In September 1909, Kashiwagi Gien, a Japanese Congregational minister of a modest church about half a day's journey from Tokyo, stood trial. He was charged with publishing ideas violating the Press Regulations, a complex set of censorship laws, in an editorial in the Christian newsletter he edited. Kashiwagi was no stranger to the local authorities, but this was the first and only time he faced punishment more severe than a fine and stern verbal reprimand, or temporary suspension of publication, from the local police. On the surface, the editorial that prompted his trial contained no explicit references to his Christian beliefs, nor did the prefectural prosecutor identify religious expression as a central issue in the ensuing trial. Nonetheless, during the trial, his defense rested on the constitution's protection of religious belief.
For Kashiwagi, what began as private efforts to warn the prefectural governor against police excess evolved into a confrontation between two competing and nearly mutually exclusive understandings of the extent of state power and constitutional guarantees for religious belief. Kashiwagi's stubborn insistence that his editorial was immune to the censorship laws because it was also an expression of his religious belief, directly confronted the state's insistence that it alone served as the final arbiter of what opinions fell within (or without) the parameters of the responsibilities and obligations of imperial subjects to not threaten public peace and morals. It also brought into relief the delicate balancing act by which the state and its local agents attempted to diffuse and neutralize criticism through the deployment of the complex censorship and libel laws in order to avoid more fundamental questioning of the foundation of the state's ideological legitimacy.
This article examines the complex and contingent process by which the state and its regional agents used legal means to manage the contours of acceptable religious belief in pre-World War II Japan. It does so by examining two separate conflicts between Kashiwagi and the local police and prosecutor—the local representatives of the integrated and extensive censorship apparatus—over the minister's criticisms of what he considered state excess and immoral behavior. As the minister of a modest rural congregation, Kashiwagi seems an unlikely focus for a study of the intersection of the promise of religious freedom and the uneven application of censorship. Unlike his co-denominationalists in Tokyo who preached before congregations that numbered several hundred and who traveled abroad and gained international reputations, Kashiwagi seems a marginal figure. He rarely left Annaka, the town in Gunma Prefecture about a half a day's journey from Tokyo where his church was located, and traveled abroad only once, to Korea and Manchuria in 1925. The publication he edited, the Jōmō kyōkai geppō (Gunma Christian world monthly), had a limited circulation of 600 copies per issue. But it is precisely his marginal status that makes the state's constant interest in his activities so compelling. Kashiwagi's uneasy relationship with the local representatives of the censorship apparatus provides an ideal window into how the state's discomfort with the freedom of religious expression it ostensibly granted manifested in practical ways through its legal efforts to determine and insist on limits to this freedom.
In early twentieth century Japan, the state employed a complex set of legal measures to prescribe how loyal imperial subjects should not only behave, but also think. Simultaneously, Japanese Christians used print media to articulate a diverse set of alternative visions for their nation. Presented under the protections ostensibly granted by the Meiji Constitution, these ideas ranged from a notion of a colonial empire guided by Christian principles to an image of a small country dedicated to caring for the needs of the least. While the former resonated, at least until the 1930s, with the dominant discourses that legitimized state actions at home and in the colonies, the latter possessed the potential to undermine the state's carefully crafted explanation of how imperial subjects were meant to relate to the state and emperor. Far from being absolute or universally acknowledged, however, the definition of normative subject behavior required a lengthy process of education and inculcation, as well as the gradual dismissal and elimination of contrary ideas, before it could become naturalized and assumed.
The Japanese empire's extensive use of censorship and libel laws to corral ideas considered subversive or potentially “injurious to public morals” has created the perception that public expression, particularly in print, was considerably hampered throughout the early twentieth century. This was certainly true by the 1930s, when the passage of increasingly restrictive wartime legislation foreclosed the possibility of voicing even the most mundane criticisms of the state, the emperor, and ideas considered fundamental to national unity.Footnote 1 But this picture of, on the one hand, a state capable of monitoring and eliminating all subversive voices and, on the other, imperial subjects cowed into a beleaguered silence by the state's limitless reach does not ring wholly true for most of the early twentieth century.
This is not to say that censorship did not interfere significantly with the efforts of a diverse group of people who attempted to publicize and circulate ideas considered subversive or obscene.Footnote 2 But it is important not to confuse the passage of censorship laws with the state's ability to enact them thoroughly. Indeed, the astonishing frequency with which critics, dissenters, and even purveyors of obscene material successfully circumvented the elaborate censorship apparatus exposes the limits of state censorship in Meiji Japan. The state overwhelmingly relied on the self-censorship of publishers, who would forfeit the entire run of an offending issue and thus risk financial ruin if they pushed the boundaries of acceptable content, rather than aggressively prosecute offenders.Footnote 3 Nonetheless, the uneven and arbitrary process by which censorship was applied inadvertently opened up space for the expression of dissent, however limited. In other words, just as surprising as the extent of censorship in pre-World War II Japan was the range of opinions that men and women managed to present without running afoul of the law. But the state always reserved the right to intervene and silence objectionable opinion, making examples of certain authors and publications by selectively targeting them “in order to keep the publishing world's thermostat set at the proper temperature.”Footnote 4 When the objectionable ideas were framed in terms of religious belief, censors were faced with a delicate decision, for choosing to take legal action against such ideas brought into relief the limits of the freedoms granted by the Meiji Constitution, and exposed the fundamental challenge faced by the state in its efforts to project an image of tolerant governance while actively promoting an exacting definition of national unity.
At the same time, even limited protection of both religious expression and the press were considered crucial markers of a modern (western) state's relationship with its citizens or subjects. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the newly formed Japanese state had identified both religious belief and published opinion as troublesome necessities in order for Japan to appear sufficiently modern and civilized to western powers, and thus an equal in a hierarchical world order. As such, the state acquiesced to the necessity of at least gesturing toward granting certain freedoms, but underwent considerable effort to prevent these freedoms from serving as credible challenges to a strict notion of national unity it considered crucial for Japan's survival in this new global context.
