samurai ethics

A conversation with Kenya Kura, for The Postil Magazine

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Sep 1, 2021

Kenya Kura is currently an associate professor at Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University in Gifu prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the University of Tokyo (B.A. in Law) and obtained Ph.D. in Economics from University of California, San Diego in 1995. His original papers regarding the following conversation are “Why Do Northeast Asians Win So Few Nobel Prizes?” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2466/04.17.CP.4.15) and “Japanese north–south gradient in IQ predicts differences in stature, skin color, income, and homicide rate” (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000949).

Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you start by reminding us of your main findings about IQ differences?

Kenya Kura: My first motivation about IQ study, basically, came from the simple fact that some IQ researchers, way back, like Richard Lynn and Arthur Jensen among others, reported that East Asians are higher in their IQ. And I was just wondering if it was true or not, and then, I went into the field of whether or not there is some kind of gradient of intelligence among Japanese prefectures. And so far, what I have found is very much in line with other findings that the Northern Japanese are somewhat more intelligent than the Southern residents on these islands. About the gradient amount Japanese people, what I have found is not at all unique: in Northern Japan IQ tends to be probably about three points higher than the average Japanese. And in the Southern Island of Okinawa, for example, it is like seven points lower than the average. And pretty much, it varies. Sort of stylized pattern that I figured out for many times and very consistently. That’s pretty much it. Also, I’ve been probably more interested in the psychological differences between the East Asians and the Europeans than most of the European Psychologists.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Do you have something to say about the dysgenic patterns (i.e., the factors of genetic decline at the level of things like fertility gaps) in contemporary Japan—compared with the West?

Kenya Kura: Actually, Richard Lynn has been asking me for probably more than a decade, probably 15 years or so, if I can get some kind of evidence about this genetic effect in Japan. But unfortunately, I haven’t got a very solid dataset on the negative correlations—the so-called the famous dysgenic trend found almost everywhere in the world that more intelligent women tend to have fewer children. But, having said that, it’s very, very obvious that in Japan, this genetic effect is going on as much as in Western society. For example, Tokyo has the lowest fertility rate. And where most intelligent men and women tend to migrate when they are going to college or when they get a job and stuff like that. So, it’s apparent that most intelligent people are gathering in the biggest city areas like Tokyo, and Tokyo has the lowest fertility rate. So, it gives us some kind of evidence but, unfortunately, this is not a really solid analysis. I also figured out that the more educated you are, the fewer children you have. This is a very much stylized or prominent sort of phenomenon also found in Japan. So, I’m sure of this genetic effect.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Is it true that the taboo about genetic differences in intelligence is far less prevalent in Japan (and the other East-Asian countries) as it is in the West?

Kenya Kura: I have been working on this subject matter for at least 20 years, and I got the impression that the real taboo of this kind of research is pretty much the same as in Western society. But there is one very big difference: in Western culture you can always pursue your scientific theme or scientific field and prove you are right. And it’s a very Western idea: individuals have a right to speak up and try to prove they are right, but Asian culture doesn’t have that. So, the problem is that Japanese scholars are scholars in some sense, including myself, but, actually, most of them are just mimicking or repeating what Western people are doing. So, there aren’t many people actually trying to show or present their own thesis, their own theory, so to speak. So in that sense, if Western society or Western Science Society says A is right, B is wrong, in the Japanese society, it is pretty much subordinate to the whole attitude.

So, I would say that mainstream Japanese scholars tend to just follow the mainstream Western culture. Personally, as for this sensitive scientific field, I really don’t have any friend working on this matter. People, including myself, are afraid to be regarded as a very strange, cranky person who is saying: “look, in group data, we are so different that there isn’t much we can do to, for example, alleviate poverty in the third world or in developing countries.” If you say that, then people think, “What?” Even though you might be right—many people think you might be right—but it is not part of our culture to speak up, that’s why I don’t expect anything to come out of the Asian scientific society to have an influence on the Western science society.

Grégoire Canlorbe: While any evolutionary psychologist agrees, in principle, that human individuals are not tabula rasa genetically, most of them nonetheless refuse to admit that it applies to groups as well, i.e., that human groups exhibit as much specific genetic characteristics as do human individuals. In other words, all agree that a human individual (whoever he is) is endowed with a specific individual genome that contributes to shaping his psychological identity; but only a minority agrees that a human society (whatever it is) is also endowed with a specific collective genome that contributes to shaping its cultural identity. How do you account for that duality?

Kenya Kura: For this sort of question, I have pretty much the same opinion as other IQ researchers of this kind. Basically, as you said, many people agree about the genetic differences between individuals whereas, when it comes to group differences, they try to negate the existence of genetic differences. So, yes, there is a dichotomy, here. But I understand this idea because their point of view—because everybody wants to be a nice person. Right? So, if you are seeking for truth only as a scientist, that is fine. But we are not some sort of abstract existence without any physical reality because everybody around you feels awkward probably if you say: yeah, but, you know, group difference makes a lot of sense. And most of the sort of talk that inequality existing in this world is probably explained by genetic differences, as Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen said, makes all the people around you feel very, very awkward or strange about your political sort of personality or your political view, itself. I can say only probably this much. So, many people are just politically persuaded not to mention—not only that—not to recognize, trying to make a lot of effort not to recognize the difference and try to negate the fact. That’s my understanding.

