COMPLETION REPORT
Japan and the Nuclear Question: Nuclear Armament and the Rise of (ultra) nationalism in Postwar
JapanSeok-Won LeeAssistant Professor
Department of History
Rhodes CollegeMy research project, Japan and the Nuclear Question: Nuclear Armament and the Rise of (ultra)nationalism inPostwar Japan, was to trace the trajectories of how conservative discourses in postwar Japan became eventually antiAmerican and even some intellectuals and activities called for a nuclear Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. To pursue myresearch goal, I have focused on two prominent Japanese intellectuals – Kamikawa Hikomatsu and Shimizu Ikutaro- who eventually advocated a nuclear Japan.
Instead of simply following their writings on Japan as a nuclear power, I have approached them as an intellectual
historian. By meticulously tracing their wartime and early postwar writings, my project has been examining thequestion of why one liberal and even progressive (both Kamikawa and Shimizu were considered leading liberal andprogressive intellectuals in wartime and early postwar Japan) intellectuals became anti-American and called for Japanas a nuclear power. In my research, I tried to demonstrate that postwar advocates of a nuclear Japan in the 1960s andthe 1970s cannot be simply explained through the lens of conservativism or ultra-nationalism in postwar Japan.
Instead, I found that many of these nationalist intellectuals – Shimizu Ikutaro and Kamikawa Hikomatsu – were once
rational social scientists and even skeptical about the Imperial-Way Japanese totalitarianism during the Asia-PacificWar. Rather than resorting to existing ultra-nationalistic thoughts, both Shimizu and Kamikawa called for a realist andpositivist perspective to be prioritized in mapping out Japan’s future and international relations. Precisely for thisreason, an icon of postwar liberal activism -Shimizu Ikutaro – can transform his notion of the postwar Japanese statebased on bottom-up civil political energies to a top-down strong nation state that should even consider being a nuclear
power.
Based on these research activities, I suggest that more dynamic and intertwined approaches to postwar Japanese
intellectual history be required. The cases of Shimizu and Kamikawa show that a conventional framework of the civilsociety group or radical activities (i.e. Anpo protests) vs. (ultra)nationalists would not show the real question of whyand how postwar Japanese conservativism emerged and has powerfully regulated the mindset of a number of Japanese
intellectuals who once identified themselves with rational and even liberal social scientists. To do that, I also suggestthat students of Japanese intellectual history trace these major postwar intellectuals’ wartime writings to draw acomplete picture of their intellectual trends and changes.
Currently, I have almost finished writing two-journal articles and they are scheduled to be completed in the fall of2018. An article on Shimizu Ikutaro will be submitted for publication to Social Science Japan Journal (published byTokyo University, printed by Oxford University Press) and another article on Kamikawa Hikomatsu will be added to
my book length work on Japanese social science and (ultra)nationalism in postwar Japan.

Publication of the Results of Research Project:Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)
Seok-Won Lee, “Japan and the Nuclear Question: Shimizu Ikutaro and the Rise of Postwar Japanese Nationalism,”
Mid-Atlantic Regional Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Towson University, Baltimore, Maryland,
October 7-8, 2017
Seok-Won Lee, “Asianism After Asianism – The Korean War the Question of Asia in early 1950s Japan and Korea,”
Order and Disorder, Conference in Honor of Professor Victor Koschmann, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, October 2729, 2017.

Seok-Won Lee, “Japan’s Regional Empire and its Aftermath: International Political Science and the Question of Asia
in 1950s Japan,” Association for Asian American Studies Annual Conference, Washington DC, March 22-March 25,2018.”

Thesis (Name of Journal and its Date, Title and Author of Thesis, etc.)
Seok-Won Lee, Shimizu Ikaturo and the Question of Conservatism, working manuscript to be submitted to Social
Science Japan Journal (Oxford University Press) (fall 2018)
Book (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)