I. The Constitution, Law, and Christians as Contested Imperial Subjects
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Christianity had been a legal religion in Japan for several decades. First introduced by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century, Christianity—or specifically Roman Catholicism—enjoyed a brief period of popularity until the Tokugawa shogunate, the feudal government that ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868, strictly forbade it.Footnote 5 After Japan was forced into diplomatic and commercial relations by the United States and other western imperial powers in the mid-nineteenth century, the continued ban on Christianity served as a central point of contention in the new, modern Japanese government's efforts to revise the terms of the unequal treaties it had been forced to sign with these powers. Finally in 1873, the government begrudgingly rescinded its longstanding proscription against Christian conversion, tacitly allowing foreign missionaries, who had already arrived a few years earlier, to work mostly unhindered.Footnote 6
For the new state, formed with the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the move to legalize Christian belief was undertaken as a political maneuver, and it did not necessarily reflect a new enthusiasm for this religion. The new state faced the challenge of constructing the structures of a modern nation-state that could gain acceptance abroad while also inculcating a definition of loyalty to the state and emperor that could supersede all other allegiances. This delicate task was complicated by the newly constituted Japanese identity that was ostensibly a unified group of imperial subjects. Within this context, allowing Christian conversion opened up a series of debates concerning the category of religion, and its rightful place in the newly established modern nation-state.Footnote 7
In 1889, the Japanese government promulgated a new constitution in the name of the Meiji emperor. Carefully crafted over the previous years to reflect “western” notions of modern governance without devolving substantive authority to the people, the constitution placed sovereignty in the emperor and prescribed loyalty and obligation to the emperor and nation as the foremost responsibility of imperial subjects. The constitution did include provision for “religious freedom” to conform with western expectations of modern governance, the language used in the constitution limited this freedom to those beliefs and practices that did not interfere with the obligations imperial subjects owed their sovereign. As the provision insisted, “Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief.”Footnote 8 The deliberately vague language of this provision thus simultaneously promised adherents of different religions the possibility of practicing their faiths unhindered while granting the state the ultimate prerogative to judge whether or not such practices conformed to the expectations placed on subjects.
The vagueness of this constitutional provision, furthermore, gave rise to vigorous public debates among members of different religions and their critics concerning the clause's more practical implications. Members of a diverse array of religions participated in these debates, but Christians came to bear the brunt of suspicions cast on religious belief, broadly defined, as a likely threat to national unity. The exact limits of religious freedom were further tested when the Imperial Rescript on Education, a brief document dictating the role of education for developing suitable subjects for the nation as well as the characteristics of ideal imperial subjects, was distributed to schools in 1890. Inoue Tetsujirō, the chair of philosophy at the Imperial University in Tokyo and the author of the state-commissioned commentary on this Imperial Rescript, provoked a lengthy and heated debate centered on whether or not Japanese Christians could ever be trusted to fulfill their duties as imperial subjects. Central to Inoue's charge was the claim that even if Christians performed every ritual associated with displays of loyalty to perfection, as long as they harbored belief in a foreign god, they could never truly be trusted, and would endanger the absolute unity demanded of imperial subjects to ensure national survival in the midst of global imperialism. Despite the efforts of Christian interlocutors to put these charges to rest, Inoue's forceful accusations seemed to suggest that Christian beliefs and practices were incompatible with the behavior demanded of all Japanese, regardless of the promise of religious freedom ostensibly granted by the constitution.Footnote 9
In addition to the constitution, the Press and Publication Regulations, which were passed immediately after the beginning of the Meiji period (1868–1912), further defined the contours of acceptable opinion. The scope of potentially unacceptable opinion was wide-ranging, and could include everything from remarks critical of the government to defending the actions of those charged with crime. Violating the onerous Press Regulations and Libel Law could lead to suspension of the paper, fines levied on the publisher and editor, and in the most extreme case, imprisonment of the publisher or editor.Footnote 10 Much like the similarly vague constitutional article promising religious freedom, however, these regulations failed to delineate precisely what types of opinions or content would be found in violation, relegating that prerogative to the local police and prosecutors, and Home Ministry, who constituted the different branches of the elaborate censorship apparatus.
Against this fractious backdrop, Japan's growing group of Protestants sought to define their beliefs and practices. Despite early efforts to form an ecumenical church—attempted to demonstrate their ability to overcome the doctrinal and ecclesiastical fissures that had divided western Protestantism—disagreements over these exact issues, among other concerns, reproduced the denominations represented by the leading mission organizations in Japan. However, by the 1890s, many Japanese Christians began questioning ongoing efforts by missionaries to maintain a hold on ecclesiastical authority. They also studied and adapted a diverse range of theologies and ministerial practices, often arguing that they were the better judges of what suited the future of Japanese Christianity, and by extension, what they hoped would be a Japan transformed through Christianity. The resulting range of theological positions, each with its own social and political implications, further divided Japanese Christians. Some, particularly those influenced by German liberal theology and Biblical criticism, embraced a “nationalist” Christianity they believed would transform Japan while also complementing Japan's new expansionist policies. Others, including Kashiwagi, argued that their Christian belief compelled them to forcefully voice their dissent when they believed that the state's actions violated their definition of God's law.
