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What is totalitarianism? Why did the Axis powers stick together? What did Japan have in common with Germany? In Japan's Holy War, Walter Skya articulates the ideology of Japanese ultra-nationalism.
Skya explicates the thinking of Japanese social theorist, Hozumi Yatsuka (1860-1912). According to Hozumi, the individual exists in society—and society within the individual. The clash between individualism and socialism is resolved through the concept of godo seizon (literally, fused or amalgamated existence), meaning the merging of the individual into society. Human beings fuse to create “society.”
The ideal person, Hozumi explained, is one who desires assimilation into the “higher organic totality” of society. The purpose of morality is to direct the individual toward kodoshin: submergence of the self into the social totality.
For Hozumi, Enlightenment thought was a threat to the Japanese ethnic state. Western liberalism provoked hostility among many Japanese because it focused on the idea of “the individual,” suggesting a separation between human beings and society. It is a mistake, Hozumi said, to think that society is made up of "isolated, self-supporting individuals.”
Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948) was one of hundreds of Japanese students who flocked to German universities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to absorb German thought. They were influenced by the theories of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), who asserted that the state was not a contractual relationship between individuals, but was “itself an individuality, independent of and superior to all other individuals.”
According to Hegel, Sovereignty was not the right or power of individuals, but stemmed from the state itself, an “organic unity with a personality of its own.” The state, from a Japanese perspective was conceived as a person or “individual organism”--and the emperor an “organ of the state.”
Hegel’s theory easily transferred to Japanese society. Uesugi Shinkichi (1878-1929), a constitutional law scholar, conceived of the state as an organism. The emperor was the ultimate source of the nation’s organizational will, representing the embodiment of the state organism.
Obeying the emperor was not only a moral action, but also the highest realization of the self—of one’s “essential being.” To absorb the self into the emperor was to become part of the emperor, and thereby to “accomplish man’s essential being.”
Another important thinker shaping religious nationalism was Kakehi Katsuhiko (1872-1961), who developed the theory of “one heart, same body,” advocating abandonment of the self--offering one’s entire body and soul to the emperor. A true Japanese does not think of self-interest, but rather forgets one’s own concerns and "completely offers oneself to the emperor.” This was especially true for soldiers.
Enlisting in the military, one “died and was reborn again to the armed forces under the command of the emperor.” According to Kakehi, “You give up your life, and do not think for a moment that you are what you are.” One abandoned one’s personal will to fulfill the will of the emperor.
To achieve the state of “one heart, same body,” individuals had to discard or annihilate the self. Consideration of one’s personal needs was wrong; one had to totally submerge the self into the collectivity.
When Kakehi spoke of the bad aspects of Western culture that had entered Japan, he was referring to the evils of Western secularism and individualism. He believed that the Western focus on the value of the individual was the “greatest threat to the Japanese nation.”
Why was “individualism” conceived as a threat? I have found a similar idea—that the nation is threatened by individualism—at the heart of Nazi ideology. Why should the idea of individual freedom be conceived as a threat to the existence of a nation?
I hypothesize that for the radical nationalist, "individualism” is equated with the idea of separation from one's nation, disrupting the idea of “one heart, same body.” Totalitarianism revolves around the idea that the individual can be absolutely united with the nation; can fuse with the "national organism."
Individualism implies the idea separation, the existence of human beings who are not merged or fused with the national organism. What is terrifying to the radical nationalist is idea that the human body might become separated from—no longer united with—the body politic.
The totalitarian fantasy, common to both Japanese ultra-nationalism and Nazism, is that all human bodies must unite to constitute one body: the omnipotent body politic. In totalitarianism, each and every human being is expected to abandon the “will to separate” (to become an individual), and to subordinate the self to the “national will.”
But what becomes of the self after individual consciousness is denied? In Kakehi’s political theology, according to Skya, the individual “enters into the mystical body of the emperor once one’s own individuality is abandoned.”
