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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2014
The paper provides an overview of the rise of Japanese philosophy during the period of rapid modernization in Japan after the Meiji Restoration (beginning in the 1860s). It also examines the controversy surrounding Japanese philosophy towards the end of the Pacific War (1945), and its renewal in the contemporary context. The post-Meiji thinkers engaged themselves with the questions of universality and particularity; the former represented science, medicine, technology, and philosophy (understood as ‘Western modernity’) and the latter, the Japanese – ‘non-Western’ – tradition. Within the context, the question arose whether or not Japan, the only non-Western nation to succeed in modernization at the time, could also offer a philosophy that was universal in scope? Could Japanese philosophy offer an alternative form of modernity to the global domination of Western modernity? In this historical context, the philosophies of Kitaro Nishida and Tetsuro Watsuji, two of the tradition's most prominent thinkers, are introduced. Nishida is considered the ‘father of modern Japanese philosophy’ and his followers came to be known as the ‘Kyoto School’. The essay ends with a brief reflection on the influence of philosophy on culture, focusing on the aftermath of the tsunami catastrophe in 2011.
1 James Heisig notes that by the time the Black Ships arrived, Japan knew enough about the industrial and technological advancements in the West that it was ready to end its isolation. Heisig, James, Philosophers of Nothingness (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001)Google Scholar, 10
2 Cf. Samson, G.B., The Western World and Japan (Tokyo: Charles Tuttle, 1984)Google Scholar and Jansen, Marius (ed.), Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization (Tokyo: Charles Tuttle, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 See Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, as well as Wakabayashi, Modern Japanese Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google ScholarPubMed. The ‘ideology of nation building’ in the new Meiji Government is discussed in Gluck, Carol, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.
4 Shozan (1811–1864) was educated in the neo-Confucian tradition but he also learned Dutch and modern technology. For discussions on post-Meiji thinkers and developments, see Tsunoda, Ryusaku, de Bary, W.M. Theodore, Keene, Donald (eds), Sources of Japanese Tradition Volume II, 1600–2000 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, 2005)Google Scholar.
5 For overviews and translated essays by Japanese philosophers from the 7th to the 20th Century, see Heisig, James, Kasulis, Thomas,and Maraldo, John (eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This comprehensive 1300-page volume is a tour-de-force on the major thinkers of Japan. For a shorter summary and introduction see Blocker, H. Gene and Starling, Christopher, Japanese Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
6 Amane Nishi (1829–1897), who traveled to Holland and brought back Comte's and Mill's philosophies, coined the term in 1862.
7 The influence of this development-based metaphysical thinking on colonialism and racism is undeniable. For an excellent discussion see McCarthy, Thomas, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 For an intellectual biography of Nishida, see Yusa, Michiko, Zen & Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitaro (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002)Google Scholar. See also Nishitani, Keiji, Nishida Kitaro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)Google Scholar for a personal recollection as well as an excellent introduction to the theory of pure experience. Nishitani, a philosopher of his own right, was a student of Nishida's and a leading figure in the Kyoto School. See also Heisig for the discussions on Nishida's key concepts. John Maraldo's entry on Nishida at the online Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy also offers a good overview (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nishida-kitaro/). Nishida's works, as well as lectures, letters, diaries, chronology, and bibliography, have been collected as the Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (NKZ), from Iwanami Shoten. The latest edition has 24 volumes (2003–2009). The quotes in this essay are from the 1966 edition. Several of his books are translated into English, but the majority of his works remain untraslated. Due to the difficulties of the language in the original texts, ‘translating Nishida’ is itself a topic of research. See Maraldo, John, ‘Translating Nishida’, Philosophy East & West 39(4) (1989): 465–496CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 On the Kyoto School, as well as on the three of its most characteristic philosophers—Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani, see Heisig. A good collection that connects the philosophies of the Kyoto School to the Continental tradition, see Davis, Bret, Schroeder, Brian, and Wirth, Jason (eds), Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011)Google Scholar. Bret Davis also offers a good summary of the Kyoto School in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/).
