Debate and dissent in late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan.

• Author: Branham, Robert J.

Japan has often been portrayed as lacking traditions of rhetoric, public speaking, and debate. Acccording to this view, as expressed by Roichi Okabe, "Japan has not witnessed the development of any indigenous rhetorical theory and practice." (187). Both Western and Japanese communication scholars have argued that the supposed dearth of indigenous Japanese rhetoric is the result of strong cultural proscriptions, deep currents of resistance to "Western" logic, public discourse and the clear expression of opinion. Debate seems an especially alien activity from the essentialist view of Japan as a harmonious and homogeneous culture.

The modern appearance of speech and debate activities in Japan is often attributed to contact with the West during the Meiji era (1868-1912) and to the efforts of Yukichi Fukuzawa and other "popularizers" of Western culture. Klopf and Kawashima, among others, insist that Japan's practice of debate is "based on its century-old history of Western speech education" introduced by Fukuzawa. (4). Becker also portrays debate as an alien activity introduced to Japan during periods of political Westernization in the Meiji era and again during the American occupation after World War II. As culture-specific transplants in strange soil, Becker argues, "these movements did not spread widely" or extend beyond periods of intense contact with the, Limited States. (Becker, "Japanese" 144).

Such characterizations of Japanese history and culture as arhetorical or antirhetorical are based on myths of homogeneity and essential harmony that conceal centuries of ideological conflict, dissent, struggle, and repression in Japan. For the Japanese ruling elite and its supporters, the notion that dissent is somehow un-Japanese has along been used to justify the suppression, even execution, of those who engage in it. (Hane, Reflections 1-28).

Myths of Japanese unanimity have real consequences. For the United States government, whose sponsorship and dissemination of "national character" studies during and before World War II continue to inform rhetorical scholarship on Japan,(1) pan, I portrayals of Japanese homogeneity have been used to justify "total war." Belief in Japanese predisposition to the "irrational" and "illogical," and in their supposed antipathy toward reasoned deliberation, strengthened American insistence upon area bombardment and unconditional surrender. (Dower 94-117; Hikins 379-400). More generally, characterizations of Japanese culture as hostile to argument, logic, declamation, exposition, and debate have fueled judgments of cultural inferiority when viewed from within a culture that equates such activities with civilization itself.(2)

But in the past decade historians such as Mikiso Hane, Tetsuo Naiita, and J. Victor Koschmann have reviced the portrait of Japan's past. What has emerged is not the "relatively peaceful" arhetorical society described by Becker ("Reasons" 90) and others, but a country whose past three hundred years have been marked by great ideological and often physical conflict, and whose disputes have often been conducted and recorded in the form of debates.

In this paper I will demonstrate that: (1) Japan had a rich and well-documented tradition of debate for centuries before its "opening to the West" in 1853; (2) Fukuzawa and other proponents of public political debate in the Meiji era had little meaningful exposure to Western theories or strategies of debate; and (3) The spread and subsequent decline of public political debate during the late Tokugawa and Meiji periods should be understood not as proof of "essential cultural qualities" or their absence, but as internal political developments grounded ill the turmoil of the times.

Japanese Debate Traditions

Notions persist that debate is somehow antithetical to Japanese culture or even that it is impossible to conduct in Japanese language. Even so respected an observer of Japanese culture as Edwin Reischuer note the absence of much genuine debate on the floor of the Diet and conclude that it is absent from Japanese culture in general. (289; 136-137). But debate occurs in many. forms and fora. The fact that we may be more likely to hear political disputes in a Japanese bar than in the Diet, or that we may hear the participants couch their disagreements in a context of harmony and respect, perhaps relying on unstated conclusions, does not mean that no debate has occurred.

True debate is determined not by format, location or style, but by, the presence of certain characteristics of discourse (development, clash, extension, and perspective). (Branham, Debate 1-2). Presentational formats may be designed to encourage (by no means to ensure) the development of these characteristics, but should not be mistaken for the definitive properties of debate itself. Debates may be cordial or fractious, written or oral, conducted in the university or in the home or fields, and may be joined by participants who are distant or proximate. When prohibited in open forums or plain language, debate may move underground or adapt the protective coloring of activities less susceptible to regulation.

