This paper explores the work of the postwar Japanese intellectual Fukumoto Kazuo (1894–1983), who argued for the significance of early modernity in Japanese history in his attempt to challenge the conventional narrative of late Japanese modernization. Fukumoto was an influential Marxist theoretician and activist in modern Japan. He studied social science in Germany under renowned theoreticians of so-called “Western Marxism,” such as Karl Korsch and Georg Lukács, in the early 1920s. After returning to Japan, he became a famous Marxist theoretician and activist in interwar Japan, but he was imprisoned in 1928 for his communist activities. While in prison, he found signs of early modernity in the Edo period (17th-19th centuries). During the postwar period, he continued publishing works on this subject. Until his death, he wrote as an independent scholar about the development of Japanese technology, arts, folk culture, and philosophy during the Edo period in comparison with parallel developments in European modernity. This paper, by focusing on some of his key texts from the postwar period, examines the implication of his works on Japan’s past in comparison with contemporaneous discourses on Japanese modernization. In doing so, this paper reveals both the importance and the problematic aspects of his view and expands the perspective of the studies of modern Japanese culture and history.

Authors:
Noriaki Hoshino, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

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Posted by James Alexander Gordon

Last updated: 2023-02-23 23:45:00

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