[Book Review] Two Books by Toshihiro Nakayama

2023/06/30

Image: Two books have been published in succession by Toshihiro Nakayama, a professor at the Faculty of Policy Management who passed away suddenly in May 2022 at the age of 55.

The first is "When the Nation of Ideals Creaks: Obama, Trump, Biden, and America" (Chikura Shobo, March 2023). The author, who was left speechless by Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential election, continued to search for what he had overlooked. This book reconstructs the essays the author wrote in various places during those six years.

The author argues that Trump is not the cause of the change in US politics, but rather an avatar (incarnation). US politics did not change because Trump appeared. Trump appeared by successfully capturing the reality of US politics that was already changing, and the author also says that the person Trump and the Trump phenomenon do not coincide. The tectonic shifts in US politics and the division that became clearly visible through the Trump phenomenon had already begun when Barack Obama became president. And he says that this continued through the four years of the Trump administration and into the Joe Biden administration.

The three administrations of Obama, Trump, and Biden look completely different if you only look at the personalities and policies of each president. However, even as administrations changed, he had not realized as of 2016 that quiet but firm changes were occurring in American society, which forms the foundation of US politics. From that surprise, the author re-examined US politics and found the creaking of the nation of ideals.

The other book is "The Communist Party of American Intellectuals: A Self-Portrait of the Nation of Ideals" (Keiso Shobo, April 2023). This book is based on the doctoral dissertation the author submitted in March 2001. It was published more than 20 years later, but the author had always been preparing to publish this book someday and had entrusted the digital manuscript to an editor.

The fact that the author wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Communist Party in the US was something he occasionally mentioned himself, so it was well known among close friends and acquaintances. However, few people had read the dissertation itself.

This doctoral dissertation has its roots in the 1966 paper (one year before the author was born) by his mentor Yonosuke Nagai, titled "Why is there Socialism in America?" By looking at why there was a Communist Party in the US—a country that rejected communism and socialism and confronted the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries in the Cold War—and why it was excluded, he sought to capture the image of the US as a nation of ideals. By shedding light on words that the US itself did not actively speak, he tried to clarify what the US seeks.

While serving as a reporter for a US newspaper and working at the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations in New York, the author held this question and continued to ask it throughout his life. As evidence, "When the Nation of Ideals Creaks" includes a 2020 essay titled "Is There No Socialism in America?" Bernie Sanders, who competed for the nomination in the Democratic primaries, boldly put forward socialist policies, and the fact that the younger generation enthusiastically supported them also left a strong impression on the author.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, it was argued that the ideological trend known as the neocons (neoconservatives) strongly influenced the George W. Bush administration, but this doctoral dissertation, submitted before those attacks, had already discussed the neocons. The author is also known for having early on grasped the political rise of the Christian Right. For the author, the US was not only a country that embodied material civilization, but also a country that was strongly driven by ideals, even if they were invisible behind the scenes, which was likely the source of his intellectual interest above all else.

When a memorial service for the author was held, the words of his American friends were introduced. One of them recalled that when they first met the author, they thought he was an American. These are two books through which we can savor the words of an author who was familiar with the US and its culture from a young age, yet continued to gaze at the US as an object of intellectual analysis and continued to explain it to us.

As a colleague and as a friend, losing Nakayama-kun has left a great deal of pain. However, it is a small comfort if his words are widely passed on through these two books.

"When the Nation of Ideals Creaks: Obama, Trump, Biden, and America"

Toshihiro Nakayama

Chikura Shobo

430 pages, 3,960 yen (tax included)

"The Communist Party of American Intellectuals: A Self-Portrait of the Nation of Ideals"

Toshihiro Nakayama

Keiso Shobo

352 pages, 5,170 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.