Main Body
Yanaihara’s Expulsion at the Hands of the “Fat Pig”
In which the author reports on how Japan’s war in Asia came to Tōdai. He describes Tōdai’s increasing involvement in the war effort—in personnel, ideology, curriculum. Within the Faculty of Economics, the “Renovationist” faction around Dean Hijikata Seibi led the charge against those who opposed increasing involvement in the war effort;in the ouster of Yanaihara Tadao it achieved a first victory. The author analyzes the standard explanation for Yanaihara’s forced resignation and finds that the true reason lay elsewhere.
“Marxism” vs. “Liberalism”
After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, Japan entered its time of emergency, its quasi-wartime footing. And after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937, it plunged into the era of true war. In that process, Japan’s nationalism grew ever fiercer, and Japanese society top to bottom moved to wartime footing. Tōdai was no exception. Within the university, the renovationist clique of professors with connections to the military (the name came from the desire to renovate Japan into a state of total mobilization for war) came to rule the roost; pacifists and war-shunners grew fewer in number.
This use of the terms “renovation” and “renovationist clique” differs completely from their use today. The same issue will come up later, too, but to say a bit now by way of explanation: the leaders of Tōdai’s renovationist clique were Hijikata Seibi (dean of the Faculty of Economics), the key figure in driving Yanaihara Tadao out, and the bunch of professors in league with him—Honiden Yoshio, Tanabe Tadao, and the others. They founded the journal Renovation (its inaugural issue appeared in October 1938), and the lead essay of that first issue, “The Mission of the Renovation Association,” gives the essence of their views. First, to speak of Japan’s current situation, Japan is fighting a war that began on the continent and preparing for the even greater war with the Allied Powers that will arise in the future. Such a situation makes “Japan’s fundamental renovation unavoidable.” What should be renovated? How? “The existing economic structure is organized basically for the goal of profit.” With it, Japan is unable over the long run to ensure “the large-scale production of military goods and the provision of robust fighting men.” To build a wartime structure for the long haul, it is “necessary first of all to change the existing structure in favor of the state, so selfishness no longer governs.” At the same time, it is necessary to “rebuild today’s unjust society from the roots up” and, in addition to expanding the production of military goods, satisfy the lives of the common people, “construct a true national community,” and thereby “accomplish the true mobilization of the state.” In order to prepare for the war already being waged and the war against the Allies that is foreseeable, it is necessary to reorganize totally the economy and the state—up till now, th