Main Body
The Popular Front Against Fascism and Kawai Eijirō
In which the author returns to the Genri Nihon assault on Tōdai, most noticeably on Kawai Eijirō. The authorities used the Comintern’s adoption of Popular Front tactics (1935) and Japan’s war in China as pretext to crack down on dissent. Kawai continued his criticism of Japan and refused to allow his books to go out of print (the authorities had hoped he would agree). In October the authorities acted to ban Kawai’s four books. Direct pressure on university president Nagayo proved unavailing, at least in the short term. The author suggests that Kawai’s defense against the charge that he backed the Popular Front was disingenuous.
Criticism of Liberalism
On February 1, 1938 Professors Ōuchi, Arisawa, and Wakimura were arrested. This, the second Popular Front Incident (or Faculty Group Incident), became the occasion for all-out attack on Kawai by government officials and the right wing. At the time of the emperor-organ issue, Diet member Ida Iwakuzu had been in the vanguard of the attack on Minobe, and on February 16, in a plenary session of the House of Peers, Ida stood up once again and raised the university issue—why this evil omen at Tōdai? He traced its roots for nearly three hours, from morning into afternoon, spanning the lunch recess; his long-windedness was part speech, part question.
Ida asserted that having been taken over by the “anti-fascist Popular Front struggle” under the direction of the Comintern, Tōdai had betrayed the kokutai and become a den of liberalism, democracy, and anti-statism; word for word, his speech echoed assertions Minoda had developed earlier in Genri Nihon. In fact, at virtually the same time as this speech, Genri Nihon published State and University: A Scholarly Critique of the Democratic, Anti-State Thinking of the Faculty of Law of Tokyo Imperial University,[1] assembling all of Minoda’s attacks on Tōdai up to that point; this speech was taken from that book. In the speech Ida named Kawai, Suehiro, Yokota, Tanaka, Miyazawa, Yanaihara and used direct quotations from their books to attack them. And he did attack: “Two Tōdai faculties—Law and Economics—are the Popular Front ‘on parade.’” “In fact, the Tōdai Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics are the den, the training ground, the research institute of the anti-statists.” The attack on Kawai was particularly tenacious, holding that the third-stage liberalism Kawai espoused (the first stage was liberal laissez-faire; the second, social betterment) aimed at the realization of socialism, and charging that it was only a hair’s-breadth away from communism. The society it aimed for was the same; the difference lay merely in Kawai’s rejection of violent revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Kawai said, “In Japan, too, providing it abandons violence, the Communist Party should be permitted political activity,” and Ida deemed that inexcusably pro-communist. Moreover, Kawai’s sharp criticism of statism, advocating its liquidation and collapse, was anti-kokutai ideology absolutely irreconcilable with Japan’s kokutai, which was an absolutist structure of sovereign-nation unity centered on the emperor.
Kawai described his own ideas as idealistic social democracy, and the Comintern’s new Popular Front tactic emphasized joining hands with social democrats and liberals to form an anti-fascist united front: the chief enemy was statism, so form a united front on that single point, anti-statism. It was precisely anti-statist social democrats such as Kawai who were in accord with the Comintern’s thrust, and the liberalism, democracy, socialism that Kawai preached were now the breeding ground of communism. Tōdai, where such a professor was serving as dean (in fact, Kawai had stepped down as dean in mid-1937), had become the headquarters of the Popular Front; the highest university of all was now the “national headquarters of the Popular Front.” Ida’s rhetoric was heated: now, in the war in China, officers and men were carrying on the battle immersed in water eighteen hours out of twenty-four, so at such a time it was not permissible that in universities at home, Popular Front ideology was in full flood.
As I mentioned earlier, Kawai was famous as an anti-Marxist, so much so that the Ministry of Education had sent him on lecture tours to higher schools throughout the country to spread anti-Marxism; so up till then, it was wholly unthinkable that anyone apart from the radical right like Minoda Muneki would dare label Kawai a communist sympathizer. But with Ida’s speech of February 1938, voices criticizing Kawai’s liberal ideas surged up. Of course, only two weeks earlier, three Tōdai professors—Ōuchi, Arisawa, and Wakimura—had been arrested, so the speech took place soon after the most earthshaking event in Tōdai. The assertion that two faculties—Law and Economics—had become the headquarters of the Popular Front made the man in the street think, Yes, of course!
International Politics and the Popular Front
In content, Ida’s speech was a carbon copy of the charges Minoda Muneki had been making, but its impact was incomparably greater. Genri Nihon reached only a very few readers, but Ida’s attack on Kawai made headlines in the general press.
DENUNCIATION AS REACTIONARY: THING OF THE PAST
“I AM MISUNDERSTOOD”
PROFESSOR KAWAI SADDENED BY DENUNCIATION
This three-line, four-column headline speaks eloquently of the swift change in Kawai’s standing. “Denunciation as reactionary” referred to the denunciation higher-school students had showered on him when the Ministry of Education had sent him out as an instructor to lead people into the right way. The denunciation of Kawai had swung from left-wing cries of “Reactionary!” to right-wing cries of “Popular Front!”
With the Popular Front Incident of December 1937, the official policy for controlling the left changed dramatically. Up till then, the structural sine qua non for invoking the Peace Preservation Law was advocacy of changing the kokutai or refusal to recognize private property; so only members and sympathizers of organizations affiliated with the Communist Party (that is, affiliated with the Comintern) were subject to control. Their crime: the intent to pursue an illegal goal. But the 7th World Congress of the Comintern (1935) had adopted the Popular Front tactic, and from that time on, even Marxists of the non-Communist type (the Rōnōha), who up till then had not been the object of control, became linked to the Comintern through the Popular Front and were subjected to control under that rubric. Thereafter officials used the Popular Front concept adroitly, broadened the Comintern connection to include non-Marxist socialists and social democrats, and seemed to think that all of a sudden they could cast their net even over people they deemed insolent for words and actions inappropriate in time of crisis. And they apparently tried to make Kawai their greatest symbolic target. Kawai believed in socialism, but what was nearest his heart was social democracy on the order of the English labor movement; he was about as far left as today’s Japanese Democratic Party. Moreover, he always stated publicly in regard to Marxism and the Comintern that he was clearly “anti-.” But it was a reality of the European Popular Front movement that the Comintern did reach out to that part of the left. Depending on country and party, there were successes and failures; but that the Comintern reached out is fact. As officials came to understand that fact, they claimed that they had to extend oversight, too.
For the officials, this was convenient. Why? In Kawai’s case, it was clear he acted from an anti-Comintern standpoint, so they hadn’t been able to pull him in under the “intent to pursue an illegal goal” often invoked under the Peace Preservation Law. But if they pushed the Popular Front logic, they could bring him under control. Kawai’s continuing speech and action—criticism of the military, fascism, totalitarianism, statism, support for university autonomy, and the like—were an annoyance; now that increasingly stringent control had shut down the activities of the Communist Party and the activities of the Rōnōha, Kawai was likely the target the officials most wanted to control.
The Popular Front did not exist as a concrete organization in Japan, but Ida’s speech was an attempt to ensnare Kawai in the Popular Front in the broad sense, as vague ideology. For all its wordiness, if you read the speech carefully, it’s hard to say what the point was; its exact meaning was shrouded. But in attacking Kawai he did use the words Popular Front repeatedly, and the implication was that Kawai’s thought, not to mention his very existence, was Popular Front-ish.
It’s clear from the following episode that the key words ‘Popular Front’ were at the root of the official attack on Kawai. At the time, Kawai’s publisher Nihon hyōronsha had issued most of Kawai’s work; Ishidō Kiyotomo was head of its publishing division, and in an essay entitled, “At the Time of the Blacklist,”[2] he writes as follows. In 1937, with the beginning of the China-Japan War, strict thought control came into effect, and the Books branch of the Home Ministry established a “Friendly Gathering about Publications” that brought together representatives of all the publishers. There officials “set out the guidelines for policing publications and explained publication bans and other punishments.”
