Kokutai

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Kokutai ( Jap. 国体 ( shinjitai ) or 國體 ( Kyūjitai )) is a Japanese term that many different translations permits (so z. B. People scharakter , community or country body , often in the English national polity ), and since the Meiji -Time was used in the context of Tennoism and the Japanese Pan-Asian movement in the meaning of (Japanese) national being .

He was, similar to z. B. Yamato-damashii , the ideological catchphrase of Japanese nationalism and was used in the legitimation of state politics in Japan up to the surrender of Japan in 1945. Even during this time, the meaning of the term was never precisely defined, although it was one of the first terms in Nihonjinron repeatedly to explain the alleged uniqueness of Japan, and - especially until the end of the war - its superiority was also used.

Thought leader

Aizawa's New Theses

One of the most influential theoretical discussions of kokutai was in 1825 by the Confucian scholar Aizawa Seishisai (birth name: Aizawa Yasushi; 会 沢 正 志 斎 (1782–1863)) in his work shinron (新 論, "New Theses"), a representative of the so-called Mito school , undertaken. In it he starts from the founding myths of Kojiki, which are established as historical facts . The motive of Aizawa's deliberations was the crisis of modern Japan, to stand hopelessly behind in contrast to the western colonial powers . Aizawa diagnosed the cause of this fact in Christianity as a central force in the unification of the Western powers. According to Kojiki, it was precisely this unity of political rule and cult (祭 政 一; saisei itchi ) that already existed in Japan in prehistoric times: the heavenly kami Amaterasu handed over the imperial regalia to her grandson Ninigi and thus the Japanese empire under the sole rule of a god emperor and high priest established in the form of the Tennō . The submission to this circumstance and the resulting unity of the Japanese people was Aizawa's conception of the kokutai . The shinron was received in particular in the movement of the sonnō jōi .

Main story

liberalism

In the brief phase of liberalism during the early years of the Meiji period , attempts were made to interpret the kokutai in a liberal sense. The views expressed mainly in meiroku zasshi (明 六 雑 誌; cf. Meirokusha ), a small enlightenment magazine, were by no means representative of the political mainstream of the time and were no longer relevant in the 1880s.

Katō Hiroyuki (加藤 弘 之, 1836–1916), one of the few Japanese scholars who was familiar with western, contractual state theories in his time , identified in his work rikken seitai ryaku (about: Basic Constitutional Government) of 1868 natural rights as essential components of the kokutai. In kokutai shinron (for example: New Theses on Kokutai) of 1874 he advocated a constitutional monarchy as a system of government in Japan and rejected the traditional view of the infallible virtue of the emperor. He also differentiated between kokutai as the unchangeable identity of the Japanese Empire on the one hand and seitai (政体) as a ( contingent ) concrete, historical form of government on the other.

Katō later distanced himself from these views in favor of a social Darwinist theory that interpreted human rights not as natural rights, but rather as the result of a natural evolutionary process for the stronger.

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) gave in his work bunmeiron no gairyaku (about: outline of a civilization theory) from 1875 to understand that kokutai is not exclusively Japanese, rather every country has a kokutai (ie its own national being). He was also of the opinion that there was nothing eternal or necessary in the concept of kokutai, that it could change or even disappear (he rejected national myths as obscure). A prerequisite and essential for the existence of a kokutai is independence in the sense of national sovereignty (according to Fukuzawa to be established by citizens who are as free as possible).

Meiji period from 1881

After the planning of a constitution decided by the Tennō Mutsuhito in 1881 , which was to be implemented in 1889 (the so-called Meiji constitution ), a comprehensive new debate began, which also included seitai in addition to kokutai . Kokutai was more important, however, and there was unanimous opinion in the political discourse determined by the conservative forces at the imperial court that an essential part of the kokutai was the absolute rule of the Tennō due to its unbroken, divine origin.

The seitai is therefore only the framework that has yet to be developed for the realization of the kokutai in modern Japan. The extent to which the Tennō should get actual or only symbolic violence through the new constitution was, however, controversial, and the compromise that was achieved (which severely restricted the alleged absolute sovereignty of the Tennō) was to cause heated arguments in retrospect about the actual role of the Tennō.

The imperial edict of education

Main article: Imperial edict of education

While the kokutai had not yet found a mention in the Meiji constitution, it found its first prominent use within a public context in the Imperial Edict of Education of the Meiji Emperor of 1890 in the expression kokutai no seika (國體 ノ 精華 or 國 軆 ノ 精華; in German for example: "the glory of the fundamental character of Our Kingdom"). In the years that followed, political theorists should repeatedly refer to this use by the Tennō as an expression of (highest) state and religious authority in the explication of the kokutai.

Legal application

Main article: Law for the Maintenance of Public Safety

For the first time in writing as a legal term, the term kokutai is used by the Japanese state in the Law for the Maintenance of Law and Order (治安 維持 法; chian-ijihō ) of 1925. On the grounds of protecting the Japanese imperial family from left-wing extremist (i.e. communist and anarchist) forces, any conspiracy or revolt against the kokutai was banned and sentenced to up to ten years in prison. A definition of the term was avoided. With a supplement to the law in 1928, the maximum sentence was set at the death penalty.

In a decision of the Supreme Court of May 31, 1929, kokutai was then only defined more precisely to the extent that it referred to the form of government that had been established in the constitution of the Great Japan Empire , i.e. H. a state with the holy and inviolable person of the Tennō as the eternal head of state and holder of state authority (Articles 1, 3 and 4). Nevertheless, the kokutai formula remained empty enough in a legal sense to legitimize the rigorous persecution, suppression and state-sanctioned extermination of opponents of the regime in Japan for the next few decades.