As the work of Fred Notehelfer, Irwin Scheiner and others has demonstrated, while the number of Christian converts remained modest even at the peak of Japanese interest in and enthusiasm for all things “western” in the 1880s, they nonetheless commanded a considerable amount of public influence and interest far greater than their numbers would suggest. One reason was the fascination, ambivalence, and outright suspicion that continued to be directed toward Christianity itself. But the significance of Christianity was not purely through negative associations. Schools founded by missionaries served as the earliest sites of exposure to Christianity, and since these schools served as the principal post-secondary schools in Japan into the twentieth century, even those students who did not ultimately convert nonetheless had classmates and friends who did, and were themselves exposed to Christian teaching during the course of their education.Footnote 11 Thus, a disproportionate number of Christian converts were both themselves mostly of an elite and well-educated class and also associated with elite intellectuals, businessmen, and politicians.
The extent of Christian influence, even prominence, within elite intellectual circles was further reinforced by the range and importance of Christian publications. Each major denomination published weekly newspapers that often featured leading public intellectuals, and despite ideological differences, even appeared in the non-circulating library of the Heiminsha, a leading socialist organization during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Additionally, several noted Christian journals such as Shinjin (The New Man), affiliated with the prominent Hongō Church whose membership was dominated by Tokyo University students, and Rikugō zasshi (Cosmos), featured content contributed by leading intellectuals and public figures, including even those like Inoue Tetsujirō who frequently denounced Christianity as antithetical to national unity. Their readership was often national, even international, and these journals were obligatory reading for any well-informed intellectual, Christian or otherwise.Footnote 12
The story of Japanese Christians' encounters with the state, at least until the 1930s, was thus characterized by discomfort and unease only occasionally interrupted by moments of police action, rather than outright suppression and censure. This is partly because much of Christian expression rarely contradicted the state's definitions of loyalty and national unity, the two critical categories whose defense and reinforcement was the censors' primary responsibility. When the state and its agents did act, the circumstances and specific charges—as well as hidden implications—demand closer attention, as do the figures that drew the attention of the censorship apparatus.
II. A Rural Minister and Exploring the Boundaries of Religious Freedom
In the shadow of the publicly provocative ministers in Tokyo and the publications they oversaw, Kashiwagi Gien devoted much of his career to debating how Christian belief fundamentally reordered the relationship between the state, emperor, and subjects. Kashiwagi may have lived and worked at the margins of the metropole, but his intellectual and religious influences and mentors as well as his closest confidants included the most prominent and influential figures of Japanese Protestantism. Despite its location, his church held special significance: as the first Congregationalist church in the Kantō region—which included Tokyo—and the first to be founded entirely through the financial support of converts, the Annaka church was a historically significant congregation within its denomination and for Japanese Protestantism more broadly. In short, the limited print run notwithstanding, his publication offered a crucial alternative voice to the main denominational weeklies because of both his own status as well as the status of the church he served.
The Jōmō kyōkai geppō primarily contained summaries of the activities of each Congregational church in the region, including average church attendance, sermon titles, and other special events organized by each congregation. It was also through this modest monthly newsletter, however, that Kashiwagi courted controversy through his opinionated editorials and commentaries and provoked the displeasure of the local censorship apparatus. For their efforts, Kashiwagi and his regular contributors attracted frequent attention from the local police and prosecutor's office. Satisfying the Press Regulations' demands, including submitting copies of each issue to the local police, prosecutor, and Home Ministry, became a regular part of his monthly routine. At times, simply receiving the geppō was perceived as potentially subversive: a church member who had been conscripted into the Army cancelled his subscription upon orders from his superiors because they objected to its contents.Footnote 13
Kashiwagi was not always successful in avoiding official sanctions; he was first fined in 1900, only two years after he began publishing the geppō.Footnote 14 While Kashiwagi generally managed to avoid the more draconian consequences of publicly criticizing the state or the ideas which legitimized it, he was no stranger to the constant attention of the local members of the censorship apparatus. Local constables, and occasionally even the local prosecutor, visited Kashiwagi to warn him against commenting on certain contemporary issues and events. According to his diary, Kashiwagi also suspected that the local police regularly placed him under surveillance, even going so far as to attend Sunday services at his church.Footnote 15
This attention, particularly given the small print run and mostly regionally specific coverage of this publication, may simply suggest that the pre-World War II censorship laws left no stone unturned. But the unique characteristics of this otherwise modest regional monthly demonstrate the degree to which a publication such as this could serve as a potent vehicle for dissent and critique uncomfortable for the state. First, through its pages, Kashiwagi attempted to foster in his audience an awareness of domestic, imperial, and global events, and challenged his readers to consider their own experiences in a broader context. Through Kashiwagi's editorial eye, readers were introduced to the works of important and controversial writers such as Kōtoku Shūsui, arguably the most notorious socialist-turned-anarchist who was executed in 1911 for his presumed role in a plot to assassinate the Meiji emperor. During the Russo-Japanese War when socialists emerged as a potent voice opposing war, he went so far as to urge his readers to subscribe to the socialist newspaper, the Heimin shinbun (Commoner News), and even advertised its subscription information.Footnote 16 Kashiwagi also featured the writings of prominent Christians and ministers of much larger congregations, and reports from former church members who had emigrated to a variety of locations abroad.Footnote 17 Other local ministers and church members also contributed their ideas and commentaries on local, national, and global events, thus making the Jōmō kyōkai geppō an important nexus of ideas that intimately linked its rural Christian audience to the world around them.
Second, the Jōmō kyōkai geppō attracted the attention of both influential public intellectuals and theorists and, more problematically, political dissidents and severe critics of the state. For example, the same socialists who Kashiwagi praised likewise identified him as a sympathetic figure, featuring him in the Heimin shinbun.Footnote 18 The likes of Yoshino Sakuzō, a leading political theorist, not only subscribed to it, but also became an important supporter who frequently corresponded with Kashiwagi about his editorials and even occasionally visited him.Footnote 19
Despite the local censors' constant attention and interference, Kashiwagi rarely faced formal sanctions. Given his notoriety with the local police and prosecutor's office, and the prominence of some of his contributors, this was certainly not because he and his ideas were considered inconsequential. Thus, it is necessary to scrutinize the one instance when the state charged and tried Kashiwagi for violating the Press Regulations in order to identify what was so threatening about his words that it provoked such a harsh response when even his endorsement of socialists and their embattled publication did not.
