Epilogue

Summary

The chaos and devastation brought about by the Pacific War within and outside Japan's borders confirmed Ishikawa's darkest forebodings. His government's geopolitical scheming during the First World War had evolved into a reckless and bellicose form of imperialism. Simultaneously, Bolshevism had betrayed all hopes of proletarian emancipation and given birth to an authoritarian behemoth. Although the war, censorship and poor health forced Ishikawa to keep a low profile, he persisted with his research and publishing activities. From the end of March 1945 he retired to Ueno, a mountain village in Yamanashi Prefecture, in order to escape the devastating bombing raids in Tokyo. There, he focused on his habitual routine of tilling the land and pursuing historical research. The level of self-sufficiency he had reached allowed him to reaffirm a symbolic, even if passive, defiance of the state apparatus.

As Japan accepted defeat on 15 August 1945, Ishikawa was almost 70 years old. His intellectual trajectory could have ended there, and in a sense it did, but not without a twist. Almost immediately after hearing the news of surrender, he sat down to write Museifushugi sengen (Anarchist proclamation), a text that he revised during the months that followed. For someone who had long asserted that the name of the Emperor should never be invoked in politics, he made the surprising move of expressing his support for the monarch. Although the full version of Museifushugi sengen was published only after Ishikawa's death, its content had already been made public at a round-table discussion and subsequent article entitled “How is Peace Possible?” (Heiwa wa dōshite dekiru ka) in 1948. The issue provoked heated debates within the recently established Japan Anarchist Federation (Nihon Anakisuto Renmei).

From Ishikawa's point of view, Japan's defeat represented a golden opportunity for the country and its people to rebuild society from scratch on the basis of anarchist principles of freedom, cooperation and equality for all. Peace and the destruction of the old system of state authority had suddenly given people the priceless chance of a fresh start.