s list represents the nature of police power in Western societies that had already become “more industrial and urban and less agrarian and rural” in the late nineteenth century. Torishimari no ho proved to be a reasonably accurate summary of the theory and practices of the contemporary police in Europe and the United States. However, precisely because of its accuracy, this article also revealed the gaps between the concept of the police and contemporary social conditions in early Meiji Japan. It is quite symbolic that Fukuzawa was the author of Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (An Outline of A Theory of Civilization). In this text, he defined “civilization” as “the sentiments and customs of a people,” and then analyzed the difference between Western civilization and Japanese civilization. The point of difference between Western and other civilizations is that Western society does not have a uniformity of opinions: “Various opinions exist side by side without fusing into one.” The distinctive nature of Western civilization is located in its “constant social intercourse among men (Fukuzawa, Dillworth, and Hurst 1970, 9, 17, 20).” On the contrary, Fukuzawa characterized Japanese society as an “imbalance of power.” Here, “imbalance of power” means a social condition where people do not have enough freedom,

178  Naoyuki Umemori independence, and social mobility. According to him, the “­imbalance of power” was most clearly exemplified by the domination of the Tokugawa ­government. He said: Let us look at the Tokugawa rule to see how the people who lived under this state of imbalance of power viewed the affairs of society, and how they conducted themselves. The millions of Japanese at that time were closed up inside millions of individual boxes. They were separated from one another by walls with little room to move around… In general, we Japanese seem to lack the kind of motivation that ought to be standard equipment in human nature. We have sunk to the depths of stagnation. (Fukuzawa, Dillworth, and Hurst 1970, 160) Fukuzawa’s “imbalance of power” explains how power functioned under the ­Tokugawa regime. It attempted to control people by locking them up in “millions of individual boxes,” which symbolizes the principle of feudalism organizing a society around a system of formally constituted status groups. In contrast, the power of the police represented by “traffic regulation” presupposes the “constant social intercourse among men,” which Fukuzawa believed to be the most distinctive characteristic of “Western civilization.” However, “constant social intercourse among men” is precisely what he would not have found in Meiji Japanese society, still dominated by the “imbalance of power.” If Fukuzawa is right in his analysis in Bunmeiron no Gairyaku that points to the lack of civil society in Japan, his Torishimari no ho indicates that it was neither possible nor appropriate for the Meiji government to import a police system that presupposed intense communication and transportation in civil society as it was. Fukuzawa’s texts reveal the paradox that emerged from the introduction of the police in early Meiji Japan. The more Fukuzawa emphasized the nature of the police as a “civil force,” the more he indicated the impossibility for the Meiji government to emulate it as it was. Fukuzawa’s texts reveal that the establishment of the police in early Meiji Japan was nothing other than a project to create a “civil force” without having a civil society. Contradictions between the Concept of Police and Social Conditions in Meiji Japan Many historians have pointed out that nineteenth-century European countries developed two quite contrasting models of the police system: the British model and the Continental model. Raymond Fosdick contrasted these two models in the following way: In Great Britain the police are the servants of the community…they are civil employees, whose primary duty is the preservation of public security. In the execution of this duty they have no powers not possessed by any other c­ itizens… A policeman has no right superior to that of a private

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  179 person in making arrests or asking questions or compelling the attendance of ­witnesses… In sharp contrast is the Continental theory, which, evolved from the necessities of autocratic governments, makes of the police force the strong arm of the ruling classes. The Continental policeman is the servant of the Crown or the higher authorities; the people have no share in his duties, nor, indeed, any connection with them. He possesses powers greatly ­exceeding those of the citizen. (Fosdick 1915, 15–16) In September 1872, the Meiji government sent Kawaji to Europe with eight other bureaucrats to research police systems. After extensive research, they returned to Japan in September 1873. After Kawaji returned to Japan, he submitted the ­memorial for the reform of the Japanese police system, which played a decisive role in establishing the Tokyo Metropolitan Office. Kawaji himself was appointed as the supervisor of this institution and served until he died in 1879. Kawaji conducted most of his research in France, and his proposals were based mainly on the French police system, especially the Paris police. Accordingly, historians have understood that the Metropolitan Police Office was modeled after the Paris police (Westney, 1982). Kawaji was an earnest advocate for the Continental police as the model of the police system in Japan. In his memorial, he proposed establishing the Ministry of the Interior and entrusting it with the administration of the police force all over the country. According to him, the central government should assume the financial burden for the Metropolitan Police Office because “the policing of the national capital is a matter of national security.” “Therefore,” he continues, “it should not be entrusted to the vagaries of short-sighted penny-pinching local officials (Yui and Obinata 1990, 227).” In his memorial, Kawaji compared the centralized police organization of Russia, Prussia, and France with the locally financed police systems of Britain, Holland, and Belgium and argued that Japan should adopt the former model. Kawaji’s memorial had a decisive impact on establishing the Metropolitan Police Office. However, it is also important to note that the European influence on the Metropolitan Police Office was limited mainly to its institutional sphere. Westney argued that “the most detailed information [of Kawaji’s memorial] centered on two features of the police: financing and the control structure” (Westney, 1982). However, the nature of the police is not only determined by its organizational characteristics but also by its actual methods of policing. We should pay particular attention to the fact that Kawaji encountered many difficulties when he attempted to introduce essential practices of policing in Europe to Japan. Kawaji compiled important field notes during his research in Europe that extended his official memorial (Takahashi, 1976). They were titled Taisei Kenbun Roku (A Record of Personal Experiences in Europe) and preserved in his archive. This text is engaging because Kawaji recorded not only objective information but also his subjective impressions of the European police system. In contrast to his official memorial that earnestly advocates the Continental police system, the