III. Local Confrontations: A Minister on Trial
In the early hours of July 17, 1909, thirty-eight of Annaka's most powerful and influential men—including the town mayor, members of the town assembly, the local postmaster, and heads of the electrical plant and bank—were arrested by the Annaka police under the orders of the prefectural prosecutor. The “Annaka incident,” as this scandal was soon called by local residents, provoked considerable protest and outrage in the town for the police's brazen treatment of the local elite, the confused and suspicious circumstances surrounding the arrests, and the implicit hint of election scandal that while obscured, appeared to lie at the root of the drama.Footnote 20
News of the arrests reached Annaka on July 19, when the local daily, the Jōmō shinbun (Gunma News), published a lengthy article detailing the events leading up to the arrests and a list of all those charged. Despite the neutral and dispassionate tone of the Jōmō shinbun report, the actual details it relayed described a troubling and alarming sequence of events. According to the report, this distinguished group had gathered the previous night at a local restaurant for a dinner honoring a local political candidate running in the upcoming election. Curiously, they had received an anonymous invitation to attend this banquet. When they arrived, they were each directed to pay a fifty sen entry fee; the article noted in passing that the dinner they were served would have cost considerably more, at least three yen, or six times the entry fee, per person. However, the article continued, a sign clearly denoting the entrance fee had been placed at the restaurant entrance. At this banquet, under the direction of the town's mayor, Kanai Shinzō, the group agreed to endorse the Seiyūkai (Friends of Constitutional Government Party) candidate, Tsuruhara Teikichi, and they all left by 11:00 p.m. The police prepared to make their arrests even before the group had gathered. The possibility that these arrests had been somehow orchestrated or provoked was suggested by the fact that the chief of the prefectural peace preservation police had ordered his men to Annaka even before the banquet had started. By 3:00 a.m. the mayor and two town assemblymen had been taken to the local police station for questioning; they were soon joined by the other attendees as well as the restaurant proprietors and employees.Footnote 21
Ultimately these men were charged with and convicted of violating the Election Law.Footnote 22 Initially, according to Kashiwagi, the police claimed that the men were arrested for leaving the restaurant without paying for the full cost of their dinner. But in fact, they were likely charged with accepting a bribe in return for endorsing the candidate—no doubt the discrepancy between the entrance fee and the actual cost of the dinner mentioned in the news report was considered a bribe. The men, who were transferred from Annaka to first Takasaki, then Maebashi prisons, underwent rigorous interrogations and were held for some time before charges were filed.Footnote 23
Troubled by the suspicious circumstances surrounding the arrests as well as the harsh treatment the men endured, Kashiwagi penned a private letter to the prefectural governor denouncing the conduct of the police and pleading leniency for the arrested men. In other words, he questioned the prefectural authority's prerogative to implement justice and assess criminality, insisting that it recognize a higher order of justice which demanded kindness and leniency even toward people who may very well have committed a crime as defined by the state's laws.
On July 24, less than a week after the arrests had taken place, Kashiwagi was ordered to appear at the local police station. Far from being moved by Kashiwagi's exhortations, the prefectural governor had turned over his letter to the police. At the station Kashiwagi was questioned by the police, who even insinuated that he was somehow involved with the group that had been arrested. They also threatened to charge him with libel: while Kashiwagi had addressed the governor through a private communication and had not yet publicly criticized how the incident had been handled by the authorities, according to the expansive libel laws, his letter could be considered a criminal act because the very act of criticizing a public official—even if such criticisms were accurate—was considered libel.Footnote 24 Significantly, the police tempered their threats by also “attempt[ing] to earnestly explain the police's actions.”Footnote 25 In other words, rather than simply charging Kashiwagi with a crime, the police attempted to use other forms of persuasion—even appealing to Kashiwagi's sympathy—to dissuade this opinionated minister from provoking an even bigger incident.
Far from convincing Kashiwagi to accept their version of events, this interaction prompted him to not only relay his own dealings with the governor and police publicly, but to also issue a lengthy assessment of what he considered the true crux of the “Annaka incident.” Kashiwagi wrote a lengthy article for the August issue of the geppō, disclosing the manner in which the arrested officials and businessmen had been treated.Footnote 26 More significantly, he used this opportunity to criticize the Japanese legal system. The crux of his criticism, which he also evoked as fundamental to his defense at the subsequent trial, centered upon the relationship between the law and what he presented as the universal rights of Japanese subjects.
