THEORY OF THE END - Part 1: The Final War

The start of a new series exploring various theories on the end of human civilization.

For as long as humanity has been around, we have had predictions of the “end,” either of an apocalyptic nature or ones of hypothetical stagnancy. Some, like the Aztecs, Buddhists, and Vedic priests, saw the universe as cyclical, with the eventual end always leading to a new beginning, while some more materialistically-minded individuals predict that natural disasters will worsen until the earth experiences a massive calamity that results in complete human extinction.

Others, like the WWII-era Japanese general Ishiwara Kanji, had ideas of a very different nature. Ishiwara had spent much time studying military strategy and surveying the technological landscape of his time, and he combined this knowledge with the Kamakura-era Buddhist priest Nichiren’s predictions of great Japanese conflict and eventual propagation of Lotus Sutra Buddhism in the age of decline (広宣流布, Kosen-rufu, or “proclaiming far and wide”). The final result of his studies was what he called the “final war theory” (最終戦争論, saishu senso ron).

In early 1940, on the eve of the second world war, he made the following chilling prediction in his lecture on “The Final War” (Note that the translation here was done through Google’s translation algorithm and thoroughly edited by me for more dynamic wording and better clarity):

The time when a decisive battle by air force initiates across the Pacific Ocean will be the time of the last great decisive battle of mankind. In other words, it will be an age when airplanes can fly around the world non-stop, and weapons like those currently used in the European war will be rendered obsolete. The new weapons will be more thoroughly destructive, with a great power that we cannot even imagine. One strike will kill tens of thousands of people instantly.

However, as we speak, planes fly around the world without landing and weapons are rapidly becoming more advanced. If a worldwide war breaks out today, by the time the next morning dawns, capitals and major cities will be completely destroyed. Osaka, Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai will be in ruins. Everything will be blown away... I believe that's the extent of the destructive power. If that happens, the war will end quickly. The final war will not be won by deliberating over spiritual mobilization and total war. Such tepidness is only a factor in the age of wars of attrition, and will not be an issue in a decisive war. In the next decisive war, we must see that this is coming and act without hesitation. The person who can create such decisive weapons and endure the inevitable devastation will be the ultimate winner.

However, although Ishiwara emphasized the potential destruction that would be wrought from such a battle, his prediction was not necessarily an apocalyptic one. Should one side of the “final war” survive, they would gain the ability to determine the future of global human civilization itself. He continues:

War will end in this next decisive war, as it will push us to the limit of the development of war. Human fighting spirit, however, will not disappear. What does it mean that war will end without the elimination of fighting spirit? National conflict will disappear -- that is, the world will become one as a result of this next decisive war. Some may think my explanation far-fetched, but I am convinced that it is theoretically sound. The limit of the development of war will make future wars impossible…

The final war will not last long. It will be over in a short amount of time. I think that the most important destiny of humanity will be decided; whether the Emperor [of Japan] should be the Emperor of the world or the President of the United States should control the world. In other words, it will decide whether the Eastern Kingly Way or the Western Way of Force should be the guiding principle for world unification.

In order to clarify his above comment on humanity’s “fighting spirit” (闘争心, tousoushin), Ishiwara later provides us with the following explanation:

The fighting spirit of humanity probably won’t disappear for the next few decades, or as long as humanity exists. On the one hand, the fighting spirit is the driving force behind civilizational development. However, after the final war, the instinctive urge to wield that fighting spirit in armed conflict between nations will naturally dissipate and will be transformed into another type of competition, namely the competition to peacefully build a more advanced civilization.

Looking at all of this from a modern lens, while it is incorrect in predicting the end of war itself, there are some elements of Ishiwara’s theory that are prophetic. For instance, he clearly foresaw the devastation that would be brought to his country by American firebombings and, ultimately, the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Technological innovation indeed brought new horrors into this world that made the total annihilation of a country (if not the Earth itself) into a matter of merely flipping a switch.

But Ishiwara predicted something else, something which may go unnoticed to the casual reader; that being the hegemonic domination of America and the proliferation of what one may call “Liberal Democracy” across the globe. While “war” has certainly not ended as a fixture of human civilization, we have not seen any conflicts rise to the scale of the two world wars since the defeat of the axis countries. Moreover, on a surface level, it appears that the consumeristic “American” way of life has swallowed up every developed and developing country across the globe, even those who outwardly proclaim an opposition to it like China.

