[Special Feature: Passing on the Stories of War] Morihide Katayama: Tetsuji Kada's Dream and Punishment—From William Morris to the Theory of East Asian Community

Image: November 23, 1943, "After the Farewell Ceremony for Keio students Departing for the Front," Keio students leaving Mita through the Main Gate (Maboroshi no Mon).

2025/08/06

Yamashoku. It is the student cafeteria on Mita Hilltop Square. The name Yamashoku is a contraction of "Cafeteria on the Hill" (Sanjo no Shokudo). Founded in 1937. Its location has changed over time, and it is now located inside the West School Building. Proceed to the back of the cafeteria. You reach the meal ticket vending machine. There, diagonally to the upper left, a single commendation certificate is likely displayed. Previously, it hung above the serving counter. It was awarded to the couple who founded Yamashoku. The date is "April 2, 1944." One year and four months until the defeat in the war. The text reads as follows: "You and your spouse have diligently performed your duties morning and night, treating faculty and Keio students with the utmost kindness, teaching employees well, and always exercising creativity and ingenuity to provide convenience to those who eat here. We express our deepest gratitude." The food situation was only worsening. One can only imagine the hardships faced by Yamashoku in supporting student life during wartime. As a Juku, they were well-considered and appreciated. At the end, of course, are the names of the presenters. First is President Shinzo Koizumi. Following him are the names of the Cafeteria Committee members. The Juku had such a position. There were four of them. Among them is the name of Aikuni Ozawa, who served as the editor-in-chief of Mita-hyoron. Right next to Koizumi's name, the head of the Cafeteria Committee was Tetsuji Kada.

Who was Kada? He was one of the representative faculty members of Keio University during the war years. A professor in the Faculty of Economics. It was said that there was not a month when his name did not appear in intellectual journals. He was also a prominent member of the Showa Kenkyukai (Showa Research Association), which gained fame as a brain trust for Fumimaro Konoe. When it comes to scholars who were involved more or less in the direction of the nation during the 1930s and 40s, those from the Imperial University system are overwhelmingly prominent, but if anyone from Keio stood on equal footing with them, it was Kada. If one were to name another from Keio, it would be Tadao Takemura, a student of Kada and also a staff member of the Faculty of Economics.

Kada was born in 1985 in Yushima, Tokyo. He went from Keika Middle School to Keio University. In the college department of political economy (in 1920, the college was "promoted" to a regular university by the University Act, and the department of political economy became the Faculty of Economics), he studied under Sei'ichiro Takahashi and others. His graduation thesis was "A Study of Adam Smith's Theory of Value." After graduating in 1919, he was immediately hired as an assistant, and having earned the trust of Koizumi and Takahashi, he studied abroad mainly in Germany from 1923 to 1926. The standard three-year university-endorsed study abroad was the typical career path at the time for advancing to a professorship, and Kada also became a professor in the Faculty of Economics upon his return. The classes he taught included "Study of Economic Theories," "Sociology," and "Economics," with "Colonial Policy" added from the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War. As can be seen from these course names, Kada was not a specialist in a narrow field from the start. Economics and sociology. History of economic thought and history of social thought. He was also keen on investigating the historical background that gives birth to thought, and he ended up having to lecture on economic history, social history, and even political history. Moreover, because Kada ardently desired to reflect his scholarship in the actual course of Japan, his classes expanded to "Colonial Policy" based on the current situation, which then came to include ethnology, war studies, and geopolitics. In the study of thought, fascism, nationalism, and totalitarianism were his absolute specialties. The areas he handled were constantly expanding.

