Genetics, DTC, and Their Social Implications: Reviews
Social welfare and scientific racism in modern Japan: discriminated Buraku and the philanthropist Toyohiko Kagawa
2023 年 131 巻 1 号 p. 33-43
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2023 年 131 巻 1 号 p. 33-43
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, knowledge about human beings, which had previously been sought in a variety of fields, was articulated with the theory of evolution, and a new civilized worldview was formed. Notably, through these interdisciplinary studies and controversies, the perception that human qualities are determined by heredity became widespread and accepted as a basis for eugenic restructuring of modern society. Even in Japan at the same time, knowledge about heredity was widely introduced through criminology and psychiatry, and eventually became an important reference framework when discussing national institutions and policies. Toyohiko Kagawa (1888–1960) is one of the intellectuals who worked on many social projects while taking in such scientific knowledge and influenced the field. In this study, taking Kagawa’s social work and his discourse as an example, it is clarified that the interpretation frame that links heredity with poverty, crime, and illness has permeated Japanese society.
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was decisive in overturning the traditional worldview of earlier ages and in the subsequent rise of evolutionary thought, its impact felt widely even outside the field of biology. Herbert Spencer, whose work was influential among Japanese intelligentsia, viewed society as a biological organism, and he described history in terms of the evolution from militant societies to industrial societies (Yamashita, 2009). His theory of social evolution therefore explained the industrialization of society as a process resembling that of the evolution of a biological species, and was enthusiastically received the world over as a scientific view of (the history of) civilization.
Thus, in the latter half of the 19th century, evolutionary theory brought together knowledge from various fields to create a new civilized worldview that held ‘survival of the fittest’ to be self-evident. Humans and their groups were placed in a hierarchy based on their level of civilization and progress along the line of evolution. This paper will examine the view of the Japanese lower classes and the Burakumin at the beginning of the 20th century considering the scientific racism that spread under the aegis of this civilized worldview.
A variety of urban social issues developed during the late-Meiji period as Japan was rapidly modernizing due to policies of Westernization (bunmei kaika, lit. ‘civilization and enlightenment’) and industrialization (shokusan kōgyō, lit. ‘promotion of industry’). The government was hard-pressed to find ways of dealing with the lower classes, which were a breeding ground for crime and disease. Ways of explaining and handling ‘deviations from the civilized norm’ such as crime, poverty, sexual perversion, and insanity were sought in the criminology and psychiatry being imported from the West at the time. This paper will show that, under the paradigm of evolutionary theory, these disciplines also distinguished between ‘normal’ people, i.e. those who had reached a normative level of development, and abnormal ‘deviants,’ unable to conform to the civilized world. The latter were seen as a threat to the quality of the national populace, requiring correction or cure.
Michel Foucault argues that the development of this knowledge gave rise to bio-power, a new form of rule for collectively controlling the bodies of the population. Based on the notion of humans as a biological species, bio-power views the objects of rule as a single entity (the population) equipped with the shared life processes of birth, development, work, reproduction, health, longevity, and so forth. In the search for a statistical ‘norm,’ all human behavior becomes pathologized, and the random elements (disease, crime, vagrancy, accidents) become something to be corrected. Those in power thus gain a circuit for intervening in the lives of the people from a statistical and demographic viewpoint, enabling them to control the minds, bodies, and behavior of the population (Foucault, 1976, 1997).
Foucault further argues that institutional racism functions as the fundamental mechanism of this power that operates on the lives of the people. The authority of ‘knowledge’ interrupts the biological continuum of humanity, fragmenting it based on ‘race’ and looking to improve and strengthen the overall human race by correcting the ‘fundamental nature’ of the abnormal and inferior ‘races.’ The collective biological phenomenon of the human race thus becomes wrapped up in the economic process, allowing the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production. Thus bio-power, based in a kind of evolutionary racism, comes to function as an indispensable element of capitalism.
Foucault’s understanding of racism is different from the earlier view of it as discrimination against ethnic groups. He sees it rather as discrimination against ‘deviants’ and ‘those most likely to pass on abnormalities to their descendants.’ The function of this racism is to identify and separate out those within the group who present a potential threat. And as the primary theory enabling this screening process, Foucault highlights the concept of ‘degeneration’ (Foucault, 1999).
The criminology and psychiatry of the time offered a myriad of opinions on the subject of ‘degeneration’ as the cause of social and pathological deviancy, often causing great controversy. The perception that human nature is determined by genetics and environment spread widely due to such interdisciplinary research and controversy, and became the basis for a move to reorganize modern society along eugenic lines. This circulation of race as a scientific concept used to organize people is what Takezawa calls ‘Race’ in the upper case (Takezawa, 2011).
Genetics and biological evolutionary theory were also widely accepted among Japanese intellectuals in the latter half of the 19th century (Suzuki, 1983). As we will see in this paper, the concept of ‘degeneration’ was also widely disseminated in Japan during the later years of the Meiji period in conjunction with policies of social reform. Alongside social Darwinism and the organic theory of society, it became an important frame of reference for debates around national policy and social norms, while the interpretive frame linking genetics with poverty, crime, and disease diffused steadily throughout Japanese society via newspapers and journals (Matsubara, 1997).
One intellectual who assimilated such scientific knowledge into his social work, and who exerted a powerful influence over subsequent Japanese social movements and social policy, was Toyohiko Kagawa (1888–1960). In 1909 he began missionary work and relief efforts among the poor, developing his humanitarian efforts while living in Shinkawa slums in Kobe. His work encompassed a wide range of activities, including care for the sick, nursing and education for children, distribution of food, the establishment of free medical clinics, and job placement. The novel Shisen wo koete [To Hell and Back] (Kagawa, 1920b), which he based on his own experiences, was a bestseller at the time. He went on to spearhead a multitude of social movements, including the consumer’s cooperative movement, the labor union movement, the farmers’ union movement, the Proletarian Party movement, and the peace movement. His reach was no less broad after the end of the Second World War, from advocating for the ‘General Repentance of the One-Hundred Million’ as an adviser to Prince Higashikuni’s cabinet to participating in the creation of the Japanese Socialist Party. His life of dedication to peace and society has been widely recognized even internationally, and in his later years he was nominated for the Nobel Prize many times (Yoshitake, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2014).
