Kokutai (国体, "national body/structure of state") is a concept in theJapanese language translatable as "system of government", "sovereignty", "national identity, essence and character", "national polity;body politic; national entity; basis for theEmperor's sovereignty;Japanese constitution" ornation.
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Kokutai originated as aSino-Japanese loanword from Chineseguoti (Chinese:國體;pinyin:guótǐ; "state political system; national governmental structure"). The Japanesecompound word joinskoku (國, "country; nation; province; land") andtai (體, "body; substance; object; structure; form; style"). According to theHanyu Da Cidian, the oldestguoti usages are in twoChinese classic texts. The 2nd century BCGuliang zhuan (榖梁傳; 'Guliang's Commentary') to theSpring and Autumn Annals glossesdafu (大夫; 'high minister', 'senior official') asguoti metaphorically meaning "embodiment of the country". The 1st century ADBook of Han history ofEmperor Cheng of Han usedguoti to mean "laws and governance" of Confucianist officials.
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The historical origins ofkokutai go back to pre-1868 periods, especially theEdo period ruled by theTokugawa shogunate (1603–1868).
Aizawa Seishisai (会沢正志斎, 1782–1863) was an authority onNeo-Confucianism and leader of theMitogaku (水戸学 "Mito School") that supported direct restoration of theImperial House of Japan. He popularized the wordkokutai in his 1825Shinron (新論 "New Theses"), which also introduced the termSonnō jōi ("revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians").
Aizawa developed his ideas ofkokutai using the idea that the Japanese national myths in theKojiki andNihon Shoki were historical facts, believing that the Emperor was directly descended from the sun goddessAmaterasu-ōmikami. Aizawa idealized this divinely-ruled ancient Japan as a form ofsaisei itchi (祭政一致 "unity of religion and government") or theocracy. For early Japanese Neo-Confucian scholars, linguistRoy Andrew Miller says, "kokutai meant something still rather vague and ill defined. It was more or less the Japanese 'nation's body' or 'national structure'."[1]: 83
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Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916) andFukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) wereMeiji period scholars who analyzed the dominance of Western civilization and urged progress for the Japanese nation.
In 1874, Katō wrote theKokutai Shinron (国体新論 "New Theory of the National Body/Structure"), which criticized traditional Chinese and Japanese theories of government and, adopting Western theories ofnatural rights, proposed aconstitutional monarchy for Japan. He contrasted betweenkokutai andseitai (政体 "government body/structure"). Brownlee explains.
TheKokutai-seitai distinction enabled conservatives to identify clearly asKokutai, National Essence, the "native Japanese", eternal, and immutable aspects of their polity, derived from history, tradition, and custom, and focused on the Emperor. The form of government,Seitai, a secondary concept, then consisted of the historical arrangements for the exercise of political authority.Seitai, the form of government, was historically contingent and changed through time. Japan had experienced in succession direct rule by the Emperors in ancient times, then the rule of theFujiwara Regents, then seven hundred years of rule byshōguns, followed by the allegedly direct rule of the Emperors again after theMeiji Restoration. Each was aseitai, a form of government. In this understanding, the modern system of government under the Meiji Constitution, derived this time from foreign sources, was nothing more than another form of Japanese government, a newseitai. The Constitution was nothing fundamental.[2][full citation needed]: 5
The concept of thekokutai was popularized during the Meiji era as Japanese elites had embraced a "crudeSocial Darwinism" as their guiding principles, seeing nations as being locked in perpetual struggle with one another for dominance, and as such the purpose of the Japanese state was first and foremost as a machine for conducting foreign policy.[3] In order to maintain support for the existing social system and for this view as the state for a machine for conducting foreign policy, the idea of thekokutai was popularized with the Japanese people being liked to one vast family under the rule of the patriarchal god-emperor.[3] The American historian M. G. Sheftall wrote that the concept of thekokutai was the ideological foundation stone of Japanese militarism, writing for millions of Japanese thekokutai was "...the mystical embodiment of the essential unity of the Japanese people, inextricably bound up withvölkish ideas about the mythical divine origins of the nation, all under the august beneficence of the institution of the divine emperor and the proverbial protection of several millennia worth of ancestral ghosts. For the IJA [Imperial Japanese Army] and tens of millions of Emperor Meiji's subjects, thekokutai was not merely a source of pride and spiritual power for the nation, it was the lifeworld of the nationin toto, not only in social and political terms, but also in theological and cosmological terms, and no means were too extreme and no sacrifice too great if deemed necessary for its survival".[4] Sheftall wrote this way of viewing thekokutai as divinely sanctioned by a god-emperor led to a certain psychological in-balance as it was difficult for those who believed in thekokutai to accept any setback, which explains the immense rage that periodically erupted over any setback to Japan.[5] In 1905, the Treaty of Portsmouth mediated by the American president Theodore Roosevelt ended the Russian-Japanese war, where Japan made gains, but nowhere near what was expected as the costs of the war had nearly bankrupted Japan, and thus the treaty was more favorable to Russia than it was assumed would be the case. The Treaty of Portsmouth led to anti-American rioting breaking out all over Japan and was presented in Japan as a national humiliation.
