In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Japanese Things and Words:An Answer to Heidegger's QuestionMichael F. MarraIt has been over thirty years since my high school teacher of philosophy, Professor Dino Dezzani, recommended a book from which to begin my study of philosophy: Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) Unterwegs zur Sprache (On the way to language [1959]). Evidently he was aware of my interest in literature and thought that Heidegger's discussion of words, things, and poetic (...) language would give some sort of direction to my naïve and youthful questions of what literature is about and what I should hope to find in it.The impact that Heidegger's book had on this young student was much greater than my professor could ever have imagined. I would hardly have committed myself to the study of Japan were it not for my reading of "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," which appears in On the Way to Language. The dialogue is a fictional reconstruction of an actual meeting that Heidegger had with Tezuka Tomio (1903-1983), a Japanese scholar of German literature who visited the German philosopher in Freiburg at the end of March 1954.1 In the dialogue the Inquirer (Heidegger) formulates a central question that, in my opinion, should be of fundamental interest to anyone seriously concerned with the study of Japan. The question is deceptively simple, at least compared with the difficulty of coming up with the answer-an answer that, as a matter of fact, the reader will not find fully formulated in the dialogue. The question is: "What is the Japanese word for 'language' "? The Japanese visitor (Tezuka in Heidegger's recollection) appears to have been caught off guard, as we can see from Heidegger's parenthetical remark: "after further hesitation." Had Heidegger posed the same question to a Frenchman or an Italian, the answer would have been immediate: "langue" or "lingua." The challenge for Tezuka was definitely higher since he had a variety of words from which to choose. He could have used, for example, the expression gengo, a combination of two Chinese characters indicating "the speech of words." Instead, he used an ancient Japanese word derived from the native Yamato vocabulary: kotoba, which literally means "the foliage of speech."2There should be little doubt that Tezuka's choice was prompted by his desire to please Heidegger by playing the philosopher's own game-something that Tezuka totally succeeded in doing, as Heidegger's dialogue attests. Tezuka introduced a term that lent itself to etymological play-an enterprise very close to the heart of Heidegger, and one that was also very popular among Japanese thinkers.3 In fact, the expression kotoba incorporates the word koto, which means both "thing" and [End Page 555] "word" and which is found in the basic concepts of Japanese ontology: Mikoto (God, or "the honorable thing"), makoto (truth, or "the true word"), kotodama (soul, or "the spirit of words"), and kotowari(reason, or "the splitting of things"). The association of "words" and "things" in the Japanese word for "language" must have been of particular interest to Heidegger, who, four years before his meeting with Tezuka, had written "Das Ding" (The thing), a major lecture on the notion of things interpreted in light of the fourfold earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. In the dialogue Heidegger refers to this essay, in which "things" are presented in their objectified presence-the disparaged things that modernity and technology have dispossessed of their Being (Sein). Heidegger points out that never has the distance between things and Sein been as great as in modernity, when all distances in space and time have shrunk.4 Given the unflattering position that Heidegger had taken on the notion of "things," Tezuka was forced to come to the rescue of the Japanese word kotoba by endowing koto with the meaning of two Heideggerian keywords: "event" (kotogara) and "affair" (Sache). The thingly component of kotoba was not simply an objectifiable presence that can be counted, analyzed, and disposed of, but rather a poietic "act" that has the power to create a reality by transforming the named thing (koto) into a real thing (koto).In "A Dialogue... (shrink)

Nishida Kitaro is a well-known Japanese philosopher whose work is marked by attempts to combine the world outlooks of the national spiritual tradition with elements of European philosophical thought. The article analyzes Nishida’s views on culture that are an independent part of his original philosophical theory. Religion, art, morality, science are the ideal forms of being in the historical world. The work of a scientist or artist is a manifestation of the formative activity of a person. The historical world (...) as the “sphere of absolute nothingness” is the final point of the introspection of “nothingness,” where reality comprehends the identity of its opposites through human activity. Nothingness, or “Emptiness,” in the East Asian tradition has another, dynamic, dimension – these are the relations between people and the relations between man and the cosmos, or Nature, which are not perceived by rough human feelings and not comprehended by equally rough mind. Nishida stressed that for Japan the issue of the authenticity of the national foundations of culture, separated from Chinese and Indian influences, has a clearly positive answer in the aesthetic sphere: in the field of traditional poetics. The traditional aesthetics of Japan reflects the archetypal structure of the national culture. All world cultures have a common prototype, but each of them is a deviation, one-sidedness of this prototype. In the West, a culture of the form triumphed, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. In Japan, on the contrary, the culture was characterized by fluidity, processability, formlessness. In fact, Nishida is one of founding fathers of modern Japanese cultural studies. (shrink)

