The Ideal of East Asia: Kojin Karatani Columbia University [PDF]

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The Ideal of East Asia Kojin Karatani Columbia University 1. Today I will talk about the cultural identity of the East Asia. This is not a subject I chose on my own. I was asked to speak on this subject. I hesitated, but at last I accepted it after thinking it over. I hesitated because this topic reminded me of such cultural ideologies as the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, which was strategically deployed by Japan in the 1930s. I could not simply discuss the cultural identity of the East Asia in naive terms. In the end, I accepted this topic precisely because I decided to examine it historically. It was around 1870-85, nearly 20 years after Meiji Restoration that the cultural identity of the East Asia began to be talked about in Japan. Japan escaped colonization, but the Meiji government did not think that they could survive without the independence and development of China and Korea. But this sense of solidarity faded away as Japan established a modern nation-state by means of westernization. This

change

is

perhaps

best

symbolized

by

Fukuzawa

Yukichi's

essay

on

"De-Asianization" in 1885. Fukuzawa had anticipated a swift change in Korea and China, but he became deeply disappointed as they remained unchanged, and he proposed that Japan go it alone and leave Asia behind. This short essay published in a newspaper became famous much later, but it was not widely read at the time it first appeared. But regardless of whatever Fukuzawa may have written, Japan's modern state was established by thoroughly denying "the cultural identity of East Asia" that had been derived from the "world empire" of China. For example, Chinese literature, oriental medicine, and even Buddhism (based upon Chinese translation) were ruled out of as disciplines in the curriculum of Tokyo Imperial University. There was, however, one discipline where Japan or the Orient was hegemonic from the start. That was the discipline of fine arts. 　A good example is the national art school of fine arts (Tokyo University of Art today) Okakura Tenshin founded it together with Ernest Fenollosa, an American scholar of oriental art. While the school of music founded at the same time was centered on western music, this school was centered on the arts of Japan and Asia. One reason for this was that Japanese arts and crafts were popular in the west. But this focus would not have been possible without the ideas and will of Okakura. However, in 10 years, Okakura, the founder and director of the school, was expelled by the westernization advocates at the school. This indicates that de-Asianization was carried out exhaustively, without exception. But Okakura did not surrender.

Instead, he countered his dismissal by founding the

Japanese Art Academy.

He went to India with fellow painters such as Yokoyama

Taikan and stayed in Calcutta for a year, during which he actively agitated on behalf of the Indian independence movement. During his stay, he published a book in English, The Ideals of the East, which begins with the following sentence;

Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilizations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life. (The Ideal of the East, 1905) The first line, Asia is one, later spread as a political slogan as far as Arabia, through Tagore, the Indian poet and a friend of Okakura's. For Okakura, the oneness of Asia signified the identity of Asia under colonization by the Western powers. But not being satisfied with this sort of negative identity for Asia, he sought a positive identity. And since there was as yet no political and religious unity to be found throughout Asia, the oneness of the multiple civilizations including the Islamic seemed to exist only in the fine arts.　And for Okakura, arts and crafts were sensible entities, not mere ideas. It should be noted that there was no "state" behind Okakura's statement that "Asia is one". He started his art movement in opposition to the modern state and continued this in India, after he was expelled by the "state". His words and actions stirred Indian intellectuals like Aurobindo Ghose and Rabindranath Tagore. But an incident took place shortly after this that totally wiped out the traces Okakura left in India, that is, Japan's victory over Russia in 1905. Indeed, this incident excited and encouraged people throughout Asia. At this very moment, however, Japan joined the imperialist western powers, leaving Asia behind: thus de-asianization was completed. Okakura wrote the following in The Book of Tea in 1906. "Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others. The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields. Much comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai, --the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in

self-sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life. Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war. Fain would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to our art and ideals." It goes without saying that his criticism was not only directed at westerners, but also at Japanese. What disappointed Okakura most , however, seems to be the change in India. Peter Heehs notes; "Indians also had been in the habit of looking down on the Japanese--Natesan called them `a race of dwarfs fed chiefly on rice`. Now suddenly Indian journalists, Indian barristers and Indian schoolboys were hailing the Japanese as the champions of resurgent Asia. In Calcutta P. Mitra, Surendranath Tagore and Chittaranjan Das---all members of the moribund Bengal Council--got together to discuss the Japanese question.---But the most conspicuous result of the Russo-Japanese War in India was the change it produced in the self-image of the Indian people. In June Surendranath Banerjea`s Bengalee gave voice to a near-universal feeling when it declared: `we feel that we are not the same people as we were before the Japanese

successes.'''