Its second meeting took place on December 15, 1937. That was the day that throughout the country over four hundred people were arrested at one go in the first Popular Front Incident. “In conjunction with the ‘Popular Front’ arrests conducted on the same day, the secretary of the Metropolitan Police Board lectured on ‘The Current State of the Popular Front.’ Here for the first time the policy was made clear that from then on, no matter what their point of view, those who shout ‘Down with fascism!’ would be considered sympathizers of the Comintern movement and subjected to control. [Emphasis: Tachibana] … The Comintern’s united anti-fascist front had been active since 1935, but the Home Ministry initiated its tough stand in 1937 because in that year the anti-fascist United Front movement was at high tide internationally; what worried me most of all was the likelihood that Kawai’s Critique of Fascism would be targeted for frontal attack.” As here, the sudden heightening of official alarm about the Popular Front at the time was because the Popular Front movement (the united anti-fascist front) was succeeding in some places, and officials worried that its influence would spread to Japan. In 1936 in France the anti-fascist Popular Front grabbed power, and in Japan too there were special issues of journals—in Kaizō, “The Popular Front and Japan,” in Chūō kōron, “The Birth of Japan’s Popular Front.” Nosaka Sanzō and Yamamoto Kenzō, who had been in the Moscow Comintern, wrote a joint “Letter to Japan’s Communists,” calling on Communists to cease their schismatic activity and join the Social Mass Party. Under this impetus, activities of the united Popular Front picked up, and in the general election in 1936 the Social Mass Party gained thirteen seats, going from five seats to eighteen; in the general election in the following year, 1937, it gained again, to thirty-seven seats. These events alarmed officials. Moreover, in response to heightened anti-fascist activity internationally aimed at German and Japanese military acts in Asia and Europe, the Japan-Germany Defense Agreement was concluded in 1936 (it was broadened the following year to include Italy). As its name indicates, this was an anti-Comintern pact; it aimed to suppress state-level Comintern activities centered on the Soviet Union and included various agreements to suppress domestic Comintern anti-fascist united front activity in the signatory states, to exchange information, and the like.
Kawai Rejects Publication Ban
As far as influence on Japan is concerned, the creation in China of an anti-Japanese people’s United Front was hugely important: the Chinese Communist Party accepted the directive of the Comintern, stopped for a while its fight with the Guomindang, and proposed a policy of national unity to fight off the Japanese invasion that had spread from Manchuria into China proper; This was the greatest factor that turned the China-Japan War into a quagmire. Three countries—Japan, Germany, and Italy—had been designated enemies of the international anti-fascist Popular Front, so when the war began, those involved in the Popular Front movement in Japan were considered to be cooperating with the enemy, secret colluders. Until the general election of April 1937, there had been movement in Japan, too, in the Popular Front direction; but after the July incident at the Marco Polo Bridge, that movement came to a dead stop. That was a direct result. Because of the intensification of the wartime order, officials exercised strict control over all such movements (all anti-war words and deeds). The climax came with the Popular Front Incident at the end of 1937 and the Faculty Group Incident at the beginning of 1938. Strong pressure on Kawai, too, began as one aspect of that broader trend (except that Kawai belonged to the faction actively cooperating with the war). But it’s not the case that the movement to ban his books began right after Ida’s speech. Ishidō writes as follows: “After the May meeting broke up, I was directed to stay behind and was approached by three officials for a ‘consultation’ at the bureau chief’s small side table. The thrust: couldn’t we voluntarily stop printing Critique of Fascism? Neither publisher nor author, I thought, wanted to cease publication, and when I asked why they were making an issue of it, they answered that the book had no specific passages whose content infringed the publication law, but there was strong pressure from a certain quarter, and if they did nothing, they feared something untoward might happen to Kawai, our ‘respected teacher.’” “A certain quarter” was of course the Army.
After the February 26 Incident, only Kawai—in “Critique of the February 26 Incident”—had criticized the army directly and eloquently.[3] Nor was that the only time. Shortly thereafter, Torinaka, chief of Chuō kōron press, came to visit and said he’d like someone to write a “Letter to the Military.” At first, Kawai declined—“I’d better mind my own business…” but later changed his mind and wrote “My Thoughts on the Crisis.”[4] This was far longer than the first essay and once again criticized the military sharply. As Tsuchida writes,[5] “He developed his argument at length, eloquently and scathingly, bitterly attacking the military’s forcible intervention into politics.” This essay later was included in the book The Crisis of Liberalism; along with the three other books, it was banned a year and a half later (in October 1938). Reading it today, I’m astonished that back then so biting a book was allowed to stay in print for a year and a half. And when the four books were banned, Tsuchida writes, “It’s clear that Kawai’s resolute critique of the military and attack on statism, especially in The Crisis of Liberalism, greatly exercised the military and right-wing forces.” As in the above passage from Ishidō, Crisis of Liberalism, too, evoked a bitter reaction among the military, so the army suggested that the press let it to go out of print voluntarily. Later, when these two books were banned, the stated reason for banning them was that they were “propaganda for socialism and against the military.”
Superb Insight
Why did the military react so strongly against Critique of Fascism? Because in that book Kawai analyzed Japanese-style fascism and sharply criticized the fact that its most important characteristic was that the military formed its core. Unlike European fascism, which arose spontaneously as a political movement of civilians, the Japanese military—from the very first, an institution whose existence was guaranteed by the constitution—put down roots firmly in the very heart of power. Moreover, via the right of supreme command, it was an institution directly subordinate to the emperor, so its power was incomparably greater than that of all other governmental organs. Because of the right of supreme command, the military could not be checked by government or by Diet. All in all, it is a superb analysis: when such an organization is central to and impels the fascist movement, it “submerges itself in the political machinery and can advance its goals by directing that machinery.” In other words, Kawai feared that the military would highjack the entire state structure from within. Japan’s politics had already reached that stage: the Five Ministers’ Council and the Inner Government Council were created with the military as members, and they become mechanisms for deciding important state-political issues—they are, he argues, fascism’s first appearance. Meanwhile, advancing further, fascism is not content to enter only one sector of power; it may come to seize all power. Neither in the Manchurian Incident nor in the May 15 Incident had fascism reached that point, and in those incidents steps were taken quickly to restore order; but at that point, fascism “became conscious of its own power to terrorize the entire governmental apparatus.” In Japanese society, “it is considered impossible to root out the disasters of fascism, so instead the hope comes bubbling up that ‘the military’ will carry out social reforms.” As a result, “carrying the people’s hopes,” the military may decide to “topple cabinets.”
Along about here, when you think of subsequent political developments, you realize how insightful this narrative truly is. Though this book appeared in 1934, long before the military toppled cabinets using the system that only active-duty generals could serve as Army Minister, before the February 26 Incident arose, before the Tōjō Cabinet, when the military controlled the entire country, he had already foreseen those developments.
Later, when the publication ban trial began, Kawai reread Critique of Fascism to prepare for it and at the time reflected in his diary (March 18, 1939), “If I do say so myself, it’s well-written and I admire it.” In fact, read today, it compels admiration: “Amazing that he was so clear-eyed back then!” But at the time, in 1937, as we saw earlier in Ishidō’s account, officials still hadn’t reached the point of prohibiting publication highhandedly, trying instead the underhanded method of asking the press to suspend publication voluntarily.
Ishidō immediately reported the request to Kawai. Had he gone along with it, perhaps the prohibition of all four works the following year wouldn’t have happened. Ishidō probably communicated that implication to Kawai, but Kawai refused firmly: “That same evening I reported the request from the Books Section to Kawai. He said the following. He still believed what he’d been communicating to his students up to now was accurate. Voluntarily ceasing publication was equivalent to admitting it had been mistaken, and as scholar and as educator, he absolutely couldn’t do that. The Home Ministry has the power to forbid publication—that’s their decision, and it’s out of his hands.” Kawai added: “The previous year the prosecutor’s office had communicated confidentially to the Tōdai Faculty of Economics that if Yamada and Ōmori resigned voluntarily, the prosecutor wouldn’t arrest them. At the time there were various opinions within the faculty; I argued they shouldn’t resign. If they stayed in their positions to the bitter end, their colleagues could fight alongside the two in defense of academic freedom. If, however, they offered their resignations, I argued, it would weaken that fight, and despite his verbal promise, the prosecutor would surely arrest them… In the end the two submitted their resignations, were arrested, and Faculty Meeting couldn’t do a thing.”
The two men were Ōmori Yoshitarō, whose resignation was sought in the March 15 Incident in 1928, and Yamada Moritarō, who was questioned in 1930 for infringing the Peace Preservation Law by giving financial support to the Proletarian News. Even though he resigned, Yamada was arrested and indicted, as Kawai indicates; but Ōmori was neither arrested nor indicted. Until he was arrested in the Popular Front Incident in 1937, he stayed out of public office, continuing to speak and be active. But Kawai did think the thoughts he mentions, so later, when on the issue of publication prohibition he was urged strongly by presidents Nagayo and Hiraga to resign, Kawai himself refused adamantly to engage in such ambiguous, “Japanese-style” dealings and did not resign. So the issue worsened steadily, and in the end in the Hiraga Purge, he shared the fate of Hijikata and the others. After telling this story, Kawai said to Ishidō, “Integrity is more important than stratagems.” Kawai was able to stick so strongly to his principles because by the time he came to write this bitter essay, he had long since foreseen the worst possible outcome for himself and had hardened his resolve and resignation.
In “My State of Mind of Late,” written on January 6, 1939,[6] when he was virtually cornered by the Hiraga Purge (he was placed on administrative leave on January 31), he writes, “The difficulties within the faculty began soon after my return to Japan in 1933, and when I reread today the diary I’ve kept since returning, I think it’s unbelievable I’ve lived in such a place!  Moreover, since the Minobe Incident and the February 26 Incident, my diary shows repeatedly that I’m resigned to the worst, so that’s why I’m so calm now. None of this started today; it’s all a crystallization of the last several years.”