In his failure to unify East Asia and defeat Western powers as he had wished, were we doomed to some unholy fate in the iron jaws of American Materialism? Ishiwara, at least, denied that this was the case, and in his final days disavowed his prior theories in favor of promoting an attitude of pacifism and peaceful propagation in Japan’s relationship with international powers going forward. Per the article “Nichirenism, Utopianism, and Modernity: Rethinking Ishiwara Kanji’s East Asia League Movement” by G. Clinton Godart:

In a certain way… the final war was to be a religious war, resulting in the inevitable victory of Nichiren Buddhism, the desirable end result. But Ishiwara and many other members were quite quick to drop the whole idea after 1945 and embrace pacifism. Ishiwara wrote that he “admits” that his prediction of a final war between Asia and the West “was a profound self-conceit and in fact a mistake” (Ishiwara Kanji Heiwa Shisō Kenkyūkai 1994, 200).

However, in the preceding decades, theories would crop up in America that would come to resemble Ishiwara Kanji’s in interesting and entirely unintentional ways. The figurehead for this line of thinking is Francis Fukuyama, a graduate from Cornell University and Harvard who became a regular face in various political thinktanks, the most notable of which being the RAND Corporation. In 1989, Fukuyama published his most famous work, one that would come to define him for the rest of his career: “The End of History and the Last Man.”

In this book, Fukuyama outlines a theory heavily inspired by Hegel’s ideas of the “dialectic” and “end of history,” proposing that human civilization was leading to a maximally efficient end state in terms of societal configuration that would satisfy not only basic human material desires, but also their sense of “dignity” and “self-esteem.” He dubbed the latter of these factors the “thymos,” borrowing the term from Plato’s republic. This concept could be seen as almost analogous to Ishiwara’s notion of “fighting spirit.”

“Thymos emerges in the Republic as being somehow related to the value one sets on oneself, what we today might call ‘self esteem,’” Fukuyama states in the book. He further elaborates as follows:

Thymos is something like an innate human sense of justice: people believe that they have a certain worth, and when other people act as though they are worth less — when they do not recognize their worth at its correct value — then they become angry.

The supremely satisfying dialectical end-point, he believed, was the Liberal Democratic model exemplified by America and spread globally in the face of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus, in a roundabout way, Fukuyama’s theory is a validation of Ishiwara Kanji’s theory of a decisive final war and ultimate global order, only in this scenario, America is the victor and its secular ideology reigns supreme.

However, Fukuyama’s magnum opus is also a product of its time, as it makes certain predictions that were based on the circumstances under which it was written, some of which, of course, failed to come to fruition. Thus it has the potential to come off as almost a pre-emptive victory march for proponents of American Liberal Democracy.

But I don’t regard Fukuyama’s book in this way and, in fact, believe that it has enough academic and philosophical rigor behind it to address at length. This is the first reason why I have chosen it as the first subject of this series of essays exploring various views around the “end of human civilization.”

The second reason is that many in our modern age have clung to Fukuyama’s prediction as a sort of pseudo-spiritual promise, using his notion of historical progress as justification for countless hideous acts, from late-term abortion to the effective castration and/or mutilation of children via “gender-affirming” care, repeating all the while that they’re “on the side of history.” While Fukuyama does not directly predict such grim happenings, we must also grapple with the fact that the Liberal Democratic system he champions in his text is the one which has led us to our current state of affairs, warts and all.

Considering all we’ve covered so far, the questions are now as follows:

1. Is Liberal Democracy truly the final social configuration “without contradictions,” as Fukuyama would say?

2. Would we even want Liberal Democracy to dominate the globe, or should we potentially consider alternatives?

In his book, Fukuyama divides his exposition into two parts: an outline of his historical narrative and a deeper, more psychosocial explanation for said narrative. In accordance with this, I have decided to also split my response to it into two parts, with the first being an exploration of his narrative and how things have progressed since the original publication of “The End of History,” and the second delving into the psychological and even spiritual aspects of the book’s central thesis.

While both of these parts are important, I feel that the second is especially so. Just as Fukuyama’s book could be viewed (somewhat erroneously, in my opinion) as a victory lap for an already hegemonic ideology, a simple listing of ways in which his foresight appears to have been lacking would fit that same accusation. What’s important here is not just pointing out deviations from his theory, but diagnosing the reasons for those deviations and using them to hopefully gain insight on the actual nature of man and the universe.

I want to thank you for reading up to now and I hope you continue to take this ride with me as I explore these “theories of the end” further.

I hope to see you all in Part 2.