Japanese Thinker Kato Hiroyuki’s Views on State and Society

Abstract

The paper focuses on the legacy of the Japanese thinker Kato Hiroyuki. The views of the academics on the state and society are analyzed. The author emphasizes that Kato was an adherent of social evolutionism and social Darwinism while postulating the need for social solidarity, which also reflected such traditional national worldviews as the ideas of Shintoism and Confucianism. It is pointed out that the penetration of Western educational ideology into Japan coincided with the impact of various socio-evolutionary schools on the minds of the local intelligentsia. This is demonstrated by the example of Kato Hiroyuki, who smoothly moved from the assimilation of the ideas of the French Enlightenment to social evolutionism. The article concludes that the leaders of Japanese sociological science, which was mainly formed in the depths of the struggle for “natural rights”, came from moderately conservative strata. From the very beginning of its existence, Japanese sociology has been closely connected with the ruling circles of its country, in fact, simply fulfilling the government’s social order.