Conference Report

Globalizing the Social Sciences:
German-East Asian Entanglements in the 19th and 20th Century
Virtual symposium organized by the German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo (DIJ),
December 9, 2021, in cooperation with the German Historical Institute Rome and theChina Branch Office of the Max Weber Foundation as part of the Max Weber
Foundation’s collaborative research project “Knowledge Unbound”. Cosponsored by theGerman Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Convener: Yufei Zhou (DIJ Tokyo).
Participants: Erik Grimmer-Solem (Wesleyan University), Stefan Keppler-Tasaki (TheUniversity of Tokyo), MISHIMA Ken’ichi (Osaka University), Egas Moniz-Bandeira (MaxPlanck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie), ONOZUKA Tomoji (TheUniversity of Tokyo), Christina Philips (Max Weber Stiftung, China-Büro), Wolfgang
Schwentker (Osaka University), TAKII Kazuhiro (International Research Center forJapanese Studies), Carlo Taviani (Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom), TSUNEKI
Kentarō (Senshu University), Franz Waldenberger (DIJ Tokyo), Chunjie Zhang (Universityof California, Davis), Yufei Zhou (DIJ Tokyo).
Conference Details: https://dij.tokyo/globalizing
This symposium brought together historians and scholars from related disciplines torevisit the impact of the German-speaking social scientific knowledge on theinstitutional and intellectual development of the political, economic and sociologicalsciences in modern East Asia. The participants highlighted the transnational experiencesof the social scientists who helped facilitate the multilateral intellectual connectedness
between Germany and East Asia during the past century. On this basis, the participants
furthermore tackled the legacies and pitfalls left by this exchange in the context oftoday’s worldwide globalization and standardization of social science research.

After introductory remarks by Franz Waldenberger and Yufei Zhou, the symposium
started with MISHIMA Ken’ichi’s keynote lecture “Zum deutsch-japanischen Transfer der
Sozialwissenschaften: Rezeption, Eigenentwicklung, Sekten-Abkapselung”. Mishima
focused on three most representative topic fields that showcased the insularity of thepostwar Japanese intellectuals in their encounter with the German social scientificknowledge. The first topic field is centered around the question, why the critical theory
had found little resonance in postwar Japan’s search for its national regeneration.
Mishima argued that aside from the accelerated Americanization of Japan’s academiclandscape after the WWII and the general scepsis of Japanese left toward thecontemporary thoughts from the Federal Republic of Germany, the lack of philosophicalreflection on political and economic issues of the Japanese social scientists was also
responsible for their neglect of critical theory – one of the most significant social
theoretical attempts for national regeneration in their contemporary German-speakingacademia. The first topic field was followed by two closely interrelated clusters ofquestions, namely, the reception of the Marxian analysis of the capitalist society and the(mis)interpretation of Max Weber. Both topic fields, Mishima demonstrated, showcased
the ossified mindset of the Japanese intellectuals in engaging with Marx and Weber. In
the first case, the Japanese leftists were occupied by Marx’s exposition of capitalist
society that emerged in the context of around 1848 and had therefore lost explanatory
power in the age of Japan’s high economic growth. The Weber-community in Japan on
the other hand, was usually captured by the cult of Weber’s personality, whichhampered them from grasping Weber’s thesis of Calvinism-inspired rational life
management historically. As a result, related debates often ended fruitlessly, or even inpersonal attacks. Mishima concluded that the general lack of reflective-critical relation
to their research objects had prevented the Japanese intellectuals from effectively
establishing mutual communication with their German colleagues in the same field.
The first presentation following the keynote addressed the topic “Wechselwirkungen:
Odaka Tomoo und die deutsche Soziologie um 1930”. Wolfgang Schwentker traces thereciprocal influences of Odaka Tomoo’s political philosophy and his contemporary
German social scientists. By shedding light on Odaka’s masterwork Grundlegung derLehre vom sozialen Verband (1932, written in German) Schwentker argued that although
Odaka’s conception of social association as an “ideales Geistesgebilde“ showed strong
influences from Hans Kelsen and the Vienna School of Jurisprudence, his criticalengagement with Hans Freyers, George Simmel and some representative members of
the German Sociological Association also significantly shaped his understanding of therelations between individual and social association as well as the nature of sociology asa scholarly discipline. On the other hand, Schwentker claimed, the contemporary
German scholars generally agreed that Odaka contributed in separating sociology as a“science of reality” and sociology as an ontological science of association. Schwentker’spresentation was followed by a session focusing primarily on the Sino-German exchange
in the field of political and economic thoughts. Egas Moniz-Bandeira provided anoverview of the local discourses over the Prussian Constitution at the turn of the 20thcentury, with its focus on the German trained Chinese legal scholars. He came to theconclusion that the most of the Chinese intellectuals spoke for a gradual transformation
to the constitutional system, and they usually had reservations about the Prussian model.