Fukuzawa Yukichi was an influential author translator for theJapanese Embassy to the United States (1860). His 1875 "Bunmeiron no Gairyaku" (文明論の概略 "An Outline of a Theory of Civilization") contradicted traditional ideas aboutkokutai. He reasoned that it was not unique to Japan and that every nation could be said to have akokutai "national sovereignty". While Fukuzawa respected theEmperor of Japan, he believedkokutai did not depend upon myths of unbroken descent from Amaterasu.
TheConstitution of the Empire of Japan of 1889 created a form of constitutional monarchy with thekokutai sovereign emperor andseitai organs of government. Article 4 declares that "the Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty", uniting the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, although subject to the "consent of the Imperial Diet". This system utilized a democratic form, but in practice was closer to an absolute monarchy. The legal scholar Josefa López notes that under the Meiji Constitution,kokutai acquired an additional meaning.
The Government created a whole perfect new cultural system around the Tennou [Emperor], and thekokutai was the expression of it. Moreover, thekokutai was the basis of the sovereignty. According to Tatsukichi Minobe,kokutai is understood as the "shape of the Estate" in the sense of "Tenno as the organ of the Estate", while the authoritarians gave thekokutai a mystical power. The Tennou was a "god" among "humans", the incarnation of the national morals. This notion ofkokutai was extra-juridical, something more cultural than positive.[6]
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This stemmed from drafterItō Hirobumi's rejection of some European notions as unfit for Japan, as they stemmed from European constitutional practice and Christianity.[7] The references to thekokutai were the justification of the emperor's authority through his divine descent and the unbroken line of emperors, and the unique relationship between subject and sovereign. The "family-state" element in it was given a great deal of prominence by political philosophy.[8] Many conservatives supported these principles as central toNihon shugi (日本主義, "Japanism", orNihon gunkoku shugi,Japanese militarism), as an alternative to rapid Westernization.[9]Nihon shugi is an ideology that values the traditional Japanese spirit and sets the tone of the state and society; it emerged in this period as a reaction to theMeiji government's radicalEuropeanization policy.[10] Nihon shugi is a kind of "kukka shugi" (国家主義, lit. "statism" or "nationalism") ideology.[10]Nihon Shugi opposed 'Europeanism' (欧化主義),democracy andsocialism, which were considered unrelated to Japanese traditions, and during theTaishō andShōwa era, it emphasized theKokutai ideology centered on the emperor as opposed toMarxism.[10]
Initially, perceived threats to thekokutai were seen as coming from abroad, but starting in the early 20th century there was a tendency to see threats to thekokutai as coming from within.[4] The internal threats to thekokutai were seen first and foremost as class consciousness as Japanese peasants moved to cities to become the working class of the Japanese industrial revolution while other Japanese rose up to become a new middle class, both developments which were seen as threatening thekokutai between dividing Japanese society into classes with different interests.[11] Other perceived threats to thekokutai were socialism and the rise of a trade union movement along with the rise of consumerism which were as seen as threatening the spiritual unity of thekokutai.[11] Finally, "Westernization" in a cultural sense was seen as damaging thekokutai by introducing foreign ideas into society.[11] Paradoxically, the Russian-Japanese war emphasised these concerns about the cracks in the unity of thekokutai as it was believed that the principle reason for Russia's defeat was the gulf between the aristocratic officers of the Imperial Russian Army vs. the "salt-of-the-earth" common Russian soldiers, and that if a similar gulf were to emerge in Japanese society, then Japan too would be defeated in war.[11]
