Overcoming Modernity, Exonerating Empire: Yoshimitsu Yoshihiko and the Ironies of Early Shōwa CatholicismChristopher T. Lough

Abstract

This study examines the political and religious thought of Yoshimitsu Yoshihiko, a convert to Catholicism and professor of philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo prior to and during the Pacific War. Yoshimitsu is notable as the only Christian to have been present at the Overcoming Modernity symposium, a conference held in 1942 at Tokyo Imperial University and later notorious for its legitimation of Japanese imperialism. Yoshimitsu’s extensive productive output and engagement with Western thought arguably placed him as Japan’s foremost Catholic intellectual until his early death in October 1945. The present article identifies Yoshimitsu’s program at the conference as a distillation of his broader political thought—including his ideology of a “New Middle Ages,” inspired by his studies in France under Jacques Maritain. It aims to shed light on a decidedly understudied figure in Western scholarship while also working toward a fresh reading of the 1942 symposium, thereby contributing to our understanding of Shōwa intellectual history as well as the history of the global Catholic Church at a decisive moment in its encounter with modernity.