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Academic Factionalism in Japan

The Case of the Tōdai Economics Department, 1919–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Byron K. Marshall
Byron K. Marshall
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

In the conventional rhetoric of Japanese social criticism, factionalism is an endemic condition caused by the lingering heritage of feudalism. Much the same kind of charges familiar in the political arena are common to discussions regarding cliques within the Japanese academic world, although there is almost no detailed research directly on the latter subject in Western languages. The following attempts to explicate one outstanding prewar example of factional strife in Japan's most prestigious university, the case of the Department of Economics at Tokyo Imperial University. It has been chosen for three reasons: (1) the Economics faculty were among the most deeply involved intellectuals in the dramatic prewar struggles over academic freedom; (2) the charge of factionalism has been raised explicitly and repeatedly by participants as well as others; and (3) the issues over which the struggle raged as well as many of the personalities have continued to be of significance in Japanese politics and within the universities down to the present. Because of its significance, there is available far more information than is common on such intramural factionalism.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1978 , pp. 529 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

The author, Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, would like to thank the University and the American Council of Learned Societies-Social Sciences Research Council Joint Committee on Japan for support of research on the history of Japanese academic institutions.

1 For a notable exception, see the stimulating research by Bartholomew, James R., ‘Cultural Aspects of Modern Japanese Science. The Career of Kitasato Shisaburō, 1853–1931’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1971);Google Scholar and ‘Japanese Culture and the Problem of Science,’ in Thackray, Arnold and Mendelsohn, Everett (eds), Science and Values (New York, 1974), pp. 109–55.Google Scholar

2 See my ‘Professors and Politics: The Meiji Academic Elite,’ Journal of Japanese Studies, 3:1 (Winter, 1977).Google Scholar

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4 Henry Smith's work cited above is the only monograph published in English that focuses on developments on the campus. For other perspectives, see Mitchell, Richard H., Thought Control in Prewar Japan (Ithaca, 1976);Google ScholarTotten, George O. III, The Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan (New Haven, 1966);Google ScholarBeckmann, George M. and Genji, Okubo, The Japanese Communist Party 1922–1945 (Stanford, 1969).Google Scholar There are also two unpublished dissertations of considerable value: Suh, Doo Soo, ‘The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Japanese Universities before 1945’ (Cambridge University, 1953);Google Scholar and Steinhoff, Patricia G., ‘Tenkō: Ideology and Societal Integration in Prewar Japan’ (Harvard University, 1969).Google Scholar

5 Kiyoshi, Ōshima, Takano Iwasaburō (Tokyo, 1968), pp. 124–36;Google Scholar and the official histories published by Tokyo University, Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku gakujutsu taikan: Hōgakubu-Keizaigakubu (Tokyo, 1942), pp. 467–519;Google ScholarTōkyō Teikoku Daigaku gojūnenshi (Tokyo, 1932), I, 1106–55; II, 181–98.Google Scholar For earlier conflicts within the Law faculty, see Epp, Robert Charles, ‘Threat to Tradition: A Reaction to Japan's 1890 Civil Codes’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1964);Google ScholarMiller, Frank O., Minobe Tatsukichi: Interpreter of Constitutionalism in Japan (Berkeley, 1965).Google Scholar

6 Ōshima, , Takano Iwasaburō, pp. 129–33;Google Scholar see also Pyle, Kenneth B., ‘Advantages of Fellowship: German Economics and Japanese Bureaucrats, 1890–1915,’ Journal of Japanese Studies, I, 1 (1974), 127–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Ōshima, , Takano Iwasaburō, pp. 166–74;Google Scholar see also the analysis in Masato, Miyaji, ‘Morito Tatsuo jiken,’ in Sakae, Wagatsuma, (ed.), Nihon seiji saiban shiroku: taishō (Tokyo, 1969);Google Scholar and Mitchell, Richard H., ‘Japan's Peace Preservation Law of 1925,’ Monumenta Nipponica, XXVIII, 3(1973), 317–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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9 Ōshima, , Takano Iwasaburō, pp. 168–79 and note 3; it should be noted that Morito and Ōuchi are listed as editorial supervisors (kanshū) for this account;Google Scholar see also Hyōe, Ōuchi, Keizaigaku gojūnen (Tokyo, 1959), p. 114;Google Scholar and Watakushi no rirekisho (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 159–66.Google Scholar

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12 Ōshima, , Takano Iwasaburō, pp. 181, 227–9;Google ScholarSeibi, Hijikata, Gakkai shunjūki (Tokyo, 1960), pp. 104–6;Google Scholar and Kawai, , Kyōdan seikatsu nijūnen, pp. 109–11, 123–6.Google Scholar

13 Hijikata, , Gakkai shunjūki, pp. 108–10.Google Scholar

14 Since there are no formal records of votes taken in faculty meetings and assistant professors did not participate equally in any case, the incidents listed here are limited to those on which there is sufficient detail in the various sources to permit at least a partial listing of how individuals sided. Given the type of partisan and often selfserving accounts one must use in such cases, it is quite probable that there are some inaccuracies; but the overall shape of the divisions is confirmed by cross-checking the claims of the participants. The reader should be warned again that the political issues and academic personalities involved here are still matters for partisan conflict and postwar treatments are no less subject to question than contemporary accounts.

