Maruyama Masao (1914–1996)

Maruyama Masao, historian of Japanese political thought and political scientist, was the son of the prominent political journalist Maruyama Kanji, who worked for the Ôsaka Asahi and Ôsaka Mainichi newspapers. After graduating from the First Higher School in Tokyo in 1934 he studied the history of western political thought at the Law Faculty of Tokyo Imperial University. In 1937 he became a graduate assistant, and in 1940 assistant professor at the same faculty. In the meantime he was persuaded by his teacher Nanbara Shigeru to delve into the texts of the Japanese tradition. Before he was drafted into the army in 1944 and posted to Pyongyang and later to Hiroshima, he had written three treatises on the development of political thought in premodern Japan for the academic Kokka gakkai zasshi (Journal of the Society of State Science). Appointed professor in 1950, he held the Chair in History of Political Thought of East Asia at Tokyo University. Compiled from the treatises mentioned above, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan was published in 1952. When his essay “Theory and Psychology of Ultra‐Nationalism” appeared in May 1946 in the opinion journal Sekai , it created a sensation. Maruyama decoded the emperor system ( tennôsei ) in an unprecedented way by focusing on the “magic power” its main ideas exerted on the thought and behavior of the Japanese. In 1956–7 he compiled this and several other scholarly works and essays on contemporary Japanese politics in Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics . In those years he frequently stated his opinions on major controversies of post‐war Japanese politics. His Japanese Thought became a bestseller in 1961 and serves as a point of reference for ongoing debates on the intellectual development of modern Japan to date. In 1961–2 Maruyama delivered lectures as a visiting professor at Harvard and Oxford universities. Shortly after the student movement had reached its climax, he had to abandon lecturing for health reasons some years prior to retirement. In 1972 his analysis in “Ancient Substrata of Japanese Historical Consciousness” attracted attention, since it seemed to be a “return to Japan.” In spring 1975 he once more left to lecture at Oxford and later at Princeton. He again immersed himself in the work of the Meiji enlightenment thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834–1901) and published as his final major book a profound commentary of Fukuzawa's Outline of a Theory of Civilization . Another major project, “Seitô to itan” (orthodoxy and heresy), remained unfinished. In addition to his specialized field, his profound knowledge of western political philosophy and music (especially the operas of Richard Wagner) was well known. Maruyama was appointed a member of the Japan Academy. He died on 15 August 1996 in Tokyo.