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In Response to Thomas Rhydwen

The greatest achievements of theWestern student of modern Asia are grounded in our gift for objectivity: the ability to read a political text, to take the gift at issue, written by an Asian and then summarize that text in a way that the original author would find plausible. In his long and considered review of my recent book,The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance, Thomas Rhydwen has demonstrated his powers of objective judgment. The result is an agreeable paradox: textual fidelity makes one a more incisive critic. Every writer suffers criticism, but to be blessed with a reviewer that one may trust to be fair and thoughtful is to renew one’s faith in the often debased and corrupt character of the book review in contemporary academe. As a scholarly reviewer, Rhydwen has shown that our discipline is capable of more than sycophancy, scorched earth, or murder by silence (mokusatsu). Let us now see if we can transform this all too rare exercise in faithful but probing readership into a fruitful dialogue. In his review, Rhydwen repeatedly focuses on “the Confucian character” of the wartime Kyoto School andThe Standpoint of World History and Japan, as well as on my idea of “Confucian Revolution.” The three zadankai or round table discussions devoted to the theme of “the Standpoint of World History and Japan” are shot through with Confucian manners and gestures, everything from age deference and respect language (keigo) to consensus building among the four speakers with an eye to fostering a harmony of opinion in Japan as a whole.None of this should surprise because Japan is a Confucian society, and Rhydwen is not surprised. Is he equally persuaded that Confucian Revolution is “Confucian?” Perusing his review has made me more alert to the unsettling novelty of this idea. By introducing the concept of “Confucian Revolution” in the pages ofThe Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance, I have, in his mind, pushed the argument for the Confucian-ness of modern Japanese society in a radical new direction. Is such radicalness justified? For my part, I am in no doubt: Confucian Revolution is a form of East Asia regime change developed in ancient China that was gradually refined there only to spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. As an engaged intellectual and political philosopher, the Kyoto School thinker acted in a manner entirely consistent with the unfolding of the Confucian interregnum that follows the death of the Emperor Meiji in 1912, resisting the Control Faction rise to power in 1941 and then surrendering morally (tenkō) to the triumph of American arms in 1945. When thinking about the politics of the road to Pearl Harbor, I do not see how one can make proper sense of the ideological struggle between Tōjō’s Control Faction and the Kyoto School in alliance with the Yonai faction of the Imperial Navy without reference to the idea of Confucian Revolution. Rhydwen does not reject the Confucian Revolution thesis, but I suspect he would welcome a harvest of evidence that reaches beyond the example of interwar Japan.