Abstract
This chapter describes Yanaihara’s concept of society (shakai) as a point of departure for the understanding of his study of empire and international relations. As a social scientist, Yanaihara perceived society as a central unit of political, economic, and social interactions. The fluidity and complexity of society determines the transformability of both international and domestic orders. As later chapters will discuss, with the application of “scientific” (kagakuteki) approaches such as Marxism, he analyzed the structural problems of socioeconomic issues. Yet he never separated social issues from the qualities and attitudes of human agents. At the center of his study there was a philosophical and social recognition that the current form of society reflected the quality of individual personality and moral ethics. The goal of this chapter is to present the fundamental social values that he developed and maintained despite the dramatic change of the Japanese political system after 1945. For the analysis of the predominant focus and interest of his study, I will use his academic and nonacademic writings.
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Notes
Kevin M. Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2007), Ch. 4.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, A History of Japanese Economic Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 64.
Richard H. Minear, Japanese Tradition and Western Law: Emperor, State, and Law in the Thought of Hozumi Yatsuka (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 182.
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Yanaihara Tadao, Watakushi no Ayundekita Michi [The Road I Have Walked] (1958), in YTZ 26, 237–238.
Ibid., 238. Also, see Yanaihara Tadao, Yo no Sonkeisuru Jinbutsu [More Personalities Whom I Respect] (1940), in YTZ 24, 134–166.
Yanaihara Tadao, Zoku Yo no Sonkeisuru Jinbutsu [More Personalities Whom I Respect 2] (1949), in YTZ 24, 297–324.
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Glenn D. Hook, Militarisation and Demilitarisation in Contemporary Japan (New York: Routledge, 1996), Ch. 2.
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Yanaihara Tadao, “Heiwakokka eno Michi” [The Path toward a Peaceful Nation] (1946), in YTZ 19, 226.
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Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 135–136.
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© 2013 Ryoko Nakano
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Nakano, R. (2013). What Is “Society”?. In: Beyond the Western Liberal Order. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290519_2
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