| The Dignity of the Nation Fujiwara Masahiko Chapter 3 Freedom, Equality, and Democracy Questioned 1. The Starting Point of Western logic 2. The concept of freedom 3. A fiction created by the West 4. Rocke : Irresponsible remarks of a great philosopher 5. Is democracy so great ? 6. The people want war 7. Japan was a democracy too 8. The media is the no.1 power 9. Prosecution investigation influenced by goverment 10. The people never mature 11. The need for a true elite 12. The conspiracy of the United States against Japan 13. Equality, no . Compssion, yes. 14. Freedom and equality cannot coexist ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 1. The Starting Point of Western logic The complete faith in logic and reason is at the root of civilization's specutaclar development since the industrial revolution. It is precisely because of civilization is striking advances that Westerners started putting too much faith in logic and the modern rational spirit. They have ended up applying logic and reson - originally valid in the fields of science and technology - to human society overall. This is not something that can be corrected overnight. 2. The concept of freedom At top of my list is the concept of freedom. In the Japan of the Middle Ages, the word for freedom, was used in the same sense as "selfishness" or "egotism." Freedom has been played up at every opportunity in postwar Japan, starting with American Occupation's elevation of freedom to a national policy. Freedom is described as a basic right of the people in the constitution, in the basic education law, and in a host of other laws. I wonder, though, if this emphasis on freedom is ultimately nothing more than the promotion of egotism. It was this monster called "freedom" that dealt such a severe blow the old morality and the forms of behaivior that the Japanese had cultivated over so many generations. Human beings are not free. We have no freedom from the moment we come into this world. There is the hefty Statute Book, and the law that wraps around us like a net, not to mention morality and ethics. All organizations have rules to enfotce cooperation. Everything we do and say is subject to regulation. 3. A fiction created by the West The only absolutely essential freedom is the freedom to criticize those in power. This freedom alone must be inviolate, as we have had the oppotunity to learn from Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. With most kinds of freedom, it is not a question of getting rid of them: either we don't have them in the first place, or else they are seriously restricted. Freedom is nothing more than a fiction cooked up by the West. The most extreme form of freedom is the "natural right" proposed by the 17th-century English pilosopher Thomas Hobbs. Under natural right, "any person has the freedom to do whatever is necessary for their own survival." If you accept this, it leads to "the war of all against all," with life becoming anarchic, barbarous, and chaotic. In Hobbs's theory of the social contract, everyone abandons their natural right, conveying it instead to some institution. This institution is the state. 4. Rocke : Irresponsible remarks of a great philosopher It was Locke who first established property rights and the right of owning things acquired through one's own labor. In contrast to Hobbs, Locke believed that the state came into being via free and equal contract between its citizens. This is called sovereignty of the people, Locke even wrote to the effect that by birth, man has complete freedom, that all men are equal, and do not like to be restrained by others. Locke also said that it was all right for the individual to pursue his pleasure freely because an all-powerful god would ensure the harmony of society. There's an irresponsible and nonsensical statement for you ! It is no exaggeration to see Locks as the father of libertarianism, ultilitarianism, and modern-day capitalism. 5. Is democracy so great ? Democracy is the same. It certainly is wonderfully logical. Sovereignty of the people is based on one important assumption: that the people are capable of making mature judgements. If this were indeed the case, then democracy would unquestionably be the best form of goverment. 6. The people want war But are the people actually capable of making mature judgements ? As an example, let us examine why the First World War took place. First a Serb assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary, in Sarajero. The masses got very worked up over this. In Budapest people shrieked, "Death to the Serbian pigs," while the Viennese newspaper described Serbia as "a land of robbery and murder," all despite the fact that nothing pointed to the involvement of the Servian goverment. One month after the assassination, as if driven to it by public opinion, the Austro-Hugarian Empire declared war on Serbia. Their intent was to conduct "a limited war." Russia, however got indignant about this, and Germany in turn got angry with Russia for being indignant. Whereupon France joined in the war because it had an alliance with Russia, as did Britain, because it had an alliance with France. In every country, the volunteer soldiers waited in long lines, and their enthusiasm to exterminate the enemy grew to fever pitch. People opposed to the war were sometimes assassinated as traitors, and a frenzy of war-lust erupted in every country, distracting people from the vague dissatisfactions of ordinary, everyday life. There were no significant territorial disputes or ideological frictions between the major powers. But the people were in such a state of uproar that it proved impossible to find a diplomatic way to defuse the situation, and Great War was the end result. This war broke out because of the sovereignty of the people of democratic nations - and 8.5 million people were killed as a result. 7. Japan was a democracy too Japan also a democratic nation, at least until 1937, the year the Japan-China War broke out. From the Manchuria Incident to World War 2nd, it was not only the majority of the Japanese people, but the newspapers - the Asahi Shimpun foremost among them - that supported militarism. Driven by public anger, the Diet even pressurized the military to take harsh measures in the Japan-China War. After the war ended, the Allies advertised the Second World War as a "conflict between democracy and fascism." This was nothing more than self-justification. In reality it was a battle between democratic states. All the countries on either sides had demagogic leaders and fanatical populaces. Democracy and the sovereignty of the people are no guarantee of peace. In democratic nations it is usually the people who play the central role in starting wars. The Iraq invasion was supported by 76% of Americans when it began. Two years into the war, with things going badly, the level of suport has fallen by around half, to 39%. This is what the "collective will of the people" really amounts to. 8. The media is the no.1 power The United States and Japan are now both democracies where the people have sovereignty. It is the people who decide on political matters. Is this an entirely a good thing ? The sovereignty of the people is the essence of democracy. but the real meaning of the sovereigty of the people is that "public opinion is all-powerful." And since nearly all the data on which the people base their judgements comes from the media, public opinion and the media are effectively one and the same thing. To put it another way, in both Japan and the United States the mass media is the No.1 power. One often hears the term "populism" being used in a plitical context, but in democratic countries with a developed media the executive can hardly helped being sucked in populism. The same is also true of legislature. Politicians may be responsible for passing laws - but it is the people who select the politicians. 