Hiroyuki Kato: A Social Darwinist Approach to the Emperorship in Modern Japan

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This article describes how a certain Japanese conservative scholar intellectually responded to the concept of "survival of the fittest", which is the main tenet of Social Darwinism, in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. This conservative scholar was Hiroyuki Kato (1836-1916), the first president of the Tokyo Imperial University. As a government-patronized scholar, he had a duty to theoretically prove the political legitimacy of the Emperorship in Japan. He accepted this main tenet of Social Darwinism as the most scientific theory of the time, which he thought could explain every phenomenon in the universe. He tried to theoretically legitimize the Meiji Emperorship by directly applying the concept of "survival of the fittest." Then, he tried to establish an ideology to enhance the Japanese national morality by modifying the original concept of "survival of the fittest." Hiroyuki Kato's application and modification of Social Darwinism in his political and moral thought is the main content of this article. In his effort to work out such ideology for supporting the Meiji Emperorship, he combined the concept of "survival of the fittest" with a Japanese traditional ethics, that is, the Bushido. Bushido is the morality which stipulated the behavior patterns of the Samurai class, the warrior-bureaucrats in the Edo period. Without Bushido, Kato could not have succeeded in applying the concept of "survival of the fittest" to his political and moral thought. Here, we can find Kato's intellectual creativity. Kato also accepted the concept of "survival of the fittest" as a mechanism deciding the international struggle. But this acceptance included a certain contradiction, which may not be found in Western countries like Britain and the United States of America. When the concept of "survival of the fittest" was used in explaining the international struggles, it was almost always inseparably combined with racism, at least with "white man's supremacy." For Japanese people, the acceptance of this concept meant that they were inferior to Caucasians, and that they would be defeated some day by Caucasians. In spite of this anti-nationalistic result, Kato dared to accept it. I labelled it as the "acceptance as the weaker." The "acceptance as the weaker" sounds paradoxical not only because it is anti-nationalistic in the receiving country, but also because the concept of "survival of the fittest" is generally said to be an ideology in favor of the strong. But it is a historical fact that Kato accepted this concept, and tried to transform Japan from the weaker to the stronger. Kato's achievement makes us reconsider the nature of Social Darwinism. It is not an ideology always in favor of the stronger. Fundamentally speaking, Social Darwinism is one of the theories of social development. However universal a certain developmental theory may appear in its birthplace, it reveals the hidden partiality or contradic- tion when it is transferred and applied to other countries. To clarify such partiality or contradiction is the major motivation of my study on the reception of Social Darwinism in Japan. And I am planning to take the same stance in my future study of the reception of modernization theory in Japan. Lastly, I would like to refer to the limits of the acceptance as the weaker.
札幌大学の論文
1998-09-30

Hiroyuki Kato: A Social Darwinist Approach to the Emperorship in Modern Japan

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