MIMESISINTERNATIONAL		HASEKURA LEAGUE INTERCULTURAL STUDIES EDITIONS		 n. 6		 Editorial Board
Raffaele Milani (University of Bologna), Rolando Minuti (University of Florence), Ikuko Sagiyama(University of Florence), Andreas Niehaus (Ghent University), Judit Arokay (Heidelberg University),
Harald Fuess (Heidelberg University), Ivo Smits (Leiden University), Franco Mazzei (University ofNaples “L’Orientale”), Giangiorgio Pasqualotto (University of Padua), Matilde Mastrangelo (Sapienza
University of Rome), Glenn Hook (University of Sheffield), Ozaki Akihiro 尾崎彰宏 (TohokuUniversity), Nagaoka Ryūsaku 長岡龍作 (Tohoku University), Satō Hiroo 佐藤弘夫 (TohokuUniversity), Satō Yoshimichi 佐藤嘉倫 (Tohoku University), Takahashi Akinori 高橋章則(Tohoku University), Paul Ziche (Utrecht University), Bonaventura Ruperti (Ca’ Foscari University ofVenice), Georg Stenger (University of Vienna)

YONAOSHI

Visions of a Better World
Edited byChristopher Craig, Enrico Fongaro,
Luca Milasi and James TinkMIMESISINTERNATIONAL© 2022 – Mimesis International – Milan
www.mimesisinternational.com
e-mail: info@mimesisinternational.com
Isbn: 9788869774034
Book series: Hasekura League Intercultural Studies Editions, n. 6
© MIM Edizioni Srl
P.I. C.F. 02419370305

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

7“Thinking Ourselves into the Future”:
J.G. Herder on Cognitive Faculties forEngaging with the Future

13

Luca Milasi and Christopher Craig

Paul Ziche“To Break Down the Barriers between East and West” –The Kihinkai (Welcome Society, 1893-1914) and Its New Visionof Tourist Diplomacy
29

Sonia Favi

The Ideological and Human Background of The Song of Roland:
Islamic War: Regarding the References about Islamic Civilization 47

Kuroiwa Taku

Ainu Resilience through Contemporary Arts

65

Disinformation, Manipulation & Demobilisation
at the 2019 UK General Election: No Light in the Gloom?

83

Cinzia Calzolari

Geraldine CastelSTUDENT PAPERS
Overcoming Modernity through Catholicism

105

Reimagining the Family in the Yoru no Nezame:
Different thoughts on shukke

121

Nagai Kafū (1879-1959) and ukiyo-e:Creating One’s Own World137

The shijin muyō Discourse Revisited:
Confucian Scholarship and Literary Writingin Early Heian Japan

157

Hoizumi Sora

Samantha Audoly

Elena Fabbretti

Dario Minguzzi

Luca Milasi1 and Christopher Craig2

INTRODUCTION

The term “yonaoshi” (世直し、よなおし, literally ‘world
renewal/repair/remaking’), and the various specific concepts
it has been used to signify, has a long history in Japan. With
its earliest origins in a series of anti-government riots in Edo
in the late 18th century, the idea rose to new prominence, andreceived its lasting associations, in connection with peasant
uprisings and outbursts in the dying years of the Tokugawa
shogunate.3 During the late 1860s, farmers and villagers driven
by “a millenarian urge to remake the world” and displaying an
unparalleled “commitment to act and change” rose up across thecountry.4 In ways that draw numerous parallels with the Ranters,
Levellers, and other radical reform groups of the 17th century
revolutionary period in England, these rebels saw in the collapseof the centuries-old political order a long-awaited opportunity
to erase long-established forms of inequality endemic to thecountryside and they directed their often-violent attentions to theproperty and the bodies of local elites. Yonaoshi continued to bea watchword in the northeast of Japan even after the shogunate
had fallen. Riots and uprisings flared into the first years of theMeiji era in these rebellious provinces, and millenarian cris de1234Sapienza University of Rome
Tohoku University
Takashi Miura, Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods inJapan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), p. 1.
George M. Wilson, Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji
Restoration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 59; H. D.
Harootunian, ‘Late Tokugawa Culture and Thought’, in The Cambridge
History of Japan, Volume 5: The Nineteenth Century, edited by Marius B.
Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 218.