In 1910, the Army MinisterTanaka Giichi engaged in a project in "mass social engineering" by founding the semi-officialZaigo Gunjin Kai (Imperial Military Reserve Association) that worked closely with the Army Ministry to "spread militaristic thought among the population at large" as its founding charter put it.[11] The purpose of theZaigo Gunjin Kai was to solidify support for thekokutai as defined by the Imperial Japanese Army, which marked the beginning of the IJA as a political force.[12] In 1915, the Imperial Military Reserve Association founded the Youth Associations designed to provide realistic military training for Japanese high school students.[13] Later on in the 1920s, the Army Minister GeneralKazushige Ugaki founded the Youth Training Schools and the Attached Officer Program under which active duty serving officers worked as teachers in every elementary school and every high school in Japan.[13] Under the Attached Officer Program, IJA officers taught the youth of Japan military tactics and drill, gymnastics and what Sheftall called "a heavy dose of indoctrination in ultra-nationalistickokutai ideology under the guise of 'civics'".[13] This militarization of the educational system led to a marked xenophobic and militaristic mood amongst the Japanese people who had been indoctrinated into believing to fight and die for the god-Emperor as the leader of thekokutai was their highest duty.[13]
From theXinhai Revolution to the enactment of thePeace Preservation Law (1911–1925), the most important pre-World War II democracy movement "Taishō Democracy" occurred. During the Taishō Democracy, the political theoristSakuzō Yoshino (1878–1933) rejected Western democracyminshu shugi (民主主義 lit. "people rule principle/-ism") and proposed a compromise on imperial democracyminpon shugi (民本主義 "people based principle/-ism"). However, asJapanese nationalism grew, questions arose whether thekokutai emperor could be limited by theseitai government.
ThePeace Preservation Law of 1925 forbade both forming and belonging to any organization that proposed altering thekokutai or the abolishment of private property, effectively criminalizing socialism, communism,republicanism, democracy and other anti-Tennoideologies.[14] TheTokkō ("Special Higher Police") was established as a type ofthought police to investigate political groups that might threaten Tenno-centered social order of Japan.[15]
Tatsukichi Minobe (1873–1948), a professor emeritus of law atTokyo Imperial University, theorized that under the Meiji Constitution, the emperor was an organ of the state and not a sacrosanct power beyond the state.[16] This was regarded aslèse-majesté.[17] Minobe was appointed to theHouse of Peers in 1932 but forced to resign after an assassination attempt and vehement criticisms that he was disloyal to the emperor.[18]
Great efforts were made to foment a "Japanese spirit" even in popular culture, as in the promotion of the "Song of Young Japan".[19]
Brave warriors united in justice
In spirit a match for a million –
Ready like the myriadcherry blossoms to scatter
In the spring sky of theShōwa Restoration.[19]
The national debates overkokutai led the Prime Minister PrinceFumimaro Konoe to appoint a committee of Japan's leading professors to deliberate the matter. In 1937, they issued theKokutai no Hongi (国体の本義, "Cardinal Principles of the National Body/Structure"[20]). Miller gives this description. Increasingly, thekokutai was defined in militarised terms in the 1930s with calls being made for a "military nation" under which the entirety of the Japanese nation would be mobilised for war in peacetime with Japan to become a modern Asian version of ancient Sparta, the totalitariangunkoku (military nation).[13]
The document known as theKokutai no Hongi was actually a pamphlet of 156 pages, an official publication of theJapanese Ministry of Education, first issued in March 1937 and eventually circulated in millions of copies throughout the home islands and the empire. It contained the official teaching of the Japanese state on every aspect of domestic policy, international affairs, culture, and civilization.[1]: 92
It clearly stated its purpose: to overcome social unrest and to develop a new Japan.[21] From this pamphlet, pupils were taught to put the nation before the self, and that they were part of the state and not separate from it.[22] It also instructed them in the principle ofhakkō ichiu ("eight cords, one roof"), which would be used to justify imperialism.[23]
Brownlee concludes that after theKokutai no Hongi proclamation,
It is clear that at this stage in history, they were no longer dealing with a concept to generate spiritual unity like Aizawa Seishisai in 1825, or with a political theory of Japan designed to accommodate modern institutions of government, like the Meiji Constitution. The committee of professors from prestigious universities sought to define the essential truths of Japan, which might be termed religious, or even metaphysical, because they required faith at the expense of logic and reason. (2006:13)[missing long citation]
The Ministry of Education promulgated it throughout the school system.[18]
