Kōtoku Shūsui and Nationalism

Kōtoku Shūsui is generally known as a socialist and anarchist who participated in the plot against the life of the Meiji emperor in 1910 and was executed for the crime of “high treason” the following year. Such an individual hardly strikes one as a nationalist. Why deal with him on a panel that proposes to address itself to the question of nationalism? And yet, contrary to surface appearance, Kōtoku was and remained a nationalist. But his image of nationalism, and the role that this force should play in the lives of the Japanese people differed considerably from that of the Meiji leadership. It is to this image, to how it was derived, and to how it was sustained that this paper is addressed.