180  Naoyuki Umemori field notes record the tensions and conflicts that Kawaji felt between the European police system and the social conditions in Japan. Kawaji’s field notes reveal that the French police could not offer helpful ­examples for the Metropolitan Police Office in actual policing methods. In his Taisei Kenbun Roku, Kawaji recorded an interesting episode. One day during his stay in Europe, Kawaji heard a lecture about the structure of the Paris police from a French official: Paris was divided into 20 districts, called arrondissements; each arrondissement was divided into four quarters (quartiers). In the case of the first arrondissement in Paris, each quartier was further divided into 13 blocks called ilots. Then, the ­official explained that three patrolmen were always making the rounds in turn in each ilot. An interesting exchange occurred at this point in the lecture. Kawaji asked the following question of the French official: “Among the three patrolmen who are in charge of a ilot, who carries the list of residents?” To this question, the official answered as follows. “We never do that. Too much intervention is ­sometimes against the peoples’ interests, even if intended to protect ­residents’ interests. We do not [make and carry lists of residents]” (Fosdick 1915, 131; Takahashi 1976, 245). This conversation reveals the tension between practical policing and civil ­society’s principles and practices, such as respect for citizens’ privacy. Karl Marx ­characterized “the executive power” under the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte as the “parasitic body” that “enmeshed the body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores” (Marx 1998, 121). Howard Payne also characterized the nature of the Second Empire as follows: If the relative term ‘police state’ connotes a preponderant executive in command of a centralized bureaucracy whose edicts supersede the voice of local government and which systematically uses decisive police controls over the expressions and organization of public opinion, then the Second Empire was a police state. (Payne 1966, 280) However, what attracted Kawaji’s attention was that the French police failed to permeate the body of French society deeply enough because of the principle of respect for civil rights. Through his conversation with the French official, Kawaji must have learned how much the Paris police were obliged to accord respect to residents’ civil rights. However, he did not seem to be impressed by the advice from a French officer. After he returned to Japan, the Metropolitan Police Office introduced the registration and census research system as one of its critical practices. Kawaji noticed the gap between the Western police system and contemporary Japanese social conditions. In his memorial, Kawaji defined the police as “an everyday therapeutic” to preserve “the nation’s health.” According to him, “the purpose of the police is to protect honest citizens and cultivate the national spirit” (Yui and Obinata 1990, 226–227). However, before he preserves “the health of the nation” and “protects honest citizens,” he must produce the nation by disciplining local people into citizens. For that purpose, he did not hesitate to deviate

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  181 from European policing methods and utilize the police as a military power for the oppression of the frequent revolts in the early Meiji period. In the 1870s, several insurrections were raised by former samurais who were frustrated by the new government’s policies. In some cases, commoners also initiated such insurrections. The Meiji government did not blink in mobilizing not only a military force but also a police force to crush these insurrections. Among these insurrections, the Seinan War in 1877 was the last and most extensive. The Meiji government pacified it through collaboration between the army and police in 1878. At that time, Kawaji submitted a memorial to the Ministry of the Interior and asked the government to send him again to Europe for further police research there. In the memorial, he explained his pressing desire: “Until today, the police have prepared only for civil war. Hereafter, true policing must be established” (Yui and Obinata 1990, 261–263). Unfortunately, we cannot determine what he meant by “true policing” because he became seriously ill in Europe and died five days after returning to Japan in 1881. Kawaji dedicated his life to the project of “true policing,” but he seemed to have been haunted by the idea that the Japanese police was still different from the “true policing” of Europe. Colonial Mediations for Conceptualizing the Police In 1872, Ishida Eikichi, the Superintendent of Police for Kanagawa prefecture, was sent to British colonial areas in East Asia, conducting extensive research on the police systems in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Macao (Naikaku kiroku kyoku 1980, 225; Yokohamashi 1961, 37). Upon his return, Ishida submitted a proposal to the Kanagawa prefecture with several detailed research reports. In this memorial, Ishida explained that his proposals were based on his one-year experience managing the Yokohama police and his half year of research in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Macao. He claimed, “Although I have not observed [the police system] in European countries yet,” he declares, “[the police in Europe] is believed to be much the same [as the police in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Macao].” “Therefore,” he continues, “I am making several proposals without reflecting on my want of ability” (Yui and Obinata 1990, 226). In the shadow of Kawaji’s accomplishments, the significance of Ishida’s research and his memorial and police reports has been largely forgotten. The main reason for this is that historians, like Ishida himself, misidentified his proposal for police reform as a British model. Since the Japanese police had followed Kawaji’s suggestion and adopted the Continental model, Ishida’s proposal for a British model is believed to no longer have any meaning. However, those interpretations overlook the gap between the British police in the metropole and the British colonial police in East Asia. In this regard, Ishida’s documents are crucial for understanding the nature of the Japanese police and its putative rapid and smooth modernization. Conventional scholarship presupposes that non-Western societies like Japan always modernize by emulating “Western” models. In contrast, Ishida’s reports reveal the collusive relationship between Japanese nation-building and Western

182  Naoyuki Umemori colonialism, indicating that Japan could modernize itself only through “colonial” mediations. Ishida’s research was made possible because Kanagawa prefecture had developed a practical relationship with the British colonial police to maintain security in the Yokohama settlement until then. When the Tokugawa government opened five ports to foreign countries according to the commercial treaties of Ansei in 1859, these powers were also allowed to build settlements in the open ports. Since then, Yokohama, a small fishing village adjacent to Edo, had developed as a center of foreign settlements in Japan. During the state of confusion and warfare surrounding the Meiji Restoration, peacekeeping in the Yokohama settlement was conducted through cooperation between Japanese and foreign personnel. During the establishment and development of the Yokohama police, the ­British Ministry played a significant role. The British Ministry in Japan remained in close communication with the Government of Hong Kong, the center of the British colonies and settlements in East Asia. Because the British had already accumulated information and experience on security maintenance in Hong Kong and Shanghai, the British Ministry in Japan could easily refer to the colonial government when they attempted to organize a police force in Japan. Ishida, in his memorial, defined a police force as “the most important instrument for governing a country.” At the same time, he severely criticized the unsatisfactory performance of the existing security institutions in Japan. According to him, the main reason for their poor performance was the lack of a unified, centralized police apparatus. He explained the current situation as “each prefectural government adopting different police systems as they like” and “there being no unity among them.” Thus, he proposed that the government establish guidelines for the structure of the police system for all prefectures in Japan. “If the government sets a fixed standard for the police and orders local authorities to observe it,” he concluded, “the police become a useful and important instrument for governing the country” (Yui and Obinata 1990, 226–227). Ishida conceptualized the essence of the British-style community police reasonably well. In his memorial, Ishida anticipated that each community should take responsibility for maintaining its police force, although he demanded the government set its concrete standards. Moreover, he also expressed his concern for the abuse of police power, requesting the government to define the “rights and duties of commoners and policemen.” He also proposed establishing a “police court” that would arbitrate cases of minor offenses. He believed that this court would contribute to preventing the police from sacrificing “the convenience of ordinary people” (Yui and Obinata 1990, 226–227). Along with his official memorial, Ishida also submitted a series of field notes to Kanagawa prefecture. Ishida’s field notes consist of six different components: Shanghai Rasotsu Kisoku (The Regulations of the Shanghai Police), Hong Kong Rasotsu Kenbun Hikki (Observational Writings on the Regulation of the Hong Kong Police), Hong Kong Torishimari Kisoku (The Regulations of the Hong Kong Police), Hong Kong Gokucho no Shotei (The Regulations of Prisons in Hong Kong), Hong Kong Kaiko Kisoku (The Regulations of Ports in Hong Kong),