Kawai began criticizing the military in his “Critique of the May 15 Incident,”[7] but in fact on the day of the May 15 Incident, he was studying in Germany and learned of the incident only from newpaper reports. He wrote “Critique of the May 15 Incident” for the Bungei shunjū issue of October of the following year, 1933. Perhaps because it wasn’t immediately after the incident, he wasn’t under much strain in writing it. He writes in his diary: “October 3. Last night finished ‘Critique of the May 15 Incident’ for Bungei shunjū. 70 pages. It’s a bit dry, and I’m not satisfied. With that, and thinking that it may well stir up some unpleasantness, I was a bit nervous. But once I’d finished it and soaked in the tub, I felt relieved, as if I’d gotten a load off my chest.”
On the way home by ship from Europe, he had reached a certain state of resolve and resignation. Of course, he was urgently determined and tense when he wrote “Critique of the Minobe Issue.”[8] In April 1935 in “On the Minobe Incident,” he wrote as follows:[9] “I left Europe, and on the ship coming home, I thought: I’ve lived forty-three years, I’ve lived pretty much as I liked, selfishly; no matter when death comes, I’ll have no regrets. I felt all that again the year before last when thinking about Japan while I was sick. I felt it again in October 1933 when I wrote “Critique of the May 15 Incident.” So now I’ve already crossed that bridge. Then an incident arose before my very eyes involving my close friend Minobe, and the peripheral conditions, conditions threatening complete collapse, were completely different from before.”
At first he refrained from acting, thinking he shouldn’t rush to take the lead on what was another faculty’s business. But one month passed, then two, and the all-important Faculty of Law took no action at all. When he met his friend Rōyama and asked about things in the Faculty of Law, he learned that the Faculty of Law was a lost cause; no one was about to do anything. At last, thinking, “There’s no need for me to wait any longer, and it’s been fruitless to wait till now,” he holed up in his Hakone lodging and at one fell swoop wrote three manuscripts: “At Hakone I took a day’s break and started writing without haste. I’d never before taken such care in writing a manuscript; while I was writing, the administrative sanction [against Minobe] was decided on, and there was the threat of legal punishment, too; on the train back to Tokyo, I saw (in the newspaper) an account of Minobe’s state of mind, and with the various stresses, my mood darkened. That night I wrote the next installment of Economic Comings and Goings first, then rewrote the first part of the Chuō kōron piece, then completed Economic Comings and Goings, and next morning I handed both in. On the 11th I was more exhausted than I’d ever been after pulling an all-nighter. Once I got home, I fell into a deep sleep, and in the morning I was fine. On the 12th I contacted the Imperial University News and it took me all of six hours, from one to nearly seven, to write twenty pages; they were more detailed and polished than ever before. With that I had got down on paper what had been bouncing around in my mind for more than a month.”
The Greatest Ideological Battle Since Meiji
Before writing these manuscripts, Kawai had had doubts. after writing them, too, doubts were his fate. A minor matter: he was only 45, and he still had two years to go before his pension kicked in. A major matter: he could conceive of various dangers to himself:
The first danger…was the menace of thugs. The second was getting fired by government or university. No matter what, without conceding a thing, I’ll push forward. No matter what, I’ll never resign. At the same time I have to think about causing trouble for close colleagues. If I resign now in discouragement, nothing will happen. Rather than that, better to hold fast for even a little and fight….
As for the possibility of violence, I’ll go over that with the family. If I’m fired, I’ll keep silent for a year or so, study as I have up till now, and observe the situation quietly. Then it still won’t be too late to make plans for the long haul.
What I must do now is first of all never concede or evade. But on that score, I’ve got confidence in myself….
He worried because his opponent this time around was Minoda and his ilk and the band of right-wing state-essence believers around them, and they included dangerous and unpredictable folks. (In fact, Minobe had been beaten up by thugs.) Unlike academic battles, this confrontation required a certain resolve and resignation: fully aware of this, Kawai rose to the struggle. At the same time as “Critique of the Minobe Issue,” Kawai said the following:[10] “A certain intellectual who rejects the emperor-organ theory would go further and purge liberalism and individualism from our thought world, and that’s an ideological battle we haven’t had to fight since the Meiji era; he says this is the first step of the heralded Shōwa Restoration. In this sense, shaking himself abruptly free of the argument over the rights and wrongs of the emperor-organ theory, he declares war across the entire intellectual front. I want to accept his challenge.”
Kawai’s “certain intellectual” is of course Minoda, the central figure in the attack on the emperor-organ theory. Minoda ranked this as the greatest intellectual battle since the Meiji era and, as if possessed, fought desperately to uproot all liberalism and individualism.[11] It took considerable resolve to fight him, and Kawai volunteered for the fight with these thoughts: “What will be is for fate to decide. I don’t have the young man’s vigor of my twenties, nor am I an old man in my fifties or sixties; now I’m forty-five— truly a good age. For fifteen years the university has let me do the research I wanted to do. I’ve been fortunate on many scores. If someone like me doesn’t speak up now, who will? I’ll leave the rest to fate and wait with a smile, cheerfully.”
A Resolve Reached at the Time of the February 26 Incident
When Kawai had criticized the February 26 Incident, too, he’d done so having resolved and resigned himself. Here I’ll cite his mindset that day from an essay he wrote the following year:[12]
February 26 one year ago remains etched deeply in my heart even now.
My university work was finished, so I thought once the day’s Faculty Meeting ends, I’ll set off on a trip and do some work, and in the morning, carrying my suitcase, I got into a jinricksha. Snow was falling steadily. The jinricksha man said General Watanabe had been assassinated, but for a moment Watanabe’s name didn’t register….
Inside the train I heard no news. After I got into a taxi at Shimbashi, roads were sealed off in every direction, and at the palace barbed-wire barricades had been strung up, and rifle-bearing soldiers were standing: seeing that, I became more and more aware of how big this incident was….
The incident we’d foreseen since the May 15 Incident had finally come. My mind turned solely to the question, what will become of Japan now? But encountering such a big event, your thought process is hazy, and things don’t come into focus. …
Snow was still falling. As I watched the scene outside the window, I was thinking only, what will become of the university now? What role should I play now?
After the meeting ended, I went back to my office and thought: set out now on the trip as planned? Or go home? … The car made slow progress on the snowy roads. Inside the car I thought of various things. People in my kind of position probably won’t suffer direct damage, but there’ll likely be pressure on my pen and tongue. The time has finally come—unwilling to submit, I’ll surely meet the fate to which I’ve resigned myself earlier.
Kawai settled in an inn on the coast near Odawara and read Yokomitsu Riichi’s Family Council and a biography of Rosa Luxemburg.  The same kind of violent revolution is being carried out around me as I read her biography, and several anti-fascist politicians have been slaughtered. As I thought of distant Germany and pondered close-at-hand Japan, my eyes never left the dark sea outside my window.” From then on, he reconciled himself to the possibility that he too might meet a death like Rosa’s.
He sometimes felt that personal danger was closing in on him. For example, there’s this in his diary for August 17, 1938: “In August a telegram came from M. [Maide] and I left for Tokyo; I sensed danger nearby. It was a bit like the end of last year and February this year. I’ll follow reason without fear or hesitation. And if I die in the process, it will be the doing of fate; but it’s also the case that sticking to principle is the only way I can survive.”
“The end of last year and February this year”: the phrase refers to the mass arrests of the Popular Front Incident and the Faculty Group Incident. This was the time when large-scale military collision broke out between Japan and Russia at Zhanggufeng (Japan’s dead and wounded: 1,400); at the drop of a hat, true war might have broken out between Japan and Russia. Maide had sent the telegram worried that the moment war broke out, the army or right-wing thugs might attack Kawai in the name of the ‘emergency.’
After the Faculty Group Incident, there was sharp disagreement within the Faculty of Economics on whether Ōuchi should be fired before he was indicted, the renovationist (Hijikata) faction arguing yes, what was left of the Ōuchi faction saying no. In that confrontation, the Kawai faction swung its support to the Ōuchi faction, with which it had been sharply at odds up till then. Maide of the Ōuchi faction became dean and stiffened Faculty Meeting and the University Council against acting against Ōuchi before he was indicted. This change in Kawai’s mindset led him to clasp hands with the Marxists, to whom until then he’d been opposed, in order to give priority to anti-fascism; so in conception, it was precisely the same tactic as the Popular Front. But what counted more for Kawai was the consciousness now of defending academic freedom and university autonomy no matter the cost. He sensed danger: these great principles were at risk; if you were a university person, they must be defended above all else. They alone must be defended at all costs—even letting bygones be bygones.
There’s an essay Kawai wrote at the time, “Crisis—University—Professors.”[13] In it, he says there are only three reasons that justify stripping a university professor of his status:
- If he speaks or acts against the kokutai;
- If he actually commits an illegal act; and
- If he offends against the ethical code of the academy.
It’s absolutely wrong to terminate a professor for any other reason. Moreover, even in those situations, the status of the professor should be changed by autonomous university decision of the faculty, and he argues forcefully that “interference by extra-university forces—for example, the government or an ideological group—should be barred.”
