CAPÍTULO I: MARCO TEORICO
1.2. Base teórica
Goshaku no Sake demonstrates, perhaps more than anything else, the critical importance of scrutinizing the representation of the present emperor and emperor system, and that lack of care and precision can trap this representation into targeting an emperor system that had ceased to exist after Japan’s defeat. Targeting the wrong emperor system can reproduce its very undemocratic elements and make it
impossible to engender the type of national morality necessary for democracy. In this sense, the text is not really about the emperor or the emperor system at all. Rather, it is about how the discourse that addresses the emperor is in dire need of reform, and how an opportunity is being missed to raise consciousness at the critical juncture of the early postwar, when so much was in flux.
The narrator draws attention to an article in Akahata that aimed to critique the language used to refer to the transition from the role of emperor to citizen,
“descent to the status of subject.”105 The articled mocked the idea as ludicrous, as if there were a stairwell separating the “emperor” (kimi) from his “subjects.” Rather than make the descent, the article urges the “descendents of the gods” to return the rice and gold they took from the people and to go back to the “Plain of High
Heaven.”106 Despite the satirical and mocking tone of the article that appropriates
105 Shinsekikōka (臣籍降下), a term also used to refer to the lowered status of the imperial family upon the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution. See Kōjien Volume V, definition.
106 GNS, 418; de Bary, 115.
the very language of the emperor only to turn it on its head, the narrator objects to the article’s failure to fundamentally question the distinction between emperor and subject, let alone the categories themselves. He asks, “Where does the status of
‘subject’ belong?” To the narrator, such mockery by Akahata ignores the actual power (jissai no chikara) the emperor exerts. Use of languages such as “descent to the status of subject” must be rejected because in democracy there are no subjects.
The existence of subjects implies subjugation, and language that smuggles in these defunct semi-feudal categories into the postwar is hostile to the realization of
democracy. The people ought not be subjects of the emperor, and neither should the emperor and imperial family be subjects of the people. Rather than employ language that suggests a loss or fall or descent from status, the narrator recommends the opposite: that they be “elevated (hikiageru) to the status of full-fledged citizen (kokumin).”107
The narrator’s critique of Akahata is rooted in his concern that the
Communist Party is perpetuating a hostile attitude—most importantly in the minds of his students—toward the emperor and the emperor’s family that treats them as inhuman, failing to see that they themselves do not constitute the emperor system;
rather, they are prisoners of it. Akahata’s hostile attitude is the “opposite of
abolishing the emperor system (tennōsei haishi no gyakuten),” or, in other words, it
107 This trope of “elevation” to the level of critical for the narrator’s conception of the role he envisages for the postwar emperor, and as we’ll see, Sakaguchi employs very similar logic, but plays with the language of “descent.”
is its very reproduction. The narrator worries that, if encouraged, the students’
hostile attitude will lead to their “snubbing” the emperor and feeling superior. But, he says, “the truth is that at best the students will be swept up by a democratic emperor and forever look up to him as an object of worship in their hearts.”108 The narrator demonstrates here how easily distain for the emperor, by reproducing the anachronistic relations that keep him distant from citizens rather than integrating him as a human, can be flipped to its opposite, emperor worship.109 Treating the emperor sympathetically, but only as a human being separate and distinct from the emperor system, is radical in that it does not recognize the premises on which the emperor system is based. These premises—feudal, antidemocratic, based on hierarchical distinctions between people—are deeply embedded in language, and even those opposed to the emperor system end up reaffirming and replicating them through language. When I say that the narrator is performing a discursive analysis, I refer specifically to this point: that the power of the emperor system is also exercised through and within language, and so, the emperor system cannot be challenged without fundamentally challenging the representation of the emperor and emperor system. The narrator calls specifically for a morality that radically opposes
representation that perpetuates the emperor system by unproblematically adopting
108 GNS, 419; de Bary, 117.
109 Nakano deals with this very question in his essay, “Patriotism and Treason,” and the fine line that can separate the two. “We need to look at how the traitors will treat the pride of the Japanese nation [日本民族] and the morality of the Japanese nation. The problem of patriotism in Japan, to the extent that ‘emperor’ and
‘emperor system’ are avoided, can flip to the problem of treason.”
its language. Instead, he demands freedom for all, including the emperor, and a conscience that cannot allow for the imprisonment of anyone. Thus, “The abolition of the emperor system is a question of practical morality. I want them to think about the fact that the more people turn their noses up to snub the emperor, the longer the emperor system will survive.”110 This, in essence, is a reformulation of the meaning of “emperor system abolition” (tennōsei haishi). Whereas the Communist Party’s version of emperor system abolition includes attack on the emperor and his family, the narrator demonstrates how such attack does no more than reproduce the conditions for the emperor system’s perpetuity. It is the system that needs to be attacked, and somewhat counter-intuitively, sympathy for the emperor—because it allows understanding of how the emperor is a tool, a puppet, and a captive of the system—is a much more potent form of attack.