Tosaka Jun

Tosaka Jun ( Japanese 戸 坂 潤 ; born September 27, 1900 in Tokyo , † August 9, 1945 in Nagano ) was a Japanese philosopher who was close to Marxism . His critical attitude towards the government and war policy brought him to prison several times.

biography

Jun Tosaka

Tosaka Jun was born in Tokyo on September 27, 1900. Due to an illness of his mother and the early death of his father, Tosaka moved with his wet nurse to his grandparents in Ishikawa Prefecture that same year . In September 1905 Tosaka was brought back to Tokyo, where he grew up with his mother in the Kanda district , in what is now the Chiyoda district . After moving to a relative living in the city of Kawasaki (now Kanagawa Prefecture ) and temporarily residing in the Akasaka district of Tokyo , Tosaka started school in the Seinan Elementary School in 1907. In 1908 Tosaka moved back to Kanda and from then on had to take the train every day to his primary school in Aoyama. Since his school was very far away and he had no friends in this area, he occupied himself almost exclusively with handicrafts and handicrafts and rarely left the house. Tosaka spent almost all of his summer vacation around 1909 with his grandparents in the countryside in Ishikawa Prefecture. In March 1913 he graduated from elementary school. For his outstanding achievements, he received a Certificate of Commendation from the City of Tokyo. In April he switched to the renowned Kaisei Middle School, where he received excellent training from well-known teachers.

In 1915 he joined the rowing club and spent most of the time after classes in rowing boats on the Sumida River. In 1916 Tosaka published a long article in the school newspaper entitled What Does World War Teach Us Teach Us? that has a nationalistic undertone. In the same journal he published another article in 1917, entitled Evolutionary State Theory . In March 1918 Tosaka graduated from high school and was enrolled in the scientific branch of the renowned First High School ( Daiichi kōtō gakkō ), with a focus on mathematics. At that time, the First Oberschule was something like the preparatory course for the Imperial Universities , which most of the graduates from this Oberschule attended afterwards. In 1920 Tosaka was patterned for military service and classified in the highest level of fitness. He signed up for a year but was postponed until he graduated from high school. His mother became seriously ill during this time and moved to Kawasaki.

In March 1921 Tosaka graduated from high school and moved to the Imperial University of Kyoto to study with Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime . Here he concentrated on the field of philosophy, mathematics, space (especially with Kant) and the natural sciences. After graduating in philosophy, he enrolled in 1924 in graduate studies at the Imperial University of Kyoto. In April he fell ill with pleurisy and, after a long illness, went to Ishikawa Prefecture for a cure in July , where he completely cured his illness. On January 12, he volunteered for an artillery unit stationed in Ishikawa Prefecture. In the rank of ensign, he was released on November 30, 1925 from military service and returned to Kyoto. In April 1926 he was employed as a lecturer at the Polytechnic High School in Kyōto ( Kyōto kōtō kōgei gakkō ) and the Dōshisha High School for Women ( Dōshisha joshi gakkō ). In December he married his first wife, Okada Mitsuko. In 1927 he was appointed lecturer at the 7th Special Training Center for Teachers ( Daishichi rinji kyōin yōsei-jo ) and joined his military unit for six months in the same year. Tosaka was made a lieutenant in the army in March 1928, the year his eldest daughter Ranko was born. In 1929 he was appointed professor at Ōtani University and lecturer at the Kobe Commercial College ( Kobe shōka daigaku ) for philosophy.

Tosaka Jun was remanded in custody in April 1930 for taking refuge in his home for a refugee member of the Japanese Communist Party . On October 7th of the same year, his first wife, Mitsuko, died. During this time Tosakas began to grapple intensely with Marxism , the criticism of ideology and the philosophy of history. In April 1931 he succeeded Miki Kiyoshis on the chair of philosophy at the Hōsei University in Tokyo, in December Tosaka married his second wife Osodo Iku. Together with the sociologist Kanba Toshio (1904–1980) and the science historian Oka Kunio (1890–1971), he planned the publication of the journal “Der Enzyklopädist”, which failed, however. During this time he organized together with the German Catholic moral theologian Professor Johannes Kraus ( Sophia University ), Miki Kiyoshi and the philosopher Gozai Yoshishige (1901–1990) the Plato-Aristotle Society. On the occasion of this acquaintance, Tosakas also began working on the editorial committee of a large dictionary on Catholicism. In the spring of 1932 he began with Oka Kunio, the science and technology philosopher Saigusa Hiroto (1892-1963) and the history philosopher Hattori Shisō (1901-1956) to establish a materialist research association ( Yuibutsuron Kenkyūkai ) to prepare, which took place on October 23 of the same year . This went hand in hand with an extreme expansion of Tosaka's critical and scientific activities, which from then on included the fields of technology, journalism, morality and other areas of modern culture and politics.

