Society Reified: Herbert Spencer and Political Theory in Early Meiji Japan

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 67-86

  Howland, Douglas ^a  

^a DePaul University   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85013772732     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500002607     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. Short discussions of the background of these two journals are included in the cen-teniary history of Tokyo University: Tōkyō daigaku hyakunen shi: Tsūshi (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku, 1984), 1:491–500, 614–22.
2. For more on the Gakushi kaiin (Tokyo Academy), see Walter Dening, “The Gakushikaiin,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, ser. 1, vol. 15 (1887):58–82
3. Okubo Toshiaki, Meiji no shisō to bunka (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1988), 255–277.
4. Shimoide Junkichi, “Miru to Supensā…Meiji bunka ni oyoboshita eikyō ni tsuite,” in Meiji shakai shiso kenkyū (Tokyo: Asano shoten, 1932), 36–38
5. Yamashita Shigekazu, “Bensamu, Miru, Supensā…hōyakusho mokuroku,” Sankō shoshi kenkyū, no. 10 (11/1974):29–35.
6. See Douglas H. Mendel, Jr., “Ozaki Yukio: Political Conscience of Modern Japan,” Far Eastern Quarterly 15.3 (5/1956):343–56
7. Yanagida Izumi, “Shakai heiken ron yakusha…Matsushima Ko den,” in his Meiji shoki honyaku bungaku no kenkyū [= Meiji bungakū kenkyū, vol. 5], rev. ed. (Tokyo: Haruakisha, 1961), 358–70. Matsushima's personal name is sometimes read “Takeshi.”
8. J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (London: Heine-mann, 1971), 185f
9. There is a minor segment of Spencer scholarship in Japan that presents him as two persons, an early “liberal” in conflict with a later “conservative.” See Nagai Michio, “Herbert Spencer in Early Meiji Japan,” Far Eastern Quarterly 14.1 (11/1954):55–65
10. Nagai bases his argument largely on Ernest Barker, Political Thought in England (NY: Henry Holt, 1915)
11. Shimizu Ikutarō, Nihon bunka keitai ron (Tokyo: Tōzai bunko, 1934).
12. Others have pointed out, however, that the trajectory from Spencer's first philosophic work, Social Statics (1851)
13. to his last, The Principles of Ethics (1893), is quite direct.
14. The only significant changes he made in the system outlined in Social Statics were to reject the divine justification for natural rights and to argue for private property in land. On Spencer's consistency, see Peel, Herbert Spencer, 26 -31
15. David Wiltshire, The Social and Political Thought of Herbert Spencer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 95f, 100f
16. See Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Encouragement of Learning, trans. David A. Dilworth and Umeyo Hirano (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1969), 1–7, 15–20
17. idem, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, trans. David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1973), 35–45, 125–134.
18. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: The conditions essential to human happiness specified, and the first of them developed ([1877?], repr. New York: Schalkenbach Foundation, 1995), 69.
19. Hereafter SS. In Japanese, Ozaki Yukio translated God as “Spirit” (kami)
20. see Kenri teikō, (1878)
21. repr. Ozaki Gakudō zenshū (Tokyo: Kōronsha, 1956), 1:68.
22. Hereafter Kt. By contrast, Matsushima Kō translated “God” as “Heaven” (ten)
23. see Shakai heiken ron (1881–1883)
24. repr. Meiji bunka zenshū, vol. 5, Jiyū minken hen (Tokyo: Nihon hyōronsha, 1927), 241. Hereafter Shr.
25. I analyze the Japanese construction of liberty in a chapter of a forthcoming book, Translating the West: Language and Political Authority in Nineteenth-Century Japan.
26. Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no gairyaku, in Fukuzawa Yukichi senshū (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1981), 4:59.
27. Cf. Outline of a Theory of Civilization, 44.
28. Peel, Herbert Spencer, 155.
29. see Mark E. Lincicome, Principle, Praxis, and the Politics of Educational Reform in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995), 70, 125, 169, 187–89.
30. SS, 150, 167
31. Shr, 294, 305f.
32. Kt, 103.
33. In Social Statics, Spencer's term is simply “rights,” with two exceptions: “human rights” (85) and “personal rights” (87). Matsushima translates both into Japanese as jinken (human rights), while Ozaki translates the former as banjin dōken (equal rights of all people) and the latter as ningen no kenri (human rights). By way of definition, Spencer offers: “by right we mean that which harmonizes with the human constitution as divinely ordained” (120); and “these that we call rights are nothing but artificial divisions of the general claim to exercise the faculties” (137). See Shr, pp. 241, 252, 276, 287
34. Kt, pp. 79f., 153. Spencer specifically rejected this earlier understanding of rights as “natural rights” emanating from the Divine will in The Man Versus the State (1884): “Clearly, the conception of ‘natural rights’ originates in recognition of the truth that if life is justifiable, there must be a justification for the performance of acts essential to its preservation
35. therefore, a justification for those liberties and claims which make such acts possible.” See The Man Versus the State: with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1982), 136–153.