On the other hand, Kagawa has also been criticized for the discriminatory tone of some of his writings, where he describes the poor and the Burakumin as inferior species who act according to animal instinct. Fujino Yutaka and Kurokawa Midori have amply demonstrated the racism and eugenicist ideas inherent in the view of the Burakumin held by Kagawa and other intellectuals of the time (Fujino, 1994; Kurokawa, 2005). The intellectual context that led Kagawa to such a discriminatory view even as he pioneered the work of humanitarian aid in Japan, however, has not been sufficiently elucidated.
In this paper I will analyze Kagawa’s discourse (exposed as it has been in the past to both praise and censure) in the historical context of the above-described concept of ‘degeneration’ and its reception in Japan, in the hopes of answering the question: how could the diametrically opposed doctrines of humanitarianism and racism come to be combined in Kagawa’s thought? I will also consider the points of contacts between the peculiar characteristics of Kagawa’s ideas and the various dimensions of modern Japanese society.
Modern Japan and ‘knowledge’ regarding deviantsIn the rush to modernize in the wake of the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government introduced political, judicial, economic, military, and scholastic systems modeled on those of the West. Such social systems drew dividing lines among the populace based in normative binaries such as ‘civilized/uncivilized,’ ‘sane/insane,’ ‘hard-working/lazy,’ ‘clean/unclean,’ and ‘virtuous/criminal,’ thereby constructing a new social hierarchy (Hirota, 1998). Scientific knowledge regarding social ‘deviants’ imported from the West at the time, including criminology and psychiatry, played an important role in the rationalization of this hierarchy.
In this chapter, I will give an outline of the twin scientific streams of criminology and psychiatry as they impacted modern Japan, focusing on ‘knowledge’ regarding deviants and the concept of ‘degeneration.’
Biological and social environmental factors in the causes of crimeThe Italian physician Cesare Lombroso, the father of anthropological criminology, is best known for his 1876 work L’uomo delinquente [The Criminal Man] (Lombroso, 1876) in which he set forth his theory of the born criminal. In that work, he asserts that criminals bear discernible physical and mental characteristics, and represent a biological ‘reversion’ to a degenerated race. He argues that the characteristics of ancient humankind are revived in the present day through an ‘atavism’ in criminals, who are destined from birth to commit crimes (Yanagimoto, 1973; Nakatani, 1994).
For example, he posits that criminals are marked by such anatomical characteristics as a narrow forehead, receding hairline, excessively large orbits, a strong superciliary arch, an outwardly protruding occipital bone, prognathous jaw, fusion of the cranial sutures resulting in underdevelopment of the forebrain, overdevelopment of the masticatory apparatus, etc. He also posits mental and behavioral signs such as an insensitivity to pain, dulled emotions, lack of shame, tattoos, prevalence of left-handedness, imitativeness, vanity, and short attention-span. Lombroso describes these characteristics, which he says are held in common with monkeys, ‘primitive tribes,’ and human children, as marks of an inability to conform to civilized society, thereby rendering antisociality congenital.
Lombroso’s theory of the born criminal created quite a stir in Europe. In 1885, the first International Conference of Anthropological Criminology was held in Rome, and Lombroso was praised by delegates from every participating nation. His theory was not universally accepted, however. The sociologist Jean Gabriel Tarde led a wave of French criticism against Lombroso’s Italian school, arguing that criminals were in fact created by their social environment. Beginning with the second conference in 1889, the International Conference of Anthropological Criminology became the site of a fierce debate between the Italian and French factions (Darmon, 1989).
While the French school advocated for a social environmental source for criminality, they did not deny the existence of biological characteristics of the criminal per se. The basic framework for the French school’s theory of criminality lay in the psychiatric theory of ‘degeneration,’ which was intimately linked to the traditional Christian worldview that sees human history as a process of degeneration from the moment that Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden for their sins. The French psychiatrist B. A. Morel formulated a theory of degeneration as a deviation from the human ‘norm,’ stemming from such things as alcoholism, poverty, drug addiction, and unsanitary working conditions. The degeneration progressively worsens with each generation, leading first to physical and mental illness and finally to extinction (Ōhigashi 1991).
The basis for Morel’s theory of degeneration was the natural philosopher Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which stated that characteristics acquired by an organism during its lifetime in accordance with its environment can be passed on to its descendants. Pathological qualities and tendencies acquired in the course of adapting to harsh environments unsuited to human life are inherited by the offspring, manifesting as physical and neurological disharmony in successive generations. From his standpoint as a pious Christian, Morel viewed this as a degeneration or degradation moving people away from the ideal original form in which God created humankind.
The psychiatrist Legrain V. Magnan further developed Morel’s ideas, situating degeneration as an incomplete development of the central nervous system brought about by poor environmental conditions. He removed the religious flavor of Morel’s work, describing the ideal form of the human race not as a thing of the past but as a future towards which we are evolving, refining the notion of degeneration by integrating it with the theory of evolution. According to Magnan, the physical characteristics of the criminal posited by Lombroso are an organic ailment brought about by degeneration. Mental imbalance and obsession would accompany the worsening condition, giving rise to the urge towards theft or murder (Ōhigashi, 1999).
