Having been asked to put down some reflection on time, the 80th anniversary of World War Two, I must confess that round dates mean little to me. Ther are things with which I have wrestled forever.
This is a consideration of the war cooperation of the Zenkoku Suiheisha, and, since 1945, the concealment of it by the Buraku Liberation Movement. I would like focus on Jiichiro Matsumoto, who represented the Buraku Liberation Movement before, during, and after the war. Not only Matsumoto, but also representative members1 of the Zenkoku Suiheisha shifted their stance to support the system of Yokusan Taisei (Imperial Rule Assistance Association). Excepting very few members, totally, the Zenkoku Suiheisha supported that aggressive war. However, examining Matsumoto’s words and actions facilitates analysis of collaboration and shifts in stance toward the totalitarian war waged in the name of democracy. Furthermore, I believe that analyzing his statements can shed light on the structural factors that allowed him to remain silent about the ethical responsibility of war collaboration. In addition, It will be clear why and how the BLL come out for democracy after the war without any self-searching.
Matsumoto stated, ‘Sweat for your work,’ ‘Cry for others,’ and ‘Shed blood for your country,’ in the 1942 pamphlet for the Yokusan election (elections for Yokusa Taisei). Elsewhere, he wrote, ‘Bleed for your country,’ and ‘With sincere gratitude for the imperial army and support for the government, we humbly request that you exercise your precious right to vote.’
This shows that the Zenkoku Suiheisha was taken over by the state and actively turned towards totalitarianism, helping to pave the way for war. Kim Jung-Mi [Kim, 1994:336:348] criticized Matsumoto’s slogans. This is also a well-known fact, but after the war, Matsumoto made another turn without any reflection. Specifically, in January 1953, at a citizens' welcome conference for the Asian Socialist Party Conference hosted by the Burmese Socialist Party in Rangoon, he delivered the following false remarks as the representative of the left wing of the Japanese Socialist Party [Matsumoto, 1953: 10].
Achieving economic development, Japan became an aggressor under the imperialist fascism of the emperor system, unleashing that devilish war and inflicting enormous sacrifices and damage on many countries in Asia. Of course, we socialists opposed this war, but we were unable to meet your expectations due to our lack of strength, and we sincerely apologize for that. As a socialist, I have been promoting the Suiheisha movement in Japan for over thirty years. I believe that this Suiheisha movement has something in common with the rest of Asia and the world.
Why did democratic social movements transform into totalitarianism through cooperation with the war effort? The Zenkoku Suiheisha waged denunciation campaigns against the Imperial Japanese Army, including the 1926 Fukuoka Regiment Discrimination Struggle, the 1927 direct petition to the Emperor by Taisaku Kitahara regarding discrimination against Buraku soldiers within the army, and the 1929 denunciation of discriminatory entries on maps produced by the Army General Staff. According to my interviews, there were even cases in which Buraku-origin soldiers fired their pistols to express outrage at discrimination among their fellow soldiers. Despite such acts of resistance, what made it possible for the movement to shift toward war collaboration with so little opposition? Furthermore, in the deliberations of the Buraku Liberation Committee—organized in 1946 as the revival and reorganization of the Buraku Liberation Movement—self-criticism of wartime collaboration was never raised as an issue. What enabled the seemingly seamless transition from totalitarianism back to democracy? Moreover, the Buraku Liberation Committee was itself a collaboration with the Reconciliation Movement, which had been aligned with totalitarian forces. Despite the sharp ideological conflict between the Suiheisha and the Reconciliation Movement before the war, what made such collaboration possible in the immediate postwar years?
In order to approach these questions, I believe Giorgio Agamben’s arguments are useful. The Buraku Liberation Movement was not characterized by a goal of overthrowing the imperial state; rather, it was shaped by the configuration of state power itself. Its demands can be understood less as an anti-imperialist struggle than as a form of appeal to the state, framed within the logic of biopolitics, for improvements in everyday life. The following is a quotation from Agamben.
