La figure diabolisée du chat dans la littérature japonaise évolue sans cesse au cours de l’époque médiévale, et nous prenons ici l’exemple d’un chat-monstre nommé nekomata. L’un des exemples littéraires les plus connus se trouve dans les Heures oisives, ouvrage écrit vers 1330 par Yoshida Kenkô. Il semble cependant que le terme nekomata soit apparu un siècle plus tôt, comme le montre l’entrée du 2 août 1233 dans le Journal de la lune brillante de Fujiwara no Teika, l’un des plus (...) grands poètes de son temps. Nous analyserons donc ce texte de première importance pour comprendre les origines de cette figure littéraire, puis tenterons de comprendre le sens de l’expression nekomata. The demonized figure of the cat in Japanese literature evolved constantly during medieval times, and here we take the example of a monster cat named nekomata. One of the best-known literary examples is found in Tsurezure-gusa, written around 1330 by Yoshida Kenkô. However, it seems that the term nekomata appeared a century earlier, as can be seen from the August 2, 1233 entry in Meigetsu-ki, the diary of Fujiwara no Teika, one of the greatest poets of his time. We will examine this important text for a better understanding of the history of the monster cat and reflect on the meaning of the term nekomata. (shrink)

The essays in the final section of the book, "Japan's Literary Hermeneutics, " rethink the notion of "Japanese literature" in light of recent findings on the ...

Japanese Hermeneutics provides a forum for the most current international debates on the role played by interpretative models in the articulation of cultural discourses on Japan. It presents the thinking of esteemed Western philosophers, aestheticians, and art and literary historians, and introduces to English-reading audiences some of Japan's most distinguished scholars, whose work has received limited or no exposure in the United States. In the first part, "Hermeneutics and Japan," contributors examine the difficulties inherent in articulating "otherness" without falling (...) into the trap of essentialization and while relying on Western epistemology for explanation and interpretation. In the second part, "Japan's Aesthetic Hermeneutics," they explore the role of aesthetics in shaping discourses on art and nature in Japan. The essays in the final section of the book, "Japan's Literary Hermeneutics," rethink the notion of "Japanese literature" in light of recent findings on the ideological implications of canon formations and transformations within Japan's prominent literary circles. Contributors: Amagasaki Akira, Haga Toru, Hamashita Masahiro, Inaga Shigemi, Kambayashi Tsunemichi, Thomas LaMarre, John C. Maraldo, Michael F. Marra, Mark Meli, Ohashi Ryosuke, Otabe Tanehisa, Graham Parkes, J. Thomas Rimer, Sasaki Ken'ichi, Haruo Shirane, Suzuki Sadami, Stefan Tanaka, Gianni Vattimo. (shrink)

This bibliographical guide gives a comprehensive overview of the historiography of philosophy and thought in the Japanese language through an extensive and thematically organized collection of relevant literature. Comprising over one thousand entries, the bibliography shows not only how extensive and complex the Japanese tradition of philosophical and intellectual historiography is, but also how it might be structured and analyzed to make it accessible to a comparative and intercultural approach to the historiography of philosophy worldwide. The (...) class='Hi'>literature is categorized and organized according to thematic focus areas such as geographical regions and continents, nations or peoples, religious traditions and philosophical teachings such as Buddhism, Islam, Shintō, and Confucianism, as well as disciplines such as ethics, aesthetics, and political thought. The bibliography is accompanied by an introduction outlining the research method as well as quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyzing the material, followed by a chronological overview of the historiography of philosophy and thought in the Japanese language and of the Japanese tradition of writing “world histories of philosophy.” As a first step towards a “history of the historiography of philosophy” in non-European languages, we hope that this guide will provide a useful tool for interculturally oriented scholarship aimed at a non-Eurocentric and diversified historiography of philosophy in a global perspective. (Open access, see link below.). (shrink)

