The human being : when philosophy meets history. Miki Kiyoshi, Watsuji Tetsuro and their quest for a New Ningen
Brivio, C.
Citation
Brivio, C. (2009, June 9). The human being : when philosophy meets history. Miki Kiyoshi, Watsuji Tetsuro and their quest for a New Ningen. Retrieved from
https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13835
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Conclusion
Three Reasons for Bankruptcy
The years between the 1920s and 1950s were a period of political and intellectual turmoil. As we have seen, the crisis and the Angst that pervaded the historical condition of Japan led to a chain of events that brought unbearable destruction and suffering both domestically and abroad. Miki and Watsuji, although in their small realm of ideas, contributed to the ideological establishment of the Japanese empire by constructing a human being that was clustered in the immobility of the Japanese nation. Their philosophy became what Marcuse calls ‘the political form of existentialism’ where ‘a secularized theological image of history emerges’ (Marcuse 1968: 33-5). Whilst Marcuse’s poignant critique is mainly directed towards Heidegger, the same could be argued here. The envisioning of the escaton and the belief in the complete success of the moral destiny of Japan is what drove Miki and Watsuji’s human being to its doomed failure. Throughout this thesis, I have argued that the historicization of the ningen resulted in the de- historicization of the Japanese nation, where a teleological view of history was remanded to an idealized and visionary future. It was precisely the detachment from ‘real history’
that triggered this ill-faith mechanism into the production of national and imperial human being. In Miki and Watsuji’s systems of thought, ‘a cognitive relation of existence to the forces of history’ that should be at the basis of historicity, never took place in a critical way.244 Miki and Watsuji uncritically subordinated their philosophy to the ideology of the government. The reason for this can be located in three fundamental and interlinked elements: first of all in the concept of medianity, secondly, in the interplay between historical context and ideas and, thirdly, in the creation of the religion of the human being.
244 See Marcuse 1968: 34-5.
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Medianity
The medianity that ontologically structured the ningen is the element that predestined it to bankruptcy. In Miki’s case, the human being as a median between totality and infinity could not have moved in another direction than the one already set by its societal element. Even when dealing with Marxist materialism, Miki was not able to overcome the problem of the medianity of existence because his ‘ningen-class’ frustrated the concept of ‘class’ in its original definition. In Watsuji’s case, ‘the ethical structure of all ethical structures’, alias the state, crushed the freedom of the individual as well as the possibility of a ‘rebellion’ against its totalitarian power. Nevertheless, subordination neither implies subjugation from higher powers nor coercion. Despite the fact that Miki was imprisoned in 1930, his ideas did not fundamentally change. In other words, the shift from Marxism to philosophy of history took place before his arrest, because it was already an inherent trait of his philosophy. Thus, the passage from ‘community’ to ‘nation’ was not the outcome of coercion, but rather a necessary step in the development of an idea. Watsuji, on the other hand, did not encounter such an episode in his lifetime. The criticism that he received came from the far right-wing fringes of the political establishment, such as the Genri Nihonsha, on the basis that his elaboration of the ‘reverence to the emperor’ did not respect the principles of the kokutai. His ningen had always been the Japanese nation, since he had always considered it a particular and exceptional country. Thus, even in the postwar period Watsuji was not able to overcome the structure of his thought because he could not ditch betweeness. Since in Watsuji medianity functioned as an existential and normative element, it impeded the possibility of the renovation of his idea.
To a larger extent medianity crystallized the human being and then a nation in a position of uncertainty. Temporally, medianity appeared to be stuck in an immobile present that denied the possibility of evolution. In this respect, Miki’s kairos subordinated everydayness to world-history as if the historical mission of Japan had already been present in his thought. Watsuji’s betweeness clustered his human being in a position of subordination to the power of the emperor and the state. Both Miki and Watsuji, by denying the progress of a teleological history, trapped their ningen.