In an effort to reduce risk and uncertainty, we hypothesize that investors avoid countries where high corruption exists. We investigate this issue by examining the relationship of levels of perceived corruption on Japanese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in both industrialized and emerging economies. The analysis presented utilizes a sample of 29,546 investments in 59 countries. Results suggest that in emerging nations, where comprehensive legal and regulatory frameworks do not exist to effectively curtail fraudulent activity, corruption serves to reduce FDI. (...) Managers need to consider the level of perceived corruption in their assessment of any market prior to potential investment. (shrink)

In this paper the author compares the concept of a Noh play, Matsukaze, with a Slovak altar painting from Košice Cathedral. The article uses Japanese Noh, where stage continuity has been preserved up until the present day, to reconstruct European medieval stage practices reflected in 15th century painting. Referring to the platonic tradition, the second speech represents a corrective to the first, thus legitimizing a sense of passion in the process leading to catharsis, or enlightenment.

Social Conformity and Response Bias Revisited: The Influence of "Others" on Japanese Respondents This study was undertaken to investigate the impact of other respondents' answers on individual responses in survey studies. The study employed four different conditions and manipulated the direction and the level of social pressure. The results have confirmed that social desirability bias hugely impacts individual answers. It was found that respondents are seven times more likely to choose a socially unacceptable option if majority of the preceding (...) respondents also have chosen the same option. Additionally, the existence of an interviewer during data collection was found to be a factor pressuring respondents to give more socially acceptable responses. (shrink)

In this paper I consider how the computer can or should be accepted in Japanese schools. The concept of “teaching” in Japan stresses learning from a long-term perspective. Whereas in the instructional technology, on which the CAI or the Tutoring System depends, step-by-step attainments in relatively short time are emphasized. The former is reluctant in using the computer, but both share the “Platonic” perspective which are goal-oriented. However, The “Socratic” teacher, who intends to activate students' innate disposition to be (...) better, would find another way of “teaching” and use of the computer. (shrink)

The recently published collection Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School, edited by Bret Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason Wirth, gathers together the best in contemporary scholarship on the Kyoto School and its legacy. This review essay is an opportunity to raise questions about the implications of this scholarship and to reflect critically on the future of the field. Although early Kyoto School philosophers are renowned for their lofty intellectual rigor, almost every one at some point bemoaned (...) the overly abstract flavor of their own work and that of their contemporaries. The call to make the philosophy concrete is without a doubt the unfinished business of the Kyoto School. This review assesses the collected volume’s range of critical and creative perspectives on the practical implications of Kyoto School theory, while indicating room for further engagement with this issue in future research. (shrink)

We examine the relationship between Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) and the national corporate responsibility (NCR) environment in host countries using corporate social responsibility and international business theories. Based on data from the Japanese Government’s Ministry of Finance AccountAbility, and other sources, we find that the level of NCR has a positive relationship with FDI inflow for developing countries. The relationship for developed countries is negative but not statistically significant. The underlying host country development stage moderates the relationship. (...) The results can help deepen understanding of FDI behaviors and have practical implications for host countries in terms of attracting FDI. (shrink)