The transcripts of the three Kyoto School roundtable discussions of the theme of 'The standpoint of world history and Japan' may now be judged to form the key source text of responsible Pacific War revisionism. Published in the pages of Chuo Koron, the influential magazine of enlightened elite Japanese opinion during the twelve months after Pearl Harbor, these subversive discussions involved four of the finest minds of the second generation of the Kyoto School of philosophy. Tainted by controversy and (...) shrouded in conspiratorial mystery, these transcripts were never republished in Japan after the war, and they have never been translated into English except in selective and often highly biased form. David Williams has now produced the first objective, balanced and close interpretative reading of these three discussions in their entirety since 1943. This version of the wartime Kyoto School transcripts is neither a translation nor a paraphrase but a fuller rendering in reader-friendly English that is convincingly faithful to the spirit of the original texts. The result is a masterpiece of interpretation and inter-cultural understanding between the Confucian East and the liberal West. Seventy years after Tojo came to power, these documents of the Japanese resistance to his wartime government and policies exercise a unique claim on students of Japanese history and thought today because of their unrivalled revelatory potential within the vast literature on the Pacific War. The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance may therefore stand as the most trenchant analysis of the political, philosophic and legal foundations of the place of the Pacific War in modern Japanese history yet to appear in any language. (shrink)

Life is short and transient--Japanese people call this sentiment mujokan. However, what if we could sweep away the "despair" looming over the present age by proactively accepting this mujo (transience)? Perusing the thought of mujo from the perspectives of philosophy, literature, art and religion, Takeuchi delves into the view of life and death unique to the Japanese people who have shared "grief" and "pain" with each other, as well as into the very core of their underlying spirit." (...) -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

This article describes the historical development of HPS/NOS mainly in higher education. Because the establishment of universities in Japan in late-nineteenth century was a reaction against Western imperialism, higher education aimed to cultivate scientists and engineers with an emphasis on practical applications. This direction in higher science and engineering education continues into the present. It has conditioned elementary and secondary education via university entrance examinations, where no questions on NOS appear. Hence, HPS research and education has developed in Japanese (...) higher education with little connection to elementary and secondary education. Instead, NOS is communicated in literature, movies, and other media. Scientific and technological communication occurs mainly outside the school curriculum in venues like museums. (shrink)

Der Band soll beides bieten: Eine möglichst genaue Beschreibung historisch und inhaltlich unbestritten wichtiger Beispiele von Philosophie, Poetik und Literatur in der Geschichte Japans sowie eine Bewertung aus komparativer und allgemein-systematischer Perspektive. Damit soll berechtigten Forderungen nach Kontextualisierung Rechnung getragen werden, aber auch die Frage nach der Qualität der Texte und Theorien Berücksichtigung finden. Thematisch sind u. a. Konfuzianismus, Buddhismus und deren Rolle in der Entwicklung der Menschenrechtsphilosophie in Japan; Religionsphilosophie, Logik, klassische Ästhetik und Literaturtheorie, tragische wie komische Literatur und (...) Haiku."-- Back cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese HistoryGary L. Ebersolekamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xvii + 411.In the 2004 American presidential campaign, a film clip of a young John Kerry testifying against the Vietnam War before a congressional committee hearing received significant television air time. (...) In the clip, Kerry poignantly asks: "How do you ask a young man in his twenties to be the last to die in the Vietnam War?" In kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney attempts to answer a similar set of questions regarding the best and the brightest young Japanese men sent to their deaths as kamikaze pilots in the closing days of the Pacific War. "How and why," she asks, "do individuals sacrifice themselves for the[ir] country?" "When a soldier 'volunteers' to die for his country, does he do so both in thought and in action? Or does he sacrifice himself only in action without espousing the ideology of state nationalism in toto?" (p. 1).Ohnuki-Tierney suggests that in recent years, as a reaction against structuralism, many anthropologists have shifted their attention to issues of praxis (what social actors and agents do). This shift is certainly evident, but I wonder if her next characterization is accurate: "Thus we now seldom differentiate between reproduction of behavior and that of an ideology or thought structure" (p. 186). She is certainly correct [End Page 607] to answer two of her own additional questions in the negative: "Is identifying reproduction in behavior enough for us to understand historical continuity and discontinuity? Is our quest satisfied if we find that a perfect reproduction takes place in action, even in the absence of reproduction in the thoughts and feelings of social agents?" (ibid.). She is wrong, though, to suggest that few other scholars have recognized and addressed this issue. If anything, the issues surrounding structure and change or cultural reproduction and change have been at the center of the work of Marshall Sahlins, James Fernandez, and Talal Asad, to name only three such scholars of note in anthropology. Moreover, generations of sociologists and historians of religion have also grappled with the issues of continuity and change.In this study, Ohnuki-Tierney has made an important contribution to our understanding of the kamikaze pilots by focusing on the lives and writings of a handful of university conscripts. Specifically, she has culled the limited number of published writings in Japanese by these former students, as well as more numerous unpublished diaries, letters, and other documents. Additionally, in an appendix (pp. 307-340) she has compiled a startling list of the works read by four of the kamikaze pilots that can help us to understand their interests and the possible influences on their thoughts. They were extremely well read in theology, philosophy, literature, and political thought—and they read widely in European languages, as well as Japanese. Through these sources, Ohnuki-Tierney attempts to understand why these young men went off to certain death, even when they did not ascribe to the emperor-centered ideology of the Japanese militarist state. In part, she seeks to counter the prevalent image that these patriotic young men worshipped the emperor and died for him. In doing so, she argues for the necessity to distinguish between patriotism and state nationalism, or, to put it another way, between dying for one's country and dying for the emperor.Much of Ohnuki-Tierney's earlier work has dealt with the roles of specific symbols in Japanese society. The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual (Princeton University Press, 1987) traced the changing uses of the monkey as a symbol of identity and otherness throughout Japanese history, while Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time (Princeton University Press, 1993) focused on rice as an important multivalent symbol of Japanese identity. The present study apparently began innocently enough as a study of the symbolic complex surrounding cherry blossoms in Japanese cultural history. Only in the course of her research did Ohnuki... (shrink)

