The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 15 | Issue 3 | Number 2 | Feb 01, 2017

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Ecology and Japanese History: ReactionaryEnvironmentalism’s Troubled Relationship with the Past

Richard Reitan

Abstract

Much ecological thought today turns to Japan’spast for inspiration. The reason, according toconservative Japanese ecologists, deepecologists, and environmental philosophers, isthat Japan’s history of aesthetic “oneness” withnature provides a model for the world toemula te as i t addresses the g loba lenvironmental crisis. I critique this view byshowing that conservative, or more accurately,reactionary ecology in Japan is closelyintertwined with ethnic communitarianism,Japan’s wartime ideology of the 1930s, anddeep ecology. I suggest that these forms ofreactionary ecology reflect a fascist desire tocreate or rely upon a nationalistic narrative ofJapanese cultural uniqueness that conceals theexcesses of capitalism and operates to sustainthe socio-economic order that is todaygenerating ecological catastrophe.

Keywords : R e a c t i o n a r y E c o l o g y ,Environmental Ethics, Deep Ecology, “JapaneseView” of Nature, Pollution, Fascism

Japan’s past has become an important resourcefor much contemporary ecological thinkingboth within and outside Japan. Conservativecultural critics and scholars within Japan, forexample, speak of an enduring “Japanese viewof nature” rooted in pre-modern Japaneseanimism and Buddhism. They locate the root ofongoing environmental destruction in theWest’s scientific, technological civilization, itsview of nature as an object detached fromhumanity, and its will to dominate the natural

environment. The “traditional Japanese view,”they suggest, provides a very differentperspective, one in which the subject of theperson and the object of nature are unified, arelationship characterized by reverence andharmony. Proponents of this kind of reactionaryecology in Japan uphold the “Japaneseperspective” as a possible solution to theworld’s ecological problems. Meanwhile,scholars and activists in the fields of deepecology and environmental ethics seek toovercome anthropocentric views of the personthat sanct ion the exploitat ion of theenvironment for human benefit. They callinstead for eco-centrism and the cultivation of aunity of individual self and all organic life. Theytoo, in many cases, turn to Japan’s past,drawing on Buddhism and Shinto in theirefforts to articulate their ideal of the non-anthropocentric “Self”.1

Why have Japan’s historical religious andphilosophical traditions become increasinglycentral to current ecological discourse?Ostensibly, the historical record confirmsJapan’s unique relation to nature andestablishes a model for the world to emulate.Given the alarming series of environmentalcrises now confronting the world—greenhousegas emissions and global climate change, theacidification of the world’s oceans, biodiversityloss, industrial pollution, the ecological damagebrought by an inadequately regulated nuclearpower industry—these views should be takenseriously. Yet, I adopt a different approach tothe above question by examining theconjuncture of the ecological views I address inthis essay with an ongoing discourse on ethniccommunitarianism, the deep ecology

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movement, and Japan’s wartime ideology. Thishas important implications for how we mightassess these ecological views.

First, reactionary ecology in Japan reflects adesire for ethnic community. This is manifestedthrough fears of cultural loss and throughessentializing and largely invented assertionsabout the aesthetic character and culture of theJapanese people. Thus, though reactionaryecology in Japan today warns of globalenvironmental catastrophe, this is not really itsprimary concern. Instead, by shifting focusfrom the global environment to the particularlandscape of Japan, then to the “unique”cultural values of the Japanese “folk” that wereostensibly shaped by this landscape,reactionary ecology in Japan hopes to reinforcea narrative of homogeneous culturalcommunity and peoplehood. The purity ofJapanese culture, in this narrative, is tied to theuncontaminated cultural and naturallandscape, giving rise to discriminationtargeting ethnic others and to an ahistoricaland selective appropriation of the past wherebythe concrete ecological disasters of Japan’spast and present are downplayed or concealedrather than placed front and center foranalysis. Second, Japan’s reactionary ecologyhas much in common with so-called “radical”theories of deep ecology and environmentalphilosophy that take “the Japanese view ofnature” as its starting point. Just as the formerseeks community on the national level, thelatter calls for a global organic community byway of an intuitive process of self-realization.The case of deep ecology, moreover, isimportant as it suggests that the problematicclaims and dangers examined in this essay arenot confined to Japan but are global andinformed by global forces. And third, theideological landscape of wartime Japan, and theworks of philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō inparticular, serve as a rich though problematicresource informing the views of bothreactionary ecology in Japan and deep ecology.

This conjuncture taken as a whole may becalled reactionary modernism, a term PeterOsborne and Mark Neocleous use to describefascism in Germany under National Socialism.2

While I do not define the current Japanesegovernment as fascist, I do suggest that theconjuncture sketched out above and exploredin more detail below reflects a fascist desire.This points to something more than a fixationon an invented cultural identity. The dangerhere is a desire, reminiscent of wartimeJapanese ideology, to cultivate a hegemonicand patriotic nationalism, to conceal andcontain the excesses of capitalism, and thus tosustain the very socio-economic order thatgenerates the ecological crises we now face.

The Narrative of Reactionary Ecology inJapan

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Umehara Takeshi, Mori no shishō

Reactionary ecology traces the world’senvironmental problems to a “Westernconception of nature”. In the West, accordingto this view, nature is seen as an objectdetached and separate from humanity and thisconception of nature contributes to thetendency to dominate and exploit theenvironment. Philosopher Umehara Takeshi isrepresentative of this perspective. From 1987to 1995, Umehara headed the conservativeNichibunken, the International ResearchCenter for Japanese Studies established byformer Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. ForUmehara, “the direct cause of present-dayenvironmental destruction is modern scientific-technological civilization” informed by“dualistic thought separating humanity fromnature” and organized around the belief that“the progress of civilization requires thesubjugation of nature by man.” This belief, hesays, is anthropocentric, egocentric, and nolonger viable.3 Thus, he identifies the problemprimarily in idealist rather than materialistterms, as a problem of ideas and beliefs ratherthan material conditions. This is a widelyshared assessment among reactionaryecologists in Japan and deep ecologists.4

In contrast to this “Western view of nature”characterized by a subject-object (humanity-nature) dualism, reactionary ecology in Japanupholds a “Japanese view” in which humanityand nature are identified. As Economist MurotaYasuhiro explains, “the Japanese view of natureis quite different from that of Westerners...theJapanese people considered themselves to beso intimately integrated with nature that theycould not identify it objectively as a separateentity...”5 This humanity-nature unity,according to this view’s proponents, isreflected in the Japanese people’s reverence forand harmony with nature. Umehara, forexample, states that in “East Asian religion, theconcept of man subduing nature hardly exists.”6