Most French criminologists shared the belief that the true nature of criminals, explained by Lombroso as atavism, was in fact a progressively worsening genetic phenomenon born of a poor environment. Degenerates were situated somewhere between healthy humans and the mentally ill, and it was this space that supplied criminals. Where Lombroso viewed criminality as an inborn trait, this theory opened the path to safeguarding society from the birth of future criminals by intervening in the present environment. An important corollary of this was that, by viewing genetic variation born of environmental conditions as something that could be inherited, the theory of degeneration became a primary factor in arousing interest in and anxiety towards genetics.
In response to the harsh criticisms of the French school, Lombroso clung even more fiercely to his theoretical framework of the born criminal, while at the same time embracing a wider range of concepts to explain its mechanism. Lombroso was able to sidestep criticism by relying on Ernst Heinrich Haeckel’s principle of biological development, which stated that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ (Gould, 1977). According to this principle, the process by which a human fertilized egg becomes an embryo, is born, and develops into an adult (ontogeny) mirrors and reproduces in microcosm the process by which the species evolves (phylogeny). In other words, the growth of a child is no less than the recreation of humankind’s evolution from lower beast to dominant species. An individual born without the qualities necessary for such growth, however, or whose development is arrested, will become a physical adult while retaining the disposition of a beast. Lombroso argued that the majority of born criminals end up in this state of arrested development because of an inborn epileptoid nature, and as a result they grow into adults more likely to commit crimes.
While both Lombroso and the French school relied heavily on the evolutionary concept of arrested development of the nervous system, they were fiercely at odds over whether to place the emphasis for the genetic causes of criminality and deviant behavior on a priori biological or a posteriori social environmental factors. Whatever the case, the question of how to safeguard society from this biological threat became an important social issue thanks to this debate.
The reception and influence in Japan of ‘knowledge’ regarding deviantsHaving created such a stir in the West, how then were the theory of the born criminal and the theory of degeneration introduced into Japan?
Morel’s theory of degeneration was the earlier of the two to be transmitted to Japan. In 1876 (Meiji 9), Bunsai Kanbe’s translation of the Englishman Henry Maudsley’s Theory of Mental Illness was published in Japan (Kanbe, 1876). As a psychiatrist, Maudsley was heavily influenced by both Darwin’s theory of evolution and Morel’s theory of degeneration, and he developed a genetic deterministic explanation for mental illness (Kurokawa, 1994). Maudsley’s work was widely read at the time by physicians throughout the world involved in the treatment of mental illness, garnering widespread acceptance for a psychiatry based on the concept of degeneration (Matsushita, 1993).
The first book on psychiatry authored in Japan was Seishinbyōgaku shūyō [A Compendium of Psychiatry] (Kure, 1894) by Kure Shūzō, under the influence of the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Kure is well-known as the founder of Japanese psychiatry, and went on to educate many psychiatrists as a professor at Tokyo Imperial University (Okada, 1982, 2002). Krafft-Ebing, along with Heinrich Schüle, was responsible for bringing Morel’s theory of degeneration to Germany and giving prominence to negative genetic factors such as mental degeneration in his classification of mental disorders. Matsushita Masaaki has shown that degeneration theory had a powerful influence on Japanese psychiatry during its foundational period (Matsushita, 1993).
Let us now examine the Japanese reception of Lombroso’s theory of the born criminal, which had already caused a great commotion in the field of criminal jurisprudence in the West. The Modern School of criminal jurisprudence appeared in the latter half of the 19th century under the influence of the development of criminology, and a debate unfolded between its adherents and those of the Classical School, who held to notions of retributive justice, free will (i.e. that criminals commit crimes of their own free will), and nulla poena sine lege (‘no punishment without law’). The Modern School took a positivist stance, advocating for reforming notions of criminal responsibility, goals of punishment, and methods of sentencing. They began a movement for the reform of criminal jurisprudence based on the idea of social defense, advocating reformatory punishment, determinism, and indeterminate sentences (Kimura, 2010).
Lombroso’s theory was greeted with great interest in Meiji Japan. His L’uomo delinquente was translated into French and German in 1887, providing the opportunity for it to be introduced to Japan as well (in ‘Hanzai no gen’in shurui [The Causes of Crime]’ in Tetsugakkai zasshi [Journal of the Society of Philosophy] no. 2, 1887) (Anonymous, 1887). Interest in his research and in the Modern School’s theories mounted quickly, and studies presenting them to a Japanese readership appeared one after the other. A new penal code (still in operation today) was promulgated in 1907 under the heavy influence of the Modern School, and enforcement began the following year (Kaikoku hyakunen bunka-jigyō-kai, 1954). Upon Lombroso’s death in 1909, the Japanese legal journals carried articles by future criminal jurisprudence authority Makino Eiichi and others extolling his great achievements (Makino, 1910).
In 1892, the anthropologist Shōgorō Tsuboi and the jurist Terao Tōru became the first Japanese delegates to the International Conference of Anthropological Criminology. Upon their return to Japan, Tsuboi reported on the state of criminal studies in the West (Tsuboi, 1892, 1893). Tsuboi coolly observes that the debate over the causes of crime between Lombroso’s theory of the born criminal and the theory of degeneration is simply a difference in emphasis, writing that ‘the two schools’ theories are readily compatible.’ This attitude was shared widely among the apostles of criminology in Japan, and, aided in part by the geographical and cultural divide between Japan and Europe, they adopted an eclectic stance that integrated both theories without exclusively supporting either one. The Japanese intelligentsia took note of the theory, shared by both schools, of a genetic origin for criminality, accepting this as the latest Western science.