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  183 and Hong Kong Miyage Kenbunki (A Record of Personal Experience in Hong Kong) (Naikaku kiroku kyoku 1980, 66–200). These texts seemed to be consulted in the establishment of the Meiji police because the Meiji government ordered Kanagawa prefecture to submit these materials to them. Among these documents, Hong Kong Miyage Kenbunki is the most interesting because it was filled with concrete descriptions indicating the immense differences between the European police system and the colonial police system. For example, the following dialogue between Ishida and a British colonial official was recorded. One day, Ishida asked the British official, “How powerful is the police in Europe?” To this question, the unknown British official answered: Once, in Paris in France, an aristocrat unintentionally touched a policeman by the end of his whip while passing through on his carriage. The policeman immediately arrested him. He was sentenced to 10 days imprisonment. He was too rich to be punished by a sentence of a fine; therefore, he was sentenced to imprisonment. This [episode] shows how people [in Europe] respect the law, not the person. The authority of the police was much strengthened [by this event]. Whenever police officers raise their truncheons in London, the hundreds of carriages immediately stop however crowded the streets are. Even Princes must obey the commands of the police. This is why a single policeman is enough to protect thousands of people on the road. (Naikaku kiroku kyoku 1980, 179) These anecdotes represent the practices of the European police, whose power should manifest itself in the performance of the various service duties represented by the traffic regulations. However, we should also pay particular attention to the fact that these episodes are related in contrast to the reality of the colonial police in Hong Kong. The spectacles of the colonial police presented to the eyes of both Ishida and British officials were quite different from the principle of the European police represented in those episodes. Ishida’s question already anticipates the difference: if he had believed that there was no difference between the colonial police and the metropolitan police, as he suggested in his memorial, he would not have asked such a question. The utopian coloration added by the British colonial officer also suggests the immense gap that he felt between the metropolitan police and the reality of the colonial police. Christopher Munn summarized that the practices of the Hong Kong police at that time were based on the assumption that the entire Chinese population were all potential, if not actual, criminals. He quoted the following words by Governor Sir Richard MacDonnell, who aggressively promoted police reform in Hong Kong during his tenure from 1866 to 1872. The criminal population does not consist of our own countrymen with all the claims which the latter have on our sympathy and patience, nor even in nine cases out of ten does it consist of residents under the British flag, but simply of the refuse population of the opposite provinces, and piratical bandits, who

184  Naoyuki Umemori hang about the town and harbor, kidnapping and robbing when a chance presents itself. (Munn 1999, 63) Wesley-Smith has classified the anti-Chinese policies practiced under ­MacDonnell into the following three categories (Wesley-Smith 1994, 96). The first category concerns punishment. Wesley-Smith argues that punishment based on racial discrimination, such as public flogging, came to be used more frequently in the mid-1860s as a method of crime prevention. The second group of anti-Chinese legislation involves the registration of Chinese people. In 1866, an ordinance was issued to require householders to furnish particulars to the Registrar-General, and their servants (those employed as houseboy, cook, cook’s mate, amah, coolie, watchman, gardener, coachman, horseboy, or boatman) were also required to register (Norton-Kyshe 1971, 66, 93, 126). The third group of discriminatory policing is associated with the laws requiring the Chinese to carry night passes. The superintendent of police was to issue passes certifying that the bearer was authorized to pass and return during the “night season” from and to his employer’s house (Norton-Kyshe 1971, 412). Ishida’s report faithfully recorded these policing methods based on racial ­distinctions in his field notes: public flogging as a punishment against the Chinese, registration of Chinese households, and issuing the night pass to Chinese residents (Naikaku kiroku kyoku 1980, 84, 90, 176, 185). In addition, Ishida’s field notes also revealed that the salaries of police officers in Hong Kong were differentiated according to ethnicity: the Europeans were ranked at the top, the Indians were next, and the Chinese were last. Faced with the racial discrimination that characterized the principles and practices of the colonial police, Ishida understandably put the following question to the British official: “Why do not you abolish the Chinese and Indian policemen and simply have the Europeans take care of everything?” To this question, the British official answered: The police have three tasks: the first is to prevent people from committing crimes; the second is to arrest the people who committed a crime, and the third is to search and catch a fugitive from justice. It is difficult for Europeans to fulfill these police duties because the population of Hong Kong is primarily Chinese whose language we cannot understand. Therefore, we use the Chinese as policemen. (Naikaku kiroku kyoku 1980, 186) This answer revealed the difference between the colonial police in Hong Kong and the police in European metropoles. As we have already seen, the British official, by introducing the episodes in Paris and London, indicated that the principal function of the European police was to protect and promote the interests of civil society by engaging in various service duties such as traffic regulation. However, the same British official explained the purposes of the Hong Kong police exclusively in terms of crime prevention and the capture of criminals. Metaphorically speaking,

