Legacies of East-West Fusions in Social Ecology Theory in Dismantling ‘Views of the Japanese Nation’

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was introduced to Japan in 1877

(Morse 1936/1877) during Japan’s push to gain military modernity through the study of western sciences and technologies and the culture from which

they had arisen. In the ensuing decades the theory of evolution was applied

as a kind of social scientific tool, i.e., social Spencerism (or social Darwin-

ism) and eugenics (Sakura 1998: 341; Unoura 1999). Sakura (1998) suggests

that the theory of evolution did not have much biological application in

Japan. Instead, Japanese applied the idea of ‘the survival of the fittest’

(which was a misreading of Darwin’s natural selection theory) to society

and to individuals in the struggle for existence in Japan’s new international circumstances (Gluck 1985: 13, 265).