The twelfth bi-annual symposium of the Nanzan Institute took up the problem of the philosophical tradition of Japan and how it has fared abroad. There were two principal foci of the meetings: the history and future prospects of the study and teaching of Japanese philosophy outside of Japan, and the preparation of a Sourcebook of Japanese Philosophy aimed at providing a solid anthology of Japanese philospohical resources from the earliest times up to the present. To (...) address these two questions, 16 participants from six language-groups— Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish—were invited to Nanzan to deliver papers and discuss projects of common interest, including the Sourcebook. The final day of the conference included a discussion with selected Japanese philosophers and intellectual historians at Kyoto University. (shrink)

An overview of Japanese philosophy from the seventh century to the present.

This important volume introduces the reader to a variety of schools of thought. Ideal for classroom use, this is the ultimate resource for students and teachers of Japanese philosophy.

The imperative that Japanese philosophy faces today, I assert, is the imperative of environmental philosophy. It is an imperative that has decidedly global origins and indisputable global significance. In discussing this imperative, I revive some age-old, perhaps idealistic, and even romantic themes from East Asian Confucian thinking in the hopes that they might become more central motifs of Japanese philosophizing, charting a way forward in the wake of Fukushima, toward a more sustainable future. In the process, (...) I critique admixtures of environmentalism and nationalism, seeking to elevate instead an ecologically sound philosophical perspective that is more globally inclined than narrowly nationalistic. (shrink)

Philosophy challenges our assumptions—especially when it comes to us from another culture. In exploring Japanese philosophy, a dependable guide is essential. The present volume, written by a renowned authority on the subject, offers readers a historical survey of Japanese thought that is both comprehensive and comprehensible. Adhering to the Japanese philosophical tradition of highlighting engagement over detachment, Thomas Kasulis invites us to think with, as well as about, the Japanese masters by offering ample examples, (...) innovative analogies, thought experiments, and jargon-free explanations. He assumes little previous knowledge and addresses themes—aesthetics, ethics, the samurai code, politics, among others—not in a vacuum but within the conditions of Japan’s cultural and intellectual history. For readers new to Japanese studies, he provides a simplified guide to pronouncing Japanese and a separate discussion of the language and how its syntax, orthography, and linguistic layers can serve the philosophical purposes of a skilled writer and subtle thinker. For those familiar with the Japanese cultural tradition but less so with philosophy, Kasulis clarifies philosophical expressions and problems, Western as well as Japanese, as they arise. Half of the book’s chapters are devoted to seven major thinkers who collectively represent the full range of Japan’s historical epochs and philosophical traditions: Kūkai, Shinran, Dōgen, Ogyū Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, Nishida Kitarō, and Watsuji Tetsurō. Nuanced details and analyses enable an engaged understanding of Japanese Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintō, and modern academic philosophy. Other chapters supply social and cultural background, including brief discussions of nearly a hundred other philosophical writers. In his closing chapter Kasulis reflects on lessons from Japanese philosophy that enhance our understanding of philosophy itself. He reminds us that philosophy in its original sense means loving wisdom, not studying ideas. In that regard, a renewed appreciation of engaged knowing can play a critical role in the revitalization of philosophy in the West as well as the East. (shrink)

This reference guide covers the entire history of Japan and is limited to books dealing with the doctrines and histories of the religions of Japan. It includes all works concerning religious, ethical, moral, and, to some extent, even political and educational thinkers and movements.

The first of 3 volumes of essays on Japanese philosophy, this work brings together essays that clarify its heritage and its practice, above all in the dynamic thought of Nishida Kitaro. Showing how philosophy takes shape through the translation of language and culture, the author examines the frameworks that have defined and confined Nishida’s thought and then charts new avenues of questioning Nishida and letting him question us. How should we envision the world at a time of (...) environmental crisis, how might we rethink our conceptions of history, religion and God; how is bodily awareness a way that the world knows itself, and just what can we make of Nishida'™s famous notion of nothingness—these are some of the questions that guide the meticulous explorations in this collection. (shrink)

