Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825 Book

I got more into modern Japanese history after reading Pankaj Mishra's book ("from the ruins of empire") and realizing that he had somehow decided to skip over the first Asian country to actually do what he thinks Afghani and company did, i.e. remade themselves and matched the West (and of course, Afghani and company did not do what the Japanese managed to do; Mishra, as usual, was not just selective, but also wrong)...This book dropped into view via @Spatel on twitter, whose interest in it will become obvious once you read the book and Aizawa's caustic views about the Abrahamic religions and their role in the colonization of foreign lands.

Aizawa was an influential early voice in the Japanese effort to resist colonization and compete with the Western powers and this is a very interesting read. I am not going to write a new review, I am shamelessly copying and pasting Sam Schulman's review here to save you a few clicks. All credit for this review of course goes to Sam Schulman.

(Sam Schulman's review is here: )

I am reading only Wakabayashi's 145-page introduction to what is really an edition of Aizawa's "New Theses", composed in classical Chinese by the Japanese Confucian scholar in 1825. I must say that this book has completely overturned my admittedly sketchy sense of the "opening of Japan" to the west, which I thought took place in 1858, and led to the Japanese being impressed by Western technology + industrialization and catching up in a generation.
It is clear from Wakabayashi that this is not the case (though it is believed by better-educated minds than me). Aizawa, a contemporary of James Mill, Schelling and Schopenhauer. His importance is that a generation or 2 before Commodore Perry, and indeed before the technical/military/industrial power of the west had manifested itself, Aizawa recognized that the power of the West lay in its ideas, not in material wealth that would come somewhat later.
What were these ideals? First of all, it's important to say that Japan resisted Western ideas for completely different reasons in the 18th and early 19th century. The west was simply barbarian, and Japan's merit came from its excellence defined in terms of Confucian values: Japan, not China, was, Japanese intellectuals thought, the true middle kingdom - (which means - roughly - moderate between north + south, moderate between mob-rule and tyranny - a moderation which was measured by adherence to Confucious-defined ideas of social and political hierarchy. I'm being crude here, of course, but let me give an example from Wakabayashi of how Japanese intellectuals persauded themselves that they were more Chinese than the Chinese. The Japanese argued that they had revered their one ruling dynasty from ancient times until today, whereas the old Middle Kingdom was characterized by constant turmoil, one dynasty overthrowing another at frequent intervals. What the Japanese were claiming was not that their dynasty was more legitimate, or holy, because of its antiquity and incumbency - but that Japan itself, in revering one dynasty (regardless of that dynasty's qualities or faults) showed themselves to be more "middle" - more loyal + complete exponents of the Confucian virtue - than the Chinese. (There was a lot of attention to hints that Confucious let drop as an old man that he might say the hell with it and go live with Eastern Barbarians overseas - but that's not as important).
So if even China was not Confucian enough, imagine the contempt for the West. But this to this contempt for barbarians Aizawa, and an earlier predecessor Jinsai (a contemporary of John Milton and Dryden) added crucial distinctions - distinctions which Wakabayashi says paved the way for the entry of Japan into the world 35 years after Aizawa wrote. Aizawa did more in his generation to understand and find out about the nature of the West. He taught that it was not enough to name-call Westerners "barbarians" - doing so had not saved China from invasion and, later, but still during Aiwaza's lifetime, defeat by the British in the Opium War. By various means, most notably by interrogating Japanese nationals who had been washed overboard from Japanese ships and rescued by Russian, American and Dutch ships, spending months or years on board barbarian ships, and sometimes taken to nearby Russian Pacific ports to live, in some cases even to Europe. He also interrogated Western sailors and officers who were washed ashore in his area of North-east Japan (it was only legal for foreign ships to call in Nagasaki, and that privilege was limited to Dutch ships).
He inferred much real information, as well as false information (he thought, for example, that the Moguls still ruled much of India in the early 19th century. He learned that the Dutch, the one European people for whom the Japanese had some respect, had become a 3rd-class power in the far east; replaced by the British, the French, the Russians and what he considered a satrapy of Britiain, the Americans. That the Dutch had become unimportant was a blow: there was a respected branch of learning in Japan called "Dutch Studies." (The restoration of the Dutch East Indies, i.e. Indonesia, was an unmotivated gift of the Allies in the Congress of Vienna). Most worrisome was Russia, which Aizawa inferred had been repulsed from its attempts to enter the European sphere of influence, and would henceforth concentrate its efforts in the far east. Russia had already conquered what Japan considered its sphere of influence in Kamchatka and Manchuria, and would, Aizawa warned,now cast its eye on the island now called Hokkaido, but which the Japanese of that day regarded as a primitive and barbarian land, inhabited by the Evo (now Ainu), and ruled by an originally Japanese pioneer dynasty which was thought to have gone native.
The most original and, to me, striking aspect of Aizawa's analysis was this. He did not fear Western technology, or wealth, or scientific achievement. What he feared was the West's religion - or use of religiousness. Unlike Japan and China, for whom religion or spirituality was a highly refined experience available only to the elite, Christianity and Islam were mass phenonoma. Western kings and emperors were unabashed and unsnobbish about declaring themselves Christians or Muslims, defenders of the faith, and used religion as a tool to - Aizawa gasps - unite the ruler and his officers with the masses they ruled! For the Japanese who mattered, Shinto was a private and elite cult (I gather) - and Aizawa and his fellow scholars were full of contempt for the "stupid Japanese commoners " they ruled, from whom Shinto was kept. All the more reason Aizawa feared and warned that Russians or English would be shameless about teaching their Christianity to the "stupid commoners," who had no allegience to Japan and the Shogunate precisely because they were restricted from Japanese religion. The result would be that Christianized Japanese would have no compunction about joining forces with the devout Russians or the hypocritcally devout English and fight against the Samurai.
The Japanese decision to exclude foreigners until Commander Perry and his steam-powered naval fleet made it impossible to resist is usually painted as the failure of a medieval technology in the face of the industrial-revolution. Wakabayashi shows that the most forward-thinking Japanese intellectuals wanted a policy of active exclusion of the West - a policy called "Jai" - in order to give Japan time to develop a Japanese social-religious identity that would allow Japan to integrate "stupid commoners" with the Emperor, his Shogun-governors and the all-important bakufu - the bureaucracy which administered everything in Japan, and like all bureaucracy was a deeply reactionary and recalcitrant force which preferred to divide not unite. The "fanatical" Shintoism and Emperor-cult that the US Navy confronted in WWII was not an ancient Japanese cultural artifact, but (I infer) a pretty artificial construction hastily put together by modern intellectuals influenced by the West.
I may add more detail to this review, but this is the argument and a stunning argument it is.

