Chapter 4 - Domin Seikatsu: Solidarity as a Political Strategy

Summary

On 17 November 1920, shortly after his return to Japan, Ishikawa addressed the Shinjinkai (New Man Society), a leftist student organisation affiliated to Tokyo Imperial University. The title of his lecture was Domin seikatsu – literally “life of the people of the earth”. It laid down the theoretical principles of the singular socio-political model Ishikawa had developed during his period of self-imposed exile and aimed at implementing back in Japan. Although he expanded on his ideas over the years, the seeds of all further intellectual projects were planted during this initial lecture. A distrust of state authority, attachment to agrarian traditions and bonds of solidarity, and a cosmological understanding of social phenomena constituted the essence of domin seikatsu. Crucially Ishikawa's vision relied on the practices of daily life as a motor for the transformation of society.

Ishikawa suggested “democracy” as an alternative reading for the term domin seikatsu. He connected its meaning to his first encounter with Edward Carpenter in 1913. On that occasion the Englishman discussed his 1883 collection of poems, Towards Democracy. As Ishikawa recalled, the conversation considered the origin of the word “democracy”, with the Greek word demos referring to “people attached to the land”, a meaning that current uses had obscured. He proceeded to translate demos as domin (土民) – rooted people or people of the earth – while “-cratie” became the homophone kurashi (く らし or 暮らし), a term meaning “life” and interchangeable with seikatsu. More than a play on words, Ishikawa's linguistic choice had clear significance. Both domin (as rootedness) and seikatsu (as daily living) expressed the very essence of his social thought.

Referring to the events of the Paris Commune of 1871, in which Elisee Reclus took part, Kristin Ross stresses how what Reclus called solidarity was thought of by the commune participants not as a moral or ethical sensibility, but as a political strategy. Kropotkin's term for the concept was mutual aid, and William Morris (1834-96) talked, like Edward Carpenter and his circle of friends, of fellowship.