Okawa Shumei and Ideology of ‘Political System of Empire’

Abstract

In the theory of “deconstruction” that creates a new theory by grafting the west and the orient, there is the point of view that ‘both sides of the west and the orient’is combined and newly restructured to “outer” location. However, this deconstruction theory was ‘half deconstruction’ in the logic of Okawa Shumei. The theory of deconstruction of Okawa Shumei did not discuss the structure itself by nullifying both sides through the instance ‘from the stance of the third party’, but found a whole new structure, deconstructing ‘the Emperor system as a ‘logic of complete internal community’ through the half deconstruction. One of the representative theorists was Okawa Shumei. He not only took an interest into “Daehak” and “Jungyong” from the aspect of ‘Confucian ideas’ but also reinterpreted the theories in a philosophy of religion and stream of times. Of course, rather than the issue that Shumei is a theorist or philosopher, the issue starts from describing the common values of ‘religion, ethics and politics’ of Confucianism as ‘morality’. This is linked to the works maximized the ‘common characteristics of all religions’ in researches on science of religion or religious history. By doing so, he materialized the ‘principle’ of how to open a new prospect in the field of the study. Okawa Shumei interpreted ‘citizens(親民)’ as ‘subjects(新民)’in Daehak and ‘ascetic(修)’ of ascetic practice(修道) as ‘have to cultivate’ rather than ‘cultivate’. Because what’s important was self-discipline of morality intuitively given to individuals. This indicated that self-discipline of morality and sincerity played a key role. By doing so, Okawa Shumei showed that Confucianism integrated the relationship between individuals and nation argued by the western scholars and overcome the disputes within Confucianism. Middle during the process has universality that does not change by the stream of times and at the same time is explained as a ‘level’ to recognize presence by transcending ego and others. It was argued that the lost ‘tradition and imperial line’ in China were all included in Japanese Shinto. In other words, based on the idea of ‘something natural = heavens thought and something moral= sincerity and virtue and something equal = heaven, land, benevolence(仁)’, the forms of the empire created ‘Jungyong ideology’ that can be found in “Daehak” and “Jungyong”