Why is it necessary to reject even governmental interference? Basically, the university should not be subordinate to the government because the university is in the position of leading the government. “The duty of university professors is not to cooperate with the government but to criticize and lead the government. Moreover, their duty is not to design state policy themselves but to educate and train the people who design state policy.” A faculty bunch (the renovationist clique) had emerged, centered in the Faculty of Economics; unsettled by the China War that had just begun, it took the lead in urging cooperation with state policy.
This essay denounced them sharply. Kawai called them the “crisis clique”: “Their minds are overwhelmed by the very size of the crisis, and they have forgotten the essence of the university.” Research in the university should not be overwhelmed by immediate short-term phenomena but must have as its goal inculcating in future administrators the ability to think of things in a longer time frame.
What university people should do now is not dream up state policy before being asked, but teach the students “to set the eternal against the contemporary, theory against reality,” to teach “the theory essential to recognize reality” and “the philosophy necessary to critique the present.” “Taking advantage of the crisis mood,” groups seized by “the hope that this is our chance to destroy university autonomy” have appeared inside the university and outside and seek to interfere in university autonomy. But Kawai stated firmly that the university “must never yield even one step” to these types. Kawai criticized outside folks such as Minoda and Ida, who in the name of emergency intensified the attack on the university, and the forces inside the university that tried to act in concert with the outside forces.
Diet Members and the Right Wing Apply Pressure on the University
Kawai referred repeatedly to the activity of forces outside the university because after Ida’s speech in the House of Peers, that activity came out into the open. In the same way as at the time of the Minobe emperor-organ issue, the same bunch began to strengthen communications among themselves, narrow the target to Kawai, and demand that he be fired. On August 26 these folks descended en masse on Tōdai president Nagayo. In Nagayo’s diary is the following entry:
Meeting with group of right-wing Diet members.
10-12:15 Meeting in the University Council Hall
Sakikata, Mimurodo, Ida, Inoue, Nakahara.
Minoda and several others had come, too, but as per last night’s agreement with Ida, I had them wait in a separate room.
But even counting only the Diet members, there were five people, and Minoda Muneki himself came along. Ahead of the meeting, the Diet members had sent to Nagayo a long message signed by a hundred sympathizers from all fields (politicians, military men, media figures, right-wing activists; the same list soon became the Alliance for a Tōdai Purge), along with other attacks on the university. Its content was cut from the same cloth as Minoda’s essays and Ida’s speech: in essence, Tōdai’s scholarly atmosphere is spreading communist-sympathizing Bolshevik ideas to all Japan, so let’s clean it up.
One passage linked Kawai with the Popular Front and criticized him specifically: “There are social democrats (Kawai Eijirō) who continue to speak out in favor of joining hands with communists, standing together in a Popular Front, and destroying statism.” This sentence owes its existence to an essay by Odamura Torajirō, at the time a student in the Faculty of Law and later professor at Asia University: “Courses at Tōdai Law and Student Ideology.”[14] An expose about the instruction he received in the Faculty of Law, it evoked great public response (among the right-wing public). At the start of this essay he writes, “April 20, in opening remarks to the ‘Social Policy’ course for which he is responsible in the Faculty of Law, Professor Kawai Eijirō said, ‘It’s a mistake that the Marxists have heretofore considered the liberals as enemies.’ Then, in fiery tones, ‘Now is the time we (that is, liberals) must join hands with the Marxists and together as a Popular Front lob shells at the right wing.’ He says this in class any number of times, but such statements are quite unproblematic in the entire university, of course, but even in the Faculty of Law, where one might expect objection.” Odamura makes it seem that Kawai praised the Popular Front in class. Genri Nihon, the Imperial University News, and the whole range of right-wing media quoted this account time and again. Criticism of “Kawai of the Popular Front” grew in volume, and in the end voices began to call for the Ministry of Education, too, to fire Kawai. The Ministry of Education began to take steps, inquiring the facts of Nagayo, and then suddenly, on October 15, the Home Ministry handed down the decision to ban publication of Kawai’s four works. Thereupon the pressure of the Ministry of Education (demanding his resignation) grew stronger still, and University officials moved to fire Kawai.
The matter got this far because the student Odamura was in fact a leader of Tōdai’s right-wing student group, and once this essay appeared, he did active propagandizing—for example, he sent off copy after copy to famous people in all fields (government officials, the military, the right wing). The course of events is very closely similar to the time when the emperor-organ issue spread quickly—Odamura looked up to Minoda as mentor, and the same people cooperated this time, too.
In his diary for the day after the visit of the Diet group, Nagayo noted that right-wing students led by Odamura had barged into the president’s office with the petition that he fire all professors who were conducting education sympathetic to Bolshevism and clean up Tōdai’s academic atmosphere. All of this activity was planned. In Nagayo’s diary for August 26, the day he met with the Diet members, there is this: “Inoue Kiyozumi asked silly questions—for example, why isn’t the university producing results? I didn’t take him seriously.” He didn’t deal with Inoue head-on. Soon, at the end of this unreal give-and-take, Ida said he wanted to hear President Nagayo’s frank opinion of this petition, so Nagayo said firmly: “I won’t respond one by one to the various issues, but I am absolutely unable to tolerate the last phrase—‘The source of the propaganda sympathetic to Bolshevism domestically is the Tōdai Faculty of Economics; in light of that fact, how can we subjects of the empire accept that situation in silence?’ In the past sixty years the Tōdai Faculties of Law and Economics (Law in particular) have sent tens of thousands of graduates out into the world. The world knows that in all areas of society these people (several prime ministers, countless cabinet ministers, and so on and so on) are making their contribution to the state and have labored honorably to construct today’s Japan. As president and with respect for these predecessors, I find it inappropriate to abuse Tōdai with these criticisms. Even if in the past, a few professors have caused problems, I am totally unable to accept these words directed at the Tōdai Faculty of Law. For the honor of Tōdai I reject these words.” It was “You folks keep criticizing Tōdai, saying that Tōdai has ruined Japan, but has any other university contributed as much to the state or accomplished as much in constructing today’s Japan?” When he said this, forcefully, Ida responded, “I quite agree,” and then, “A president who didn’t get angry wouldn’t be a good president. Let’s bring the formal meeting to a close. Thank you for your time.”
Nagayo did treat them coldly, but the very fact that the president received the protest of the right wing and held this kind of meeting was a first in Tōdai history; nor is there any later example. How was this meeting received within Tōdai? Yabe Teiji, professor of politics at the Law Faculty, wrote this in his diary:
August 25, 1938
According to a radio report I happened to hear, tomorrow the Ministry of Education and the president will meet, and the fact that Minoda Muneki’s name was mentioned makes me unhappy in the extreme. More and more, news of madness[15] drives out sanity….
According to the evening paper, the group meeting with the president to present its opinion is not the Ministry of Education but Mimurodo, Kikuchi, Ida, Inoue, and others—all of them notorious. But the president is the biggest imbecile of all for meeting with them in the first place…
According to the newspaper, five members of the House of Peers—Ita, Kikuchi, Mimurodo, Inoue, and Nakahara—met today with the president, the dean of Letters and the dean of Agriculture.
To report on the results of this meeting, the Alliance for a Tōdai Purge rented Hibiya Public Hall for a “Report of Interview with Imperial University Officials—Lecture Meeting to Criticize the Atmosphere of the Academy;” according to an announcement from the sponsors, it drew a large audience of 2,800. According to “Notes from the Editor’s Desk” in the October 1938 issue of Genri Nihon, this lecture meeting went virtually unreported by the major newspapers. It said that was because most news reporters of the major newspapers were leftists who graduated from universities where the academic atmosphere was sympathetic to Bolshevism. To prove the lecture meeting was truly a great success, Genri Nihon ran two photos of the meeting. Judging by these, it does indeed appear to be well attended. Had the Tōdai uproar aroused serious interest in the world at large? Or was this an era in which a great many movers and shakers were right-wingers? By the way, this huge crowd included Maruyama Masao, assistant professor in the Politics section of the Faculty of Law. At the direction of Nambara Shigeru, he had gone to check things out.
Odamura’s Testimony: True or False?
Did Kawai in fact say in class what Odamura reported? As this issue became more serious, the perplexed Kawai said he had never said any such thing in class, that it was all Odamura’s fabrication. His claim was believed, and Odamura was punished by being placed on indefinite leave from the Faculty of Law. But I have my doubts about Kawai’s version. Maruyama Masao was Odamura’s classmate and took Kawai’s “Social Policy” course during the same semester. He spoke as follows about this matter:[16]
Fukuda: Even in Kawai’s own memoir he reflects that he was aware that fascism was the enemy, so the tactic should be to join hands with the Marxists as soon as possible to oppose fascism. His own principles never changed, but he picked the wrong time to oppose fascism.
