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Otaka Tomoo’s Conception of Sovereignty as Nomos: A Phenomenological Interpretation

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Tetsugaku Companion to Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy

Part of the book series: Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy ((TCJP,volume 3))

Abstract

The present chapter deals with a controversy on the Japanese sovereignty between Otaka Tomoo (1899–1956) and his colleague Miyazawa Toshiyoshi (1899–1976) in the period from 1947 to 1950. After the overview of the controversy, we introduce a set of philosophical ideas from Otaka’s writings published before 1945 as a background for his theory of so-called Nomos-sovereignty. With this framework at hand, we reinterpret Otaka’s position in the controversy with Miyazawa, and we disclose a phenomenological philosophy of law, which Otaka pursued as a student of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, although he did not realize this himself.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more on Otaka’s life, see Uemura and Yaegashi 2016: section 15.2.

  2. 2.

    We must point out that Otaka’s engagement with Japanese social issues has its dark side. There are some traces that show how deeply and voluntarily he took part in the Japanese imperialist project in Korea. See Kim 2013 and Ishikawa 2006.

  3. 3.

    This point is particularly clear in Otaka’s popular war-time writing. See Ishikawa 2006: 203.

  4. 4.

    There is little literature on the Otaka-Miyazawa controversy written in English. See Higuchi (1990), which discusses the issue about the Constitution of Japan and the emperor system, providing a summary of the Otaka-Miyazawa controversy.

  5. 5.

    The Meiji Constitution (formally the Constitution of the Empire of Japan) was the constitution of Japan from November 29, 1890 to May 2, 1947. It was replaced by the Constitution of Japan, which was enacted on May 3, 1947, and remains the fundamental law of Japan until now.

  6. 6.

    It is very likely that Otaka took the term “Nomos” from Carl Schmitt’s Über die drei Arten des rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens (Schmitt 1934). In Hō no Kyūkyoku ni aru mono [法の窮極に在るもの, On What Underlies Law], Otaka explicitly refers to Schmitt’s work, immediately after his mention to Nomos as “the king reigning all people and deities” (Otaka 1947b: 66–7). However, Otaka does not follow Schmitt’s theory in the national-socialistic period. He criticizes it as “a deceptive ploy which intends to fulfill a political purpose in the name of the law” (Otaka 1947b: 219). For Schmitt’s conception of Nomos and Otaka’s objection to it, see Fujisaki 2017.

  7. 7.

    In his 1948 paper, Otaka acknowledges that he had such an intention when he wrote his 1947 book (Otaka 2014: 205).

  8. 8.

    See standard textbooks and commentaries on the Constitution of Japan: For example, Ashibe 1992: 233–4; Takahashi 2013: 42–3.

  9. 9.

    The only exceptional figure with this regard is a son of his master, Gerhard Husserl, but Otaka’s reference to this philosopher is rather marginal and unimportant. Gerhard is mentioned as someone who points out that positive laws are valid even when everybody who is subject to those laws falls asleep (cf. Husserl 1925: 7, cited in Otaka 1942: 103).

  10. 10.

    For a more detailed explanation, see Uemura and Yaegashi 2016.

  11. 11.

    For Husserl’s own discussion of foundation, see the second chapter of his Third Logical Investigation, especially, Husserl 2001, vol. 2: 25–28.

  12. 12.

    In Kokka Kōzō-Ron, Otaka formulates his account in terms of the notion of foundation (cf. Otaka 1936: 334).

  13. 13.

    To be more precise, Otaka refuses Kelsen’s idea that social groups are explained away by normative factors alone. Since he holds that states are mulch-sided entities of which laws are one element, he would agree with the weaker claim that certain kinds of social groups have some normative aspects.

  14. 14.

    Here Otaka cites Stammler (1921: 159ff.) and Stammler (1902, 116ff.); cf. Otaka 1942, 282n2.

  15. 15.

    Therefore, it would be better to talk about “aims” of laws in this context, even though the original term “mokuteki” has no singular/plural distinction. Note that, however, we should not always put it in the plural. For, as we will see shortly, Otaka holds that there is only one second-order aim of laws.

  16. 16.

    Otaka claims that the validity of positive laws is grounded in the harmony of social action already in Grundlegung (Otaka 1932: 218–219). At that moment, however, he does not deal with the aim(s) of laws.

  17. 17.

    Taken in isolation, it might not be entirely obvious whether the “objective aim” in this passage refers to the second-order aim. Given the context in which it appears, however, one would find a good reason for our interpretation.

  18. 18.

    Even if such an interpretation is correct, however, it would not certify that Otaka would, therefore, be able to overcome the dilemma. Indeed, we have found no textual evidence suggesting that he was ever aware of it.

  19. 19.

    We might be able to characterize Nomos as the “concept” of right laws, as contrasted to the “conceptions” of them. For the distinction of concept and conceptions, see Rawls 1999: 5.

  20. 20.

    The initial idea of this chapter was presented at a workshop on Otaka and Phenomenology in June 2016 at Meiji University, Tokyo. The authors thank Taito Sakai for organizing the workshop and Takayuki Kira, Nami Thea Ohnishi, and the other participants for their comments and feedbacks. Our gratitude goes also to Rodney Parker whose proofreading saved us from mistakes in English. The authors’ researches are supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from Japan Society for Promotion of Science (Grant No.: 20748884, 26770014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hiroshima Institute of Technology, Hiroshima, Japan

    Toru Yaegashi

  2. Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

    Genki Uemura

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  1. Toru Yaegashi
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  2. Genki Uemura
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

    Shigeru TAGUCHI

  2. FISPPA-Department, University of Padova, Padova, Italy, Department of Philosophy, China University of Political Science and Law, Peking, China

    Andrea ALTOBRANDO

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Yaegashi, T., Uemura, G. (2019). Otaka Tomoo’s Conception of Sovereignty as Nomos: A Phenomenological Interpretation. In: TAGUCHI, S., ALTOBRANDO, A. (eds) Tetsugaku Companion to Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy. Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21942-0_9

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