(Heehs,

Peter,

The

Bomb

in

Bengal

The

Rise

of

Revolutionary Terrorism in India 1900-1910, Oxford University Press, 1993, p63) From the viewpoint of Okakura, India seemed to be following the same path Japan had taken. All of this discouraged Okakura and forced him to leave Japan to work for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1910, when Japan annexed Korea. At the time, Okakura's works were not read in Japan, because they were published abroad in English. It was only in the 1930s that his works were translated into Japanese. "Asia is one" became a catchphrase for Japan's new strategy, the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. Of course, here it took on a meaning entirely different from what Okakura had intended. The Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was based upon the idea of overcoming modernity, meaning such things as the modern state and industrial capitalism. This concept was ostensibly opposed to imperialism, by insisting that individual nations could be integrated into it without losing their own autonomy, just like monads in Leibnizian monadology. But needless to say, it was nothing but an ideology which whitewashed Japan's imperialism. Instead of acting to change reality, the philosophers of the Kyoto School at the time changed their interpretation of reality. After the war, the Japanese rejected these ideas. This was due to their reflection on the past and their sense of guilt. At the same time, as they abandoned the imperialist ideology, they also abandoned their sense of solidarity with Asia that they undeniably had, despite the imperialist ideology. The postwar Japanese stance by and large has

been to avoid all commitment to Asia. It is noteworthy that this attitude is another form of de-Asianization. We stand not so far from the historical situation of Fukuzawa Yukichi's de-Asianization and Okakura Tenshin's pan-Asianism. So I think there must be some historical necessity behind the reemergence of the topic of the cultural identity of East Asia today. It is a subject that recurs no matter how we try to negate it. But this is not peculiar to East Asia alone. It is rather based upon the repetition-compulsive structure of world history. Therefore, we should examine the question of history and repetition outside the context of East Asia, precisely in order to think of East Asia. 2 When I say that history repeats itself, I do not mean that it recurs with the same content, but rather with the same form. It is Karl Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire who first grasped this repetition structurally. The opening passage is well known: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." The fact is that it is in his philosophy of history that Hegel wrote to this effect. He stated that what looks to be merely contingent and possible at first becomes actual and inevitable through repetition. Hegel took up the example of Caesar as one world-historical figure. When Rome expanded to the point that it no longer could fit the structure of the city-state, Caesar attempted to become an emperor and was killed by Brutus et al., who adhered to the existing structure of the republic. People did not accept the reality of the empire until Caesar was killed. Caesar himself failed to become an emperor, but his name went on to become a general noun which signifies emperor; Kaiser, Czar, etc. When he stated that "Hegel remarks somewhere,--", Marx may have forgotten the above-mentioned historical context. But in The 18th Brumaire, he described the very process of an emperor emerging from a republic. Apparently he wanted to emphasize the fact that the process by which Louis Bonaparte became emperor after the revolution in 1848 was a repetition of the way Napoleon became emperor in the first French revolution of 60 years earlier. Marx says that the first is a tragedy and the second a farce. But the repetition represents more than this. In the first place, Marx points out that the first French revolution was performed in costumes borrowed from ancient Rome. Such a repetition happened not just because people could not face a new situation without reference to past experiences. In other words, this was not simply a matter of representation. It should be noted that they

would

not

wear

ancient

costumes

unless

there

were

some

structural

similarities between their present and the past. In the first French revolution, the emperor emerged at a point of crisis in the

formation of the democratic state, which originated in the killing of the absolutist monarch. This emergence of the emperor is an example of what Freud called "the return of the repressed." There is a sort of repetition compulsion operating in this process. However, even though the emperor may signify the return of the dead king, but he differs in nature from a king. The emperor should correspond to an "empire," which by definition exceeds the scope of a city-state or nation-state. In fact, Napoleon advocated forming a European federation to oppose British industrial capitalism. The same is true of his nephew Louis Bonaparte. As a Saint-Simonist

socialist,

he

proclaimed

the

permanent

dissolution

of

class

oppositions. In this light, it may be said that he was a proto-type of Hitler, who repeated this in his Third Reich.