Psychology, as an adjacent field to psychiatry and criminal jurisprudence treating social pathologies such as crime and juvenile delinquency, was also an early adopter of criminological knowledge. Terada Seiichi, known as the trailblazer of Japanese criminal psychology, gives a detailed account of the experiences of criminals in Sugamo Prison and the effects of punishment on them in his 1913 book Shūjin no shinri [The Psychology of Prisoners] (Terada, 1913), based on data from his own surveys (in addition to introducing atavism and degeneration as genetic factors underlying crime). He sought to explain the mechanism producing criminal behavior in humans from the standpoint of the arrested development or dissolution of the nervous system, arguing that illness or environment could ‘weaken’ the ability and will to inhibit the instincts that manifest at each stage of neural development. He subsequently published Lonburōzo hanzaijinron [Lombroso’s Theory of Criminals] (Terada, 1917) and Hanzai shinri kōwa [Lectures on Criminal Psychology] (Terada, 1918), and actively involved himself in so-called ‘reform and relief’ projects to promote awareness among educators and the public of the relationship between crime on the one hand and genetics and environment on the other, and of the importance of education as a preventive measure.
Problems surrounding labor and urban poverty became progressively worse as the industrial revolution picked up steam after Japan’s victory in the first Sino-Japanese war. In addition, rural areas were impoverished and brought to ruin by massive spending during the Russo-Japanese war, leading to a rural improvement movement for rebuilding these regions. To cope with this wave of societal transformation, knowledge from the field of criminology was mobilized and applied to social issues (Matsubara, 1997).
The government’s institution of buraku improvement measures provided the catalyst for applying this ‘knowledge’ regarding deviants to the Burakumin community. These measures were a part of the ‘reform and relief’ work and the regional improvement movement initiated by the Home Ministry at the time. The goal was to improve the lifestyle and environment of the Burakumin in order to prevent crime and provide relief from the discrimination and poverty with which they struggled (Fujino, 1984).
Kōsuke Tomeoka, a commissioned officer of the Home Ministry, became the theoretical fulcrum of the buraku improvement measures. He was an emblematic social reformer of the age, working first as a chaplain in the Sorachi detention center in Hokkaido and involving himself in the prison reform movement, and in 1899 (Meiji 32) establishing his Home School for the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents in Sugamo in Tokyo (Murota, 1998; Tanaka, 2000; Kaneda, 2003; Nii, 2010).
While serving as chaplain at the Sorachi Detention Center, Tomeoka noticed the large numbers of Burakumin among the prison population, which he recalls as the catalyst for his interest in the so-called ‘Buraku Problem.’ According to him, their behavior was particularly vulgar even compared to other prisoners, and when he investigated their crimes, he discovered that many were particularly ‘atrocious.’ ‘Highway robbery and rape, for example, while murders would include gouging out the eyes or severing the limbs of the victims, acts of indescribable cruelty.’ In addition, he discovered that they were 8–10 times more likely to become criminals than were ‘regular people’ (Tomeoka, 1909). His statement that ‘in order to decrease crime in our nation in general, it is vital that we decrease crime on the part of the tokushu buraku’ shows that for Tomeoka and his ilk, the buraku improvement measures were a form of social work initiated largely with the goals of public order and social defense in mind (Fujino, 1986; Sekiguchi, 2014).
It is important to note, however, that while one can discern the deep influence of criminology on Tomeoka’s theories of social reform, he was also passionate about correcting ‘deviants,’ and was critical of the discrimination they received. While Tomeoka saw both heredity and environment as factors underlying crime, he was adamantly opposed to the theory of genetic determinism. ‘For most people, the very word “genetic” conjures an image of something beyond human agency, but I believe that heredity is itself human agency. Because heredity is none other than something created by habit’ (Tomeoka, 1918, emphasis added). Therefore, all social deviants, including criminals, juvenile delinquents, and the Burakumin, can be corrected through environmental improvement.
At the same time, it is undeniable that this degeneration-based image of the deviant, in which inferior conditions produce bad genes, can easily shade into stereotypes of the lower classes. In any case, Tomeoka eagerly extolled his theories of social work in workshops conducted as part of the Home Ministry’s ‘reform and relief’ and regional improvement efforts, and people in every region appeared in answer to appeals to participate. The buraku improvement project was underway.
Toyohiko Kagawa’s poverty relief efforts and his view of the poor Pathologizing the poorToyohiko Kagawa was one of those who put Tomeoka’s buraku improvement theories into practice. As a Christian, Kagawa also had an interest in charity work, and Tomeoka’s theories regarding ‘reform and relief’ resonated with him even as he conceived his own brand of social work (Nunokawa, 1993).
Kagawa’s lifelong engagement with social work and social movements began with his poverty relief efforts in Shinkawa in Kobe. He entered the missionary path during his time in seminary, and when he graduated he started residence in the Shinkawa slums, beginning his poverty relief efforts in earnest at the age of 21. His work met with constant trials and tribulations, however. Diseases such as plague, cholera, and dysentery were epidemic in the slums, and Kagawa and his wife Haru, who worked with him, both contracted trachoma, each losing the sight in one eye as a result. In addition, the residents did not readily warm to their efforts, frequently threatening them and obstructing their work.
For Kagawa, the single most striking feature of the slums was the prevalence of criminals and idlers, with ‘90% of the crime in Japan being perpetrated by the poor’ (Kagawa, 1919). In particular, he singled out ‘foster child killing’ as a wretched crime that he frequently encountered in the slums (Kagawa, 1915). This refers to the practice of taking over the care of another’s baby in return for compensation, and then allowing the child to die. According to Kagawa, there were multiple funerals in the slums each year for victims of ‘foster child killing.’ He called it a ‘particular crime of the poor,’ writing that such human cruelty ‘makes abundantly clear some part of the mindset of the poor.’ He continues: ‘This too must spring from somewhere, however. So from where? The answer is that it is the result of the adaptation of the will of the poor to the critical threat to their survival which their lifestyle presents’ (Kagawa, 1915). ‘Needless to say, the looming threat of death has a massive influence on human psychology, and its first effect is an insouciant attitude towards life. Its second is rampant murder. Its third is the transcendence of morality, in a negative sense’ (Kagawa, 1915).