What follows are quotations from Wakabayashi + his translations:

"Aizawa argued that the secret of Western strength lay in Christianity, a state cult that Western leaders proagated to cultivate voluntary allegience both in their own peoples and in those they colonized overseas." He called it kokutai, "the essence of a nation" (and by extesionm :what is essential to make a people into a nation)" - A novel use, previously the word s meant "the nation's honor" or "dynastic prestige." His words:
"The only nation besides our own that is not yet befouled by either Islam or Christianity is the Manchu Ch'ing empire."
Jinsai did not argue that the imperial line's longevity revealed the divine will, or that it was unique to Japan. It just meant that Japan was more adherent to Confucian pricniples and values - embodying hierarchal status order of Middle Kingdom civilization better than China. 27.
Maeno scolded Japan for not listening to Matteo Ricci's reform ideas. "In Europe, Italy [ie the Vatican] is sovereign in matters of moral transformation....Responsibl. for govt is delegrated to priest-officials (Cardinals) of whom ether are 72...)
Maeno sad Christianity (tenshukyo, the state religion of Holland and the teaching of Africa alall ahve the same aim> to base edification and govt on this policy (of welfare for widowers+widows, orphas, suffering).
The natvives revere the Europeans as sage-rulers (shinsei). "
Aizawa viewed Christianity as :conquest without warfare". Believed Japan needed to develop kokutai to acheive the kind of popular unity he beleived Christianity and govt it inspired had created in Western nations. :The shock and chagrin at the discovery [that Christianity, rather than Confucian culture/values, had won the allegience of most of the earth's inhabitants] prompted him to conceive of the concpet of kokutai.
Aizawa thought Christians would take over Japan indirectly trhough Christian "transformation." 1st the Ezo tribes in the north and primitive tribes on islands to the south, then "seduce 'the stupid commoners' in Japan proper." He likened Western barbarians to the great generals Chao Ch'ung-kuo + Chu-ko Liang, and Sun Tzu's dictums - high praise.
The bakufu kept their subjects ignorent and weak by policies laid down by Ieyasu, policies which made it impossible to "conscript commoners again [as was done in antiquity]." Astute in its day, now made Japan vulnerable. Western Learning informed Aizawa of these new thrreats.
Later thinkers - Yokoi Shonan + Ito Hirobumi - in 1856 + 1888 - realized need for state religion. Former: Xtianity "combines govt and edification. From sovereign on down to commoners - all are true to its commandments." Latter: "In europe, constitutional govt has had over 1000 years since its inception. Not only are the peoople thoroughly familiar with it, religon serves as a "linchpin" for them...seeped deeply into the people's hearts; theiir hearts + minds are united in this faith. But in our country religions are very weak, non can serve as a linchpin - [Buddhism has few followers, Shinto is an elite cult]"

Shots of some random pages:

For a modern historian's description of the the rise of modern Japan, Marius Jansen's The Making of Modern Japan is good
A review here:



Well written and detailed and included enough quotes from Japanese writings to give one a flavor of Japanese thinking and not just an outsider's version of it.

"Samurai" by John Man was fun, but you may need the overall picture first.