211 Angst
The interplay between historical context and ideas is another factor that, to some extent, helped the concept of medianity being shaped in this fashion. Miki keenly described the period he was living in as one of Angst. His readings reflected his feelings.
As a matter of fact, Pascal, Gide, Heidegger, Shestov, Jaspers, Sorel, Nietzsche, who were the main European sources of influence for Miki, are all philosophers who lived in historical periods of spiritual and political travail. It probably should not be underestimated that they were all ‘existentialist’ thinkers whose efforts were directed to the analysis and interpretation of human existence in the world. As Miki himself acknowledged, during his sojourn in Germany he realized that students were not interested anymore in the rational logic of Neo-Kantianism, but they were turning to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky (MKZ I: 437). He blamed it on the period of uncertainty that Germany was undergoing after the loss of WWI and that mirrored, with similar characteristics, the one that Japan faced in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Miki thought that this milieu was the one that permitted the rise of ‘irrational forces’ that took Japan over and that he attempted to confront with his concept of the renovation of the human being as ‘type’ from a human, cultural and intellectual standpoint. Nevertheless, his technological homo faber could not be effective in the critique of totalitarianism, since its characteristic were the ones of the Japanese folk. Yet again, the historical context and the idea of the ningen that then emerged appear to be deeply related. The combination of the uncertainty of the present with the longing for an immediate, future solution are two historical elements that contributed to Miki’s underpinning of his entire system in the existential Angst of the human being. Since the historical context, in this case, reflected the one of ideas, it is easy to conclude that they both failed in finding a solution for the renovation of Japan. Instead, they opted for a resolution of war and for the imperialist enterprise in East Asia.
Watsuji did not consider the period he was living in as explicitly one of angst.
Nonetheless, he effortlessly proposed his betweneess and human being as the Japanese alternative to Western modernity, Western capitalism, Western ‘profit society’ and Western colonialism. It is difficult to see how such a theorization could have been generated had it not been for the historical crisis in which Japan found itself. From the very beginning of his career he constructed a model of existence that was particular, harmonious, overshadowed by the presence of an absolute state and absolute ruler, and whose ethics was distinctively Japanese. As an interpreter of his time, Watsuji thought that the only formula that would have saved Japan from the ‘imperialist powers’ was to look back into
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the Japanese past and find the elements that set it apart from the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, the crisis ended with another crisis in August 1945. In the second part of his life Watsuji strenuously searched for the reason why his model failed together with his country. He was only able to blame it on the period of national seclusion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where, yet again, Japanese technological process had been prevented by the short-sightedness of its rulers. Thus, Watsuji did not re-discuss his own system of thought based on betweeness, he re-discussed Japanese history.
The second period of Angst that came alongside the American occupation of Japan pushed Watsuji to revisit his idea regarding the role of the emperor, albeit not to change it.
He could not accept the fact that the emperor had been stripped of his powers and he affirmed that throughout Japanese history, whether the emperor had retained the political power or not, his subjects had always felt the ‘reverence’ for him. The betweeness that had seen the emperor being the good, totalitarian ruler in a dialectical relationship with his subjects had become the good, symbolic ruler of his citizens. The Japanese ethical thought was preserved in its crystallized and immobile structure, the revisiting of the past did not resulted in a critical understanding of it and Watsuji’s human being remained clustered in the Japanese particularity. The only solution Watsuji could come up with was to ‘get rid of the concept [of kokutai] all together’ as if only a word could help re-winning a war (WTZ XIV: 368).
