Maruyama masao biography of martin

Masao Maruyama (scholar)

Japanese political scientist

Masao Maruyama (丸山 眞男, Maruyama Masao, 22 March – 15 August ) was a leading Japanese political scientist and political theorist. His expertise lay in the history of Japanese political thought, to which he made major contributions.

Early life

Maruyama Masao was born in Osaka in [2] He was the second son of journalist Maruyama Kanji. He was influenced by friends of his father such as Hasegawa Nyozekan, a circle of people identified with the liberal current of political thought during the period of Taishō democracy.

Maruyama masao biography of martin Thinker political scientist historian professor [ 1 ]. Maruyama Masao was born in Osaka in Tokyo: International House of Japan. Sign In Register.

After graduating from Tokyo Furitsu Number One Middle School (currently known as Tokyo Municipal Hibiya High School), he entered the Tokyo Imperial University and graduated from the Faculty of Law in His thesis "The Concept of the Nation-state in Political Science" earned a Distinguished Thesis Award, and Maruyama was appointed assistant in the same department.

Originally he had wanted to specialize in European political thought, but changed his focus to concentrate on Japanese political thought, a subject that until that time mainly centered around the concept of an imperial state, and was influenced by a foundational ordinance that required subjects to be taught "in accordance with the needs of the state."[3] Maruyama brought to the discipline a theoretical perspective grounded in extensive comparativism.

The person who originally recommended this path to him was his mentor, Professor Shigeru Nambara, who was highly critical of military and bureaucratic obstructions to the growth of a constitutionally defined "national community."[4] An expert in European political thought, Nambara steered the young Maruyama into working on these topics.

In March , Maruyama was drafted and stationed in the Army at Hiroshima.

  • Maruyama masao biography of martin johnson
  • Maruyama masao biography of martin short
  • Maruyama masao biography of martin cruz

    • After experiencing the atomic blast at Hiroshima and seeing out the end of the war there, he returned to his post at the university in September. He caught tuberculosis at the time, and after an operation, spent the rest of his life on one lung.

    Rise to fame

    Maruyama first attracted attention from the scholarly community immediately following the war with his famous essay on wartime Japanese fascism, "The Logic and Psychology of Ultranationalism," first published in the widely-read journal Sekai in [5] In particular, Maruyama deemed the prewar imperial system a "system of irresponsibility." Maruyama continued to write about wartime and contemporary Japanese politics in the late s and early s, until he was forced to take a break from scholarly activities due to his being in and out of hospitals with illnesses in the mids.[5] He returned to his research in the late s, but ceased writing about recent politics and focused his attention on excavating the political thought of the Edo and Meiji periods.[5] It was not until the late s that Maruyama's earlier essays were anthologized and republished for the first time, bringing him fame and acclaim from a much broader cross-section of the Japanese general public.[5]

    Role in protest movements

    Maruyama became involved in the Anpo Protests against revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty at an early stage, in , and became involved in a variety of protest activities and publishing anti-treaty statements.[5] Shortly after the shocking ramming of the Treaty through the Diet by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi on 19 May , Maruyama emerged as one of the main faces of the anti-Treaty movement.

    On 24 May, he gave a dramatic speech "Time for a Choice" (Sentaku no toki) to an over-capacity crowd at a hall in central Tokyo. Maruyama argued that Japan was about to choose between democracy and dictatorship. He also argued that due to Kishi's outrageous actions, ordinary Japanese people needed to support the anti-Treaty protests in order to protect democracy, even if they did not mind the Treaty itself.[6]

    However, Maruyama later came to regret his starring role in the crisis.

    In the aftermath of the protests, Maruyama was attacked by opponents on both the right and the left. From the right, he was attacked as a supporter of communists and socialists, and from the left, he was accused of being a supporter of a very narrow vision of "bourgeois" democracy that only supported the interest of the ruling capitalist classes.[7] Maruyama was most strongly attacked by fellow leftist intellectual Yoshimoto Takaaki, who had a large following among New Left student radicals.[8] During the university protests in the late s Maruyama was strongly denounced by the students front as a symbol of "self-deceiving" postwar democracy.

    Maruyama in turn criticized this new student movement, especially after he was subjected to intense harassment and his personal office at the University of Tokyo was ransacked by occupying students in [9] Around this time, Maruyama angrily confronted the students, Maruyama telling them, "Even the fascists didn't do what you are trying to do!"[10] This kind of episode, combined with his own ailing health, forced him to retire in [9] He was however appointed professor emeritus at the same university in

    Later life

    Though Maruyama suffered from poor health especially in his later life, he continued studying and writing until he died in Tokyo on 15 August [2] The major work of his retirement years was a three-volume commentary on Fukuzawa Yukichi's principal work Bunmeiron no Gairyaku, based on a lengthy seminar he conducted with a small working group.