Maruyama: In the course “Social Policy” I attended as a third-year student, too, the biggest mistake of Japan’s Marxists was to view liberalism exclusively as enemy and focus entirely on attacking it; basically, they should have cooperated with liberalism against fascism. Making an enemy of the liberalism it should have formed common front with against fascism—that was Japan’s Marxism: he said so time and again.
In fact, this is the same as his thinking about the Popular Front and matches pretty well Odamura’s memory. Moreover, among things that Kawai wrote at the time, there are several passages that deny the Odamura report, but none is a fundamental refutation, and they are all strangely inarticulate. The “explicitness, clarity, firmness of tone” that he always used to squelch an opponent in debate are almost completely absent. His chief evidence is the assertion that operating from his own clear fundamentals he wouldn’t be likely to say such a thing. There is only un-Kawai-like evasion cleverly organized as refutation. So—setting aside the issue of whether he actually said the words Popular Front that Odamura cited—I think he must have said something that could well be interpreted that way. Whether or not he actually used the word in that context, it’s indisputable that Kawai’s thinking at the time had become Popular Front-ish.
- Kokka to daigaku: Tōkyō teikoku daigaku hōgakubu no minshushugi mukokka shisō ni taisuru gakujutsuteki hihan, Tokyo: Genri Nihonsha, 1938. ↵
- “Hakkin no koro,” Newsletter accompanying Vol. 3 of Kawai’s Collected Works Kawai Eijirō zenshū, 24 v., ed. Egami Teruhiko (Tokyo : Shakai Shisōsha, 1967-1970). ↵
- “Ni-niroku jiken no hihan.” ↵
- “Jikyoku ni taishite kokorozashi o iu.” ↵
- “Kaisetsu,” Vol. 12 of the Collected Works. ↵
- “Sakkon no shinkyō.” ↵
- “Go-ichigo jiken no hihan.” ↵
- “Minobe mondai no hihan.” ↵
- “Minobe jiken ni tsuite,” Zenshū 20. ↵
- “Minobe mondai no hihan,” Imperial University News; “Kaikaku genri to shite no shisō taikei, Chūō kōron. ↵
- RHM: The Japanese term ‘possessed’ here is a homonym for Minoda’s personal name. “Crazy Minoda” is what his antagonists often called him. ↵
- “Ninirokunichi no omoide,” Zenshū 17. ↵
- “Jikyoku—daigaku—kyōju,” Nihon hyōron, April 1938. ↵
- “Tōdai hōgakubu ni okeru kōgi to gakusei shisōseikatsu,” Inochi, September 1938. ↵
- RHM: ‘Madness’ here and the repeated use of ‘crazy’ later in this diary are plays on Minoda’s given name: kyō (crazy) is a homonym for kyō, the Chinese reading of the character mune of Minoda Muneki. ↵
- Kikigaki Kaikō Nambara Shigeru. ↵


3.2 Interest
Two services typically offered by banks are savings accounts and loans. If you deposit money into a savings account, the amount of money in the account gradually increases. At a later date, you can withdraw more money than you deposited. In contrast, when you borrow money in the form of a loan, the total amount you will have to repay will be more than the amount you originally borrowed. In both of these scenarios, an increase in the amount of money is due to interest.
Interest is the cost of borrowing money. It is the amount of money that is paid in addition to the amount borrowed, loaned or invested.  The original amount borrowed, loaned or invested is called the principal. Interest is charged on the principal due to the following factors:
- Inflation. As noted in the section 3.1, due to inflation money’s purchasing power slowly decreases. Without charging interest, the lender would be left with less purchasing power than they started with.
- Risk. There is a chance that the borrower will default on (not pay back) their loan. To account for this risk, lenders charge interest. The interest they earn helps cover losses from borrowers who are unable to make their payments.
An interest rate is a percentage rate applied on the principal, which is used to calculate the amount of interest generated in an interest period (the frequency that interest is calculated, e.g. monthly, bi-weekly, yearly).
There are two types of interest: simple interest and compound interest.
3.2.1 Simple Interest
Simple interest is calculated on the amount that was originally borrowed, loaned or invested – the principal. Interest accumulated in previous periods does not earn additional interest.
Example 3.1
Suppose you make a deposit of $100 in a bank account that pays 5% interest per year. After one year, you earn 5% interest, or $5, bringing your total balance to $105. After one more year, since simple interest is paid only on your principal, you again earn 5% of the original $100. That means you earn another $5 in the second year, and will earn $5 for every year of the investment. (Boundless Finance, 2016). The diagram below shows the interest the $100 deposit earns each year and how that affects the total value of your deposit. The next table shows account balances for this scenario for the first 5 years.
| Year | Beginning Balance | Interest Earned | Ending Balance |
| 0 | – | – | $100.00 |
| 1 | $100.00 | $5.00 | $105.00 |
| 2 | $105.00 | $5.00 | $110.00 |
| 3 | $110.00 | $5.00 | $115.00 |
| 4 | $115.00 | $5.00 | $120.00 |
| 5 | $120.00 | $5.00 | $125.00 |
Table 3.1 Simple Interest Earned on a $100 Deposit
Typically, the current account balance is called the present value ($100 in period 0) and the account balance at some point in the future is termed the future value ($125 in period 5).
The future value consists of the present value (principal) and the total interest:
(3.3)
Where F = Future Value
P = Present Value
I =Total Interest
Total interest I is the total simple interest paid on the principal in all periods. It is calculated as follows:
(3.4)
Where P = Present value
i = interest rate
N = number of periods
Thus, the future value formula becomes:
Rearranging, we get the future value with simple interest formula:
(3.5)
Applying this formula to example 3.1 we get:
So, the future value of the investment in 5 years is $125. Total interest paid is $25.
While simple interest is a useful theoretical concept, it is rarely used in the real world. Loans you get from a bank, money you invest in savings accounts, credit card debt etc. accrue what is called compound interest.
3.2.2 Compound Interest
Compound interest is calculated on the total amount – the principal and previously earned interest – in a given period. In other words, compound interest includes interest earned on interest, not just interest earned on the principal, like simple interest does. The interest period for compound interest is typically termed the compounding period. For the same interest rate, compound interest will always result in more total interest than simple interest.
Example 3.2
Suppose you make the same $100 deposit into a bank account that pays 5% interest, but this time, the interest is compounded annually. After the first year, you will again have $105. At the end of the second year you also earn 5% interest, but this time it is calculated based on your $105 balance. Thus, you earn $5.25 in interest in the second year, bringing your balance to $110.25. In the third year, you earn 5% interest on your $110.25 balance, or $5.51. Table 3.2 shows how interest accumulates in the account for the first 5 years.
| Year | Beginning Balance | Interest Earned | Ending Balance |
| 0 | – | – | $100.00 |
| 1 | $100.00 | $5.00 | $105.00 |
| 2 | $105.00 | $5.25 | $110.25 |
| 3 | $110.25 | $5.51 | $115.76 |
| 4 | $115.76 | $5.79 | $121.55 |
| 5 | $121.55 | $6.08 | $127.63 |
Table 3.2 Compound Interest Earned on a $100 Deposit
While you may use a table to calculate the future value, it may be convenient to develop a formula for this calculation.
In year 1, interest is applied to the principal (present value in period 0):
Thus, the future value in year 1 is:
In year 2, interest is now calculated on the ending balance in year 1, which is :
The Future value in year 2 is therefore:
Similarly, in year 3 interest is calculated on the ending balance in year 2 – :
So, the future value in year 3 is:
Continuing for N periods, we get the general future value with compound interest formula for single cash flows:
(3.6)
Remembering that , the formula for total compound interest is:
(3.7)
To summarize, the formulas for simple and compound interest are in Table 3.3 below.
| Simple Interest | Compound Interest | |
| Total Interest | ||
| Future Value | ||
| Interest earned | Only on principal | Both principal and accumulated interest |
Table 3.3 Simple and Compound Interest
Let’s see an example problem comparing simple interest to compound interest.
Simple and Compound Interest Examples
Suppose we want to make one deposit into a bank account today in order to withdraw $2000 five years from now. How much would we have to deposit
- If the account paid 5% simple interest annually?
- If the account paid 5% compound interest, compounded annually?
Solution
a. Simple Interest
From the problem statement, we know that the future value of the account should be $2000, so F = $2000 We are given the interest rate, i = 5% = 0.05 , and the number of years, N = 5. Given all this information, we first use the simple interest formula 3.5 to solve for P – the value of the initial required deposit:
b. Compound Interest
For the compound interest account, we use compound interest formula 3.6 to solve for P:
Thus, comparing the two values, we can see that you would have to deposit a smaller amount into a bank account with compound interest. This is due to the fact that compound interest yields higher total interest amounts compared to simple interest, as noted before. By putting money in a compounding account rather than a simple-interest account, even at the same interest rate, you would earn an extra $33. Even though $33 does not seem like much money, it can be significant when considering larger amounts invested over longer time periods. If you were to withdraw $2 million after five years under the same terms, the difference would be $33 000!