Campaign to clarify the Kokutai

After the short time of the democratic theorists in the Taishō period , a particularly active theoretical discussion of the kokutai took place in the Shōwa period and during the emerging Japanese imperialism . The reason for this was the domestic political event of the 1935 forced resignation of the House of Commons representative Minobe Tatsukichi , a professor emeritus for law at the Imperial University of Tokyo , because he had taken the view that the Tennō itself was only an organ of the state. The press , parliament and the population took part in the so-called kokutai meichō undō (国体 明 徴 運動; for example: campaign to clarify the Kokutai). The answers given to the question about the meaning of the kokutai were to a much greater extent than before, affirmative character, both with regard to the existing political conditions in Japan, the justification of these in national myths and foreign policy .

In a writing from this time by Tanaka Chigaku , the founder of the Kokuchūkai Buddhist school , a split from traditional Nichiren Buddhism , it says:

“Needless to say, Japan, as a land founded by the gods, is a divine land ... For the administration of the land it is of the utmost importance to worship the heavenly gods, on whom it is loan ... The Tennô, descendants of the gods, possess as Gods in human form the commission of the gods, they are leaders of a country that belongs to the gods ... The throne was not created by Jimmu- Tennô, but was inherited from the sun goddess through the Kami age from generation to generation. "

- Tanaka Chigaku : What is Nippon Kokutai? Introduction to Nipponese National Principles . Shishio Bunka, Tokyo 1935-36.

kokutai no hongi

In the course of a reorganization of the public schools towards the ideological education of the Japanese population in relation to loyalty to the emperor, militarism and a justified claim to the implementation of imperialist interests, the Ministry of Education published the textbook kokutai no in 1937 (the year the Second Sino-Japanese War began ) hongi (国体 の 本義, for example: Basic principles of Japanese Kokutai), which was initially only given to teachers in all public schools (from elementary schools to universities) in order to give them a strong and uniform character in personal studies and discussions with other teachers To be able to guarantee the basis for the argumentative defense of the current political situation within Japan and in relation to other countries. The book's authors were professors at Japan's most prestigious universities and the leading intellectuals of the kokutai meichō undō.

Later the textbook was made available to the entire population and nearly 2 million copies were sold by the end of the war.

After the introduction, which repeats the official myth of the state Shintō from the Kojiki and Nihonshoki , which postulates the descent of the Tennō from the heavenly kami and thus declares it to be the most venerable expression of political violence and priestly authority and identifies this with the kokutai, various are given Determines virtues that are or should be inherent in the Japanese people. This includes absolute loyalty to the Tennō as the basis of Japanese national morality (国民 道 徳; kokumin dōtoku ) and filial piety as a "way" ( dō , ie here principle, lifestyle) of utmost importance, which (only together, because filial piety alone is only Asian ) make up the "flower of kokutai". The Japanese people and the Tennō thus lived in a patriarchal but harmonious relationship with each other in a divine land (神 国; shinkoku or 神州shinshū ) in the form of a family state (家族 国家; kazoku kokka ).

Further, affirmative focal points in kokutai no hongi are (social) harmony, which determines every Japanese person to carry out and glorify certain tasks and duties, as well as Bushidō ("way" of loyalty and equality of life and death) as an outstanding characteristic of Japanese national morality and a positive example , realized in the armed forces, for the compatibility of established principles with the tasks of a patriotic modernization.

The task of the armed forces is also the defense of the kokutai by submitting all those forces that oppose the adjustment to the sublime influence of the virtues of the Tennō.

The future task of establishing a new Japanese culture also requires the inclusion and adaptation of the cultural achievements of the West in the kokutai. Just as Confucianism and Buddhism were previously integrated into Japan, Japan can and must, as it were, deal with Western ideas in order to promote cultural progress. The kokutai no hongi is more about scientific, technological and, to a lesser extent, intellectual and institutional aspects of Western societies.

However, ethical and ideological values and concepts of the West are consistently rejected. These are fundamentally determined by an individualism that is alien to the kokutai . Individualism and the associated overemphasis on the ego are mainly responsible for social grievances in the West and the development of such extreme concepts as socialism , anarchism and communism . Even more moderate concepts such as liberalism and democracy spring from this source and would have caused significant differences in Western societies from Japanese kokutai.

swell

  1. ↑ Quoted from Gerhard Rosenkranz: Shinto - the way of the gods . Regin-Verlag, Wachtendonk 2003, p. 109, ISBN 3-937129-00-6 .

literature

  • Gerhard Krebs : Japan in the Pacific War. System of rule, political decision-making and the search for peace (published by the German Institute for Japanese Studies ). Iudicium, Munich 2010, pp. 15–23 (“Ideology and Education”).
  • Klaus Antoni : Shintô and the conception of the Japanese national system (kokutai). Religious traditionalism in modern times and modern Japan ; in: Handbuch der Orientalistik: Dept. 5, Japan; Vol. 8; Leiden, Boston; Cologne, Brill, 1998, ISBN 90-04-10316-3 . Revised English version: Kokutai - Political Shintô from Early-Modern to Contemporary Japan . Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tobias-lib 2016. ISBN 978-3-946552-00-0 . Open Access Publication: [1] .
  • Paul Brooker: The Faces of Fraternalism. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan . Oxford University Press, New York 1991, ISBN 0-19-827319-3 .
  • Robert King Hall (Eds.) And John Gauntlett (Translator): Kokutai no Hongi: Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1949.

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