36. Ueki Emori, “Hinmin ron,” in Ueki Emori senshū, ed. Ienaga Saburō (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1974), 123
37. Nobutaka Ike, The Beginnings of Political Democracy in Japan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950) 135.
38. “Sakeya kaigi,” repr. Nihon kindai shisō taikei, vol. 21, Minshū undō (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989), 246–56
39. Ike, Beginnings of Political Democracy, 103f.
40. SS, 185, 228, 241f. Ueki's compatriot in the Risshisha, Sakamoto Naohiro (or Namio), made the same argument about the limits of government in “Honron” (On Fundamentals), quoted in Yamashita Shigekazu, Supensā to Nihon kindai (Tokyo: Ochano-mizu shobō, 1983), 90–93.
41. Roger W. Bowen, Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan: A Study of Commoners in the Popular Rights Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 206, 208. Cf. SS, 219–20.
42. SS, 170f.
43. Shr, 308
44. Kt, 129f.
45. Ueki, “Hinmin ron,” 122f., 142–146.
46. Ueki Emori, “Danjo no dōken,” in Ueki Emori senshū, 169–71, 184f.
47. At several points in the essay, Ueki borrows the language of Ozaki Yukio's translation of Social Statics; compare pp. 152, 158f.
48. Ozaki, Kt, 68, 94f.
49. See also Bowen, Rebellion and Democracy, 197–212.
50. Bowen, Rebellion and Democracy, 224–26
51. Irokawa Daikichi, Meiji seishin shi, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1973), 17, 39f., 313.
52. On the elements of Spencer's theory of evolution, see Peel, Herbert Spencer, 101.
53. The first discussion in Japan of Spencer on evolution, to my knowledge, was a set of excerpts with editorial commentary in the English-language publication, The Japan Weekly Mail, September 20, 1873: 664–666.
54. Visiting naturalist Edward S. Morse gave a popular series of lectures on Darwin's theory of evolution (shinka ron) in autumn 1877
55. see Robert S. Schwantes, “Christianity versus Science: A Conflict of Ideas in Meiji Japan,” Far Eastern Quarterly 12.2 (2/1953):123–132.
56. On the introduction of Spencer's theory of evolution to Japan, see Ōkubo, Meiji no shisō to bunka, 53, 205, 210.
57. Nagai Michio, Kindaika to kyōiku (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku shuppanbu, 1969), 152–172 [“Supensā-shugi no ryūkō”]. Nagai compares Spencer's Study of Sociology and Ariga Nagao's 1883 translation as Shakaigaku, in the context of two factions among Spencer's followers in Japan: the scientific-minded proponents of popular rights and the more conservative proponents of sociology at Tokyo University.
58. KatōHiroyuki, Jinken shinsetsu, repr. Meiji bunka zenshū, vol. 5, Jiyūminken hen (Tokyo: Nihon hyōron sha, 1927), 372–378.
59. See David Abosch, “KatōHiroyuki and the Introduction of German Political Thought, 1868–1883” (Ph.D. Diss., University of California, 1964), 430–447.
60. The Study of Sociology (1873; repr. New York: D. Appleton, 1901), 313f.
61. On social Darwinism in relation to Katō, see first the definitive work of Yamashita Shigekazu: “Herbert Spencer and Meiji Japan,” in Japan in Transition: Thought and Action in the Meiji Era, 1868–1912, ed. Hilary Conroy, Sandra T. W. Davis, and Wayne Patterson (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984), 77–95
62. idem, “Meiji shoki ni okeru Supensā no juyō,” Seijigaku nenpō 1975:77–112
63. idem, Supensā to Nihon kindai (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobō, 1983), 143–160.
64. See also Winston Davis, The Moral and Political Naturalism of Baron Kato Hiroyuki (Berkeley: University of California, Center for East Asian Studies, 1996), 35- 82
65. Unoura Hiroshi, “Kindai Nihon ni okeru shakai dāwinizumu no juyō to tenkai,” in Kōza: shinka, vol. 2, Shinka shisō to shakai, ed. Shibatani Atsuhiro et al. (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku shuppankai, 1991), 119 -152
66. Watanabe Masao, The Japanese and Western Science, trans. Otto Theodor Benfey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 66–83.
67. In conjunction with the limited importance of Spencer to Katō's ideas, Richard Weikart has noted the limited importance of Spencer to German social Darwinism; see “The Origins of Social Darwinism in Germany, 1859- 1895,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54.3 (7/1993):469–488.
68. Tokutomi Sohō, Shōrai no Nihon, in Tokutomi Sohō shū, ed. Uete Michiari (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1974), 51–54, 63, 67–73.
69. Tokutomi Sohō shū., 81f., 88f
70. see also Irokawa, Meiji seishin shi, 401f., 414ff.