I am sure it is fine if the executor of the law summarily executes the law regardless of what the people think, but those who are in a position to govern the people are obligated to pay particular attention to the feelings of the common people. Furthermore, for those with even a little pluck, if they were to [become aware of] England where there is a love of freedom and respect for rights, the people would all be stirred up . . . . Are the English a willful people who do not fear the authorities, or are the Japanese subservient? . . . In other words, it is certainly possible that there is nothing noteworthy about the Annaka incident from a legal perspective, but from the perspective of freedom, rights, and the laws of humanity, it is certainly worth considering.Footnote 27
Kashiwagi objected to the conduct of the police and the law's considerable reach by considering the police's activities in the context of freedom and an ideal notion of rights. Furthermore, by evoking the example of British law—and the relationship between British law and the crown's subjects—Kashiwagi imposed an accounting of the Annaka incident that rendered it far more consequential than its parochial context might suggest. Unconcerned with the nature of the alleged charges, Kashiwagi instead insisted that the intrusive and relentless actions of the police prevented the people from trusting them, which fundamentally undermined the basis for a national polity produced through the loyalty (“trust”) the people directed toward the emperor and his agents, the police.Footnote 28 Buried in his musings about the extent of universal rights and the degree to which the Japanese state should consider the “feelings of the common people,” Kashiwagi questioned the normative foundation of the law. Having thus penned his objections to the legal system, and implicitly questioned the legitimacy of the arrests, Kashiwagi sent the issue off to his printers and awaited its distribution on August 15.Footnote 29
The following day, the Gunma police made quite clear that Kashiwagi's public musings on what he considered the police's violation of the spirit of universal rights were an unacceptable challenge to the local authority's prerogative to execute the law. They acted with lightning speed to round up Kashiwagi and all parties associated with the geppō, including Okabe Kunohachi, the publisher of record who also served as minister of the church in nearby Haraichi, and the printer.Footnote 30
Kashiwagi and Okabe were indicted and tried in the prefectural court in Takasaki in September. The initial trial, and the subsequent appeal, highlight the uncomfortable tension created by the state's efforts to legally define the boundaries of acceptable opinion and Kashiwagi's equally determined effort to assert alternative boundaries rooted in transcendent principles. At the center of this contest, however, religious expression played a crucial role, both in Kashiwagi's insistence that his political critique was also religious expression, and the prefectural prosecutor's labored efforts to entirely circumvent religion as a factor in the trial.
Kashiwagi was charged with violating Article 21 of the Press Regulations that forbade publishing opinions excusing violations of the criminal code or actively supporting convicted criminals. Okabe was charged with violating Article 11 of the Press Regulations because of the specific timing of the geppō's distribution: by distributing the geppō on a Sunday, the police charged, Okabe had circumvented the censorship regulations that required immediate submission of all publications to the local police, prosecutor, and Home Ministry in Tokyo for review. Convicted at the initial trial, Kashiwagi and Okabe appealed, transforming this rather bizarre incident into a very public and visible challenge to the state by two otherwise modest and unassuming ministers.Footnote 31
In Kashiwagi's recounting of his trial in the Jōmō kyōkai geppō, he quoted extensively from accounts in the local newspapers that described the appeals court proceedings in great detail. The papers meticulously described Kashiwagi's demeanor and appearance—that he wore a suit, his hair and moustache were speckled with gray, his glasses on his round face gave him a humble appearance—and noted the disproportionately large number of Christians who had traveled from throughout the prefecture to observe the proceedings. Although the crime for which Kashiwagi was being tried was unrelated—at least superficially—to his role as a Christian minister, these newspapers paid special attention to this fact. In other words, these reports implied that Kashiwagi's role as a Christian minister was not incidental, but central to the fact that he had been charged with this crime. And the public trial of a Christian minister, particularly for allegedly sympathizing with convicted criminals, made for a provocative public local scandal.
Kashiwagi had given the court plenty of material to which to object: criticizing the police and the governor, unfavorably comparing Japan's legal system to that of Britain, and urging consideration for the men who had been arrested. By publicly disclosing the nature of his letter to the governor, Kashiwagi was also subject to being charged with libel, as the police had initially insinuated. So it is curious that the issue that the prosecutor emphasized in this second court proceeding was Kashiwagi's supposed defense of the arrested men. The prosecutor perhaps decided that his case was more convincing if he framed Kashiwagi's criminal act as a public defense of criminals rather than a private plea—however ill-advised—to a public official. In court, however, Kashiwagi attempted to dictate the actual issue at hand, which was not, as the prosecutor insisted, his defense of the arrested men. Instead, he declared,
I [did this] out of a higher motive [than to defend these men]. In other words, because the prefectural officials are hostile to the people and show an utter disregard for their rights, I decided that it was my responsibility as a man of faith to bring [the police's conduct] to the public's attention so that [the authorities] would realize [their wrongdoing] . . . . In regards to [what I consider] the necessity to write [this piece] critical of the authorities' actions, I did this fully mindful of the law.Footnote 32
Testifying before the court and a full audience, Kashiwagi asserted his ethical obligation as a Christian and pastor: to expose wrongdoing and misconduct and call the offenders to repentance. While the prefectural authorities attempted to associate him with the original group of men arrested, thus making him complicit in secular criminal conduct, Kashiwagi used his trial to instead accuse the authorities of moral misconduct. No longer concerned with the original confusing and obfuscated charges that had instigated his own scandal, Kashiwagi imposed a superior ethical code onto the police, all the while insisting that he was obligated to do so out of his religious convictions. Furthermore, the basis of his criticisms expanded on what these convictions included: a defense of “the people” against the brazen conduct of a state that considered the interests and rights of the people irrelevant and suspicious. By formally appealing his original conviction he also stubbornly reasserted his claim that his act of publicly criticizing those in authority should be protected by law.
Not surprisingly, the local prosecutor painted a radically different picture of Kashiwagi's actions. Dismissing Kashiwagi's claim outright, the prosecutor simply stated,
This case is based on the simple fact of whether or not in the article, the defendant wrote something that can be clearly interpreted as a defense of criminals. The purpose of the author is irrelevant; all that matters is whether or not the author wrote something defending criminals. If he did this intentionally, this constitutes proof of a criminal act.Footnote 33
According to the prosecutor's statement, Kashiwagi's intent had no legal bearing on the case. Far from being convinced of Kashiwagi's moral justification for his actions, the prosecutor accused him of being in danger of violating Article 41 of the Criminal Code: making statements injurious to public peace and order. While denying that religious belief had any bearing on the substance of this case, the prosecutor declared, ironically, that the only reason he was not adding this charge was out of consideration for Kashiwagi's profession and character.Footnote 34
Kashiwagi's lawyers—who, as the newspaper reports noted, were also Christians—likewise argued that Kashiwagi had a legal right to profess his beliefs in the geppō. For instance, one lawyer insisted,
There are few things more dangerous than law that does not consider morality. Furthermore, religion is something that insists on the authority of the individual. The police use the authority of an organization as a shield to interrogate individuals, and the police's reckless suppression of individuality ignores the spirit of the constitution.Footnote 35
This defense, while superficially framing the case in terms of the spirit of the constitution, also implied that Kashiwagi's criticism of the local authorities contained two critical components: first, that his critique was an expression of his religious convictions because he was asserting the “authority of the individual,” and, second, that religious expression should be protected under the constitution. This second point—asserting that airing his religious-beliefs-turned-political-critique in so contentious and public a manner was something protected by the constitution—launched a substantial challenge to the state's considerably circumscribed interpretation of the concept of “religious freedom.” This was a legal defense turned offense, the transformation of a prefectural court into the site of a presumptuous attack upon the very definition of what constituted religious belief and the extent of constitutional protection and conversely, the limits of state interference.
