Kokutai and Nation-building

Kokutai to bio-politics to national identity

On Friday’s conference about Imperial Sovereignty & Colonial Violence, Max Ward talked about the logic and principles behind the infamous Peace Preservation Law that was established in 1925 and was in effect until 1945.  He explained this law was placed to suppress left-wing political parties like the anarchists and communists deeming them as a dangerous foreign thought to the kokutai, national essence of Japan.    Max Ward placed great focus on this notion of kokutai and how it was perceived throughout the imperial space, both in the metropole and within the colony.  He also mentions the importance of how kokutai does not have a precise definition providing ground for various interpretations and logics.  Kokutai with this context was used to create a boundary for the law to determine what was considered a dangerous foreign thought to the national essence without clearly defining what national essence was referring to.  Later on the law serves to function as a mechanism for nation building by the means of conversion, or tenkou, of the once ideologically dangerous individuals, shisouhan or thought criminals, to basically labour force for nation-building.  This idea of conversion has a different context in the colonies in which it is through their admiration towards Japan that they establish their paradoxical national identity of being Japanese as a colonial subject and not Japanese within the metropole where Japanese just awaken to their national identity.  

In the 2008 South Korean Western film, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, there is a subtle yet strong presence of the Peace Preservation Law or its idea of kokutai amidst the background of the main plot.   The very presence of the Korean national liberation movement was something that went against the kokutai of the Japanese Empire.  According to the Peace Preservation law, anything that is set to alter the national essence and threaten the private property clauses were seen as something close to thought-crimes.  There were also cases where according to the home ministry, the Korean independence movement was trying to achieve their goals through the communist movement.  So there is this on-going conflict of nation-building within the film.  Even the treasure that served as the main plot device for the film turned to be oil, which basically represents the idea of modernization or nation building the two groups were striving for.  

Lenin Amaya