Abstract
This inquiry into the thought of three political thinkers in pre-war Japan is motivated
by a concern of our own time: the absence of credible opposition in the present-day
political system. The widely accepted view is that Japanese society is "conformist",
and the pressure for conformity comes from traditions and cultural norms. My
general position in this dissertation is that very often conformity is not only a matter
of inherent cultural norms but is a political and social force appropriated,
strengthened and enforced by those in power: the weak tradition of public debate has
historical foundations.
However, mainstream historiography (Marxism and the school of
modernisation theory), rarely pays attention to one of the most significant motors of
dissent, the tension between authority and the individual, especially as it was
exacerbated by the Meiji Restoration. I therefore hope to engage with previous
accounts in the following ways. The first concerns definitions of modernisation, and
the other, methodological, is concerned with the relations between individual and
society. To highlight the role of the general populace in the emergence of political
modernisation, I borrow from Jiirgen Habermas his concept of a civil society and his
investigation of the transformation of the "public" sphere. I also employ
methodological perspectives based on the cultural theory of Raymond Williams, with
his emphasis on the material dynamics of social change.
To examine the mechanics of opposition in pre-war Japan based on this
combination of definition and methodology, I focus on the careers of three prominent
"dissidents": Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948), a constitutional scholar, Sakai
Toshihiko (1870-1933), a socialist reformer, and Saito Takao (1870-1949), an
opposition member of Parliament. All three were outspoken critics of discretionary
power, and realised that the Meiji Restoration by no means ensured a civil society.
Nevertheless post-Restoration Japan witnessed drastic changes in the forms of
authority and in the people's engagement with them. Hence all three were articulate
critics of government, and witnessed, recorded, and participated in those changes
through their writings and political activities. The dissertation traces the
contributions of each to the emergence of a Japanese civil society, and examines the
viability of liberal positions within a period of highly "engineered" social change.