10 See Nishida, Kitaro, An Inquiry Into the Good (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. For the notion of experiential ontology and for the comparions with James, see Feenberg, Andrew and Arisaka, Yoko, ‘Experiential Ontology: The Origins of the Nishida Philosophy in the Doctrine of Pure Experience’, International Philosophical Quarterly 30(2) (1990): 173–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 NKZ 1: 29. All of the translations from the Japanese are by the author.
12 NKZ 1: 51
13 For recent translations as well as commentaries on Nishida's difficult texts, see Haver, William, Ontology of Production: Three Essays (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Krummel, John W.M. and Nagamoto, Shigemori, Place and Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitaro (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
14 See Heisig for discussions on the notion of nothingness in Nishida's philosophy.
15 Robert Carter offers a good overview of Watsuji in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/watsuji-tetsuro/).
16 There is an English translation available, Watsuji, Tetsuro, Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1971)Google Scholar; however, it is out of print and the translation is not very accurate. There is a better German translation: Fudo. Wind und Erde. Der Zusammenhang von Klima und Kultur (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1997)Google Scholar. Although it is in French, probably the best translation is by Augustin Berque, a long-time scholar of Watsuji as well as on Japanese culture, geography and spatiality. See his Fudo: le milieu humain (Paris: CNRS, 2011)Google Scholar. See also Berque's Thinking Through Landscape (London and New York: Routledge, 2013)Google ScholarPubMed for discussions that extend Watsuji's intuitions. All of Watsuji's writings are collected as Watsuji Tetsuro Zenshu (WTZ), 25 volumes. The latest edition is from 1989–1992. The translations in this essay are from the 1977 edition.
17 WTZ 8: 7
18 WTZ 8: 11
19 Watsuji's ethics is translated: Watsuji, Tetsuro, Watsuji Tetsuro's Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996)Google Scholar.
20 For a good introduction to Watsuji in English as well as an interesting comparison to feminist theories, see McCarthy, Erin, Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood through Continental, Japanese, and Feminist Perspectives (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010)Google Scholar. See also Arisaka, Yoko, ‘The Ontological Co-Emergence of “Self and Other” in Japanese Philosophy’, The Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(5–7) (2001): 197–208Google Scholar.
21 Watsuji's notion of Being-between emerges out of his critique of Heidegger. For example, in the Preface to Fudo he writes: ‘The limitation (of Heidegger's approach) is due to the fact that Heidegger's Dasein is ultimately an “individual”. He grasped human existence as an existence of a self. But this is merely an abstract aspect within the double-structure of our individual-qua-social existence’ (WTZ 8: 2). Heidegger does discuss a notion of a Mitsein (Being-with) but it remains underdeveloped, according to Watsuji.
22 WTZ 10: 16
23 Tosaka Jun zenshu (Collected Works of Tosaka, Tokyo: Keiso-Shobo, 1966) 3, 172–3. At that time, Nishida accepted this criticism; for instance, in his letter to Tosaka written in October, 1932, Nishida writes: ‘I appreciated and learned much from your astute criticism – since I have not yet written anything on praxis, I can understand the criticism that my ideas appear phenomenological […] however, I am not a Marxist, and I do believe there is something einseitig [originally written in German] about Marxism […] but I would of course learn and incorporate Marxist thought when I understand it more fully, so please don't hesitate to send me more of your criticisms’. Letter #749, NKZ I, 18:460.
24 Nishida was writing some of his most mature philosophical work in the volatile political climate of the mid 1930s to early 1940s. After the take-over of Manchuria in 1931–32, the Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937; by then the whole country was swept by nationalist sentiments and the military government was becoming increasingly authoritarian.
25 See Arisaka, Yoko, ‘The Nishida Enigma: “The Principle of the New World Order”’, in: Monumenta Nipponica 51:1 1996, 81–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an English translation as well as an introduction to the background and the debates surrounding the essay. For a collection of essays on the connection between Japanese philosophy and nationalism, see Heisig, James and Maraldo, John (eds), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994)Google Scholar. For further discussions on the politics of Nishida and the Kyoto School, see also Goto-Jones, Christopher, Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co-Prosperity (London and New York: Routledge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Goto-Jones, C. (ed.), Re-Politicising the Kyoto School as Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.
