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Exploring the overshadowed streams of the Red Cross Movement

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Mayuka Tamura Miyagawa

Part II: Development of the Red Cross Movement beyond Japan

2.3 Ninagawa’s Motivations

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2.3.1 Patriotism, Nationalism, and Internationalism

  • 1 Ninagawa Arata, Watashi No Ayunda Michi 私の歩んだ道 [My Life], Kindle Edition (Aozora Bunko, 2015), 148.
  • 2 Yasuaki Onuma, “Japanese International Law in the Prewar Period - Perspectives on the Teaching and (...)
  • 3 Ibid.
  • 4 Ibid., 33.
  • 5 Ibid.
  • 6 Ibid.

1Having seen Ninagawa’s endeavours, the question ought to be asked; was Ninagawa a patriot? Most certainly yes. Moreover, if nationalism is distinguished from patriotism by putting an emphasis on desires for power in the international sphere, Ninagawa would also be a nationalist. From the early days of his career, he threw himself into the service of Japan. He described in his autobiography that he strove to do his best for ‘the glory and freedom of the Japanese people’ from the time he served the military as a lawyer specialising in international law.1 And this was quite natural given his educational background. A decade before Ninagawa started studying international law at the University of Tokyo, in 1886, the Meiji government implemented the Imperial University Order, making the University of Tokyo an Imperial University.2 The purpose of education and research became service of the nation.3 Among different disciplines, this patriotic trend was most evident in international law. As it was crucially important knowledge needed to revise the unequal treaties and to comply with the Geneva Convention, scholars of international law were expected to serve the state by conducting research and providing legal advice to the government.4 In fact, numerous professors of international law at Tokyo Imperial University and the Army and Navy Academies offered legal advice to the government to solve diplomatic issues.5 They even accompanied the military to the frontlines during wars to make sure that the Japanese military was complying with the Geneva Convention.6 Although not yet a professor at that time, Ninagawa served the military as a scholar of international law for this same reason.

  • 7 Ninagawa, Jindō-No-Sekai-To-Nihon 人道の世界と日本 [The Humanitarian World and Japan], 5.
  • 8 Micheline Ishay, Internationalism and Its Betrayal, Contradictions of Modernity, v. 2 (Minneapolis: (...)

2However, separating nationalism from internationalism would misguide any interpretation of Ninagawa’s motivations. To understand why he was so committed to enshrining peacetime operations in the Red Cross’s mandate, it is important to perceive nationalism and internationalism not as a dichotomy but as compatible concepts. Often, internationalism is understood as an ideology that values cooperation among nations to uphold universal human rights and justice whereas nationalism places importance on nations securing their own interests over other countries. Yet, that is not necessarily how Ninagawa grasped the two concepts. While Ninagawa considered securing national interest important, he also explicitly articulated that achieving world peace through practicing humanitarianism is the ideal of all civilised people, which the Japanese should also seek to pursue.7 His thinking is probably best articulated by Micheline Ishay, who invites us to consider internationalism as ‘philosophical guidelines’ that tie nations and their peoples together.8

  • 9 Malkki, The Need to Help, 30–31.
  • 10 Ninagawa, Watashi No Ayunda Michi 私の歩んだ道 [My Life], 237.

3Underlying Ninagawa’s vigorous advocacy for peacetime operations was an entwined ideology of nationalism and internationalism that considered humanitarianism as a tie that holds countries together in achieving world peace. This mirrors how some of Malkki’s interviewees supported liberal internationalism, which takes regimes of territorial sovereign nation-states for granted and seeks harmonious cooperation between nations.9 It was out of this notion that Ninagawa harshly criticised Japanese politicians and military officers when they threatened world peace by using Japanese nationalistic sentiments for their own benefit. Ninagawa was strongly opposed to Japan withdrawing from the League of Nations in 1933 and urged his acquaintances in the Cabinet and the Privy Council to change their minds. However, he faced a firestorm of criticism and was told by the police that his life was at risk. Seeing the withdrawal actually taking place, Ninagawa deplored that the future of Japan was in jeopardy.10

2.3.2 International Obligation to Help: French-Speaking Lawyer from Japan

  • 11 Malkki, The Need to Help, 30–39.
  • 12 Ibid., 52.
  • 13 Onuma, “Japanese International Law in the Prewar Period - Perspectives on the Teaching and Research (...)
  • 14 Ibid.
  • 15 Fumiya Iida, “Bakumatsu Meiji Shoki Ni Okeru Furansu-Go Kyōiku Ni Kansuru Kenkyū 幕末・明治初期におけるフランス語教育 (...)
  • 16 Malkki, The Need to Help, 51.

