Can human will conquer destiny? The utopian experiment of Saneatsu Mushanokōji

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Saneatsu Mushanokōji was a Japanese intellectual who rejected the fatalism of his era. Instead of viewing individuals as powerless, he championed a philosophy of humanism, asserting that we control our own destiny. His radical quest for a better life led him to build a real-world utopian commune in the mountains.

Born in 1885, Saneatsu Mushanokōji grew up as a frail youth in Tokyo, finding solace in literature and the works of Tolstoy. By 1910, he had co-founded the influential Shirakaba literary group, using its magazine to challenge the prevailing Japanese naturalism of the time. While naturalists often depicted individuals as desperate victims of uncontrollable forces, Mushanokōji argued that humanity could shape its own future through the assertion of individual will.

His idealism reached its peak in 1918 when he moved to the mountains of Kijō, Miyazaki, to establish Atarashiki-mura, or New Village. This quasi-socialistic commune was inspired by Tolstoyan principles, aiming to create an environment where humanism could flourish. During this period, he produced works like the 1919 novel A Happy Man and the 1920 novel Friendship, which dramatized the victory of humanism over ego. However, the practical challenges of communal living eventually led him to leave the village in 1926.

Mushanokōji’s life was marked by sharp contradictions. After the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, he turned to painting vegetables and writing biographies of historical figures. Later, his support for the Japanese government during World War II, expressed in his 1942 work Personal Thoughts on the Great East Asia War, led to his purge from public office by American Occupation authorities in 1946. Despite these political controversies, he achieved a literary comeback in the late 1940s and was awarded the Order of Culture in 1951, living until the age of 90.

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