Clearly, the archetype for all of these characters

is "Caesar". Concerning this repetition in history, the above explanation is suggestive, but a question remains: why does this repetition take place roughly once every 60 years? I suppose this is based upon an economic repetition, namely the business cycle. In Capital, Marx discussed business cycles, but only short-range ones, those taking place every 10 years. Later the Russian Marxist economist Kondratieff, who was executed by Stalin, called attention to a longer-range business cycle, one ranging 50-60 years, a cycle which today is called "Kondratieff's long wave". In my view, this long wave is integral to the stages of capitalist development, because the ascent of a new stage is accompanied by a long-standing depression. It is also accompanied by the replacement of one world commodity by another. This can be illustrated in diagram (1). In speaking of the stages of world capitalism such as mercantilism, liberalism or imperialism, I don't mean to suggest that all nations followed such policies. Liberalism, for instance, was the policy of the hegemonic state, which is Britain, during the 19th century, while other nations countered it with protectionism during this period. Nonetheless, this period may be called the stage of liberalism, because whatever policies they may have taken, other nations belonged to the world economy dominated

by Britain.

Nations

that are

located at different

stages

nonetheless belong to the synchronic structure of the world economy, comprising the international division of labor. But liberalism as the policy of the hegemonic state was not limited to the 19th century when Britain was hegemonic. According to Wallerstein, there have been only three hegemonic states in history. For example, Holland was the first hegemonic state. It was liberalistic at a time when Britain was still mercantilist or protectionist. Holland was liberalistic in political terms as well. In fact, Amsterdam was a city where Spinoza was able to live in safety and Descartes and Locke sought refuge, all because of its toleration of freedom of thought. Holland was still hegemonic in the domains of circulation and finance in the latter half of the 18th century, even after it was outstripped by Britain in the domain of manufacturing.

There was a transitional period between 1750 and 1810. Around 1810, Britain emerged as the hegemonic nation, as it overwhelmed the other nations in every domain. Marxist called this stage liberalism, and it gave way to imperialism after the 1870s. I follow this conventional view in the diagram. But these stages reflect the development of capitalism. In order to see the repetitive nature of history, however, it is better to regard liberalism as characterizing periods where there is a hegemonic state and to regard imperialism as characterizing periods where there is no hegemonic state-the former hegemonic state is on the wane, but others are not yet ready to take its place and so a period of struggle ensues. This phase takes about 60 years. What I noted as the stage of mercantilism (1750-1810) in the diagram represents such a period. While Holland was on the decline, Britain and France struggled against each other in the attempt to establish a new hegemony. The period of imperialism after 1870 marks a period when Germany, America, and Japan joined in the struggle to establish a new hegemony, demanding the repartition of the territories that Spain, Holland, France, and Britain had occupied at an earlier stage of capitalism. Thus it may be said that on the one hand, the stages of world capitalism unfold in tandem with the development of new production powers, but on the other hand, world capitalism also alternates between the liberalistic and the imperialistic. This is why history seems to operate on cycles lasting 120 years rather than 60 years. In this sense, the stage that began around 1990 is characterized both by information capitalism and by imperialism. It was generally believed that the world after 1990 would be defined by neo-liberalism as backed by overwhelming US hegemony, a situation comparable to the 19th century domination by Britain. However, we must note that America was a hegemonic state before 1990. It had already begun to decline in political and economic terms, as indicated by the suspension of the gold standard for the US Dollar in 1971. The stage of liberalism backed by American hegemony should be found instead in the period called "the cold war," which despite appearances was actually a period characterized by a very stable regime. For instance, the advanced capitalist states cooperated with each other against the socialist bloc without, and adopted social welfare policies within. Eventually, despite the apparent antagonism, the external socialist states and the domestic socialist parties within the advanced capitalist nations functioned to stabilize world capitalism rather than to threaten it. Therefore, the cold war period was a stage of liberalism brought about by the hegemonic state, America. The salient trend in the advanced capitalist nations since 1980s is the set of economic policies known as Reaganism or Thatcherism, policies that include cutbacks in social welfare programs, reductions in taxes, and deregulation of capital.

