HAS LEV TOLSTOY CREATED AN “ANARCHIST MODERNITY” FOR JAPAN? (DISCUSSION OF THE BOOK: KONISHI, S. [2013] ANARCHIST MODERNITY: COOPERATISM AND JAPANESE-RUSSIAN INTELLECTUAL RELATIONS IN MODERN JAPAN. CAMBRIDGE, MA: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS. - 426 P.)

Abstract

The article examines the key concepts articulated in the works of the Oxford professor Sho Konishi. According to S. Konishi, Lev Tolstoy, in collaboration with Japanese Orthodox converts who received their theological education in Russian Orthodox Mission schools and institutions in Japan and in Russia, created a new form of religion in Japan. This doctrine, which Konishi refers to as “anarchist religion” or “Tolstoyanism”, supposedly came to represent a new, unique model of modernity opposing the Western one, and played a significant role in Japanese thought in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The current article does not aim to either validate or argue with the more general concepts proposed by S. Konishi. However, it demon strates that his main argument on Tolstoy’s interaction with the Japanese Orthodox believers in creation of a new Japanese anarchist religion does not stand up to closer examination.