些か以前のものであり、既に日本語訳が出回っているようだ。紐育在住の翻訳家／エッセイストの佐藤紘彰氏*1の愛国心を巡るテクスト；
“Creeping back toward thought control” The Japan Times May 29, 2006 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?mode=makeprfy&file=eo20060529hs.html
先ず一読して、エッセイの書き方のお手本のようなテクストだという印象を持った。Samuel Johnson、Ambrose Bierce、それからGeorge Bernard Shawというゴージャスな三連発*2。しかし、注目すべきは上田秋成及び三島由紀夫についての言及だろうか。
上田秋成を巡っては「どの国でもその国のたましいが国の臭気なり」という言葉。本居宣長との関係に触れつつ曰く、
また、三島については、
"National learning" or kokugaku arose during the Edo Period (1600-1868) on the notion that you could distill the Japanese heart, Yamato gokoro, by removing from Japanese culture (especially literature) all the impurities that were the Chinese influences. As Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769), one proponent of this approach, typically stated, "In anything, once you are adversely affected (by them) . . . you lose the original Japanese spirit" or Yamato damashii. In "national learning," Yamato damashii was synonymous with Yamato gokoro.So what is the Japanese heart or spirit? Moto'ori Norinaga (1730-1801), Mabuchi's top student, defined it in a tanka as something as sparkling and pure as "the mountain cherry blossoms fragrant in the morning sun." He did not stop there. When he turned 70, he inscribed the poem on a portrait of himself and distributed it to his disciples.
Ueda Akinari (1734-1809), a kokugaku student but no cultural exclusionist, scoffed when he heard about this self-promoting act. "What's all this talk about the Yamato damashii?" he asked. He then followed it with the observation quoted above.
Like many literati of his day, Ueda was well read in Chinese literature, and some of his stories were retellings of Chinese tales. But I don't think he snarled at the avatar of kokugaku because he was Chinese-infatuated. Unlike Moto'ori, he knew nationalistic assertions were silly. Each country has what it considers to be its soul and regards it as special. But that soul is also its defect.
No, Ueda did not use the word aikoku, which combines two Chinese characters meaning "love" and "country." The word, perhaps not a part of classical Chinese, may not have existed until the early Meiji Era (1868-1912).
という。
Yukio Mishima suggested that much when he wrote an essay on the word aikokushin to say that it gave him "gooseflesh." It "smells of something made by government," he wrote, "something sneakily forced upon you." He noted that the word must have had a good deal to do with the Christianity that poured into Japan as the country opened itself to the West, because the idea of "love" as suggested in the word had never been part of Japanese tradition.Mishima, of course, is famous for "Patriotism," the title of the short story as well as the movie he made out of it. But as he pointed out when he chose the story for the anthology he edited with Geoffrey Bownas, "New Writing in Japan" (Penguin, 1972), the Japanese word he used was yukoku, which "conveys more than a hint of melancholy." It is derived from an old Chinese word, youguo, "worried about the state of the nation."
Why did the word aikokushin give Mishima "gooseflesh?"
"When you are inescapably within a country and are a member of it," he explained, "you are nevertheless asked to put that country opposite you as an object," as if it were "a Pekinese or a Sevres vase," and "to deliberately 'love' it. That's too hokey and I hate it." You may fall in love with your country but you can't be forced to love it, Mishima said. He wrote the essay three years before his death, when he was making increasingly esoteric, intractable cultural arguments. But in this essay he was clear and convincing.
さらに「パトリオット・ミサイル」や9.11以後の米国Patriot Actに触れながら、エッセイは
と結ばれる。和漢英を横断した博古通今なこのようなエッセイというのは、〈伝統〉を重視するという新政権の教育政策が目標のひとつとすべきものでもあると思うが、如何だろうか。
For now, the Liberal Democratic Party has been compelled to drop the outright use of the word aikokushin in a proposed revision of the Fundamental Law of Education of 1947, but its original plan hasn't changed a bit. In opposing the revision, the Tottori Prefecture's Lawyers Association has stated that when the government tries to specify by law "tradition," "culture," "the country" and "the homeland" as things to be "esteemed" and "loved," the only motive that could be deduced is "thought control."
本居宣長は好きな思想家であり、態々松坂まで墓参に行った程なので、少々弁護を試みれば、宣長は文化的にはエスノセントリストであったかもしれないが、それを政治化しようとはしなかった。宣長のいう「漢意」とは素直でないこと、殊更に理屈を捏ねること一般の謂であり、亜細亜というマクロな視点で言えば、宣長の「漢意」への批判というのは、儒家に対する道家的批判の一例ということもいえるのかも知れない*3。事実、国学は江戸時代の支配的な思想としての朱子学、またその神道における現れとしての伊勢神道系の思想に対するカウンターカルチャーとしてあったということ、またそれは儒家における伊藤仁斎や荻生徂徠の朱子学批判に学統においても連なるものでもあったことは取り敢えず指摘しておく。話はずれるが、左翼には評判がいいらしい安藤昌益について、その排外主義にいかがわしさを覚え、脊髄反射的にこいつ、江戸時代のポルポトじゃないかという印象*4を持ってしまったことは告白しておく。
*2:あと、反−愛国心的な英語の名文を挙げるとすれば、Virginia Woolf（See http://orlando.jp.org/VWW/）だろうか。
*3:そういうのは「漢意」か。Orz