71. Tokutomi, Shōrai no Nihon, 105–08. A thread of argument would link Tokutomi Sohō and his contemporaries Inoue Tetsujirō and Miyake Setsurei to Spencer's “genre of social Darwinism”
72. see Earl H. Kinmoth, The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought: From Samurai to Salary Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 100
73. Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), 36–42, 110–12, 150–52
74. Donald H. Shively, “The Japanization of the Middle Meiji,” in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 77–119.
75. Pyle (111f.) and Shively (94, 104) make use of Spencer's often-quoted letter of 1892 to Kaneko Kentarō …in which he urges Japan (a) to evolve on its own, following conservative and patriarchal patterns rather than adopting foreign institutions and (b) to exclude foreigners from all Japanese property rights, mining, and trade, in order to maintain the purity of their race. See Herbert Spencer, “Advice to the Modernizers of Japan,” in On Social Evolution: Selected Writings, ed. J. D. Y. Peel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 253–257.
76. See Fukuzawa Yukichi, Gakumon no susume, in Fukuzawa Yukichi senshū 3:131.
77. Cf. An Encouragement of Learning, 74.
78. Katō, Jinken shinsetsu, 380–382.
79. See Davis, Moral and Political Naturalism, 83–102.
80. D. R. Howland, “J. S. Mill in Japan: Society as Village in the 1871 Translation of On Liberty,” unpublished mss.
81. Inoue Tetsujirō, Tetsugaku jii (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Sangakubu, 1881), 82, 85
82. Inoue Tetsujirō and Ariga Nagao, Tetsugaku jii, rev. and enlarged ed. (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Sangakubu, 1884), 113, 118.
83. For a helpful review of the development of shakai in Meiji dictionaries, see Sōgō Masaaki and Hida Yoshifumi, Meiji no kotoba jiten (Tokyo: Tōkyōdō, 1986), 207–209.
84. Heruberuto Supensā [Herbert Spencer], “Fujo no kenri,” trans. Sakaguchi Sakichi, Gakugei shirin, vol. 5 (11/1879):340–54 and (12/1879):451–68; see pp. 351, 452, 455- 57. Sakaguchi's metaphorical translation of “militant,” kanka, means quite literally “shield and spear.” His essay is based on (but is by no means an exacting translation of) “The Status of Women” from Spencer's The Principles of Sociology, vol. 1, pt. III, ch. X.
85. see pp. 351, 452, 455- 57. Sakaguchi's metaphorical translation of “militant,” kanka, means quite literally “shield and spear.” His essay is based on (but is by no means an exacting translation of) “The Status of Women” from Spencer's The Principles of Sociology, vol. 1, pt. III, ch. X.
86. Katō, Jinken shinsetsu, 374
87. Tokutomi, Shōrai no Nihon, 105–108.
88. SS, 107, 111
89. Shr, 267, 270
90. Kt, 142, 146.
91. Kato, Jinken shinsetsu, 357.
92. J. D. Y. Peel notes that Spencer's title Social Statics was deliberately chosen in opposition to “social science,” which, at the time, had “distinctively Owenite or Saint-Simonan overtones”
93. Herbert Spencer, 82f.
94. Yokoyama Gennosuke, Nihon no kasō shakai (1899)
95. repr. Yokoyama Gennosuke zenshū, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Meiji bunken, 1972)
96. Carol Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 26–29.
97. A series of newspaper articles on “social problems” is reprinted in Meiji bunka zenshū, 3rd. ed., vol. 6, Shakai hen (Tokyo: Nihon hyōronsha, 1968), 397–571
98. Nishi Amane, “Heika tokkō,” in Nishi Amane zenshū, ed. Okubo Toshiaki (Tokyo: Munetaka shobō, 1966), 3:3–17.
99. See Roger F. Hackett, “Nishi Amane…A Tokugawa-Meiji Bureaucrat,” Journal of Asian Studies, 18.2 (2/1959):213–25
100. Ōkubo, Meiji no shisō to bunka, 324ff.
101. Ueki, “Hinmin ron,” 113–18, 125, 130–34. On Ueki as an early radical
102. see Ienaga Saburō Kakumei shisō no senkusha: Ueki Emori no hito to shisō (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1955), 16–18, 87–108, 195f.
103. The term “socialism” was introduced to Japan with the controversial and shortlived “Eastern Socialist Party” (Tōyō shakaitō), an agrarian association founded on May 25, 1882 and disbanded by police orders within a month. See Kano Masanao, Shihonshugi keiseiki no chitsujo ishiki (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1969), 292f.
104. Shinbun shūsei Meiji hennen shi, ed. Nakayama Yasumasa (1934–1936; repr. Tokyo: Honpō shoseki, 1982), vol. 5:46f, 49, 70f, 81, 105, 110, 112, 120–24, 223, 227, 235.