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  185 while metropolitan police power was described in the exercise of traffic regulation, the essential nature of the Hong Kong police manifested itself in issuing night passes and registering the local Chinese. Although conventional scholarship emphasizes the unique character of Hong Kong as a “little miniature representative of Great Britain” (Wesley-Smith 1994, 101), law and order in Hong Kong were, as Christopher Munn argues, no less racist than in other colonies. Munn argues that “the imperative of protecting European lives and property distorted the colony’s criminal justice system into one that gave little consideration to the liberties of the ordinary Chinese people” (Munn 1999, 46, 68). Ishida’s reports captured the essence of colonial policing and conveyed the image of the police that “gave little consideration to the liberties” of the locals to Japan. The Mission of Civilization by the Meiji Police Let us compare the police surveys conducted in Western Europe with those in the colonies and settlements in East Asia. We notice that the police system emerging in Meiji Japan was not a simple emulation of its European models. Instead, I argue that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Office emerged as a chimera of the Continental European police system and British colonial policing. In terms of its organizational structure, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Office was undoubtedly modeled after the police systems in France and other Continental European nations. However, when we shift the focus to the actual practices of policing, its similarities to policing in British colonies and settlements become apparent. Because of the enormous differences between people’s lifestyles in France and Japan, much of the information on policing French citizens by the Paris police was almost useless for the Japanese police at that time. In contrast, concrete examples of policing East Asian people and society were accumulated by British colonial police in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and the other colonies and settlements in East Asia. The reports on British colonial policing from Hongkong and Shanghai were essential manuals for the Meiji elite to learn how to control and civilize their people, whose customs and habits were like the natives in those colonies. Let us compare the actual practices of the Japanese police with those of the Paris police and the British colonial police in the 1870s. Many Japanese observers have pointed out that heavy-handed discipline was a “unique” feature of the ­Japanese police from the beginning. For example, Ishiki Kaii Jorei (Minor Offenses Act) issued in Tokyo in 1872 declared the following behaviors illegal: “Being outside half-naked”; “Riding a horse half-naked”; “Wearing a skirt [for men] and wearing men’s clothing [for women]”; “Carrying a night soil bucket without a cover”; “­Urinating in places other than the toilet”; and “Allowing children to defecate or urinate in the street” (Ogi, Kumakura, and Ueno 1990, 3–26). Although these behaviors did not constitute an immediate threat to public security, they were evaluated as inappropriate from the perspective of “civilization.” In the early Meiji period, the police force functioned not only to maintain public security but also to civilize and discipline the residents who resisted moving toward the modern lifestyle.

186  Naoyuki Umemori Those actual practices of the Meiji police had more commonalities with the B ­ ritish colonial police than with their putative model, the Paris police. I­shida’s research reports titled “The Regulations of the Shanghai Police” and “The R ­ egulations of the Hong Kong Police” contained many concrete regulations acted on by the British colonial police to civilize and discipline the natives. As David ­Abernethy argues, “Civilizing the uncivilized” was always “a major justification for the colonial rule” (Abernethy 2000, 287). We can find many common items concerning civilizing the locals in the “Minor Offenses Act” in Meiji Japan and in British colonial regulations, such as the Police Regulations in Hongkong and Shanghai. This indicates that the so-called unique characteristics of the Japanese police were a conscious and unconscious appropriation of British colonial policing in East Asia. Policing the people’s customs represents a convergence between the Meiji police and the colonial police. Another example is the registration system, which was one of the main topics for Japanese police research both in the colonies and in Europe. We should remember how Ishida described the British colonial police practicing it against the Chinese population, while Kawaji recorded that the Paris police could not implement this system. The registration system of the Meiji police reveals how various administrative practices came into contact and fused to produce a new technology. As many contemporary observers have pointed out, the registration and census research system had been a crucial characteristic of the Japanese police system (Katzenstein 1996). The origin of this policy is almost as old as Japan’s police system itself. Gyosei Keisatsu Kisoku (Regulations of the Administrative Police), promulgated in 1875, is the first document to institute concrete procedures of registration (Yui and Obinata 1990). This regulation ordered policemen to pay particular attention to the “sex, age, trade, and character” of residents in their district. In October 1876, the Metropolitan Police Office issued Koguchi Torishirabe Tetsuzuki (Manual for Census Taking), which required police officers to make lists of residents under their supervision by recording their address (whether the address was permanent or temporary and whether the resident was a tenant or landowner), occupation, and age (Yui and Obinata 1990, 392). However, the Meiji leaders were not satisfied with simply collecting “objective” information about the Japanese people. They also ordered the police to research each resident’s “subjective” aspects. A document titled “Additional Instructions for Census Taking,” promulgated in 1879, clearly reveals the Meiji leaders’ strong desire to control individual subjectivity. At the very beginning, the author of this text explained that census-taking is “to have policemen memorize the occupation, name, and character of each resident under their charge and be prepared to report this information to the authorities at a moment’s notice.” In addition, the author asked rhetorically, “Although it is easy to identify the number and occupations of residents under your charge, it is hard to identify each person’s character. How should we investigate this?” The text says: A person who behaves properly, works hard, dutifully helps their parents, and fulfills social responsibilities should be defined as a good subject. A person

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  187 who likes to resist the authorities and eats the bread of idleness without a job and property should be defined as a bad subject. (Yui and Obinata 1990, 393) The Meiji state ordered the police to differentiate the entire Japanese population into “good subjects” and “bad subjects.” The text also stipulated that policemen should investigate “bad subjects” three times a month, while “good subjects” should be visited once a month. The police were instructed to investigate the recent behavior, relationships, and reputations of “bad subjects.” Kawaji himself explained the secret to hunting down “bad subjects” as “hearing voiceless voices and seeing formless forms” (Koe naki ni kiki, Katachi naki ni miru) (Yui and Obinata 1990, 258). Policemen were expected to detect in advance events that had not yet occurred and prevent them from happening. The Japanese police to this day use Kawaji’s words as a catchphrase that represents their mission. This way, “bad subjects” were produced and reproduced by the police through census taking as a byproduct of producing good citizens. Once “bad subjects” became an established category, their existence, in turn, legitimized the meticulous intervention of the police in the daily lives of ordinary people. Conclusion The collusive relationship between British colonial rule in East Asia and nationbuilding in Japan was manifested in establishing the police system in the early Meiji period. This leads to a series of questions regarding the nature of Japanese nationbuilding. Did the Meiji state attempt to govern their people by imitating European colonial states’ practices to control the locals? Did the Meiji elite attempt to handle their people in a way similar to the British colonial police officers’ domination of their local people? Did many of the “unique” characteristics of the Japanese police, compared to the contemporary European police, represent the characteristics of the colonial police in contrast? Here, it is convenient to utilize Michel Foucault’s theory of modern power as a yardstick to unpack its political implications. Foucault argues that a new form of knowledge/power (Polizei) emerged in Continental Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, replacing the traditional techniques of governance (Politik). While “Politik” refers to the “fundamentally negative function” of the state in fighting internal and external enemies, “Polizei” refers to the “positive function” of developing both the lives of citizens and the vitality of the state (Foucault 2000). Fukuzawa’s conceptualization of the police as a “civil force” categorically differentiated from the military force neatly fits Foucault’s binary opposition. However, the early practice of the Meiji police was a strange mixture of Polizei and Politik. Police reform had been one of the most crucial concerns for the Meiji government. Particularly after the end of the Seinan War in 1877, the separation of the police from the military came to be recognized as an urgent task by the Meiji elite. From that time onward, various attempts were made to promote the shift from a military-style police prepared for civil unrest to a preventive police force whose