9.4 Nervous System Control of Muscle Tension
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Explain concentric, isotonic and eccentric contractions
- Describe the length-tension relationship
- Describe the three phases of a muscle twitch
- Define wave summation, tetanus and treppe
To move an object, referred to as load, the sarcomeres in the muscle fibres of the skeletal muscle must shorten. The force generated by the contraction of the muscle (or shortening of the sarcomeres) is called muscle tension. However, muscle tension also is generated when the muscle is contracting against a load that does not move, resulting in two main types of skeletal muscle contractions: isotonic contractions and isometric contractions.
In isotonic contractions, where the tension in the muscle stays constant, a load is moved as the length of the muscle changes (shortens). There are two types of isotonic contractions: concentric and eccentric. A concentric contraction involves the muscle shortening to move a load. An example of this is the biceps brachii muscle contracting when a hand weight is brought upward with increasing muscle tension. As the biceps brachii contract, the angle of the elbow joint decreases as the forearm is brought toward the body. Here, the biceps brachii contracts as sarcomeres in its muscle fibres are shortening and cross-bridges form; the myosin heads pull the actin. An eccentric contraction occurs as the muscle tension diminishes and the muscle lengthens. In this case, the hand weight is lowered in a slow and controlled manner as the amount of cross-bridges being activated by nervous system stimulation decreases. In this case, as tension is released from the biceps brachii, the angle of the elbow joint increases. Eccentric contractions are also used for movement and balance of the body.
An isometric contraction occurs as the muscle produces tension without changing the angle of a skeletal joint. Isometric contractions involve sarcomere shortening and increasing muscle tension, but do not move a load, as the force produced cannot overcome the resistance provided by the load. For example, if one attempts to lift a hand weight that is too heavy, there will be sarcomere activation and shortening to a point, and ever-increasing muscle tension, but no change in the angle of the elbow joint. In everyday living, isometric contractions are active in maintaining posture and maintaining bone and joint stability. However, holding your head in an upright position occurs not because the muscles cannot move the head, but because the goal is to remain stationary and not produce movement. Most actions of the body are the result of a combination of isotonic and isometric contractions working together to produce a wide range of outcomes (Figure 9.4.1).
All these muscle activities are under the exquisite control of the nervous system. Neural control regulates concentric, eccentric and isometric contractions, muscle fibre recruitment, and muscle tone. A crucial aspect of nervous system control of skeletal muscles is the role of motor units.
Motor Units
As you have learned, every skeletal muscle fibre must be innervated by the axon terminal of a motor neuron in order to contract. Each muscle fibre is innervated by only one motor neuron. The actual group of muscle fibres in a muscle innervated by a single motor neuron is called a motor unit. The size of a motor unit is variable depending on the nature of the muscle.
A small motor unit is an arrangement where a single motor neuron supplies a small number of muscle fibres in a muscle. Small motor units permit very fine motor control of the muscle. The best example in humans is the small motor units of the extraocular eye muscles that move the eyeballs. There are thousands of muscle fibres in each muscle, but every six or so fibres are supplied by a single motor neuron, as the axons branch to form synaptic connections at their individual NMJs. This allows for exquisite control of eye movements so that both eyes can quickly focus on the same object. Small motor units are also involved in the many fine movements of the fingers and thumb of the hand for grasping, texting, etc.
A large motor unit is an arrangement where a single motor neuron supplies many muscle fibres in a muscle. Large motor units are concerned with simple, or “gross,” movements, such as powerfully extending the knee joint. The best example is the large motor units of the thigh muscles or back muscles, where a single motor neuron will supply thousands of muscle fibres in a muscle, as its axon splits into thousands of branches.
There is a wide range of motor units within many skeletal muscles, which gives the nervous system a wide range of control over the muscle. The small motor units in the muscle will have smaller, lower-threshold motor neurons that are more excitable, firing first to their skeletal muscle fibres, which also tend to be the smallest. Activation of these smaller motor units, results in a relatively small degree of contractile strength (tension) generated in the muscle. As more strength is needed, larger motor units, with bigger, higher-threshold motor neurons are enlisted to activate larger muscle fibres. This increasing activation of motor units produces an increase in muscle contraction known as recruitment. As more motor units are recruited, the muscle contraction grows progressively stronger. In some muscles, the largest motor units may generate a contractile force of 50 times more than the smallest motor units in the muscle. This allows a feather to be picked up using the biceps brachii arm muscle with minimal force, and a heavy weight to be lifted by the same muscle by recruiting the largest motor units.
When necessary, the maximal number of motor units in a muscle can be recruited simultaneously, producing the maximum force of contraction for that muscle, but this cannot last for very long because of the energy requirements to sustain the contraction. To prevent complete muscle fatigue, motor units are generally not all simultaneously active, but instead some motor units rest while others are active, which allows for longer muscle contractions. The nervous system uses recruitment as a mechanism to efficiently utilise a skeletal muscle.
The Length-Tension Range of a Sarcomere
When a skeletal muscle fibre contracts, myosin heads attach to actin to form cross-bridges followed by the thin filaments sliding over the thick filaments as the heads pull the actin, and this results in sarcomere shortening, creating the tension of the muscle contraction. The cross-bridges can only form where thin and thick filaments already overlap, so that the length of the sarcomere has a direct influence on the force generated when the sarcomere shortens. This is called the length-tension relationship.
The ideal length of a sarcomere to produce maximal tension occurs at 80 percent to 120 percent of its resting length, with 100 percent being the state where the medial edges of the thin filaments are just at the most-medial myosin heads of the thick filaments (Figure 9.4.2). This length maximises the overlap of actin-binding sites and myosin heads. If a sarcomere is stretched past this ideal length (beyond 120 percent), thick and thin filaments do not overlap sufficiently, which results in less tension produced. If a sarcomere is shortened beyond 80 percent, the zone of overlap is reduced with the thin filaments jutting beyond the last of the myosin heads and shrinks the H zone, which is normally composed of myosin tails. Eventually, there is nowhere else for the thin filaments to go and the amount of tension is diminished. If the muscle is stretched to the point where thick and thin filaments do not overlap at all, no cross-bridges can be formed, and no tension is produced in that sarcomere. This amount of stretching does not usually occur, as accessory proteins and connective tissue oppose extreme stretching.
The Frequency of Motor Neuron Stimulation
A single action potential from a motor neuron will produce a single contraction in the muscle fibres of its motor unit. This isolated contraction is called a twitch. A twitch can last for a few milliseconds or 100 milliseconds, depending on the muscle type. The tension produced by a single twitch can be measured by a myogram, an instrument that measures the amount of tension produced over time (Figure 9.4.3). Each twitch undergoes three phases. The first phase is the latent period, during which the action potential is being propagated along the sarcolemma and Ca2+ ions are released from the SR. This is the phase during which excitation and contraction are being coupled but contraction has yet to occur. The contraction phase occurs next. The Ca2+ ions in the sarcoplasm have bound to troponin, tropomyosin has shifted away from actin-binding sites, cross-bridges formed, and sarcomeres are actively shortening to the point of peak tension. The last phase is the relaxation phase, when tension decreases as contraction stops. Ca2+ ions are pumped out of the sarcoplasm into the SR, and cross-bridge cycling stops, returning the muscle fibres to their resting state.
Although a person can experience a muscle “twitch,” a single twitch does not produce any significant muscle activity in a living body. A series of action potentials to the muscle fibres is necessary to produce a muscle contraction that can produce work. Normal muscle contraction is more sustained, and it can be modified by input from the nervous system to produce varying amounts of force; this is called a graded muscle response. The frequency of action potentials (nerve impulses) from a motor neuron and the number of motor neurons transmitting action potentials both affect the tension produced in skeletal muscle.
The rate at which a motor neuron fires action potentials affects the tension produced in the skeletal muscle. If the fibres are stimulated while a previous twitch is still occurring, the second twitch will be stronger. This response is called wave summation, because the excitation-contraction coupling effects of successive motor neuron signalling is summed, or added together (Figure 9.4.4a). At the molecular level, summation occurs because the second stimulus triggers the release of more Ca2+ ions, which become available to activate additional sarcomeres while the muscle is still contracting from the first stimulus. Summation results in greater contraction of the motor unit.
If the frequency of motor neuron signalling increases, summation and subsequent muscle tension in the motor unit continues to rise until it reaches a peak point. The tension at this point is about three to four times greater than the tension of a single twitch, a state referred to as incomplete tetanus. During incomplete tetanus, the muscle goes through quick cycles of contraction with a short relaxation phase for each. If the stimulus frequency is so high that the relaxation phase disappears completely, contractions become continuous in a process called complete tetanus (Figure 9.4.4b).
During tetanus, the concentration of Ca2+ ions in the sarcoplasm allows virtually all of the sarcomeres to form cross-bridges and shorten, so that a contraction can continue uninterrupted (until the muscle fatigues and can no longer produce tension).
