[ID: A page from a book. The excerpt begins in the middle of a sentence. The text reads: …existence. A historical valorizing—interpreting history according to meta-physical norms—also explains why, in “The Principle of Everydayness,” Tosaka parenthetically notes “a thing like cultural history; which does not periodize by means of politics, cannot even be considered one piece of a total history.⁴⁹ In “Just What is a Crisis of Culture?” Chapter 11 of Japan as a Link in the World (1937), Tosaka shows the atrocities that may be logically derived from metaphysical valorizing when ‘freedom’ means cultural freedom, ‘progress’ means cultural progress.⁵⁰ “The fascist appeal to [the Idea of Culture] always returns, not to questions of science or criticism, but to questions of morality…all questions must thus begin and end with an appeal to moral standards of good [zen] or bad [aku] [for the culture]. ” And because the Idea of Culture is necessarily particular and insular, it is not open to critical inquiry:
The burning of non-Aryan books by the Nazis strikes us as barbaric, reminding us of the buying of Confucianists by the first Qin emperor. But to the curators [shihaisha] of Geman Culture, the purification of German Culture, the elevation of German Culture, explicitly requires this ‘vandalism’ (?!) Understand, Hirschfeld’s studies of sexuality harm German morality,⁵¹ Marxist texts are immoral, and therefore anti-Cultural [hibunka]… Goebbels’ ban on Jewish books, too, may Iook like barbarism. But when seen from Goebbels’ perspective [as curator of German morality] it is an urgent and necessary defense of German Culture.⁵²
Echoing the central insight of The Japanese Ideology, Tosaka demonstrates that because the concept of Culture as an “objective spirit” of a particular people relies on the transhistorical concepts “Idea of Culture,” “Spirit,” and “Life"—concepts that also provide the ground of liberalism (see Katsuhiko Endo’s essay in this volume)—Nazi philosophy may be derived from the German Philosophy of Culture represented by liberalism “without any distortion [sono mama].“⁵³
Below this are the references that were linked in the text:
Tosaka, ‘The Principle of Everydaymess,” in TJz, 3:99.
Tosaka Jun, “Sekai no ikkan toshite no Nihon,” in TJz, 5:62.
Tosaka refers here to the Jewish physician, gay activist, sexologist, and founder of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Magnus Hirschfeld (1868—1935). In May 1933 the Nazis looted the Institute and burned its library.
Tosaka, “Sekai no ikkan toshite no Nihon,” in TJz, 5:63.
The reference at 53 is cut off at the bottom. End ID.]