Furthermore, Moniz-Bandeira discovered the active role of the Qing state in promoting
a transnational network of legal knowledge between China and the West. Christina
Philips illustrated the landscape of the Chinese social science students who sojourned inGermany during the interwar years. She observed that not few from those Chinese
students had later become the prominent figures of the CCP. However, Philips argued,
the “social sciences” in which these students were baptized, had brought forth little fruit
for the institutionalization and professionalization of the related disciplines in China.
Yufei Zhou put a spotlighted on the reception history of the German-speaking economic
thinkers in Republican China. By examining the Chinese scholars’ engagement withFriedrich List, Gustav Schmoller, Werner Sombart etc., she concluded that most Chinese
economists in the 1920s and 1930s found an historical parallel between Republican
China and the Germany of the mid 19th century. Therefore, Zhou argued, the early
Chinese intellectuals were primarily attracted by the protectionist measures proposedby the German economists, but less concerned with the philosophical traditions behindthem. In her comments on the keynote, Chunjie Zhang reinforced the importance of theidea of national salvation in the overall spectrum of China’s intellectual life at the turnof the 20th century. She further provided the perspective of the rise of New Confucianism
after the May Fourth Movement, which was deeply intertwined with different schoolsof ideas of reforming the Chinese state and society.
The second part began with Carlo Taviani’s investigation of the historiographical debate
on medieval business corporation and its legacy in Japan. Focusing on the various
interpretations of the Casa di San Giorgio, Taviani suggested that the financial features,for example, the limited liability, the tradability of shares and the management ofdividends and capital of Casa di San Giorgio were most carefully studied by the German
legal scholars and economists of the 19th century. He indicated that this insight hadpossibly sparked in Japan a debate over modern enterprise and modern human being inan entirely different context. TAKII Kazuhiro provided an extensive overview over theimpact of German Staatswissenschaft in Meiji Japan. Based on analysis of Itō Hirobumi’s
study tour to Europe (1882-1883) and his encounter with Lorenz von Stein, Takii pointed
out three major elements in Itō’s administrative policy that came into being under theinfluences of German Staatswissenschaft, namely, the reform of the imperial household
system, the fundamental reform of governmental organization and the founding of theimperial university. ONOZUKA Tomoji had shed light on the German national economist
Lujo Brentano and his role in shaping the development of social statistics in modernJapan. By highlighting the intellectual connectedness of Takano Iwasaburō and Fukuda
Tokuzō to Brentano and their later achievement in integrating social statistics into
Japan’s welfare policies, Onozuka claimed that the leftwing social research institutes inGermany and Japan in the 1920s suffered the same fate as the world history reached it
critical crossroad. In the same context, Erik Grimmer-Solem illustrated the developmentof the “Empirical Revolution” in German social sciences in the late 19th century andspotlighted the leading role of the University of Strasbourg. Focusing on the case of KarlRathgen, who was trained at Strasbourg and taught at the Imperial University of Tokyo,
Grimmer-Solem unveiled the multi-dimensional entanglements between Germany andJapan in establishing the applied social science. Lastly, TSUNEKI Kentarō traced thetransformation of thoughts and beliefs of the Japanese economic historian Ōtsuka Hisao
during the final years of the total war. By examining Ōtsuka’s changing interpretation ofMax Weber’s concept of “spirit of capitalism”, Tsuneki demonstrated that Ōtsuka’s
cautious and uncertain standpoint in the spring of 1944 was quickly replaced by adefinite supportive attitude towards the expansion of Japan’s productivity for the sakeof “overcoming the modernity”.
Overall, the presentations in this symposium shared the thesis that the German speakingsocial sciences were most enthusiastically embraced by the intellectuals in East Asia fromthe late nineteenth century to 1945. They showed that this legacy had significantly
pushed forward the evidence-based social governance and diversified the political
spectrum in East Asian countries in the first decades of the twentieth century. Thissymposium provided a multi-national perspective in the history of knowledge circulationand contributed insights on how social sciences - as an emerging field – weredisseminated globally and institutionalized, practiced and regenerated in the local
context.