15 Ōuchi, , Keizaigaku, pp. 229–30;Google ScholarFumio, Yamada, ‘Tōdai Keizaigakubu mondai no shisō,’ Kaizō (03 1939), pp. 71–80.Google Scholar

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18 Yamada, , ‘Tōdai Keizaigakubu mondai no shisā,’ p. 73.Google Scholar

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20 Mombusho, , Meiji ikō kyōiku seido hattatsushi (12 vols, Tokyo, 1938–1939), VII, 10–11;Google ScholarSmith, , Japan's First Student Radicals, pp. 200–5;Google ScholarMitchell, , Thought Control, pp. 69–126.Google Scholar

21 Itsurō, Sakisaka, Arashi no naka no hyakunen (Tokyo, 1952), pp. 170–1;Google Scholarand the anonymous article entitled ‘Kubi kirareta daigaku kyōju retsuden,’ Chūōkōron (July 1933), 234–43.Google Scholar

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24 Tanaka, et al. , Daigaku no jiji, pp. 63–5;Google ScholarNambara, et al. , pp. 171–2;Google ScholarBeckmann, and Okubo, , Japanese Communist Party, pp. 188, 193–5.Google Scholar

25 Hijikata, , Gakkai shunjūki, pp. 173–91;Google ScholarŌuchi, , Watakushi, pp. 262–4;Google ScholarKenkyūkai, Shakai Shisō (eds), Kawai Eijirō denki to tsuisō (Tokyo, 1948), pp. 88–93;Google ScholarŌshima, , Takano Iwasaburō, pp. 355–7;Google ScholarTadao, Yanaibara, Watakushi no ayunde kita michi (Tokyo, 1958), pp. 45–9, 52, 99–103;Google Scholar and Tai, Sekiguchi, ‘Teikoku Daigaku no mondai’ Chūōkōron (04 1938), 354–61.Google Scholar

26 For details on the kyōju gurupu or ‘Academicians Group,’ see Totten, , Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan, pp. 166–75.Google Scholar

27 Ōuchi, , Keizaigaku, pp. 248–9.Google Scholar

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32 Kenkyūkai, Shakai Shisō, pp. 93–9;Google ScholarNambara, et al. , pp. 285–6;Google ScholarMinobe, , Kumon suru demokurashii, p. 229;Google ScholarHijikata, , Gakkai shunjūki, pp. 201–27;Google Scholar and Masamichi, Rōyama, ‘Tōdai Shukugaku mondai to watakushi no shinkyō,’ Bungei Shunju (05 1939).Google Scholar

33 Kenkyūkai, Shakai Shisō, pp. 99–105;Google ScholarTōkyō Teikoku Daigaku gakujutsu taikan: Hōgakubu-Keizaigakubu, pp. 506–10;Google ScholarŌuchi, , Keizaigaku, pp. 289, 294–304;Google ScholarYamada, ‘Tōdai keizaigakubu mondai no shisō,’ pp. 71–80;Google Scholarand Ichio, Tamura, ‘Tōdai funjo uchimakubanashi,’ Chūōkōron (03 1940), 206–10.Google Scholar

34 Kawai Eijirō was accused of refusing to side with the defenders of Morito in 1920 because he was the son-in-law of Kanai Noburu; Ōshima, , Takano Iwasaburō, p. 181. Kawai denied he sided against Morito and took pains to disassociate himself from the views of his father-in-law, with whom he said he was not close, stating that the elder man had become inflexible as age and illness took its toll;Google ScholarKawai, , Kyōdan seikatsu nijūnen, pp. 107, 120–2. Hijikata Seibi had also married the daughter of his senior professor while a student in the old College of Law, but marital ties of this sort, common in other Departments and earlier periods, were a rarity in the Economics Department of the 1920s and 1930s.Google Scholar

35 See Clark, Terry N., Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Professor Nambara Shigeru attributed the solidarity within the Law Department to ‘the fact that there were many senior professors who by long tradition worked together to transcend all such disagreements,’ Nambara, et al. , Onozuka Kiheiji (Tokyo, 1963), p. 281.Google Scholar This, of course, does not tell us how the tradition began or how it was sustained. For some revealing insights into the internal dynamics and external relations of the Hōgakubu in the late 1930s, see the first volume of the recently published diary of Professor Teiji, Yabe, Yabe Teiji nikki, 4 vols (Tokyo, 1974).Google Scholar

37 Hijikata, , by contrast, was among those intellectuals purged by the American Occupation, while Kawai did not survive the war.Google Scholar