Nishida Kitaro is widely considered as the first original philosopher in modern Japan. Addressing this claim, Richard Stone critically examines Nishida's relation to his contemporary philosophers in the Meiji era (1868-1912), highlighting the continuity, difference and relationships between them. He argues that ideas starting from early Meiji philosophers were gradually given more rigorous treatment over the course of the era, eventually culminating in Nishida's early philosophy.The Origins of Modern Japanese Philosophy offers an engaging insight into the Meiji (...) period, bringing Nishida's work it into dialogue with his predecessors. (shrink)

In tackling the question of what is Japanese philosophy, the paper discusses: philosophy in general, the issue of Japanese philosophy, and the relevance of both philosophy and Japanese philosophy in our present age of globalization. Examining the definitions of philosophy provided by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, and looking at the philosophies of Nishida and Nishitani among others, I argue the source of philosophy—its originary and universal motivation—to be the question of (...) meaning of existence. Japanese philosophy is no exception. I then discuss whether there is something unique to Japanese philosophy in particular and look into the question of the essence of Japanese philosophy. Furthermore, I argue that in order to be true to the original motivation of philosophy, the study of Japanese philosophy, if it is itself to be considered philosophy, cannot be reduced to biography, history, or philology. It must be relevant to our life. I then conclude with a discussion of the relevance of Japanese philosophy and the philosophical study of Japanese philosophy to our life today. (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)

Volume 2. The second of three volumes of essays that engage Japanese philosophers as intercultural thinkers, this collection critically probes seminal works for their historical significance and contemporary relevance. It shows how the relational ethics of Watsuji Tetsurō serves as a resource for new conceptions of trust, dignity, and human rights; how forgiveness empowers the repentance and the sense of responsibility advocated by Tanabe Hajime, and how Kuki Shūzō’s philosophy of contingency puts a fortuitous twist on normative ethics. (...) The author also re-examines the controversy about Kyoto School wartime writings so as to uncover the covert side of today’s empires, and reflects on the hidden consequences of seeing nature as the non-human world. Underlying these investigations is a consistent style that interrogates philosophers for what lies undisclosed and that exposes decisive questions that arise between us and them. (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.

Nishida Kitarô -- Tanabe Hajime -- Kuki Shûzô -- Watsuji Tetsurô -- Miki Kiyoshi -- Tosaka Jun -- Nishitani Keiji.

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)

This book, written by one of the leading Japanese scholars in the philosophy of agricultural science, examines the relationship between human life, the natural environment, and agriculture.

This essay consists of two parts. In the first part we show in general outline the development of modern Japanese philosophy since 1867. And as one of the typical products of that process we analyse in the second part the metaphysics of the late Prof. Nishida.

Japanese philosophy can be viewed as consisting of three historical phases. In the first and classical phase, theoretical speculation in Japan is usually seen as a variation of East Asian intellectual tradition, which basically consists of Confucianism and Sinicized Buddhism. Some thinkers nevertheless start to depart from this framework by drawing either on the indigenous culture or on the knowledge of occidental civilization, which eventually leads to the Westernization of Japanese society. In the second, or modern, phase (...) of Japanese philosophy, there arises a theoretical task to synthesize Eastern and Western frameworks, and many pioneering works of modern East Asian philosophy are produced in the first half of the 20th century. The third and contemporary phase of Japanese philosophy spans from the postwar reconstruction of Japan to the present, when eminent researchers lead philosophical studies under the framework either of analytic or continental context. Recent philosophical research in Japan is increasingly getting free from such academic frameworks, producing some remarkable results-- although most of these contemporary works remain unknown overseas. (shrink)

"In the first study of its kind, David W. Johnson's "Watsuji on Nature" reconstructs the astonishing philosophy of nature of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960), situating it in relation both to his reception of the thought of Heidegger and to his renewal of core ontological positions in classical Confucian and Buddhist philosophy. Johnson shows that for Watsuji we have our being in the lived experience of nature, one in which nature and culture compose a tightly interwoven texture called "fūdo". By (...) fully unfolding Watsuji's novel and radical claim that this is a setting that is neither fully external to human subjectivity nor merely a product of it, this book also sets out what still remains unthought in this concept, as well as in the relational structure that underwrites it. Johnson argues that what remains unarticulated is nothing less than the recovery of a reenchanted conception of nature and an elucidation of the wide-ranging implications of a relational conception of the self for questions about the disclosive character of experience, the distinction between fact and value, and the possibility of a place-based ecological ethics. In an engagingly lucid and deft analysis, "Watsuji on Nature" radically expands our appreciation of twentieth-century Japanese philosophy and shows what it has to offer to a global philosophical conversation"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