Kashiwagi and his defense team's impassioned appeal to the spirit of the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom as the basis for criticizing the state was soundly defeated. The court upheld the earlier decision, ultimately fining Kashiwagi seventy yen for his crime. His congregation gathered donations so that he could pay the fine and avoid imprisonment, the alternative penalty.
This trial certainly had no direct bearing on events or people in Tokyo, and thus no doubt might appear to be a rather parochial affair with little wide-ranging consequence, even though the original arrests and Kashiwagi's subsequent trial galvanized the local residents. But through this very public trial, Kashiwagi declared that this localized confrontation served as a critical opportunity through which to challenge the state's increasing encroachment into the lives of its subjects. Regardless of the actual contemporary reverberations of this incident, the claims Kashiwagi made during the course of the trial suggest the potential weaknesses in the complex and sophisticated legal framework established by the state to encourage, nurture, and at times coerce a distinct and more narrow understanding of rights and obligations of imperial subjects, and the extent of ideas harmful to public peace and order. Likewise, Kashiwagi's inevitable conviction revealed the state's refusal to give hearing to his insistence that as a Christian and minister, he was obligated to uphold truth. The judge's ruling demonstrated that such an idea was irrelevant, inconsequential, and possibly even illegal as far as the state and its regional representatives were concerned. The prefectural judiciary's attempt to contain Kashiwagi's presumptuous behavior by bringing him and his “co-conspirators” to trial was countered by Kashiwagi's stubborn insistence on an active defense. He offered his congregants and other Christians in Gunma an example of what he believed constituted obedience to God, despite the possible consequences. Furthermore, at the time of the Annaka incident, Kashiwagi seemed to consider the courts as a legitimate and fruitful arena in which to assert what he considered the appropriate boundaries for the state's actions. The outcome of the trial, on the other hand, demonstrated the shrinking limits of such challenges to the state's powers.
In 1909, the Japanese empire was still in its infancy. While it had gained the island of Taiwan from China as part of a war indemnity following its victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), its efforts to demonstrate parity with western imperial powers were far from complete. Furthermore, at home, the 1910s were marked by political confusion. Elected politicians began to successfully challenge their more established counterparts who were appointed, not elected, to the Imperial Diet. Political theorists such as Yoshino Sakuzō presented widely acclaimed challenges to the existing system of government that had privileged unquestioning unity over popular participation in politics.Footnote 36 While embattled and the constant object of government suppression, socialists and other leftists still managed to circulate increasingly radical ideas that rejected the legitimacy of the current government's authority as well as the social and economic status quo that seemed to protect their position. In this climate, the government adjusted its censorship strategy. While the censors applied their criteria selectively, and even arbitrarily, the cases that resulted in court trials particularly involved what they considered to be harmful ideas, specifically ideas that publicized socialist or communist critiques of the state or those which questioned the foundations of imperial rule.Footnote 37 The Imperial Diet even tried to pass new legislation to specifically curtail leftist ideas in 1922. While this effort failed, it revealed renewed concern that the recent enthusiasm for participatory politics and the more intense influence of communism following the Russian Revolution threatened the government's ability to impose its definitions of national loyalty and unity.Footnote 38
Against this backdrop, the unforeseeable tragedy of a catastrophic earthquake in September 1923 prompted a crisis, not only due to the heavy death toll and material damage, but also due to acts of mass violence in the chaotic aftermath. In response to these extraordinary circumstances, censorship became noticeably aggressive with a sharp increase in prosecutions as the state strained its resources to control the circulation of news reports, analyses, and interpretations of the events following the earthquake. In the preceding decade, Kashiwagi's disillusionment with the state had only grown: the notorious 1910 trial of leftist radicals charged with an assassination attempt of the emperor and the subsequent execution of twelve of those convicted, Japan's colonization of Korea, and his own denomination's establishment of a mission there that accepted substantial financial support from the colonial government drew his ire and further critiques. He now responded to this latest national crisis with a series of editorials through which he denounced the violent aftermath of the earthquake as the inevitable consequence of the same ideology that had justified Japan's territorial expansion. Written during arguably the most restrictive censorship period before the 1930s, these editorials nonetheless serve as a stark counterpoint to the editorial that led to his prosecution in 1909.
IV. Successfully Denouncing the State in the Aftermath to the Great Kantō Earthquake
The Great Kantō Earthquake that struck on September 1, 1923 devastated Tokyo, Yokohama, and surrounding areas, leveling most structures to piles of rubble and causing the deaths of over 100,000 residents. In the weeks that followed, troubling news reports gradually emerged that a number of political dissidents and possibly thousands of Korean residents—migrants from Japan's principal colony—had been attacked and murdered, often with the tacit consent of the authorities. In the previous years, in addition to championing Japan's socialists, Kashiwagi also roundly criticized both Japan's colonization of Korea and his own denomination's missionary efforts in colonial Korea. As he slowly pieced together how these two groups, considered politically and morally intransigent by the state, became the objects of violence, Kashiwagi again was compelled to respond. The uneven process by which he uncovered these state-sanctioned crimes and finally succeeded in publishing a compelling condemnation of them is significant, not only for the views he expressed, but for the insights it offers into what (and what did not) constitute harmful ideas in a time of acute government scrutiny of ideas critical of the state.
