EAS 209 Essay Topic

Postmodernism and Japan

Edited by Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian

Duke University Press

Durham and London

Naoki Sakai

Modernit y and Its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism

Even though I will predictably reach the concl usion that the postmodern, an other of the modern. cannot be identified in terms of our "modern " discourse. it should not be unerly pointless to put into question what constitutes the separation of the modern and the postmodern-that is. what underlies the possibility of our talking about the modern at all. Similarly. it is essential to deal with another other of the modern, the pre mod - ern, with reference to which modernity has also been defined in a great many instances. This series-premodern-modern- postmodern -may suggest an order of chronology. How- ever, it must be remembered that this order has never been dissociated from the geopoliti- cal configuration of the world. As is known very well by now, this basically nineteenth- century his torica l scheme provides a perspec- tive through which to comprehend the lo- cation of nations, cul tures, traditions, and races in a systematic manner. Although the last term has not emerged until fairly re- cently. the historico-geopolitical pairing of

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the premodern and the modem has been one of the major organizing apparatuses of academic discourse. The emergence of the third and enigmatic term, the postmodem , possibly testifies not so much to a t ransition from one period to another as to the shift or transforma- tion of our discourse as a result of whic h the supposed indisputabil- ity of the historico-geopolitical pairing (premodern and modem) has become inc reasingly problematic. Of course. it is not the first time the va lidity of this pairing has been challenged. Yet, surprisingly enough, it has managed to survive many c hallenges, a nd it would be extremely optimistic to believe it bas finally been proven to be ineffectual.

Either as a set of socioeconomic conditions or as an adherence of a society to selected values, the term "modernity" can never be under- stood without reference to this pairing of the premodern and the modern. His torically, modernity has primarily been opposed to its historical precedent; geopolitically it has been contrasted to the non- modem, or, more specificalJy, to the non-West. Thus, the pai ring has served as a disc ursive scheme according to which the hi storical predi- ca te is trans lated into a geopolitical one and vice versa. A subject is posited through the attributio n of these predicates, and thanks to the function of this discursive apparatus, two kinds of a reas are dia - c ritically discerned: the modern West and the premodern non-West. As a matte r of course, this does not mean either that the West wa s never at premodern stages o r that the non-West can never be modern- ized: it simply excludes the possibil ity of a si mu ltaneous coexi ste nce of the premodern West a nd the modern non-Wes t .

Already a c ursory examination of this sort about moderni ty am - ply suggests a certain polarity or warp among the possible ways to conceive of the world historically a nd geopolitically. As many have pointed out, t here is no inherent reason why the West/ no n- West op- pos ition should determine t he geographic perspective of modernity exce pt for the fac t that it defi nitely se rves to establish the putative unity of the West . a nebulous but command ing posi tivity whose exis- te nce we have tended to take for granted for such a long time. It goes without saying that the West is not si mply and stra ightforwardly a geographic category. One need not refe r to historical details to dis- cover that the Wes t has expanded and shifted arbitrarily fo r the last

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two centuries. It is a name for a subjec t wh ich gathers itself in di s- course but is a lso an objec t constituted discursively; it is, evidently. a name a lways assoc iating itself with those regio ns, communities, and peoples that appear poli tica lly or economically sup erior to other regions, communities. a nd peoples. Basically. it is j ust like th e name "japan," whi c h reputedly des ignates a geograph ic area , a traditio n, a national identity, a culture. an ethnos, a market, and so on, yet unlike all the other names associated wi th geograph ic particularities, it also implies the refu sal of its self-de limitation ; it claims that it is capa ble of sus taining , if not actua lly transcending. an impulse to transcend all the particularizations. Which is to say that the West is never content w ith what it is recognized as by its others; it is al- ways urged to approach others in order to ceaselessly transform its self-image; it continually see ks itself in the midst of interaction with the Other; it would never be satisfied with bei ng recognized but would wish to recognize others; it would rather be a supplier of rec- ognition th an a receiver thereof. In short, the West must represent the moment of the universal under whi ch particulars are subsumed. Indeed. the West is particular in itse lf, but it also constit utes the uni- versal point of reference in relation to which others recognize them- selves as particularities. And, in this regard, the West thinks itself to be ubiquitous.

This account of the putative unity called the West is nothing new, yet this is exactly the way in whic h jiirgen Habermas, for instance, still argues about Occ idental rationalism. He "implicitly connec t[s] a claim to universality with our Occidental understandina of the world." 1 In order to specify the significance of this claim. he relies upon the hi storico-geopolitical pairing of the premodern and the modern, thereby highlighting a comparison with the mythical unde r- standing of the world. Within the c ultural traditions accessible to us- that is. within the c ultural traditions anthropologists have re- constructed for us-myths of archaic societies ''present the sharpest contrast to the understanding of the world dominant in modern soci- eties. Mythical worldviews are far from making poss ible rational orientations of action in our sense. With respec t to the conditions for a rational conduct of life in this sense. they present an antithesis to the modern understanding of the world. Thus the heretofore unthe-

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matized presuppositions of modem thought should become visible in the mirror of mythical thinking." 1

He takes for granted a parallel correspondence among the binary oppositions: premodern / modem, non- West /West, myt h ical/rational. Moreover, for him, the very unity of the West is a given; it is an almost tactile reality. What is most surprising is that while admit- ting the need for the non- West as a mirror by which the West be- comes visible, Habermas obviously does not ask if the mirror may be extremely obscure. Whether or not the image facilitated by eth- nographers and anthropologists is the true representation of what is actua lly there, is not at issue. What is worthwh ile noting is that he dea ls with the non-Western cultures and traditions as though they were clearly shaped and as though they could be treated exhaustively as objects. Even w hen he tackles the problem concerning the incom- mensurability of other cultures, the whole issue of unintelligibility is reduced to the intelligibility of the problem of incommensurabili ty. For Haberm as, it signifies no more than that of cultu ral rel ativism, a pseudoproblem in itself.

