Reimagining the post-war international order : the world federalism of Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko

Abstract

This chapter considers the two most important leaders of the world federalist movement in occupied Japan, Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko. Both were remarkably early supporters of women's suffrage and democratic institutions; both benefited from rich international connections; and finally, both exhibited an unusual combination of pragmatic and utopian tendencies. The core of Kagawa's argument for the possibility of a genuine federal world, however, was to be found in his theory of institutional evolution as a manifestation of world cultural development. For Kagawa eugenics should not only be used to eliminate problematic people. He also called for a comprehensive and global approach to the "sex problem" to proactively create a "superior and peaceful people". Support for a world federation that remedied the faults of both the League of Nations and the United Nations was not, for either of these figures, an independent cause that each came to stand behind in the moment of defeat.