The fact is that one and the Same affirmation of bear life leads, in bourgeois democracy, to a primacy of the private over the public and of individual liberties over collective obligations and yet becomes, in totalitarian states, the decisive political criterion and the exemplary realm of sovereign decisions. And only because biological life and its needs had become the politically decisive fact is it possible to understand the otherwise incomprehensible rapidity with which twentieth-century parliamentary democracies were able to turn into totalitarian states and with which this century's totalitarian states were able to be converted, almost without interruption, into parliamentary democracies. In both cases, these transformations were produced in a context in which for quite some time politics had already turned into biopolitics, and in which the only real question to be decided was which form of organization would be best suited to the task of assuring the care, control, and use of bare life. Once their fundamental referent becomes bare life, traditional political distinctions (such as those between Right and Left, liberalism and totalitarianism, private and public) lose their clarity and intelligibility and enter into a zone of indistinction. The ex-communist ruling classes' unexpected fall into the most extreme racism (as in the Serbian program of “ethnic cleansing") and the rebirth of new forms of fascism in Europe also have their roots here. (Agamben, 1995:121-2)
Agamben's point can be understood as follows. In a democratic society, when people—or a particular minority—merely wish to “live” or to “protect their lives,” that is, when they demand bare life, this appears as a claim to individual freedom and private rights (such as bodily autonomy and privacy). At such a moment, politics takes as its primary purpose the “protection of individual life.” By contrast, in a totalitarian state, bare life is not regarded as something to be protected but as something to be controlled. The state holds the power (sovereignty) to decide how life is to be treated, and the criterion of that decision is biological life itself. In other words, in democracy, life serves as the foundation of freedom, whereas in totalitarianism, life becomes the object of manipulation by state power. Both democracy and totalitarianism stand on the same biopolitical horizon: they are continuous with each other insofar as each is concerned with how to protect or to control bare life. Democracy and totalitarianism thus share the same soil.
The Zenkoku Suiheisha’s movement for Buraku liberation, for example, criticized discrimination against Buraku people within the military and demanded its abolition. This was nothing other than Buraku soldiers demanding a better life. It was a petition to the sovereign Emperor to abolish discrimination so that they might become better soldiers. In a situation where the state remained somewhat democratic, such a demand appeared as an appeal for improved status and treatment. However, as tendencies toward totalitarianism became more pronounced, it emerged instead as something to be controlled.
Without recognizing this mode of power—referred to as bio-power2 or biopolitics—people end up internalizing the very structure of sovereign power. In such a context, they cast themselves into the mold prepared by power, which prescribes what it means to be a proper national subject. One consequence of this was the wartime cooperation of the Buraku Liberation Movement. Yet this does not absolve participants of responsibility, for such actions were undertaken of their own volition.
Note
１According to Kim, Chōichi Ikoma published a poem titled “Burning the Keikan-ki” in the official newspaper of the Buraku Kōsei Kōmin Undō (Welfare and Imperial Subject Movement of the Buraku) on August 25. Its opening lines read:“Before the Divine Emperor / We burn the flag of sin, the Keikan-ki.”For the Buraku Kōsei Kōmin Undō group, the Keikan-ki had become the “flag of sin.” A month and a half later, on October 2, the dissolution meeting of the Okayama Prefectural Federation of the Zenkoku Suiheisha was held. After Seiji Nozaki, serving as Executive Chairman of the Okayama Prefectural Federation, “explained the significance of dissolving the Zenkoku Suiheisha,” a resolution was passed declaring: “We dissolve the Okayama Prefectural Federation of the Zenkoku Suiheisha, an organization that divides and opposes the people, and advance resolutely toward building the system of national unity under the Imperial Rule Assistance structure.” It is reported that “the Keikan-ki was also solemnly burned at the same time as the dissolution.” [Kim, 1994:168] In other words, it can be said that nearly all movements related to the Buraku were wholly absorbed into the yokusan system.
2 The concept of biopower was introduced by Michel Foucault, who explained that the modern state became a “state that protects life,” thereby mobilizing, disciplining, and monitoring people’s bodies. Giorgio Agamben developed this in a more critical direction, arguing that the state of exception becomes normalized, and that sovereignty is the arena where the state decides “whose life to protect and whom to exclude.” Foucault, however, also remarked that Nazism represented both the “generalization of biopower” and, in the same sentence, the “generalization of sovereign power to kill” [Foucault, 1975–1976 = 2007: 258]. In this respect, the arguments of the two thinkers, while differing in perspective, share considerable common ground. In other words, Agamben emphasizes the positioning of bare life—its “exceptionalization”—from the standpoint of the victim, whereas Foucault analyzes the biopolitical dimension of modern power as a technique of government.