Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016. ix, 268 pp. (Illustration.) US$59.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-5533-8.
Attempts to foster a culture of democracy in Japan are the topic of this book. Adam Bronson focuses on the Institute for the Science of Thought, one of the most influential associations to emerge in Japan in the early postwar years. He follows the institute’s ideological as well as philosophical changes. We also get to know a number of key people in the organization and how they developed from a small research group to citizens’ activism in connection with the protests against the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty. Science of Thought was one of the central rallying points marking the beginning of a citizens’ movement that has influenced civil society in Japan down to the present day. The research behind the book teaches us how intellectuals and citizens, through practical experience, tried to foster and create one hundred million Japanese philosophers.
For democracy to gain ground the immediate past must first be discredited as hierarchical and irrational. This is the topic of the first chapter. Science of Thought scholars forged a shared negative image of the prewar and wartime years as centred on an elite culture of all-male high schools, which many of them actually attended—an experience for which they later expressed regret. The pro-democracy groups that formed after 1945 were hostile towards any display of devotion to old Japanese thinkers such as Nishida Kitarō, whom they associated with the fascist past.
Chapter 2 addresses the way the Science of Thought scholars looked to America for solutions. They were disillusioned by West European thought, which they now associated with fascism and empire, and thought that the solutions to the apparent contradiction between intellectual and democratic culture were to be found in the US. The aim was to foster democratic citizens through the new science of communication, which was guided by principles of clarity and transparency. The group conducted statistical surveys and interviews in what became interdisciplinary research to probe the mind of ordinary people; this is treated in chapter 3. “The philosophy of ordinary People” (Hitobito no Tetsugaku) asserted that the philosophy that structured the life of an ordinary fireman was no less worthy of study than that of an intellectual. The idea of an “open room” was introduced through which they solicited the participation of non-intellectuals in a collaborative “thought movement.”
In the early 1950s the group thought that the social scientific methods that they were using were not helping overcome the separation between intellectuals and the masses. As chapter 4 describes, they now shifted their focus towards grassroots education in the countryside. This process started with Muchaku Sekyō’s Echo School (Yamabiko Gakkō), a collection of essays written by middle-school students in the impoverished Yamagata prefecture. It became an immediate runaway bestseller and later also a film. Another example was the sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko, who criticized her own earlier use of quantitative scientific methods and instead went on to become an active part of the communities she studied. She participated in amateur writing circles organized by female textile workers in Yokkaichi. Many imagined these as parallels to the reading and writing groups in the People’s Republic of China. They were geared to playing a role in a transition towards a revolutionary “village democracy in Asia.”
With the onset of high economic growth in the latter half of the 1950s the Science of Thought group started worrying about the growing material prosperity. They were concerned about their politically active classmates shedding their beliefs and undergoing an “employment conversion” when they graduated and about how conformism was being enforced in the 1950s just as in the 1930s. Chapter 5 shows how this led to the group promoting an oppositional stance embodied in the ideal of a classless society.
The conclusion, finally, is about the Science of Thought group’s struggle in connection with the protest movement against the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 and how they tried to transcend the political divide between progressives and conservatives and set an example of principled opposition to the government in the name of defending democracy. They countered the suggestion that a silent majority of the population supported the treaty.
The book is a historical exposé of the development of the Science of Thought and how the focus and philosophy of its members adjusted to changing conditions in the surrounding society. It tells the story of how difficult it must have been for the Japanese to embrace democracy right after the war and how some individuals, believing in a scientific approach, really struggled to have it implemented in Japanese society. It is a good illustration of the devotion that individual Japanese citizens can bring to bear once they are convinced of a certain idea. Japanese society is often described as one that favours consensus, but in this book we also gain insights into how fighting can go on inside organizations when members have different ideas—something which is not uncommon in civil society organizations in Japan today. It also testifies to the Japanese belief in “learning by doing.” Rather than emphasizing the development of refined theories, the Science of Thought members believed that democracy needed to be practised if it were to gain ground.
This is an unusual book that does not follow any specific trends. It gives a broad picture of left-wing and opposition movements in Japanese society and the struggle to establish a culture of democracy. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to gain insight into this type of democracy movement, on which we do not seem to have much research at the moment. The book is also a good read for anyone interested in philosophy in its broadest sense.
Marie Söderberg
Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden
pp. 586-588