Kagawa ascribes the moral decline of the poor to the fact that most of them are ‘degenerates,’ explaining their inability to escape that state as follows: ‘First, they are poor because they are degenerates. Second, because it is hereditary. Third, they are alcoholics. Fourth, the hereditary transmission of syphilis and other such diseases. Fifth, many go mad as a result of poverty.’ Among these he emphasizes the prevalence of degeneration as a result of alcohol intake (Kagawa, 1919). Thus, at the basis of Kagawa’s theory of the morality of the poor we can perceive a mind/body monism tinged by degeneration theory, that the burden resulting from the attempt to adapt to a harsh environment not suited for human survival can give rise to abnormal qualities and tendencies, which can then be passed on to descendants who are born ‘deviants.’
For instance, Kagawa claimed that there is a ‘physiological cause’ of indolence. Among 56 men surveyed in Shinkawa, 30 suffered from syphilis, squint, brain disease, weak constitution, physical disability, eye disease, chronic disease, etc. The remaining 26 healthy individuals had traces of illness in their physique that had manifested within one year of birth, and which suppressed their childhood growth. Among 17 women, 11 had a weak constitution, squint, ‘erotomania,’ etc., while only four were healthy. There was also a prevalence of heart disease and other cardiovascular illnesses among the poor and working class, which Kagawa ascribed to the influence of alcohol, syphilis, and overwork He writes that for the many who avoid work and make begging their livelihood, such mind/body illnesses lead to ‘the degeneration of independent will,’ leading them to become ‘people with a disunity of character,’ such that they ‘cannot physiologically survive except to become a beggar’(Kagawa, 1915).
According to the understanding of the time, based as it was in evolutionary theory, humankind is a complex and superior animal that has evolved from a simpler, inferior organism, constructing an advanced civilization as it biologically and socially evolved from its uncivilized ancestors. According to Kagawa, the poor too must be considered according to this principle and placed along the continuum of biological and social evolution from simple to complex, from inferior to superior, from savage to civilized. He used this foundation of biological and social evolutionary theory to apply the wisdom of criminology to a consideration of the psychology of the poor.
For instance, the reason the poor cannot escape their savage, uncivilized state is that during childhood they are placed in a severe environment that suppresses their growth, and so mind and body do not develop into those of a normal adult. Their habit of ‘snacking’ derives from becoming an adult while keeping the youthful inability to suppress their desires, and one can detect signs of degeneration in most of them. One can therefore distinguish many points of overlap between the behavior of the poor and that of uncivilized peoples.
But if we view this through the lens of the theory of evolution, it ceases to be a problem. When humans were still more like monkeys, no one would take issue with them eating the things that monkeys eat. And in that time, we can assume that it was also not yet standard that one would eat three meals a day as we do now. … In the beginning, it seems that the Japanese ate only two meals a day, but since the Warring States period we have become a race that eats three. It is clear, then, that this practice of snacking is indeed one manifestation of degeneration, a retrogression to the over-consumption of the primordial age when humankind were hunters (Kagawa, 1915).
Kagawa viewed these physiological characteristics of the poor as prescribing their psychology and social relations. When it comes to familial relations among the residents of the slums, for example, children stay out all night, husbands gamble until dawn, and wives are left at home alone to worry about how the family will get by. The home was not a place of solace, and marriages were loveless. ‘There is no such thing as a domestic life for the poor. Such domesticity is something that occurred much later, evolutionarily speaking. The poor are not yet evolved to the point of developing the structure of family life’ (Kagawa, 1915).
Contemporary children are at the mental and physical stage of our uncivilized ancestors, and each step of their development mirrors the stages of humankind’s evolution. The inferior conditions in the slums, however, retard the development of the children who live there, making it impossible for them to escape the state of early humans. Just as Huxley wrote that ‘One need not go to Africa to see savages, one can simply go to the slums of London,’ Kagawa writes that ‘because the lives of the poor tend to be far behind those of the other elements of society, the social heritage of the past lives on intact in the poor’ (Kagawa, 1921).
This ideology, created by expanding and adapting Haeckel’s theory that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ to describe human development and evolution, contributed greatly to the rationalization of racism at the time (Gould, 1983). Kagawa held a monistic view of body and mind informed by biological evolutionary theory, and, relying on criminological and psychiatric theories of ‘degeneration,’ he understood the poor as being stuck at an early stage of human development.
Kagawa’s view of the BurakuminIn his Study of the Psychology of the Poor, Kagawa’s greatest emphasis was on the idea that the problem of poverty is not a simple economic issue but must be considered in light of the causal relationship between the human body and mind. He considers the history of slums from this standpoint and brings the Burakumin into the discussion.
Speaking about the poor of Japan as a whole, it must be said that any urban areas we might call slums are more developed than the tokushu buraku [special hamlets]. This is a startling fact, and it is correct to say that there are in fact no pure-blooded Japanese slums. … Thorough research has led me to believe that over two-thirds of the impoverished may be eta [i.e. Burakumin]. Those wishing to study the slums of Japan must bear in mind this racial method of analysis. This important issue is no different from the classification of ‘round-headed races’ and ‘long-headed races’ used in the cities of the West (Kagawa, 1915).
Kagawa points to an influx of Burakumin from rural areas into the slums, writing, ‘The eta are invading the cities of Japan’ (Kagawa, 1915). He goes on to enumerate the physical and psychological characteristics of the Burakumin, claiming that they derive from racial difference: ‘Obesity is prevalent among them and they tend to be taller than the average Japanese, so is not a matter of course that their emotions be different from those of the Japanese as well? Can their violent emotions, their heartlessness, their unity, their deep jealousy really come only from their environment? Might it not in fact be something racial?’ (Kagawa, 1915). He further asserts that the problem of poverty in Japan is in fact a racial problem caused by the Burakumin: ‘The poor of Japan possess a long history, and thus a social heredity unseen in new nations’ (Kagawa, 1920a).