188  Naoyuki Umemori duty is to maintain daily public security (Nakazawa 2004). We can find its ­symbolic manifestation in establishing the military police system under the ­Ministry of War in 1881. From the perspective of the Ministry of the Interior, it was a process of releasing obsolete and redundant personnel from the police system whose mindsets were still in the age of the samurai (Sakuma 2008). We can place the period from the late Sino-Japanese War to the Russo-Japanese War as the age of police reform in Japan. As Nakazawa and others have pointed out, social transformations such as rapid urbanization and industrialization, the revision of unequal treaties that led to the mixed residence of foreigners and Japanese in Japan, etc., made inevitable the implementation of a series of police reforms, including the expansion of jurisdictional territories along with the development of legal systems, cooperation with political parties, and improvement in the quality of police officers (Nakazawa 2004). However, it should be noted that the age of police reform coincided with Japan’s initiation of its colonial expansion. In 1895, Japan acquired Taiwan from the Qing dynasty through the Treaty of Shimonoseki. However, even after the “pacification proclamation” of November 1895, Japan encountered strong resistance from the Taiwanese people. In Korea as well, especially after the First Japan–Korea Agreement of 1904, resistance by the Korean volunteer army was in full swing. In Taiwan and Korea, the Japanese colonial government sought to introduce a police system to maintain public order, which became highly militarized in order to suppress rebellions. When Japan was making progress in reforming its police force to separate the military elements from the police on its mainland, its specter, whose mission was to maintain public order and discipline the population, was revived in Taiwan and Korea in the new cloth of colonial police. There, the Japanese colonial states viewed the locals as potential enemies and developed and practiced various policing methods to hunt anti-Japanese “bad” subjects down and transform them into “good” subjects or simply eliminate them. The police system, the most characteristic expression of modernity, reached Japan through colonial mediations. In the process of nation-building in Japan, the practices of colonial policing were utilized as rather effective tools. Later, these policing practices were transplanted into Taiwan and Korea for Empire building. The main concern of the colonial police was to prevent the locals from resisting Japanese rule. According to a colonial bureaucrat, “reconnaissance of the people’s affairs and direct involvement in personnel matters are generally not the forte of those with military backgrounds.” Then, he insisted on the qualitative superiority of the police over the military to eradicate anti-Japanese feelings among the Korean people. “Using military force (for that purpose)…is like using a big beef knife to kill a small chicken” (Matsui 2005). According to him, the police should be used as the main force for colonial domination because it could permeate every corner of society and involve residents’ private matters more aggressively. Max Ward analyzes how the Special High Police controlled people in Japan by creating and utilizing “thought crime,” which eventually contributed to establishing a fascist regime in Japan in the 1930s (Ward 2019). If we recognize the origin of thought crime as anti-Japanese sentiments among the locals in Taiwan and

The Establishment of the Police System in Meiji Japan  189 Korea, Japanese fascism could also develop only through colonial mediations. This consideration also leads to a contemporary discussion of “colonial modernity.” We cannot assume that “colonial modernity” emerged only in the colonies after the Empire of Japan officially started its colonial expansion. My research into the establishment of the police in Japan indicates that modernity in Japan was contaminated by colonialism from the outset. This adds another perspective to the question of the complex relationship between colonialism and modernity in East Asia. Bibliography Abernethy, David B. 2000. The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Bayley, David H. 1985. Patterns of Policing: A Comparative International Analysis. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ——. 1991. Forces of Order: Police Behavior in Japan and the United States. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cohn, Bernard S. 1996. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dower, John. 1988. “Sizing up (and Breaking down) Japan.” In The Postwar Development of Japanese Studies in the United States, edited by Helen Hardacre, 1–36. Leiden: Brill. Fosdick, Raymond B. 1915. European Police Systems. New York: The Century Co. Foucault, Michel. 2000. “Omnes et Singulatim: Toward a Critique of Political Reason.” In Michel Foucault/Power: Essential Works, edited by James D. Faubion, 298–325. New York: The New Press. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1963. “Torishimari No Ho.” In Fukuzawa Yukichi Zenshu, edited by Keio gijuku, 20:54–62. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi, David A. Dillworth, and G. Cameron Hurst. 1970. An Outline of a ­Theory of Civilization. Tokyo: Sophia University. Fukuzawa, Yukichi, and Eiichi Kiyooka. 1992. The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Lanham: Madison Books. Hara, Takashi. 1970. “Taiwan Tochi Nian.” In Hisho Ruisan 18, edited by Ito Hirobumi, 32–34. Tokyo: Hara Shobo. Ishii, Ryosuke. 2012. Edo No Machibugyo. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Kasama, Yoshihiko. 1991. Zusetsu Edomachi Bugyosho Jiten. Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobo. Kato, Takashi. 1994. “Governing Edo.” In Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the States in the Early Modern Era, edited by J. McClain, J. Merriman, and Kaoru Ugata, 41–67. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Katzenstein, Peter J. 1996. Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Kume, Kunitake. 2009. Japan Rizing: The Iwakura Embassy to the USA and Europe. ­Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Marx, Karl. 1998. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publisher. Matsui, Shigeru. 2005. “Kankoku Keisatsu Ni Kansuru Ikensho.” In Kankoku “Heigou” Ki Keisatsu Shiryo, edited by Toshihiko Matsuda. Vol. 8. Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo: Yumani Shobo. Minami, Kazuo. 2005. Edo No Machibugyo. Tokya: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. Moore, Barrington Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

