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Comte, Mill, and the Thought of Nishi Amane in Meiji Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Thomas R. H. Havens
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One aspect of the intellectual upheaval which accompanied the Meiji Restoration of 1868 was the phenomenon of bummei kaika, “civilization and enlightenment.” Although it may be useful to think of the early Meiji years as a Japanese siècle de lumières, it is significant that the country's most progressive scholars derived their main inspiration from such contemporaneous Western social philosophies as positivism and utilitarianism, not the European enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It is natural that the proponents of bummei kaika turned for guidance to John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte rather than Diderot or Rousseau, because their goal was to expose Japan to those urbane modes of thought from abroad which would bring her to the “civilized” stage of development envisaged by European social philosophy. The means to be employed consisted of empiricism, not abstract reasoning: “what we should call the truly enlightened world,” wrote Tsuda Mamichi in 1874, “is when practical studies become popular in our country and each person attains an understanding of truth.” Similarly, Fukuzawa Yukichi took nineteenth century England, not eighteenth century France, as the model for Japan's efforts to achieve “enlightenment.”

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , February 1968 , pp. 217 - 228
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Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1968

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References

1 Rousseau was not introduced to Japan until 1877, for all practical purposes. See Tōru, Miyagawa, “Nihon no keimō shisō” [“Japanese Enlightenment Thought”], Kōza kindai shisō [Colloquium on Recent Thought], ed. Musashi, Kaneko and Hisao, Ötsuka, IX (Tokyo, 1959), 141Google Scholar.

2 “Kaika o susumeru hōhö o ronzu” [“Discussion of the Methods of Promoting Enlightenment”], Meiroku zasshi [Journal of the Meiji Six Society], No. 3 (Tokyo, Feb. 1874)Google Scholar, in Meiji bunka zenshū [Collection on Meiji Culture], ed. Sakuzō, Yoshino (Tokyo, 1927–1930), XVIII, 65Google Scholar.

3 This analysis has been suggested in part by Toshiaki, Ōkubo, “Bummei kaika” [“Civilization and Enlightenment”], lwanami kōza Nihon rekishi [Iwanami Colloquium on Japanese History], XV (Tokyo, 1962), 251–86Google Scholar.

4 See Ōkubo, pp. 274–75; Blacker, Carmen, The Japanese Enlightenment: A Study of the Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi (Cambridge, Eng., 1964), p. 38Google Scholar; Japanese Thought in the Meiji Era, ed. Masaaki, Kōsaka, trans. Abosch, David (Tokyo, 1958), pp. 50–60Google Scholar.

5 Kyōichi, Kazue, “Nihon kindai shisō no shodankai” [“The Various Stages of Recent Japanese Thought”], Kōza kindai shisō [Colloquium on Recent Thought], ed. Musashi, Kaneko and Hisao, Ōtsuka, IX (Tokyo, 1959), 103–04Google Scholar.

6 See Blacker, introduction and ch. 3, for a more favorable comparison of the European enlightenment and bummei kaika.

7 Biographical details are taken from Ōgai, Mori (Rintarō), Nishi Amane den [Biography of Nishi Amane] (Tokyo, 1898)Google Scholar, in Ōgai zenshü [Collected Works of Ōgai] (Tokyo, 1923–1927) VII, 125–97Google Scholar. See also Hackett, Roger F., “Nishi Amane—A Tokugawa-Meiji Bureaucrat,” JAS XVIII (Feb. 1959), 213–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Piovesana, Gino K., Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought, 1862–1962, A Survey (Tokyo, 1963). PP. 1–18Google Scholar.

8 Soraigaku ni taisuru shikō o nobeta bun [Document Stating Aims vis-à-vis Sorai Studies] (Tsuwano, 1848)Google Scholar, quoted in Kyōichi, Kazue, “Nishi Amane no shūgyō jidai” [“Nishi Amane's School Years”], Nihon oyobi Nihonjin [Japan and the Japanese], No. 1428 (Tokyo, Apr. 1964), 46Google Scholar. Other versions appear in Nishi Amane zenshū [Collected Works of Nishi Amane], ed. Toshiaki, Ōkubo (Tokyo, 1960), pp. 3–6Google Scholar, and Ogai, pp. 130–31. All the texts are based on a kambun diary kept by Nishi. Hereafter Nishi Amane zenshū will be cited as NAZS. Since one volume of NAZS appeared under Ōkubo's editorship in 1945 and three more volumes, numbered vols. I through II, were published between 1960 and 1966, dates rather than volume numbers will be used following the abbreviation NAZS.

9 Ōgai, p. 135.

10 The text, together with photographic reproductions of the entire original notes, was first published in NAZS 1945, pp. 3–562. The text is supplemented by notes taken by Nishi's pupil Nagami Yutaka. Hereafter Hyakugakfi renkan will be cited as HGRK.

11 HGRK, pp. 62–65. See Piovesana, p. 16.

12 HGRK, pp. 66–67.

13 The most important was Seisei hatsuun [The Relation of the Physical and the Spiritual], NAZS 1960, pp. 29–129.

14 See Lewes, George Henry, The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its Origins in Greece down to the Present Day (rev. ed., New York, 1857), p. 787Google Scholar.

15 HGRK, p. 74.

16 HGRK, p. 167.

17 HGRK, p. 54; Kyōichi, Kazue, “Meiji jidai no shisō” [“Thought in the Meiji Era”], Nihon no rinri shisōshi [History of Japanese Ethical Thought], ed. Kyōichi, Kazue (Tokyo, 1963), p. 297Google Scholar; Kyōichi, Kazue, “Nishi Amane no shōgai to sono shisō” [“The Career and Thought of Nishi Amane”], Tetsugaku kaiishi (The Journal of the Philosophical Society of Chuo University), No. 9 (1958), 1Google Scholar; Yoshiteru, Asō, Kinsei Nikon tetsugakushi [History of Recent Japanese Philosophy] (Tokyo, 1942), pp. 315–16Google Scholar.

