■ S1989),

ource: “Japanese Approaches to the Cultural Revolution,” CCP Research Newsletter 2 (Spring
21–25.

Japanese Approaches to the Cultural Revolution:

A Review of Kokubun Ryōsei’s Survey of the
Literature

What follows is an extended review of an excellent summary of Japanese

writings on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China and the
changes in China since the death of Mao Zedong and the purge of the “Gang
of Four” in Kokubun Ryōsei’s “The Present State of Japanese Research on the
Chinese Cultural Revolution and Problems Areas.”1 Professor Kokubun of Keio
University is one of the few genuinely recognizable political scientists of China
in Japan. Although still young, he has already amassed an impressive list of
publications, including two articles in English. This piece appeared in a Keio
University publication.
Kokubun makes no pretense of covering the many hundreds of Japanese
books, articles, and media editorials concerning the Cultural Revolution. For
example, the National Diet Library has published a listing in its monthly bul-
letin of 700–800 items published in Japanese for a period of less than two years
(January 1900–October 1967).2 Kokubun gives several other, equally lengthy,
listings published in Japan.
He notes at the outset that the whirlwind of events in China—from the
Cultural Revolution to the Lin Biao affair, the anti-Lin Biao, anti-Confucius
campaign, the Tiananmen incident, the death of Mao, the arrest of the “Gang
of Four,” and the rehabilitation of Liu Shaoqi—have dramatically changed
Japanese assessments of the Cultural Revolution and considerably under-
mined approaches adopted earlier to contemporary Chinese history.
He sees five general evaluative stances taken by Japanese scholars toward
the Cultural Revolution. The first includes those who analyzed the Cultural
Revolution within a Marxist framework and praised it uncritically. Such people

1  Kokubun Ryōsei 国分良成, “Nihon ni okeru Chūgoku bunka dai kakumei kenkyu no genjo
to mondaiten” 日本における中国文化大革命研究 の現状と問題点, Sanshokuki 三色
旗 409 (April 1982), pp. 2–6.
2  “Chūgoku bunka dai kakumei ni kansuru hōbun bunken mokuroku” 中国文化大革命に関
する邦文文献目録 [Bibliography of documents in Japanese concerning the Cultural
Revolution in China], Kokuritsu kokkai toshokan geppō 国立国会図書館月報, (80–82).

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544 Japanese Approaches to the Cultural Revolution

supported the “class struggle” to topple Liu Shaoqi and others suspected of
“taking the capitalist road.” Now that the Chinese have reversed the verdict
on the Cultural Revolution, advocates of this position, such as Suganuma
Masahisa, author of The Cultural Revolution,3 and many others, find them-
selves in a serious quandary. Kokubun says that they have chosen one of three
options: “They can keep pace with the [new] Chinese line; they can remain
silent about the Cultural Revolution; or they can consistently hold onto their
earlier views” (p. 3). Suganuma, for example, has taken the first route and
admitted the errors of his earlier ways. But, this is not enough. Kokubun notes
that “the issue is not resolved in this manner [that is, by admission of past
mistakes]. We need a reexamination of the whole scholarly attitude of these
people” (p. 4). Indeed, we do. It may be a religion to them, but there is no rea-
son that confession should exonerate people who were complicit in one of the
great crimes of the Twentieth century. Others in this first group include: Ando
Hikotaro4 and Fujimura Toshiro.5
The second Japanese approach to the Cultural Revolution also adopted a
Marxist framework of analysis, but used it to criticize events in China. These
people argued that the Cultural Revolution was either a simple power strug-
gle or Mao’s effort to enforce his dictatorial control; and Liu Shaoqi’s plans
for socialism, they claim, were more correct than Mao’s. This position closely
parallels the stance taken by the Japan Communist Party which split with the
CCP in 1966. As a representative work of this strain, Kokubun cites: Kawazoe
Noboru and Inumaru Giichi, The Cultural Revolution in China: Its Origins
and Contradictions.6 From their perspective, the “main aim” of the Cultural
Revolution “was to establish and strengthen an unlimited dictatorial control
of Mao’s clique based on a deification extraordinaire of Mao Zedong” (p. 4).
It was, they conclude, “anti-democratic, anti-socialist, anti-Marxist, and anti-
Leninist.” Nonetheless, they also argue that while the Cultural Revolution
was a (manipulated) mobilization from above, it also embodied a participa-
tory movement of the masses from below. Just what elements of a popular

3  Suganuma Masahisa 菅沼正久, Bunka dai kakumei 文化大革命 (Tokyo: San’ichi shobo
三一書房, 1967).
4  安藤彦太郎
5  藤村俊郎
6  Kawazoe Noboru 川添登 and Inumaru Giichi 犬丸義一 Chūgoku no bunka dai kakumei,
sono kongen to mujun 中国の文化大革命—その根源と矛盾 (Tokyo: Aoki shoten 青木
書店, 1968).