However, Kada was someone who did not collapse at all even when things reached that point. He was an amazing hard worker. He was exceptionally good at organizing information. For example, when the May 15 Incident occurred, he would create and show a map of the thoughts of the Japanese agrarianists who formed its ideological background, clearly explaining the positioning of "dangerous right-wing thinkers" like Seigo Gondo, Akira Nagano, and Kozaburo Tachibana, whom ordinary academics were reluctant to touch. Moreover, how appropriate his understanding was! It was truly objective. There was no strange prejudice. Such a scholar is rare. In terms of having a hand in many things, Kiyoshi Miki and Ikutaro Shimizu were contemporaries, and the two were acquaintances of Kada, but Kada was not at all inferior to the breadth of Miki or Shimizu. Furthermore, Kada's organization of the era and its thought, while always having some degree of discrepancy with the tracks on which the Empire of Japan was moving, never reached the point of getting off halfway or derailing. Kada's dream ultimately sought the ideal realization of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" and resonated with it until the end. Kada, along with the Empire of Japan, rushed down the path toward self-destruction. Quite deliberately. Yamashoku, to which Kada had presented a commendation certificate in joint signature with Koizumi and others, was burned down once in an air raid in May 1945, but Kada himself also had to leave Keio University after the war. He was caught in the public office purge.

Now, from around when did Kada's thoughts and actions toward a double suicide with the Empire of Japan begin to synchronize in that direction? The seeds were there from the beginning. In 1924, while studying in Berlin, Kada wrote "William Morris: Life and Thought as an Artistic Social Thinker." It is a study of Morris as the title suggests, but Kada's own dreams are projected onto it. He shows himself by talking about Morris. Kada is, after all, a person who learned during the Taisho era. The early Taisho period. With World War I as a turning point, Japanese capitalism headed toward prosperity. However, in the late Taisho period, contradictions also amplified. The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred a few months after Kada went to study abroad, and at that time, Eiichi Shibusawa, a survivor of the late Edo and Meiji periods, called the earthquake a "divine punishment" (tenken) and sparked a debate. According to Shibusawa, the thoughts and actions of the new generation of capitalists in the Taisho era were merely running toward the pursuit of private interest with their desires laid bare. Capitalism without morality is evil. It is no wonder that heaven is angry. This was Shibusawa's thought.

Whether the earthquake was divine punishment or not, Kada shared the same feeling as Shibusawa that it was dangerous unless shackles were placed on the runaway of capitalism. If that were the case, for Kada's generation, one path was to join Marxism. In terms of economists, Marxist-leaning Hiromi Arisawa and Takao Tsuchiya were one year younger than Kada. However, this is Kada, who was raised at Keio by Koizumi and Takahashi. Kada continued to be influenced by the spirit of Yukichi Fukuzawa, which began with "Heaven creates no man above another," and held that one should freely realize one's life through individual talent thereafter, and that it is wrong to bind human freedom with ideology. While attracted to Marx, he could not agree by any means. Private greed is bad, but he also felt it was strange to destroy the self for the sake of some abstract concept like the nation or the proletarian class. Such a Kada was forced to seek a kind of middle way. Classical arguments like those of Adam Smith, Kada's early research subject, which suggested that devotion to private interest leads to public interest, did not seem useful when witnessing the reality of Japan and the world after World War I.

The place Kada chose as an emergency shelter was Morris. Labor itself is made into art. It is made into pleasure. And the wealth obtained from labor is made everyone's. It is made the public interest. A brake is put on the pursuit of individual desire. Human pleasure should normally be found in the act itself rather than in accumulation; therefore, the act of labor can become a pleasure. If one is satisfied with labor as a joyful act and a moral leeway is born where one can accept the resulting profits being turned toward the public interest, there will be no contradiction or collapse, and the private and public can coincide and coexist. The ideal image of Morris that Kada resonated with was something like that. Moreover, Morris's "everyone" would not be something that spreads a large cloth like the whole of humanity. Everyone is happy at the site of labor. Such an "everyone" is an everyone whose faces can be seen, and it would be impossible to expand this to a Kantian concept of humanity or a Marxist concept of class. It is, to the last, a communalism where everyone's faces are visible. It is a community.