This

is

called

neo-liberalism.

But

Hannah

Arendt,

who

argued

that

imperialism started in the 1880s, characterized imperialism as a situation in which the state is liberated from the yoke of the nation. For example, Lenin defined imperialism in terms of the export of capital. But this is not restricted to the 1880s. The export of capital means that capital moves abroad to seek cheaper labor power, deserting the workers of the nation from which the capital originates. Thus, capital and the state enter into global competition, free from the financial burden of the nation. In this regard, neo-liberalism today is rather characteristic of imperialism. For this reason, the period after 1990 should be called the age of the new

imperialism,

as

David

Harvey

has

argued.

（David

Harvey:

"The

New

Imperialism", Oxford University Press, 2003） 　 Negri and Hart have described the empire of the US at the time of Gulf War in 1991. They considered it to be imperial, but not imperialist. In other words, the United State was more like the Roman Empire than modern imperialist nations. In fact, the way the US acted then with the support of the United Nations seemed distinct from its previous modes of action. It looked plausible that the US was acting not out of national interest, but rather on behalf of the world market economy. But the fact that America asked for the approval of UN was not proof of its domination of the world empire. On the contrary, it did so because it lacked the financial power necessary for it to behave as the hegemonic state. Eventually, the Iraq War in 2003 proved that the US was not an empire in the way that Negri and Hart had argued. The United State took unilateral action for its own sake, in defiance of the United Nations. One of the conspicuous features of the second Iraq war is the emergence of Europe, among others, as a super-state in competition with the US. Therefore, we should consider the world situation today not so much as a fundamentally new phase, but rather as a kind of recurrence of what happened in the period following the 1880s. 3 I am focusing on this repetition-compulsive nature of the state and capital not just to understand and explain history, but to obtain practical wisdom that may somehow help ward off another cycle of repetition. In that sense, my theory should be taken as

a

heuristic

hypothesis.

In

this

regard,

it

should

be

noted

that

the

countermovement against the state and capital, that is, the socialist movement understood in a broad sense, has changed as well in response to the new stage of world capitalism, showing a similar pattern of repetition. In order to counter the repetition in history compelled by the state and capital, we must eschew a futile repetition of the countermovement itself. As for the repetition of revolutionary movements, it is very interesting that Wallerstein compared the world revolution of 1968 to that of 1848. He is a historian who relies upon Kondratieff's long wave theory, but in his remarks, he did

not emphasize or even notice that the time span between 1848 and 1968 is 120 years. Nonetheless, his remarks correspond exactly with my hypothesis. Let us compare the world after 1848 and the world after 1968, as seen in the chronological table (2). For instance, Marx started writing in the 1840s and published the Communist Manifesto with Engels in 1848, just before the outbreak of revolution. It is recognized that Marx had made an epistemological break with his earlier-"young Marx"-- thinking, once he wrote The German Ideology in 1846. With this in mind, how Marx came to be read in the sixties is interesting. On the one hand, the "early Marx" was revived to rival Stalinism. This trend was represented by Marcuse. On the other hand, his break with his early humanistic thought was also positively reevaluated-by Althusser, among others. In a sense, both versions of Marx were necessary. In the 1960s, it may be said that by and large the "Marx" of the 1840s was summoned up. In addition, I would like to point out the fact that Marx was little known at the time of the world revolution in 1848. The most influential thinkers at that time were Saint-Simon, Proudhon, and Blanqui. As a matter of fact, the 1960s saw a renewed appreciation not only of the early Marx, but also of the early socialists or anarchists, as represented by Proudhon. In this sense, we may say that the entirety of 1848 was recovered in 1968. To go into more detail, in the 1960s, the theory of permanent revolution that Marx had proposed from 1848 to 1850 was revived by way of Trotsky and Mao. Permanent revolution does not simply mean to continue the revolution till the state and capital are abolished. It has a specific meaning:

that is to say, it refers to a

situation where a small number of socialist leaders seize power and carry out radical change in a nation characterized by an underdeveloped capitalist economy. This is nothing but a form of Blanquism. Marx, however, abandoned this view in September, 1850. "If the proletariat could gain control of the government the measures it would introduce would be those of the petty bourgeoisie and not those appropriate to the proletariat. Our party can only gain power when the situation allows it to put its own measures into practice. Louis Blanc is the best instance of what happens when you come to power prematurely. In France, it wasn't jus the proletariat that gained power but the peasants and the petty bourgeois as well, and it is their demands that will prevail" (Address to the Central Committee of Communist League). To put it differently, socialists who take power in an underdeveloped society ought to engage in the task elsewhere undertaken by the bourgeoisie. The socialist revolutions in the 20th century took place in such a situation, and this put socialists in precisely this sort of fix. Marx rejected the idea that a society could skip over a historical stage at will. However, Trotsky picked up Marx's concept of permanent revolution after the first Russian revolution in 1906 as a result of Russo-Japanese War, insisting that the

coming Russian revolution would be the bourgeois revolution to be immediately followed by the socialist revolution. Lenin objected to this view for years, but in 1917 when the revolution took place, he startled the old Bolsheviks by announcing the so-called April Theses, which asserted that the revolution should immediately proceed to the Socialist revolution. That was nothing but Trotsky's permanent revolution. And in October, Lenin and Trotsky seized state power via a military coup. Needless to say, such a regime resulted in the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship. Trotsky called it the revolution betrayed. In other words, he criticized the party bureaucrats who abandoned the permanent revolution, but he did not reflect critically on his own hasty decision to seize power by a military coup, nor more fundamentally on the very notion of permanent revolution or Blanquism that had been rejected by Marx himself. But in the 1960s, Trotskyism was revived after the critique of Stalin, and the notion of permanent revolution was given a new impetus by Mao's "cultural revolution" in China. It looked as if permanent revolution had been restored. This engendered revolutionary movements all over the world-all of which, however, collapsed after a period of turmoil. But this describes only one part of the new left in the 1960s. On the other side, the traditional modes of the leftist movement were totally changed. It is often said that "Student power" swept the world in 1968. This does not refer to the student movement in a narrow sense. It refers instead to the complete shattering of the Marxist convention which gave priority to the working class as led by the vanguard party. The movement of 1968 did not intend to seize power, either through parliament or other means. It aimed not at a political revolution, but at a social revolution. It cast light on a variety of peripheral minorities that had been subordinated to the category of proletariat, highlighting the situation of women, immigrants,

aborigines,

anti-establishment,

but

pariahs, also

gay-lesbians

against

a

and

coercive

others. powers

It

was

lurking

not

only

within

the

anti-establishment movement itself. This seemed to be a new phenomenon. Wallerstein named it the "anti-systemic movement." But in fact, in historical terms it is not entirely new. It represents rather a resurgence of anarchism, that is, the form of socialism that prevailed in the 1840s. In the 1960s, movement activists did not call themselves anarchists, but they were all the more anarchistic in nature: for example, Foucault and Deleuze. We may add to this the American version of anarchism made famous as "civil disobedience" by Thoreau in the 1840s. In this regard, it may be said that "1848" was restored by and large in "1968". What happened then to the revival of "1848"? It is evident that the new version of "permanent revolution" such as the Maoist Cultural Revolution failed. How about anarchism and the anti-systemic movement in general then? They appear to have been successful, since they achieved a variety of tasks, but in fact it seems to me

that they failed as well. This is clear from the fact that they cannot counter effectively the new imperialism today. The problem is that they are unconscious of their own failure.