Habermas argues \vith epistemological confidence in order to rein- stall epistemological confidence in us and make us tr ust in univer- salism again.3 That is, given the most persuasive and possibly most ri goro us determination avai lable today of the term "ethnocentric - ity," one might say he is si mply e thnocentric. But if the intrusion of the term "postmodern" bears witness to the inquietude surround ing our identity, if this putative uni ty of the West, t he us, from which and with whom Habermas wishes to spea k is being dissolved, what does the fact that his epistemological confidence is not shaken im- ply? If the possibility of a certain enunciative position, the us, the Occidental us, with whkh his theory of communicative action is so closely interwoven, is in fact threatened, would one be justified to say his epistemological confidence indicates something e lse? Are we then allowed to say it points to an inquietude about us that has been repressed?

From this perspective, it is understandable that the discursive object caUed japan has presented a heterogeneous insta nce that could not be

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defined as a specific and unitary particularity in universal terms: Japan's uniqueness and identity are provided insofar as Japan stands out as a partic ular object in the universa l fie ld of the West. Only when it is integrated into Western universalism does it gain its own identity as a particulari ty. In other words, japan becomes endowed with and aware of its "self" only when it is recognized by the West . It is no acciden t that the discourse on japanese uniqueness (Nihon- j inron) mentions innumerable cases of japan's difference from the West, thereby defining japan's identity in terms of deviations from the West. Its insistence on Japan's pecu liarity and difference fro m the West embod ies a nagging urge to see the self from the viewpoint of the Other. But this is nothi ng bur the positi ng of Japan's identity in Western te rms w hich in return establishes the centrality of t he West as the universal point of reference. This is why, despite the gestu res of critic izing j apan ese exclusivism and ethnocentricity, Pollack in fact eagerly e mbraces a nd endorses the Japanese particularism and racism so ev ident in Nihonjinron. As a matter of fact, h is e ntire argument would collapse without t his openhanded acceptance of particularism.

Con trary to what has been advertised by both sides, un iversa l- ism and particu larism re inforce and supplement each o t her ; they are never in rea l conflic t ; they need eac h other and have to seek to form a symmet rical, mutually supporting rel ationsh ip by every means in or- der to avoid a dialogic encounter which wouJd necessarily jeopardize their re putedly secure a nd harmonized monologic worlds. Universal- ism and partic ularism endorse each other's defect in order to conceal their own; they a re in timately tied to each other in their accomplice. In this respect, a particularism such as nationalism can never be a serious c ritique of universalism, for it is an accomplice thereof.

Still, the relationship between the West and the non- West seems to follow the old and familiar formula o f master/slave. And during the 1930s when "the t imes after the modem" (Bendai), somewhat simi- lar· to our postmodernity, were extensively examined, one of the issues that some japanese inte llectuals problematized was the West and the non- West relationship itself. In offering a diagnosis of the times, many, including young philosophers of t he Kyoto School such

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as Koyama lwao and Kosaka Masaaki. singled out as the most sig- nificant index the rapport between the Western (European) a nd the non -Western (non-European) worlds. A fundamental c hange, they observed, had taken place in the world si nce the late nine teenth and the ea rly twentieth centuries. Until the late ninetee nth century, his- tory seemed to have moved linearly toward the further unification of the world. The entire globe wa s gradually organized according to the s ingular framework which ultimately would allow for only one center. First of all, history appeared to be an unending process of uni- fi cation and centralization with Europe at the ce nter. Hence, it was understandable and partially inevitable to conceive of history s imply as the process of Westernization (Europea nization). In this histori cal sc heme, the entire world was viewed from t he top , and was thought of as being Western in the sense that the rest of the world was taken to be that which was doomed to be Westernized. Essentially, as is bes t represented by Hegelian histo ric ism, "the history of the world was European history." 11

However, toward the late nineteenth century, Koyama claims, the non-Western world began to move toward its independence and to form a world of its own. As a consequence of this transformation, what had hitherto been taken for the entire world was revea led to be a merely modem (kindai) world, a world among many worlds. This possibili ty for historica l cognition and praxis, informed by the funda- mental historical transformation of the world, was then called " World History." In this world history, it was assumed that histor ical changes simply could not be comprehended without reference to the a lready established spatial categories: climate , geography. race, nation, cul- ture, etc. Only within the framework set up by those categories was it possible to understand historical developments and make sense out of various changes whkh were to be incorporated into a larger unit of narrative. What t his simple but undeniable recognition pointed to was that history was not only temporal or c hronological but also spa· tial and relational. The condition for the poss ibility of conceiving of history as a linear and evolutionary series of incidents lay in its not as yet thematized relation to other histOries, other coexisting tempo- ralities. Whereas monistic history (ich igenteki rekishi) did not know its implicit reliance on other histories and thought itself autonomous