In the fall of 1869, the first of eight students set off from the tiny Sadowara Domain in southeastern Kyushu to pursue study in America and Europe. Overshadowed by more famous peers from other domains, the Sadowara students have been all but forgotten, and their lives abroad remain an untold story. Yet they played an important role in the early development of Japanese studies in the United States. Enrolling at diverse institutions mostly in the Northeast, six of the students (...) came to form a close relationship with Yale’s university librarian, a philologist named Addison Van Name. Inspired by his new friends to study the Japanese language, within a year Van Name was offering America’s first college course in Japanese, and he quickly began to produce scholarship on Japan and its language, literature, and history. By the mid-1870s, the Sadowara students had returned to their home country, where their subsequent careers constituted a microcosm of the paradox and transformation of the early Meiji period. Van Name maintained contact with his Japanese friends, and through this long-distance relationship succeeded in building America’s first significant Japanese library collection: a 3,000-volume collection of Edo and early Meiji titles that still survives today. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate a reprint of a Meiji anthology titled Meiren qiantai shi 美人千態詩 by Shang- hai shuju in 1914. This is the first time that this anthology has received critical attention. I examine the poems collected by the anthologist, contextualize the anthology in relation to traditions and trends in Japan and China, and analyze the significance of the poetic tradition centered on images of women for understanding border-crossing literati culture from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. (...) My study revises both Japanese and Chinese literary history. I show that the practice of kanshi composition was sustained by major Japanese men of letters through the late Meiji era. With the rise of modern Japanese literature, especially in the genre of fiction, it is generally held that there was a rupture between Edo and Meiji-Taisho literature. Within the discursive space carved out by the beauty anthology, however, we see a continuity that unified the Edo and Meiji eras. Furthermore, the Japanese poets’ particular engagement with the subgenre on beautiful women and related sentiments was concurrent with developments among the Chinese literati from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. (shrink)

