KITA IKKI
PLAN FOR THE REORGANIZATION OF JAPAN (1919)
As Japan
gained international prominence in the early twentieth century, numerous
variants of Japanese ultranationalism flourished. Some ultranationalists rejected all Western influences in Japan,
but most wished to integrate Western technologies and practices with Japanese
ideas and institutions. Kita Ikki (1884‑1937) became the chief spokesperson for
ultranationalist revolutionaries in Japan in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. In 1919, he published Plan for the Reorganization
of Japan, excerpted below, which calls
for radical reforms in Japan. By
curbing the power of financial and
industrial interests, elected politicians, and bureaucrats, revolutionaries
hoped to produce a powerful Japanese society that was under direct leadership
of the Emperor and able to fulfill Japan's
declared mission of leading and protecting Asia from Western imperialism. After an attempted coup in 1936 by some of Ikki's supporters in the
military, Kita was arrested and executed.
At
present the Japanese empire is faced with a national crisis unparalleled in its
history; it faces dilemmas at home and abroad.
The vast majority of the people feel insecure in their livelihood and
they are on the point of taking a lesson from the collapse of European
societies, while those who monopolize political, military, and economic power
simply hide themselves and, quaking with fear, try to maintain their unjust
position. Abroad, neither England, America,
Germany, nor Russia has kept its word, and even our neighbor China, which long
benefited from the protection we provided through the Russo-Japanese War, not
only has failed to repay us but instead despises us. Truly we are a small island, completely isolated in the Eastern
Sea. One false step and our nation will
again fall into the desperate state of crisis‑dilemmas at home and abroad‑that
marked the period before and after the Meiji Restoration.
The
only thing that brightens the picture is the sixty million fellow countrymen
with whom we are blessed. The Japanese
people must develop a profound awareness of the great cause of national
existence and of the people's equal rights, and they need an unerring,
discriminating grasp of the complexities of domestic and foreign thought. The Great War in Europe was, like Noah's
flood, Heaven's punishment on them for arrogant and rebellious ways. It is of course natural that we cannot look
to the Europeans, who are out of their minds because of the great destruction,
for a completely detailed set of plans.
But in contrast Japan, during those five years of destruction, was
blessed with five years of fulfillment.
Europe needs to talk about reconstruction, while Japan must move on to
reorganization. The entire Japanese
people, thinking calmly from this perspective which is the result of Heaven's
rewards and punishments, should, in planning how the great Japanese empire
should be reorganized, petition for a manifestation of the Imperial prerogative
establishing “a national opinion in which no dissenting voice is heard, by the
organization of a great union of the Japanese people.” Thus, by homage to the Emperor, a basis for
national reorganization can be set up.
Truly,
our seven hundred million brothers in China and India have no path to
independence other than that offered by our guidance and protection. And for our Japan, whose population has
doubled within the past fifty years, great areas adequate to support a
population of at least two hundred and forty or fifty millions will be
absolutely necessary a hundred years from now... T]he noble Greece of Asian culture must complete her national
reorganization on the basis of her own national polity. At the same time, let her lift the virtuous
banner of an Asian league and take the leadership in a world federation which
must come. In so doing let her proclaim
to the world the Way of Heaven in which all are children of Buddha, and let her
set the example which the world must follow.
So the ideas of people like those who oppose arming the nation are after
all simply childish.
Section One:
The People's Emperor
Suspension of
the Constitution
In
order for the Emperor and the entire Japanese people to establish a secure base
for the national reorganization, the Emperor will, by a show of his Imperial
prerogative, suspend the Constitution for a period of three years, dissolve
both houses of the Diet, [1] and place the entire nation under martial law....
The True
Significance of the Emperor
The
fundamental doctrine of the Emperor as representative of the people and as
pillar of the nation must be made clear....
There
is no scientific basis whatever for the belief of the democracies that a state
which is governed by representatives voted in by the electorate is superior to
a state which has a system of government by a particular person. Every nation has its own national spirit and
history. It cannot be maintained, as
advocates of this theory would have it, that China during the first eight years
of [its] Republic [2] was more rational than Belgium, which retained rule by a
single person. [3] The
"democracy”of the Americans derives from the very unsophisticated theory
of the time which held that society came into being through a voluntary
contract based upon the free will of individuals; these people, emigrating from
each European country as individuals, established communities and built a
country. But their theory of the divine
right of voters is a half-witted philosophy which arose in opposition to the
theory of the divine right of kings at that time. Now Japan certainly was not founded in this way, and there has
never been a period in which Japan was dominated by a half-witted
philosophy. Suffice it to say that the
system whereby the head of state has to struggle for election by a long-winded
self-advertisement and by exposing himself to ridicule like a low-class actor
seems a very strange custom to the Japanese people, who have been brought up in
the belief that silence is golden and that modesty is a virtue....
1. The Japanese legislature.
2. The Chinese Republic was established when
the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911.
3. Belgium had a constitutional monarchy with
an elected legislature as the primary governing authority.
1. What religious language does Ikki use to
justify Japan's need for reorganization?
What nationalistic language does he use?
2. What does Ikki think of the dominant western
system of constitutional monarchy? Why
does he say both it and American-style democracy are unsuited for Japan?
3. Compare Ikki's goals for political reform to
the general drift of European politics in the interwar years. How might Ikki's ideas reinforce
authoritarianism?
4. What future role does Ikki envision Japan
playing in Asia? How does this compare
to similar rhetoric from western Europeans, particularly with regard to Africa?