18 HGRK, p. 145.

19 I am indebted to Professor Joseph R. Levenson for suggestions on this point.

20 HGRK, p. 55.

21 This work may be found in NAZS 1960, pp. 232–89.

22 Chichi keimō appears in NAZS 1960, pp. 390–450.

23 HGRK, p. 146.

24 Sec Blacker, p. 29, and Abosch, David, “Katō Hiroyuki and the Introduction of German Political Thought in Japan: 1868–1883” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in history, University of California, Berkeley, 1964), p. 322Google Scholar.

25 Charlton, D. C., Positivist Thought in France During the Second Empire, 1852–1870 (Oxford, 1959), PP. 44–48Google Scholar; Nishi, , “Yōgaku o motte kokugo o shosuru no ron” [“Discussion of Writing Japanese with Western Letters”], Meiroku zasshi No. 1 (Tokyo, Jan. 1874), in NAZS 1961, p. 579Google Scholar.

26 For Mill, see Principles of Political Economy, ed. Ashley, W. J. (London, 1909), pp. 795–96Google Scholar.

27 For Comte, see Court de philosophic positive (Paris, 1830–42) VI.Google Scholar

28 For documentation of the English impact, see Hane, Mikiso, “English Liberalism and the Japanese Enlightenment, 1868–1890” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in history, Yale University, 1957), pp. 8–25Google Scholar.

29 Soraigaku ni taisuru shikō o nobeta bun, p. 46.

30 See Charlton, pp. 5–7, for a summary of the various types of positivism.

31 Shin'ichi, Funayama, Meiji tetsugakushi kenkyū [Studies in the History of Meiji Philosophy] (Tokyo, 1959), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

32 See Funayama's comments ibid., pp. 7–8.

33 McEwan, J. R., The Political Writings of Ogyū Sorat (Cambridge, Eng., 1962), p. 14Google Scholar; Mueller, Iris W., John Stuart Mill and French Thought (Urbana, 1956), p. 128Google Scholar.

34 Sources of Japanese Tradition, ed. de Bary, Wm. T. (New York, 1958), pp. 423–24Google Scholar.

35 McEwan, p. 4; Mill, , “Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government, ed. Lindsay, A. D. (New York and London, 1951), pp. 42–50Google Scholar.

36 Liberty was first published in England in 1859, and Nakamura's translation was a complete one. Nagamine Hideki published a partial translation of Representative Government (1861) as Daigi seitai in 1875. Hayashi Shigeru and Suzuki Jūkō brought out a complete translation of Political Economy (1848) as Keizai ron in 1875. See Asō, p. 177.

37 Asō, p. 83.

38 Saburo, Ienaga and Kenji, Ino, “Kindai shisō no tanjō to zasetsu” [“The Birth and Collapse of Recent Thought”], Kindai Nihon shisōshi kōza [Colloquium on Recent Japanese Thought], ed. Saburō, Ienaga, I (Tokyo, 1959), 51–52Google Scholar.

39 On this point see Asō, p. 177; Shin'ichi, Funayama, Nihon no kannenronsha [Japanese Idealists], (Tokyo, 1956), pp. 48–49Google Scholar; Kyōichi, Kazue and Toru, Sagara, Nihon no rinri [Japanese Ethics] (Tokyo, 1959). PP. 175–76Google Scholar.

40 This theme, of course, is not unique to the Meiji period or to Japan. Cf. the search by Japanese intellectuals for the moral basis of “democratization” after World War II, especially in such works as Osaragi Jirō, Homecoming, trans. Brewster Horowitz (Rutland, Vt. and Tokyo, 1955).

41 Rigaku appeared in two volumes. System of Logic was first published in England in 1843, while Utilitarianism appeared serially in Fraser's magazine in 1861 and as a separate book in 1863.

42 It is contained in NAZS 1960, pp. 514–54. Hereafter Jinsei sampōsetsu will be cited as JSSPS.

43 JSSPS, p. 514

44 JSSPS, p. 515.

45 JSSPS, p. 515.

46 JSSPS, p. 519.

47 JSSPS, p. 515.

48 JSSPS, p. 515.

49 JSSPS, p. 519.

50 JSSPS, p. 521.

51 JSSPS, P. 527.

52 JSSPS, p. 528.

53 JSSPS, p. 546.

54 JSSPS, p. 532. By public Nishi meant society, not the state.

55 See Ryōen, Minamoto, “Meiji ishin to jitsugaku shisō” [“The Meiji Restoration and Practical Thought”], Meiji ishinshi no mondaiten [Problems of Meiji Restoration History], ed. Yoshio, Sakata 1962), pp. 116–17Google Scholar.

56 See Plamenatz, John, The English Utilitarians (Oxford, 1958), ch. IGoogle Scholar.

57 JSSPS, p. 534.

58 JSSPS, p. 534.

59 As expressed in “Representative Government,” in Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government, ed. Lindsay, A. D. (New York and London, 1951), pp. 271–92Google Scholar.

60 JSSPS, pp. 535–36.

61 JSSPS, p. 536.

62 JSSPS, p. 540.

63 JSSPS, p. 541.

64 JSSPS, p. 541.

65 For a discussion of Fukuzawa's ideas on this point, see Carmen Blacker's summary of Gakumon no susume, in Blacker, pp. 57–58.

66 JSSPS, p. 542.

67 For a less sanguine appraisal of the effects of keimō thought in general, see Blacker, pp. 138–39.