Grégoire Canlorbe: It seems the Indo-European cultural pattern that is the tripartite hierarchy of society for the benefit of a warlike, sacerdotal aristocracy with a heroic ethos (i.e., the ethos of self-singularizing and self-immortalizing oneself through military exploits accomplished in contempt for material subsistence) has been present or paralleled in traditional Japan. Do you suspect an Indo-European influence in Japan?

Kenya Kura: Oh, I have sort of an idea. It’s not very much proven, but Japanese society or Japanese people are basically a hybrid, about 30 percent of the original so-called Jomons before the Chinese or Koreans came, about two thousand years ago. And this Korean or, I would say, Chinese genetic factor constitutes about 70 percent. So 70 percent of Chinese plus 30 percent of indigenous Japanese people is the basic genetic mix of current Japanese people. And this kind of huge 70 percent explains the East Asian characteristics. Basically, it gives us looks like mine, right? Probably, any European can notice that Japanese, Korean, Chinese typically have different face characteristics. And although, as I said, Japanese people have 70 percent of retaining this genetic tendency, the 30 percent remains in our genetic structure. And I suspect that this natural 30 percent gives us more of a war prone personality than the Chinese or the Koreans. So, that’s why we put a lot of war emphasis, like the Samurais’ theory, as you might know: more martial arts, real battle and war, and really domination, all over Japan. That’s my understanding.

Grégoire Canlorbe: The traditional Japanese have been highly creative and sophisticated in the martial-arts field—to the point of surpassing the Westerners from that angle. Yet only the traditional Westerners have come to transpose to the field of science the art of fighting, i.e., to transpose to science the spirit of competition, innovation, and assertiveness associated with physical combat. How do you make sense of it?

Kenya Kura: It’s a very good point—an interesting point for me, too. My understanding about it is that, for example, French people seem to like judo a lot. I have heard that it’s very popular. So, for example, judo, or we have a similar sort of art that is huge called kendo. But that kind of martial art, as you said, has been very sophisticated in this country, and also in China, to some degree, maybe even more so. But that gives me an idea of science itself because science itself is equally into any kind of sort of natural—not only natural reality, but also the analytical view for every kind of phenomenon. So, for example, we don’t have social science, and we just import it from the West. It’s the same. I mean, natural science was imported from the West. And when it comes to science, it’s also based on logic—a heavy dose of logic and mathematics, usually. None of the Asians were interested in mathematics, at least not as much as Western people had been. So, when it comes, for example, to geometry, even the ancient Greeks were very much interested in it. The Chinese people never developed the equivalent of that kind of logic. And it’s also true that mathematics has been developed almost exclusively in Northern Europe within the last five hundred years. And Chinese people, although they were in higher numbers than White Europeans, they didn’t develop anything. Neither did the Japanese or the Koreans.

So, the problem is that East Asians tend to neglect the importance of logic. They don’t see that much. They just talk more emotionally, trying to sympathize with each other, and probably about political rubbish, more than Western people, but they don’t discuss things logically, nor try to express their understanding and make experiments to determine if something is true or not. Scientific inquiry is very much unique to Europeans. That’s my understanding. So, although it seems like East Asians are very quick to learn things—the Chinese are probably the quickest to learn anything—but they’ve never created anything. That’s my idea. So, they don’t have the scientific mentality, a sort of inquiry or sufficient curiosity to make science out of sophisticated martial arts.

It may be true that the “traditional Japanese have been highly creative and sophisticated in the martial-arts field—to the point of surpassing the Westerners from that angle.” But I guess nowadays even judo or any kind of martial arts is more developed or more sophisticated, a lot more sophisticated, in European countries. The Japanese or Chinese created the original martial arts. But their emphasis—especially the Japanese, they put too much emphasis on their psychic rather than physical power. So, when you look at any kind of manga or anime, the theme is always the same: the rather small and weak main character has got some kind of psychic power and a special skill to beat up the bigger and stronger enemy. And it’s pretty much like “the force” in the Star Wars movies. But in the case of Japan, it’s a lot more emphasized. So, they tend to sort of think less about physical power and more about the psychic personality kind of thing. That’s the sort of phenomenon that we have, which shows some lack of analytical ability from my point of view.

Grégoire Canlorbe: A common belief is that the Japanese people is both indifferent to the culture of Western peoples—and genetically homogenous to the point of containing no genius. Yet contemporary Japan is displaying a variety of geniuses in videogames (like Shigeru Miyamoto), music (like Koji Kondo), etc., and is quite opened to the Western world culturally. Videogames like Zelda and Resident Evil are highly influenced by the West: the Western heroic fantasy in the case of the former; and George Romero’s movies in the case of the latter. Some Japanese actors (or movie directors) enjoy worldwide fame, like Hiroyuki Sanada who is portraying Scorpion in the new Mortal Kombat movie.