190  Naoyuki Umemori Munn, Christopher. 1999. “The Criminal Trial under Early Colonial Rule.” In Hong Kong’s History: State and Society under Colonial Rule, edited by Tak-Wing Ngo, 46–74. ­London: Routledge. Naikaku kiroku kyoku. 1980. Hoki Bunrui Taizen. Vol. 27. Tokyo: Hara Shobo. Najita, Tesuo, and H. D. Harootunian. 1988. “Japanese Revolt against the West: Political and Cultural Criticism in the Twentieth Century.” In The Cambridge History of Japan, edited by Peter Duus, 6:711–774. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nakazawa, Shunsuke. 2004. “Nisshin Nichiro Senkanki No Keisatsu Kaikaku.” Hongo Hosei Kiyo, 31:183–214. Norton-Kyshe, James William. 1971. The History of The Law and Courts of Hongkong. Vol. 1. Hong Kong: Vetch & Lee. Ogi, Shinzo, Kumakara, Isao, and Ueno, Chizuko. 1990. Fuzoku sei (Nihon kindai shiso taikei). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Okamoto, Makiko. 2008. Shokuminchi Kanryo No Seijishi: Chosen, Taiwan Sotokuhu to Teikoku Nihon. Tokyo: Sangensha. Ota, Rinichiro. 1975. “‘New American Cyclopedia’ Wo Megutte.” Fukuzawa Techo, no. 7: 1–8. Payne, Howard. 1966. The Police State of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, 1851–1860. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ripley, George, and Charles A. Dana. 1872. The New American Cyclopedia. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Sakuma, Ken. 2008. “Meiji Zenki Niokeru Kenpei Sosetsu No Keii: Hanbatsu Seiji Tono Kanrenkara.” Waseda Seiji Koho Kenkyu, no.87: 59–80; no.88: 45–61.  Shiba, Ryotaro. 1995. Kono Kunino Katachi. Vol. 3. Tokyo: Bungei Shunju Sha. Silberman, Bernard S. 1993. Cages of Reason: The Rise of the Rational State in France, Japan, the United States, and Great Britain. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Steinmetz, George. 2007. The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Takahashi, Yuzai. 1976. Meiji Nendai No Keisatsu Bucho. Tokyo: Ryosho fukyu kai. Vogel, Ezra F. 1979. Japan as Number One: Lessons for America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ward, Max M. 2019. Thought Crime : Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan. ­Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Weber, Max, Hans Heinrich Gerth, and Charles Wright Mills. 1965. Politics as a Vocation. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Wesley-Smith, Peter. 1994. “Anti-Chinese Legislation in Hong Kong.” In Precarious ­Balance: Hong Kong between China and Britain, 1842–1992, edited by Ming K Chain, 91–106. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Westney, D. Eleanor. 1982. “The Emulation of Western Organizations in Meiji Japan: The Case of the Paris Prefecture of Police and the Keishi-Choo.” Journal of Japanese Studies, no. Summer: 307–342. Wolferen, Karel van. 1990. The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation. New York: Vintage Books. Yamamuro, Shinichi. 2017. Asia No Shisosimyaku. Jinbun Shoin. Yokohamashi. 1961. Yokohama Shishi. Vol.3 (1), Yokohama: Yokohamashi. Yui, Masaomi, and Sumio Obinata. 1990. “Kanryosei, Keisatsu.” Nihon Kindai Shiso Taikei. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.

Index of Names

Ames, Roger 11–13, 17, 53, 99, 101–104, 124 Arendt, Hannah 165–166 Arisawa, Hiromi (有澤廣巳) 94 Aristotle 48–49, 52, 62, 64, 139–140, 150 Balibar, Étienne 38, 41 Benveniste, Émile 28, 39–40 Buckle, Henry Thomas 82, 86 Burke, Edmund 135, 148 Chan, Joseph 137, 149 Chang Wejen (張偉仁) 59 Choe, Je-u (崔濟愚) 14, 99, 101, 111 Choe, Si-hyeong (崔時亨) 99, 109, 111 Confucius (孔子) 62, 103, 139, 143, 144; see also Analects of Confucius (Lunyu, 論語) Duara, Prasenjit 5, 70, 80 Dussel, Enrique 7, 9–10 Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah 5, 123–125, 131, 154 Foucault, Michel 27, 30, 33–34, 36, 41, 187; see also Foucauldian Frege, Gottlob 49 Fukuzawa, Yukichi (福澤諭吉) 12–13, 23–32, 35–41, 82, 85–87, 131, 171, 176–178, 187 Galton, Francis 82, 87 Graham, A.C 48, 52, 101 Guo, Qiyong (郭齐勇) 53 Hacking, Ian 82, 86 Han Fei (韓非子) 120–121, 130 Hara, Takashi (原敬) 174 Haushofer, Max 89

He, Lin(贺麟) 15, 134, 149 He, Xinyin(何心隐) 138, 149 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 49, 123–124, 131, 158–159; see also Hegelian Hobbes 121–123, 158; see also Hobbesian Ishida, Eikichi (石田英吉) 181–186 Jaspers, Karl 6, 124, 131 Jenco, Leigh 167–168 Kaviraj, Sudipta 156–157, 168 Kawaji, Toshiyoshi (川路利良) 175, 179– 181, 186–187 Koselleck, Reinhart 3 Kure, Ayatoshi (呉文聡) 82, 89–90 Levinas, Emmanuel 140–141, 150 Li, Lanlan (李兰兰) 53 Liang, Qichao (梁启超) 4, 81 Luhmann, Niklas 83 Mannheim, Karl 158, 169 Maruyama, Masao (丸山眞男) 14–15, 113, 154, 157–169 Marx, Karl 9, 125, 150, 158, 180 Mencius(孟子) 45, 48, 53, 122, 127, 129, 131, 141–142; see also Mencius (孟子) Mill, John Stuart 32, 36–37, 40–41, 100, 157 Mills, Charles 156–157, 172 de Montaigne, Michel 125, 139–141, 150 Mori, Rintarō (Ōgai) (森鷗外) 90–91 Nishi, Amane(西周) 82–85 Oettingen, Alexander von 89 Ogyū, Sorai (荻生徂徠) 83–84

