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CHAPTER FIVE

Some Concluding remarks

In my exposition of Roesler's constitutional thought, I have stressed the peculiar social ideas which are apparent in it. I believe that the key to his whole conception of the constitution is to be found in his idea of the 'social state', derived from his fundamental philosophy of the 'social law' as the 'order of social freedom'. And I believe that it was the nonrealization of his social conception of the state which was the main reason for the failure of the Meiji Constitution and the breakdown of the Meiji state.

Roesler's conception of the constitution, its role and its organic development rests on a presupposition which is not written in the constitution and cannot be written there. It presupposes that in the people and especially in its leading classes a consciousness of social freedom is alive and that the constitutional system draws its life energy from this awareness. The spirit of social freedom and social law which for Roesler is the life-spring of the social state has an ethico-religious root. Roesler considered it an offspring of the Christian idea of humanity. Only the Christian religion which sees every man personally called to God can uphold the freedom and social responsibility of the person with an absolute conviction. Roesler believed that these essentially Christian ideas would be accepted everywhere in the modern world, and that the cultural development of Japan after the Restoration was moving in a direction toward the realization of these ideas. Therefore the process of modernization of Japan was to him, in its deeper aspect, the progress in the awareness of social freedom—of that social freedom as he understood it in the sense of Christian humanism. On this optimistic faith his whole constitutional theory rests.

In reality however, in the socio-cultural transformation of the Meiji era no Christian humanism took root in the new nation. On the contrary, the new nation came more and more under the sway of a social ideology fundamentally hostile to the spirit of social freedom, and that prevented the realization of the free and social state which Roesler had in mind. That ideology was the kokutai ideology.

The Japanese took over in the Meiji era a multitude of ideas and institutions from the West in an adventurous and utilitarian spirit, abandoning old traditions without rooting themselves in a deeper Weltanschauung. The lack of an absolute conviction as a hold and guide in the onrush of the new ideas was rightly perceived by the conservative leaders to lead to spiritual and moral confusion and to endanger the national ethos. Therefore, they attempted to make the kokutai ideology the spiritual base of new Japan.

Itō said in the speech opening the deliberations of the Privy Council on the constitutional draft: 'In Europe, religion is the foundation of the state. The feeling and thought of the people is deeply penetrated by and rooted in religion. In our country however the religions represent no important force. In our country what alone can be the foundation is the Imperial House.' From this belief springs the first basic article of the constitution: 'The great Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal.' This first article was meant as brief summation of the whole kokutai ideology. In the by-documents to the constitution, the imperial proclamations on the occasion of the promulgation of the constitution, this ideology is fuller revealed. It is noteworthy that the more liberal constitutional drafts of the government's opposition, too, contain the first article of the constitution. The kokutai ideology was the common article of faith of all the leaders of the new epoch. The only one who was against the mystical first article was the foreigner H. Roesler. For him it was a contradiction to build a modern constitutional state on a mystic foundation. The constitutional thought was to him an expression of the modern 'spirit of social freedom,' and that seemed to him a more reliable foundation for a modern political order than an irrational myth.

Soon after the promulgation of the constitution, the Imperial Rescript on Education, drafted mainly by Inoue Kowashi, was issued. It makes the kokutai ideology the norm of education. In this edict, the traditional Confucian family ethics is put wholly into the service of the state and the Emperor. The imperial throne appears as the ground and center of all social relations. From this time, the kokutai ideology was, with an ever-increasing power that reached its peak in the years before the war, indoctrinated into the people and made, in the form of State Shinto, into a universally binding state religion.

There cannot be any doubt: in the kokutai ideology the individual is totally subordinated to the state and its mission. The myth of the eternal Japan was the typical myth of the totalitarian state: the single person has no value in itself, only the greatness of the people has ultimate meaning.

In the atmosphere of this totalitarian ideology respect for the dignity of the person and the ethos of personal freedom, decision and responsibility could not develop. What the constitution in this respect demanded for its fruitful implementation, was not understood. The myth of the divinely founded and ruled family state substituted a false image for the existing social reality. Japan was not any longer an archaic patriarchical society, but a modern industrial society, burdened by all the tensions and needs of such a society. The social problems of this society demanded a new social spirit, a new social ethic: to feel oneself, out of respect for the dignity of every man, responsible for shaping the public life in such a way that everybody in today's mass society may keep intact his humanity. For these social tasks the official state myth could not generate any moral energy. The official ethic was centered on devotion to the family and to the imperial house. Social responsibility remained limited to one's own family and the Emperor and his Empire. The sphere of social life which is neither the family nor the state, that sphere where the economic and cultural life of modern society moves, where, beyond family and state, by free cooperation the free cultural life of a free society has to be built, remained void of moral impulses.

Corresponding to the idea of the family state, there prevailed a governmental patriarchalism in which the 'initiative from below', the participation of the people in politics, was not desired, and the concern for the common good was the domain of the bureaucracy. Furthermore, at the apex of this family state there was no responsible head. The myth which made the Emperor a quasi-divine being prevented his carrying out the supreme political decision-making which the constitution clearly assigned to him. If the Emperor was to retain the halo of superhuman wisdom and sanctity, he could not be allowed to be dragged down into politics, into the arena of party strife and fallible decision. Therefore, the Japanese avoided asking political decisions from him and kept him away from governmental affairs. In this vacuum of decision-making in the constitutional system stepped anonymous rulers, those who in reality dominated the throne and made the will of the Emperor by deciding for him the selection of ministers and the policy of the Cabinet. Under Emperor Meiji it was the Genrō of the Restoration, in the final phase it was the military clique. Those real decision-makers behind the throne were men and power groups which stood outside the constitution and were, in the last resort, responsible to nobody. So the way was open to an abuse of the imperial power, and this abuse of the imperial power by uncontrolled power cliques perverted the whole structure of the Meiji Constitution.

The worst effect of the kokutai ideology was the extreme nationalism of the whole people. This ideology swelled the national self-conscience into belief in the divine mission of the Emperor and his people to govern the world. This religious nationalism became the life impulse of the new Japan and made the growth of a Christian humanistic idea of the state and of personal freedom impossible. A people indoctrinated in this ideology was bound to adhere with blind enthusiasm to whatever policy it seemed would enhance the national honour and greatness and could not bring forth any internal resistance against an even inhuman dictatorship which claimed to execute the national mission. This supernationalism of the kokutai ideology has been the ultimate and decisive cause preventing the actuation of the Meiji Constitution in the direction of the ever greater social freedom which Roesler had envisaged as the goal of the constitution. It finally rendered the constitution entirely meaningless and brought about the collapse of the state of the Meiji Constitution.