Kenya Kura: About the sort of personality and the intelligence mixture of the geniuses, I guess—Dr. Templeton and Edward Dutton—I’m sure that you talked with him—Edward Dutton wrote a very good book about why genius exists and what kind of mixture of personality and intelligence we need to make a real genius. And I do agree basically with Edward Dutton’s idea that we don’t have the sort of nice mixture of intelligence and, at the same time, a sort of very strong mindset to stand out from other people. The Japanese tend to be among others too much. So, they can’t really speak up and have a different kind of worldview from other people. As I said, Japanese scholars tend to rather avoid discussion or serious conflict of some point of view against other scholars so, that’s why there is no progress or no need to prove what you’re saying is true or not. That is a problem.

Okay, so, this is just a part of answering your question. And the other thing is—oh, but I’ve been talking about science—in order to be a scientist, you have to basically propose some kind of thesis and at least show some evidence that your thesis is right or proved in pieces. But when it comes to fine arts or Manga, Anime or literature or movies or games, you don’t really have to argue against other people. You just create what you feel is beautiful or great—whatever. So, because Japanese culture basically avoids discussions or arguments against each other, they are more inclined to create something like visual arts. That’s why I believe Japanese manga or anime have been very popular also among Europeans. Probably including yourself, right? I’m sure you’ve played or traded video games from Japan.

You talked about Hiroyuki Sanada. He’s one of the most famous action movie stars, like Tom Cruise type. So, I understand what you wrote, here. And the other thing is—it’s pretty much the same. In the Edo period, about 300 years ago, there was fine arts called ukiyo-e. These paintings and printings were sold to the public. And the French impressionists in the 19th century were, as far as I know, very attracted to those ukiyo-e and they got some inspirations from them and how to draw the lighting or nature itself. So, I do believe that Japanese people are probably genetically talented to some degree. I would dare to say they’re talented in visual arts. But it does not mean that they are talented in science. These activities are totally different, which gives me a very interesting sort of contrast.

Grégoire Canlorbe: In intergroup competition, the Empire of Japan was highly successful militarily—until 1945’s nuclear bombing, obviously. How do you account for that performance?

Kenya Kura: A German soldier was a very effective soldier, even compared with Americans or Swedes. So, I believe it’s very similar in the case of Japan. The Japanese tend to be tightly connected to each other, which gives them a very high advantage in military activity. That’s why they first tried to really dominate the whole of Asia, and, eventually, they had a war against the US in order to sort of get the whole Chinese continent. And, of course, Japan was defeated. But Japan is not so much endowed with natural resources like oil or coal, or whatever. In some sense, we’re very strong in military actions, it’s true. So, it’s very similar to the story that the Chinese are probably more inclined to study and learn original things like Confucius or the old stuff in order to show how intelligent they are, whereas the Japanese tend to be more war prone, more warmongers. They think more seriously and put more emphasis on military actions than the Chinese or Koreans. So, that’s why Japan, in the last century, first invaded Korea, and then, moved into the Chinese continent and defeated Chinese army. That’s just how I understand it. It’s very similar to German history.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Democracy is commonly thought to allow for an “open society” in which every opinion can be discussed—and in which ideological conflict can be settled through exclusively peaceful, electoral means, without the slightest drop of blood. Does the democratic regime in Japan since 1947 corroborate that vision?

Kenya Kura: You’re right. Exactly. You are French, so you have a serious understanding of how people can revolt against the ruling class because of the French Revolution, which is the most famous revolution in human history. So you have a serious understanding about the existence of conflict and that the product of this conflict may be fruitful, good for all human beings. But, unfortunately, Asia does not have that sort of culture that if you say something true and then, have a serious conflict of opinions about it, it may turn out to have a fruitful result. That’s very Western to me.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add a few words?

Kenya Kura: I’ve probably said pretty much everything in a scattered manner, but let me emphasize one thing: usually, for any kind of European person, the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese look very similar or the same, but genetically, we are probably somewhat different, much as, for example, Slavic language people and the Germanic language group. So there might be some kind of microdifference of this kind which may, especially in the future, explain the dynamics of History. That is what I want to know and try to understand.

That conversation was initially published in The Postil Magazine‘s September 2021 issue

A conversation with Pierre Bergé, for The Postil Magazine

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Sep 1, 2020

Pierre Bergé—born on 14^th November 1930 and deceased on 8^th September 2017—was a French award-winning industrialist and patron. He co-founded the fashion label Yves Saint Laurent, and was a longtime business partner (and onetime life partner) of the eponymous designer.

A supporter and personal friend of François Mitterrand, Bergé was currently described as a social liberal. Bergé participated in all the campaign rallies of François Mitterrand (except in 1981, when he did not vote for Mitterrand). Bergé later served as President of the Association of the Friends of Institut François-Mitterrand.

