Article ID: CBB001220952

The Instinctual Nation-State: Non-Darwinian Theories, State Science and Ultra-Nationalism in Oka Asajiro's Evolution and Human Life (2011)

unapi

In his anthology of socio-political essays, Evolution and Human Life, Oka Asajiro (1868--1944), early twentieth century Japan's foremost advocate of evolutionism, developed a biological vision of the nation-state as super-organism that reflected the concerns and aims of German-inspired Meiji statism and anticipated aspects of radical ultra-nationalism. Drawing on non-Darwinian doctrines, Oka attempted to realize such a fused or organic state by enhancing social instincts that would bind the minzoku (ethnic nation) and state into a single living entity. Though mobilization during the Russo-Japanese War seemed to evince this super-organism, the increasingly contentious and complex society that emerged in the war's aftermath caused Oka to turn first to Lamarckism and eventually to orthogenesis in the hopes of preserving the instincts needed for a viable nation-state. It is especially in the state interventionist measures that Oka finally came to endorse in order to forestall orthogenetically-driven degeneration that the technocratic proclivities of his statist orientation become most apparent. The article concludes by suggesting that Oka's emphasis on degeneration, autarkic expansion, and, most especially, totalitarian submersion of individuals into the statist collectivity indicates a complex relationship between his evolutionism and fascist ideology, what recent scholarship has dubbed radical Shinto ultra-nationalism.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001220952/

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Authors & Contributors
Hamlin, Kimberly Ann
Mogilner, Marina
Mazzeo, Marco
Yu, Xiaobo
Biasillo, Roberta
V. Tikhonov
Concepts
Evolution
Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Science and society
Science and politics
Lamarckism
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
21st century
18th century
Places
Russia
Germany
England
United States
Italy
China
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