Rethinking Confucius in Light of Post-World War I Political Crises: Ōkawa Shūmei’s Reading of the Doctrine of the Mean

Ōkawa Shūmei is notorious for his involvement in the promotion of Japanese wartime ideology and for being judged a “Class A” war-criminal during the Tokyo War-Crimes Tribunal.  Because the shadow of such judgments hang over the various texts that he produced, scholars have only recently realized his immense scholarship to areas such as Islamic studies. I will focus on a neglected area of Ōkawa’s work, namely his reading of the Confucian The Doctrine of the Mean.  This commentary was published in 1927 and gives us a window into Ōkawa’s critique of modernity and his political vision. Ōkawa’s political vision is historically significant since it is part of a larger global intellectual trend critical of modernity and the West after World War I. He mobilizes Confucian thought in order to overcome the alienation in capitalist society and the modern state. Ōkawa invokes Confucius and Classical Chinese thought to unite the people, the ruler and nature. This becomes the base of his pan-Asianism throughout the interwar and wartime period.  I argue that Ōkawa’s ideological resolution to the conflicts of modernity fails to grasp the actual dynamics of class, capitalism and the state. Consequently, his vision promoted a new configuration of capital and the state more oppressive than the liberal version it attacks.  Given that both the problems that Ōkawa faced and the ideological forms he embodied are with us today, Ōkawa’s work has more than merely historical significance.