Published on August 21, 2019. This article introduces an essay by Kyoto University Professor Emeritus Saeki Keishi published in the Sankei Shimbun, beginning with Susumu Nishibe’s youthful experience in a discriminated village in the mountains of Wakayama, where children refused his offer of treats, and discussing the pride postwar Japan lost in exchange for prosperity and peace, the essence of conservatism, constitutional issues, the Japan-U.S. security system, and dependence on America.

August 21, 2019.
Probably, through this refusal by the children, he was able to give decisive certainty to a certain fundamental feeling that he had long carried within himself.
The following is from an essay by Kyoto University Professor Emeritus Saeki Keishi, published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “Thinking in August of Reiwa: Seventy-Four Years After the War, Conservatism Has Lost Its Pride.”
From the experience of the young Nishibe Susumu.
In Weekly Sunday Mainichi, critic Takazawa Shuji had been serializing “A Critical Biography of Nishibe Susumu,” which was recently completed, and in it he touched on a certain episode.
It was when Nishibe entered the University of Tokyo and, at the same time, also joined the Communist Party.
In accordance with the Communist Party’s policy at the time of sending young party members to rural villages and the like as so-called mountain-village work teams, the young Nishibe also went to a discriminated community in the mountains of Wakayama.
His purpose was to teach children at an elementary school where classes were not being held because of the struggle over teacher performance evaluations.
As he was leaving, Nishibe tried to treat the children to ice candy.
But the children did not accept it.
From the children’s point of view, Nishibe was an elite who had come from Tokyo.
They themselves were at the very bottom of society.
But they were not beggars.
They had no reason to receive charity, they said.
This small event seems to have been a truly great experience for Nishibe, and I myself heard him speak of it several times.
Probably, through this refusal by the children, he was able to give decisive certainty to a certain fundamental feeling that he had long carried within himself.
After returning to Tokyo, Nishibe left the Communist Party and moved toward the Bund, a radical movement organization of students expelled from the party, and went on to become one of the leaders of the 1960 Anpo protests.
Here I do not intend to look back once again over the footsteps of Nishibe, who took his own life about a year and a half ago.
What I want to discuss is “Japan’s postwar era.”
And I also want to think about the “conservatism” that, for better or worse, supported “postwar Japan.”
The image of the children in the mountain village of Wakayama, who, no matter how excluded from society and how much they suffered in poverty, immediately rejected both sympathy and charity from someone in the upper stratum of that society, is the complete opposite of the general picture of “postwar Japan.”
It was something entirely different from the “masses” of postwar Japan, who, after the period of high economic growth, grew richer year by year and, in the later words of Mishima Yukio, became giddy with cries of money, money.
Moreover, postwar Japan, which felt no shame in converting everything into money, also felt no shame in the reality that its postwar peace was guaranteed by America.
As the price of prosperity and peace.
What the children of Wakayama showed was the ultimate pride that there are things one must protect even if one cannot eat, and it was true dignity.
And postwar Japan lost this pride as the price of prosperity and peace.
The figure of postwar Japanese people, crowding around welfare in order to get even a little money, trying to connect with politicians in search of vested interests, raising their voices in the name of equality of rights whenever their own position becomes even slightly disadvantageous,
and appealing to the government to do something for them, is ugly and distorted.
The reason Nishibe attempted an almost reckless confrontation with this “postwar Japan” was probably that he saw the ugliness of postwar Japan both in this mass society that unconditionally accepted “peace” and “prosperity” dependent on America and was still full of dissatisfaction, not merely saying “as long as we can eat,” but in any case demanding “give us more money,” and in the realism that praises following America as an excellent realistic choice.
In order to protect the pride that Japanese people once possessed, that is, the “spirit of independence and self-reliance,” one has no choice but to stand against “postwar Japan.”
Where has the “spirit of independence and self-reliance” gone?
Conservatism is the spirit that tries, as much as possible, to protect this “spirit of independence and self-reliance,” and also the most fundamental dignity and pride of human beings.
In that sense, to speak of “conservatism” in postwar Japan requires extraordinary difficulty and a strong will.
It is not something one can casually call oneself.
The reason is that postwar Japan is not only overwhelmingly under American influence spiritually, but that the structure of the state itself was given by America.
Needless to say, this means the Constitution and the Japan-U.S. security system.
Therefore, “conservatism” in postwar Japan has no choice but to question the constitutional issue and the American issue, that is, excessive dependence on America in defense and diplomacy.
But precisely here, it is also true that “conservatism” collides with the wall of “reality.”
At this late stage, questioning the validity of the present Constitution cannot do anything, and security has no choice but to depend on Japan-U.S. relations.
Even so, if no debate arises over Japan’s defense or the Japan-U.S. alliance even when President Trump recently spoke of terminating the security treaty, even if it was a strategic spur-of-the-moment remark, then one can only say that “conservatism” has disappeared.
If peace continues and the economy becomes prosperous, the pride that once existed in those mountain-village children—that there are things more important than money or food—will probably grow thin.
Nevertheless, the human spirit can still criticize reality.
To be conservative must mean that one cannot simply defend or praise, as it is, the “reality” in which money is scattered to raise stock prices, people rejoice over how much money foreign visitors to Japan have spent, and think that it is enough if peace can be protected by strengthening Japan-U.S. relations.
The first year of Reiwa is seventy-four years after the war.
This era will truly be an era in which “conservatism” is questioned.
Saeki Keishi.