Francis Fukuyama, political scientist
Private Passions
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama reflects on his life, musical passions, and political evolution across five decades. The conversation weaves together his deep appreciation for classical
Key takeaways
- Fukuyama's paternal grandparents were Japanese immigrants; his grandfather lost a hardware store during WWII internment in Colorado, later receiving a formal apology under Ronald Reagan.
- He studied Plato's Republic at Cornell under Alan Bloom, crediting the experience with shaping his lifelong commitment to classical education and big philosophical ideas.
Main topics
- Classical music appreciation
- Japanese-American internment & family history
Notable quotes
"The end of history will be a very sad time"
Conclusion
The episode offers a rare synthesis of Fukuyama's intellectual evolution and
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:07) you Speaker 1 (0:10) Thank you. Speaker 2 (0:22) The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama loves big ideas. His 1992 book, The End of History and The Last Man, was an international bestseller. It argued that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western liberal democracy was the best system of governance. It wasn't perfect and hadn't achieved everything, but it was the most humanly satisfying model. He also stated that the end of history will be a very sad time, predicting that safe, prosperous, last men would grow bored and restless. Eventually this would fuel a rage against the establishment that would invite populism. Francis' most recent book is a memoir called In the Realm of the Last Man. In it, he reflects on his political evolution over five decades and also writes about some of his favorite music. Today, Francis' music by Handel, Mozart, Karloff. But I think you want to start with Bach. who's clearly a particular favourite. Speaker 1 (1:27) It's absolutely the case that Bach has been my favourite composer from the time that I was in middle school and first introduced to him, and it's a passion that stayed with me in all the subsequent decades of my life. Speaker 2 (1:39) What is it about Bach's music emotionally that you respond to? Speaker 1 (1:43) Well, it's interesting because there's both an intellectual and an emotional part. The intellectual part is counterpoint itself. It's a very complex... form of music and you know you learn to listen for the different voices and how they come in and then harmonize and so forth but the thing about bach that has really struck me is how he's so good at melody you know that he creates these melodic lines like the air and the g string you know from the orchestral suites i mean it's just a single instrument playing one string, and it's just so memorable and beautiful. And I think there are very few composers that I know that have created melodies like that. Speaker 2 (2:23) What have you chosen for us today? Speaker 1 (2:24) Well, I wanted to start with cantata number 78. It's funny how I came upon this because there's a series of children's records or CDs to introduce children to classical composers. And one of them was called Mr. Bach Comes to Town. And the premise was that Bach came back to life and was talking to a group of kids. And one of them asks him at one point, which of all the pieces you've written do you think is the most beautiful? And he said, It's this one, Cantata 78. It's a mezzo-soprano duet that's sung in the second movement, and I think they were absolutely right. This is really one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Speaker 2 (4:01) He plays with the voices there. That's the wonderful thing about having a mezzo and a countertenor. You're never quite sure which is which, and so it becomes all the teasing. Speaker 1 (4:10) Yeah, I just love the way that the voices are separated, and then they come together, and then they're separated again. And the tune is very lovely. Speaker 2 (4:18) Via Eilen mit Schwachen from the cantata No. 78 by Bach, performed by Ingrid Schmidthusen, Charles Brett, and the Chapel Orchestra, conducted by Philippe Herreweger. Francis, your family history is very fascinating. Your paternal grandmother and grandfather came to the United States from Japan. Your grandfather in 1905. Speaker 1 (4:42) That's right. He came from a basically farmer family. He was not particularly well-educated. And then my grandmother was a picture bride, meaning that she came six, seven years after him. She had a picture of her husband-to-be, but as a 21-year-old, she sat across the Pacific, not knowing what kind of future would meet her in the United States. They got married shortly after she arrived. He showed up at the dock with her picture, and they somehow found each other. But they had a very successful marriage after that. Speaker 2 (5:14) It's extraordinary how that happens sometimes because we all believe, especially in the West, in romantic love. But sometimes a kind of arranged marriage can work very well. Speaker 1 (5:24) Sometimes I think parents actually know who's an appropriate partner better than the children do. Speaker 2 (5:30) She, your grandmother, was a very industrious lady. She Speaker 1 (5:33) turned out to be really talented in a lot of different... She did watercolors. She played the koto. She was a dressmaker, so she started a business while my grandfather was running his hardware store in the little Tokyo, the Japanese-American part of Los Angeles. And so we didn't know this until after she passed away that she had all these talents. Speaker 2 (5:55) After the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, many members of your family were sent to internment camps in America. Tell us a little bit about what happened. Speaker 1 (6:05) Well, the announcement