1910년대 大山郁夫의 정치사상 -大正데모크라시기의 국가와 자유-

The Political Thought of Ohyama Ikuo in the 1910s

The aim of this study is to look into the political undercurrent of the Taisho Democracy movement by way of Ohyama Ikuo s own political philosophy in the 1910s. Ohyama, along with Yoshino and Minobe, was one of the political thinkers who gave rise to the movement. The political viewpoint of Ohyama was preeminent among his contemporaries due to his adherence to the innate principle of democracy itself. The fundamental soundness of Ohyama s rationale and logic warrants an in-depth analysis of the Taisho Democracy via his views. There was a great transition in Ohyama s political positions from the 1910s to 1920s. Whereas Ohyama in the 1910s advocated, as did Yoshino, universal manhood suffrage and parliamentarism, he, in the next decade, demonstrated rather dramatic shift in his beliefs. This paper, nonetheless, focuses on his views during the 1910s, in particular his perspectives on individual freedom versus national authority. As democracy at its core is the product of thoughts revolving around individual freedom versus national authority, one can evaluate the validity of Theories of Democracy upon examining Democrats utterances on this very issue.