Subjects, Kakehi claims, “cast aside their individual selves and enter into the emperor.” All Japanese living at the present time exist inside the emperor; indeed all Japanese who have ever lived—from the origin of the state onward—exist within the emperor. The emperor, in short, symbolizes an immortal body in which all Japanese bodies are contained.
Skya concludes that the “total assimilation of the individual" into a collective body is the "goal of all totalitarian movements,” of which Shinto ultra-nationalism was only one variety. What’s more, the assimilation of the individual into the collective body is conceived as a moral imperative. The fundamental dictum of totalitarianism is: “There shall be nothing separate from the collective body.”
Those who embrace totalitarian ideals, I hypothesize, react with panic and rage to the possibility that anything could exist in a condition of separation from the national body. Ultra-nationalism builds upon a symbiotic fantasy: the leader and the people are one; the people are merged with one another. The idea of separateness acts to shatter the fantasy of perfect union with an omnipotent body (politic).
Perfect union is achieved when the individual abandons his will in order to internalize the will of the nation. Hitler informed the German people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” By becoming nothing, one can incorporate the nation into the self—thus becoming “everything.”
Soldiers occupy a special place in this ideology. In his “One Spirit, Same Body” address, Kakehi quoted a passage from the Gunjin Chokuyu (Imperial Rescript to the Armed Forces):
- Soldiers and Sailors, We are your supreme commander-in-chief. Our relations with you will be the most intimate when We rely upon you as Our limbs and you look up to Us as your head. If the majesty and power of Our Empire be impaired, you share with Us the sorrow; if the glory of Our arms shine resplendent, we will share with you the honor.
This passage, Skya observes, emphasizes the “direct and intimate tie between the Emperor and the soldier.” This relationship, in fact, is more than direct and intimate. Soldiers and sailors are relied upon as “limbs,” and should look up to their commanders as their “head.” Members of the armed forces, in short, are conceived as if part of the same body. When a soldier carried out the will of his superior, he was not simply “obeying.” He could no more resist the order of his superior than an arm can resist the brain’s command.
In The Waffen SS (1990), Bernd Wegner observed that the SS saw the individual as an “integrated element of a social organism.” The value of the SS-man—justification for his existence—“depended solely on the advantages he furnished the national community.” The SS-man was only a “fragment of the body politic to which he owed his allegiance.”
As a “fragment of the body politic,” the SS-man had no alternative but to obey. Like the Japanese soldier in his relationship to the emperor, the SS-man was expected to abandon his subjective will and to execute the “will of the Reich,” that is, Hitler’s will. Himmler informed his SS that “everyone should be fully aware that our lives do not belong to us, but to the Fuehrer and Reich.”
The body of the SS-man belonged to the Reich because his own body was not separate from the body politic. This was the meaning of “obedience.” The individual's body was fused with the body politic--and could not resist the power of this body. The “organic theory of the state”--seemingly an obscure, mystical ideology—has very real, practical consequences.
The goal of the ideal self in Japan prior to the Second World War was to “absorb the self into the emperor;” to become “part of the emperor.” The ideal German citizen, similarly, was expected sought to absorb Germany into himself: to identify with Hitler.
National "identification” meant giving over one’s body to the body politic. When the body politic exists within the self, this larger body overwhelms the smaller body, compelling the smaller body to do the bidding of the larger body. The aspiration of totalitarian ideology is to destroy the boundaries between self and society; between one’s own body and the body politic. Totalitarian ideologies seek to actualize a symbiotic fantasy of no separation.
Japanese and German totalitarianism grew out of a mystical theory: the idea of nations or bodies politic as real entities that have the capacity to live forever. Political violence seeks to assert the reality of these mystical entities: to kill off those human beings who do not acknowledge or agree that this entity is omnipotent.
Totalitarianism seeks fusion of self and society, declaring there shall be no such thing as separateness. The totalitarian fantasy is that individual and society are one—human beings are bound inseparably to their nation.
In totalitarianism, the body of the individual is imagined to merge with an actual body politic that can live forever. Human beings embrace totalitarianism—abandon their separate selves—to partake of the “immortality” of the body politic. Unlike humans, the nation is conceived as an organism that can “live on.”
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