A longtime fan and patron of opera, Mitterrand appointed Bergé president of Opéra Bastille on 31 August 1988. He retired from the post in 1994, becoming honorary president of the Paris National Opera. Bergé was also president of the Comité Jean Cocteau, and the exclusive owner of all the moral rights of all of Jean Cocteau’s works. In 2010, he bought a stake in Le Monde newspaper, along with investors Matthieu Pigasse and Xavier Niel.

A supporter of gay rights, Bergé supported the association against AIDS, Act Up-Paris, and assumed ownership of the magazine Têtu. He was also one of the shareholders of Pink TV, before withdrawing. In 1994, he participated in the creation of the AIDS association Sidaction, and he became its president in 1996 until his death. Bergé was finally the author of several essays devoted to Yves Saint Laurent, as well as to freedom and republican values. He published in 2010 a book, Lettres à Yves, which was translated into English with the title Yves Saint Laurent: A Moroccan Passion, in 2014.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Do you approve the decision of the international community, during the Paris conference on the Middle East, to condemn “the colonization of the Palestinian territories by Israel”?

Pierre Bergé: I approve this decision. I am absolutely in favor of the State of Israel, but just as indisputably pro-Palestinian. I am extremely wary of Mr. Netanyahu; in fact, I do not trust him much more than Mr. Trump. I am extremely shocked that one can, while being from the Jewish people, the martyred people, the people of the Shoah, challenge territories to other peoples.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Donald Trump was described by gay journalist Milo Yiannopoulos as the most pro-gay candidate in the electoral history of the United States of America. Do you subscribe to this judgment? What is your view, in general, on the election of Donald Trump?

Pierre Bergé: For the moment, it seems to me that the American President the most favorable to homosexual rights, and in general human rights, was none other than Barack Obama. My admiration for this man is immense and unwavering. I am waiting to see what Trump will do. With regard to election results, not only in America but around the world, I would say that people are tired of the commonly agreed assumptions and let themselves be tempted by new ideas. I fully understand that, although I do not approve their choices.

Having said that, I would also like to point out, without questioning the American institutions and the Electoral College system, that Hillary Clinton, a woman I do not greatly appreciate, was almost 3 million votes ahead of Donald Trump. One must be careful not to overestimate the enthusiasm of the American people for the man who will make the oath this week [week of Monday 16 January 2017]. Without necessarily incriminating the American electoral system, one can still deplore this gap between the choice of ballot boxes and the outcome finally imposed. This situation is not unique; it has many antecedents, and not just on the American soil. Bertrand Delanoë, in 2001, was also elected mayor of Paris while he was a minority in numerical terms.

Grégoire Canlorbe: “A woman,” writes Yukio Mishima in Forbidden Colors, “is never as exhilarated with happiness as when she discovers desire in the eyes of a man.” As a fine connoisseur of the feminine soul, do you hold this remark as insightful?

Pierre Bergé: This Mishima’s quotation echoes what Yves Saint Laurent said about the beauty of a woman in love. “The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves.” Do not think I am bringing everything back to Saint Laurent, I am not so candid! But you will agree that the resemblance of his intuition with that of Mishima is striking. What Saint Laurent had in mind, with this statement, is that a woman does not need clothes to be happy, because the essential lies elsewhere.

You describe me as a fine connoisseur of the feminine soul. This may be true, but I nonetheless think I am more aware of the male soul. As to whether I agree with Mishima, it seems to me that he is somewhat reductive in his statement. I believe that it is every human being who is never so happy as when he discovers sexual attraction or admiration in the eyes of another human being, whether the latter is a man or a woman.

Grégoire Canlorbe: It is not uncommon, among conservative circles, to deplore what they perceive as a pronounced disdain for the military and religious functions – the warrior and the priest – in post-1789 society, while “merchants,” i.e., entrepreneurs and capitalists, are excessively valued in the nation. Would you say that the captains of industry are precisely the warriors of the capitalist era, the samurai of modern times, by virtue of their conquering character, their sense of abnegation, and their competitive spirit?

Pierre Bergé: Georges Clémenceau said, of the French Revolution, it is to take “en bloc.” In other words, if one adheres to the values of the Revolution, one must also accept the bloodbaths that accompanied the promotion of the ideals of 1789; and what the Revolution has brought to the world is too great and too decisive for us to be entitled to deny it in the name of the atrocities committed during the Terror. I regret it obviously, but the Revolution is to be taken in its entirety, with its good and its bad sides.

Your question is interesting. Unfortunately, your idealist portrait of businessmen is far from reality. I am often taken aback when I hear a politician, such as those who present themselves during this campaign period, claiming to be concerned exclusively with the fate of France. The truth is that a politician cares, in the first place, for his own interests – and only secondly for France. But those you call captains of industry, for their part, have no ounce of patriotic consideration. They care so little about the interests of France that they do not hesitate to relocate their production sites or to settle in tax havens.