However, Kada could not stay there. The era of contradiction and anxiety after World War I transformed into an era of crisis and terror due to the Great Depression, which began in 1929, just three years after Kada became a professor at Mita. At that time, Kada, being on Mita Hilltop Square, must have felt something anew in the trajectory of the thinker Fukuzawa.

The first time Kada immersed himself in Fukuzawa research was probably around the time of the Manchurian Incident, the Shanghai Incident, and the May 15 Incident. In his lectures at Mita, he began to take up the ideological history and economic history of the Meiji period together. At that time, Kada discovered Fukuzawa as the ultimate realist. Certainly, Fukuzawa values the individual. It is easy to understand him if he is seen as a liberal. But, Kada says. Did Fukuzawa simply continue to chant the freedom of the individual as a primary principle like a mantra? That would not be the case. Fukuzawa never pitted the individual against the state. No individual without a state. Nevertheless, since the old state up to the Edo period had been dismantled as no longer useful by the end of the shogunate and the Restoration, there was no choice but to build a new state anew. Individuals would not be able to live in peace without a strong state. Then, who builds a strong new state? It is decided that it is individuals with talent suitable for the new era. For that purpose, individuals must first study well and become independent. This is also the raison d'être of Keio University.

For example, one studies at Mita, accumulates knowledge, and becomes wealthy. If such individuals increase, talent will overflow in both the public and private sectors, and if many wealthy people emerge, tax revenue will also become abundant, and the new state can become powerful for the first time. According to Kada, Fukuzawa was the best thinker who always envisioned the balanced development of the individual and the state, the private and the public. He emphasized the role of the private sector because he believed that the private sector was more flexible than the state, which tends to be inherently rigid and strongly tied to bureaucracy, and that it was appropriate to use that flexibility to make the state powerful. Later admirers of Fukuzawa tend to want to see him as a mass of antagonism toward the government, but in the early Meiji period, when Fukuzawa's thought shone most vividly, the government possessed only external power. Its inner substance was still lacking. The private sector exists to put a soul into the government. It is a public-private collaboration. If the government is weak, he emphasizes liberalism in the private sector, and in times of need, he unhesitatingly preaches blatant nationalism. Fukuzawa is truly flexible. This is why a realist is a realist. How many people are there who "read Fukuzawa but do not know Fukuzawa," failing to understand such true value? This was Kada's lament.

By the way, what is the state envisioned by Fukuzawa? Fukuzawa also discusses civilized nations in general, but his thought is, to the last, a thought within history that tries to make a specific nation called Japan stand, and the individuals for whom Fukuzawa seeks independence are, in short, Japanese people in mind. Therefore, Kada regards Fukuzawa as, in the end, a Meiji "progressive nationalist," and fundamentally a nationalist. When individuals live to their maximum potential, the nation-state in which those individuals live becomes powerful. Then, the economic, social, and political environment of the individuals within that state becomes better. The degree of self-realization also increases. Kada's "progressive nationalism" probably includes not only the progress of the nation-state but also the progress and expansion of the freedom and rights of the individuals who constitute that nation-state. The individual and the state engage like gears to circulate and synergize progress. That is the Fukuzawa spirit as understood by Kada.

If that is the case, Kada's behavior in the crisis of the 1930s is already clear. He would take the attitude of "progressive nationalism" that Fukuzawa took in the Meiji period and utilize it to the maximum within the situation of the crisis-ridden Showa era, willingly walking on thin ice. This was Kada's path. To repeat, Kada was a historian of economic thought and an economic historian. He also knew Marxism. He could not simply follow the Fukuzawa style as it was. Japan basically had no choice but to further develop capitalism, but the idle pursuit of private interest would create winners and losers, spread voices of resentment, invite class struggle, and lead to the collapse of capitalism. The present day has reached the limit of such a historical stage. Therefore, Kada also awakened to Morris. However, in the small community dreamed of by Morris, it would be impossible to further advance the enlarged capitalism. It would only result in contraction. In fact, Kada liked a rural, minimum economy. That is why he felt some warmth toward agrarian thought rooted in the traditions of small Japanese farming villages, such as that of Kozaburo Tachibana. But that cannot save the modern age. Economy has something called scale. Once something has become large-scale, it can only be sustained under ingenuity to maintain that scale. Then, is it a global economy? No, the world is in a state of Great Depression. To stop the chain of depression, an autonomous economic zone must be constructed, not worldwide, but by partitioning the world. However, even if partitioned, it is still quite large-scale, so it is quite far from a community where everyone's faces are visible, like the utopia of Morris or Tachibana.

