[Book Review] Kiyoteru Hanada's 'Spirit of the Reconstruction Period' — Resistance in Silence and Rebirth Starting from Death
Introduction: Under the Mask of the Renaissance
Published shortly after the war, Kiyoteru Hanada's 'Spirit of the Reconstruction Period' is a volume that discusses figures representative of the European Renaissance. Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Copernicus, Poe. Historical figures appear in each chapter, and their thoughts and anecdotes are freely combined. At first glance, it is a collection of historical criticism by a polymath. Or, it may even look like a book of pedantic intellectual play.
However, as you read through this book, you notice a strange tension drifting throughout.Why the 'Renaissance' in Japan immediately after its defeat? Why talk about a distant era rather than the here and now? Moreover, that narrative is not merely an explanation, but somehow provocative and full of implications.
This book is a work of thought that borrows history. Under the mask of the Renaissance, Hanada is talking about something else. It seems that at least two layers are superimposed there.
One is the way intellectuals existed during the war. In an era where one was not allowed to speak directly, how does one sustain thought? How does one keep words from dying?
The other is the problem of the spirit after the defeat. After everything has collapsed, what do people rely on to live again? What does life look like after passing through death and despair?
The distant history of the Renaissance functions as a mirror that reflects both of these simultaneously. The figures appearing in this book are not merely great men of the past, but are Hanada's own masks and the alter egos of his contemporary intellectuals. When reread from that perspective, 'Spirit of the Reconstruction Period' emerges as an extremely urgent book concerning resistance in silence and rebirth after death.
Let us first consider the chapter on Copernicus.
Chapter 1: The Mimicking Intellectual — The Strategy of Copernicus
The chapter titled 'Celestial Map' features Copernicus, who advocated the heliocentric theory. While establishing a philosophy that shook the worldview to its foundations, he lived out his life without being sent to the stake. Hanada takes a strong interest in his caution, his calculated silence, and his stance of gauging the timing of publication.
Copernicus did not provoke his enemies head-on. He did not rush to publish his own theories, but laid the groundwork little by little while observing the surrounding situation. While maintaining a position that would not immediately subject him to the Inquisition, he still did not let go of the core of his thought. That figure is closer to a cool-headed strategist than a brave revolutionary.
What Hanada reads there is the paradox of 'fighting by not fighting'. If one attempts a frontal breakthrough in a situation where one is surrounded by enemies, the thought will be crushed. If so, one should withdraw for a moment and wait for the opposing forces to deepen their internal contradictions. Silence is not submission, but a method for making time an ally.
This image of Copernicus reminds one of Hanada's own stance during the war. In an era when censorship and suppression became routine, explicit political criticism was impossible. Direct words were sealed. Therefore, the circuit of history was chosen. Within the form of talking about Renaissance figures, criticism of the present was folded in.
Not blatant rebellion, but persistence through allegory and masks. Tortuous rhetoric. Expressions that could be taken either way. That ambiguity was not merely a technique, but a strategy for survival.
What is important is that there is no cynicism there. Copernicus did not remain silent merely for self-preservation. He believed that his thought would act beyond the era and tried to preserve it in a sustainable form. Perhaps Hanada, too, was trying not to burn out his words, but to preserve them to hand over to the next era.
Resistance does not always take the form of a shout. Sometimes it is bypassed, masked, and told as a story of a distant era. The existence of Copernicus is depicted as a symbol of such 'mimicking intellectuals'.
At this point, 'Spirit of the Reconstruction Period' ceases to be a mere historical critique. It becomes a response to the question of how to continue speaking in an era when speaking is not allowed.
And that strategy of silence eventually connects to another layer — the problem of death and rebirth.
Chapter 2: Rebirth Starting from Death — Poe and Claverina
What Copernicus showed was a strategy to sustain thought in silence. However, 'Spirit of the Reconstruction Period' does not end there. What Kiyoteru Hanada repeatedly gazes at is not only the conditions for thought to survive, but the structure of 'rebirth' after civilization itself has once collapsed.
A symbolic chapter for this is 'Spherical Trigonometry,' which deals with Edgar Allan Poe.
In this chapter, starting from Poe's view of the end, Hanada brings up the story of a strange marine organism. An organism called Clavelina shrinks its body when the environment deteriorates, loses its complex organs, and contracts into a simple sphere that looks almost like an embryo. Its heartbeat stops, and at first glance, it appears dead. However, when the water is replaced, the sphere expands again and regains its complex structure.
Hanada sees the structure of the Renaissance in this phenomenon. At the same time, it seems he is also superimposing the state of post-war Japan upon it.
What is important is the point that 'rebirth' is not a continuous development. It does not move forward smoothly, but rather shrinks, simplifies, and approaches almost nothingness. The next life cannot begin without passing through a state like death.
Japan immediately after the defeat in the war was in exactly such a state. The national ideology had collapsed, the value system had been inverted, and people did not even know what they had believed in. There was no pride or confidence there, only a void spreading out.
Hanada does not depict that void merely as 'despair.' Rather, he attempts to see the buds of the next life within the movement of contraction.
What should be noted here is that it is not a matter of 'returning to the original state.' Clavelina is not restored to the same form. The re-expansion after passing through contraction is a reorganization of the structure itself. Life after experiencing death cannot be the same as it once was.