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and total. "world " history conceived of itself as the spatial relations of hi stories. In world history. therefore. one could not think of his- to ry exclusively in those te rms which referred back only to that sa me hi story; monisti c histo ry cou ld not deal wi th the world as it was appre he nded in world history since the world is primarily a sphere of he te rogeneity and others. To what ex tent Koyama's world hi story was capable of faci ng heterogeneity and others. and whether or no t world history wou ld ever be able to be exposed to them in their heteroge ne ity and otherness will be examin ed later. Bu t I shouJd note that this notion of othern ess a nd heterogeneity was a lways defin ed in term s of differen ces a mong or betwee n nations. cultures, and his to- ri es as if there had been no differences and heterogeneity within one nation, c ulture , and history. For Koyama, heterogeneity and other- ness were at most moments of international differences.

An oblivion of spatial predicates. which reveals itself as the truth of mon istic history at the moment of t he emergence of wor ld history, comes from certain hi storical conditions. Unless the hi storica l and c ultural world is se riously challenged and influenced by another, it would never reac h an awareness that its own world can never be di- rectly eq uated to the world at large. and would continue to fantasize about itself as being the re presentative and representation of the to- tality. Eu rocentric history is one of the most typical cases of this: for it, the world does not exist. But Koyama also adds j apanese national history to the lis t . Japanese national history is another example of monistic history in whic h, in spite of the fact that Japan has been c hallenged a nd influenced by other histories and c uJtures, it bas yet to arrive at the knowledge that history resides in those intera ctions with others, due to its island situation (shimaauni-teki joken).

What Koyama brought into awareness is the fact that the very identity of a history is constituted by its interdependence with other histories, things other than itself. Precisely because monistic history does not recognize the conditions for the possibility of its own iden- tity. it naively expands its specific values indefinitely and continues to insist upon the universal validity of those va lues: it misunderstands and misconstrues the moment according to whic h the necessity to claim its universality and the insistence upon its identity a re simul- ta neously inaugurated. Thus the moment of otherness is deliberately

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tran sformed in order to maintain its putative ce ntrality as the initiator of the unive rs al a nd the commensurability of unive rsa l and partic ular va lues. This no doubt amounts to the a nnihi lation o f the Other in its otherness. Proba bly the mission which moni stic hi story believes it - self to take cha rge of is best summarized by the following statement: "They are just like us." Of course, it has to be remembered , this state- ment is definitely distinct from another statement-" We are just like them"-in whic h the centrality of us is not insured: that is, t he in- feriority in the power of us is instituted instead of t he superiority, but these fo rm a supplementary pa ir.

Monis tic history has worked in the se rvice of a certain histor ica lly sp ecific domination, a form of domination whi ch has not ceased to be turbulent in its e ffect even today. However, Koyama saw and tried to seize a tuining point in the development of monistic history. He insisted that another his tory. world history, which recognizes other his tories, was about to emerge. And this emergence should mark a fundamental change in relationship between the s ubject of history and its others; it should indica te that the monistic hi story in wh ic h others we re refused their own recognition was no longer possible. In this new history, the plurality of histories and the interaction among them would be the principle. Hence, spatial terms would of necessity be incorporated into a history that wou ld have to be construed as a synthesis of time and space, and internationalized.

What Koyama advocated may sound like a genuinely pluralisti c history as opposed to a linear singular one, and, if one were to believe all that has been said, this trans ition from monistic history to world his tory should mark a radical histori ca l cha nge leading to a different power arrangement in which cult ural , nationaL and historical par- ticularities are fully respected. All the c ultural worlds would t hen be mediated not by what K6saka Masaaki ca lled the "ontological univer- sals" (yu -teki fuhen) but by the "mu " universals (mu-teki fuhen) .14

And if this should be the case, one wou ld then envisage the beyond of modern times. the other side of the historical break which would allow one to objectify the limits o f the modern discourse- in short , a genuine postmodernity.

In this context, it is noteworthy that, for Koyama as well as fo r

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Kosa ka, the unity of the subject of history, of pluralistic history, is unequivocally equated to that of the nation-sta te. Yet they stress that the nation-state does not immedia tely correspond to a race (jinshu ) o r folk (minzoku). The state for them is a being-for-itself which is opposed to other states. and , in this regard , it exists in the ··world ." T he state, therefo re, is not likened to other "entities" suc h as race. nat io n. clan. o r fami ly precisely because it has to be mediated by its re lationships with other states and consequently be self-reflective- that is, a subj ect. On th e othe r hand, the nation desig nates a commu- nity rooted in nature. a community where people are born and die. The bondage that kee ps its members together is that of blood, pro- crea tion, and land, and is natural in the sense that the tie between mother and c hild is natura l.

Koyama issues a warning disclaimer here: the nat ion as a natu - ra l co mmunity ca n never be the subject of history because it is not med iated by universals. T he natu ra l community (Kosaka re fers to it as "substa nce" [kitai)) is not a subjec t in itself, fo r it has yet to be rationa lized. The nat ural commu ni ty must be represented by the state; only t hrough the state. the natural community is identified as the nation for itself. And only t hrough this representation to itself does the nation become historical and generate its own c ulture, a histori cal world of its own. At this stage, a nation forms a hi sto ry or histori cal world of its own wi th the state as its subjec t.