In the framework of Japanese studies, the relationship between Buddhism and Japanese poetry has received very little academic consideration. The noticeable founded narrative forms and potent and substantial philosophical influence of classical Chinese writings have resulted in the image of China being recontextualized during the process of fantasy, development, and encounters on the part of Japanese writers or investigators, with the result that many distortions and mischaracterizations have occurred as a result of this process. This work employs (...) a comparative method that incorporates literature and philosophy to examine the poetry of Hagiwara Sakutarô (1886–1942). The comparative analysis is seen from the viewpoint of Naturalism's impact and the use of description in the development of Japanese contemporary poetry. This has led to several inaccurate depictions of the country. The image of China that is presented in Japanese literature is both a perception and an illusion that is produced when cultural knowledge and creative achievements are combined. This combination creates the image of China. In the article, an examination and classification of the depiction of China in Japanese literature is provided. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Consciousness and Machines:A Commentary Drawing on Japanese PhilosophyS. D. Noam Cook (bio)Viewed from within the great unity of consciousness, thinking is a wave on the surface of a great intuition.Kitarō NishidaIntroductionRecent developments in AI have made the long-standing debate about what computers can and can't do a major public concern. What we understand the properties of such machines to be, and consequently how we design [End Page 305] (...) and deploy them, will increasingly shape how we live and how we understand ourselves. Thus, there is an urgent need for better understanding of these issues.Susan Schneider, in her book Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, offers an exceptionally careful and insightful examination of key issues entailed in how we understand AI and ourselves. One of her central concerns is how we might test for machine consciousness. Given the variations in design and function among current and projected AIs, Schneider sees no likely one-size-fits-all test. So, she offers a battery of different tests that she believes together will make such testing more reliable. This seems a wise approach, and reflects the conceptual and pragmatic care Schneider takes throughout the book.Similarly, it seems to me that the question of machine consciousness should also include various understandings of consciousness itself. What consciousness is taken to be has varied widely both historically and culturally. No commonly accepted single understanding has emerged, and may never emerge. Just as having a battery of tests might help us better assess possible machine consciousness, having different understandings of consciousness might give us a better understanding of what we are testing for. The two should work in tandem, each gauging and shaping the other.Like the development of computers themselves, the predominant thinking about AI has been shaped, in part, by key presuppositions of a scientific worldview, with its origins in Western thought and culture. Among these presuppositions are materialism, reductionism, and a primary focus on objective behavior. These are reflected in the common concern with observable behavior of physical aspects of the brain in efforts to understand human consciousness, which in turn has become a familiar model for work on machine consciousness. All this is important and valuable work. But, in the spirit of Schneider's cautions, it should not be taken as one-size-fits-all. Accordingly, I offer one view of consciousness from a different perspective.In what follows, I sketch out an understanding of consciousness that draws on Japanese philosophy, particularly that of the highly influential early twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida (1870–1945). I then explore how the tests for machine consciousness that Schneider proposes might be viewed from that perspective.Consciousness: A Perspective from Japanese PhilosophyConsciousness was a central concern for Nishida, whose philosophy is deeply informed by Japanese culture and by Zen theory and practice. As one might expect from such a philosopher, Nishida's exploration of consciousness is not concerned with properties of the brain, but with what we might discern through disciplined reflection on the experience of our own consciousness. Ultimately, he views consciousness as an organic whole [End Page 306] of systemically organized interrelationships of activities and sensations within our subjective experience. This may be understood by first considering 'nothingness'.For Nishida, nothingness does not suggest an ultimate and absolute vacuity, as is often understandably assumed. In Nishida's sense, it is a singular "place" that mirrors the multifaceted world of our common experience. In understanding this, I am told by native Japanese speakers that the English word 'nothingness' has an advantage over the Japanese equivalent, 'mu', in that 'nothingness' can usefully be broken down as 'nothing-ness'. This suggests that nothingness is a state of consciousness where what we commonly experience as distinct (self, other, world, blue, ache, joy, etc.) is indistinct, a state of unified experience. This is consciousness without our finding or discriminating in it the myriad "things" of common experience, but rather a "pure experience" of a singular whole. Nishida introduces his concept of "pure experience" as follows:To experience means to know facts just as they are, to know in accordance with facts by completely relinquishing one... (shrink)

Volume one. History -- volume two. Philosophy -- volume three. Religion -- volume four. Translations.

The studies of Japanese Intellectual History was born after the 1st World War when Japan occupied the position to confront the West in the world history. In this period, Japan expanded its influence in Southeast Asia. How to establish the national identity of ‘Japan’ was the research task of Japanese Intellectual History. This paper thinks about the meanings of the studies of Japanese Intellectual History by considering the birth, main issues, and the direction of the studies of (...) Japanese history of thought. One of the huge characteristics of researches on the Japanese Intellectual History First, it is the period of a shift in generations. On top of the retirement of the 1st-generation researchers such as Maruyama and Goyas in the postwar period, their younger scholars also faced the period of retirement. Second, it is the researches the history of thought without a view of history. The researches on the Japanese history of thought after Maruyama certainly showed its external expansion such as the expansion of research materials, close reading of historical records, cross-sectional research on the studies of Japanese Intellectual History and neighboring studies, criticism of modern knowledge, criticism of researches in the viewpoint of single-national history, and expansion to the East Asian history of thought. However, there is no distinct view of history including the researches on the history of thought. Thus, there are no researches aiming to suggest the whole image of studies on the history of thought. Third, the theme of researches on the history of thought is moving to modern times. Fourth, the researches on the Japanese history of thought are locked in a viewpoint of single-national history. It would be necessary to review the characteristics of Japanese Intellectual History in correlations of China, Joseon, and Japan. (shrink)

(1996). Coudenhove‐Kalergi and Japan: The influence of his ideas on Japanese intellectuals and politicians. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 771-777.