Such claims concerning the “Japanese view ofnature” are basic to reactionary ecologicald iscourse in Japan . Deep eco logy ’sefforts—drawing upon Eastern religioustraditions to overcome western dualism in therealization of organic wholeness—appearstrikingly similar.7 Contributors to thisdiscourse on nature turn to a range of religiousand philosophical traditions from Japan’spast—Buddhism, Shinto, Shugen-dō,Confucianism—to substantiate their claims andto suggest that located within the history ofthis nature aesthetic is perhaps a solution tothe world’s ecological problems.8

In each case, Japan’s pre- and early-modernpast is drawn upon to assert the Japanesepeople’s aesthetic relationship to nature as aunique and timeless cultural feature. Moreover,there is a clear binary opposition at work here.These ecological thinkers derive a “Japaneseconception of nature” by way of an oppositionto an ostensibly transparent and coherent“Western view”. Implicit in such assertions isthe conclusion that the latter must be overcomeand the former cultivated if the world is to haveany hope of addressing its current ecologicaltroubles. But the ahistorical claims associatedwith reactionary ecology and its focus onaesthetic values rather than material conditionsundermine its authority as the solution totoday’s global environmental crises.9

Omissions and Distortions: ConcealingEnvironmental Disaster

A major problem with the narrative outlinedabove is not merely i ts essential izedrepresentation of Japan and the West, but theahistorical perspective underlying itspresuppositions and claims. The view of theJapanese peop le as inherent l y andharmoniously at one with nature relies not onlyon the regulative idea of a nature-dominatingWest, but also on a serious and persistentmisreading and distortion of the past.

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Left out of reactionary ecology’s narrative ofJapanese history are a wide range of ecologicalproblems including polluted air, soil, and waterassociated with iron manufacturing and miningoperations from the end of the 16th century;10

the Ashio Copper Mine disaster; Japaneseindustry’s role in deforestation, particularly inSoutheast Asia;11 Japan’s well-documented “BigFour” industrial diseases of the 1950s and1960s;12 and Japan’s ongoing struggles withwater pollution (including the syntheticchemical perflourooctanite or PFOA thatrecently contaminated the Yodo and Ai Riversnear Osaka) and pesticide pollution.13

Ashio Copper Mine, circa 1895

In the early 1970s, Japan’s steps to addressthese serious pollution problems broughtpositive results.14 But because the socio-economic order that generated theseenvironmental problems was essentiallyunchanged, environmental degradation,together with reactionary ecology’s efforts toignore or downplay it, continued.15 Thus,Japan’s greatest ecological catastrophe inrecent years, the disaster at Fukushima Daiichinuclear plant of 2011, also receives littleattention among reactionary ecologists.

If Japan’s past is to suggest a solution to theworld’s environmental problems, then it must

be the past without a cleansing away of Ashio,industrial diseases, PFOAs, and Fukushima.Yet, in Japan’s reactionary ecological discoursewhere the argument is made that Japan and itsenvironmental history holds the solution totoday’s ecological crises, Japan’s disastrousenvironmental record receives little if anyscrutiny.16 We find much the same situation inworks of the deep ecology movement: a greatdeal of attention to ideologies of Japan’s“oneness with nature,” often drawn fromwartime Japan, but little attention to theecological tragedies of Japan’s past andpresent.17 Clearly, reactionary ecology’s“Japanese view of nature” has little to do withhistorical reality. How, then, do we account forits authority?

Alienation and the Desire for Community

“Oneness with nature” is put forward as atimeless feature of the Japanese character butthis assertion’s emergence is in fact quiterecent.18 Of course, assertions of this kind werecommon in early twentieth century Japan, asnoted above, yet a similar discourse emergeddecades later at least in part as a response tothe excesses of capitalism in Japan’s postwarperiod. The industrial diseases of the 1950s and1960s in particular, but also socio-economicunevenness, consumerism, and tensions ofclass, gender, and ethnicity, gave rise to agrowing sense of dislocation and alienationand, in turn, a desire for community.19 Indeed,many of the contributors to this discourse inthe 1960s and 1970s, and today as well, speakof a sense of alienation (sogai kan).

Murota Yasuhiro, for example, speaks of the“ser ious problem” of “ the feel ing ofhomelessness that the Japanese peoplee x p e r i e n c e d ” w i t h c h a n g e s o findustrialization.2 0 Sonoda Minoru, ananthropologist and Shinto priest, expresses asimilar view, lamenting the loss of communityassociated with “kakyō,” meaning “one’s oldhome” or “one’s homeland”21 And Kitamura

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Masami, a scholar of agriculture, observes thatwhile the introduction of the natural sciencesto Japan spurred scientific thought amongJapanese, “it also brought a detachment fromnature. Probably the greatest loss from thiswas the feeling of unity with nature.” ForKitamura, this meant a cultural loss as well,because, he explains, “Japan’s traditionalculture emerged out of this sense of unity...from flower arrangement and Japanese gardensto the tea ceremony, tanka and haiku poetry,and Noh and Kabuki, not one is produceddetached from nature.”22

Thus, for some, alienation is experienced orunderstood as a loss of cultural tradition, as adetachment from nature to which the Japanesewere once connected by “spiritual ties,” and asa longing for a “return” to traditional“homeland” or community.23 This desire for a“return” contributes to a discourse on theovercoming of alienation in an imaginarycommunity of Japanese people at one withnature and with each other. But this is a mis-diagnosis of the problem, building on a verynarrow view of alienation. By focusing onalienation as estrangement from culture andtradition, reactionary ecology loses sight of amore concrete form of alienation.

For example, Hiroko Tabuchi has shown theplight of Japan’s nuclear power labor force,part of a broader “two-tiered work force, withan elite class of highly paid employees at topcompanies and a subclass of laborers who workfor less pay, have less job security and receivefewer benefits.” These contract workers, whomade up 89% of the more than 10,000 workersat the Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2010,are routinely exposed to dangerously highlevels of radiation.24 It is this material form ofalienation—in which workers, like those in thenuclear power industry, have little control overthe labor process and their workingconditions—rather than the ideal and imaginaryloss of homeland, that must be the startingpoint for any assessment o f Japan’s

environmental problems.25 Yet, many withinand outside Japan accept the idea that Japan’spast illustrates a unique nature aesthetic. In aneffort to provide an underlying basis for thisclaim, they turn to older theories linkingclimate and culture. This has taken the form ofa new discourse on “climate”.