came very suddenly that everybody in the West Coast, all the Japanese, including people like my two aunts and... uncle and father who were born in America and therefore were American citizens all had to report to these camps. My grandfather had a hardware store that he invested a lot of time and effort building during the Great Depression, and he was forced to sell it within the space of a week or so. So he basically lost all of the capital that he had put into this enterprise, and then they spent the rest of the war in Colorado, in a camp in Colorado. That Speaker 2 (6:39) must have been really devastating, and I think the Americans even later realized that they'd got this wrong. They did apologize and provide some restitution. Speaker 1 (6:49) That's right. Under Ronald Reagan, they made a formal apology and they paid the people that had been interned a certain modest amount of money. They said that they were sorry that this had ever happened. And then the Supreme Court... overturned the decision that had been made during the war that legalized the internment, and they said it's not legal, in fact. Unfortunately, I thought that was a settled issue, but with the current administration in Washington, we're, I think, committing unconstitutional violations that were not that different from what happened to my ancestors. Speaker 2 (7:23) That comes out in a lot of your writing. What effect... did these experiences have on your family, do you think? Speaker 1 (7:30) It's very interesting. This is, I think, true of a lot of immigrant families. Speaker 1 (7:36) grandfather finally got his citizenship in the 1960s, and he immediately voted for Barry Goldwater, who was this extremely conservative Republican who ran against Lyndon Johnson in the 64 election. My father, by contrast, was a Protestant minister. He was a pacifist and very much on the other side of the political spectrum. He was horrified that my grandfather had voted for a Republican. And my father spent much of his life, you know, working for the civil rights. rights movement, against the Vietnam War, and all of the things that liberals at that time were heavily engaged in. Handle next, Francis. That's right. So this aria has been performed by virtually every soprano in the operatic world. It's a very beautiful one. There's a movie about Farinelli, this famous Italian, I guess he was a countertenor. Castrato. Castrato, yeah, right. I guess you didn't need countertenors back then. So there's a scene in the movie where he sings this aria and all the women in the audience faint because it's so beautiful. And Speaker 2 (8:43) you do almost yourself. Yeah, that's right. La sciacchio piange from Act II of Handel's opera, Rinaldo. Speaker 2 (9:50) Lascia che piange from Act II of Rinaldo by Handel, performed by Simone Kermes with La Magnifica Comunita Orchestra, conducted by Isabella Longo. What's extraordinary about that is not only is the first phrase absolutely wonderful, but then he sort of tops it with the second phrase, which is equally beautiful, if not more so. Speaker 1 (10:12) Yeah, he builds to a real climax within a very slow-moving, otherwise slow Speaker 2 (10:17) -moving piece. Did you play an instrument yourself? Speaker 1 (10:21) Well, I have a lot of musical talent in my family, but it somehow managed to skip me. Speaker 2 (10:26) Nevertheless, would you like to? Speaker 1 (10:29) Oh, I'd love to be able to. One of my hobbies for many decades has been high-end audio, and so I've invested an indecent amount of money in having one of the best stereo systems I can afford, and I listen all the time. Speaker 2 (10:45) Francis, academia runs in your family. Your father was also a professor, but your mother... grew up in Japan. So how did they meet? Speaker 1 (10:53) Well, she came to the United States as one of the first immigrants from Japan after World War II in 1949. It was a very difficult time. Obviously, there had been this very bitter war in the Pacific, but she nonetheless wanted to study at the University of Chicago. And that's where she met my father, who was a graduate student at the time. And they got married in 1950 and had me in 1952. Speaker 2 (11:18) Was music important to them? Speaker 1 (11:20) It was interesting to me because she grew up in a period where everything Western was, you know, very popular in Japan. And so her musical background was Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, you know, all these Western composers, nothing indigenous to Japan. And so that was my introduction to music. One thing that's very interesting, you know, all of my children played in youth orchestras. And if it weren't for Asian Americans, I think that a lot of the classical music in the United States simply wouldn't exist because it's the children of Asian immigrants that really want to take up violin and piano. And some of them are just terrifically good. Not me, but, you know. Speaker 2 (12:05) Your next track is by Dorothy Fields. You're a great fan of hers. Speaker 1 (12:10) Yes, I am. I write a piece on her every July 15th, which is her birthday, because I think it's really kind of the origin of American music, the great American songbook. She wrote for many of the songs that are done in Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers movies. She came out of a very musical Jewish family. And I think that American music pop music in the 20s and 30s developed a genuine, distinctive character, partly because of the immigration. And it shows why immigration is a good thing. Speaker 2 (12:43) So what have you chosen from Dorothy Fields? Speaker 1 (12:46) Well, it's this famous song, I Can't Give You Anything But Love. I like it because it was actually written before the Great Depression, but it reminds me of the Depression because it's a young man