TOTALITARIANISM IS AN IDEOLOGY ASSERTING THAT THE NATIONAL GROUP HAS ABSOLUTE PRIORITY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. 

FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Richard Koenigsberg, Andrew Hammer, Mei Ha Chan
presents

The Psychology of Totalitarianism
Analysis of Japan's Holy War
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Japan's Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism
Walter A. Skya
(Duke University Press)

Publisher: Duke University Press
Author: Walter A. Skya, Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies, Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks. 

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ABSTRACT: Totalitarianism seeks fusion of self and society, declaring there is no such thing as separation. The totalitarian fantasy is that individual and society are one—human beings are bound inseparably to their nation. In totalitarianism, the body of the individual is imagined to be merge with an actual body politic--that can live forever. Human beings embrace totalitarianism—abandon their separate selves—to partake of the “immortality” of the body politic. Unlike ordinary organisms, the nation is conceived as an organism that can “live on.”

What is totalitarianism? Why did Axis powers stick together? What did Japan have in common with Germany? This essential book articulates the ideology and psychology underlying Japanese ultra-nationalism. Skya explicates the thinking of Japanese social theorist, Hozumi Yatsuka (1860-1912), who states that the individual exists in society—and society within the individual. The clash between individualism and socialism is resolved through the concept of g­odo seizon (literally, fused or amalgamated existence), meaning the merging of the individual into society. Human beings fuse together to create “society.”

The ideal human being, Hozumi explains, is one who desires assimilation into the “higher organic totality” of society. The purpose of morality is to direct the individual toward kodoshin: submergence of the self into the social totality.

For Hozumi and other Japanese thinkers, Skya says, Enlightenment thought was a threat to the Japanese ethnic state. The struggle against Western liberalism focused on the idea of “the individual” as an entity separate from society. Hozumi stated that “the individual does not exist in isolation. It is a mistake to think that society is made up of isolated, self-supporting individuals.”

Hozumi sought to wage war against Western civilization. This, essentially, was a war against the idea that it is possible for human beings to exist in a condition of separation from society. The bond between the individual and society had to be rock-solid, and eternal.

Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948) was one of hundreds of Japanese students who flocked to German universities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and absorbed German thought. These students were influenced by the ideas of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), who asserted that the state was not a contractual relationship between individuals, rather itself was "an individuality, independent of and superior to all other individuals.”

Sovereignty was not the right or power of the individual or individuals, but stemmed from the state itself, an “organic unity with a personality of its own.” The state was conceived as a person or “individual organism,” and the emperor as an “organ of the state.”

Hegel’s theory easily transferred to Japanese society. Uesugi Shinkichi (1878-1929), a constitutional law scholar, also conceived of the state as an organism. In Japan, the emperor was the ultimate source of the nation’s organizational will, embodiment of the state organism.

Obeying the emperor was not only a moral action that contributed to this “collective being as a totality,” but also to the highest realization of the self—of one’s “essential being.” To absorb the self into the emperor, Skya says—to become part of the emperor—was to “accomplish man’s essential being.”

An important thinker shaping religious nationalism in Japan was Kakehi Katsuhiko (1872-1961), who developed the theory of “one heart, same body,” which advocated abandoning the self and offering one’s entire body and soul to the emperor. A true Japanese does not think of self-interest, but rather “forgets one’s own concerns and completely offers oneself to the emperor.” This was especially true for soldiers.

When one enlisted in the military, one died and was "reborn again to the armed forces under the command of the emperor.” You give up your life and "do not think for a moment that you are what you are.” One abandons one’s personal will to fulfill the will of the emperor.

To achieve the state of “one heart, same body,” the individual had to annihilate the self. Any consideration of one’s own personal needs was wrong: one had to totally submerge the self into the collectivity. When Kakehi spoke of the bad aspects of Western culture, he was referring to the evils of Western secularism and individualism. He believed that the Western focus on the value of the individual was the “greatest threat to the Japanese nation.”

What is the nature and meaning of this threat of “individualism” that pervaded Japanese political theory? This same idea—that the nation is threatened by individualism—was at the heart of Nazi ideology. Why should the idea of individual freedom be conceived as a threat to the existence of one’s nation? Here we encounter a fundamental dynamic revolving around the idea of separation or separateness.

Individualism” for the radical nationalist is equated with the idea of separation from the nation, thus disrupting the idea of “one heart, same body.” Totalitarianism revolves around the nation as an actual organism or body politic. Individualism or separateness, therefore, implies the idea of a human being (a body or organism) that is not merged or fused with the national body. What terrifies is the idea that the human body might become separated from—no longer united with—the body politic.

The totalitarian dream or fantasy is that all human bodies unite to constitute one omnipotent body politic. In totalitarianism, each human being is expected to abandon the “will to separation” (individualism) and to subordinate the self to the “national will.”

