| My dissertation, "The Science of Capital: Uses and Abuses of the Social Sciences in Interwar Japan," examines the changing nature of social policy and its study [shakai-seisaku-gaku] in modern Japan. With the upheaval of labor and peasant disputes after the Showa Crisis (1930-- ), the "socialist" scholars (e.g., Kawai Eijiro, Okochi Kazuo, Kazahaya Yasoji, and others) came to occupy a dominant position in academic institutions. They were also more and more directly involved in the decision-making process of socioeconomic policies of the government (including colonial policy).; Here, the relations of the study of social policy and political conditions of the 1930s were both troubling and fascinating. On the one hand, despite their disagreement on the meaning of "socialism," these scholars attempted to form a "united popular front" against statism, the absence of social policy for the protection of workers and peasants, and military expansion in Asia.; On the other hand, however, I argue that their calls for the re-creation of the working classes as an autonomous, responsible "Japanese nation" and for the adoption of social policy "by and for the Japanese nation" went hand-in-hand with the Japanese state's own attempt to reform itself "democratically" in order to overcome the crisis of capitalist social organization. Further, their vision of a "peaceful, democratic empire" laid the foundation of state efforts to establish a "New Asian Order" (as a global economic sphere in a contemporary sense), which Uno Kozo called an "organized method of imperialism." In a word, I argue that these Japanese progressive intellectuals' visions of a democratic, nation-state as the Subject of social policy corresponded to the emergence of a new capitalist state-form (in the form of "empire"), which appeared as a response to the crisis of capitalism.; In addition to the examination of the relations between the socialist science of social policy and the actual conditions of interwar Japan, I attempt to present a critical perspective of the current political and economic situation, by re-examining Uno Kozo (a political economist) and Tosaka Jun (a philosopher), who were thoroughly critical of the ideological and theoretical premises of the study of social policy. |
