Masao Maruyama

Rise to fame

Maruyama first attracted attention from the scholarly community immediately following the war with his famous essay on wartime Japanese fascism, "The Logic and Psychology of Ultranationalism," first published in the widely-read journal Sekai in 1946. In particular, Maruyama deemed the prewar imperial system a "system of irresponsibility." Maruyama continued to write about wartime and contemporary Japanese politics in the late 1940s and early 1950s, until he was forced to take a break from scholarly activities due to his being in and out of hospitals with illnesses in the mid-1950s.

However, Maruyama later came to regret his starring role in the 1960 crisis. In the aftermath of the protests, Maruyama was attacked by opponents on both the right and the left. From the right, he was attacked as a supporter of communists and socialists, and from the left, he was accused of being a supporter of a very narrow vision of "bourgeois" democracy that only supported the interest of the ruling capitalist classes. Maruyama was most strongly attacked by fellow leftist intellectual Yoshimoto Takaaki, who had a large following among New Left student radicals. During the university protests in the late 1960s Maruyama was strongly denounced by the students front as a symbol of "self-deceiving" postwar democracy. Maruyama in turn criticized this new student movement, especially after he was subjected to intense harassment and his personal office at the University of Tokyo was ransacked by occupying students in 1969. Around this time, Maruyama angrily confronted the students, Maruyama telling them, "Even the fascists didn't do what you are trying to do!" This kind of episode, combined with his own ailing health, forced him to retire in 1971.