This article concerns kime, a somatic code used in the ‘empty hand’ Japanese martial art of karate. Kime is a tactile-kinesthetic entity born out of practice, coming into being in a social setting through the specific organization of the body-self, fusing body and self into one stance and movement. Kime is entirely embodied, yet can only be operated and recognized inter-subjectively. It plays a crucial role in combat and at the same time also indicates a spiritual possibility that depends (...) on eradication of emotion and volition. An analysis of kime shows how cultural understandings can emerge without necessarily using symbolic representations or verbal discourse in their construction. These somatic non-dual understandings can come to form an entire world-of-meaning directly through the moving body. The moving body shapes itself within itself even as it interacts with and contributes to shape its immediate environment. This is a world-of-meaning that includes complex inter-subjectivity founded on the speed and ambiguity of the interface between the innerness and the outerness of the body. (shrink)

The present volume is the latest example of what scholars of Japanese philosophy have been up to in recent years. The papers collected here, most of them presented at conferences held in Barcelona and Nagoya during 2016, have been arranged in four thematic parts. The first two parts cover the history of Japanese philosophy, as their topics extend from premodern thinkers to twentieth century philosophers; the last two parts focus on Nishida and Watsuji respectively.

There are two well-known truths about Japan: one is that Japan is one of the most advanced economies, which takes pride in its highly advanced technology, social infrastructure and system; the other is that Japan ranks lowest at women’s social participation among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Even though the Japanese government has initiated programs to promote female participation and advancement in society, these initiatives have not yet borne remarkable fruit. This study intends to address this issue (...) by investigating the effectiveness of female leadership in Japan, specifically its effect on organizations’ gender diversity and inclusion climate and employees’ task-related positive attitudes. Synthesizing social information processing theory and social identity theory, the study examines 306 Japanese employees working with their female supervisors in medium- and large-sized manufacturing companies. The findings show that female ambidextrous leadership contributes to shape and strengthen a gender D&I climate and ultimately enhances employees’ hope on their work. In addition, the positive effect of a gender D&I climate on employees’ hope is the same for all employees regardless of gender. The findings clarify the role of female leadership and the underlying psychological mechanism through which female leadership influences employees’ positive work attitudes. This first empirical study in Japan contributes to the research on female leadership and D&I management. (shrink)

What is culture? What can we learn from art, architecture, and fashion about how people relate? Can cultures embody ethical and moral ideals? These are just some of the questions addressed in this book on the cultural philosophy of three preeminent Japanese philosophers of the early twentieth century, Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō and Kuki Shūzō.

日本を代表する「思考の達人」“Meisterdenker”たちは如何にして、明治維新以降、輸入品ではない、日本固有の思考法・方法論を創りだしたのか?続々重版の大好評、入門講義シリーズ。日本に学問として の「哲学」を定着させるうえで決定的な役割を果たした西田幾多郎『善の研究』と日本的な「倫理学」の方法論を開拓したとされる和辻哲郎『人間の学としての倫理学』を熟読し、日本人の深層に在る思想を探る。.

In Japan, where a prominent gap exists in what is considered a patient’s best interest between the medical and patient sides, appropriate decision-making can be difficult to achieve. In Japanese clinical settings, decision-making is considered an act of choice-making from multiple potential options. With many ethical dilemmas still remaining, establishing an appropriate decision-making process is an urgent task in modern Japanese healthcare. This paper examines ethical issues related to shared decision-making (SDM) in clinical settings in modern Japan from (...) the psychocultural-social perspective and discusses the ideal decision-making process in present Japan. Specifically, we discuss how five psychocultural-social tendencies – “surmise (Sontaku),” “self-restraint (Jishuku),” “air (atmosphere or mood, Kuuki),” “peer pressure (or tuning pressure, Docho-Atsuryoku),” and “community (Seken)”—which have often been referred to as characteristics of present-day Japanese people, may affect the ideal practice of SDM in Japanese clinical settings. We conclude that health care professionals must be aware of the possible adverse effects of the above Japanese psychocultural-social tendencies on the implementation of SDM and attempt to promote autonomous decision-making, thereby allowing patients to make treatment choices that sufficiently reflect their individual and personal views of life, experiences, goals, preferences, and values. (shrink)