Main Body
The Great Purge of the Faculty of Economics by Hiraga Yuzuru, Battleship President
In which the author discusses the Hiraga Purge (January 1939), the Draconian measure that ended the factional fighting within the Faculty of Economics. He traces the purge’s roots to the presidency of Nagayo Matarō and the strategizing of Tanaka Kōtarō. Given the virulence of Kawai Eijirō’s critique of the military, it’s no surprise that Kawai was purged. What is surprising is that the purge removed as well the leading “renovationist” on the Faculty, Hijikata Seibi—this despite the fact that on the surface at least, both President Hiraga and Minister of Education Araki were his ideological allies. Thirteen (of nineteen) members of the Faculty of Economics were purged or resigned in protest. The Hiraga Purge was then and remains today an issue on which opinion divides sharply.
Day after Day of Headlines
A great many incidents intertwined chronologically in those three years: the Yanaihara Incident in 1937, the Faculty Group Incident (the arrest of Ōuchi) and the ban on publication against Kawai in 1938, the Hiraga Purge and the Tsuda Incident of 1939. These incidents were so many and so complex that try as you can, it’s virtually impossible to make the ins and outs easy to understand. This chapter is mainly about the Hiraga Purge. Let me state at the outset: it followed a more complicated course than did the other incidents, so it’s particularly difficult to understand, and there are many aspects we still don’t understand.
But historical truth lies in complexity. To put it differently, the truth of history is very hard to grasp. On any number of issues the judgment of history is still pending, but for the Hiraga Purge more than any of the others, historical judgment varies with the historian. The critics call it the rash act of a military officer-president who understood neither the value of scholarship nor the raison d’ètre of the university; those who praise it say it saved Tōdai. Without the Hiraga Purge, the Faculty of Economics would probably have been destroyed, and the trouble would have spread, with profound consequences, to the Faculty of Law, too.
Regardless, no contemporary Tōdai event shocked the eyes and ears of the world more than the Hiraga Purge. The Faculty of Economics came close to complete ruin. Day after day the newspapers ran headlines and reported events as they happened. They reported everything, even what was discussed at Faculty Meetings and University Council meetings—a first in Tōdai history.
I’ve already laid out the bare facts of the Hiraga Purge, but let me summarize. At the time, as a result of complicated factional struggle, the Faculty of Economics had become dysfunctional. In December 1938, succeeding Nagayo Matarō, twelfth president of the university, Hiraga Yuzuru (formerly dean of the Faculty of Engineering) became thirteenth president. The conflict within the Faculty of Economics seemed at an impasse; fed up and in bl