The term guominxing is undoubtedly an important term in both the history of modern thought and the history of modern vocabulary. However, it seems that the term has never been specifically explored as an object of study in the field of lexical history whereas in the field of intellectual history, the emphasis has often been on the ideas represented by the term as opposed to the term itself, which is in fact marginalised. This article focuses on the Chinese word guominxing, (...) examining both the process of its production and dissemination as well as its current usage, in order to reveal its significance for the history of modern intellectual exchanges between China and Japan and the history of modern Chinese thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Reception of Husserl’s Phenomenology in Japanese PhilosophyShinji HamauzuWhen we talk about the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology, we should discuss in advance what can justify this talk. When we mention keywords— for instance, intuition of essence, intentionality, inner time-consciousness, rigorous science, natural attitude, phenomenological reduction, transcendental phenomenology, noesis-noema, my living body, genetic phenomenology, empathy, intersubjectivity, life-world, and so on—which keywords should we use when talking about the influence (...) Husserl’s phenomenology had on Japanese philosophy? But we should also ask the following question as well: Which of Husserl’s texts could be available for scholars of Japanese philosophy? Interestingly, there were few works, beyond attending Husserl’s lectures, that one could access, because he only published six books and six articles while he was alive. After Husserl died in 1938, many manuscripts were rescued from the Nazi’s hands and placed at Leuven University in Belgium where the Husserl Archive was first established. The manuscripts were edited and published as Husserliana beginning in 1950 (which now has 42 volumes). Given this, we can think of Husserl’s work as consisting of two periods: the period before and the period after the publication of Husserliana.I myself am interested in the problem of “intersubjectivity” within Husserl’s phenomenology. It is on the one hand the problem of “other-experience (Fremderfahrung)”—i.e., “how I experience the other”—which is the problem of other-experience in the empirical dimension. But it is on the other hand the problem of “intersubjective constitution”—i.e., “how the objective world is the correlate of intersubjective constitution through other-experience,”1 which is the problem of how the other participates in the transcendental dimension. It is characteristic of Husserl’s phenomenology that these two problems are discussed together inseparably. [End Page 1]The manuscripts on the problem of “intersubjectivity” from 1905 to 1935 are collected in volumes XIII to XV of Husserliana. Although the fifth meditation of Cartesian Meditations (first published in French translation in 1931) is often mentioned as the representative work on this theme, it is no more than the tip of the iceberg after Husserl struggled for many years on this problem. The genesis of this theme in the manuscripts dates back to 1905 when terms such as “other” (ein Anderer) and “foreign” (fremd) appeared in manuscript 1, or terms such as “empathy” (Einfühlung) and “intersubjective” appeared in manuscript 2. Husserl wrote later that he had discussed this theme to a relatively large extent in the lecture Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology (Hua XIII) in 1910–1911. In the period of 1905–1910, after the “problem of intersubjectivity” was first introduced, we can also find the idea of “phenomenological reduction” appear for the first time in the literature. This tells us that the problem of intersubjectivity and the idea of phenomenological reduction were born as two sides of the same coin.When Husserl’s phenomenology was first introduced to Japan, Japanese scholars were already reading the first volume of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, where the “intersubjective world” is thought to refer to a “correlate of experience mediated by empathy,”2 and so the task is to clarify the “intersubjective constitution of the objective world.”3 However, when we consider Husserl’s influence in the history of Japanese philosophy and examine whether the problem of intersubjectivity is discussed as a fundamental problem of philosophy, it can be doubted, in my opinion, whether or not there were any researchers who ever faced this problem seriously. In what follows, I survey several generations of philosophers in Japan who engaged with Husserl’s rehabilitation, to investigate the problem of intersubjectivity in his reception and extent of his influence.Nishida Kitarō’s Interest in PhenomenologyNishida Kitarō (1870–1945) looked back at the revision of his first book in 1936 and wrote,The standpoint of this book [An Inquiry into the Good (1911)] is that of consciousness, which might be thought of as a kind of psychologism... I came to realize that it is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that an individual exists because there is experience. I... (shrink)

Research on Sino-Japanese Relations is an important part of the field of Japanese Studies in China. This article offers an overview of research on Sino-Japanese relations over 60 years of PRC history. It focuses on research since the end of the Cold War, and especially on progress in the field since the beginning of the twenty-first century. On the basis of this overview, the author discusses gaps in the literature and directions for future research. The author (...) would also like to express in advance his regret that due to limited space it is not possible to mention every piece of important scholarship in the field. (shrink)

By offering an apology of Japan's closed country policy, Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716) was contributing not so much to the literature of exotic journey record, but rather to the field of European political and moral theory, and importantly to the debate over the relative merits of ancient and modern societies and effects of international commerce. There is a marked lack of scholarly attention given to Kaempfer as a modestly interesting political theorist, compared to a substantial body of research praising his (...) record as a scientifically minded observer of remote cultures. As a deceptively straightforward specimen of the genre of travelogue, and also because it has tended to be treated mostly as a pioneering attempt in western Japanese studies, Kaempfer's work has not generally been considered in its relation to the debate on Europe's own moral and political predicament. When it has, the emphasis tended to be on the influence his work exercised on the enlightened European mind and its awareness of alien cultures, rather than on the extent to which the moral and political questions he sought to answer regarding Japan's situation were in fact standard questions formulated within the wider European debate on commerce and government. This paper hopes to correct the imbalance by placing Kaempfer's argument into the context of such contrasting contemporaneous positions as those represented, respectively, by Joseph Addison's view of global commerce in The Spectator and by François Fénelon's vision of the ideal commonwealth of Salente in his Aventures de Télemaque. ☆ The present article was written as part of the author's stay in 2008 at the Centre for History and Economics, King's College, Cambridge, made possible by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation research grant. The author would like to thank the staff of the Centre for an unfailing support, and to Istvan Hont and Carolina Armenteros for invaluable comments on the text. (shrink)