    This was published in , as Reading 'An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation', (「文明論之概略」を読む) by Iwanami Shoten. Besides, he contributed several more noteworthy as well as controversial works on Japanese culture or the process of translation in modern Japan. Most noteworthy is his concept of basso ostinato.

    Maruyama referred to this musicological concept to capture a socio-historically substratum underlying human thought. Although basso ostinato is in constant flux, it is experienced by people as a relatively stable intellectual framework through which people give meaning to life.[11]

    See also

    Honors

    Representative works in English

    Notes

    1. ^ abcNakajima, Makoto (16 September ).

      [The Nihon Dai Hyakka Zensho: Nipponica 's explanation]. Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 7 December

    2. ^ abJames Kirkup (23 August ). "Obituary: Masao Maruyama". The Independent. Retrieved 8 September
    3. ^Andrew E.

      Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public Man in Crisis, California University Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London p. 39

    4. ^Barshay, op. cit. pp. –
    5. ^ abcdeKapur, Nick ().

      Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

    6. ^Kapur, Nick (). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.
    7. ^Kapur, Nick ().

      Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo.

      Maruyama masao biography of martin johnson: Maruyama first attracted attention from the scholarly community immediately following the war with his famous essay on wartime Japanese fascism, "The Logic and Psychology of Ultranationalism ," first published in the widely-read journal Sekai in Stevens, B. Thinker political scientist historian professor [ 1 ]. However, Maruyama later came to regret his starring role in the crisis.

      Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

    8. ^Kapur, Nick (). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp.&#;–7. ISBN&#;.
    9. ^ abKapur, Nick (). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo.

      Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

      Maruyama masao biography of martin henderson London: Routledge, ISBN ISSN He also argued that due to Kishi's outrageous actions, ordinary Japanese people needed to support the anti-Treaty protests in order to protect democracy, even if they did not mind the Treaty itself.

      p.&#; ISBN&#;.

    10. ^Karube, Tadashi (). Maruyama Masao and the Fate of Liberalism in Twentieth-Century Japan. Tokyo: International House of Japan. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
    11. ^Rösch, Felix; Watanabe, Atsuko (13 July ). "Approaching the unsynthesizable in international politics: Giving substance to security discourses through basso ostinato?".

    12. More
    13. Maruyama Masao : and the fate of liberalism in twentieth ...
    14. [I-House Press] Maruyama Masao and the Fate of Liberalism in ...
    15. Masao Maruyama (scholar) - Wikiwand

      16. European Journal of International Relations. 23 (3): – doi/ ISSN&#; S2CID&#;[permanent dead link&#;]

    16. ^L'Harmattan web site (in French)
    17. ^Association for Asian Studies (AAS), Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian StudiesArchived 17 May at the Wayback Machine; retrieved

    External links

    Further reading

    • Barshay, Andrew E.

      "Imaging Democracy in Postwar Japan: Reflections on Maruyama Masao and Modernism." Journal of Japanese Studies 18, no. 2 (): –

    • Kapur, Nick (). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN&#;.
    • Karube, Tadashi ().

      Maruyama Masao and the Fate of Liberalism in Twentieth-Century Japan. Tokyo: International House of Japan. ISBN&#;.

    • Rösch, Felix; Watanabe, Atsuko (). "Approaching the unsynthesizable in international politics: Giving substance to security discourses throughbasso ostinato?". European Journal of International Relations.

      23 (3): – doi/ S2CID&#;[permanent dead link&#;]

    • Sasaki Fumiko.

      Maruyama masao biography of martin luther Kotobank in Japanese. In March , Maruyama was drafted and stationed in the Army at Hiroshima. Kanji Maruyama [1]. Bernard Stevens.

      Nationalism, Political Realism and Democracy in Japan: The Thought of Maruyama Masao. London: Routledge,

    • Takeshi Morisato. "The Problem of Japanese Modernity." Genealogies of Modernity ().
    • _____. "Japan and the Octopus Trap of Modernity." Genealogies of Modernity ().

      Maruyama masao biography of martin lawrence Retrieved 7 December One of the paradoxes, and not the least, that characterizes the complementarity that we are establishing between Nishida and Maruyama resides in the fact that the former, aiming a universally valid discourse, expressed, to some extend, positions marked by the cultural particularity of Japan, while the latter, spending a great effort studying Japanese intellectual history, has a way of thinking that is more clearly universal. European Journal of International Relations. Loading AI tools.

    • _____. "Breaking Out of the Octopus Trap of Modernity." Genealogies of Modernity ().