While rejec ting Hegelian philosophy as a n extension of monis tic history, Koyama rigorously follows Hegelian construct ion. Accept· ing a ll the " modern " premises, Koyama attempts to cha nge merely the ir historical view. By introducing pluralistic world history and thereby claiming to go beyond modernity ( kindai), he endorses al- most everything the Japanese state has acqui red unde r the name of modernization. The critique of the Wes t and of the modern expressed in hi s c ritique of monistic history seems to disclose t he fa ct tha t the whole rhetoric of anti-modernity is in fac t a cover for the unprin- c ipled endorsement of anything modern when Kosaka and Koyama deal with the issues on which the cri tique of the West is most urgent - the issues rela ted to the Sino-Japanese situations during the 1930s and early 1940s.

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In a roundtable talk held in November 1941 , Kosaka, Koya ma, and others refer to the relationship between historica l development and t he morality of a nation. 15

KOYAMA: The subject [shutai ] o f moral energy should be the nation [ kokumin ]. ... The nation is the key to every problem. Moral energy has nothing to do with indiv idual or personal ethics, or the purity o f blood. Both culturally and politically the nation is the center of moral energy.

KOSAKA: That is right. T he folk [minzoku] in itself is meaningless. Whe n the fol k gains subjectivity [shutaisei ] , it necessarily turns into a national folk [ kokka-teki minzoku ] . The folk without sub- jectivity o r self-determination [jiko aentei ], that is, the folk that has not transformed itself into a nation [kokumin ] is powerless. For instance, a folk like the ainu cou ld not gain independence, and has event ually been absorbed into other folk [t hat has been transformed into] a nation. I wonder if the jews would follow the sa me fate. I think the Subject of Wor ld History must be a national fol k in this se nse.'6

O ne ca n ha rdly d iscern a ny difference between this understanding o f modern subject ivity and that of the Hegelian dialectic. First of all, the modern nation must be an embodime nt of the will (jiko-aentei sei). That is to say, the subjec t of the nation is, at the sa me tim e, self-determination (the determi nation of the self as such ) and the determin ing se lf (t he self that determi nes itself). And the modern nation must externaUze itself in order to be aware of itself and to rea lize its w ill. He nce, it is, without exception, a nation representing itself in t he st ate; it is the synthesis of a folk (irrational) and the state (rational). The nation is the reason concretized in an ind ividua lity (kobetsusei = folk), so that the nation cannot coi ncide with t he folk immediately. In orde r fo r the fol k to transform itself into the nation , the folk must be negatively mediated by o t her folks. That is. the stron ge r fo lk must conquer and subj ugate othe r weaker fo lks in o rder to form t he nation. '7

The fragility of t hei r anti-modern rhetoric becomes all the more apparent when the plural istic world history is discussed in the con-

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text of the contemporary historical situation. In another roundtable talk titled "T6aky6ei ke n no rinrisei to rekishisei" ("Ethics and His- toricality of Grea t East Asian Coprosper ity Sphere") held about three mont hs afte r the previo us o ne with the sa me participa nts, they di - rectly re late the issue of history to the Sino-Japanese relationship.18

KOSAKA : The Sino-japa nese wa r [shina jihen] invo lves many things and is ext reme ly complex. But the final factor whic h determines t he outcome should be the question "which morality is supe rior, the Japa nese or Chinese one?" Of course, poli t ical a nd c ultura l mane uvers are very important. Yet our moral attitude towa rds the Chinese is even more important , perhaps. We shou ld consider measu res like this: we should send many of our morally excell en t people over there to show ou r mora l energy so t hat the people over there would be persuaded to convince themselves [of our moral superiority] . The Si no-Japanese war is also a wa r of moral- ity. Now that we have entered the Great East Asian War. the war is muc h larger in scal e now, namely, a war between the Oriental morality and the Occide ntal morality. Let me put it differently,

• the q uestion is wh ic h moral ity will play a more important role in t he World History in the fu ture.19

It is amazi ng that they could stiU talk not only about the japanese nation's morality but a lso about its superiority ove r the Chinese one at that stage. Imagining the national atmosphere around that time in which these utterances were made, one would rather refrain from asking whe ther or not K6saka was joking. Nevertheless, it is at least worthwhile noting that the relationship between the japanese and Chinese moralities is put in a sort of dialectic. K6saka seems confi- dent t hat the supe rior ity of j apanese morality would eventually be proven as if the w hole thing had been guaranteed by japanese mili- ta ry superiority.

For K6saka , historical process involves a series of inevitable con- flicts in which t he morality of one nation is judged against that of another. Thus the incident in China (the Sino-Japanese war) is a moral war, and t he war over the Pacific is also a war which will decide the moral s uperiority of the East or the West in view of the ult imate morality of the totality-that is, all of humanity. In this

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sense. hi story a s he conceives of it is the history of mora l deve lopment toward the es tabl is hment of morality fo r humanity, toward the ult i- mate ema nc ipation of hum an kind. Despite re peated de nunciatio n of the te rm "humanism," Kosa ka is never able to resist the tempta tion of justifying the status quo in terms of humanism. In other words. his c ritiq ue of human ism and modernity is, in fact, a t hinly disguised celebration thereof.