26 Supporters of Nishida today generally point out that he could not have done otherwise – at the time the perceived ‘traitors’ were incarcerated or forced to resign, and given his public position he could not have refused to participate nor could he have presented something that would openly criticize the Imperial Army without seriously jeopardizing his life or position.
27 NKZ I, 12: 428
28 NKZ I, 12: 429
29 NKZ I, 12: 434
30 Dower, John, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986)Google Scholar, 227
31 For the various analyses of Watsuji's theoretical complicity with nationalism, see Bellah, Robert N., Imagining Japan: The Japanese Tradition and Its Modern Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar, Chapter 3; Odin, Steve, The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996)Google Scholar, especially 65–; Goto-Jones, Christopher, ‘The Way of Revering the Emperor: Imperial Philosophy and Bushido in Modern Japan’, Shillony, Ben-Ami (ed.), The Emperors of Modern Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 23–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a well-known reflection on Watsuji, Eurocentrism, and reverse-orientalism, see Sakai, Naoki, ‘Return to the West/Return to the East: Watsuji Tetsuro's Anthropology and Discussions of Authenticity’, Harootunian, H. D. and Miyoshi, Masao (eds), Japan in the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 237–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Watsuji, Tetsuro, Rinrigaku (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965)Google Scholar, 603.
33 Translation of the discussions is available in English: Calichman, Richard (ed and trans), Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. For analyses see also Heisig and Maraldo, Rude Awakenings.
34 Perhaps the harshest criticism of Nihonjin-ron is found in Dale, Peter, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (London and New York: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar. The book was previously published in 1986 by Croom Helm.
35 Nakamura, Yujiro, Nishida Tetsugaku no Datsu-kochiku (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1987)Google Scholar. Unfortunately there is no English translation. Kimura, Bin's collected writings span 8 volumes (Kimura Bin Chosaku-shu, 8 vol., Tokyo: Kobundo, 2001)Google Scholar, but the groudbreaking works that reflect Watsuji's theories are Hito to hito to no Aida: seishinbyourigaku-teki Nihon-ron (Between Human Beings: Theory on Japan from a Perspective of Psychiatry, Tokyo: Kobundo, 1972)Google Scholar, and Jiko, Aida, Jikan: Gensho-gaku-teki Seishin Byori-gaku (Self, In-Between, Time: Phenomenological Psychiatry, Tokyo: Kobundo, 1981)Google Scholar.
36 ‘Kindai no Chokoku to Nishida Tetsugaku’ (‘Overcoming of Modernity’ and Nishida Philosophy), a roundtable discussion with Wataru, Hiromatsu, Akira, Asada, Hiroshi, Ichikawa, and Kojin, Karatani, Kikan Shichô 4, 1989Google Scholar, 10.
37 The notable modern-day Kyoto School scholars include Shizuteru Ueda, Masakatu Fujita, and Ryosuke Ohashi; there are also productive scholars on the Kyoto School outside Kyoto today, such as James Heisig, John Maraldo, Rolf Elberfeld, Graham Parkes, Michiko Yusa, and Bret Davis, among others.
38 See, for example, Fujita, Masakatsu and Davis, Bret (ed.), Sekai no Naka no Nihon no Tetsugaku (Japanese Philosophy in the World, Kyoto: Showa-do, 2005)Google Scholar, and Heisig, James (ed.), Nihon Tetsugaku no Kokusai-sei (The Global Significance of Japanese Philosophy, Kyoto: Sekai Shiso-sha, 2006)Google Scholar.
39 Having spent most of my adult life in the U.S.A. and witnessed numerous cases of looting in the Los Angeles area during various emergencies such as black-outs and riots, I asked a Japanese friend about such possibilities. The reply was, ‘You must be joking. No one dares to act so selfishly, for fear that he or she will be ostracized’. The reason was not so much out of moral considerations but rather out of the fear that one may be banned from the group.