A New Discourse on Climate

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Watsuji Tetsurō Climate

A key resource for much conservative andreactionary ecology today is philosopherWatsuji Tetsurō’s Climate (Fūdo, literally “Windand Earth”) published in 1935. It is probablythis text, more than the many others of thisperiod dealing with nature and Japaneseculture, that provides the clearest effort to linkthe natural landscape and “national character”.Watsuji’s text shares with present-dayreactionary ecology the same objectives andproblems: he sought to confirm a homogeneousfolk community derived from Japan’s “unique”landscape.

Climate, according to Watsuji, affects “all themanifestations of human life” from foodproduct ion , bu i ld ing mater ia ls andarchitectural style to “literature, art, religion,and customs”.26 He demarcated the globe intoseparate climatic zones, arguing that each gave

rise to distinct cultural groupings. For example,the European “meadow zone,” Watsujiexplained, with its grassland for livestockgrazing, gave rise to a culture of control overnature, scientific epistemology, and rationality.By contrast, Japan, situated in a “monsoonzone,” developed an attitude toward naturecharacterized by resignation and submissionrather than resistance. In this region,distinguished by its humidity, seasonal heavyrains and unpredictable weather patterns, thepower of nature “is so vast that man is obligedto abandon all hope of resistance and is forcedinto mere passive resignation.”27 Overall, thisframework, in which regional differences inclimate lead to commensurate culturalvariation, allowed Watsuji to affirm the East-West binary opposition so prevalent in earlytwentieth century Japan and the uniqueness ofJapanese culture. The culture and character ofthe Orient (and of Japan), he maintained, aredistinct from those of the Occident. And thesedistinctions are rooted in nature itself.

Today, a new discourse on climate consciouslyinformed by Watsuji’s thought, sometimescalled shin fūdo ron in Japanese, has emerged.As scholar of Buddhist and social philosophyMatsuoka Mikio observes and as much recentenvironmental literature in Japan attests,“efforts to grasp Watsuji’s fūdo-ron asenvironmental thought have steadily increasedfrom the end of the twentieth century.28 In shin-fūdo discourse, the focus is not the globalenvironment but the particular Japaneselandscape. The aim is to assert the uniquenessof Japan’s nature aesthetic as one thatsanctifies nature and reflects Japanese peopleand Japanese landscape as a single body. Tonaturalize these claims, shin fūdo ron turnsexplicitly or implicitly to Watsuji’s concepts andarguments, insisting that at a fundamental levelJapanese landscape and cul ture areintertwined.

Sonoda Minoru explains that landscape(fūdo)—“a warm and wet monsoon climate” in

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Japan’s case—shapes culture. Landscape, heexplains, “denotes not only the external,natural climatic and geographic features of aregion, but also refers to an internalisednature, infused with a cosmological andspiritual Lebenswelt [lifeworld] construed bythe people living in the region.” In other words,“landscape” is more than geography; it comesto be internalized by the people of thelandscape who develop a common aestheticrelationship to it.29

“Forest culture” is another form of shin fūdoron. In recent decades, the forest has emerged,for Japan’s reactionary ecologists, as thesymbolic and material essence of Japan’sunique aesthetic relationship to nature. A fairlysmall number of scholars with strong politicalbacking, Umehara Takeshi and YasudaYoshinori among them, have received a greatdeal of attention for their works on “forestculture,” “forest civilization,” and “forestthought”. The forest, in this discourse,represents the Japanese people’s unique,eternal, and harmonious relationship withnature.

Like Watsuji, proponents of forest culture beginwith separate climatic zones that are shown tohave their respective impacts on culture. Thegeographic conditions of Japan as an islandcountry “gave rise to a climate (fūdo) ofoceanic warmth and humidity” well suited forforests, which provided an abundance of foodand natural resources. Rice cultivation andfishing also developed out of Japan’s climaticconditions. In the Occident, however, thedomestication of animals generated a need forgrazing land, which in turn led to the clearingof the forests. This, then, is the climatic andhistorical basis for the claim that Europeancivilization is “forest-dominating” while Japan’s,with its different conditions for subsistence, is“forest-protecting”. Ultimately, according toforest-culture theorists, religion, nationalcharacter, and even views of history aredetermined by climate. Thus, climate explains

Japan’s “tolerant polytheism” as opposed to theWest’s “intolerant monotheism” and its“character” (one with nature and forest-protecting, a society characterized by unity)versus Western character (anthropocentric andforest-dominating, characterized byindividualism). 3 0

Matsuoka Mikio also contributes to therehabilitation of Watsuji’s thought. In a recentwork on Japanese philosophy and ecology, hesuggests that the views of nature put forwardby Kyoto-school philosophers Nishida Kitarōand Watsuji Tetsurō provide a “present-daysignificance”. He compares the Kyoto School’semphasis on the Mahayana Buddhist unity ofsubject and object, self and other, to theories ofself-realization in deep ecology and sees thepossibility of unifying the two. In this way, hehopes to contribute to the development of anew environmental ethic that integrates “East”(Kyoto School philosophy) and West (deepecology) to “truly overcome modernity’s nature-destroying views of the environment”. InNishida and Watsuji’s own efforts to unifyviews of nature of East and West and in theirappropriation of “oriental thought to overcomethe limits of Western modernity,” they can beseen as “forerunners,” says Matsuoka, oftoday’s radical ecology. He concludes that“following in the footsteps of Nishida andWatsuji’s hard work” is meaningful.31 Yet wefind much in Matsuoka’s new environmentalethic that is consistent with wartime rhetoricon nature, subject-object unity, and overcomingmodernity.

Watsuji’s notion of fūdo also appears incontemporary environmental ethics as aconceptual resource for thinking through therelationship between humanity and nature.Presupposed here is an essentialized “Japaneseview of nature” and an understanding ofculture, national character and climate thatsuggests an uncritical acceptance of Watsuji’sproblematic claims. Philosopher Steve Odin, forexample, in an article on the “Japanese concept

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of nature,” calls Watsuji’s fūdo “one of the mostsuggestive Asian resources for environmentalethics...” in addressing the human-naturerelationship.32 James McRae, a scholar of Asianphilosophy and religion, also draws uponWatsuji’s Fūdo, stating, “One’s naturalsurroundings play an essential role in thedevelopment of the person, to the extent thatthe different cultures of the world owe theirdistinct characters to the unique naturalclimates in which they make their homes.”Here, McRae presupposes the idea of uniquecultural character informed by climate. “One isa fully developed human being only whenone...embraces one’s context as an essentialpart of oneself.” The context here is climate orfūdo. The realization of this full developmentrequires “a process of self-negation in whichone denies the illusion of one’s “individual”self” and (here quoting Watsuji’s Ethics) “theindividual’s surrender to the totality”.33 Headvocates an environmental ethics that doesaway with the conception of the rational,autonomous individual, that instead embracesWatsuji’s view of person as conditioned byclimate.