The complete devastation of the earthquake severely hampered Kashiwagi's access to information, and it was only through a slow and deliberate effort that he was able to piece together troubling evidence that the state had tacitly condoned acts of violence in the earthquake's aftermath. On September 3, Kashiwagi traveled to Karuizawa, a resort town to the northwest in neighboring Nagano Prefecture, to attend a regional denominational conference. Refugees fleeing from the disaster crowded the considerably delayed train. Kashiwagi overheard these refugees tell of “arsons and bombings by Koreans and the invasion of mobs.”Footnote 39
In the following days, and after he returned to Annaka, he began to hear very different rumors, this time that vigilante mobs had systematically sought out and attacked Koreans. He was even more troubled that some of his own acquaintances seemed to accept claims that Koreans and socialists were plotting to overthrow the government.Footnote 40 Reports began to trickle in of vigilante mobs attacking and killing Koreans not only in Tokyo, but also in adjacent areas such as neighboring Saitama prefecture, and even in Gunma itself. Even as he visited friends and neighbors to gather more information about the attacks on Koreans, he received a visit from the local prosecutor. Preempting Kashiwagi's intention to publicly condemn these acts of mob violence, the prosecutor warned Kashiwagi not to mention the attacks that had happened in Gunma or the massacres in Tokyo.Footnote 41 The following day, he was summoned to the police station by the local police constable, who repeated the prosecutor's warning that he was not to write anything about the massacre of Koreans.Footnote 42 Michael Weiner has convincingly demonstrated that the police not only turned a blind eye to these mobs, but also even started some of the rumors and urged on the mobs.Footnote 43 Existing scholarship on the implementation of censorship in this period suggests that the state also aggressively used the Press Regulations to prevent those like Kashiwagi from exposing the state's complicity or circulating ideas it considered harmful to national cohesion and unity.Footnote 44
During the following month, Kashiwagi nonetheless continued to gather information, even though he was warned against writing publicly about the Korean massacre by the local police. He learned from one of his friends that the anarchist Ōsugi Sakae, his partner and noted feminist Itō Noe, and his six-year old nephew, had been rounded up following the earthquake and then murdered while in the custody of the military police.Footnote 45 What particularly distressed his friend, in addition to the actual assassinations, was news that many individuals (including a member of the city assembly of Takasaki) were calling for the dismissal of all charges against the police who had been charged with the murders, with some even calling for them to be declared national heroes for ridding the country of these radicals.Footnote 46
Unlike the 1909 incident, in 1923, the police and local prosecutor repeatedly warned Kashiwagi against publicly commenting on either the Korean massacre or the murder of political radicals. However, he felt compelled to address the violence directed at these two groups. In the resulting editorials, particularly a lengthy declaration titled “Korosu nakare” (Thou shalt not kill), Kashiwagi reframed these acts of violence in an imperial context, condemning the post-earthquake violence as a deplorable symptom of the jingoistic atmosphere fostered by the Japanese empire's expansionist policies. He took considerable risks by blatantly ignoring the warnings of the local police and prosecutor. And indeed, the publication of this piece appeared to be in jeopardy. On the night before the issue was to be distributed, the local policeman visited Kashiwagi, informing him that his monthly might be suspended for violating the Press Regulations and asking him to not distribute the issue, just in case. Much to his annoyance, Kashiwagi received no further word from the authorities, however, and the issue was distributed a few days later without incident.Footnote 47 A close examination of the tone and contents of this editorial, however, demonstrate that the local policeman's concern was not without merit, and it is indeed remarkable that this issue passed the scrutiny of the censors.
Kashiwagi warned that the spree of vigilante violence portended a dark and troubling future for Japan.Footnote 48 Kashiwagi considered the senseless violence in the aftermath of the earthquake to be an alarming recapitulation of the brutal suppression of the Korean independence protests, known as the March First Movement, that had swept across the Korean peninsula four years earlier. He denounced both as deplorable and lamentable precisely because they violated a fundamental aspect of God's law. He reserved his most incendiary language for his fellow Christians who, he argued, were charged with upholding God's law, for their seemingly passive acceptance of the state's coercive tactics and willing suppression of those deemed subversive or undesirable. As far as he was concerned, “thou shalt not kill” was an absolute, precise, and unambiguous command: “‘Thou shalt not kill’ means thou shalt not kill, and is clear as fire; there should be no cause for doubt. There are no conditions, only ‘thou shalt not kill.’ There should be no reason to [consider any other interpretation] than that this is a divine command absolutely forbidding the killing of others.”Footnote 49 Despite the clarity of this simple command, Kashiwagi lamented, Christians had eagerly sought various conditions and qualifications, attempting to marshal spiritual justification for different types of murder. Thus, he continued, “some now claim that killing in the name of religion was unacceptable while killing in the name of the nation was, even for Christians.”Footnote 50
While Kashiwagi rejected all killing—including self-defense and legalized executions—he particularly condemned war as a form of mass murder. Rather than maintaining peace, he countered, “Military buildup always leads to an arms race, and in order to convince a nation's subjects that such military buildup is necessary, [the government] points to imaginary enemies and must then claim that an invasion is imminent. . . . Military build-up necessarily leads to war.”Footnote 51 In other words, Kashiwagi identified a circular logic linking militarism, territorial expansion, and wartime economic interests that made each seem inevitable.