4 The world revolution of 1848 failed completely. In France, Bonaparte became the emperor and rebuilt the nation as a modern industrial state. In Prussia, the Iron chancellor Bismarck pursued the rapid development of heavy industrial capitalism. And they confronted each other in the Franco-Prussian War. The Paris Commune was the result. This was the last recurrence of 1848, or rather, of the French Revolution. Marx paid it unstinting praise, but also he thought it would never be repeated. Marx died in 1883. It was around the time that Britain occupied Egypt and the Fabian Society was founded. This means that Marx died at the moment when Britain shifted to imperialism and the revolutionary movement shifted to social democracy. In short, he died at a moment when "1848" seemed far past and when the future seemed to hold only the bleak prospect of imperialism. How did Marx see the future when he was about to die? We can guess it to some extent, if we see things according to the diagram 1848=1968. For instance, 1883, the year of Marx's death corresponds to 2003, the year when Edward Said died (Or Derrida who died in 2004 may be added). Imagine--how did they look back at the 1960s when they made their debut, and waht did they think about the near future? To see what relation or distance to the "1848" or his early thoughts Marx held in his later years, just imagine what relation or distance to the "1968" of their early thoughts Said or Derrida had in their later years. And because I am nearly their age and I knew them personally, I must wonder what their own thoughts of the future might have been. "1848" was defeated and resulted in imperialism in the 1880s. Then, how about "1968"? Isn't it the same as what happened to "1848"? For instance, the theory of deconstruction had social impact because it also suggested a position from which to deconstruct both capitalism and socialism as metaphysics during the cold war period. But it lost its actual significance after 1990, because the deconstructive power of capitalism itself became blatantly displayed. Also "micro-politics," which laid more emphasis on the small powers latent in the civil society instead of state power, cannot cope with war declared by the state, typical of macro-politics. Now there seems to be a revival of 1968 or 1848, but with a different costume. For instance, Negri & Hart predict that the multitudes will rise in revolt against a single empire or world capitalism. But this is on the one hand, a new version of the Communist Manifesto's prediction that the world would be divided into two

large classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, which eventually reach a final showdown. On the other hand, it is a revival of anarchist insurgence. That means that they are recalling "1968" or "1848". But it is only a repetition of the past, its tragedy and its farce. But if that is so, does that mean then that we have to move to the politics of social democracy? I want to remind you that this is the very question that plagued intellectuals in the 1880s. We should consider it just to understand the questions we face in the present. Three years after the death of Marx, Engels wrote in his preface to the English edition of Capital that after "his life-long study of the economic history and condition of England", Marx concluded that "England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. " (1886). If what Engels said is true, what does it mean? Does it mean that the course for the future lies in parliamentary social democracy? In fact, we cannot tell for certain what Marx thought about this, but Engels' position is quite clear. He would later pronounce that "1848" was outdated. In the 1890s, when the social democratic party advanced by leaps and bounds in Germany, Engels came to think that social revolution "entirely by peaceful and legal means" was possible in Germany as well. His disciple Bernstein pushed this one step further. In the meantime, there were also people who thought socialist revolution was possible in the underdeveloped capitalist nations and who therefore shifted the center of gravity of the revolution to there: Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, and Trotsky. This amounted to a recovery of "1848," despite differences in nuance. And here we should add anarchists as well. They recovered their energy in anarcho-syndicalism. They advocated the general strike as the means of revolution. In this sense, both Marxists and anarchists recovered "1848" after a gap of 60 years. As I mentioned earlier, both were summoned up again in 1968. And more recently both Negri and various anarchists have been trying to recover "1968" again. However, I do not see any future lying in this direction. In the 1880s and 90s, there was no other choice other than these two directions: social democracy and radicalism. But they were both swept away by imperialist development. The result was the First World War. How about today? We are located in a similar situation. And if we don't find an alternative to counter the state and capital, we too will be driven away by the repetition-compulsive movement of the state and capital. 5 At all events, is there no alternative that can counter the state and capital? I think there is. There is a method for countering capital and state "entirely by peaceful and legal means", while refusing parliamentarianism. In my view, this method can be found in Capital, to which Marx devoted his whole life after he abandoned his

