‘帝國’의 그림자와 마주한다는 것 –竹內好와 동아시아–

Abstract

This study will be looking into a genealogy of Asia by focusing on the discourses of Takeuchi Yoshimi(竹內好) who is a representative Japanese intellectual and thinker. The reason Takeuchi was selected among lots of post-war Japanese thinkers is that he is the one who faced the problem of ‘the shadow’ most actively, entitled for this essay. In Japanese society, post war is remembered as losing a war, rebirth, and space of light. What matters is that the light is not the one breaking out of the inside darkness, but coming into from the outside. Since losing the war, Takeuchi dedicated himself to the darkness during his lifetime. The darkness never disappears even though it is not seen now due to light. The darkness is always casting its shadow around light. But the shadow can not be regarded as evil. The shadow started growing in Meiji period, Japan under struggling with the modernity, and happened to get pseudo-lighting one time (Like the Greater East Asia and the world as One Family), but it is not all of the shadow. Thus, to solve the shadow subjectively, we should face the darkness right now ourselves. In the process of groping the way, Takeuchi met a thinker named Lu Xun. As shown in his writings in common, Lu Xun stepped forward in double suffering; one is the hardest time with no way to go after waking up from dream in his life and the other is to wake the slaves in sleep up around him. In post-war Japan which is ‘lack of the spirit if independence’, what Takeuchi noticed was war experience in order to pursue “revolution rooted in national tradition”. For Takeuchi, war experience was not a simple action to retroact a past memory. To get out of closeness of experience, war experience should be “generalization”, further “thought”. That was the only way to make it possible to graft democracy and patriotism separated in post-war situation, and a way that war and post-war generation can go forward to a common goal together. But, unfortunately, he could not clarify the matter in the post-war Japanese public sphere although he confirmed and suggested “centric possibility” in his words and writings. And his withdrawal resulted in more serious dual confrontation of the post-war intellectual sphere. Of course, there needs future discussion on the discourse sphere of the rightists, but it is clear that the progressives gave over the sphere of ‘nature-emotion theory’, called ‘patriotism’ to the rightists, by focusing on ideological criticism only. That is, post-war democracy questioned the responsibility of the war, but failed to establish a proper sphere where confused emotion regarding war and post war of Japanese people, which brought a fearful revenge from history after that. To expand and succeed to Takeuchi’s thought, there should be an active and full-scale review on how his discourse was connected with social renovative movements including Zenkyoto in the end of 1960’s (how they thought of and transcended the heritage), how that was interfaced with the memorial space containing 1990’s post war passing over 1970’s and 1980’s absence. Further, it should be reviewed that how the question from the Peninsular as the link of the Continent and Island can be localized.