Apart from an inc redible concei t expressed in th is passage, there is a theoretica l formation whic h clea rly contradicts the premises of pluralistic world history. To imagine the re lationship between China and Japan in terms of the war of Chinese and Japa nese morali ties is to posit a dialec tica l re lationship betwee n the two mora li ties. T hi s means th at , in the o ptimistic imagination, J apanese mora lity will eventually prove itS uni versal ity as well as the pa rticularity of Chi- nese mora lity. This would necessarily be a process in which pa r- tic ula rities would be subjugated to the domina tion of a unive rsa lity. Koyama said , "[The Chinese] have subjec tive se nse of their Sino- cent rism bu t do not have an objective consciousness of 'the World ' . . . . Whi le there is a moral in China, there is moral energy in Japa n. " 10

What we see here is the ugliest aspect of universalism, and it should not be fo rgotten that th is is, a fter all, the reality of Koyama's " plural- ism." Not o nly a Japanese victory over China was presumed and un- questioned, but also Japanese moral s uperior ity was assumed; th e temporary mili tary superiority of Japan (w hic h, after all , was faked by national mass media) was thought to guarantee the right to spea k condescend ingly. If this dialectic movement betwee n universalistic a nd particu la ristic moralities had proceeded as it was imag ined, it would eve ntually e liminate the pluralistic coexis te nce of many histo- ries and traditions passionately a dvoca ted in the critique of monistic history. Within the scheme of the universalism-particularism pair, the plural subjectS will gradually be organized as many particula rities su bjected to a single center of universalism.

How, then, can one possibly avoid the detested monistic history? For world history would be no different from the history of progress toward the complete dominion by one center. Koyama and K6saka think they are e nti t led to accuse the Chinese for thei r lac k of a world-histori ca l sense, for their insolence, and finally for t he ir par-

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ticularism; they felt entitled to do so because they thought they were speaking from the position of universalism.

Pluralistic world history proves itself to be another version of mo- nistic history. I do not know how one could possibly avoid this con- clusion when the subjects of world history are equated to nations. How can one put forward an effective critique of modernity when one affirms and extols one's national identity as the sole base for his- torical praxis? And their critique of modernity is at best some guise of anti-imperialism under which Japanese modernity (including the inevitable conseq uences of its expansionist impulse) is openhandedly endorsed. What annoyed them in monistic history is not the fact that many were suppressed and deprived of the sense of self-respect in the world because of its Eurocentric arrangement. What they were op- posed to was the fact that. in that Eurocentric arrangement of the world, the putative unity of the Japanese happened to be excluded from the center. And what they wished to realize was to change the world so that the Japanese would occupy the position of the center and of the subject which determines other particularities in its own universal terms. In order to achieve this goal, they would approve anything Western on condition that it conforms to the structure of the modern nation-state. Far from being an anti· Western determina- tion, what motivated them was the will to pursue the path of mod- ernization. In so far as centralization and homogenization is part and parcel of modernization, their philosophy of world history paradoxi- cally illustrates the inevitability of war by showing the impossibility of the coexistence of many centers. And the disastrous failure of this philosophy indicates that j apa n was already so far modemhed that it would necessarily initiate the movement toward universalism and would never be able to rid itself of the impulse to universalize and totalize despite aJl the rhetoric of anti-modernism.

Perhaps the most c rucial point the philosophers of world history did not realize was that japan did not stand outside the West. Even in its particularism. Japan was already implicated in the ubiquitous West, so that neither historically nor geopolitically could Japan be seen as the outside of the West. This means that , in order to criticize the West in relatio n to Japan, one has necessarily to begin with a critique of Japan. Likewise, the cr itiq ue of Japan necessarily entails

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the radical critique of the West. So it seems to me that, in so far as one tries to speak from the position of us, the putative unity of either the West or Japan, one would never be able to escape t he dominion of the universa lism-particularism pair: one would never be effective in criticism no m atter how radical a posture one might put on.

After Japan 's defeat in 1945. Takeuchi Yoshimi was one of those few intell ectuals w ho engaged themselves in the serious examination of Japanese morality in relation to China, a nd openly admitted that the war Japan had just lost was a war between Chinese and Japanese moralities. Brilliantly he demonstrated the inevitability of japan 's d e- feat on both soc ioeconomic and moral grounds. Japan proved itself morally defeated on its ow n te rms . However, Takeuchi was also one of the few who refused to ignore a certain legi timacy in what incited many, including the philosophers of world history, to a rhetoric of pluralism , despite the fact that, during the war, he was among those who despised and refused the idea of a "Great East Asian Copros- perity Sphere" advocated by people like the philosophers of world history. By every means he t ried to sustain an intellectu a l concern about the problem of Western domination which, of cou rse. d id not disappear with Japan 's defeat.

ln a m anner s imilar to Koyama's definition of monisti c history, Ta keuchi draws attention to th e involuntary nature of modernity for th e non-West. Here, too, the term of mode rnity must signify not only a te mporal or c hronologica l but also a spatia l concept in the sense th at the significance of modernity for the non-West would never be grasped unless it is apprehended in th e non-West's spatial relationship to the West. Mode rnity for the Orient, according to Takeuchi, is primarily its subj ugation to the West's political. milita ry, and economic control. The modern Orient was born only when it was invaded, defeated, and exploited by the West. This is to say that only when the Orient became an object for the West did it enter modern t imes. The truth of mo dernity for the non-West, therefore, is its reac tion to the West: Ta ke uchi insists that it must be so precisely because of the way modernity is shaped wit h regard to the problematic concerning the su bjective identity of the West.

