<論説>橘樸による「自我」の探求と中国評論 --日中思想界の同時代性と差異に注目して--

Abstract

本稿は橘樸という日露戦争後に中国に渡った知識人に焦点を当て、その「自我」の探求と中国評論をてがかりに、日中思想界の同時代性と差異を検討した。橘はこれまで中国問題研究家のみとして知られてきたが、本稿では明治末期における橘の「煩悶青年」としての側面に注目し、人生論的煩悶を抱えたまま中国に渡った橘が、大正期日本で流行した教養主義・人格主義・生命主義の諸思潮を吸収しながら、王陽明や孫文の哲学に触発されて、感情および実践意志を重視する人生哲学を打ち出したことを明らかにした。さらに、橘の主情意的な人生哲学と、「非宗教運動」などに見られた中国の新思想家による理性啓蒙の主張との緊張関係を考察した。そのうえで、新文化運動期の中国と大正期の日本は、西洋文明と科学理性の普遍性を再考するという二〇世紀前半の世界的な思想動向を共有しつつも、理性批判をめぐって異なる方向を示したことを指摘した。

This article focuses on Tachibana Shiraki 橘樸, an intellectual who moved to China after the Russo-Japanese War. Tracking the transnational process of his quest for the “self” 自我 and his evaluations of China, this article sheds light on the contemporaneousness and divergence between the intellectual spheres in Taishō Japan and China during the New Culture Movement in the 1910s and 20s. Tachibana has previously been known only as a journalist specializing on Chinese affairs. This article portrays him as a member of the “anguished youth” 煩悶青年 in the late Meiji era, a generation that felt alienated from society and longed to find a new meaning of life. The first two sections of this article illustrate how he overcame his anguish in the search for the meaning of life and cultivated the subjectivity 主体性 of the “self” after moving to China. The experience of a cerebral hemorrhage and the encounter with a woman named Okiku お喜久 during a visit to Siberia as a war correspondent in World War I was a turning point for him. After recovering from his illness, he absorbed the philosophical trends that were prevalent in Taishō Japan, such as culturalism 教養主義, personalism 人格主義, and philosophy of life 生命主義, due to the development of the Japanese book distribution system in China in the 1920s. Meanwhile, inspired by the philosophy of Wang Yangming and Sun Yat-sen, he developed his own philosophy of life. Against outer truth, he stressed the role of inner experience mediated by emotion and the will to practice, which he characterized as pragmatism on the basis of voluntarism. The third section analyzes Tachibanaʼs evaluations of the Chinese New Culture Movement and sheds light on the contemporaneity and divergence between intellectual spheres in China and Japan in the 1910s and 20s. During this period, the “anguished youth” phenomenon also became prevalent in China. Chinese and Japanese intellectuals shared common concerns over the quest for the meaning of life. This was a contemporaneous trend in the post-WWI world reflecting a widespread intellectual reconsideration of the universality and superiority of Western civilization and scientific rationality following the catastrophe of WWI. Part of this trend was the philosophy of life by thinkers such as Henri Bergson and Rudolf Eucken that had gained popularity in both China and Japan. Japan served as an important reference for Chinese intellectuals, with philosophical vocabulary translated by Japanese, such as jinseikan 人生観 (view of life, translated from “Lebensanschauung”), being introduced to China. Tachibana, residing then in Tianjin and Beijing, was a close observer of the New Culture Movement. He visited Chinese intellectuals such as Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, Hu Shi 胡適 and Lu Xun 魯迅. He most appreciated the educational theory of Cai Yuanpei, who valued the cultivation of emotion through art. In contrast, he disavowed the claims made by radical thinkers of the supreme power of science and reason.

During the late 1910s and early 20s, intense debates were conducted by Chinese intellectuals assessing Eastern versus Western civilization. These later developed into debates on science versus the philosophy of life. Progressive thinkers like Hu Shi viewed Western scientific civilization as an ideal for China and science as applicable in all disciplines, while thinkers like Liang Qichao 梁啓超 and Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 questioned the superiority of Western civilization and scientific rationality. Tachibana, who stressed the role of emotion in his own philosophy and considered the accentuation of emotion as the characteristic of 20th century civilization, showed empathy with Liang Shuming, who reinterpret Confucianism with the aid of Bergsonʼs philosophy of life and proclaimed that the “view of life” representative of Chinese culture could solve the problems of the Western world. Yet there were also differences between the two: Liang was an advocate of Confucianism, while Tachibana discerned the Taoist philosophy of “nature” by Laozi as the essence of the “view of life” embodied in Chinese culture. The debates in China ended with the thinkers who tried to challenge the superiority of Western science and knowledge being overwhelmed. From the middle 1920s, science and empiricism came to be considered as the all-powerful solutions for both individual and social problems by most Chinese intellectuals. For young people the Marxism, advocated by those like Chen Duxiu 陳独秀, that saw objective materialism as the motive force in society, providing an interpretation of history and the sole truth governing human life dominated, while Tachibana turned to Asianism in the 1930s, claiming the superiority of the Gemeinschaft in the East that was supposed to be bound by emotion and will over the Gesellschaft in the West based on mere reason. This article concludes that, although intellectuals in Japan and China living contemporaneously in the post-WWI world, shared common concerns regarding the quest for meaning of life, as well as a reconsideration of Western civilization and scientific rationality, divergences can also be detected. In contrast to the strong presence of the pursuit of science and rationality in China, the critique and reconsideration of rationality was a steady undercurrent in contemporary Japan. The tension between Tachibana and the radical thinkers in China can be viewed as embodying such a divergence.