9. Prosecution investigation influenced by goverment policy Even the all-important judiciary is not immune to being influenced by outside forces. It is hard to avoid the impression that the courts deliver their verdicts while keeping one discreet eye fixed on public opinion. People all around the world right now are in the grip of an epidemic. The name of the epidemic is political correctness. It is basically a philosophy that the weak are always right, "week" usually meaning women, children, the elderly, the physically handicapped, and minority groups. This excessively naive philosophy has served as a catalyst to stimulate modern-day hypocrisy, and has spread over the whole world in the course of the last decade. Political correctness helps explain verdicts that would mystify anyone - such as O.J. Simpson and Michel Jaskson being declared innocent. 10. The people never mature This is a crucial point. The people of the countries of the world are immature - not just in the past, but in the present and in the future, too. It follows from this that the implicit precondition for democracy - "a citizenry capable of exercising mature judgement" - is something that can never be. Democracy is in urgent need of serious modification. Wisnton Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of goverment, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." This would seem to indicate that he, too, held the notion that the implicit precondition for democracy would never be fulfilled. 11. The need for a true elite Regardless of its form of goverment - democracy or otherwise - a state always needs a genuine elite. It is the members of this elite who can curb democracy's inherent tendency to run amuck. The members of the true elite must fulfill two conditions. First, they must have aquired absolutely useless knowledge of subjects like literature, history, art, and science; then, backed up by this knowledge, they must also have an uncommon ability to see the big picture, and possess a sense of all-round judgement that is far beyond that of ordinary people. As for the second condition, they must have the strength of character to lay down their lives for their country and their people in a crisis. Present-day Japan no longer has this kind of true elite. A true elite should possess a spirituality that rises above worldly things. 12. The conspiracy of the United States against Japan In the postwar Occupation, the greatest problems for GHQ (the United States) was how to make sure that Japan would never again be hostile towards the United States. The American were worried that if they thoughtlessly created an elite, the Japanese people, with their great underlying strength, would rise up as a powerful nation once again. The first step to make sure this did not happen was to crush the elite, so the Americans immediately dismantled the old-style middle schools and high schools. This measure was in clear breach of Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Convention, which states that " the occupant.....must respect the laws in force in the country." This, however, was just the start, for the United States was already engaging in secret, infamous acts to brainwash the populace - namely, the suppression of the freedom of speech through large-scale censorship. Continuing on this theme, the imposition of the constitution and the basic law on education was also a contravention of the Hague Convention. And remember, the only reason that the United States had been able to denounce the Japanese surprise attach on Pearl Harbor as " dastardly" and "infamous" was because the very same Hague Convention stated that a declaration of war must be issued before instigating hostillies. Prior to the Hague Convention, all countries - including the United States had made extensive use of suprise attacks. Even after the Convention, the United States occupied Dominica after a surprise attack in 1916 without any declaration of war. Again in World War the 2nd, German's invasions of both Poland and the Soviet Union were suprise offensives. The article on declaring war in the Hague Convention was nothing more than an agreement on the proper etiquette for starting war, and nobody thought it important. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army had made an audacious landing on the Malay Peninsula, then a British colony. The British had not made an issue of whether or not a proper declaration of war had been made. It was only because the American people were steeped in the anti-war values of the Monroe Doctrine that President Roosevelt needed to make a display of anger and use extreme language like "infamous" and "dastardly." He made use of inflammatory rhetoric so that he could break his election pledge "not to spill one single drop of American blood abroad" and take America into the Europe war. His calculations were on the mark: the American people got into a lunatic fury, and Roosevlet was able to join in the world war. 13. Equality, no . Compssion, yes. The word "equal" has a long history in Japan. Originally it meant "smooth" or "level" or it refered to the mercy of Buddha extending alike to all living beings, or it meant "fair." None of these meanings is aggressive or provocative. In Japan, we do not respond to discrimination by setting up something else in opposition to it, but with compassion and pity for the weak, for the looser, for the oppressed. Conpassion stands at the center of the samurai spirit. If people had an adequate supply of compassion of this kind, discrimination would disappear, rending the fiction of equality redundant. The United States may choose to put itself forward as the standard bearer of equality, but it is a country where company executives have average incomes of around 1.3 billion yen, while the average worker earns around 3 million yen. (2004 figures). It is a country where 35 million people are too poor to have access to medical care. 14. Freedom and equality cannot coexist It is not actually possible for freedom and equality to coexist. I mentioned the existence of numerous private golf clubs in the United States that do not accept women as members or hardly admit any people of color. This is certainly not equality from the perspective of the women and colored people in question. But seen from the golf club's point of view, such decisions represents freedom of organization, freedom of taste, and freedom of thought. In this instance, freedon and equality are in a head-on collision. God does not perpetrate paradoxes of this kind. Therefore, the idea that freedom and equality are both God- given is a rank lie. God must have granted either one of them, or neither of them. Freedom of speech clashes with the freedom to protect one's privacy. Democracy, freedom, equality - each of them has enough beautiful logic to fill a book, which expains why the world was so intoxicated by them. Too much faith in logic and reason is, I believe, the true cause of the difficluties that the world currently faces. 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