Nakai Masakazu and the Revolutionary Potential of Consumption: From Bi-hihyō to the “Logic of the Committee” and Kyoto’s “Housing Problem” in 1930s Japan

This article focuses on the prewar theoretical and print activities of Kyoto school philosopher Nakai Masakazu. It spotlights Nakai’s efforts to confront alienation under finance capitalism and inspire a new “critical” and “cooperative” form of mass subjectivity in consumers. The article contributes to extant scholarship in two ways. First, it develops Nakai’s novel interpretation of Marxism and consumer struggle in connection with his mid-1930s article “Logic of the Committee” (“Iinkai no ronri”) and his work on the tabloid-format newspaper Doyōbi (Saturday). Second, it provides a broader picture of Nakai’s philosophical development by showing how these ideas trace back to his involvement with an understudied set of coterie journals from the early 1930s: Bi-hihyō (Aesthetics/Criticism) and Sekai bunka (World Culture). The article divides into three parts, each of which moves across theory and praxis. Part 1 focuses on Nakai’s work on Bi-hihyō and Sekai bunka. It traces the historical development of Nakai’s early philosophy of collectivity, media technology, and specialization and massification in connection with the “crisis” conditions of early 1930s Japan. Part 2 focuses on Nakai’s attempts to develop and consolidate these concepts in the context of finance capitalism in his seminal “Logic of the Committee.” In particular, it shows how Nakai reinterpreted these early philosophical concepts in terms of consumer alienation. Part 3 then focuses on Nakai’s response to this condition of consumer alienation in his tabloid newspaper Doyōbi. It reveals how these sustained engagements in philosophy and print developed into a novel interpretation of Marxism from the standpoint of consumer struggle, and it shows how this connected with the so-called “housing problem” (jūtaku mondai) or “housing crisis” that peppered the pages of Doyōbi before its censorship. It ends by briefly considering how Nakai’s philosophy offers a novel contribution to twentieth-century Western Marxism.