What I am planning to write for Diogenes is an essay of elucidating the original meaning of “kokoro” in ancient Japanese.

“Kokoro” is regarded as corresponding to mind in English; for example, we call philosophy of mind “philosophy of kokoro”. We can compare English with French in order to notice the problem concerning this notion. While we say in English “mind-body problem”, in French we call the problem (or rather “l’union”) of “l’âme et du corps”. But there are many cases where “mind” is translated with “l’esprit”. We can already ask the question from where comes this ambiguity. Much the more in Japanese.

I should explain how the philosophical terms are constructed in Japanese. When we say philosophy tout court in Japan, that means the Western philosophy or philosophy in the Western style. Most of its technical terms were made as translation from the Western languages, and when we dare to translate the Western words, the most usual way is to use Chinese characters that are ideograms. In ordinary Japanese, terms originating from Chinese are mixed into its vocabulary. We feel certain “difference” in such words, especially in technical terms borrowed from the Western languages: such is the case of philosophical terms. But “kokoro” is not such a translated word, but an original Japanese word. So personally I feel that this word sounds slightly strange as a philosophical term.

That is the motive of this paper of mine: I wish to conceive the original meaning of “kokoro” in its originating stage. I consult mainly Manyô-shû, ancient anthology of poem established about the mid 8th Century.