Abstract
The word ‘tenkō’ has been applied at various times to everything from the Meiji intellectual’s rediscovery of Japanese culture to the post-war student activist’s acceptance of a job with Mitsubishi.1 It refers to the act of renouncing an ideological commitment under pressure. The current usage of the term originated in the 1930s, when the majority of imprisoned members of the Japan Communist Party publicly renounced their party affiliations. The fact that an ideological commitment was given up, and the fact that the persons involved were in prison because of that commitment, suggests that tenkō is related to thought control.
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Notes and References
For detailed analyses of thought-control policies see Lawrence Ward Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan (Kodansha International Ltd, 1984);
Richard H. Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983);
and Richard H. Mitchell, Thought Control in Prewar Japan ( Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976).
Ikeda Katsu, Chian iji ho, in Shin hbgaku zenshū (Nihon hyōronsha, 1939) vol. xix, p. 24.
Data from Shihōshō, keijikyoku, Chian iji hō ihan jiken no saihan ni kansuru kenkyū, in Shisb kenkyū shiryō tokushii, vol. xlvi (December 1938), pp. 20–1.
See W. Allyn Rickett, ‘Voluntary Surrender and Confession in Chinese Law: The Problem of Continuity’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. xxx, no. 4 (August 1971).
Mizuno Shigeo, ‘Nihon kyōsantō dattai ni saishi tōin shokun ni “kans6”.’ Mimeographed manuscript, 23 May 1929.
Nabeyama Sadachika, Watakushi wa kyōsantō o suteta (Taitō shuppansha, 1949) pp. 145–60.
Gail Lee Bernstein, Japanese Marxist, A Portrait of Kawakami Hajime, 1879–1946 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976) p. 163.
See Tosawa Shigeo, ‘Shisō hanzai no kensatsu jitsumu ni tsuite’, reprinted in Shakai shugi undo, III, Gendai shi shiryō, vol, xvi (Misuzu shob6, 1965).
The process of tenkō is analysed in detail in Patricia G. Steinhoff, Tenkb: Ideology and Societal Integration in Prewar Japan (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1971) ch. 4.
Germaine Hoston, Tenkō: ‘Marxism and the National Question in Prewar Japan’, Polity, Autumn 1983;
and Shisō no kagaku kenkyi3kai (ed.), Tenkō, 3 vols (Heibonsha, 1959).
Matsuzawa Hiroaki argues for a different sort of emotional response linked directly to the organisational structure of the Party. See his ’“Theory” and “Organization” in the Japan Communist Party’, trans. J. Victor Koschmann, in J. Victor Koschmann (ed.), Authority and the Individual in Japan (University of Tokyo Press, 1978 ) pp. 108–27.
See Takeshi Ishida, ‘Conflict and its Accommodation’, in Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen and Patricia G. Steinhoff (eds), Conflict in Japan (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1984), for a succinct description of this social structure.
Tokuda Kyiiichi and Shiga Yoshio, Gokuchū jūhachinen (Jiji tsnshinsha, 1947).
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© 1988 Gail Lee Bernstein and Haruhiro Fukui
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Steinhoff, P.G. (1988). Tenkō and Thought Control. In: Bernstein, G.L., Fukui, H. (eds) Japan and the World. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08682-5_5
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