Treppe
When a skeletal muscle has been dormant for an extended period and then activated to contract, with all other things being equal, the initial contractions generate about one-half the force of later contractions. The muscle tension increases in a graded manner that to some looks like a set of stairs. This tension increase is called treppe, a condition where muscle contractions become more efficient. It’s also known as the “staircase effect” (Figure 9.4.5).
It is believed that treppe results from a higher concentration of Ca2+ in the sarcoplasm resulting from the steady stream of signals from the motor neuron. It can only be maintained with adequate ATP.
Muscle Tone
Skeletal muscles are rarely completely relaxed, or flaccid. Even if a muscle is not producing movement, it is contracted a small amount to maintain its contractile proteins and produce muscle tone. The tension produced by muscle tone allows muscles to continually stabilise joints and maintain posture.
Muscle tone is accomplished by a complex interaction between the nervous system and skeletal muscles that results in the activation of a few motor units at a time, most likely in a cyclical manner. In this manner, muscles never fatigue completely, as some motor units can recover while others are active.
The absence of the low-level contractions that lead to muscle tone is referred to as hypotonia or atrophy and can result from damage to parts of the central nervous system (CNS), such as the cerebellum, or from loss of innervations to a skeletal muscle, as in poliomyelitis. Hypotonic muscles have a flaccid appearance and display functional impairments, such as weak reflexes. Conversely, excessive muscle tone is referred to as hypertonia, accompanied by hyperreflexia (excessive reflex responses), often the result of damage to upper motor neurons in the CNS. Hypertonia can present with muscle rigidity (as seen in Parkinson’s disease) or spasticity, a phasic change in muscle tone, where a limb will “snap” back from passive stretching (as seen in some strokes).
Section Review
The number of cross-bridges formed between actin and myosin determines the amount of tension produced by a muscle. The length of a sarcomere is optimal when the zone of overlap between thin and thick filaments is greatest. Muscles that are stretched or compressed too greatly do not produce maximal amounts of power. A motor unit is formed by a motor neuron and all the muscle fibres that are innervated by that same motor neuron. A single contraction is called a twitch. A muscle twitch has a latent period, a contraction phase, and a relaxation phase. A graded muscle response allows variation in muscle tension. Summation occurs as successive stimuli are added together to produce a stronger muscle contraction. Tetanus is the fusion of contractions to produce a continuous contraction. Increasing the number of motor neurons involved increases the amount of motor units activated in a muscle, which is called recruitment. Muscle tone is the constant low-level contractions that allow for posture and stability.
Review Question
Critical Thinking Questions
Click the drop down below to review the terms learned from this chapter.


W. Cowper
WHAT various hindrances we meet
In coming to the mercy-seat!
Yet who that knows the worth of prayer
But wishes to be often there?
2
Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw;
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
Gives exercise to faith and love;
Brings every blessing from above.
3
Restraining prayer, we cease to fight;
Prayer makes the Christian’s armor bright:
And Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
4
Have you no words? Ah, think again:
Words flow apace when you complain,
And fill your fellow-creature’s ear
With the sad tale of all your care.
5
Were half the breath thus vainly spent,
To heaven in supplication sent,
Your cheerful song would oftener be,
“Hear what the Lord hath done for me.”


36 Chemistry
Allied Health Chemistry
Hadeel A. Abozenadah, Adam H. Bishop, Scott D. Bittner, and Patricia M. Flatt (Western Oregon University)
2018
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
The focus of this textbook is to introduce students to the foundations of General, Organic and Biological Chemistry and prepare students to be successful in health-related degree programs. The first part of the textbook focuses on the basic fundamentals of measurements in chemistry, the scientific method, an introduction into atoms, elements and trends of the periodic table. The second part of the textbook focuses on chemical bond formation, stoichiometry and chemical reactions, an introduction to organic chemistry, and the relationship of concepts to biological systems is carried throughout the text with a focus on medical and health-related aspects.
Formats: Online, PDF, and Word
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Analytical Chemistry 2.1
David Harvey (DePauw University)
2016
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Analytical Chemistry 2.0 provides balance between theory and practice, between “classical” and “modern” analytical methods, between analyzing samples and collecting samples and preparing them for analysis, and between analytical methods and data analysis.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: CHEM 311
The Basics of General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry
David W Ball (Cleveland State University), John W Hill (University of Wisconsin), and Rhonda J Scott (Southern Adventist University)
2011
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
This peer-reviewed open textbook was developed to suit a one-semester General, Organic and Biological Chemistry course.
Formats: Online and PDF
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Be Prepared! Everything you should know for 1st year Chemistry
Andrew Vreugdenhil and Kelly Wright (Trent University)
2019
Licence: CC BY
These online Pre-Chemistry modules are designed to function as chemistry preparation for first-year chemistry students. They are particularly useful for students who, for various reasons, are otherwise not confident in their preparation for first-year university-level chemistry.
Format: Online
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Chemistry: Atoms First – 2e
Paul Flowers (University of North Carolina at Pembroke), Edward J. Neth (University of Connecticut), and William R. Robinson (OpenStax)
2019
Licence: CC BY
This OpenStax textbook was developed with chemistry professors and a pedagogical approach, with Chemistry OpenStax as the foundation. As the name suggests, this text uses an “atoms first” approach to the subject which involves the introduction of atomic and molecular structure at the beginning of the course material.
Formats: Online and PDF
Suggested for: CHEM 350
Chemistry – 2e
Paul Flowers (University of North Carolina at Pembroke), Klaus Theopold (University of Delaware), and Richard Langley (Stephen F. Austin State University) (OpenStax)
2019
Licence: CC BY
This Openstax text was the precursor to the Chemistry: Atoms First book. This text covers the same concepts but through a different approach. This resource has been successfully adopted and adapted.
Formats: Online and PDF
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Chemistry and the Environment: A Chemistry Perspective for discussion of Environmental Issues
Licence: CC BY
This textbook designed to accompany a one-semester course in chemistry-based discussions of important environmental issues such as air pollution, the ozone layer, climate change and water quality. Chemical principles are introduced, followed by environmental ‘focus’ sections to base discussions on the scientific principles and societal intricacies of the individual topics.
Formats: Online
Suggested for: CHEM 330
Chemistry for the life sciences I: A Supplementary Textbook to the Online Lecture Notes
Ying Zheng (University of Lethbridge)
2018
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
The topics of this course are arranged around two important themes in today’s world: water and energy. The book was written in a story-telling style in the hope that, as the story unfolds, the students will gradually adopt a chemist’s perspective in viewing the world around us. It was also written in a question-and-answer style so that the readers may acquire a critical-thinking attitude and learn the various problem-solving skills as they take part in answering each question.
Format: PDF
CLUE: Chemistry, Life, the Universe and Everything
Melanie Cooper (Michigan State University) and Michael Klymbowsky (University of Colorado Boulder)
2019
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Chemistry, Life the Universe and Everything (CLUE) is a transformed general chemistry curriculum, developed by an interdisciplinary team of a chemist and a molecular biologist, that aims to bring about evidence-based change in general chemistry. General Chemistry is a gateway course for many students intending on careers in scientific, engineering, and healthcare-related disciplines. CLUE was developed using a design research approach that focuses on scaffolded progressions around four core ideas: structure and properties, bonding and interactions, energy, and change and stability. The course emphasizes causal mechanistic reasoning in order to help students move beyond knowing that, to knowing how and knowing why chemical phenomena occur.
Formats: Online, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and more
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Concept Development Studies in Chemistry
Licence: CC BY
“Concept Development Studies in Chemistry” is an online textbook for an Introductory General Chemistry course. Each module develops a central concept in Chemistry from experimental observations and inductive reasoning. This approach complements an interactive or active learning teaching approach.
Formats: Online, PDF, EPUB, and more
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Consumer Chemistry – How Organic Chemistry Impacts our Lives
Hadeel A. Abozenadah, Adam H. Bishop, Scott D. Bittner, S. Lopez, C. Wiley, and Patricia M. Flatt (Western Oregon University)
2017
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
The focus of this textbook is to introduce students to the fundamental applications of organic chemistry to society, technology, and the development of consumer products. The first part of the textbook focuses on the basic fundamentals of measurements in chemistry, the scientific method, and an introduction into atoms and elements. The second part of the textbook focuses on an introduction to organic chemistry and how it is applied to our daily lives. Topics include fuels and energy, polymers, fertilizers, pesticides, food and food additives, household cleaners, cosmetics and personal care items, pharmaceuticals, and air and water pollution. Organic concepts covered include an introduction to intermolecular forces and solution dynamics, VESPR and molecular geometry, organic structure and basic chemical reactions.
Formats: Online and PDF
Suggested for: CHEM 350
First Year General Chemistry
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
This textbook was developed for a first year Chemistry course at Queen’s University and provides a succinct explanation of the basics of chemistry in easy-to-use language and examples.
Formats: Online
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
General Chemistry for Gee-Gees
Kevin Roy, Mahdi Zeghal, Jessica M. Thomas and Kathy-Sarah Focsaneanu (University of Ottawa)
2021
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
This book was designed for students enrolled in CHM1311 Principles of Chemistry at the University of Ottawa.
