Maruyama Masao

Maruyama Masao (丸山眞男, March 22, 1914-August 15, 1996) was a leading Japanese political scientist and political theorist. His expertise was in the history of Japanese political thought. Maruyama's work was often recognized as a blending of academic thought and journalism.

Personal History
Maruyama Masao was born in Osaka, the second son of journalist Maruyama Kanji. He was influenced by friends of his father such as Hasegawa Nyozekan, and tried to create a vein of political thought within the context of the Taisho democracy. After graduating Furitsu Number One Middle School (currently known as Tokyo Municipal Hibiya High School), he entered the Tokyo Imperial University and graduated from the Department of Law in 1937. While he was a student, he composed the thesis "The Concept of the Nation-state in Political Science" and was recognized with the Distinguished Thesis Award, soon thereafter becoming an assistant in the department. This thesis is contained in "Between the Middle and the End of War". Originally he had wanted to research European political thought, but he instead began to work in the area of Japanese political thought. At the time, Japanese political thought was still mainly centered around the concept of an imperial state. However, Maruyama wanted to engage in research from a scientific standpoint. The person who originally recommended this path to him was his mentor, Professor Nanbara Shigeru. Nanbara disliked the concept of the imperial state and saw ample room for an alternative theory, but because his own expertise was in the area of European political thought he steered the young Maruyama into doing the job.

In March 1945, Maruyama entered the military and was stationed in the Army at Hiroshima. After experiencing the blast at Hiroshima and seeing out the end of the war there, he returned to his post at the university in September.

Immediately following the war he published "The Logic and Psychology of Ultranationalism" and other theses dealing with prewar militarism and fascism which left a strong impact on postwar Japan. He was famous for calling the prewar imperial system a "system of irresponsibility". He was also a powerful democratic opinion leader, going far beyond the academic world and wielding great influence regarding the Treaty of San Francisco and the student movements of 1960.

However, in the late 1960's he was strongly denounced by the students front as a symbol of self-deceiving postwar democracy. He criticized this student movement, especially when his research room at University of Tokyo was ransacked by occupying students in 1969, as "barbarism not even Nazis did not do". This, combined with his own ailing health forced him to retire in 1971.

Representative works in English

 * Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.
 * Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Translated by Mikiso Hane. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.