When public disputation proved too risky in the Tokugawa era, political controversy found expression in unlikely media. The kabuki and puppet theaters, for example, provided a means through which audiences could evade restrictions on open debate. (Ernst 207). Although Morrison refers to kabuki as a "highly stylized drama dealing with non-controversial matters" that "finds novelty completely shunned," (99) it was often a forum for political disputation. Issues and events of the day were portrayed in transparent disguise, building upon existing private interest and discussion and providing comparatively safe ground for further discussion. The political significance of theater did not escape the authorities, who prohibited the explicit depiction of "unusual events of the day," ordered (in 1644) that "in plays the names of existing people will not be used," and insisted that plays and books avoid "unfounded rumors which are current in society" (1721) and, in case of doubt, "any matters which are questionable" (1684). (Shively 23-27). The repeated prohibitions of anything approximating open public debate suggest the existence of some popular proclivity to engage in such activities.

Government regulations of political discussion in plays were circumvented by providing historical settings for recognizably current issues. Character names and minor details of the actual stories were changed in order to elude the censors.

Perhaps the moat famous of these historical adaptations is Chushingura, the tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin. In March 1701, the daimyo of Ako, Lor Asano, drew a sword and wounded Kira, an official of the Shogun's government who had insulted him. It was a capital offense to draw a sword in the court. Asano was forced to commit seppuku, his lands were seized, his family line ended, and his retainers dismissed. The retainers, now ronin, or "masterless samurai," plotted revenge. Two years later, on 30 January 1703, forty-six of them broke into Kira's mansion, cut off his head and took it to Asano's tomb. (Keene 1-3).

These events electrified the nation. In the two months during which the fate of the captured ronin was weighed by the Shogun, the propriety of their act and just desserts were widely debated among all classes of Japanese society. Confucian scholars were divided, some declaring the ronin highly virtuous in their loyalty others condemning their violation of law. But this debate was by no means limited to the elite, and soon spilled into public discussion through the theater. Two weeks after the ronin had been forced to commit seppuku, the firs dramatization for the events was staged in Edo (now Tokyo). Although it was closed by the authorities after three performances (Keene 3), other soon replaced it, changing sufficient details of the actual events to avoid the censors. More than one hundred plays have been based on the story, including the popular classic, Chushingura.

The various dramatizations of the Asano affair involved debate at three levels: They drew upon the popular debate that had already occured, incorporating its issues and relying upon its participants to provide a ready audience; second, they represented the arguments and moral dilemmas of the controversy, framing a theatrical debate without resolution; third, then, enabled and fueled further debate, providing both an acceptable innocuous context for the discussion of real political and moral decisions and a dramatic impetus to engage in these discussions. Fukuzawa's own autobiography describes his early enjoyment of (pre-Perry) scholarly debate, on literary interpretation(3) and his debates in the Ogata school on the propriety of the acts of the Forty-Seven Ronin:

If the theme of the Forty-Seven Ronin came up, I would challenge my comrades, "I will take which-ever side you are against. If you say the Forty-Seven Ronin were loyal, I will prove they were disloyal. Or if you want to Prove the contrary, I will take the opposite side, for I can make them loyal men or disloyal men with the twist of my tongue. Now, come, all of you together."

Such were our innocent debates; sometimes I won, sometimes I was beaten; and our voices often were loud, but that made it all the livelier. Never did our debates grow so serious that the debaters had to decide the absolute right or wrong of the problem. (Autobiography 78).

Debate over the Forty-Seven Ronin had already been something of a national pastime in Japan for more than a century before Fukuzawa joined the fray (and before the arrival of Perry). (Sansom 502-503). Their fate was one of many issues that divided national opinion and provoked enormous and enduring controversy.

In his influential treatise on The Art of Debate (1900), Raymond) Alden observed that "in its simplest form debate is universally practiced; for its use...