As the above indicates, fūdo, though its use issometimes qualif ied, is an importantconceptual resource in current ecologicaldiscourse. This new discourse on climate,mediated by Watsuji’s climate theory inparticular and by Japan’s wartime ideologygenerally, operates to substantiate claimsconcerning the unique aesthetic character ofthe Japanese people and carries with it thesame potential for oppression as the climatediscourse of the 1930s.

National Landscape and Oppression

Reactionary ecological efforts in Japan torehabilitate Watsuji and the wartime discourseon nature generally are matters of concern.Watsuji ’s fūdo-ron contributed to theoppressive ideology and material conditions ofwartime Japan by defining this community in

terms of absolute loyalty to the state.34 Today,those who seek to draw upon Watsuji’s work asa source for environmental ethics are in manycases unaware of the oppressive potential in histheory of fūdo. Others suggest that Watsuji’sthought, though coopted by the state for fascistends, was in fact benign or that “his intent wasnot to advocate tyranny or fascism”.35 Butintent is not the issue here. There is a logic toWatsuji’s thought whereby the imaginedaesthetic character of the Japanese folk, whichoperates as a basis for homogeneous obedienceand loyalty to the state by mystifying socio-economic tensions, must constantly be affirmedand enforced, and defended against a socialreality that threatens to expose it as myth andas a basis of oppression. This logic is at work inhis Fūdo and clearly visible in his other worksas well.36

In Watsuji’s thought, the Japanese landscape isvenerated as sacred, caused to be sacred bylinking landscape, divinity, and state (“thedivine land” or shinkoku). This sanctity itself,then, is held up as justification for reverenceand loyalty to the state and employed as ameans to, in Watsuji’s words, “regulate theindividual from the standpoint of the totality.”37

Shin-fūdo ron perpetuates this sanctification ofnature and should therefore be a cause forconcern.

Senda, for example, articulates such a view,naturalizing it as an essentialized and eternalfeature of the Japanese character and linking itto the Japanese emperor. “Since ancient timesthe Japanese people have believed in a widevariety of deities which reside in all sorts ofnatural phenomena. The natural landscapeitself is the visual expression of deifiednature....even the Emperor was a deity ofnature...”38 Yoshida Kikuko, a specialist inJapanese philosophy, believes that among theJapanese people today a “feeling for nature’sdivine life force” endures.39 Umehara’schampioning of an “animism that worshipsnature,” Yasuda’s many calls to “worship the

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mountains,” and Shinto scholar Ueda Kenji’semphasis on the “spiritual communicationbetween nature and human beings” in Shintoprovide further examples.40 Finally, we see indeep ecology and Gaia theory (which, by someaccounts, views the entire earth as a sentientorganism) a similar tendency to sanctify nature,whereby “even the commonest sticks andstones have a spiritual essence which must bereverenced” and the merging of individual andnature culminates in “spiritual personhood”.41

In his study of fascism, Mark Neocleous callsattention to a link between fascism and thesanctification of nature. “Ideologically,” heargues, “fascism does not merely ‘respect’nature: it sanctifies and spiritualizes it.” This,he explains, is because “The sanctification ofnature is simultaneously the sanctification ofthe nation as the natural collective unit. Theintegral connection between the idea of anational spirit and the spiritual concept ofnature focuses attention on this nature, that is,the land of this nation, and the role it plays inshaping national character and identity.”42 Andas we have seen in Watsuji’s theory and inreact ionary ecology today, “nature”consistently refers to the Japanese landscaperather than the global environment. Thisreverence for nature and the way it reinforces areverence for the nation and culture of Japansuggest that Neocleous’s insights pertain hereas well.

For those defending this ideological structure,the critique or questioning of what is deemedsacred is intolerable.43 As a result, actualenvironmental degradation taking place inJapan, which by its very presence subvertsreactionary ecology, becomes a problem of theother. That is, capitalism’s excesses—pollution,alienation, socio-economic unevenness—aredissociated from Japan, Japanese history, andJapanese culture by locating the problemelsewhere. Marilyn Ivy, discussing fascism inwartime Japan, suggests that capitalism’sexcesses were “purged, assigned to the

outside,” that is, located outside “Japaneseculture” (e.g. by attaching them to some “non-Japanese” other living or acting within Japan)or geographically outside of Japan itself (e.g. inthe “West” or in China).44

Yasuda Yoshinori provides an example, settingup a clear opposition between “the soul ofJapan” and those who threaten it. According toYasuda, religion must play a large role in theresolution of the world’s environmentalproblems. “We must cultivate the soul of Japan,the heart of Japan by introducing religiouseducation into the education of Japan’s youngpeople, as they are the ones who will bear theburdens of the future.” He calls on Japan tocreate a group of “environmental-rangers” whocan be sent to all regions in the country tofurther environmental protection and respondto natural disasters. “Further,” he states, “theywould crack down on such things as the illegaldevelopment carried out by foreigners.”45

Yasuda warns of “the buying up of Japaneseterritory by foreigners,” a practice he claims islinked to grave environmental harm.

While Yasuda acknowledges that environmentalharm does take place even within Japan, hesuggests that “illegal development” is notcarried out by “Japanese” but by “foreigners”.In this way, he draws upon a commondiscriminatory formula in which to be foreign inJapan is to be criminal and crime is a foreignmatter.46 In his vision, Japan’s youth, oncereligiously trained and armed with the “souland heart” o f Japan, wi l l defend theenvironment by defending Japanese cultureagainst the external threat.

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Yasuda Yoshinori

Monsoon and Civilization

From this one example, of course, we shouldnot expect to see activists on the streets ofJapan congratulating themselves on theircultural oneness with the forest while at thesame time chanting “down with foreigners”.But the two are not unconnected. Reactionaryecology contributes to the production of anexclusionary ideology of cultural identity and sois bound up with the oppressive conditions thatthis ideology generates. Yasuda’s comments onforeigners are delivered within a context ofvery troubling hate speech and hate groups.Historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki, discussing hatespeech in Japan, calls attention to the “Citizens’League to Deny Foreigners Special Rights” or“Zaitokukai” formed in 2007. “Zaitokukaiprotest actions,” she notes, “are most oftendirected at Korean residents in Japan...but thegroup’s list of other targets is long andeclectic...” The Zaitokukai is not the only suchgroup. Another, the “New Social Movement”(Shinshakai Undō) assembled “some 150 to 200far right demonstrators [and] staged a marchthrough the busy main streets of Shin-Okubo[where many ethnic Korean and Chinese live],yelling vitriolic abuse [“Kill Koreans,” forexample] and incitements to ethnic violence atinhabitants...”47 “Non-Japanese” ethnic groupsin Japan represent an internal threat; by theirvery presence they undermine the narrative ofJapan as homogeneous racial community. Andthis notion of homogeneous community is at thecenter of the cultural discourse reactionaryecology helps to form.