I may surprise you, but I am not admiring the business company. I remember talking about it with President Mitterrand, who had somewhat let himself be distracted at the end of his first seven-year term. “You would make a mistake,” I told him in essence, “if you thought the company was there to create jobs.” He was visibly intrigued by my remark. “In reality,” I continued, “the company is there to create profits; and the day it can make a profit without creating a job, it does it.” This is all the more true at the moment. Like the assembly line a century ago, the robotization is about to allow the companies to do without a considerable part of manpower; and this is what the company is there for.

The company is there to produce, sell, negotiate, and optimize; and all the rest, I tell you straight away, is bullshit. If you ask big business leaders, you will certainly hear them claiming great principles, such as, the fight against unemployment, the economic influence of France, or its leadership in technological innovation. No doubt they will agree that they are the samurai of modern times. But let them perpetuate the custom of seppuku, if they really want to walk in the footsteps of the samurai of old! I fear very much that you will not find many who have the courage to give themselves a “beautiful death,” or even to renounce some juicy profit, to do honor to France.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Feminist sociologists are generally inclined to denounce all kinds of voluntary female behavior, particularly with regard to sexual preferences or dress habits, on the grounds that these behaviors reflect “symbolic violence” from males. Yet the veil often escapes their warnings, and they even see in it a mark of feminine dignity and resistance to the diktats of male lust. How do you explain this apparent complacency on the part of feminists towards Islam?

Pierre Bergé: Your ascertainment surprises me. It seems to me that it is a minority of feminists, not the majority of them, who make this complacent speech vis-à-vis Islam. You do well, however, to draw attention to the possible straying of today’s feminism. Our society, imbued with gender theory, wants to make women and men equal. But equality is a dreadful word. Men and women are certainly equal before the law; they are not equal in anything else.

We evoked above the Revolution of 1789. As beautiful as the triptych on the pediment of the French Republic is, the choice of the term equality was a regrettable error. The word justice would have suited our motto “freedom, equality, fraternity” better. No human being, male or female, is equal to another, except that everyone has the right to freedom and to the pursuit of happiness. Men and women are certainly unequal; it does not follow that women are inferior to men in dignity and freedom; they are simply different.

My friend Louise de Vilmorin used to say, in essence, that if men and women were not there to perpetuate the human race, if they had no sexual attraction, a woman would walk next to a man like a rabbit next to a hat. Women and men belong to two different worlds. I have many female friends, whom I respect; and I spent my life defending women. But in wanting to make women absolutely equal to men, one ends up preaching total nonsense. The search for parity is one such nonsense. Hiring a woman on the pretext that she is a woman cancels the exercise of judgment on her objective skills, and prevents a sincere appreciation of her work and her talents.

That said, that women are rarely at the level of men in working life, and there are persistent inequalities in treatment. I will not dispute it. After centuries of female oppression by religion and the law, society is marked by old power struggles; and one cannot seriously expect the gap between men and women in business, and elsewhere, to be leveled overnight. There is no denying injustice. But denouncing this state of affairs is not an alibi to promote the egalitarian feminism on which I have just expressed myself.

As concerns, more particularly, the Islamic veil, there is undoubtedly an attempt to standardize the hijab, even the full veil, in our Western lands. I obviously denounce this trend, because I see the Islamic veil for what it is: a perfect instrument of legal and religious oppression, which is out of place in a lawful society. No coherent defender of the freedom and dignity of women can rejoice at the trivialization of this dress custom in public space and in homes.

The contemporary complacency with regard to the Islamic veil takes on a paradoxical allure, when we know to what extent the emancipatory ideals of feminism, indisputably incompatible with traditional Islam, have moreover conquered our era, not without some excesses which I have spoken of above. In your question, you do well to suggest this tension. But it is much less the feminist intellectuals and activists, rather the previously mentioned “merchants,” who advocate a spirit of misguided tolerance. I recently spoke in the media to denounce the “Islamic fashion” that several major clothing brands adopted.

When the sense of priorities is reversed to the point that the spirit of profit prevails over the values of the Republic, one can effectively claim that the City is corrupted by an excessive valuation of the market function. I told you that I do not admire, personally, the business company. I admire art and creation; that’s true. But I hate commerce and marketing. In addition, I have always felt that a fashion designer was there to embellish women, to encourage them on their path of freedom, and not to be the accomplice of misogynistic manners that are hostile to the liberal principles which are theoretically those of Westerners and, in particular, of the French since the Revolution.

Grégoire Canlorbe: “A very common error (…) consists in believing,” Konrad Lorenz tell us in his 1972 essay, Behind the Mirror, “that feelings of love and respect cannot be associated together (…) I have the absolute certainty to have never loved and respected a friend more deeply than the undisputed leader of our group of children of Altenberg, four years my elder (…) Even those of my age whom I would classify (…) as inferior to me, always had some something in themselves that impressed me and in what I felt them to be superior to me (…) I don’t think that one can truly love someone whom one looks down on, from all point of view.” In regard to your own experience, do you subscribe to this analysis of love?