Beggars, for instance, who have fallen into a psychological state where mental abnormality has brought about a lack of independent will, ‘have neither the heart for competition nor conquest. They easily end up with absolutely no resistance in their character, and many of them will likely go to Heaven.’ Those beggars who are Burakumin, however, have a special genetic disposition: ‘Among those who have been beggars since the Tokugawa period, the outcastes [Jp. Hinin] have a fine, outstanding nature, but the eta are no good at all’ (Kagawa, 1915). This was because ‘the impure beggarly blood of the [Burakumin] represents a terrifying degree of atavistic heredity’ (Kagawa, 1915), in other words because they are congenitally poor, born that way due to an essential genetic predisposition to poverty, thereby differentiating them from those who have become poor due to their environment.
I have come to the conclusion that the blood of the eta must surely be mixed with the blood of ancient slaves. I do not by any means say this to disparage them. I adjudge it to be so based on the fact that they have inherited and maintain the lifestyle of their ancestors. The majority of them even now construct their homes in the manner of troglodytes. They construct spacious, rough-walled dwellings with no room divisions, no windows, and poor ventilation. This is true everywhere in Japan. The construction of their dwellings is utterly different from that of the Japanese. Their homes have no floors, despite the fact that abundant access to wood would make the construction of floors an easy matter. Yet they are satisfied living in the style of their ancestors. The majority of them continue to eat meat in the style of their ancestors as well. They even had no qualms about eating meat during the vegetarian days of the Tokugawa period. They are satisfied with the lowest labors, which is to say, the work of slaves (Kagawa, 1915).
Kagawa thus attributes the Burakumin’s method of home construction, custom of eating meat, and socially maligned occupations to the fact that they genetically inherited the customs of ancient conquered people. Furthermore, having determined that their speech involves a Chinese accent and nouns from Korean, and that they have Caucasoid skin and a physique combining elements of both the Chinese and Japanese peoples, he suggests that they are a ‘hybrid race.’ He asserts that the Burakumin are the descendants of a race conquered by the Japanese, ‘a degenerate race among the Japanese—and a race of slaves, an ancient people out of step with the age,’ and he does not shy away from calling them ‘a tribe of criminals’ and ‘a tribe of prostitutes’ (Kagawa, 1915).
We must note, however, that Kagawa saw no contradiction between such racist attitudes and his humanitarian relief efforts. Kagawa argues for sympathy towards the habitual criminals among the poor, writing, ‘We must rather show them compassion. The majority of them are not conscious of their own crimes, pitiably deeming robbery no more than another type of work’ (Kagawa, 1915). Kagawa’s stance was that these people, unable to escape the uncivilized and barbaric stage of development at which they were stuck, must be given medical treatment and granted knowledge, property, and occupation. Thereby they could be guided into the path of evolution and so delivered. In fact, reality undercut his imagined ideal time and time again, but he persevered in his efforts with a spirit of literal self-sacrifice (Nunokawa, 1998).
So how did he deal with the latent antisociality in the slums which so frustrated his attempts at reform? According to Kagawa, 70% of crime perpetrated by the poor could be eliminated through social reform. However, he wrote, ‘I believe that the remaining 30% absolutely cannot be improved by the power of religion or socialism without recourse to eugenics, because theirs is a totally criminal race as a result of sexual selection’ (Kagawa, 1915). On the possibility of the improvement of the Burakumin, Kagawa implies that there are those who can be redeemed, and those who are beyond help: ‘The majority of them have already been redeemed, and through their influx into the cities they themselves are engaged in a process of self-selection. … In the near future, they will be entirely wiped out save for those that remain as a criminal race’ (Kagawa, 1915).
Based in his own research, Kagawa offers the following method for solving the problem of poverty:
Attempts to solve this serious problem from a solely economic perspective (particularly through charity alone) are fundamentally misguided, charity being nothing more than an injection of camphor. If we do not apply ourselves to every aspect of social policy, especially social insurance, and furthermore, if we do not establish vigorous racial improvement institutions and strong religious, moral, and spiritual movements, the resolution to the fundamental problem will remain outside our grasp (Kagawa, 1919).
He argues for the necessity of social policies such as social insurance to prevent poverty, and correction through eugenics and spiritual movements for those already in straitened circumstances.
In Kagawa’s view, the ‘excessive charity’ of repeated almsgiving will only serve to increase the number of ‘degenerates.’ Just as he insisted on the use of eugenics if necessary to deal with obstacles to improvement, Kagawa extolls the importance of preventive measures to eliminate the malignancy and danger of poverty before it starts. This corresponds to the emphasis in the nascent Japanese social work movement on the importance of ‘poverty prevention’ work to prevent people from becoming the objects of ‘poverty relief,’ and indeed Kagawa himself turned his activities more and more ‘from poverty relief to poverty prevention.’
From poverty relief to poverty prevention—social reform work and the theory of social defense The rice riots and the BurakuminWith the government’s decision to dispatch troops to Siberia in 1918 (Taisho 7), merchants speculating on the rice market withheld sales, sending the price of rice skyrocketing. From July to September of that year, protest movements sprung up throughout Japan as the populace sought a reduction in the price of rice, providing an opportunity for Japanese social work to develop in the direction of ‘poverty prevention’ (Ikemoto, 1999).
There were many Burakumin among the lower classes involved in the protests, and when the riots were over, the government singled them out as the ringleaders, with much of the media and intelligentsia following suit. As a result, a view of the Burakumin strongly influenced by criminology and mirroring Kagawa’s own spread widely throughout Japanese society (Fujino, 1988; Kurokawa, 1999).