L’acte de la philosophie japonaise est celui d’un évidement de soi: acte d’accueil des traditions philosophiques du monde, acte en résonance, créateur d’une terminologie, d’une logique, d’une conceptualité originales, s’alimentant aux sources d’une pensée mythique jamais tarie. Les textes présentés ici en feront sentir l’inclassable nouveauté: cette philosophie n’est ni purement shintoïste, bouddhique, chrétienne, néoconfucianiste ; elle n’est ni « orientale » ni « occidentale », mais proprement japonaise.

In this book, 12 contemporary Japanese philosophers of science are presented using a generous sampling of their works as scientists and philosophers who have investigated the foundations of natural science, the philosophy of mind and especially of perception, the logic of inference and of time, causality, and evolution.

Zen and Japanese Culture is one of the twentieth century's leading works on Zen, and a valuable source for those wishing to understand its concepts in the context of Japanese life and art. In simple, often poetic, language, Daisetz Suzuki describes his conception of Zen and its historical evolution. He connects Zen to the philosophy of the samurai, and subtly portrays the relationship between Zen and swordsmanship, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese love of nature. Suzuki's (...) contemplative work is enhanced by anecdotes, poetry, and illustrations showing silk screens, calligraphy, and examples of architecture. Since its original publication in 1938, this important work has played a major role in shaping conceptions of Zen's influence on Japanese traditional arts. Richard Jaffe's introduction acquaints a new generation of readers with Suzuki's life and career in both Japan and America. Jaffe discusses how Zen and Japanese Culture was received upon its first publication and analyzes the book in light of contemporary criticism, especially by scholars of Japanese Buddhism. (shrink)

Comparative environmental philosophy is valuable in many ways. Perhaps it is most valuable because it reveals some of the foundational assumptions that run so deep in the poles of comparison that they might otherwise have gone unnoticed. These revelations may invite us to challenge those assumptions that have led to the kind of thinking responsible for much of the environmental degradation that we see today. Japanese Environmental Philosophy gathers papers focused on the environmental problems of the twenty-first (...) century. Drawing from Japanese philosophical traditions they investigate our relationships with other humans, nonhuman animals, and the environment. The heart of the book consists of chapters written by fifteen top scholars from Japan, the United States, Europe, and Australia. The essays cover a broad range of topics drawn from various strains of Japanese thought—including Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, the Kyoto school, and Japanese philosophy of art and aesthetics—as well as from traditional Japanese culture and the contemporary science of planning for natural disasters. These articles demonstrate that Japanese scientific, philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions can provide meaningful insight to address the current global environmental crisis. (shrink)