8Yonaoshi

couer continued to echo in Tochigi, Fukushima, and other areasof Tōhoku.5 The establishment of the new government and its
effective suppression of dissent, however, put an end to yonaoshibased rural uprisings by the early 1880s, but the term found ahome in the so-called “new religions” of the late 19th century
among adherents convinced that they were “living in a time ofcrisis that would be overcome by divine intervention”.6 Evenas these groups rose to prominence in the new century, though,yonaoshi took on a life of its own and entered into the general
Japanese lexicon. Shedding its explicitly spiritual meanings
but retaining its associations with a world in an unsatisfactory
state, injustices that need righting, and an idealized moral visionof the future, the term was set free to resonate with different
causes and different efforts for reform or revolution. Finding
purchase in such disparate applications as quotidian mumblings
about bettering personal lifestyles, calls for improvement in thecultural and economic spheres, and condemnation of politicaland economic systems, yonaoshi has in the last century become
an almost ubiquitous term, but one which still holds at its heart a
revolutionary dream of a better world.
This volume presents a collection of essays based onpresentations given at the 6th annual Hasekura League International
Japanese Studies Symposium, Yonaoshi: Envisioning a BetterWorld. Taking the generalized definition of yonaoshi as astarting point, the symposium invited participants to explore thetheme in both a Japanese context and as a concept that reaches
across borders and language boundaries to connect with humanexperience in a wide array of geographic and temporal settings.
Planned jointly by Sapienza University of Rome and Tohoku
University, in part to celebrate the long history of cooperation
56See Stephen Vlastos, ‘Yonaoshi in Aizu,’ in Conflict in Modern Japanese
History: The Neglected Tradition, edited by Tetsuo Najita and J. VictorKoschmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 164-176; M.
William Steele, Alternative Narratives in Modern Japanese History (London:RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 44-60, among others.
Nancy K. Stalker, Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburō, Oomoto, and theRise of New Religions in Imperial Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’iPress, 2008), p. 37.

L. Milasi, C. Craig - Introduction

9between the two institutions, the symposium was originallyscheduled to be held in Rome. The outbreak of COVID-19
in late 2020, however, forced a rescheduling and the event
eventually took place online over two consecutive weekends on
the 5th- 6th and 12th-13th of March 2021 in sessions designed tominimalize the inconvenience of the widely differing time zones
in Italy and Japan. While concerns over the ongoing pandemic
momentarily hampered cultural exchanges among the Hasekura
League institutions and have made impossible – for the time
being, at least – any chances for the international cohosting of
joint ventures, the online conference provided an invaluable
opportunity for participants to resume interactions and share
their outlook on a theme that took on fresh significance in thelight of the multifarious and universal challenges posed by the
global pandemic. The sense of hope and belief in the possibilityof fundamental and positive change coming in the wake of the
global disaster still remained in its early months, a context thataugmented the earnestness and passion of the presentations andprovided for a memorable exchange of ideas and scholarship.
The sequence of the chapters in the current volume follows
a roughly temporal order, starting with a philosophicaldiscussion that functions as a timeless opener and lays a kindof epistemological groundwork for the subsequent entries. PaulZiche presents a thought-provoking analysis of a 1797 essay by
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) titled “On our knowing
and not-knowing the future” (“Vom Wissen und Nichtwissender Zukunft”). Herder, a theologian, anti-idealist philosopher,writer, and theoretician of the humanities, discusses in thispamphlet whether it is humanly possible and desirable to knowthe future, only to conclude that humans cannot know the futureand should not want to know what they are not able to know.
The philosopher acutely notes at the same time how it is just
as natural for humans to want to reach out into the future. Thequestion raised by Herder – and Ziche himself – in this chapter
is of interest far beyond the intriguing problem of understanding
Herder’s outlook. The ‘radical transformation’ that the question
posed in the paper signifies can be offered as an initial means to10Yonaoshi

