Yoshino Sakuzo Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Yoshino Sakuzo (1878–1933) was a Japanese political thinker and leader of the Taisho democracy movement. He is best known for his formulation of the political theory of minponshugi, or “politics of the people.” Born into a middle-class merchant family, Yoshino was converted to Christianity in high school. During his years as a law student, he joined the Hongo Church, where he came under the influence of Christian socialists Abe Isoo and Naoe Kinoshita. Two years after Yoshino’s graduation in 1904, he went to China as a private tutor to the son of Yuan Shikai, a Chinese warlord. Yoshino returned to China in 1909 to become an assistant professor at Tokyo Imperial University. He was in Europe from 1910 to 1913, during which time he came into contact with European intellectuals.

While at Tokyo Imperial University, Yoshino began writing articles on politics in the Chuo Koron (Monthly Review), calling for the establishment of a constitutional government. In 1918 he founded the Reimeiki (Enlightenment Society) and held lectures with another leader of the democratic movement, Oyama Ikuo. They called for the introduction of adult suffrage and a reduction in the constitutional powers of the Upper House of the Diet, the Privy Council, and the military. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 brought challenges to the democratic movement and Yoshino was forced to resign from the university and take a job as an editorial writer for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. However, his articles were censored and he was once again forced to resign. He then founded the Meiji Bunka Kenkyukai (Meiji Culture Research Association) and published under its auspices an encyclopedic twenty-four volume work titled Meiji Bunka Zenshu (1929–1930). During this period he worked to create a united front of noncommunist liberal democratic parties.

Arguably Yoshino’s most important work was On the Meaning of Constitutional Government, which defined his career. Although he was a democrat, his vision of Japanese democracy differed from the European models. While critical of imperial authoritarianism, Yoshino rejected the concept of natural rights as the basis of democracy because the concept was alien to Japanese traditions. Instead, he based his argument on the well-being of the people. According to Yoshino, democracy was based on two fundamental premises: the first, minshu shugi, held that sovereignty was vested in the people. The second, minpon shugi, held that the welfare of the citizens was the ultimate goal of the state. This reasoning made it unnecessary for the Japanese to accept the theories of European philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, among others, regarding the philosophical content of democracy; it was enough to borrow the democratic institutions and modify them to the Japanese environment. Even this idea of a constitutional monarchy was a radical one in pre–World War II (1939–1945) Japan. It was only after Japan’s humiliating defeat in the war that Yoshino’s ideas were validated. Yoshino’s collected writings have been published in eight volumes.

Bibliography:

Silberman, Bernard. “The Political Theory and Program of Yoshino Sakuzo.” The Journal of Modern History 31 (December 1959): 310–324.
Sogoro,Tanaka. Yoshino Sakuzo. Tokyo: Miraisha, 1958.

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