However, a communal spirit is necessary there as well. Because capitalism, which pursues only private interest, is failing, socialism is also rising, and the elderly Shibusawa cried out for the restoration of the morality of capitalists during the Great Kanto Earthquake. Freedom bound to some extent by the public interest. Boldly modified capitalism. That is Kada's version of Showa realism. Of course, the market of Japanese capitalism, which developed from Meiji to Taisho, is no longer sufficient with only Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria. Communitarianism must be applied not only to the single nation of Japan but more broadly. At that time, Japanese capitalism must suppress its desires both internally and externally, endure a lot, bestow much upon the poor masses and poor regions, and care for and help weak nations. This is because the world no longer permits colonialism that is solely focused on exploitation. Just as Japan quickly awakened to "progressive nationalism" with Fukuzawa as a leader, the various peoples of Asia are also awakening to it. China is the same. It is national self-determination. Kada lectured on colonial studies at Mita, but it was to state the impossibility of colonies in the modern age. All that remains is the international enlargement of the Morris-like world. A fairly surreal dream. A principle where Japan's progressive nationalism, which can no longer be contained in one country, loosely bundles various nations and regions, respecting each nationalism, while the Japanese people take a further leap, increase wealth, and can maintain such a principle. A sense of community in the heart. What do you call that? By changing the character for "common" in community to the character for "cooperation," it is called Kyodotai-shugi (communitarianism). A kind of federation under the name of a community instead of a colonial empire. While behaving morally as the leader of such a thing, he wanted to maintain Japan's position and continue to stand at the forefront of "progressive nationalism." He also wanted to gain wealth. He wanted to survive the global economic war. He wanted to continue to play the role of leading Asia. The "Kada version of the Fukuzawa spirit" under the name of "progressive nationalism" would shine in the East and repel the US and UK.

As mentioned earlier, Kada was a prominent member of the Showa Kenkyukai, the brain trust of Fumimaro Konoe. In September 1938, the second year of the Second Sino-Japanese War and shortly after the enactment of the National Mobilization Law, when the "East Asia Block Economy Research Group" was formed within the association, Kada became its chairman and laid the foundation for the ideology of the East Asian Community. First, in Japan, the "capitalistic spirit of prioritizing private interest" must be "converted to a holistic cooperationism." Altruism, not self-interest. Public interest, not private interest. Capitalism is modified so that the share of altruism and public interest grows larger. Japan shows the example and leads the countries participating in the community both economically and politically. This ideology, which Kada was heavily involved in forming, was shared by Kiyoshi Miki, Masamichi Royama, and others, influenced Japan's national policy, and eventually became extremely vulgarized and hollowed out by politics, "degenerating" into the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" where the image preceded and the substance could not keep up. It cannot be said that Kada and others, who created the Buddha but failed to put a soul into it and let the words take on a life of their own, bear no responsibility for that.

Did Kada reflect after the war? I do not think that was necessarily the case. While feeling anger that the development of his correct dream had been hindered and gutted by opponents, Kada seems to have continued to search for a compromise for his version of modified capitalism even after the war. For example, in his later years, he supported the Democratic Socialist Party, which was born in 1960 when right-wing socialists split from the Japan Socialist Party. Neither Marxism nor simple capitalism. He probably saw the possibility of "progressive nationalism" in the Democratic Socialist Party.

After the public office purge was lifted, Kada served as a professor at Yamaguchi University and Nihon University, and passed away in 1964.