Few aspects of American military history have been as vigorously debated as Harry Truman's decision to use atomic bombs against Japan. In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive collection of key primary source documents that illuminate the behavior of the United States and Japan during the closing days of World War II. (...) Kort opens with a summary of the debate over Hiroshima as it has evolved since 1945. He then provides a historical overview of thye events in question, beginning with the decision and program to build the atomic bomb. Detailing the sequence of events leading to Japan's surrender, he revisits the decisive battles of the Pacific War and the motivations of American and Japanese leaders. Finally, Kort examines ten key issues in the discussion of Hiroshima and guides readers to relevant primary source documents, scholarly books, and articles. (shrink)

The book aims to describe the history of Chan (Japanese Zen) School thought from the standpoint of social history. Chan, a school of East Asian Buddhism, was influential on all levels of societies in the region because of its intellectual and aesthetic appeal. In China, Chan infiltrated all levels of society, mainly because it engaged with society and formed the mainstream of Buddhism from the tenth or eleventh centuries through to the twentieth century. This book, taking a critical stance, (...) examines the entire history of Chan thought and practice from the viewpoint of a modern Chinese scholar, not a practitioner, but an intellectual historian who places ideological developments in social contexts. The author suggests that core elements of Chan have their origins in Daoist philosophers, especially Zhuangzi, and not in Indian Buddhist concepts. Covering the period from the sixth century into the twentieth century, it deals with Chan interactions with neo-Confucianism, Quanzhen Daoism, and Gongyang new text philology, as well as with literature and scholarship, its fusion with Pure Land Buddhism, and its syncretic tendencies. Chan’s exchanges with emperors from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasty, as well as the motives of some loyalists of the Ming Dynasty for joining Chan after the fall of the Ming, are described. The book concludes with an examination of the views of Chan of Hu Shi, D.T. Suzuki, and the scholar-monk Yinshun. (shrink)

It is essential for scientists to introduce their research in a comprehensible manner and to communicate with colleagues in the same/different fields and with the public. As genome research requires the massive expenditure of public funds, and raises ethical, legal, and social issues, genome scientists have communicated extensively with the public. In addition, they have established interdisciplinary collaborations that resulted in the creation of a new research field known as bioinformatics.We examined the history of communication activities involving Japanese genome (...) scientists between 1989 and 2005 using extensive literature surveys and interviews. We found that genome researchers went through much trial and error, particularly with respect to collaborative interdisciplinary efforts, and although they early on recognized the necessity of communicating with colleagues in different fields, it was not until the introduction of a large governmental research budget, the Millennium Project (2000 - 2004), that individual researchers began to be actively engaged in communication activities. In conclusion, to facilitate the participation of scientists in communication activities, researchers who are acquainted with different research fields, community, and society should proactively function as coordinators of interdisciplinary programs or mediators of collaborative research. It is also of primal importance to present to scientists the advantage of dialogue with society scientifically and to design effective communication programs that provide researchers with such opportunities. (shrink)

敗戦から七十年、我々はどこに向かうべきか?中江兆民、北村透谷、石川啄木、小林秀雄。彼らを知らずして、本当に「現代日本」を語れるのか?

Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:????; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:????; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt;} Learning styles, much related to motivation and cognitive strategies, has been one of the most frequently discussed topics in the field of foreign/second language (L2) education. (...) There is a considerable body of research on learning styles stemming from the domain of psychology to the conceptual field. As individuals learn in different ways from time to time, from culture to culture, and from context to context, findings of such research can only explain a comparatively small group of people’s temporary perceptions of their learning preferences to a selected subject surveyed. Sternberg (2001, p. 250) notes that “the literature has failed to provide any common conceptual framework and language,” while, according to Reid (1998), the concept is still not well understood. An enduring question for language researchers is the effect of individual differences on the efficacy of language learning (Nel, 2008). Much more research has to be done to address the issue of theoretical coherence as well as aiming for well-rounded empirical findings, tested through replication. Therefore, with an intention to contribute more data to cross-country research, this study investigated the differences and similarities of Chinese and Japanese college students’ perceptions of their current English learning styles through a classroom-based survey. Implications for the teaching and learning are discussed in the final section. (shrink)

