Fanatical Politics Needn’t Be Gibberish
As populist-inspired anger has apparently undercut rational self-interest as a basis for political action in many polities, it is timely to consider the role of fanaticism and irrationality in effecting political change. John Person’s study of two controversial nationalistic intellectuals in early 20th-century Japan — public intellectual Mitsui Kōshi and academic philosopher Minoda Muneki — exposes how our assumption about what counts as “normal” politics may be too conceptually rigid and blinkered.
Mitsui and Minoda’s “Japanist” promotion of Emperor-centered nationalism, their critique of parliamentary politics and their promotion of spiritual fulfilment and ethnic homogeneity as a means of harmonizing individual and collective identity have been too readily dismissed by their critics as “fanatical gibberish.” Person’s corrective reveals both individuals’ establishment connections, their conscious drawing on the work of Western literary, philosophical and psychological thinkers and how far their nationalist agenda was exploited by Japan’s governing elites in the 1930s to limit the spread of Marxist movements. Person captures vividly early 20th-century Japan’s impassioned, existentially critical intellectual debates, its political turmoil and the sharp departure from reasoned discourse in Europe and Asia of the past, foreshadowing today’s fractured, emotional politics.
He captures early 20thcentury Japan’s existentially critical intellectual debates.