Modernity and It s Critique liS

Modernity is the self-recognition of Europe. the recognition of Eu rope's modem self as distinct from her feudal self, a rec- ognition rendered possible only in a specific historical process in which Europe liberated itself from the feudalistic (with her liberation being marked by the emerge nce of free capital in econ- omy. or the establishment of modem personality as an indepen- dent and equal individual in human relations) . Europe is possible only in this hist ory. and inversely it can be said that history is possible only in Europe. For history is not an empty form of time. It consists in an eternal instance at which one struggles to over- come difficulties in order thereby to be one's own self. Without this. the self would be lost; history would be lostY

The West (Europe) cannot be the West unless it continually strives to transform itself; positively the West is not, but only reflectively it is. '' Her (Europe] capital desires to expand her market; the missio nar- ies are committed in the mandate to expa nd the kingdom of heaven. Through ceaseless tension, the Europeans endeavor to be their own selves. This ceaseless effort to be their own selves makes it impos- sible for them to remain what they are in themselves. They must take a risk of losing themselves in order to be their own selves." 22

The idea of progress or historicism would be unintell igible without reference to this continual searc h for the self, a ceaseless process of self- recenter ing.

Inev itably the self-liberation of the West resulted in its invasion into the Orient. In invading the Orient, "she [Europe] encounte red the heterogeneous. posited her self in opposition to it." At the sa me t ime, Europe's invasion gave rise to capitalism in the Orient. No doubt, the establishment of capitalism there was taken as a conse- quence of the West's survival-ex pansion. and it was thought to testify to progress in the h istory of the world and the triumph of reason. Of course, the Orient reacted to the West's expans ion and put up resistance to it. Yet in this very resistance it was integrated into the dominion of the West and served , as a moment, toward the comple- tion of Eurocentric and monistic world history. In th is scheme. the Orient was to play the role of self- consciousness that had failed in the continual dialectical reaffi rmation and recentering of the West as

116 Naoki Sakai

a self-consciousness that was ce rtain of itself; it a lso se rved as a n ob- ject necessitated in the format ion of th e West as a knowing subj ec t. T hus the O rie nt was ex pec ted to offer an e ndl ess seri es of st range a nd different things whereby the famili arity of o ur things was implicitly affirmed. The knowledge of Oriental thjngs was shaped after the ex- isti ng power relation between the West and its other-object, and, as shown in Edwa rd Said's Orienta/ism. it continued to affirm a nd solid- ify that relation. But we must not forget that the Orient thus known cannot be represented to itself; it can be represented only to the West .

On the o ne hand, the West is delimited, opposed to that whi ch is alien to it; it needs its other for its id entity. On the other hand. the West is ubiquitous a nd invisible as it is assumed to be the cond i- tion of the possibility for the universal validity of knowledge. Only in a disc ursive formation called modernity is universality possible as essentially Western universality. But, Ta keuc hi says. "The Orient resists." He reiterates the term resistan ce.

The Orient resists; it disturbs the West's dominion. It is important to note tha t the modernization of the Orient was prompted by this re- sistance. Here, Takeuchi stresses that ifthe Orient had not resisted it would never have been modernized. Accordingly, the modernization of the Orie nt should not be thought of as a mere imitation of West- ern things, although there have been cases in which t he will to resist was very weak. as in japan's modernization. As is amp ly shown by the fact tha t the Orient had to modernize and adopt things from the West in order to resis t it, the modernization of the Orient attests to an advance or success fo r the West, and, therefore, it is always West- ernization or Europeanization. So it necessarily appears that. even in its resistance, the Orient is subjugated to the mode of represen- tation dominated by the West. And its attempt to resis t the West is doomed to fai l; the Orient cannot occupy the position of a subject. Is it possible, then. to define the Orient as that which can never be a subject?

It goes without saying that neither the West nor the Orient are im- mediately referents. The unity of the West is totally dependent upon the manner in which resistance is dealt with in the gathering together of its subjective identity. At this juncture, Takeuchi 's explanation of

Modernity and Its Critique 117

the term resistance seems to begin to oscillate between two different readings.