The Religion of the Human Being
Miki and Watsuji certainly bore on their shoulders the burden of having been the prophets of their own national history. Their systems, based on the idea that the ningen was the origin and the future of Japan, were based on the faith that the escaton of the war would have materialized in a Japanese victory. The escaton always presupposes an expectation towards the historical fulfillment that will come with the Day of the Lord. At the same time, the element of predestination plays a key role in this sense. Miki and Watsuji called it ‘the moral destiny of Japan’. As in religion, they firmly and uncritically
213 suggested that the renovation of the human being should have come after the end of the
‘world’, in a re-shuffling and re-balancing of the global powers. Their religious thought was underpinned by the idea that the escaton could have not but appeared in this way. Miki and Watsuji’s ningen was predestined to become a society, a nation and then an empire because of its immanent ontological structure on the one hand, and because Miki and Watsuji trusted the escaton on the other. The historical fulfillment of the destiny of Japan not only should have brushed away any doubts regarding the technological superiority and
‘modernity’ of Japan, but it would have finally seen the new ‘type’ appear in the form of the ‘Eastern’ human being or the Japanese Gemeinschaft. Eventually, the cardcastle collapsed both politically as well as idea-logically. Japan lost the war and had to endure the tragedy of two atomic bombs, the Eastern human being died with Miki in a prison cell forgotten by the Americans and Watsuji’s Gemeinschaft took the oxymoronic form of a brand new postwar society grounded in the old and defeated prewar one.
The idea of ningen as Miki and Watsuji built it was a ‘vision’ completely detached from historical reality. In the face of a crisis they were not capable of coming to terms with reality in a critical way. The national, uncertain, median human being that they constructed could not but fail in its internal renovation since spatially and temporally it was crystallized a specific location and history. The escaton simply contributed to expose the flaws their philosophy had kept hidden for so long. The war bankrupted their ideas and they chose to take that risk.
Further Thoughts
In this thesis I have attempted to answer the questions of how Miki and Watsuji created a concept of the human being that could not but eventually collapse into the Japanese empire, and also to what extent the historical period and the intellectual milieu of their time contributed to this vision. Yet, I have tried to demonstrate that a clear line between philosophy and politics cannot be drawn. As long as ideas are not considered as being the combined expression of a philosophical exercise, its historical context and its political environment, it will be almost impossible to understand why they unfolded in a
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given fashion. Judging Miki and Watsuji solely for their political choices would not do justice to the essence of their work. Refraining from exploring these very same choices, on the other hand, would have identical results. Contextualizing their political expressions in the framework of their overall production could help in casting more lights on the reasons that pushed them to support a totalitarian regime.
In my work I have reached the conclusion that Miki and Watsuji’s ningen did not have a choice but to follow this path. What was negated to their human being was the possibility of evolving following the progress of history. Medianity prevented development, the Angst located it in a position of uncertainty and the religious thought based on the belief in the moral destiny of Japan made into a predestined ideal. Such a theorization indeed endangers the possibility of change and to swiftly turn into another direction. This problem does not entail that Miki and Watsuji did not bear any responsibility for their political involvement with the regime. On the contrary, they chose to subordinate their ideas to the one of the government by opting not to modify the vision they had themselves helped to carve.
Further thoughts come to mind. For example, is the fact that Miki created a
‘ningen-class’, without following the concept of class as explained in Marxist philosophy, the result of the idea of ‘harmony’ (wa) that many have recognized to be an ‘invented tradition’? If this was the case, then it would mean that Miki’s society was indeed a society where class struggle would have only disrupted the order imposed from above and it would put Miki in the same position as the one of Watsuji. Secondly, is the fact that Watsuji refused to change his idea of betweeness not a symptom of a greater malaise that pervaded the Japanese intellectual milieu in the 1950s and 1960s? In other words, is the refusal of dealing with the war and its subsequent loss a proof that a whole intellectual community took refuge into what Hannah Arendt called ‘the nostalgia for a still intact past’? Thirdly, could the failure of the escaton be the reason behind Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji’s turn towards philosophy of religion in the postwar period? Lastly, could the framework of the escaton be employed in other historical or ideological locations to possibly attempt to explain the involvement of a great number of intellectuals with the totalitarian regimes of the past century?
Perhaps this is a small piece of the puzzle of why intellectuals got involved and enthusiastically supported the ‘banality’ of evil of WWII.