Japan’s largest and most powerful right-winggroup, the “Japan Council” (Nippon Kaigi),illustrates the close connections amongr e a c t i o n a r y e c o l o g y , p a t r i o t i ccommunitarianism, and intolerance towardthose who question its aims. Formed in 1997,the Japan Council promotes a standard list ofright-wing imperatives: “respect the ImperialFamily as the center of Japanese life;” nurture

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patriotism; promote a new Constitution “basedon our nation’s true characteristics;” nurtureyoung people to grow up with pride and lovefor their nation; and establish a strong armyand promote the nation's status abroad.”48

While the Zaitokukai will sometimes criticizethe Japan Council for not going far enough,anthropologist Yamaguchi Tomomi points outthat “it is organizations like Japan Council thatincubate issues like the so-called militarycomfort women and xenophobia.”49

Moreover, the Japan Council has called forincluding a clause on environmental protectionin a revised constitution. They write:

From ancient times, the Japanese people havebelieved that deities dwell in the mountains andthe rivers, in the grasses and the trees. This isa matter of the spirit of ecology, the reverencefor nature flowing within Japanese tradition.Isn’t it our obligation today to bring to life thisJapanese tradition? Do we not have theobligation to incorporate environmental rights,or rather the duty to protect the environment,into the constitution and to resolve to protectthe workings of nature for the future not onlyof humanity but all living things?50

Here, the Japan Council’s immediate aim ofcourse is to use this ecological argument toopen up the constitution for revision, ultimatelyin hopes of revising the “peace clause” articlenine. But, like reactionary ecologists, its keyconcern is not environmental protection butrather the shoring up of “tradition” and anarrative of Japanese community.

This same communitarian ideology is nowformally codified in Japan’s education system.The 2006 revisions to the Basic Law ofEducation reflect an effort by Prime MinisterAbe and other conservative politicians to weavetogether reverence for nature, tradition, andculture with the call for environmentalprotection so as to legislate patriotism. ThisLaw lays out education’s aim, according to thegovernment’s provisional English translation:

“to foster an attitude to respect life, care fornature, and contribute to the protection of theenvironment.” But this worthy aim of (global?)environmental protection is offset by whatimmediately follows: “to foster an attitude torespect our traditions and culture, [and] lovethe country and region (kyōdo) that nurturedthem…”51 There is more here than the obviouseffort to cultivate patriotism. Translating kyōdoas “region” is an obfuscation. Kyōdo conveys“one’s home” or “homeland” and is closely tiedideographically and semantically to SonodaMinoru’s longed-for kakyō (discussed above)and to one rendering of furusato, another evenmore ideologically weighted term forhomeland. Thus, care for nature andenvironment in the first passage becomes loveof Japanese landscape in the second. Moreover,“homeland” in this revised law operates, asfūdo or “climate” does for Watsuji and shinfūdo ron proponents, as the wellspring ofculture and tradition. Again, this emphasis onnational landscape and community cannot beseparated from ethnic discrimination: the oneattests to the homogeneous aesthetic characterof the Japanese people while the other is aresponse to the threat to this myth ofhomogeneity posed from the “outside”.

As we have seen, there is also an effort inreactionary ecology to locate environmentaldegradation (and the excesses of capitalismgenerally) geographically outside of Japan. Forexample, in the East-West (or Japan-West)binary discussed above, Japan is set apart from“Western civilization,” defined in terms of amonotheistic Judeo-Christian religious traditionand a will to dominate nature. By situating theroots of global environmental crises in animagined “West” from which Japan is detached,reactionary ecology positions Japan outside theconditions of environmental exploitation. Yet,reactionary ecology seeks not only to distanceJapanese culture from these problems, but touphold and disseminate the “Japanese view” asthe solution.

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We see in this discourse an imperialist desirefor the dissemination or proselytization of thisview or narrative to the world. Nearly all of thereactionary ethical thinkers in Japan examinedin this essay conclude by holding up the“Japanese view” as a model for the world’semulation. Umehara, for example, states, “Myhope now is to discover in the cultural originsof Japan not only a new value orientation whichwould benefit us as we forge the values ourchildren can live by...but also to contribute tothe who le o f human i t y a new va lueorientation...”52 Yasuda, Senda, Odin, McRae,Tsurumi, Kagawa-Fox, Matsuoka, Yamauchiand others follow suit. Perhaps this in itself isno cause for concern, merely the contributionof a theory to ongoing debate about how best torespond to global environmental problems. Yetwhen so much of this narrative is so closelyintertwined with wartime discourse, we mightrecall one of the highest aims to whichWatsuji’s climate theory led: “the lofty ideal ofcausing all other nations to attain this sense ofVeneration of the Emperor”.53

In his “Proposal for a solution to the world’senvironmental problems based on Japanesecivilization,” Yasuda Yoshinori puts forward aplan to “disseminate Japanese environmentalethics to the world.” Japan, he suggests,should:

organize a team for a ‘beautification of theearth’ movement. Dispatch this team to cleanout toilets, particularly in China. This is theonly way to change the spirit (kokoro) of theChinese people.54

No doubt this proposal was put forward as abenevolent offer of assistance to help thepeople of China “improve” themselves. Butimperialist desires are very often couched inthe language of benevolence. Were Japan totake it upon itself to “improve” the defective“Chinese spirit” (after, of course, first ascribinga unitary and defective spirit to the vast anddiverse population of China), how can we view

this as anything other than an imperialistdesire, again resonating closely with therhetoric of wartime Japan. How would theChinese character be changed? Whosecharacter or spirit would serve as a model forchange?

A further recommendation Yasuda puts forwardfor disseminating Japanese environmentalviews to the world, what he calls an “effectivemeasure,” is “to encourage Japan’s youngpeople toward international marriages, then totransfer Japanese values to the children (andgrandchildren) from these marriages.”55 Thevalues of the non-Japanese parent in such anarrangement are apparently of no value.Yasuda, together with his neo-imperialistrecommendations, may be an outlier, but not acomplete anomaly. His claims reflect the logicof reactionary ecological discourse within thematerial conditions of global capitalism.

