A Study of the Political Mentality of Yonezawa Hiroyasu at the Early Stage of Japanese Modernization

神奈川県茅ヶ崎市This article explores the political mentality of Yonezawa Hiroyasu who lived in his 20's and 30's as a craftsman during period of the "Taisho Democracy." Yonezawa Hiroyasu lived through the immensely exciting age of Japanese modernization from the Meiji era to the Showa era. He was a craftsman of the Japanese industrial metal art, Zogan, in the traditional city of Kanazawa. He wrote a diary almost all his life from year 19 of the Meiji era to year 86 of the Showa era, just before he died. The diary was not written during some period of World War 2, however. Using the data from his diary as a main text, I have reconstructed and reinterpreted his life history. The focus of my analysis is his internalization of his experience of the "Taisho Democracy", especially the former half of it, and his act of dividing people into an "in-group" and an "out-group," excluding the different people in the latter, and simultaneously being closer to the authorities in the former. The in-grouping action, that is, the way he thought and acted politically, with no internal trouble and no internal conflict during his part in the modernization of Japan is discussed