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Japanese Approaches To The Cultural Revolution 545

movement they are referring to have yet to be addressed. Other scholars whose
work falls into this second group include Nakanishi Tsutomu,7 among others.
The third group includes those Japanese scholars who stressed the posi-
tive aspects of the Cultural Revolution, though not from a Marxist frame-
work. Unlike the first group Kokubun has identified, this third group did
not follow in lockstep the Chinese line at the time. Although they did not
deny elements of a power struggle, they were trying to assess the import of
the Cultural Revolution for the contemporary world in a positive light. This
group—which includes such scholars as Nomura Koichi,8 Kawachi Juzo,9 and
Yamada Keiji10—has largely held to its guns despite the reevaluations under-
way in China. In his book Questions for the Future,11 Yamada argues that the
infamous “two-line struggle” had nothing whatsoever to do with the “capitalist
road;” what was at issue was the “value of socialism.” Liu Shaoqi envisioned a
technocratic society supported by “bureaucratic rationalism,” but this was a far
cry from either capitalist or Soviet society. The Maoist line during the Cultural
Revolution, in Yamada’s words (which sound hauntingly reminiscent of many
Western observers), was a challenge to “the alienation of society and mankind
controlled by technocrats.” Thus, this group’s basic perspective on the Cultural
Revolution was to see it as an issue of visions. One seriously wonders if they
ever noticed when the actual events in China clashed with the ideals.
Kokubun’s fourth group includes those scholars who, from a non-Marxist
perspective, recognized many different, textured qualities to the Cultural
Revolution. Their work examined these various areas empirically without
offering, as a rule, subjective judgment about the Cultural Revolution itself.
One major work in this vein was Kamibeppu Chikashi’s The Logic of the
Cultural Revolution in China,12 a highly detailed account through the Ninth
Party Congress of 1969. He argues that it was not a simple power struggle but a
conflict between contending lines and policies. Other scholars whose work is
in this category include Okubo Yasushi,13 Torii Tami,14 and Uno Shigeaki.15

7  中西功
8  野村浩一
9  河地重蔵
10  山田慶児
11  Mirai e no toi 未来への問い (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō 筑摩書房, 1968).
12  Kamibeppu Chikashi 上別府親志, Chugoku bunka kakumei no ronri 中国文化革命の
論理 (Tokyo: Tōyō keizai shinpō sha 東洋経済新報社 1971).
13  大久保泰
14  鳥居民
15  宇野重昭

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546 Japanese Approaches to the Cultural Revolution

The fifth interpretative strategy for the Cultural Revolution was a thor-
ough or practically thorough, denunciation of it from a non-Marxist perspec-
tive. Scholars of this stripe see it as a blatant power struggle without an iota
of positive significance, and they tend to hold similar views about Chinese
Communism and Maoism as well. Two works, cited by Kokubun, that typ-
ify this fifth stance are: Shibata Minoru, The Tragedy of Mao Zedong,16 and
Kuwabara Toshiji, Mao Zedong and Chinese Thought.17 Shibata argues that
the Cultural Revolution constituted “the appalling ‘malice’ of Mao as it accu-
mulated over a ten-year period,” along with his “tenacious” thirst “for power”
(p. 6). The “tragic” quality of the Cultural Revolution was that “Mao considered
himself a proletarian Marxist, while he was convinced that Liu Shaoqi was a
bourgeois revisionist.” I cannot help but feel that there were greater tragedies
in the Cultural Revolution than Mao’s misconceived self-image, unless Shibata
was applying the concept of tragedy in the strict sense of an Oedipal figure
who ends up unconsciously destroying everything he has inherited and loved.
There is still something a bit simplistic about this analysis, as Kokubun notes.
Surely, the Cultural Revolution and the mobilization of millions of people was
not just a marionette show.
Kokubun concludes by offering his own ideas about future work on the
Cultural Revolution and Japanese views of it. He suggests interviews with
those who actually experienced it may help convey a more realistic picture of
events in China at the time. He also suggests going beyond seeing it solely as
a Mao-Liu power struggle. A more recent work by Kagami Mitsuyuki,18 uses
an analysis of the Red Guard movement as a vehicle to discuss various other
aspects of the Cultural Revolution, such as differences between regions and
units. Kokubun also encourages less political partisanship (as was so thor-
oughly apparent in the five schools of thought he analyzes) and more group
projects. The Cultural Revolution was a complex affair which convulsed a con-
tinent for a decade. He encourages a more cumulative, relative approach to its

16  Shibata Minoru 柴田穂. Mo Takutō no higeki 毛沢東の悲劇 (Tokyo: Sankei shuppan
kyoku サンケイ出版局 1979, 5 volumes).
17  Kuwabara Toshiji 桑原壽三, Mo Takutō to Chūgoku shisō 毛沢東と中国思想, (Tokyo:
Jiji mondai kenkyūjo 時事問題研究所, 1969).
18  Kagami Mitsuyuki 加々美光行 Shiryo Chugoku bunka dai kakumei, shusshin ketto shugi
o meguru ronso 資料中国分化大革命、出身血統主義をめぐる論争 [Source
Materials on the Cultural Revolution in China: The Debate over the Principle of Origin
and Blood line] (Tokyo: Rikuetsu 陸説, 1980).

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Japanese Approaches To The Cultural Revolution 547

many facets. Surely the simplistic analyses, so popular then and now, have no
place on the scholarly agenda.
One thing is for sure: if Kokubun Ryōsei is indicative of the future of
Japanese political science on China, then Japan will definitely be number one
in at least this area.

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