Reactionary Ecology as Fascist Desire

Markedly absent from reactionary ecology is asustained critique of capitalism. The object ofcritique in these works is not the materialecological conditions of the socio-economicorder but ra ther “ the West” and i t santhropocentric nature-dominating values,China and its people’s defective “spirit,” or theforeign presence within Japan. Thus,environmental excess is routinely locatedoutside of Japanese culture, society, andhistory. Despite their impassioned assertions ofconcern for the global environmental crisis,environmental degradation is not the primaryconcern of the champions of “forest culture”and the “Japanese view of nature”. The keyobjective of reactionary ecology in Japan (anddeep ecology contributes to this) is to bolster anarrative of a homogeneous ethnic communityat one with a sanctified nature, where “nature”signifies the particular Japanese landscape anda unique Japanese culture.

This is a narrative clearly mediated byideologies of wartime Japan. Both deep

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ecologists and reactionary cultural critics inJapan reflect this in their sanctified views ofnature; their rehabilitation of wartime thinkers,like Watsuji (and Heidegger), whose theoriesand statements have been at least tinged withwartime ideology but who now once againspeak with authority; their longing for a retreatto a mythic past of cultural community; andtheir aesthetic desire to unify subject andobject, self and nature, to overcome thealienation of the “Western ego” and attain“organic wholeness” through an intuitiveprocess of self-realization.

Euro-American (and in some cases Japanese)scholarship on deep ecology and environmentalethics differs from reactionary ecology in Japanin that it is not usually framed within anarrative of one particular nation or culture.But it is driven by a similar logic. Because ituncritically appropriates Japanese history andbecause it reflects a largely reactionaryview—a longing for a return to an idealized pre-industrial civilization, an endorsement of a kindof neo-vitalism (e.g. Gaia as “super-organism”),etc.—it contributes to the reactionary agendain Japan. Above all, it is important to considerreactionary ecology within Japan together withreactionary ideologies and movements globally(deep ecology and certain positions inenvironmental ethics, for example, as well asreactionary ecological discourse in the UnitedStates) in order to emphasize that thereactionary tendencies unfolding within Japanare not unique to Japan; rather, they indicate aresponse to the tensions and contradictions ofglobal capitalism. Indeed, the disturbingparallels with the United States today—anirrational denial of climate change and willfuldisregard for environmental degradation pairedwith a longing for an imagined former era ofAmerican “greatness” and a violent hostility toa wide range of “others” targeted for theirethnicity, religion, gender, or sexualorientation—is a telling example of this.

In this sense, the various features of

reactionary ecology within and outside Japancan be understood to reflect a fascist desire.56

My use of this term is not to identify Japantoday as a fascist regime, but rather to callattention to “a politics implicit in moderncapitalism” and to “a permanent possibilityinherent in the social forms of modernityitself.”57 This is a reactionary desire to containthe material (and ideological) conditions—theexcesses of capitalism—that threaten todestabilize the socio-economic status quo.Through a range of strategies (mystification, aselective and ahistorical reading of the past, anEast-West binary to differentiate Japan fromthe West, a sanctified view of nature, efforts toaestheticize community and culture) theseforms of reactionary ecology promise to restorecommunity to those alienated by the capitalistsystem. But the real impact is to satisfy areactionary desire to regulate society bysubordinating the individual to the culturalwhole, conceal environmental harm, andsustain the very socio-economic order thatgenerates the ecological crises we now face.

The anthropocentric ideology that reactionaryecology rightly critiques (but fails tohistoricize) cannot be overcome while thematerial conditions generating it remainuncontes ted . I f the cur ren t g loba lenvironmental crisis is to be taken seriously,wha t i s needed i s ne i the r cu l tu ra le x c e p t i o n a l i s m m a s q u e r a d i n g a senvironmentalism nor vitalism. There is indeedmuch we can learn from Japan’s environmentalhistory, but only so long as this history ishistorical, materialist, and dialectical.58 Incontrast to the ahistorical and arbitraryaccounts of Japan’s past in reactionary ecology,a careful, inclusive historical reading of Japan’senvironmental record is essential, not only toreveal and address the ecological catastrophesin Japan’s history, but also to historicize andinvalidate the narrative, concepts, andframeworks of reactionary ecology in Japan, toreveal their mediation by wartime discourseand their oppressive potential, to reveal what

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reactionary ecology seeks to conceal.Moreover, it is important to move beyondopposit ions between eco-centric andanthropocentric values, between the cultural,ecological, or religious attitudes in animismand Buddhism vs. Judeo-Christianity. Rather, acareful and sustained critique of the materialforces producing environmental degradation, acritique of capitalism, is needed. A materialistassessment also reveals the socio-economicconditions that give rise to the alienation andthe desire for cultural community that animatesreactionary ecology within and outside Japan.Finally, in contrast to “the Japanese view ofnature,” in which nature is reduced to theJapanese landscape, a fixed repository orwellspring for enduring cultural values, adialectical view of nature and humanity’srelation to it is needed so that we can movebeyond such cultural essentialism. Not only doour representations of nature shift over time;humanity acts on and changes the environmenteven as the environment acts on and changeshumanity. Fukushima illustrates this mostclearly.

Working to demystify and delegitimizereactionary ecology’s claims so as to focuscritique squarely on the forces producingenvironmental degradation is an importantstarting point. But ultimately, critique is notenough. Radical change to the global socio-economic order is necessary; “greencapitalism,” voluntarism (well-intended butinsufficient efforts to address climate changesuch as the use of CFL light bulbs or recycling),and mere adjustments to the status quo, as R.Guha, John Bellamy Foster, Joel Kovel, andothers have convincingly argued, will beinsufficient. More than two and a half decadesago, Ramachandra Guha wrote, “If colonial andcapitalist expansion has both accentuatedsocial inequalities and signaled a precipitousfall in ecological wisdom, an alternate ecologymust rest on an alternate society and polity as

well.”59 Today, with the crisis of global climatechange intensifying, the need for a post-capitalist order has become more urgent thanever.

