Anarchist Modernity, Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan

440 Pages·2013·19.95 MB·English

by  Sho Konishi

Anarchist Modernity
Harvard East Asian Monographs 356

Anarchist Modernity
Cooperatism and Japanese- Russian
Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan
Sho Konishi
Published by the Harvard University Asia Center
Distributed by Harvard University Press
Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London 2013
© 2013 by Th e President and Fellows of Harvard College
Printed in the United States of America
Th e Harvard University Asia Center publishes a monograph series and, in coordination with the
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Korea Institute, the Reischauer Institute of Japan ese
Studies, and other faculties and institutes, administers research projects designed to further
scholarly understanding of China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and other Asian countries. Th e Center
also sponsors projects addressing multidisciplinary and regional issues in Asia.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Konishi, Sho
Anarchist modernity : cooperatism and Japanese- Russian intellectual relations in modern
Japan / Sho Konishi.
pages cm. — (Harvard East Asian monographs ; 356)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 674- 07331- 9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Anarchism— Japan—History.
2. Cooperation— Japan—History. 3. Japan— Relations—Russia—History.
4. Russia— Relations—Japan—History. I. Title.
HX947.K584 2013
335'.83—dc23
2012050450
Index by Eileen Doherty-Sil
Printed on acid- free paper
Last fi gure below indicates year of this printing
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
For Anika

Contents
Illustrations viii
Ac know ledg ments ix
Abbreviations xii
Notes on Style xiii
Introduction 1
1 Revoliutsiia Meets Ishin: Th e Emerging Vision of
Cooperatist Civilization 29
2 Anarchist Religion: Translation and Conversion beyond
Western Modernity 93
3 Th e Nonwar Movement in the Russo- Japanese War:
Th e Invention of the People without the State 142
4 Th e History Slide 209
5 Translingual World Order: Language without Culture 258
6 Nature in Culture, Culture in Nature: Phagocytes,
Dung Beetles, and the Cosmos 296
Epilogue: Culture Turned Upside Down 329
Bibliography 353
Index 385
Illustrations
1.1 Lev Mechnikov in samurai dress, circa 1876 49
1.2 Tattooed laborer in Meiji Japan 52
2.1 Fragment of a church mural in the village of Tazov,
Kursk Province, Russ ia 94
2.2 Tokutomi Roka with Lev Tolstoy and Tolstoy’s daughter
Aleksandra Tolstaya, Iasnaia Poliana, Rus sia, 1906 134
3.1 Th e “society of cliques” pushing a peasant into war.
Cartoon in Heimin shimbun, January 17, 1904 163
3.2 Yamamoto Kanae’s Ryōfu (Fisherman), published in
Myōjō, July 1904 170
3.3 Sleepy fi sherman. Usen cartoon from Hikari,
October 15, 1905 173
3.4 Workers at rest. Usen cartoon from Heimin shimbun,
April 10, 1905 174
3.5 Farmers relaxing. Usen cartoon from Heimin shimbun,
January 24, 1905 174
3.6 Monkey Trainer from Tōwa Shinpō. Usen postcard, 1908 176
3.7 Transnational heimin. Cartoon from Heimin shimbun,
January 17, 1905 186
3.8 “Eternal Rest.” Cartoon in Sudzilovskii- Russel’s Nagasaki
newspaper Volia 6 (May 7, 1906) 202
4.1 Social Studies Circle led by Arishima Takeo 250
5.1 Vasilii Eroshenko wearing a Rus sian peasant’s blouse
in Japan, 1916 286
5.2 Nakamuraya sweetshop, 1909 289
Ac know ledg ments
Th e following archives, libraries, and institutions w ere especially helpful
and generous in off ering assistance and materials for this project: the
State Museum of L. N. Tolstoy Manuscripts Department and Library;
the Historical Library Periodicals Collection and East Asia Collection in
Moscow; the State Archive of the Rus sian Federation; the Rus sian State
Archive of Literature and Art; the Hokkaido University Slavic Research
Center Library; the Seki Kansai Memorial Museum and Archive; the
Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace Archives at Stanford
University; the Niseko’s Arishima Takeo Memorial Museum Archive;
the Japan Esperanto Institute Library; the Japa nese Foreign Ministry
Archive; the Hokkaido Municipal Archive; Hokkaido University North-
ern Studies Special Collections; the National Diet Library Newspaper
and Journal Collection; the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Cen-
tennial Collection; the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago;
and the Oxford Bodleian Japa nese Library.
Th is book has also relied on archival treas ures and other materials
preserved by the following institutions: the Kanagawa Prefectural Li-
brary of Modern Literature; the Tokutomi Roka Museum Collection;
the Meiji Newspaper and Journal Collection of Tokyo University; the
National Archive of Japan; Haverford College Quaker and Special Col-
lections; the Miyazawa Kenji Museum; the Ogawa Usen Memorial Mu-
seum; the Setagaya Literature Museum; the Hokkaido Museum of Lit-
erature; the Museum of Modern Literature in Hakodate; the Yamamoto
Kanae Museum; the Tokyo Municipal Library, Archive Section; the
x Ac know ledg ments
Franz Boas Papers Collection of the American Philosophical Society;
and the Chicago Field Museum, Archival Section.
Th is work’s incorporation of diverse fi elds of study and geographic
areas would not have been possible without the generous funding of the
Fulbright-H ays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, the
Esperantic Studies Foundation, the Social Science Research Council/
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the University of Illinois at
Urbana- Champaign Research Board, the U.S. Library of Congress Flor-
ence Tan Moeson Fellowship, the Association for Asian Studies NEAC
grants, the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago,
and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. I am very grateful for
their support. I would also like to acknowledge the Reischauer Institute
of Japan ese Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the
Center for Japan ese Studies of the Russ ian Academy of Sciences, Mos-
cow, Rus sia; and the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University in
Japan, which kindly extended fellowship affi liations to me.
My article “Reopening the ‘Opening of Japan,’ ” Th e American His-
torical Review 112, no. 1 (2007): 101–1 30 appears in some portions of
Chapter 1 with permission from the University of Chicago Press and the
American Historical Association. My article “Translingual World Order,”
Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 1 (2013): 91–1 14, an earlier version of
Chapter 5, appears with permission from Cambridge University Press.
Parts of “Tolstoian Religion in Meiji Japan,” pp. 233– 266 in Converting
Cultures: Religion, Ideology, and Transformations of Modernity, edited by
Dennis Washburn and A. Kevin Reinhart, 2007, appear with the per-
mission of Brill. Th e earlier conceptual grasp of the signifi cance of the
Nonwar Movement found in “Th e Absence of Portsmouth in an Early
Twentieth-C entury Japan ese Imagination of Peace” in Th e Treaty of
Portsmouth and its Legacies, pp. 98– 105, edited by Steven J. Ericson and
Allen Hockley (2008), appears in Chapter 3 with the permission of the
University Press of New En gland.
Finally, I wish to express my appreciation to a number of individuals.
I thank Harriet Shelley, the only one to have read this book throughout
its various stages of metamorphosis. She off ered countless questions and
criticisms from the eyes of a nonspecialist. Th is volume is the result of my
attempt to answer and respond to them. I wish to express my gratitude to
Professors Tetsuo Najita and Sheila Fitzpatrick of the Department of