Meanwhile, Takeuchi points out, the Orient does not connote any internal commonality among the names subsumed under it; it ranges from regions in the Middle East to those in the Far East. One can hardly find anything religious, linguistic, or cultural that is common amung those varied areas. The Orient is neither a cultural, religious, or linguistic unity, nor a unified world. The principle of its identity lies outside itself: what endows it with some vague sense of unity is that the Orient is that which is excluded and objectified by the West in the service of its historical progress. From the outset, the Orient is a shadow of the West. If the West did not exist, the Orient would not exist either. According to Takeuchi, this is the primary definition of modernity. For the non-West, mode rnity means, above all, the state of being deprived of its own subjectivity. Then does the non-West have to acquire its own subjectivity? His answer to this seems to harbor the kind of ambiguity so characteristic of his entire discourse. "For there is no resistance, that is, there is no wish to maintain the self (the self itself does not exist ) . The absence of resistance means that Japan is not Oriental. But at the same time, the absence of the self-maintenance wish (no self) means that Japan is not European. This is to say, japan is nothing." l3

Takeuchi says "Japan is nothing." But is Japan really nebulous and amorphous without any inclination toward self-recentering? Because Japan does not wish to be itself, to posit itself anew, he argues, it fails to be itself and al so fails to be like the West. His denunciation of contemporary japan makes it seem as if japan had not had any representation of itself, or the self that was not concretized in various institutions: as if there had not been any state which imposed the sense of a nation upon those living in the region; as if those living in the region did not identify themselves with the nation; as if the nation ca lled japan had existed fo r thousands of years merely as a natura l community.

japan is a modern nation. Precisely in their effort to sustain itself, people in Japanese territories have organized themselves as a nation and represented themselves in the state of that nation. How could a

118 Naoki Sakai

nation without the sense of national identity possibly launch a war which lasted for more than fifteen years, resulting in an amazing amount of human and economic w reckage? It seems t hat Takeuchi is caught in t he historico-geopolitical pairing of the premodern and the modern, according to which, since the West is modern, Japan should be premodern or at least non-modem. Instead of a nalyzing the pairing of the West and the non- West excluded by the West , Takeuchi assumes the validity of this pairing in ta lking about japan. But his analytical device collapses upon the object of its analys is.

This sort of misapprehension seems to derive from Takeuchi's con- viction that, in order to counteract the West's aggression, the non- Wes t must fo rm nations. Then what is heterogeneous to t he West ca n be o rganized into a kind of monolithic resistance against the West. A nation can oppose heterogeneity against the West, but within the nation homogeneity must predominate. Without constructing what Hegel ca ll ed the " universal homogeneous sphere," the nation would be impossible. So, whether you like it or not. the modernization pro- cess in the formation of the modem nation should entail the elimina- tion of heterogeneity within. Exactly the same type of relationship as that between the West and the non- West will be reproduced be- tween the nation as a whole a nd heterogeneous elements in it. In this context, the nation is always represented by the state so that it is a subject to which its members are subject, whereas heterogeneous elements remain deprived of t heir subjectivity so that they a re not subject to t he subj ec t.

Insofar as he never loses faith in the universal emancipation of mankind, Takeuchi is certainly a modernist. Therefore, he believes that monist ic world hi story is, after all thi ngs are considered, an inevi tability and that, consequently, t he universal emancipation will be realized not by the West but by the Orient. In hi story, he says, the true subject is the Orient. In the meantime, we mu st endure the el imination of heterogeneity in order to construct t~e nation, the subject of history. It is misleading to say that Takeuchi is anti- modern; be rejects only limited aspects of modernization.

On the other hand , one ca n detect a thread suggesting a different reading of his term resistance. For the O rient, resistance is supposed never to contribute to the formation of its subjective identity. In

Modernity and Its Critique 119

other words, resistance is not negation by means of which a subject is posited in opposition to what it negates. Hence, resistance has to be likened to negativity, as distinct from negation, which continues to disturb a putative stasis in which the subject is made to be adequate to itself. Here, Takeuchi is concerned with something fundamental to the whole problem of modernity and the West.

I do not know what resistance is. I cannot logically pursue the meaning of resistance .... I dread the rationalist belief that everything can be brought into presence. I am afraid of the pres- sure of an irrational will which underlies the rationalist belief. And to me that seems to be [the essence of] Europe. [Until re- cently] I have noticed that I have been haunted by this feeling of fear. When I realized that many thinkers and writers in Japan, except for a few poets, did not feel what I felt and were not afraid of rationalism, and when I noti ced that what they had produced in the name of rationalism- including materialism-did not look like rationalism, I felt insecure. Then I came across Lu Xun. I saw Lu Xun endur ing this kind of fear all by himself. ... If I were asked "What is resistance?", the only answer I have is " It is what you find in Lu Xun." 21

Resista nce comes from a deeply rooted fear of the will to represent everything, the will essent ial for modern subjectivity. Lu Xun exem- plifies a desperate effort to resist subj ec tivity, to resist subjection to subjectivity, and finally to resist subjection to the subject.

For Lu Xun, it is impossible to assume an observational and indifferent attitude, that is, the attitude of humanism. For the fool [Lu Xun himself] would never be able to save the slave as hu- manism naively hopes .... The slave is a slave precisely because he seeks to be saved. Hence, when he is awakened, he will be put in the state of "no road to follow," of "the most painful moment in life." He will have to experience the state of self-awareness that he is a slave. And he has to endure the fear. As soon as he gives in and begs for help, he will lose the self-awareness of his own slave status. In other words. the state of "no road to follow" is the awakened state, so if he still believes that there is a road to march on, he must be dreaming.