江戸派国学は、江戸下町文化が大きく花開いた19世紀初頭の化政期に、町人たちを主体に形成された。村田春海・加藤千蔭らの江戸派国学を、“春満‐真淵‐宣長”の国学に連なる系譜に位置づけた、国学史上劃期的名著 の復刻。.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 117-133 [Access article in PDF] Emptiness, Kenōsis, History, and Dialogue: The Christian Response to Masao Abe's Notion of "Dynamic Śūnyatā " in the Early Years of the Abe-Cobb Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Charles B. Jones The Catholic University of America Introduction Between 1980 and 1993, the Japanese Zen scholar Masao Abe resided in the United States, teaching in various places.1 This brought him into contact with (...) many American scholars and theologians, among whom was John Cobb, a Protestant theologian then working in the area of process theology. Many of the ideas that Abe brought from Japanese Buddhism and particularly from the "Kyōtō School" of Japanese philosophy appeared to Cobb intriguingly congruent with his theological work, and the two began a series of dialogues that came to include a larger and larger circle of Christian theologians2 and (mostly Western) Buddhist scholar-practitioners. The end result was a series of informal encounters as well as a series of three formal "International Buddhist-Christian Conferences" (1980, 1984, 1987; a second series of dialogues were held without Abe's attendance starting in 1998 after a hiatus under the name "International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter"3 ). From these encounters came an impressive number of publications from Abe and from a variety of other participants in what is sometimes known as the "Abe-Cobb Encounter."The agenda, following Cobb's suggestion and vocabulary, was to allow each side to "cross over" into the other; in other words, to study and internalize the worldview of the other in as much depth as possible without converting or losing one's connection with one's home tradition, abiding in the other side as a guest. Later, one was to "cross back," come home to one's own tradition and reflect on the benefits gained in wearing the other's shoes for a time.4 This agenda, which emphasized understanding the other's worldview and concepts of ultimate reality, suited the highly intellectual style of the dialogues, focused as they were on philosophical and theological concerns. [End Page 117]Nevertheless, even given the concern to study and understand the other's philosophical standpoint, a curious disconnect emerges when one studies the literature produced in this dialogue. During the early phase of these encounters in the 1980s, each side, Buddhist and Christian, appears to have taken one text as normative for the entirety of the other's tradition. For Abe, following his predecessors in the KyōtōSchool, the emblematic textfor Christianity was avery short one: the hymn toChrist recorded by Paul in Philippians 2:6-11. He was particularly drawn to the concept of kenōsis, "emptying," which he thought might serve as a cognate for the Buddhist idea of "emptiness" (Skt: śūnyatā ). While the Christians participating in the dialogueaccepted this as a point of contact, albeit with some reservations, others have objected strenuously to this approach, saying that Abe's method of interpreting this text did not hold to responsible methods of exegesis, and at any rate the passage was much too minute to support an entire theology of God and creation.5The Christian side by and large adopted much the same strategy in coming to grips with Buddhist thought, choosing a brief text as the paradigmatic statement of the Buddhist view of ultimate reality: the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā (Root Stanzas on the Middle Way; hereafter the MMK) of the second-century Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna. In this instance, objections from the Buddhist side were not forthcoming, because Abe himself took the MMK as a normative statement of Buddhist thought. Nevertheless, his own presentation of Buddhism, especially his key notion of "dynamic śūnyatā, " went considerably beyond Nāgārjuna's presentation and thus elicited some objections from the Christian side for not hewing to their own understanding of Nāgārjuna. Because Abe never responded to these objections directly, the misunderstanding was left unresolved... (shrink)

This symposium represents the first major foray of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry into what may well become one of its significant strands of scholarship. The JBI has always encouraged critical and marginal areas of bioethics scholarship and particularly those which make use of contemporary continental philosophy and cultural theory in addition to traditional analytic methods. For that reason this symposium is an expression of a “natural fit” or a “match made in heaven” (or at least the Platonic version of (...) that idea). The authors span times and sites in history and culture, from ancient Greece to present day Brisbane. They draw on a variety of literary genres and figures, ranging from Greek tragedy to an epic Chinese novel; from Jane Austen to William Styron, a major American novelist and essayist; from the modern English science fiction of Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese expatriate in London, to the 20th-century English poetry of Philip Larkin. The symposium also engages with some recur. (shrink)

あはれ・わび・いきなどの美意識や芸術の本質について、和辻哲郎、九鬼周造などの知の巨人から学ぶ。.