“My Political Philosophy” (Chap1) Yukio Hatoyama Monthly journal “Voice” September Issue Aug 10th, 2009

Chap1 The Banner of Party Politician Ichiro Hatoyama

Among Japanese people today, "ai" is a particularly popular word which is usually translated as ‘love’. Therefore, when I speak of "yuai", which is written with the characters for ‘friendship’ and ‘love’, many people seem to picture a concept that is soft and weak. However, when I speak of yuai, I am referring to a concept that is actually rather different. What I am referring to is fraternity, as in liberté, égalité, fraternité, the slogan of the French Revolution. When my grandfather Ichiro Hatoyama translated one of the works of Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi into Japanese, he rendered the word fraternity as "yuai" rather than the existing translation of "hakuai". Therefore, when I refer to yuai, I am not referring to something tender but rather to a strong, combative concept that was a banner of revolution. 85 years ago, in 1923, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi published his work Pan-Europa, starting off the Pan-Europa Movement which eventually led to the formation of the European Union. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi was the son of an Austrian noble, who was posted to Japan as his country's minister, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an antiques dealer from Azabu, Tokyo. One of the count’s middle names was the Japanese name Eijiro.

In 1935, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi published The Totalitarian State against Man. The work includes severe criticisms of Soviet communism and Nazism as well as the reflections on the self-indulgence of capitalism in leaving such ideologies to flourish. Coudenhove-Kalergi believed that freedom forms the foundation of human dignity and that it is therefore unsurpassed in value. In order to guarantee freedom, he advocated a system of private ownership. However, he was despondent at how the severe social inequalities produced by capitalism had helped give rise to communism by creating an environment in which people aspired to equality, and also at how this had resulted in the emergence of national socialism as an alternative to both capitalism and communism. "Freedom without fraternity leads to anarchy. Equality without fraternity leads to tyranny"(Translation of the quote in Japanese). Coudenhove-Kalergi discussed how both totalitarianism, which tried to achieve equality at all costs, and capitalism, which had fallen into self-indulgence, resulted in disregard for human dignity and as such resulted in the treatment of human beings as a means instead of an end. Although freedom and a quality are important for human beings, if they are followed to fundamentalist extremes, they can both result in immeasurable horrors. Therefore, Coudenhove-Kalergi recognized the necessity of a concept that could achieve a balance and maintain respect for humanity. That is what he sought in the idea of fraternity.
"Man is an end and not a means. The state is a means and not an end". These are the first lines of The Totalitarian State against Man. At the time Coudenhove-Kalergi was putting ideas together for this publication, two different forms of totalitarianism were prominent in Europe, and his home country of Austria was being threatened with annexation by Hitler's Germany. Coudenhove-Kalergi traveled all around Europe advocating the cause of Pan-Europeanism and criticizing Hitler and Stalin. However, his efforts were in vain. Austria fell to the Nazis and Coudenhove-Kalergi was forced to flee in disappointed exile to the United States. The movie Casablanca is said to be based on his flight. When Coudenhove-Kalergi talks of a "fraternal revolution", he is referring to the combative philosophy that supported the fierce fight against both the left-wing and right-wing totalitarianism of that age. After the war, Ichiro Hatoyama, who was exiled from public office just as he was on the point of becoming Prime Minister, read the works of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi as he was living his enforced life of leisure. He was so struck by The Totalitarian State against Man that he took it upon himself to translate it into Japanese. His translation was published under the title Jiyu to Jinsei (Freedom and Life).

For Ichiro, who was an ardent critic of both communism and military led planned economies, The Totalitarian State against Man seemed to provide the most appropriate theoretical system for fighting back against the popularity of Marxism that began to swell in post-war Japan (the Socialist party, Communist party and labor movements) and for building a healthy parliamentary democracy. While fighting against the growing influence of the socialist and communist parties, Ichiro Hatoyama used word yuai (fraternity) as a banner in trying to bring down the bureaucrat-led government of Shigeru Yoshida and replace it with his own administration of party politicians. This was expressed succinctly by Hatoyama in the Yuai Seinen Doshikai Kouryo (Young People’s Fraternal Association Mission Statement), which Ichiro Hatoyama wrote in 1953. "Under the banner of liberalism, we will devote ourselves to a Fraternal Revolution, avoid extreme left wing and right wing ideologies, and work steadfastly to achieve a healthy and vibrant democratic society and build a free and independent cultural nation."

Ichiro Hatoyama's concept of fraternity continued to have influence as an undercurrent within Japan's post-war conservative political parties. Following the revision of the Japan-US security treaty in 1960, the Liberal Democratic Party changed direction significantly and began to prioritize policies of management-labor conciliation. These policies formed the foundation for Japan's period of rapid economic growth and are best symbolized by the LDP Basic Charter, a 1965 document which was written to serve as a kind of mission statement. The first chapter of this charter, which is entitled "Human Dignity", states, " human lives are precious, and are an end in and of themselves. The lives of human beings must never become a means". A similar phrase can be found in the LDP Labor Charter, a document which called for reconciliation with the labor movement. These phrases are clearly borrowed from the work of Coudenhove-Kalergi, and were very likely influenced by Ichiro Hatoyama's thinking on the subject of fraternity. These two charters contributed to the establishment of the Hatoyama and Ishibashi cabinets, and were both drafted by Hirohide Ishida, a politician who served as Labor minister in the Ikeda Cabinet and was responsible for setting Japan on a course towards conciliatory labor-management policies.