Shimizu Ikutarō as a Global Ultranationalist Thinker: On Tenkō and Giambattista Vico

Abstract

ABSTRACT Today, Shimizu Ikutarō is mostly remembered as a leading leftwing intellectual and political activist that turned conservative and advocated for Japan to become a nuclear power. Especially outside of Japan, this has made Shimizu persona non grata. Nevertheless, despite the very questionable nature of his later thought, Shimizu remains one of the most influential scholars in postwar Japanese history. More in depth scholarship on his later theory can cast light on his whole career and on its relation not only to the Japanese cultural and political dynamics after the 1960s, but also to the international intellectual environment of that period. The present article takes Shimizu’s claim to a theoretically justified turn (tenkō) at face value: it reconstructs and criticises the Japanese sociologist’s work with the tools of global intellectual history, focusing on his evocative but distortive use of eighteenth century philosopher Giambattista Vico. Through this analysis, it suggests how Shimizu used Vichian themes, such as the meaning of common sense and the opposition between ars topica and ars critica, to conceptualise his problematic political stances concerning aspects of public life such as education and the role of the intellectual elite in society.