4When looking further into Ninagawa’s motivations to help, Malkki’s observation of the ‘international obligation to help’ provides another basis for the analysis.11 In her work, she states that humanitarian workers’ sense of international obligation to engage in their work is also shaped by personal background. As she puts it, ‘it is out of being someone, somewhere in particular, that one ends up making a greater ethical and imaginative connection to the world’.12 In Ninagawa’s case, it can be presumed that his expertise in international law and foreign language, as well as his position as a member of the overseas mission appointed by the JRCS, shaped his international obligation to take action when he witnessed the consequences of WWI. Most notably, Ninagawa was among the first batch of lawyers in Japan to study international law after the institutionalisation of the discipline took place in 1894.13 He was one of the fortunate generations able to study international law properly because previously, the discipline was not taught by full-time professors but by non-experts such as diplomats.14 Having further developed his expertise during his military service as a lawyer, his competence in international law became a fundamental part of his identity. Moreover, Ninagawa was proficient in French because he had studied the language earnestly from the time he was in high school. According to Fumiya Iida, not many were able to pursue their expertise based on their proficiency in French because those who could speak the language at that time were recruited by Japanese ministries and were moved from one ministry to another to make use of their language skills.15 However, since Ninagawa did not choose a career in the government sector, he was among the very few Japanese that were proficient in French on top of having both academic and practical knowledge of international law. Considering that at the time it was rare for Japanese intellectuals to have both expertise in international law and foreign languages, those skills would have been enough to give Ninagawa a sense of international obligation to help when facing the catastrophic situations of war. Yet, in addition to having these skills, he was in a position to meet and discuss Red Cross activities with government officials and representatives of all major national societies as an appointed messenger of the JRCS. This must have heightened his sense of ‘I want to help’ to become the imperative ‘I need to help because I can’. As Malkki suggests that one’s own subjective position can be one of the sources of people’s need to help,16 having the right skills and the means to pursue an ideal world could have been a simple yet powerful reason why Ninagawa developed a sense of international obligation to advocate vigorously for certain humanitarian operations.

2.3.3 Personality: Sense of Justice and International Attractions

  • 17 Ibid., 39.

5Ninagawa’s personality that emerges from his autobiography is another aspect that should not be dismissed when studying his motivations to help. Ninagawa had a strong sense of justice and a yearning to work in foreign countries, which both derived and deviated from the characteristics of the time. Unlike Sano and Ishiguro, who were both born in the era of peace, Ninagawa was born in the era of turmoil, when civil and international conflicts broke out one after another. From the early days of his childhood, Ninagawa’s mother and teachers often talked about the civil war that led to the establishment of the Meiji government. Among those stories was a detailed account of atrocities committed by the reformists’ force. Ninagawa recalled this in his autobiography and emphasised that he developed a profound sense of justice and hatred toward cruel acts in war by listening to his mother and teachers’ stories. This strong sense of justice nurtured in his early life is probably what led him to pursue international law, persevere in advocacy for humanitarian practice, and fearlessly express opposition when the Japanese government was threatening world peace. Moreover, Ninagawa grew up in an era where he could have familiarity with Western countries. With westernisation unfolding at a ferocious pace, the Meiji government not only took in Western culture and systems in every part of people’s lives, but also allowed more government officials and scholars to travel abroad. These characteristics of the age must have fostered Ninagawa’s desire to work in foreign countries. Ninagawa, as early as in high school, decided that he wanted to be a diplomat that travels around the world. Although he did not end up becoming one, he still went abroad to study after he was awarded a doctoral degree from the Minister of Education. While he stayed in Europe, he travelled all around the region and studied international law. His keen interest in foreign countries and his desire to work in an international setting would have motivated him to take part in the international conferences and overcome the challenges he faced there. This aspiration also aligns with Malkki’s findings, in which humanitarian workers expressed a deep love of travelling abroad and working in an international arena.17

Notes

1 Ninagawa Arata, Watashi No Ayunda Michi 私の歩んだ道 [My Life], Kindle Edition (Aozora Bunko, 2015), 148.

2 Yasuaki Onuma, “Japanese International Law in the Prewar Period - Perspectives on the Teaching and Research of International Law in Prewar Japan,” Japanese Annual of International Law 29 (1986): 31.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., 33.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ninagawa, Jindō-No-Sekai-To-Nihon 人道の世界と日本 [The Humanitarian World and Japan], 5.

8 Micheline Ishay, Internationalism and Its Betrayal, Contradictions of Modernity, v. 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), xxi.

9 Malkki, The Need to Help, 30–31.

10 Ninagawa, Watashi No Ayunda Michi 私の歩んだ道 [My Life], 237.

11 Malkki, The Need to Help, 30–39.

12 Ibid., 52.

13 Onuma, “Japanese International Law in the Prewar Period - Perspectives on the Teaching and Research of International Law in Prewar Japan,” 36.

14 Ibid.

15 Fumiya Iida, “Bakumatsu Meiji Shoki Ni Okeru Furansu-Go Kyōiku Ni Kansuru Kenkyū 幕末・明治初期におけるフランス語教育に関する研究 [A Study of French Language Education at the End of the Edo Period and the Beginning of the Meiji Era],” Bulletin of Fukuoka University of Education. Part IV, Education and Psychology 46 (February 10, 1997): 3.

16 Malkki, The Need to Help, 51.

17 Ibid., 39.

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