But what becomes of the self after individual consciousness is denied? In Kakehi’s political theology, the individual “enters into the mystical body of the emperor once one’s own individuality is abandoned.” Subjects should cast aside their individual selves and "enter into the emperor.” Kakehi asserted that all Japanese living at the present time exist inside the emperor, indeed that all Japanese who have ever lived—from the origin of the state onward—exist within the emperor. The emperor, in short, symbolized an immortal body in which all Japanese bodies are contained.

Skya concludes that the “total assimilation of the individual into a collective body is the goal of all totalitarian movements,” of which Shinto ultra-nationalism was “only one variety.” What’s more, the assimilation of the individual into the collective body is conceived as a moral imperative. The fundamental dictum of totalitarianism is: “There shall be nothing separate from the collective body.” Taking this a step further, one is justified to take measures to kill or destroy those individuals who embrace the heretical view that separation from society is possible.

Those who embrace totalitarian ideals, I hypothesize, react with panic and rage to the possibility that anything could exist in a condition of separation from the national body. Ultra-nationalism builds upon a symbiotic fantasy: people and nation are one, the leader and nation are one, the leader and the people are one, the people are merged with one another.

The idea of separation or separateness shatters the fantasy of perfect union with an omnipotent body (politic). Perfect union is achieved when the individual abandons his will in order to internalize the will of the nation and its leaders. Hitler informed the German people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” The advantage of becoming “nothing” is that one can incorporate the nation into the self—thus becoming “everything.”

Soldiers occupied a special role in the Japanese totalitarian ideology. Kakehi singled out the armed forces. In his "One Spirit, Same Body" address, he quoted a passage from the Gunjin Chokuyu (Imperial Rescript to the Armed Forces):

"Soldiers and Sailors, we are your supreme commander-in-chief. Our relations with you will be the most intimate when We rely upon you as Our limbs, and you look up to Us as your head. If the majesty and power of Our Empire be impaired, you share with Us the sorrow; if the glory of Our arms shine resplendent, we will share with you the honor."

This passage, Skya observes, emphasizes the “direct and intimate ties between the Emperor and the soldier.”

However, the relationship between leaders and led is more than “direct and intimate.” The soldiers and sailors are relied upon as “limbs,” and should look up to their commanders "as their “head.” In short, soldiers and sailors are conceived as part of the same body. When a soldier carries out the will of his superior, he is not simply “obeying.” He can no more resist the order of his superior than an arm can resist the brain’s command.

In his The Waffen SS (1990), Bernd Wegner observed that the SS saw the individual as an “integrated element of a social organism.” The value of the SS-man—justification for his very existence— “depended solely on the advantages he furnished the national community.” The individual was, in the eyes of the SS, only a “fragment of the body politic to which he owed his allegiance.”

As a “fragment of the body politic,” the SS-man had no alternative but to obey this body. Like the Japanese soldier in his relationship to the emperor, the SS-man was expected to abandon his subjective will to execute the “will of the Reich,” that is, Hitler’s will. Himmler informed his SS that “everyone should be fully aware that our lives do not belong to us, but to the Fuehrer and Reich.”

The body of the SS-man belonged to the Reich because his own body was not separate from the body politic. This is the meaning of “obedience.” The nation was an enormous body politic existing within the body of the SS-man, thus could not be resisted. Thus the “organic theory of the state,” seemingly an obscure, mystical ideology—has very real, practical consequences.

The goal of the ideal self in Japan prior to the Second World War was to “absorb the self into the emperor.” Similarly, the Nazis’ ideal German citizen sought to absorb Germany into himself. “National identification” meant giving over one’s body to the body politic. When the body politic exists within the self, this larger body overwhelms the smaller body, compelling the smaller body to do the bidding of the larger body.

The aspiration of totalitarian ideology is to destroy boundaries between self and society; between one’s own body and the body politic. Totalitarian ideologies seek to actualize a symbiotic fantasy of no separation. Totalitarianism glorifies the ideal of “the community” at the expense of individuals, building upon the fantasy of a “national organism,” the survival of which is given priority over the survival of individual human beings.

Hitler asserted, “The individual is transitory, the People is permanent.” When he spoke of “the People,” Hitler was referring to an abstract idea or ideal—the “national organism”—not to concrete human beings. The German nation was conceived as an actual body that could live forever.

Japanese and German totalitarianism grew out of a mystical theory: the idea of nations or bodies politic as real entities that have the capacity to live forever. Nations are conceived as omnipotent bodies that embrace and contain everything. Political violence asserts the reality of these mystical entities, often seeking to kill off human beings who do not acknowledge or agree that the state is omnipotent.