Format: Online
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Human Biochemistry
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Available through LibreTexts, this is a comprehensive text meant for university-level biochemistry courses covering topics such as cellular structure, lipid structure, carbohydrate, DNA, binding, transport, kinetics, metabolism, catalysis, oxidation, and signal transduction. There are links and references for further investigation and chapter-based questions. This largely imitates commercial biochemistry textbooks.
Formats: Online, PDF
Suggested for: CHEM 301
Introductory Chemistry – First Canadian Edition
Jessie A. Key (Vancouver Island University)
2014
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
This text is a Canadian adaptation of Introductory Chemistry, an open textbook that was developed by a chemistry professor at Vancouver Island University as part of the B.C. Open Textbook Project. This text has been successfully adopted and includes over 20 additional sections.
Formats: Online, EPUB, PDF, MOBI and more
Suggested for: CHEM 217, CHEM 218
Key Elements of Green Chemistry
Licence: CC BY
This text was designed for an introductory course in green chemistry. It has been reviewed at the Open Textbook Library.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: CHEM 330
OCLUE: Organic Chemistry, Life, the Universe & Everything
Melanie M. Cooper (Michigan State University) and Michael W. Klymkowsky (University of Colorado Boulder)
2019
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
The essence of organic chemistry is how carbon atoms interact with other atoms and groups of atoms to produce an astounding array of complex and interesting molecules. The basics of bonding and intermolecular interactions are introduced in the general chemistry version of CLUE (Chemistry, Life, the Universe & Everything), along with how the structure of a molecule affects its properties, how the energy changes associated with chemical and physical changes can be predicted and explained, and how chemical systems can be stabilized or perturbed by changing conditions. These four core ideas (structure-property relationships, bonding and interactions, energy, and stability, and change) are continued on into OCLUE and are deepened and expanded as we discover and explain ever more complex chemical systems.
Formats: Online, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and more
Suggested for: CHEM 350, CHEM 360
Organic Chemistry – A Tenth Edition
John E. McMurry, Cornell University
2023
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
John McMurry’s Organic Chemistry is renowned as the most clearly written book available for organic chemistry. In John McMurry’s words, “I wrote this book because I love writing. I get great pleasure and satisfaction from taking a complicated subject, turning it around until I see it clearly from a new angle, and then explaining it in simple words.” In Organic Chemistry: A Tenth Edition from OpenStax, McMurry continues this tradition while updating scientific discoveries, highlighting new applications, scrutinizing every piece of art, and providing example problems to assist students. Organic Chemistry: A Tenth Edition continues to meet the scope and sequence of a two-semester organic chemistry course that follows a functional group approach. A highlighted list of changes along with a detailed table of contents and ancillary descriptions can be found on the Instructor and Student resources sections of this page.
Formats: Online, PDF
Organic Chemistry I
Xin Liu (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
2021
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
An open textbook that is suitable for the first semester of Organic Chemistry. Basic concepts of the structures and reactivities of organic molecules are covered in this open textbook. Besides the fundamental discussions of organic acids-bases, stereochemistry, IR and NMR, this book also includes the topics of substitution and elimination reactions, radical substitution of alkanes, preparation and reactions of alkenes and alkynes.
Formats: Online, EPUB, PDF, and more
Suggested for: CHEM 350, CHEM 360
OrgChem101 Learning Lab
Alison B. Flynn (University of Ottawa)
2015
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
OrgChem101 is a set of organic chemistry learning modules that provide structured guidance as you (the student) explore organic chemistry concepts. They are free of charge to students and instructors everywhere. The modules provide metacognitive support, interactive instructional videos, animations, and interactive activities that promote the mastery of concepts, provide feedback, and link to real-world contexts. Covers organic nomenclature, organic mechanisms, and acid-base reactions.
Format: Online
Suggested for: CHEM 350, CHEM 360
Thermodynamics and Chemistry, 2nd Edition
Licence: CC BY
This is designed for a 1-semester course in classical chemical thermodynamics.
Formats: PDF
Virtual Textbook of Organic Chemistry
William Reusch (Michigan State University)
2010
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
An interactive textbook covering the usual topics treated in a college sophomore-level course. Links are offered to advanced discussions of selected topics.
Format: Online


5.5 Literature
Theatre: William Shakespeare
We know relatively little about Shakespeare’s life, and what we do know does not necessarily add to our understanding of his plays. The impact of those plays, however, is beyond question. Shakespeare is credited with introducing about 1700 words to the English language (by invention, by turning nouns into verbs, by pulling words from other languages, etc.). When we talk about a gust of wind, or someone swaggering into a room, or bumping into someone, we are using Shakespeare’s words. Many phrases introduced by Shakespeare are also in common usage: such as if someone catches a cold after too much of a good thing and is now a sorry sight who has seen better days. It is Shakespeare’s use of language that has kept him so popular; the basic plot of Hamlet was based on historical events recounted by Saxo Grammaticus and written about by previous authors, but like Homer’s version of the story of the Trojan War, Shakespeare’s presentation of the material surpasses all others. Hamlet’s grief about his father’s death—and his mother’s subsequent marriage to his uncle—could have led to a straightforward Elizabethan revenge tragedy. In Shakespeare’s hands, the play instead explores the philosophical, psychological, and physical ramifications of revenge. Shakespeare’s plays are well known around the world, and they have influenced countless authors. Hamlet is a particularly good example of this phenomenon; Goethe’s Faust (a masterpiece in its own right) includes quotations from Hamlet and rewrites the Hamlet/Ophelia relationship in the context of Romanticism, while Fyodor Dostoevsky rewrites the relationship in the context of Realism in his Notes from Underground. Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted successfully in many countries, which is an argument for their timeless appeal. For example, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) takes Macbeth and sets it in feudal Japan, with the title character as a samurai. Of all of the plays, Hamlet is both the most well-known and the most frequently adapted, both on the stage and in film.
Read entirety of Hamlet here
World Literature Copyright © by Anita Turlington; Rhonda Kelley; Matthew Horton; Laura Ng; Kyounghye Kwon; Laura Getty; Karen Dodson; and Douglas Thomson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Used under Fair Use for Education Purposes
The Tempest is regarded as the last play Shakespeare wrote alone, based on the fact that it uses material only available in late 1610 C.E. and it was performed before King James on Hallowmas Night, 1611 C.E. After writing this play, Shakespeare soon retired to Stratford, but he also collaborated on at least two other plays. Scholars group The Tempest among Shakespeare’s late plays called “romances,” a modern term for a genre of plays that blend elements of tragedy and comedy. It was published in the First Folio of 1623, which is the first published edition of the collected works of William Shakespeare. The actions of The Tempest take place in a single location in a single day (keeping the unities of time and place), beginning with a storm raised by Prospero, the former duke of Milan, whose position has been usurped by his brother Antonio and King Alonzo of Naples. The play has lent itself to numerous adaptations, including Aimé Césaire’s 1969 postcolonial adaptation, Une Tempête (“A Tempest”).
Read the entirety of The Tempest here
World Literature Copyright © by Anita Turlington; Rhonda Kelley; Matthew Horton; Laura Ng; Kyounghye Kwon; Laura Getty; Karen Dodson; and Douglas Thomson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Video URL: https://youtu.be/piTraKIfQWk?si=IUjkV8605hk6bt6G
Used under Fair Use for Education Purposes


January 10, 2002: Frayne, Noises Off
Piccadilly Theatre. Evening
One of the largest in London when it was built in 1928, this theatre has a relatively small proscenium stage that makes it perfectly accessible for certain kinds of plays, Noises Off being one of them. Up to now, I have just missed seeing some production or other of this marvelous take-off on the theatre and all that can go wrong when you’re doing comedy, or farce. In this case, we get a play-within-a-play approach: a bunch of semi-pro actors are trying to survive during the production of a play called Nothing On (get it?). The program for Nothing On, a nice send-up of theatre programs and their advertisements, is included as an insert in the program for Noises Off. Frayne’s even more ingenious device is to show us only Act I of Nothing On, but to show it three separate times, once in a final, catastrophic rehearsal, and twice more on tour. And an even more wonderful invention is to make the first and third run-throughs be seen from the audience’s point of view, while the second is seen from backstage.
The result is a truly brilliant farce in the genre of true classic British farce, in which all the characters are constantly being frustrated or thwarted by an increasingly hostile world — in this case, two worlds: the world of failing or failed human relationships, and the world of the theatre, where risk is the only constant and success is a will-o’-the-wisp. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. As for the requisite beautiful girl in her underwear — the sine-qua-non (for male viewers like me) of contemporary farce from Feydeau on — that was full of pleasure too. Nice thing about farce is that you get to entertain lustful fantasies of connection with young, nubile women and never get called to account for it afterwards. They should do farce more often, at least if they do it as well as these impeccably timed actors can do it. Whoever said farce was silly didn’t know what he was talking about. It gets at you where you live.