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Nagai Ryūtarō and the “White Peril,” 1905–1944

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Peter Duus
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Extract

It is often said that the nationalism of the 1930's was more “narrow,” more “parochial,” more “isolationist,” and more “pathological” than the nationalism of Meiji. In the earlier period, men like Fukuzawa Yukichi and Ōi Kentarō, who had ingested the liberalism of the late Victorian West, defined Japan's identity and role in the world in cosmopolitan, even revolutionary terms. By contrast, it is said, the nationalists of the 1930's were “frogs at the bottom of a well,” whose vision of the nation was clouded by folkish myths of national superiority or who were moved at most by narrow concern for national self-interest. The men of Shōwa, unlike those of Meiji, lacked a conception of Japan's role in the world which admitted the claims of higher goal or value than the nation itself.

Type
A Symposium on Japanese Nationalism
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , November 1971 , pp. 41 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1971

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References

1 Keene, Donald, “Japanese Writers and the Greater East Asia War,” Journal of Asian Studies, XXIII/2, February 1964, pp. 209–255CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Kenzō, Matsumura, Nagai Ryūtarō (Tokyo, 1959)Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Ryūtarō, Nagai, Zanpan (Tokyo, 1914), pp. 197–199Google Scholar; Shin Nippon, May 1911, pp. 150–156; Ryūtarō, Nagai, Nagai Ryūtarōshi daienzetsushū (Tokyo, 1924), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

4 Shin Nippon, loc. cit.

5 Sannosuke, Matsumoto, “Kokuminteki shimeikan no rekishiteki henkan,” in Kindai Nihon no seiji to ningen (Tokyo, 1965), pp. 199–254Google Scholar.

6 Ibid.

7 Ryūtarō, Nagai, Kaizō no risō (Tokyo, 1920), pp. 181–196Google Scholar.

8 Ibid.

9 Matsumura, Nagai, pp. 80–81.

10 For Nagai's views on domestic policies, see Duus, Peter, “Nagai Ryūtarō: The Tactical Dilemmas of Reform,” in Craig, Albert M. and Shively, Donald H.. Personality in Japanese History (Berkeley, 1970), pp. 399–424Google Scholar.

11 For example, see Waseda gakuhō, no. 148, pp. 21–22; Shin Nippon, Vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 53–57; Ryūtarō, Nagai, Sekai seisaku jūkō (Tokyo, 1925), pp. 93–100Google Scholar.

12 Chūō Kōron, Vol. 34, no. 9, pp. 40–46; Ryūtarō, Nagai, Nagai Ryūtarō-Shi kō-A yūbenshū (Tokyo, 1944), pp. 59–60Google Scholar.

13 Shin Nippon, Vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 20–22; Nagai, Daienzetsushū, pp. 79–100; Nagai, Sekai seisahu, pp. 142–146.

14 A fairly representative example of Nagai's views on China policy in the 1920's may be found in Ryūtarō, Nagai, Nagai Ryūtarō-Shi daienzetsushū, Vol. 2 (Tokyo, 1930), pp. 170–234Google Scholar, 248–249. See also Matsumura, Nagai, pp. 238 ff., 260–271.

15 Ryūtarō, Nagai, Ajia saiken no gisen (Tokyo, 1937). pp. 1–9Google Scholar. See also an article in English, Ryūtarō, Nagai, “Some Questions for President Roosevelt,” Contemporary Japan, Vol. 8, no. 5 (July 1939), pp. 563–573Google Scholar.

16 Nagai, Ajia saiken, pp. 14–15; Ryūtarō, Nagai, Watakushi no shinnen to taiken (Tokyo, 1938), p. 337Google Scholar.

17 Matsumura, Nagai, pp. 435–450; Nagai, “Some Questions,” loc. cit.

18 Nagai, Kō-A yūbenshū, pp. 200–201.

19 Crowley, James B., “The Concept of the New Asian Order: Prince Konoe and His Brain Trust, The Shoōwa Kenkyūkai,”a paper prepared for the Sixth Seminar of the Conference on Modern Japan,Puerto Rico,January 2–7, 1968.Google Scholar

20 Yoshimi, Takeuchi, “Kindai no chōkoku,” in Kindai Nihon shisō kōza (Tokyo, 1959), Vol. 2, pp. 227–281Google Scholar.