Relevant articles from The Asia-PacificJournal:

Andrew DeWit, “Hioki’s Smart Community andJ a p a n ’ s S t r u c t u r a l R e f o r m(https://apjjf.org/site/search/level/2/title/Hioki’sSmart Community and Japan’s StructuralReform.),” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 14,Issue 15, No. 10 (Aug., 2016)

Paul Jobin, “Dying for TEPCO? Fukushima’sN u c l e a r C o n t r a c t W o r k e r s(https://apjjf.org/2011/9/18/Paul-Jobin/3523/article.html),” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9,Issue 18, No. 3 (May 2011)

David McNeill, “Nippon Kaigi and the RadicalConservative Project to Take Back Japan(https://apjjf.org/-David-McNeill/4409),” Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 48, No. 4 (Dec.,2015)

Sato Kei et al., “Japan’s Largest RightwingOrganization: An Introduction to Nippon Kaigi(https://apjjf.org/site/search/level/2/author/SatoKei),” trans. J. Victor Koschmann, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 48, No. 5 (Dec.,2015)

Robert Stolz, “Remake Politics, Not Nature:Tanaka Shozo’s Philosohies of “Poison” and“ F l o w ” a n d J a p a n ’ s E n v i r o n m e n t(https://apjjf.org/-Robert-Stolz/2331/article.html),” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 5, Issue 1, No.0 (Jan., 2007)

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Freedom of HateSpeech: Abe Shinzo and Japan’s Public Sphere(https://apjjf.org/2013/11/8/Tessa-Morris-Suzuki/3902/article.html),” The Asia-Pacific Journal,Vol. 11, Issue 8, No. 1 (Feb., 2013)

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Richard Reitan is associate professor of history at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster,PA 17603, US. He is the author of Making a Moral Society: Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan(Hawaii, 2010) and various articles on modern Japanese history including “Narratives ofEquivalence: Neoliberalism in Contemporary Japan,” Radical History Review 112 (2012):43-64, and “Völkerpsychologie and the Appropriation of ‘Spirit’ in Meiji Japan,” ModernIntellectual History 7, 3 (2010): 495-522. rreitan@fandm.edu

Notes1 I am grateful to the reviewers of this article for their comments and suggestions, and toXinyu Liu, who worked with me as a student research assistant during the initial stages of thisproject.2 See Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (London & New York:Verso, 1995), 162-68; and Mark Neocleous, Fascism (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1997), 59-74.3 For these statements, see Wakabayashi Akihiko, “Kankyō shisō ni okeru rinrigaku tekiaporōchi to etosu kara no aporōchi,” Japanese Association for Religious Studies, n.d., 179-80;Umehara Takeshi, “The Japanese View of the “Other World”: Japanese Religion in WorldPerspective,” Japan Review 2 (1991): 189-90.4 See, for example, Murota Yasuhiro, “Culture and the Environment in Japan” EnvironmentalManagement, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1985): 105; Midori Kagawa-Fox, The Ethics of Japan’s GlobalEnvironmental Policy: The Conflict Between Principles and Practice (New York: Routledge,2012), 35-36; Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith,1985), 43, 65-67.5 Murota, “Culture and the Environment in Japan,” 105.6 Umehara, “The Civilization of the Forest,” New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol. 16, Issue 2(1999): 45.7 See Tsurumi Kazuko, “Animism and Science,” in Adventure of Ideas: A Collection of Essayson Patterns of Creativity and a Theory of Endogenous Development (Kawaguchi: Japanime,n.d.), 288; Kagawa-Fox, Japan’s Global Environmental Policy, 1, 31-2, 35; Masao Watanabe,“The Conception of Nature in Japanese Culture,” Science Vol. 183, No. 4122 (1974): 279-82.On deep ecology, see Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, ix, 66-7.8 See Tsurumi, “Animism and Science,” 288-89; M. Senda, “Japan’s Traditional View of Natureand Interpretation of Landscape,” Geojournal, Vol. 26, No. 2, History of Geographical Thought(Feb. 1992): 132, 134; Umehara, Mori no shisō ga jinrui o sukuu (Tokyo: PHP, 2015), 155; andYamauchi Tomosaburō, “The Confucian Environmental Ethics of Ogyū Sorai: A Three-Level,Eco-Humanistic Interpretation,” in J. Baird Callicott and James McRae ed., EnvironmentalPhilosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought (Albany: State University of New York, 2014),338-39 and 354.9 On the prioritization of values over materiality, see Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots ofOur Ecological Crisis,” Science, New Series, Vol. 155, No. 3767 (Mar. 10, 1967), 1205-1207,much-cited in Japan’s reactionary ecology; A. H. Badiner ed., Dharma Gaia: A Harvest ofEssays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1990), xiv, 22; and Devall and

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Sessions, Deep Ecology, ix.10 Matsuoka Mikio, Kyoto gakuha to ekorojii (Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 2013), 56-57.11 See Derek Hall, “Japan’s Role in the Asian Environmental Crisis,” Social Science JapanJournal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (April 2001), 96; Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and thePolitics of Timber in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press, 1997), 1-2, 5, 165.12 On postwar pollution issues, see Imamura Tomoaki et al., “History of Public Health Crises inJapan,” Journal of Public Health Policy 28 (2007): 221-37. Also see Masano Atsuko, Yondaikogaibyo: Minamatabyo, Niigata minamatabyo, Itaiitaibyo, Yokkaichi kogai (Tokyo: Chuokoronshinsha, 2013).13 Yasuda, “Jinrui to shizen,” 164, 170. In Yasuda’s text there is no mention of Fukushima,Minamata, PFOAs, Yokkaiichi asthma, Ashio, etc. Pollution in this text only appears inreference to countries other than Japan. Also see “Suspected carcinogen polluting watersupply: PFOA level especially high in Osaka: Study,” Japan Times, 22 May 2007; OECD,Environmental Performance Reviews: Japan (Paris: OECD, 2002), 100.14 Miranda. A. Schreurs, Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 47. Also see Andrew De Wit, “Hioki’sSmart Community and Japan’s Structural Reform,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 14, Issue 15,No. 10 (Aug 2016). De Wit calls attention to the emerging “smart communities” in Japan, suchas Hioki City, which reflect structural reforms for cleaner, more efficient, and less expensiveenergy production.15 For an overview of the environmental issues Japan faces today, see Ishibashi Haruo et al.,Gendai Nihon no kankyō mondai to kankyō seisaku (Tokyo: Senbundo, 2012), 144-45.Ishibashi approaches these issues from an empirical standpoint outside of reactionaryecology.16 See Yasuda, “Jinrui to shizen,” 151-177; Umehara, Mori no shishō, 161, 198 (except for abrief acknowledgement that Japan, too, had environmental problems, Japan’s disastrousecological history is absent in this work); Kitamura Masami, “Tôzai no shinrin-kan” (Easternand Western Views of the Forest), in Yasuda Yoshinori and Sugahara Satoshi ed., Mori tobunmei (Tokyo: Asakura shoten, 1996), 19-28.17 See, for example, Callicott and McRae ed., Environmental Philosophy; Alan Drengson andInoue Yuichi, Diipu Ekorojii: Ikikata kara kangaeru kankyō no shisō (Kyoto: Shōwadō, 2010).In J. B. Callicott and R. Ames, Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought (Albany: SUNY Press,1989), we do find reference to mercury pollution in Japan in the Epilogue, but the focus ofthis work, as the title suggests, clearly lies elsewhere.18 Julia Adeney Thomas writes, “Much of the revolutionary recasting of the national ideologyof nature occurred in the decade after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5)...Japan’s“immemorial harmony with nature” is a twentieth-century product...” J. A. Thomas,Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology (Berkeley & LosAngeles: University of California Press, 2001), 186-87.19 See Richard Reitan, “Narratives of ‘Equivalence’: Neoliberalism in Contemporary Japan,”Radical History Review, 112 (2012): 50-51.20 Murota, “Culture and the Environment in Japan,” 105.21 Sonoda Minoru, “Shinto and the Natural Environment,” in John Breen and Mark Teeuwened., Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), 42, 44.