"1848." What is it? I don't have enough time today to talk about it in detail, but I hope you will read my book Transcritique, on Kant and Marx. Today, I would like to talk about another alternative, which was shown by a British man who turned Marxist after the death of Marx. He was an anarchist who had long been engaged in the Arts and Crafts movement and who turned Marxist after reading Capital. William Morris was opposed not only to Fabian socialism, but also to Bolshevism. I think his approach is deserving of more attention today. What is interesting here is that the Okakura Tenshin I mentioned earlier seems to be have been influenced by Morris, although he did not refer to him directly. In fact, the British woman who wrote a preface to The Ideals of the East called Okakura the "William Morris of the East". Meanwhile, Yanagi Muneyoshi who in some respects may be called Okakura's successor studied Morris ardently. Yanagi praised Korean pottery and folkcraft and supported Korean independence from Japan. I underscore the fact that these two figures who acted for the liberation of Asia based themselves in the field of culture. This "culture" did not refer to abstract ideas, but rather to concrete art and to the art of living. This was far from the political ideology of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. Finally, let me return to the theme of "the cultural identity of East Asia." I remarked earlier that it was linked to the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere of the 1930s. Then, is it likely that Japanese will begin repeating this slogan again today? Never! It is unlikely that the 1930s will be repeated today. But this does not mean that we are free from the repetition-compulsive nature of capital and the state. So while it may be said that the 1930s will never be repeated, in fact we may be seeing a repetition of the 1880s now. In fact, the situation in Asia today is like that of the 1880s prior to the Sino-Japanese War. China is no longer the nation it was in the 1930s, dominated by the imperialist powers and split by an internecine war, but instead is now an "empire" that expands its politico-economic influence all across southern Asia. The geopolitical map of East Asia created around the time of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894 is still alive today. For example, Taiwan was an outcome of this war. 　After World War Two, people within and without Japan were afraid that it might return to its prewar militarism. Such fears were both right and wrong. Firstly, such fear is beside the point. Postwar Japan rejected both military expansionism and pan-Asianism. Neither will come back. In this regard, Germany stands in sharp contrast to Japan. As a matter of fact, the idea of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity was borrowed from the German Grossraum. However, Japan abandoned this after the war, while Germany did not. They have realized it in a different form, namely the European Union. In a sense, Germany did not disavow its prewar attempt to unify Europe. Of course, they rejected the past thoroughly, with deep apologies and compensation. But why did they do so? And why did other European nations accept this? Because they were

aware of the oneness of Europe standing against the rest of the world, especially the United States. The

consciousness

of

the

identity

of

Europe

has

its

origins

in

European

consciousness toward the Islamic world, but in modern times, it stems from Napoleon's concept of the federation of Europe as a counter to British industrial capitalism. The same thing was repeated in the Third Reich. France and Germany have repeatedly fought wars since Napoleon, struggling to win hegemony in order to unify Europe against the rest of the world. By contrast, postwar Japan had no such intention. It is determined never to commit itself to Asia. Japanese reflections and apologies on the imperialist past seem to lack serious consistency, because they have no intention whatsoever of working together with other Asians. For this reason, Japanese politicians have repeatedly made stupid remarks they would not make if they really wanted to get along well in Asia. I myself have been angered by the follies of Japanese politicians that nullified numerous Japanese efforts to improve relations with Asian nations. It is simply absurd to do such things, even in terms of simple economic rationality. But as I observe the words and deeds of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and his vast popularity, I have had to reconsider my views. I now have to acknowledge that there is a will of the state, lurking behind the politicians. Japan as a state has no urge to realize Asian community. Its primary concern is instead to maintain good terms with the Unites States. That being so, it is not difficult to understand the Japanese response to the Iraqi War: don't oppose the US, and don't side with Asia. Herein lies Japan's reflection on the Second World War. Now let me return to the topic at hand. The fear of Japan repeating the 1930s misses the point, but the fear of Japan reviving as a military power is to the point. In other words, it is not the 1930s but the 1880s that are being repeated. We have some memory of what happened 60 years ago, but little of what happened 120 years ago. We try hard not to repeat the past of 60 years ago, but in so doing, we are unconsciously repeating the past of 120 years ago. Japan's military fortification today is different from that of wartime fascism. The same is true of the other nations in East Asia. For instance, North Korea is becoming more and more like the Li dynasty, while China is becoming more and more like the Ching dynasty. With all of this, is there still any significance in talking about the cultural identity of East Asia? I think there is. I remarked a while ago that Okakura countered the de-Asianization of Japan with the notion of the cultural identity of Asia as found in the history of arts. "Asia is one" was the epitome of this. And I also noted that this was later translated into Japanese and became a slogan for national strategy in the 1930s. This fact means that the same phrase may change its meaning depending who utters it. When we talk about cultural identity, we should ask who is speaking. Is it the state and capital? Or is it individuals like Okakura who stand against the state and capital?

