抄録
Harold Laski was once a popular political theorist in postwar Japanese politics. This paper examines the ‘Laski boom’ in the 1950s by comparing three Japanese political scholars: Masao Maruyama, Yoshihiko Seki, and Yasuzo Suzuki.
While Maruyama depicts Laski as a consistent thinker, Seki stresses Laski's waver in his theory of state and liberty. Meanwhile, while holding a Marxist perspective, Suzuki sincerely accepts Laski's individualism and his theory of liberty. Through the comparison, we shall comprehend that Maruyama and Suzuki similarly appreciate Laski's political ambivalence between western democracy and communism.
However, this paper also suggests a curious irregularity that Maruyama was attracted to Laski's gradual commitment to communism, and that Suzuki learned liberal theory of right from Laski. In conclusion, Laski's dilemma was also the shared dilemma of Maruyama and Suzuki, and this paper proves the ‘Laski boom’ in postwar Japanese politics as the intellectual cross-point where these political scholars intersected.