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22 Kitamura, “Tōzai no shinrin-kan,” 20, 21.23 Much of this parallels early Showa era efforts to conceptualize and disseminate a subject-object unity of self and other, national subject and nation-state, humanity and nature whichtook shape as a desire for community and as a means to address increasingly serious socialproblems generating alienation and social dislocation.24 Hiroko Tabuchi, “Braving Heat and Radiation for Temp Job,” New York Times, 10 April2011.25 See Paul Jobin, “Dying for TEPCO? Fukushima’s Nuclear Contract Workers,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 18, No. 3 (May 2011).26 Watsuji Tetsurō, Fūdo: Ningengaku teki kōsatsu (Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 2006), 17.27 Watsuji Tetsurō, A Climate: A Philosophical Study, trans. Geoffrey Bownas (Tokyo: Ministryof Education, 1961), 19. Cf. Watsuji, Fūdo, 31.28 Matsuoka, Kyoto gakuha to ekorojii, 340.29 Sonoda, “Shinto and the Natural Environment,” 33, 35.30 See Yasuda Yoshinori, Mori o mamoru bunmei, shihai suru bunmei (Tokyo: PHP Shinsho,1997), 217-18, 220-225.31 Matsuoka, Kyoto gakuha to ekorojii, 2, 379-80, 402, 411.32 Steve Odin, “The Japanese Concept of Nature,” in Callicott and McRae ed., EnvironmentalPhilosophy, 252-253.33 James McRae, “Triple-Negation: Watsuji Tetsurō on the Sustainability of Ecosystems,Economies, and International Peace,” in Callicott and McRae ed., Environmental Philosophy,362.34 See Watsuji, Fūdo, 170-81, where Watsuji discusses Japan’s ie (household) society and theindividual. Also see Tetsuo Najita and H. D. Harootunian, “Japan’s Revolt Against the West,”in Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi ed., Modern Japanese Thought (Cambridge and New York:Cambridge University Press, 1998), 242.35 See McRae, “Triple-Negation,” 373, n.15.36 See, for example, Watsuji Tetsurō, “The Way of the Japanese Subject,” in David Dilworth etal. ed., Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998),285-287. See also the “Fundamentals of Our National Polity,” co-authored by Watsuji andpublished by Japan’s Ministry of Education: Monbushō ed., Kokutai no hongi (Tokyo:Monbushō, 1937).37 Watsuji, Fūdo, 177.38 Senda, “Japan’s Traditional View of Nature,” 131.39 Yoshida Kikuko, “Kagaku gijutsu bunmei to Nihonjin no shizenkan,” Ningen to Kankyō(Journal of Human Environmental Studies) 2 (2011): 13.40 See Umehara, Mori no shisō, 51, 84, 124, 155, 211; Umehara, “The Japanese View of the“Other World”,” 189; Yasuda, “Jinrui to shizen,” 152; Ueda Kenji, “Shinto’s View of theHuman,” in Heisig et al. eds., Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Honolulu: University ofHawai’i Press, 2011), 544.41 Joan Halifax, “The Third Body: Buddhism, Shamanism, and Deep Ecology,” in Allan HuntBadiner ed., Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley: ParallaxPress, 1990), 24; Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, ix, 67, 76.42 Neocleous, Fascism, 76, 77.

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43 Consider the severe retaliation toward those who refuse to whitewash Japan’s wartimehistory and demand an honest account of the “comfort women” issue. See Katsuya Hirano, “AReflection on Uemura Takashi’s Talk at UCLA,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 33,No. 4 (Aug. 9, 2015), 1-3.44 Marilyn Ivy, “Foreword: Fascism, Yet?” in Alan Tansman, ed., The Culture of JapaneseFascism (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2009), viii-ix.45 Yasuda Yoshinori, “Nihon-teki bunmei ni yoru chikyū kankyō mondai kaiketsu e no teigen”(A Proposal for the solution to the world’s environmental problems by way of Japanesecivilization), Kikan seisaku keiei kenkyū, Vol. 4 (2009): 54, 58-59.46 See, for example, Apichai W. Shipper, “Criminals or Victims? The Politics of IllegalForeigners in Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 2005): 299-327.47 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Freedom of Hate Speech: Abe Shinzo and Japan’s Public Sphere,”The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 8, No. 1 (Feb. 25, 2013), see 3-5.48 David McNeill, “Nippon Kaigi and the Radical Conservative Project to Take Back Japan,”Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 48, No. 4 (Dec. 2015).49 Sato Kei et al., “Japan’s Largest Rightwing Organization: An Introduction to Nippon Kaigi,”trans. J. Victor Koschmann, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 48, No. 5 (Dec. 2015), 3.50 Nippon Kaigi, “Kempō mondai shiryōshū: gen kempō o shiru tame no 12 shō,” 11 July, 2000.From http://www.nipponkaigi.org/opinion/archives/882, accessed June 2 2015.51 See the text of this document at the website of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,Science and Technology: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/kihon/about/index.htm. Also seeDavid McNeill and Adam Lebowitz “Hammering Down the Educational Nail: Abe Revises theFundamental Law of Education,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 5, Issue 7, No. 0 (July 2007).52 Umehara, “The Civilization of the Forest,” 41.53 Watsuji Tetsurō, “The Way of the Japanese Subject,” 285.54 Yasuda, “Nihon-teki bunmei,” 59.55 Yasuda, “Nihon-teki bunmei,” 59.56 Ivy, “Foreword: Fascism, Yet?” viii. Also see Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant,Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 210.57 Neocleous, Fascism, xi and Osborne, The Politics of Time, 161.58 Foster et al. use this formula to understand “nature”. John Bellamy Foster et al., TheEcological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 261.59 See R. Guha, “Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation,”Environmental Ethics Vol. 11 (Spring 1989): 71-83; Foster et al., The Ecological Rift, 47,436-42; Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?(London & New York: Zed Books, 2007), 162.