Kashiwagi also unleashed a tirade against state-sponsored violence—both by its own representatives and by vigilante mobs—as a far greater threat to the nation than socialism or even anarchism.Footnote 52 He even went as far as to claim that anarchy potentially could be non-violent, while the state's actions left no room for peaceful discussion and debate. No matter how subversive, he insisted, no idea should be countered with violence, for it was the state's obligation to expose the illogic or harm of an ideology through offering a superior ideology.Footnote 53 The silencing of dissent through murder and the scapegoating of defenseless Korean laborers, Kashiwagi inveighed, exposed a state-sanctioned moral indifference that imperiled Japan's future to become a civilized and conscientious nation.
This moral indifference was not an accident or some kind of essential cultural trait, Kashiwagi continued, but was instead carefully and systematically nurtured by the state through national education policies and universal conscription. Through the poisonous effects of military indoctrination, intolerance bred by national compulsory education, and fanned by the general atmosphere of militarism, the Japanese people were being shaped into an intolerant jingoistic nation without conscience or empathy for others.Footnote 54 Kashiwagi lamented the deplorable moral condition of the Japanese people, citing the recently reported words of the perpetrators intended to justify their actions:
Defendants of the recent massacre say, “I didn't kill them for me, but I did it for the nation,” or, “I did it thinking of the world so really you should be praising me,” or among those who were rounded up [there are those who] say because the deed was done while they were caught up in the chaos [in the earthquake's aftermath] they should be given the benefit of the doubt, and admit that perhaps they shouldn't have done something like this. But no one seems to be moved by their own moral conscience to truly repent for having taken the lives of innocent people. Japanese people do not appreciate the preciousness of human life, but this must be considered a great defect of national education, of the national character.Footnote 55
Kashiwagi refused to accept these excuses for, he insisted, the perpetrators had violated God's law and were thus culpable even if the state refused to apply the law to their actions. The solution, Kashiwagi strenuously argued, was a new society-wide resolve and determination to reject war as a solution to national problems. And in this, Christians should play a central role; after all, he reasoned, they were governed by the teaching, “thou shalt not kill.”Footnote 56
V. Conclusion: The Limits of Religious Expression
For a Japanese state still anxious about its position in the global order and nervous about the acquiescence of its subjects, religious belief represented a site requiring constant attention and control. Allowing for religious freedom, however, marked Japan as a civilized nation, and as long as religious adherents consented to behaving as appropriately moderate imperial subjects whose religious belief was expressed in support of, and subordinate to, the state's interests, there was no problem. But the problem with Christianity—something Inoue Tetsujirō had identified during the Imperial Rescript debates—was its presumptuous insistence on a superior authority to which Christians were bound. While not all Japanese Christians agreed with this theological position—in fact, some of the most prominent ministers embraced a more liberal theology that considered such a position arcane—those who did threatened to expose the pretense of national unity that was meant to be Japan's greatest resource in its competition for imperial equality and acknowledgment.
In this context, Kashiwagi and the state fundamentally disagreed on the definition of religious expression, as well as the extent of constitutional freedoms. While Kashiwagi based both his 1909 objection of police excess and his 1923 condemnation of state-sanctioned violence on his Christian belief and conviction that he was obligated to defend his interpretation of God's law, the state rejected his presumptuous claim that his dissent was constitutionally protected because of its religious basis. By refusing to engage with Kashiwagi according to his terms, the state arrogated to itself the prerogative of defining what was legitimate religious expression and, by extension, what could be protected as such by law. The prefectural court refused to acknowledge Kashiwagi's critique of local police conduct as a form of religious expression, demonstrating it was indeed subject to the Press Regulations, and thus rendering the critique impotent by virtue of its illegality.
At the same time, the state—or more specifically, its local representatives—used censorship laws selectively. In part, this was because the sheer volume of publications produced on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis made close scrutiny of all publications impractical. There were usual suspects who faced the greatest attention of the censors, but even they (among which Kashiwagi might be included) could not always predict how their publications would fare. Just like Kashiwagi discovered upon publishing an editorial featuring content that disregarded explicit instructions from local authorities, the state occasionally allowed the publication of ideas that seemed to fall well within the parameters of ideas considered harmful to the state and national cohesion. This was despite the fact that Kashiwagi published this editorial amidst the strictest scrutiny of published materials before the 1930s, and the editorial focused on the two subjects explicitly targeted by the censors.
The unpredictability produced by the inconsistent application of the Press and Publication Regulations created space for the expression of dissent, but it also prompted many authors and publishers to exercise greater self-censoring and self-surveillance, thus making the censorship system far more effective than what the state could achieve on its own.Footnote 57 But more significantly, by employing erratic and inconsistent enforcement, the state asserted its prerogative as the ultimate arbiter of what constituted acceptable thought and belief. Not only when it asserted its right to find published opinion harmful and thus illegal, but also when it allowed the publication of ideas that might be perceived harmful, the state diminished the incendiary potential of critiques of the state. Within a regime that limited what ideas could be expressed, the very act of allowing a publication to reach its audience—after revealing that a particular issue was under consideration for suspension—detracted from an author's claims that publishing a particular idea constituted an act of dissent.
In the case of Kashiwagi, it is ultimately impossible to accurately prove why such an extreme discrepancy exists in how he was treated by the local censorship apparatus between the 1909 and 1923 incidents. What his experiences suggest, however, is that, despite his efforts to challenge conventional definitions of constitutionally protected religious freedom and the obligations a minister owed his congregation and his nation, the state maintained a monopoly on who defined, legislated, and arbitrated the limits of religious expression. This was not due to a general disregard for the relevance of religion, but in fact resulted from a realization that religious thought possessed the potential to forcefully challenge state authority. Thus, in addition to attempting to undermine it through philosophical, ideological, or intellectual means, the state also attempted to inoculate its effects by making it irrelevant in the public realm.
