This chapter introduces an essay by Kanji Nishio criticizing the intellectual contradictions of postwar Japanese liberal thinkers.
It examines Shuichi Kato’s ambiguous understanding of both Western and Japanese culture, and exposes the flawed logic that attempts to defend both Western democratic socialism and the Chinese Communist Party simultaneously.
The essay sharply highlights the weaknesses of postwar intellectual discourse in Japan.

2019-03-27
He fell into the logical trap of wanting at all costs to defend both Western-style democratic socialism and the Chinese Communist Party, arguing that if one condemns China’s authoritarian dictatorship, then the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan must be the same as well, thereby lumping everything together indiscriminately.

I republish here a chapter originally released on August 16, 2018, titled:
“The Bloodless Sweetness of His ‘Best-of-Both-Worlds’ Position—Neither Western Culture nor Japanese Culture—Exposed the Emotional Inconsistency of His Political Arguments.”

What follows is a continuation of an essay by Kanji Nishio published in the current issue of the monthly magazine Sound Argument, titled “The Three Villains of the Postwar Liberal Fortress: Kazutoshi Hando, Kenzo Nakajima, and Shuichi Kato—A Weakness of Intellect, an Extremely Weak Intellect.”
Emphasis in the text, except for headings, is mine.

He wishes to say that socialism has not perished.

Hiroshi Furuta has written a piece criticizing the distortion in Shuichi Kato’s attitude toward the West.
He says that Kato’s manner of approaching the West, driven by a hatred of modern Japan as something counterfeit, has an irritating air of excuse-making (included in Thus Spoke “Paper Books”, Chikuma Bunko).
Every early summer, Kato visited Oiwake in Karuizawa and left beautifully realistic descriptions of the small village with its cultural-village atmosphere and the surrounding nature.
Furuta wrote that it was “like a Japanese painting imitating a Western painting,” acknowledging for the moment Kato’s “Japanese spirit,” yet dismissing his “Western spirit” as something that looked entirely like a sham.
Kato himself wrote that he had failed as a government-funded overseas student, yet claimed that he soon became able to argue in French with great linguistic skill.
Furuta judged this to be “almost impossible,” and concluded that it was a lie.
In The Song of the Sheep and The Continued Song of the Sheep, “Kato’s descriptions of the West are the exact opposite of his descriptions of Japan, like an inexperienced pastel painting by a Japanese painter, and not beautiful at all.”

In short, when Shuichi Kato speaks about Japanese culture it becomes something like a Japanese painting imitating Western painting, and when he speaks about Western culture it reveals the awkward ugliness of a Japanese painter who has merely traveled in the West and casually attempts to paint in Western style.
Kato never truly confronted Western culture nor grasped its essence.
Therefore his understanding of Japan also never goes beyond the realm of mere taste.
Because there is no soul in either side.
That is what Furuta intends to say.
Furuta has noticed something important.

This is the true nature of the aesthetics that guided postwar Japan among French-oriented literary figures such as Shinichiro Nakamura and Takehiko Fukunaga, who had secretly gathered in Karuizawa during the final years of the war.
The symbol of Oiwake was Tatsuo Hori, and today it is Otohiko Kaga.

In his serialized column “Yūyō Mōgo” in the evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun, Shuichi Kato exposed the grotesque spectacle of his later years, revealing his ideological nonsense in a defenseless and foolish manner, like a toad opening its mouth wide and exposing its belly.
For example, he treated the Liberal Democratic Party, which at the time had not experienced a change of government, as being of the same nature as China’s authoritarian dictatorship.
I admonished him, saying that even a middle school student would not misunderstand such nonsense, and that he should not write such absurdities (Shinchō 45, March 1990 issue).

In order to claim that only Stalinism collapsed with the end of the Cold War and that socialism itself had not perished, Kato fell into the logical trap of wanting to defend both Western-style democratic socialism and the Chinese Communist Party.
He argued that if China’s authoritarian dictatorship were to be condemned, then the Liberal Democratic Party must be the same as well, lumping everything together indiscriminately.

His bloodless sweetness—his attempt to take the best of both worlds, belonging neither to Western culture nor to Japanese culture—exposed the emotional inconsistency of his political arguments.

To be continued.