Suchergebnisse

From a historical perspective, the welfare net in Japan was established from above without democratic participation and expanded only slowly. This expansion in many cases was aimed at enhancing national cohesion, especially during war time. During the current neoliberal era, Japan's paternalistic welfare state has been able to put into practice the dismantling of national pension and health-care systems without the need for any theoretical re-orientation. In response, counter-publics have engaged in protest and resistance. By doing so, the victims of modernization and those who are socially weak and disadvantaged in multiple ways are able to regain their self-esteem and personal integrity. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

In the postwar era, Amano Teiyū and Watsuji Tetsurō enjoyed among the Japanese public a reputation as "old liberalists" who had not been contaminated by the insane kokutai-ideology Japanese militarism had propagated. Both wrote immediately after the war that the new constitutional status of the emperor as a symbol of national integration merely described the quintessence of the time-honored tradition of the Tennō. To summarize their opinion: the Tennō had been re-established as the incarnation of national culture in opposition and intentional dissociation from the military regime of the past. During the war, however, they had been passionate preachers of the national ideology, who did not hesitate to speak of the necessity of self-sacrifice for the national totality and the Tennō. It seems that they did not realize that the public could accuse them of being turncoats after 1945, nor did the public notice their change of course. In this essay, I try to identify the reason for this alleged continuity of liberal mentality, which is not consistent with the actual arguments both philosophers had put forward during the heyday of ultra-nationalism.