Pierre Bergé: All those I have loved in my life were also people I admired. I endorse Konrad Lorenz’s wording: I do not believe either that one can truly love someone that one looks down on, from all points of view. It is true that one can have a very strong sexual attraction towards someone whom one despises. One can even get on remarkably well with him in the bedroom. But if one does not admire him, one may well be subject to his animal charm, sensitive to his dangerous side, but it will not be love – even if this means deluding oneself about the tenor of feelings that one experiences towards him.

I would add that one can love and admire someone who is self-destructing before one’s eyes. It happened to me; and it was with a heavy heart that I had to bring myself to leave Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s. Addiction is a disease just like cancer or depression. Would you stop admiring and cherishing someone because he has a tumor?

Grégoire Canlorbe: It is not uncommon to hear that a “deregulated” market economy necessarily leads to growing income inequalities which state intervention is fortunately able to correct. Opposed to this first approach is notably that which estimates that, whatever the economic system considered, communism or capitalism, the market economy left to its own devices or accompanied by a redistributive system, the state of affairs is such that 20% of the population holds 80% of the national income. Which of these two opinions do you prefer?

Pierre Bergé: The second option that you evoke seems to me to present what has actually happened so far. All economic systems have experienced a highly unequal distribution of wealth. I do not know whether one should see in it the manifestation of an eternal law of human affairs, inscribed in the natural order of things. But as a man of the Left, I would prefer, of course, that it be possible to correct this tenacious tendency for the majority of national income to be concentrated in the hands of a minority of the population. That said, I am no longer fifteen; and I am no longer under the spell of communist or Proudhonian ideals. I will not tell you, like a François Hollande, that finance is my “enemy.” But I keep being shocked, in the age of globalization, by the indecent distribution of wealth and the dubious practices of certain companies.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Which one, between Putin’s Russia, religiously Orthodox, and militant Islam, do you currently see as the greatest threat to the freedom of women and minorities?

Pierre Bergé: Both seem to me to be dangerous, beyond the shadow of a doubt; but the greatest danger assuredly comes from militant Islam. I am aware that the Orthodox Church is close to power and that the Patriarch of Moscow is making an authoritarian speech on social issues. Even though homosexuality was decriminalized in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR, the government expressly talks about fighting “homosexual propaganda,” in other words, the political and social demands by the LGBT community.

The fact remains that the terrorist acts which strike France and other countries in the world are concretely coming from the Muslim community. It is easy to notice that it is not the Orthodox who provoke a crash, besiege an embassy, assassinate journalists and caricaturists, take hostages in a supermarket, commit assaults in a performance hall, the street or a Christmas market, and enslave men and women.

Grégoire Canlorbe: A fashionable assertion is that Western societies have secularized to the point of giving rise to a spiritual void unprecedented in human history. In the opinion of Vilfredo Pareto, in his 1917 treatise The Mind and Society, the Christian religion has only given way to the democratic religion.

“The acts of worship of the Christian religion,” he writes, “have diminished among modern civilized peoples, but have been partially replaced by acts of the worship of socialist saints, humanitarian saints, and especially of the worship of the State and of the god People (…) The Catholic processions have almost disappeared, but have been replaced by ‘processions’ and by political and social ‘demonstrations’ (…) For many of those who deviate from the Christian religion, Christian enthusiasm has changed to ‘social,’ or ‘humanitarian,’ or ‘patriotic,’ or ‘nationalist’ enthusiasm; there is something for every taste.”

Do you subscribe to Vilfredo Pareto’s iconoclastic thesis, or to the common opinion that we have indeed come out of religion in the West?

Pierre Bergé: This analysis that you cite is perhaps iconoclastic, but it does not hold water. To begin with, it is wrong that the Christian religion is on the decline in the world. We mentioned earlier the Orthodoxy that is rising from the ashes. Furthermore, it is excessive to present democracy as a substitute for the Christian religion. In fact, democracy is simply not a religion. But it is quite true that men on the left regrettably tend to classify all Catholics as reactionary rightists.

I like to say that men on the left, to whom the Republic very much owes its existence, have emptied the churches to fill the museums. I totally agree with it. But we certainly have not replaced Catholic worship with socialist worship. It is foolishness to pretend that we would worship a “State god” or a “People god.” The state does have a significant weight in society; and the ambient discourse is indeed articulated around the values of assistantship, secularism and the nation. But none of this has ever taken on nor could have ever taken on a religious character.

I fail to see how Christian practices and beliefs would have diminished on the grounds that democratic institutions were gaining ground. They have certainly decreased, at least in France, but if they have done so, it is certainly not in the context of a competition with the values and customs of the Republic. The reason for this relative decline of Christianity, more particularly Catholicism, is to be found in the obsolete side of its beliefs and practices. After having been in the spotlight for two thousand years, not without the support of force, to the extent that the Church burned heretics, they are simply going out of fashion.