When I deliver an introductory lecture on Japanese Philosophy, I always raise the following question: Is it appropriate to modify the word philosophy with an adjective such as Japanese? Philosophy is, after all, a discipline that addresses universal problems, and so transcends the restrictions implied in geographical descriptors. However, as Kuki Shūzō argues in his essay “Tokyo and Kyoto,” I think that this is only part, and not the whole truth of the matter.One’s thinking takes (...) place within the framework of one’s cultural heritage, and the different nuances of each of the words one uses can influence how one thinks. It is for this reason that every philoso­phy has its own unique character. As Otto Pöggeler suggests, there is something about the thought of Japanese philosophers such as Nishida Kitarō and Nishitani Keiji that does not fit easily into the framework of “philosophy” in the Western tradition. This is a conse­quence of the fact that they did not simply passively adopt, but rather attempted to critically challenge Western philosophy. I suppose that their grounding in Japanese and other Eastern traditions contributed to their critical challenge of Western philosophy. And I submit that there is a strong tendency in traditional East Asian thought to not simply grasp things within a presupposed framework of “knowledge,” but rather, since “knowledge” itself is understood to be a certain kind of restriction, to return to its roots.Needless to say, neither Nishida’s nor Nishitani’s thought is merely a philosophical reiteration of such traditional East Asian teachings. Nevertheless, we can say that the East Asian idea that knowledge is at root something restrictive lives on in their thinking. The radical­ity of Nishida’s and Nishitani’s thought can be understood to lie in the manner in which they cast light on the limits of the “knowledge” pursued by Western philosophy, problematizing the basis on which this knowledge is established as well as the framework it sets up.I think that the “character” of this or that philosophy arises from such different ways of seeing things and different attitudes toward “knowledge.” It is crucial to point out, however, that the gaps resulting from these differences need not become hindrances for philosophical thinking. Indeed, I think that the existence of such gaps, rather than hindering “dialogues” between different philosophies, is precisely what enables them to be meaningful. This is also what I have in mind when I stress the importance of dialogue in my lectures on Japanese philoso­phy. It is, after all, the creative dialogue engendered in this manner that enables philosophy to progress along its path of radical inquiry. (shrink)

While many historians take the view that Japanese philosophy only started with the Meiji Restoration and the entrance of Western culture into Japan, Hajime Nakamura demonstrates that there has been a long history of philosophy in Japan prior to the Meiji. Beginning in 592 AD, when Japan first became a centralized state and continuing into the early modern era, this work deals with the important problems and salient feature of Japanese philosophical thought at all stages in (...) its development. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is not to argue for the “influence” of Cassirer, but rather to make known the reception of Cassirer in Japanese philosophy, illustrate the interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy, and hopefully spark interest in what might be a fruitful dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Historically, the paper defines Japanese philosophy and makes known its engagement with Western (...) philosophy and the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism and its project of a critique of culture during its own self-development. Systematically, the paper points to the possible interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy and makes the case for a mutually productive dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Implicitly, the paper attempted to show that an engagement with Japanese philosophy from the perspective of a critique of culture forces us to question the Western dichotomy between philosophy and religion and the importance of this for the further development of a non-Eurocentric critique of culture. And by extension, that a critique of culture must be cognitive of the historicity of the culture from which it speaks. (shrink)

This is a set of essays and translations that covers comprehensively all of Japanese philosophy.

To answer the question of whether there is such a thing as Japanese philosophy, and what its characteristics might be, scholars have typi­cally used Western philosophy as a measure to examine Japanese texts. This article turns the tables and asks what Western thought looks like from the perspective of Japanese philosophy. It uses Japanese philo­sophical sources as a lens to bring into sharper focus the qualities and biases of Greek-derived Western philosophy. It (...) first examines ques­tions related to the reputed sole origin and the nature of philosophy in ancient Greece. Using the analyses of Robert Bernasconi, it con­cludes that this reputation is a bias instilled by philosophers such as Hegel in the modern era. It then uses the scholarship of Pierre Hadot to show that Greek philosophy was not argumentative discourse for its own sake, but a way of life where reason was in the service of spir­itual progress. This suggests a definition broad enough to accommo­date Asian and other non-Western philosophies. Under the lens of Japanese philosophy, however, Greek-based Western philosophy often displays a double detachment, from everyday life and from embod­ied existence. In contrast, Japanese Buddhist and Confucian philoso­phies evince an appreciation of embodied existence in the ordinary world. The article raises several questions for further investigation in the prospect that the lens of Japanese philosophy can refocus the task of philosophizing today. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy covers, in detail and depth, the entire span of Japan’s philosophical tradition, from ancient times to the present. It introduces and examines the most important topics, figures, schools, and texts from the history of philosophical thinking in premodern and modern Japan. Each chapter, written by a leading scholar in the field, clearly elucidates and critically engages with its topic in a manner that demonstrates its contemporary philosophical relevance.