192  Index of Names Okamoto, Makiko (岡本真希子) 174 Ōkuma, Shigenobu (大隈重信) 87 Ōuchi, Hyōe (大內兵衛) 94 Qian, Mu(钱穆) 117, 129–130 Rawls, John 43, 59–60, 64, 136; see also Rawlsian Richard, Ivor Armstrong 48 Roetz, Heiner 123–125 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 136, 148 Schmitt, Carl 164, 169 Shaw-Lefevre, George John 90 Shiba, Ryotaro (司馬遼太郎) 175 Spruyt, Hendrik 120–121, 130 Steinmetz, George 174 Sugi, Kōji (杉亨二) 82, 87–89, 91 Takahashi, Katsuhiro (高橋勝弘) 92 Takano, Iwasaburō (高野岩三郎) 91, 94

Takeuchi, Yoshimi (竹内好) 164, 169 Tan, Sor-hoon 151, 156–157 Tang, Junyi (唐君毅) 53–55 Tsuda, Mamichi(津田真道) 82–86, 88 Tully, James 15, 154–157, 161 Vissering, Simon 83–84 Wang, Pei 14, 113, 148, 150 Weber, Max 100, 120, 122–123, 158, 172; see also Weberian Wenckstern, Adolph von 91 Wolgast, Elizabeth H. 59–62 Xunzi (荀子) 141, 148; see also Xunzi (荀子) Zarakol, Ayşe 4 Zhang, Taisu 144, 151

Index of Terms

1919 Moment 79 Analects of Confucius (Lunyu: 論語) 45, 144 axial (or Non-axial) civilization 6; - axial age 124, 131 Book of Changes (Yijing易經) 47–48, 50–51, 70, 101–102 Buddhism 43, 46–49, 62 Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (An Outline of A Theory of Civilization文明論之 概略) 40, 177–178 Burma 74 Centrism 8; - Eurocentrism 5–9, 15; - logocentrism 57; - Sino-centrism (Sinocentric) 69 China (Chinese) 3, 11–13, 15, 22, 25, 43–48, 54, 59, 67–77, 80, 99–100, 109, 114–115, 117–119, 120–132, 134–138, 141–142, 144–152, 159, 169 Chinese Geographical Society(中國地學 會) 69–70 Chinese-style Modernization 4 Cold War (The Cold War) 4, 77, 160 collective identity 108, 111 colonialism 29, 39, 69, 71, 76, 100, 108, 118, 137, 156, 171, 173–175, 182, 189; colonial states 16, 172–174, 187–188; - post-colonialism 5, 168; - self-colonization 7, 11, 16, 64 communities of acquaintances 118, 125 Comprehensive Book of Eastern Learning((Dongkyeong Daejeon 東 經大全) 99, 101 Confucianism 12, 17, 22–28, 30, 44–47, 53, 56, 99, 101–104, 106–108, 110,

111, 127–128, 131; - Confucius 62, 103, 139, 143, 144; - NeoConfucianism 128 correlative cosmology 101–102, 105, 107, 110 cross-cultural dialogue 154, 156, 167 determinism 47, 74, 75, 85, 86, 96 dialogue 154–157, 160–169; - intercultural Dialogue 14–15; - intracultural dialogue 155, 157, 163, 167; selfdialogue 155, 157, 163, 165–167; - transcultural dialogue 154, 156– 157, 160–161, 167–168 distinction between fellow countrymen and foreigners (自他之別) 32 Doctrine of National Sovereignty (国権論) 24 Donghak (Eastern Learning東學) 13–14, 67, 99–111 East Asia 22, 43, 46, 49, 68–69, 73, 76, 99–101, 111, 171–172, 174–175, 181–182, 185–187, 189 East Asian Modernity 5, 13, 68, 77, 110 ecological holism 52 Edo (Edo period) 172, 182 Emperor System (天皇制) 30–31, 33–34, 36, 40–41; - Emperor’s baby (天皇 之赤子) 33 empire 33, 36–37, 41, 75–76, 79, 116, 129, 173–175, 180, 188–189; - The German Empire 174 end of history (The end of history) 115 equality 12, 18, 20–23, 26, 28–30, 33–39, 41, 47, 60, 77, 114, 121–122, 125– 126, 128, 130, 134–141, 144–149, 156, 164

194  Index of Terms Fabrica mundi (cartographic schematism) 18–19, 39 fate 105–106, 108 feudal 12, 14–15, 17, 20, 24, 26, 28, 35, 107, 109, 116–119, 121–122, 126, 129, 145, 158; - Feudalism 14, 115–120, 122, 125, 127, 131, 137, 158, 178; - Feudal kingdom 171; Feudal remnant(封建的遺制) 12, 17, 22; - post-feudal 14 filial piety (孝) 15, 141–142, 147–149, 151–152 Foucauldian 12 freedom of speech 147–148 geo-body 70, 76 global modernity 9, 13 grassroots mobilization 109 harmony (he 和) 48, 56, 145 heaven 14, 45, 51, 54, 82, 84, 101–111, 117, 122–123, 129, 139; - heavenly dignity 14, 104, 106–108 Hegelian 123, 124, 134, 158 hierarchy 13–15, 26, 28–29, 80, 108, 113, 118–119, 135–138, 141, 145, 146, 147–150, 152; - hierarchy in space 13, 77, 80; - hierarchy in time 13, 77, 80 Hobbesian 45 Hong Kong 16, 181–186 horizon of expectation (Erwartungshorizont) 3, 11 human “becomings” 51, 52–53, 56, 63, 102 immanence 123–124 individual (individuals) 3–4, 7, 11–12, 15, 19, 22–31, 33–36, 38–40, 51, 58, 64, 86, 101, 104–106, 122–123, 125, 135, 137, 144, 158, 162, 166, 178, 186; - individualism 5, 25–26, 30, 64, 108, 122–123, 131, 158–159; - individualistic 3, 4, 108, 126; - individuality 14, 28, 52, 100, 106–108, 110, 122–123, 125, 162, 164; - individuation 12, 15, 19–20, 26–27, 29–30, 34, 158–159 industrialization 5, 15, 122, 125–126, 129, 151, 188 Ishiki Kaii Jorei (Minor Offenses Act) 185 Japan (Japanese) 4, 9, 11–16, 17, 20–25, 28–41, 44, 46, 67–70, 73, 75–77,