In the end, what has changed with the secular Republic is not that a new official cult has tried to supplant Catholic worship, but that religious affairs have been relegated to the private sphere. This was not the case before. Let us not forget that the Catholic Church has persecuted the Protestant community from which I come. Even if religion now belongs to the intimate sphere, and no longer to the political sphere, the religious beliefs of Catholic citizens have of course an impact on their electoral preferences and on their positions about a given subject in society or a given draft law.

As evidenced by a recent survey, relayed last week by an article in Le Monde, it is however a biased perception that every Catholic is opposed to marriage for all or to surrogacy. In reality, there are multiple scenarios among Catholic voters. A number of them are politically right-wing, when it comes to the economy, and yet sensitive to left-wing concerns about so-called social issues. I think, therefore, that we have to take a step back from the overly obvious prejudices that we leftwing men commonly share about Catholics.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add a few words?

Pierre Bergé: You did well to request this interview. Now I would like it if you tell me about yourself.

That conversation with Grégoire Canlorbe, which happened in January 2017, was initially published in French in Revue Arguments, in Mars 2017; then published in English in The Postil Magazine, in September 2020

A conversation with Tsutomu Hashimoto, for Revue Arguments

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Oct 19, 2017

Tsutomu Hashimoto is a Professor of Economics at Hokkaido University in Japan, obtained a Ph.D. at Tokyo University, and published various books on liberalism and philosophy of economics in Japanese. He was a visiting researcher at New York University from 2000 to 2002 and at Aix-Marseille University in 2016. Contact: hasimoto@econ.hokudai,ac,jp

Grégoire Canlorbe: Among the major quests of your lifetime, one project that is dear to your heart consists in constructing an original theory of liberalism from the angle of a “philosophical anthropology of the social sciences.” Could you develop the origin of this vocation and the present lines of force of your perspective?

Tsutomu Hashimoto: So far, I have published nine and edited five books in Japanese, all related to the theme of liberalism. You mention “philosophical anthropology of social sciences,” which is actually the title of my second book. In this book, I developed my philosophical foundation of liberalism, focusing on the concept of “person” in the context of philosophical anthropology since Max Scheler (1874–1928).

However, before explaining this, let me discuss my experiences on three epoch-making or breaking crises of our age, since all of these led me to a new consideration on liberalism. The first was the Revolutions of 1989 that lead to the fall of communism in Eastern European countries. The second were the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, which actually happened during my stay in New York. The third was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, in 2011.

First, the Revolutions of 1989 gave me the starting point of my study. At that time, I was 22 years old and was simply shocked by the corruption in Eastern European communist countries. Many Japanese intellectuals who influenced me in the 1980s were sympathetic to Marxist ideologies and they investigated new possibilities or frontiers on Marx’s text in terms of developing contemporary philosophy. In fact, many creative social theories in Japan emerged from this line of investigation. However, in 1989, I realized that these theoretical contributions were entirely useless in terms of normative issues.

At that time, I also had the chance to read F. A. Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty during a seminar at my university in 1989. However, since the professor was a stubborn Hayekian and talked about Hayek authoritatively, I came to read Hayek critically. Meanwhile, I happened to find M. Rizzo and G. O’Driscoll’s stimulating book, Economics of Time and Ignorance, in my college library. When I found this book, I intuitively realized that it would be very important for both my life and research. In fact, after 10 years, I translated it into Japanese and, thanks to Professor Mario Rizzo, I had the chance to be a visiting researcher with New York University from 2000 to 2002.

My first book, The Logic of Liberty: Popper, Mises and Hayek, published in 1994, is about my investigation on liberalism as anti-communism. During the entire 20th century, the most important issue in the field of economic thought was “which regime is better or more desirable between capitalism and socialism?” Since this question cannot easily be settled at a theoretical level, the debate proceeded up to the stage of scientific methodology, and many people examined which side’s methodology or epistemology was scientifically legitimate between capitalism and socialism. This was a unique situation, because methodological statements carried some normative implications of these ideologies.

For example, methodological individualism carried implications on normative individualism. However, in my analysis, this situation gradually collapsed or faded. As such, methodological debates between capitalist and socialist camps have ceased to represent normative conflicts, partly due to their logical endogenous problems and partly due to historically exogenous elements. In other words, methodological investigation became de-ideologized or eliminated its “thought-ladenness.” In order to show what happened with the methodologies of the 20th century, I developed my “functional theory of methodology” and presented a thesis in which I call upon the “thought-ladenness of methodology.” This is, in short, the theoretical core of my first book.

The second book, as I already mentioned, is a philosophical investigation, in which I proposed a new model of what I call “problem-subject.” In this book, I analyzed the achievements of Max Weber and the subsequent Weberians and constructed an original system of philosophical anthropology.