In the wake of the rice riots, the Imperial Path of Justice Association (established in 1913 by Ōe Taku and others with the aim of ‘rectifying the thoughts’ [Jp. shisō zendō] of the Burakumin) embarked on a tour of the buraku areas throughout Japan to quell further rioting. Even the Association’s president Ōki Enkichi, who had up to that point refrained from directly involving himself in their activities, took this as an opportunity to make a firm stand on the importance of solving the so-called Buraku Problem.
According to Ōki, ‘The psychology of the tokushu Burakumin is of an extremely brutal cast. It goes without saying that because they make their living beating to death birds and beasts—or still have that blood flowing in their veins even if they no longer perform such work—what seems brutal to normal people does not seem to brutal to them’ (Ōki, 1918b). ‘The oppression and persecution they have suffered at the hands of society generation upon generation has produced in their race a truly fearsome nature, a nature callously indifferent in the face of that which would freeze the blood of the ordinary person, their attitude as if to say, ‘it is no concern of mine’’ (Ōki, 1918c). ‘I would go so far as to say that the outbreak of disturbances in August occurred because the eta resistance movement took advantage of the social unrest due to the sudden jump in the price of rice’ (Ōki, 1918d). He writes that the ‘more than 1200 long years of humiliation they have suffered thanks to superstitious fallacy has effected a change in their very nature’ (Ōki, 1918a). In other words, it is the very ‘degeneration’ of the Burakumin, caused by endless persecution and discrimination, that was the source for the antisociality which caused the riots.
Rice riots broke out in the Shinkawa slums as well, the locus of Kagawa’s poverty relief efforts, and much of the populace, including many Burakumin, participated (Tokunaga, 1988). After the riots, Kagawa deemed them an unpardonable manifestation of the antisociality latent in the poor.
In a lecture delivered before the House of Lords entitled ‘The Scientific Basis for Poverty Prevention Measures,’ Kagawa claimed that the rice riots were none other than an expression of the racial inferiority of the poor and argued for the importance of policies to safeguard society.
Having investigated the causes of the rice riots of Taisho 7, I have found that they were indeed all centered around slums. … The urban rioting was entirely the work of aberrant groups of rioters in the slums. … Those who truly provoked the riots are not necessarily a threat, not workers, nor skilled laborers of the working class. Half are rather thugs, gamblers and pimps, imbeciles, degenerates, half-mad with drink – these are the leaders, and I therefore think we must pay them the utmost heed. I believe it is essential in particular that we enact basic relief for them (Kagawa, 1924).
From that point on, Kagawa stressed the need to clearly differentiate between the poor and the working class, shifting the emphasis of his work to poverty prevention, in other words to activities to prevent members the working class from descending into poverty (Nunokawa, 1988).
The biological standard of the Japanese and the politics of ‘life’We have already seen that at the beginning of the 20th century, when Kagawa was involving himself in poverty relief efforts in Kobe, poverty prevention and even moral education were emphasized over poverty relief: ‘If poverty relief is the end, poverty prevention is the means. If poverty prevention is the goal, moral education is the source’ (Inoue, 1909). The emphasis was on the need to find and minimize the sources of poverty that made relief necessary in the first place, in order that poverty relief work not become ‘excessive charity’ for the indolent masses. In the 1920s various social policies for the prevention of poverty were enacted, including economic protections (public markets, housing supply, accommodation protection, cafeterias, public baths, public pawn shops), unemployment protections (job placement, sheltered work programs), and health insurance (Tamai, 1992; Ikemoto, 1999).
From the beginning, poverty relief work in Japan was described in terms of the need to protect the organism of society: ‘The poor are a germ infecting the social organism and preventing its development. The establishment of appropriate institutions to cleanse this infection is for the self-sufficiency of the nation’ (Kuwata, 1910). And it was the theory of ‘degeneration’ that ‘scientifically’ explained the malignancy and antisociality of the poor.
Ogawa Shigejirō, a leader in both the theory and practice of social policy at the time (including the establishment in 1918 in Osaka of the District Committee System), gave the following explanation in his discussion of the relationship between poverty relief and poverty prevention. Because ‘beggars’ are themselves a ‘social calamity’ and ‘a great seedbed and source of misfortune, producing unsocial bad actors of all stripes,’ we must strive to totally suppress them. The reason for this is that ‘the proportion of both a priori and a posteriori degenerates among beggars and vagrants is incredibly high’ (emphasis added), and ‘the task of making them into economically self-sufficient, independent people is nearly, or rather totally, impossible. They have neither the faculties for thought nor even the possibility for such. Ultimately measures must be taken to see to it that they are given medical care and placed under effective relief protection in perpetuity.’ Ogawa too considers the betterment of those who are the objects of poverty relief to be difficult and extolls the importance of measures to prevent poverty before it starts (Ogawa, 1927).
In addition to his poverty relief activities, in 1917 Kagawa became a leader in the labor movement, taking command of the universal suffrage movement as well as the Kawasaki/Mitsubishi shipyard strike, the largest prewar strike in Japan. He continued to strengthen his contributions to social movements, forming the Kobe consumer cooperative in 1919 and the Japanese farmer’s union in 1922. After the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, he moved to Tokyo, largely changing the focus of his work from the poor and Burakumin to workers, farmers, and consumers, focusing on activities to prevent people from becoming the targets of relief. Kagawa describes the difference between people who are the targets of poverty relief and those who are the targets of poverty prevention as follows:
I have engaged in relief work for almost a full twenty years now, laboring as much as possible to bring those unfortunates who have fallen into the depths back to the light. And through my twenty years of experiences, I have discovered a stark difference between the proletariat and the poor. Those at the bottom are to be pitied, but in terms of capacity, there is a stark difference between them and the general proletariat. … To wit, unlike the general proletariat, they do not seem to possess the potential to increase their efficiency. In other words, as the eugenicist Davenport says, among those who have fallen into the slums there are a great many with psychological deficiencies. I have seen this with my own eyes. I cannot help but feel how pleasurable it is to help the proletariat, but how bleak it is to help those at the bottom. It is also many times more costly to aid those at the bottom. And the more I help them, the more I strip them of their independent spirit, and the worse their reliant appetites become. The more I help the proletariat, however, the more congenial and lively they become (Kagawa, 1929).