Japanese Philosophy in the Making 1: Crossing Paths with Nishida, by John C. Maraldo, is the first of three volumes collecting his essays in Japanese philosophy. This volume, which is divided into two sections, gathers together thirteen essays reflecting on the thought of Nishida Kitarō. The first section, “Pathways to Nishida,” is comprised of three essays clarifying some of the metatheoretical, intellectual and scholarly contexts around the study of Nishida’s thought. The remaining essays represent “Pathways Through (...) Nishida,” which engage Nishida’s philosophy from a variety of analytic, thematic, and comparative perspectives. These pathways are genuinely penetrating and unfold around a handful of fundamental... (shrink)

A translation of a Japanese text written by philosopher Tosaka Jun in 1935, at the moment the country had begun to embark upon a course of fascist authoritarianism that led to war and total destruction. Titled The Japan Ideology, the text purposely recalls its derivation and kinship with Marx and Engels's The German Ideology and expands on the role played by philosophic idealism in preparing the population for both the new politics of fascism and the demands of the eventual (...) war it brought. In its penetrating analysis of the relationship between philosophy and the formation of ideology in a politically critical and crucial historical time, this foundational work in the Japanese Marxist tradition remains accessible and timely, speaking forcibly to conditions that continue to persist in Japan and everywhere in today's world. (shrink)

The growing scholarship on the Kyoto School of Japanese Buddhist philosophy has brought it to the attention of more and more people in the West, but in the process, the Kyoto School has acquired a fixed identity. It is usually depicted as centered around three main figures—Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji—and concerned with the philosophy of nothingness. In fact, however, as the thirteen scholars in this volume show, the Kyoto School included several other members beside (...) the inner circle of three, and these members were concerned with a wide range of philosophical issues beyond the philosophy of nothingness. The range and variety of these essays give a much more realistic picture of the many fronts on which the Japanese encountered Western philosophy. (shrink)

Set in the context of global philosophy, this volume offers critical, innovative, and productive dialogue between some of the most influential philosophical figures from East and West.

First published in 2000. This is Volume II of three of a series on Japan. Written in 1924 the author has treated his work philosophically, historically, and by way of proof has adduced several important problems concerning Japanese idealism which have as yet not been quite clearly introduced to the West.

When I first opened my copy of Thomas Kasulis's Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History, I had planned to skip around, as one might do when reading an edited volume. Initially, I was most interested in how I might excerpt various chapters for classroom use. And I have indeed come away with many ideas for reading this book with students. But, after making it through just the first few pages of Kasulis's highly informative and entertaining history of (...) class='Hi'>Japanese philosophy, I found that the book demands to be read in the order in which it was written. In addition to his role as philosopher and historian, in this book Kasulis is a storyteller. And so, as when enjoying a... (shrink)

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 ) 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 and his followers came to be known as the . The essay ends with a brief reflection on the influence of philosophy on culture, focusing on the aftermath of the tsunami catastrophe in 2011. (shrink)

Japanese Environmental Philosophy is the latest contribution to an ever-growing discourse on non-Western and comparative approaches to nature and the environment spurred in no small part by the renowned environmental ethicist, J. Baird Callicott. This volume is the second book edited by Callicott and James McRae, the first being Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought. The latter is considered a sequel to Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, edited by Callicott and Roger T. Ames, first published (...) in 1989. As the most recent and most specialized of these three, Japanese Environmental Philosophy provides timely perspectives on the ecological exigencies facing our world while also offering... (shrink)

The chapters in this book focus on a phenomenon that is named by a conjunction of three terms: Japanese, Buddhist, philosophy. Each of these terms implies a distinction demarcating one domain of inquiry from other related domains: Japanese as distinct from Chinese, Korean, or Indian; Buddhist as distinct from Confucian or Shintō; and philosophy as distinct from religion or psychology. Each of these terms, the three in question as well as their contrasts, reflects a distinctly modern (...) category that abstracts from historical realities that blur the distinctions. With this qualification in mind, this chapter clarifies the terms in question, then selects two themes: language-reality-truth, and the nature of Buddhist practice, and gives a sample of philosophical methods and styles of argumentation that characterize “Japanese Buddhist philosophy.” For the most part, the selection here is limited to examples from pre-modern times, before Japanese Buddhists had encountered western philosophy and began to present Buddhism in its terms. (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 (...) 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)