By 1937, "election purification", originally aimed at corruption, required that no candidate set the people in opposition to either the military or the bureaucracy.[24] This was required because voters were required to support imperial rule.[24]
Some objections to the founding of theTaisei Yokusankai (Imperial Rule Assistance Association) came on the grounds thatkokutai already required all imperial subjects to support imperial rule. Conservative thinkers voiced concerns that the establishment of an empowered class of aides to the emperor was akin to the creation of a new shogunate.[25]
For the leaders of Japan's "fascist-nationalist clique", writes Miller, "kokutai had become a convenient term for indicating all the ways in which they believed that the Japanese nation, as a political as well as a racial entity, was simultaneously different from and superior to all other nations on earth."[1]: 93
This term, and what it meant, were widely inculcated in propaganda.[26] The final letters ofkamikaze pilots expressed, above all, that their motivations were gratitude to Japan and to its Emperor as the embodiment ofkokutai.[27] A sailor might give his life to save the picture of the Emperor on a submarine.[28]
During World War II, some anti-modernist intellectuals argued that prior to theMeiji Restoration, Japan was always a classless society under a benevolent emperor, but the restoration had plunged the nation into Western materialism (an argument that ignored commercialism and ribald culture in the Tokugawa era), which had caused people to forget their nature. To recover their traditional identity, Japanese citizens had to actively participate in the war effort.[29]
"Japanist" unions endeavoured to win support by disavowing class violence and pledging support for nation and emperor.[30] Nevertheless, because of the mistrust of unions in such unity, the Japanese went to replace them with "councils" in every factory, containing both management and worker representatives to contain conflict.[31] Like the Nazi councils they were copying, this was part of a program to create a classless national unity.[24]
Because many religions had figures that distracted from the central emperor, they were attacked, such as theOomoto sect condemned for worshipping figures other thanAmaterasu, and in 1939, the Religious Organization authorized the shutting down of any religion that did not conform to the Imperial Way, which the authorities promptly used.[32]
Hirohito evoked theKokutai in hissurrender broadcast, which announced the Japanese acceptance of thePotsdam Declaration (unconditional surrender).
By thesurrender of Japan in 1945, the significance ofkokutai diminished. In autumn 1945,GHQ forbade circulation of theKokutai no Hongi and on 15 October repealed the 1925Peace Preservation Law. By the enactment of theConstitution of the State of Japan (3 May 1947), theEmperor's sovereignty and thelèse-majesté were repealed.
Nevertheless, some authors, including Miller, believe that traces of Japanesekokutai "are quite as vivid today as they ever were".[1]: 95
In the 21st century, Japanese nationalists, such as those affiliated with theNippon Kaigi lobby, have begun using the phrase "kunigara" (国柄, "national character").
Japanists further circumscribed the permissible limits of political discourse. From the middle of the Meiji period, some conservatives had begun to advocate Nihon shugi, or Japanism, as an alternative to rapid Westernization. In particular, they wished to preserve traditional values and what they saw as Japan's unique national polity, or kokutai. For many conservatives in the Meiji era, the concept of the kokutai revolved around two principles. A divine line of emperors had ruled from time immemorial, and intimate familylike ties united the benevolent sovereign with his loyal subjects.
At the same time that [the government] approved universal manhood suffrage, the Diet passed the Peace Preservation Law of 1925. Drafted by bureaucrats within the Ministry of Justice, the measure stipulated that anyone 'who organizes a group for the purpose of changing the national polity (kokutai) or of denying the private property system, or anyone who knowingly participates in such group' could be jailed for ten years, or even executed after the law was amended three years later.
In the 1930s, however, Japanists singled out Minobe for intense criticism. Battle was joined in 1934 when rightwing organizations, including the Imperial Military Reservists' Association, published accusatory books and pamphlets charging that Minobe's thoughts amounted to Ièse majesté.
