From Kent to Japan

In his famous A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Bertrand Russell suggested that Japan before the Second World War was a true Filmerian state. This diagnosis had a real impact on Japanese scholars, including Maruyama Masao, who identified Filmerism with pre-war Japan and in turn accepted the Lockean social view as a theoretical guideline of post-war Japan. The aim of this article is to show the ideological role of ‘Filmerism’ in three Japanese ‘Filmerian controversies.’ Before the Second World War, both ‘Filmerians’ and anti-Filmerians upheld neither Filmer nor Locke. What both parties upheld was the idea of Kokutai or ‘Japaneseness,’ and they used the label of ‘Filmerism’ to dismiss particular political theories. This pre-war relationship amongst ‘Filmerism,’ ‘Lockeanism’ and ‘Japaneseness,’ however, underwent a rapid transformation after the War. Unlike the pre-war theorists, the post-war theorists came to see ‘Japaneseness’ as ‘Filmerism,’ which should be denied by Lockeanism. By inquiring into the trajectory of Filmer in Japan, we can shed light upon the significant role of a cross-cultural straw man in the comparative mode of political theory as well as an intellectual and ideological dimension of the pre- and post-war Japanese political situations

Economic history · Ideology · Just war theory · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science · Cinema and Media Studies · Classics · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law