approach yonaoshi, as Ziche convincingly demonstrates that theGerman thinker’s robust arguments can show how ideas that arerelevant for political transformation relate to epistemological,theological, psychological, aesthetic, anthropological, and otherissues.
Taking a stance concerning the future is a prerequisite for any‘radical transformation of the world’ as a political-social and/orreligious process of change. The options that we have for reachingout into the future, and the difficulties that we encounter in doingso, clearly are of key importance for the many challenges thatwe face today. The upheaval and renovation occurring during
the Meiji period in Japan (1868-1912) is the subject of Sonia
Favi’s informed second chapter in the book. Favi details how
the management of tourism at a (semi-)private level in the
newly-opened country in the late 19th century played a crucialrole in inspiring future governmental tourism policies, analysing
critically the circumstances that led to the creation of a publicorganization for promoting tourism, the Kihinkai, and exploring
the backgrounds and activities of its members. Tying theseactivities to Japan’s position on the international diplomaticstage in the late Meiji period, the main argument holds that theKihinkai initiated a pioneering project in tourism diplomacy,
devised at a time when governmental involvement in tourism
was still in its infancy even in Europe, representing an endeavor
in the early years of modern Japan that was innovative, evenfrom a global perspective.
The book then moves to the social-literary realm, whereKuroiwa Taku introduces the first Japanese translation of a famous
French medieval epic by Ban Takeo published in January 1941
under the title The Song of Roland: Islamic War (『ロオランの歌 回教戦争』). The chapter focuses on the unusual subtitleof this Japanese version of the French epic, closely examining
the explicit references to Islamic civilization in the Japaneserendition of the original text and its foreword and to the relative
contributions of its translator and its editor. Examining excerpts
from materials related to the translation, including separate works
by its editor and his mentors, all notable propagandists during

L. Milasi, C. Craig - Introduction

11

the war years, Kuroiwa illustrates the ideological and social
background of this Japanese rendition of The Song of Roland
and presenting new insight into the complicated place of Islamic
societies and their histories in wartime Japanese understandingsof Asia.
A thorough and compelling description of political and social
phenomena also characterizes Geraldine Castel’s chapter, which,building upon a significant body of scholarship documenting thedangers technology might represent for democracy, explores
whether in the context of the 2019 General Election in theUK evidence can be found of a possibility for yonaoshi in thesphere of digital politics. Sifting through the digital morass of
misinformation and manipulation that washed over the Internet
during that bitterly fought election, she identifies a trail that might
be followed out of the gloom and points to signs that resistance ismounting to counter the significant threats technology represents
for democracy, particularly in the three areas of disinformation,manipulation, and demobilization.
The following chapter by Cinzia Calzolari centers on Ainu
culture and recent developments in its people’s production in thefine arts. Using the case of Bikky Sunazawa (1931-1989), themost celebrated Ainu modern artist, the chapter explores how art
can function as a source of resilience and a site of resistance for acommunity afflicted by more than a century of collective trauma
related to systematic discrimination, racism, and the simplificationand commodification of its cultural heritage. Calzolari argues that
Sunazawa’s life and work are a clear example of how often art
and important artists who have not been provided with the space
and acknowledgement they deserve still somehow find a way
to stand out. Sunazawa renewed artistic forms and developed
an engaging approach, finding artistic success and bringing new
vigor and attention to issues surrounding Ainu civil rights withhis art and life.
The book also includes four chapters from younger scholars, avery welcome set of contributions that highlight the quality of theglobal research sustained by the Hasekura League’s promotionof international, cross-cultural research activity. Hoizumi Sora’s

12Yonaoshi

chapter takes up the topic of the Japanese wartime preoccupation
with overcoming modernity and relates it to prominent Catholic
ideologues, presenting new insight into the movement and its
cultural context. Samantha Audoly focusses on the presentationof the tonsure in the classical Japanese text Yoru no Nezame inher chapter, shedding new light on a Heian narrative unjustly
neglected outside Japan. Elena Fabbretti’s contribution provides
a compelling portrait of prominent modern Japanese writer Nagai
Kafū, exploring the hidden political dimensions of his later-life
retreat into nostalgia for the lost past. Finally, Dario Minguzzi
presents a discussion of social value attached to poets and theirworks in the early Heian period, providing new information
concerning and a rewarding analysis of the dynamic relationshipbetween Confucian scholarship and the composition of Sinitic
poetry revolving around the self-proclaimed ‘uselessness’ ofpoetry.
This volume was composed and assembled in the months
following the March 2020 symposium, and the progress tothe present has again been marked with arresting parallels to
the work’s theme. Just as the millenarian hopes that fueled theparoxysm of yonaoshi unrest in the Japanese countryside in
the last years of the failing shogunate were betrayed with theestablishment of the new Meiji order, so too did the optimism
and firm resolve of early 2020 give way to frustration andpessimism as the virus mutated and continued its spread. The
authors engaged in adapting and expanding their presentations
into book chapters did so in an often very different mindset andwith significantly altered expectations of the future than thosethat had informed their initial efforts. Thus, while it is to be
hoped that the current collection of essays can recreate in somesmall way the genuine and lively atmosphere of the symposium,the contradictory nature of the context in which the works wereoriginally conceptualized and presented and that in which they
were written down provides another dimension of interest and,perhaps, an additional layer of insight into the roots of yonaoshi
and the potential for a better world.