Kagawa saw the union movement as a link in the chain of social education and moral guidance in accordance with the social evolutionary law of mutual aid. He argued that it was precisely in order to protect society from the threat of revolution and violence that popular moral education through universal suffrage and labor unions should be enacted. ‘We have but to look to Russia for an example of what happens when one foolishly abandons the working class’ (Kagawa, 1919). ‘Providing the populace with organization and education is the shortcut to preventing uprisings. In a country like Japan, where the lower classes currently have no voice, the people have no way to participate in politics other than to show their will through constant uprisings. Therefore, if we wish to prevent such uprisings in Japan, we must organize labor unions with all possible haste’ (Kagawa, 1919).
As Kagawa found his place within the work of poverty prevention, his active involvement with the people of the slums diminished, and in particular his engagement with the Burakumin as a group impoverished due to their ‘racial inferiority.’ Kagawa had been involved with the future leadership of the Burakumin liberation group known as the National Levelers Association [Zenkoku suiheisha] even before its establishment in 1922, and in the group’s early days he participated in oratorical meetings and the like (Ōsaka jiji shinpō, 7 January 1923 (Anonymous, 1923)). The discrimination denunciation struggle [sabetsu kyūdan tōsō] developed by the Levelers movement, however, was often accompanied using force and unfolded into a social issue that drew national attention through incidents such as the 1923 Suikoku struggle, a clash between the Levelers and the ultranationalist Kokusuikai. The leftist faction of the Levelers gained influence under the guidance of the Japanese Communist Party, and many activists were arrested in the Communist Party suppression incident; the Suiheisha had undeniably strayed far from Kagawa’s goals of social defense and the evolution of humankind. In fact, Kagawa referred to the Levelers movement as ‘the Gospel of Hate,’ clearly demonstrating the depth of his disappointment (Kurahashi, 2011).
Later, in his 1933 book Nōson shakai jigyō [Social Work in Farming Communities] (Kagawa, 1933), Kagawa contrasts the poor of Kobe and Osaka with whom he had worked in the past with those impoverished in the wake of the Great Kantō Earthquake.
Fully 70% of the residents of the slums are ignorant. Those in Tokyo, however, have suddenly become indigent and so are not true poor people. They are poor as a result of natural disaster, and so their nature is good. Those in Kobe and Osaka, where I worked, have mostly been poor since time immemorial. They are truly ignorant brutes, and we must find a way to control their birthrates. If exposed to x-rays for five hours, they will become absolutely unable to bear children (Kagawa, 1933).
By those who have been ‘poor since time immemorial,’ Kagawa unmistakably means the Burakumin. On the one hand he transforms the residents of the slums and the Burakumin into an internal Other, a ‘criminal race’ of ‘thugs’ and ‘degenerates,’ whose fundamental nature is one of ‘indolence’ and ‘imbecility.’ At the same time, he tries to prevent people from becoming that Other, with the goal of eliminating the Other entirely. Kagawa’s activities were undergirded by a powerful zeal to nurture the ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ elements of society, and to maintain the biological standard of the Japanese people. Here we can clearly discern the presence of a eugenicist ideology combining elements of both humanitarianism and scientific racism. What role did this ideology of Kagawa’s play in the social work and social movements of which he was a pioneering leader? The time has come to reevaluate modern Japan from this perspective.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japanese intelligentsia took a profound interest in scientific racism, attempting to deploy it in the work of social improvement. What are we to make of this? The scientific ‘knowledge’ imported from the West drew a dividing line between those who deserved to live and those that did not, shaping both consciousness and practice, as well as social systems as a means of social defense. As examined in this paper, Toyohiko Kagawa was at the center of the wave that swept across the age created by this ‘knowledge.’
The term tokushu buraku used for the Burakumin during this period left a deep impression throughout much of society, inculcating the belief that the Burakumin are a genetically and biologically inferior race. At the same time, the concept of ‘degeneration’ offered a theoretical explanation for the Burakumin as a ‘special race’ [tokushu]. The authority of ‘knowledge’ highlighted the tokushu buraku as it served its function of actively detecting social dangers and identifying those deviants who required correction.
Happily, the eugenicist measures advocated by Kagawa for those among the poor who were ‘difficult to correct’ were never put into place. This does not mean, however, that such a discourse was devoid of social impact. The process by which the residents of the slums of Japan and the Burakumin came to be seen as a ‘degenerate’ race ripe for improvement was the same process by which the bearers of mainstream society, that is the Japanese, constructed themselves as a ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ race: discovering an essential Otherness in one’s historical and actual neighbors is inevitably accompanied by an essentializing of the self as a homogeneous group.
We cannot ignore the positive contributions Kagawa’s social work made to the lives of the Burakumin and the people of Japan’s lower classes, of course. It is an indisputable fact that later Japanese social welfare was constructed based on these accumulated efforts. But we also cannot dismiss the eugenicist streak discernible in Kagawa’s thought as a passing fallacy. Nor should we trivialize those ideas as a problem unique to Kagawa. Instead, by locating them within the history of the formation of Japan’s social system, we can use them as a starting point for the fight against the xenophobia and hate sweeping contemporary society.
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI (grant number 16H06320).