120 Naoki Sakai

And he continues,

The slave must refuse his slave identity, but at the same time. he must refu se the dream of liberation as well. He must be a slave with the acutest sense of hi s miserable s tatus, and remain in the " most painful awakened state in life." He must remain in the state that, because there is no road to follow, he must kee p on tryi ng to go. He rejects what he is. and at the same time be rejects any wish to be someone other than what he is. This is the meaning of despair which exis ts in Lu Xun and which makes Lu Xun possible . . .. There is no room for humanism here . ... H

Here. above all. resistance is that which disturbs the possi ble repre- sentational re lationship between the self and its image. It is some- thing t hat resists the formation of those ident ities which subject people to various institutions. Yet this does not liberate them ; this does no t lead to emancipation because people are often subjec t to what they most fear through the words of emancipation. Possibly one should leave them in their sleep rather than "cry a loud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, ma king those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death ." But if one is determined to be awake, one must at least resist one's hope to go beyond. What enabled Take uchi to c riticize modernity seems to come from this sense of resistance, although Ta keuchi so often approves of modernism. This is wh a t sepa ra ted him from those who naively imagine the possibility of over- coming the modern. By the same gesture of emancipation , they all fall into the trap set up by modernity. As Takeuchi has given up an emancipatory ideology, he can be a ll the more effectively critical o f moderni ty despite his commitment to certa in modernist va lues.

The sense of uncerta inty which the term postmodernity provokes may indicate the gradual spreading of this resistance. And I think I understand the term "play" best when I, unjustifiably perhaps. asso- ciate it with what Takeuchi saw in Lu Xun.26 Only at this stage one could talk about hope, but rather hesitantly. just as Lu Xun did in his short story "My Old Home."

The access of hope made me suddenly afraid. When J un-tu had asked fo r the incense burner and candlest icks I had laughed up

Modernity and Its Critique 121

my sleeve at him, to thin k that he was still worshipping idols and would never put them out of his mind. Yet w hat I now ca ll ed hope was no more than an idol I had c reated myself. The only di ffe rence was that what he desired was close at ha nd, w hile w hat I des ired wa s less eas ily real ized.

As I dozed, a stre tc h of jade-green seasho re spread itse lf before my eyes. and a bove a round golden moon hung from a deep blu e sky. I thought: hope ca nnot be sa id to exist, nor can it be said no t to exist. It is just like roads ac ross the earth. For actua lly t he ea rt h had no roads to begin with, but when ma ny me n pass one way. a road is made. 17

Notes

r J i.i rgen Habcrmas, The Theory of Communicarive Acrion. vol. r, trans. Thomas McCart hy (Boston, 1984). 14-

2 Ibid. l See Ric hard Rorty. "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity," in Habermas and

M odernity. ed. Ric hard J. Bernstein (Cambridge. Mass .. 1985). r67. 4 David Pollack. The Fracrure of Meaning (Princeton, 1986), '1- 5 Ibid . 6 Following the critique of positivist linguistics put forth by Tokieda Motaki during

t he 1930s. one could assert three pointS-the unity of language is very much Like the Kantian "ideal" or consciruring posirivi cy which makes the empirical study of language possible: the uni ty of language. therefo re . is never given in "e>Cperi- ence" : and, consequently. the idea of the universal essence of language would never be obtained through the induction of the accumu lated empirical d ata on the increa si ng number of particular languages.

7 It is in the eighteenth century that the unities of the Japanese cu lture, language. and ethnicity as they are conceived of today were brought into existence. In this sense, t he J apanese were born in the eighteenth century. See my dissertation. Voices of the Past (Chicago. 1983), 217- 335·

8 Pollack. Fracrure of Meaning. 4- 9 Ibid .. r6.

ro Ibid. , 3-4. II Jbid. , 227. r2 Ibid. r:s Koyama lwao. "Sekaishi no rinen " ("The Idea of World History"). Shiso (April-

May 1940) . 14 Kosaka Masaaki. " Rekishi-teki sekai" (" Historical World"), in Kosaka Masaaki

chosakushii (Complete Work s of Kosaka Masaaki). vol. r (Tokyo. 1964). 176- 2r7.

122 Naoki Sakai

IS K05aka Masaa ki. Suw ki Shigeta ka. Koya ma lwao, .lnd Nishitani Kc iji. "Sek::~ishi ­ tc ki tac h iba to Nihon" (''The Standpoint of World Hi story a nd Japan " ) . Chti6 koron (Janu ary •9 4Z}.

16 I bid .. aSs. 17 Kosa ka , " Re kishi-teki sekai." 192. t8 Kosaka Masaaki. Suzuki Shigcta ka. Koya ma lwao, a nd Nishitani Keiji . "Toakyoci-

ken no r inrise i l O rek ishisei" ("Ethics and HistOri caliry of Great Eas t As ian Co- prosperity Sphere"). Chilo koron ( April 1942).

19 Ibid .. 12o-za. 20 Ibid .. 129. 21 Takeuchi Yoshimi. " Kindai towa nanika " ("W hat Is Modernity?"), in Takeu,·hi

Yoshimi zenshil (Complete Works of Takeuchi Yoshimi ). vol. 4 (Tokyo. 1980) . 130. 22 Ibid .. 13 1. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid .. 144. 25 Ibid .. •ss-57- 26 See jacques De rrida, Dissemination . rrans. Barbara Johnson (C hicago. 1981). 6 t-

•7•- 27 Lu Xun. "My Old Home," in Selected Srories of Lu X un. trans. Yang Hs ien-ji and

Gladya Yang (Peking. 1972}. 63- 64.