The notion of the cultural identity of the East Asia is empty and ugly, when it is spoken by the state and capital. Nevertheless, it cannot simply be dismissed for that reason. What Okakura called the ideals of the East remains a fresh idea so long as it is not yet realized. I think that the true "cultural identity of East Asia" can be shaped through solidarity and the association of people's struggles against the state and capital. It is not an easy task. Probably we will be swayed and driven by the repetition-compulsive structure of the state and capital. But if we are more aware of this, we can elude futile repetition and gradually advance toward the Ideals of the East.

Bibliography Harvey, David, The New Imperialism, Oxford University Press, 2003. Kojin, Karatani and Kohso, Sabu, Transcritique, on Kant and Marx, The MIT Press, 2003. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The German Ideology, Prometheus, 1998. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Communist Manifesto, Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire, Pluto Press, 2002. Marx, Karl, Capital, Penguin Classic, 1993. Heehs, Peter, The Bomb in Bengal The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India

1900-1910, Oxford University Press, 1993. Kakuzo, Okakura, The Ideals of the East, J. Murray, 1920. Tenshin, Okakura, The Book of Tea, Duffield and Co., 1928.

국문초록 동아시아의 이상 - 카라타니 코진 오늘날 동아시아의 문화적 정체성에 대해 말하는 것이 여전히 의미가 있는 일일까? 나는 의 미가 있다고 생각한다. 오늘날 만연해 있는 일본이 1930년대 제국주의 시대로 되돌아갈지 도 모른다는 두려움은 핵심을 놓친 것이며, 오히려 일본이 군사 강국으로 다시 태어나려는 욕망에 대한 두려움이야말로 올바른 관점이라 할 수 있다. 우리는 아마도 60년 전에 일어난 일들에 대한 기억을 가지고 있을 것이지만, 오히려 120년 전에 일어났던 일에 대한 기억은 거의 망각해가고 있다. 그러나 정작 두려운 것은 약 60년 전에 일어났던 일을 반복하지 않 으려는 우리의 노력 속에 무의식적으로 120년 전으로 되돌아가려는 충동이 숨어있을 수도 있으리라는 점이다. 예를 들면 조선민주주의 인민공화국은 점점 더 조선을 닮아가고 있으 며, 중화인민공화국 역시 점점 더 청나라를 닮아가고 있다. 오카쿠라 텐신은 일본의 탈 아 시아화를 통한 “아시아는 하나다”라는 명제를 수립했다. 그러나 아이러니컬하게도 이 동일 한 명제는 이후 1930년대 군국주의 일본의 대동아공영권의 모토가 되었다. 우리는 하나의 명제가 누구에 의해, 어떠한 관심 안에서, 어떠한 맥락과 담론적 구성 안에서 발화되고 인 지되는가를 물어보아야 할 것이다. 그것은 국가와 자본에 의해서인가? 혹은 국가와 자본에 반대했던 오카쿠라 텐신과 같은 개인에 의해서인가? 동아시아의 이상은 그것이 국가와 자본 에 의해 발화될 때 추하고 공허한 것이다. 동아시아의 이상 혹은 동아시아의 문화적 정체성 이란 실체적인 것이 아닌 생성적인 되어야 하며, 국가와 자본의 반복 강박적 구조에 대한 인민의 투쟁 안에서 서서히 모습을 드러낼 것이다. 그리고 이러한 사실을 우리가 자각하고 있는 한 우리는 이러한 악순환의 구조에서 빠져나와 새로운 동아시아의 이상을 향한 작은 한 걸음을 내딛을 수 있을 것이다. 키워드 Keywords 동아시아, 문화적 정체성, 담론, 일본, 오카쿠라 텐신(岡倉 天心) East Asia, Cultural identity, discourse, Japan, Okakura Tenshin 투고: 2006년 4월 17일 심사: 2006년 5월 30일 ~ 6월 17일 게재확정: 2006년 6월 21일