National Communion: Watsuji Tetsuro's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State

Abstract

The relationship between power and individual freedom is basic to any definition of morals or ethics.' Ethics, after all, are culturally defined rules of conduct-although most elaborations of ethics are based on so-called universal principles, rooted in sort of absolute, be it God, the cosmos, or nature-that are imposed one way or another upon individuals who have the capacity to choose between various modes of action. This definition of ethics implies, on the one hand, in Foucault's words, the presence in all societies of of (mode d'assujettissement) (Foucault 1982, p. 239), which, through various normalizing practices, leads to the fact that people ... recognize their moral obligations (ibid., p. 239; Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, p. 258). The rules of conduct that constitute the mode of subjection can be implicit or explicit, depending on the way they are imposed (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, p. 22). On the other hand, this definition implies choice of conduct by individuals, which in turn supposes certain measure of freedom of action (Foucault 1982, pp. 218-221). It is this relationship between power and freedom that I wish to examine here in the works of the Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960), as it relates to his conception of ethics and of the Japanese imperial state. To be more precise, the object of this article is to analyze the relation between the disappearance of power in Watsuji's treatment of the Japanese political organization and his ethical positions, whereby the individual's only truly moral choice is self-sacrifice for the community. My contention is that Watsuji's universalist philosophical positions, presented in the first section below, are similar to his conception of Japan's polity, which is the object of the second section, and can be explained only through his treatment of what he saw as Japan's particular political system and values.2 The second part and the conclusion of this article are an elaboration on Sakai Naoki's position that the relation between the whole (the Japanese imperial state as representative of the nation) and the individual in Watsuji's philosophy is sort of immanentism (Nancy 1990, p. 16),3 relation whereby the whole is immanent in the individual and the individual immanent in the whole (Sakai 1997, pp. 101113). As Sakai shows, this type of relation between the whole and the individual implies rejection of coercion, or violence, of the whole (the state) on the parts (the individuals), that is, it implies a state that 'leads' but does not 'dominate' (Sakai 1997, p. 112). These propositions of Sakai's can be elaborated on through an analysis of Watsuji's writings, and this is what is attempted here.4