This perspective is decisively different from an attitude that views post-war reconstruction merely as restoration or recovery. For Hanada, reconstruction was not about returning broken things to their original state, but about transformation. Just as the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era was not merely an update of systems, but a change in the human spiritual structure itself.
Poe's view of the end is also not a simple desire for destruction. The end is a collapse after order has been strained to its limit, and that collapse is also a preparation for a new order. Death is both a rupture and an opportunity for expansion.
If mimetic resistance during the war was a problem of 'persistence', then what is being questioned here is the problem of 'transformation'. How can one live again after being broken? How can one remain without fearing the void?
Hanada's words are not tragic. There is a cold, clear understanding of structure in them. Catastrophe can sometimes be unavoidable. However, catastrophe is not the end point. What is important is the stance of how one stands afterward.
At this point, 'The Spirit of the Reconstruction Period' ceases to be merely a book of hope after the defeat. It becomes a book of stern recognition that rebirth can only begin by looking death in the eye.
Chapter 3: What is the Renaissance—The Transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era
The two layers we have looked at so far—mimetic resistance and rebirth through death—overlap in the historical phase of the Renaissance.
For Hanada, the Renaissance is not merely a classical revival movement. It was an era of transformation in which humans rearranged their own positions as the medieval order reached a dead end, value systems collapsed, and religious worldviews wavered.
This 'perspective of transformation' is important.
Transformation is neither continuous progress nor a simple rupture. Even if the appearance is the same, the internal structure changes. Or, even if it appears to be a rupture on the surface, there are things that persist in the depths.
The defeat was a huge rupture for Japan. However, Hanada captures it not as mere destruction, but as the moment when 'Japan's Middle Ages' ended. The spiritual structure centered on the Emperor system, ultra-nationalistic values, and the pressure to conform to the community. When those collapsed, was Japan not thrown into the modern era for the first time?
If so, reconstruction is not economic rebuilding, but the reorganization of the spirit. It is for humans to take responsibility for their own positions again. To not depend on authority, to not entrust oneself to an absolute narrative, and to stand while embracing the void.
The figures of the Renaissance are symbols of that attempt. Dante inscribed individual passion into a theological worldview, Machiavelli separated politics from morality to look reality in the eye, and Leonardo treated nature not as a mystery but as an object of observation.
They were searching for new coordinate axes within a world that was falling apart.
Hanada superimposes this stance onto postwar Japan. After experiencing the death that was defeat, one should not simply stand stunned in the ruins, but rather consider what to build from there. What kind of spirit should serve as the foundation?
What emerges here is not heroic optimism. Rather, it is an extremely sober gaze. Humans are easily swept away by fanaticism. Order easily turns into violence. That is precisely why one must see through the structure, detour around words, and maintain thought even while occasionally remaining silent.
'The Spirit of the Reconstruction Period' is not a book that celebrates reconstruction. It is a book that calmly explores the conditions under which reconstruction is possible.
The strategy of mimicry.
Rebirth through death.
And the perspective of transformation.
When these three overlap, what Hanada calls the 'spirit of the reconstruction period' ceases to belong to a specific era. It becomes a stance that should be re-examined in every place that finds itself in the aftermath of a catastrophe.
In the conclusion, I would like to think a little more about that possibility.
Conclusion: Living in a Period of Transformation
The 'reconstruction period' depicted by Kiyoteru Hanada refers to the specific era of Japan immediately after its defeat, but at the same time, it transcends it. The Renaissance discussed in this book is not a reproduction of historical facts, but a way of being of the spirit that arises at the moment when civilization reaches a dead end, values collapse, and words lose their power.
There, first of all, there was silence. In a situation where speaking directly was not permitted, thought chose a detour: it mimicked, wore a mask, and spoke of distant history. Struggle took the form of persistence, not shouting. The very act of not letting thought die became resistance.
And after a catastrophe, a void like death spreads. However, Hanada did not fill that void with fear or sentimentality. A new life cannot begin without passing through death. By regressing, simplifying, and approaching almost nothingness, the structure is reorganized. There is an awareness there that rebirth is not recovery, but change.
At this time, the 'reconstruction period' does not mean a time of economic recovery, but a period of transformation that requires the reorganization of the spirit. Like that historical moment when the world shifted from the Middle Ages to the modern era, after order has collapsed, people must re-assume their own positions. When the narratives one relied upon become invalid, what does one rely on? The time spent facing that question is the reconstruction period.
We are not currently in the midst of a war. However, the atmosphere where speaking is hesitated, the environment where differences in position immediately turn into condemnation, or the sense of powerlessness that visits after a destructive event, are by no means things of the past. Raising one's voice is not the only justice, and remaining silent is not the only wisdom. How does one sustain thought in between?
Hanada's stance provides a strategic suggestion for that. To mimic while not losing one's core. To look death in the eye while not overlooking the possibilities for reorganization lurking within it. What is needed in a period of transformation may not be passion or cynicism, but an intellectual stance that continues to stand while seeing through the structure.
The spirit of the reconstruction period is not a concept closed within a single chapter of history. I believe it is an attitude that is being quietly tested within each of us who chooses to continue living after a catastrophe.