Anarchist deracialization and Hirano Imao in Transwar Japan (1920–1970s)

The prewar and postwar division in the historiography of Japan has obscured intellectual and practiced continuities that transcend it. An investigation of anarchist influences on Hirano Imao’s (1900–1986) thought and action from 1920 to the early 1970s unveils a transwar continuity of what I call anarchist deracialization. Anarchist deracialization points to the intellectual deconstruction of racial hierarchies by dismantling the category of race itself, accompanied by a form of non-essentialist action guided by mutual aid and direct action. I argue that Hirano’s promotion of science and a view of nature predicated on equality and diversity became a foundation for his postwar relief campaign in Japan towards mixed-race children and their mothers. This thesis unveils a form of thought and action that I argue lied outside of imperialist, nationalist, and Western democratic discourses and cannot be understood through the frameworks of identity politics and strategic essentialism