After working on this book, I went to New York for two years as a visiting researcher and experienced the 9/11 terrorists attack in 2001 there. I was frightened not only by this incident, but also by the subsequent situation in New York. For example, I was stuck in an underground car a number of times for reasons unknown to me. Since I was alarmed by this situation in New York, I changed my research interests from Austrian economics to international political economy in general. The achievement of this change was reflected in the publishing of my third book, The Conditions of Empire, in 2007.

In this book, I first developed the ideas of “trans-conservatism” and “spontaneitism” as certain types of liberal enterprise in a global context. From this original perspective, I proposed two policies. One is how to create “world money” through Tobin’s tax and associated avoidance activities. The other is how to promote a liberal society by adjusting tariffs.

After writing this book, I published several other books on liberalism. Finally, in 2011, Japan experienced the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. This was the third crisis for me and a crisis of the legitimacy of the Japanese government as well. Facing this disaster, I conceived the nature of the problem from an Austrian perspective and pointed out that the constructivist formation of the electricity supply is at issue. From a broad perspective, capitalism in the 21st century would be driven by people’s ecological concerns.

In my book, Lost Modernity, published in 2012, I tried to answer the following question: what type of driving force is possible in our age for capitalism? Theoretically, I divided contemporary history after World War II into three periods: modernity, post-modernity, and lost modernity. Then, I investigated the driving force of capitalism in the age of lost modernity. The answer would be neither “modern diligent work,” nor “post-modern expanded desire.” I will talk about my investigation later during our interview but, in any event, this book was based on my observation on the contemporary Japanese society.

Therefore, I have developed my idea on liberalism by facing the three epoch-making crises: the Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

I call my original theory of liberalism “growth-oriented liberalism” or “spontaneitism.” More recently, I developed a theory on liberalism by extending the implications of Dogen’s masterpiece, Shouhou Genzou (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), written in 13th century Japan. I am still trying to broaden my original perspective, especially in the field of economic philosophy.

For example, I am targeting a theory of “capability as potentiality,” as opposed to Amartya Sen’s “capability as ability,” a “vita activa” model of interventionism, as opposed to Cass Sunstein’s libertarian paternalism, and so forth. Hopefully, I would systematize these theoretical studies and present a new image of the liberal ideal. Overall, this will be a work on the art of governance from the perspective of a Hayekian horticultural expert, which I am still working on.

Grégoire Canlorbe: In economics, you esteem the Austrian methodology and Weltanschauung very highly. When it comes to enlightening the specificities of Japanese capitalism, how do you sum up the conceptual advantages of Austrian economics over other approaches such as Weberian sociology or Marxian theory?

Tsutomu Hashimoto: Considering the idea of catching up with western capitalism, I think that there is no great worldview or Weltanschauung that has contributed to explaining it in detail. This is true in the Japanese case as well. Neither Max Weber nor Karl Marx provides us with any significant theory on this topic. Austrian economics, however, might have a normative answer. This school would propose that developing countries be incorporated into the global network of market economy through deregulation of the domestic market and acceptance of capital from advanced countries as much as possible.

This type of normative perspective would explain the successful history of capitalism in small countries such as Singapore, but would not explain other successful economic developments in large countries such as Japan. In fact, the Austrian worldview has begun to influence the Japanese society after Japan has economically caught up with the western countries in the 1980s.

In order to look into the specificities of the success of Japanese capitalism, we need to refer to some innovations in management, such as “just-in-time inventory management” and “quality control circle.” In this respect, Ikujiro Nonaka’s work on shared tacit knowledge in firms is worthwhile mentioning, since this theory explains why Japanese firms have competitive advantage in the global market economy in terms of knowledge. Nonaka’s work is best placed in the context of Austrian economics, as an application of the Hayekian theory of knowledge.

It is also worth mentioning that Katsuichi Yamamoto, the founder of Austrian economics in Japan, became active in the political area as well. While he wrote a comprehensive book on socialist calculation debate in 1939 and several related books on anti-socialism, anti-totalitarianism, and anti-welfare state, he became a member of parliament for five mandates. His political stance was based on moral nationalism and he sought national integrity for the Japanese spirit by means of education. It would be interesting to study his contribution to Austrian economics and his politically conservative message.

What I utilize from the Austrian worldview are some contemporary issues on social policies in Japan. For example, I have presented my reform proposals on national universities. In Japan, national universities have finally transformed into “national university corporations” in 2003. During this transformation, I proposed the following ideas: free mergers and acquisitions among universities, free use of university brand names, acceptance for those who passed a low standard of common entrance examinations in every university and college, additional examination to select students starting the third grade, and so on. It is interesting to see that some of my proposals have been accepted and institutionalized in the reform process of universities.

Other proposals of mine are related to the following issues: privatization of post offices, counter-arguments on the criticism of neoliberalism in Japan, reform proposal on the NHK (National Broadcasting Corporation), reform proposal on the tariff system, proposal to create a world currency, etc. In these proposals, I am, to some degree, inspired by Hayek’s way of thinking rather than by Marxist, Weberian, neoclassical or institutional economics.