A lecture event held by the materialist research association in February 1933 was broken up by the police. In the same year Tosaka founded the Alliance for the Freedom of Science and the Arts (Gakugei jiyū dōmei) together with Miki, the Marxist writer Nakano Shigeharu (1902–1979) and the literary critic Aono Suekichi (1890–1961). His eldest son was born in August, and in October he succeeded Oka Kunio as chief secretary of the materialistic research association. In addition to organizing and planning the activities of the association, Tosaka excelled through a lively lecture and publication activity, which soon made him one of its leading figures. In the short time before his publication ban in 1937, Tosaka wrote around 300 journal and newspaper articles and ten books and anthologies. On the occasion of the student riots at the Hōsei University in 1934, Tosaka resigned from his office together with the entire professorships of the propaedeutic department and was then dismissed by the council of the literary faculty of his university on suspicion of harboring leftist ideas. Tosaka never worked at a university again and lived exclusively from his work as an author and critic. His second daughter was born in January 1936. Due to the danger to his own life, Tosaka left Tokyo because of the military coup on February 26th and stayed with the critic and publicist Honma Yui'ichi (1909-1959) in Sado (located in today's Ni'igata Prefecture). After a short stay in the region around Kyoto, Tosaka returned to Tokyo after the situation there had calmed down again. Despite the growing militarism and fascism in Japan since the coup attempt in 1936 and the outbreak of war against China the following year, the materialist research association continued its activities. Due to his anti-fascist and anti-militarist stance, Tosaka was banned from publication towards the end of 1937, which drastically curtailed his journalistic activities.

The prohibition of publication imposed on the leading figures represented a threat to the continued existence of the association, which in 1938 triggered an intense dispute over the dissolution or reform of the association among the members of its leadership. After the arrest of the chair holders among the members, Tosaka finally ordered the dissolution of the association, which was re-established shortly afterwards by the same members under the name "Science and Art" (Gakugei). This attempt failed, however, when, in a wave of arrests known as the Yuiken incident, the main members of the group were arrested in November and the publication of the body of the same name had to be stopped. Tosaka was arrested at the Suginami Police Station in Tokyo until he was released in May 1940. Tosaka was initially in good spirits and tried to cheer up the other inmates. From summer to autumn 1939 he wrote a large number of letters in which he tried to convince the authorities of his innocence and the fact that materialistic research would not violate the law for the maintenance of public safety. During this time he also wrote a series of haiku under the hidden title Rosa Luxemburg . The trial against Tosaka began in 1940 and he was released on bail after more than two years.

After his release in 1941, he resumed his part-time work as editor of the large dictionary on Catholicism. He also worked as a consultant for the publishing program of the publishers Hakuyō-sha and Itō shoten. Despite his publication ban and the ongoing proceedings against him, Tosaka published four essays during this time. The trial against him began in December and was sentenced in the first instance to a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Tosaka appealed against the judgment immediately after its announcement. In the period leading up to his final imprisonment in 1944, he spent his evenings writing manuscripts. In December 1942 he was sentenced to three years in prison in the second instance in the proceedings against him that were resumed in the summer. Tosaka immediately appealed against this judgment. In the summer and autumn of 1943 Tosaka took part in his spare time in a series of company outings of the Itō shoten publishing house in what is now Nagano Prefecture and began his new hobby, skiing. In December of the same year, the appellate court upheld the three-year sentence pronounced against him (minus the pre-trial detention he had already served, that would have been four months). Tosaka also appealed against this judgment. The Supreme Court reopened the case against Tosaka in March 1944 and dismissed his appeal in an urgent procedure lasting several minutes. In May he received a reprieve due to the need for dental treatment and the evacuation of his children, which had become necessary due to the increasing air raids on the capital. On September 1 of the same year, Tosaka began his detention in Tokyo's Sugamo Prison . Due to the intensified air raids on Tokyo, Tosaka was transferred to Nagano City Prison in 1945. Here at the end of July he fell ill with acute kidney inflammation due to malnutrition and scabies. On August 9, just a few days before Japan's surrender, Tosaka died in the heat of summer in his cell. In a fire in a friend's house caused by a bombing raid, all of Tosaka's unpublished writings stored there were destroyed only a few days before his death. On August 4, 1946, Tosaka Jun's remains were buried in the Tama Cemetery near Tokyo.

Fonts

• Kagaku hōhōron (On the Scientific Method, 1929)
• Ideorogī no ronrigaku (The Logic of Ideology, 1930)
• Ideorogī gairon (Outline of Ideology, 1932)
• Shisō to fūzoku (Thoughts and Customs, 1936)
• Shisō to shite no bungaku (Literature as Thought, 1936)
• Nihon ideorogiiron (The Japanese Ideology, 1936)
• Kagakuron (On Science, 1936)
• Sekai no ikkan to shite no Nihon (Japan as a region of the world, 1937)
• Dokushohō (My method of reading, 1939)
• Gijutsu no tetsugaku (Philosophy of Technology, 1939)

literature

• Dilworth, David A., Valdo H. Viglielmo and Augustin Jacinto Zavala (eds.): Sourcebook for modern Japanese Philosophy. Westport: Greenwood Press 1998, 321-325.
• Schäfer, Fabian (ed.): Tosaka Jun. Ideology - media - everyday life. Leipzig: Leipzig University Press 2011.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Tosaka is the family name, Jun is the first name.