79–80, 82–89, 92–96, 99–100, 109, 114, 122, 126–127, 131, 134, 154–155, 157–163, 166–167, 169, 171–182, 185–189 Jus Publicum Europaeum 29 justice 20–23, 33, 36–37, 43, 57–62, 64, 84–85, 109, 136, 184, 185; - injustice 59, 61, 109, 138, 156; Zhengyi (正義) 43, 57–59 Korea (Koreans) 4, 13–14, 16, 22, 25, 30, 46, 67–68, 75–76, 99–101, 103–104, 106–111, 148, 173, 174, 188–189 Kyoto School 4 liberal democracy 4, 15, 114–115, 134 Marxism 43, 46–49, 62, 158, 168; - Marxist 47, 94, 96, 128, 134, 158, 160–161, 173; - Neo-Marxism 57 May Fourth movement 3, 69 Meiji Restoration(The Meiji Restoration明 治維新) 20–21, 23, 27, 29, 33, 41, 126–127, 131, 171, 182 memory 11 Mencius (孟子) 45, 63, 129, 150–151 modernity(ies) (early and late) 3–16, 17–22, 31, 43–46, 48–49, 53, 55, 62–64, 67–69, 77, 82–83, 85, 87, 89–90, 96, 99–100, 103, 108, 110–111, 113–118, 120–127, 129–131, 134, 137, 148, 154–162, 167–169, 171–172, 175, 188–189; - hybrid modernity 7, 9, 12, 14, 99–100, 103, 108, 110; - nonWestern modernity 7, 10, 159, 167; - overcoming modernity 6, 11; - Western modernity 12, 15, 17, 43–46, 48–49, 53, 55, 62–64, 99, 116, 122, 154, 156–161, 167–169; Western modernization 5–6, 10–11, 160 nation 5, 8–9, 20–22, 25, 29, 31, 33–38, 40–41, 48, 69, 73–74, 76–77, 86, 93, 180, 185; - nation-state 4–5, 8, 11, 16, 21–22, 24, 26, 29, 37–38, 69–70, 72–73, 76–77, 82, 109, 114, 128, 171, 173–174 national body (國體) 20, 31–32 nationalism 40, 69–71, 77, 82, 175; nationality 12, 18–21, 30–33,

Index of Terms  195 36–38; - nationalization 12, 19–20; - nation-building 5, 15, 38, 109, 172, 181, 188; - nationhood 12, 17, 100, 109; - nation-state system 4, 69–70, 77, 80; - ultra-nationalism 6, 11 natural boundary 72 one gaze, equal mercy (一視同仁) 33 ontology 13, 43, 49–51, 57, 59, 62, 130–131 Orientalism 5, 175 otherness 15, 155, 163–169; see also we-ness peasant rebellions 14, 21, 39, 100, 109 police (policing/ Police Bureau) 14–15, 113, 131, 171–173, 175–189; The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department 172; - Torishimari (Police) 176, 182 pre-Qin Chinese thinkers 115, 122, 126,  128 progressive conservative 134, 149 progressivism 85 Qingdao(青島) 73, 81 Rawlsian 60, 64; see also Rawls, John relation/ relational 11–12, 14, 28, 44, 53, 56, 58, 106, 108, 110; - relational identity 20, 28, 30, 37, 40; relational persons 102 self-cultivation (修身/自我修养) 102–104, 147 sentiment of nationality (The sentiment of nationality: 國體之情) 33, 36–37 Sinicization (中國化) 4; - Sinicized 43 Sino-Babylonianism (西來説) 70–71, 80 Sino-Japanese Relations 68, 76, 79, 92, 93, 188 social change 13, 32, 67, 80, 82, 91, 100, 103–104, 108 societies of strangers 125 sovereignty 10, 13–14, 19–20, 24, 29, 33, 36, 67–68, 70, 73, 76–77, 80, 117, 121; - sovereign states 29, 117, 120

space of experience (Erfahrungsraum) 3, 11 specific identity 20, 30–31, 40 standard of civilization 13, 68, 80 subjectivity 7, 14, 21–22, 30, 39, 123–124, 159, 186 Taiwan (Taiwanese) 16, 22–23, 30, 59, 73, 131, 173–174, 188 teaching of Autonomy and Independence (自主独立論) 24–25 Torishimari no ho (The Rule of Policing) 176, 177–178, 189 totalitarianism 122, 125, 131, 160, 165 transcendence 52–54, 105, 107, 123–124; individualist transcendence 105 transcendental universalism 52, 56–57, 59–60 translation 6, 8, 10–12, 17, 31, 40–41, 43, 45, 47–49, 53–55, 57–58, 62, 84, 88, 92, 160, 169, 176 Versailles Settlement 13, 67, 69, 73, 75, 79 Washington Conference 73–75 Weberian 3 We-ness 14, 104, 107–108; see also otherness Westernization(西方化) 3–5, 9–10, 13, 67, 70, 124, 171 Western modernity 12, 15, 17, 43–46, 48–49, 53, 55, 62–64, 99, 116, 122, 154, 156–161, 167–169 Western modernization 5–6, 10–11, 160 Western superiority 5 Wilson’s Fourteen points 70, 73 Xunzi (荀子) 150–151 Yongdam`s Legacy (龍潭遺詞) 99–100, 102, 107 Zhou-Qin transition (the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, 周秦之變) 11, 14, 114–115, 117–118, 120, 123–130; Zhou-Qin transition period 11 zoetology(生生論) 43, 50