Besides hushing its critics, the government sought to inculcate good citizenship among schoolchildren by introducing a new textbook, Kokutai no hongi ('Cardinal Principles of the National Polity'), published by the Ministry of Education on March 30, 1937, as an official statement of the government's concept of the kokutai. The purpose of the text, according to its own conclusion, was to overcome social unrest and 'develop a new Japan by virtue of the Way of the Empire which stands firm throughout the ages at home and abroad, and thereby more than ever to guard and maintain the prosperity of the Imperial Throne which is coeval with heaven and earth.' Following a historical overview that paid special honor to the divine origins of the imperial line, a series of overtly nationalistic essays explored the vlrtues of Japan's 'special and unique' customs, culture, religion, morality, and way of life. Throughout the volume, the prose sang the praises of the national achievements of the past, credited those accomplishments to the wisdom of the imperial house, and called upon the Japanese of the 1930s to prepare themselves to make any sacrifice necessary to preserve the integrity of the emperor and nation.
Konoe and Matsuoka added to the allure of a geographically extended coprosperity sphere by wrapping it in imperial shrouds. Any move south, they averred, would be accomplished 'peacefully' and in accordance, as Konoe so carefully phrased it in his radio address, 'with the lofty spirit of hakko ichiu'. It was another skillful rhetorical flourish by the veteran wordsmith. As every Japanese schoolchild who had read Kokutai no hongi knew by heart, hakko ichiu meant 'eight cords, one roof' and first appeared in the eighth-century chronicleNihon Shoki to describe how the legendary first emperor Jimmu extended his dominion over the other clans of the early Japanese islands, which subsequently enjoyed unparalleled prosperity and security thanks to his imperial benevolence. Superimposed upon Asia in 1940, the resuscitated ideal pictured a quasi family of nations led by Japan and its patriarch-emperor; the 'Imperial Way', Matsuoka intoned, would permit 'every nation and every race' to find 'its proper place in the world'.
Conservatives such as Hiranuma Kiichiro, who served as prime minister for eight months in 1939, objected that the proposed totalitarian IRAA was nothing but a 'new shogunate' that would usurp the power of the emperor's government, and Japanists declared that the national polity, the hallowed kokutai, already united the emperor with subjects who naturally fulfilled their sacred obligation to 'assist imperial rule'. On a more mundane plane, senior officials within the Home Ministry feared the loss of bureaucratic turf and complained that the proposed network of occupationally based units would interfere with local administration at a particularly crucial time in the nation's history.
The growing sense of national emergency prompted many groups that earlier had assumed an oppositional stance toward the state to reassess their goals and tactics. One expression of that tendency came in the early 1930s, when thousands of workers joined so-called Japanist unions whose leadership hoped to improve working conditions by disavowing violent confrontations and demonstrating their loyalty to nation and emperor. Kamino Shin'ichi, originally a foreman at the lshikawajima shipyards, organized one of the more influential Japanist unions. In concert with other members of the conservative right, he and his followers ridiculed the political parties as being corrupt, condemned liberalism and democracy as the failed ideologies of a decadent West, and sought to build a new industrial order, premised on the 'unity of emperor and subject', in which laborers and capitalists would be 'of one mind and spirit, fused in an inseparable solidarity'.
No group experienced more severe suppression than the new religions as Home Ministry bureaucrats embarked upon a crusade 'to eradicate evil cults' for the crime of propagating lèse majesté. As manifested in such works as kokutai no hongi, the government in the 1930s fostered the growth of an official orthodoxy centered upon a sacrosanct emperor who stood both as the head of state and as the benevolent father of the family of Japanese citizens. Although not overtly antiemperor, many of the new religions espoused doctrines that threatened the centrality of the imperial figure; prosecutors, for instance, condemned the Omoto sect for revering deities other than the Sun Goddess. The most dramatic moment in the government's campaign against 'quack religions' came on December 8, 1935, when hundreds of police stormed Omoto headquarters, smashed the main shrine building, dynamited an auxiliary hall, decapitated religious statues, and arrested nearly a thousand sect members. Four years later the Diet passed the Religious Organizations Law empowering the government to disband any religious organization whose teachings did not conform with 'The Imperial Way', and officials promptly suppressed other unorthodox religions. An aversion for social disorder and a desire to 'unify the will of the people' around national goals prompted bureaucratic officials in the 1930s to suppress or to co-opt the support of organizations that opposed government policies. Some of the associations, notably the Omoto sect, preferred to break rather than to bend, but most tempered their demands, shifted to less contentious goals, or even dissolved themselves.
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