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.

This paper discusses the two representative philosophers of the Kyoto School, Kitaro Nishida and Hajime Tanabe from the perspective of process theology and the Buddhist-Christian dialogue in Japan.

The first chapter explicates Nishida’s concept of “pure experience” in comparison with William James’ radical empiricism and with Kant’s dualism of sense and reason. Pure experience in Nishida’s sense is neither a passive reception of objective sense-data given before subjective mental operations, nor the raw material of experience which must be given “form” by experiencing subject. It is nothing but metaphysically ultimate activity from which both the experiencing subject and the whole range of the experienced objects from sense-perception to intellectual intuition emerge as its self-unfolding.

The second and third chapters discuss the two key concepts of process theology, “concrescence” and “the extensive continuum” with a special reference to the Mahayana Buddhist concept of “emptiness (sunyata)” and “dependent arising (pratityasamutpada)”. Nishida’s tripartite concept of topos, i.e. a topos of relative being, a topos of relative nothingness, and the topos of absolute nothingness will be applied to process theology in order to explicate the relation of two ultimates in Whitehead’s metaphysics, i.e. the relation of God as the religious ultimate to creativity as the metaphysical ultimate.

The fourth and fifth chapters discuss Hajime Tanabe as a critical successor of Nishida’s philosophy of Nothingness. Tanabe is more akin to Whitehead than to Nishida in that Tanabe reformulates Nishida’s concept of Nothingness from the temporal perspective of a finite human existence related essentially to “species” or “society” in the historical world. Tanabe transforms the unity of contradictories in the logic of topos into the contrasted opposites in the historical process of becoming, which involves novelty and discontinuous leaps at points of historical crisis. For him history has become “the overall Koan” in which the metaphysical topology of static being is to be superseded by the innovative principle of nothingness in the historical world.

Japanese feminist philosophy has in the last 15 years focused on the theme of‘ sexual slavery’, especially on the issue of ‘comfort women’. The issue of ‘comfort women’ was not only a highly charged social and political issue, but also the turning point in conceptualizing the category of ‘the other’ from the viewpoint of East Asian feminist philosophy. It enabled Asian women philosophers to rethink the feminine solidarity and also to create a new forum for a transnational feminist philosophy in East Asia. For this purpose of feminist philosophy in networking, a group of East Asian women philosopher is working together on the task of Asian philosophy of gender as well as on a new line in the philosophy of ‘the other’.

In my paper, I would like to describe the conceptual framework of this feminist philosophy in networking and want to try to redefine the concept of gender from East Asian feminist philosophy.

Japanese history is a part of the long history of Northeast Asia. Since Japan began to form a unified nation from the time of Shotoku-Taishi (AD. 574-622) in the early seventh century, it continued to cultivate a rather independent culture. In its long history, the most catastrophic era was the Asian-Pacific War in 1931-45, ending with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The recovery from the aftereffects and trauma of the War Japan has initiated is the topic I would like to write here as a problem of memory and reconciliation with other countries involved in the War.

In 2006, Prime Minister Jyun-ichiro Koizumi, when he worshiped at Yasukuni Shrine, spoke in the meeting of news reporters that “The freedom of the heart is protected by our Constitution, and cannot be violated by anyone.” It was completely unspeakable to me that Mr. Koizumi, in his official role as Prime Minister, made use of the Japanese Constitution for the purpose of defending his personal right to worship at Yasukuni Shrine. A half of the nation, however, accepted this way of speaking. As long as we Japanese insist on and are not liberated from Yasukuni Shrine, we cannot become reconciled and co-exist with other nations, because this shrine is seen as the symbol of the Japanese past militarism which was centered on the Emperor.

But the situation around Yasukuni becomes more complex if we go probe beneath the political dimension, because memory is always deeply connected with the problem of identity regard-less of whether it is personal or collective. For some conservative groups, the formation of modern Japan starts from the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which seeks to center the identity of the modern state in the Emperor, rather than in the democracy starting from the end of the War on August 15, 1945. The difference in the memory of the starting points of modern Japan between conservatives and others shapes the different identities in present-day Japan, sometimes becoming a hindrance to form a civil society. I will call this situation “Yasukuni fundamentalism” in today’s Japan.

The purpose of the present paper is to propose a way to overcome this Yasukuni fundamentalism by developing a public philosophy and by its application to today’s civil society.

In this article it is proposed to go beyond ontotheology, which has been seen as the start of totalitarian thought and totalitarianism. In order to do this and find the key to interpretation the author refers to narratology and Hayatology or Ehiyehlogy (a variety of Hebrew ontology). From the nar-ratological viewpoint he analyses and interpretes the following Old Testament texts: Abraham’s story and the narrative of the Exodus under the guidance of Moses.

By means of this narratological analysis the author identifies in these Old Testament texts Hebrew ontological thought, that is, Ehiyehlogy. He therefore sets out some features of the Hebrew being (hayâh and ehyeh) in the following respects:

1. i. it is an ecstatic becoming and differentiates;

2. ii. this ecstasy has an intentionality focused on the other;

3. iii. this intentionality tends towards creation of a community;

4. iv. intervention by such a being (hayâh or ehyeh) articulates time, the historical kairos;

5. v. this articulation takes the concrete form of an alliance;

6. vi. the Hebrew being acts through being incarnate in people (prophets, sages, writers who wrote for Abraham, Moses or others, etc.).

Taken together, these features of the being make up an ontology which has an open identity and is made manifest in the narrative identity that is not monopolistic but polyphonic, that is, in little stories or anonymous, marginal characters, or else people resisting totalitarianism.

This Ehiyehlogy is supported not only by studying the Hebrew text but also by Buddhist inspiration, which emphasizes the relativity aspect rather than the substantial one. Hence, by building up Ehiyehlogy the author looks onto overcoming the totalitarian nature of contemporary civilization and look for the possibility of coexistence.

In order to control language Chinese philosophy discovered methods other than the ‘rectification of names’. On one hand there is the total annihilation of language, and on the other a greater clarification of language than the one performed by the ‘rectification of language’. To understand this situation better it is necessary to go backwards in the genealogy from the controversy over the theory that ‘language exhausts meaning’ and the one that maintains ‘language does not exhaust meaning’, which took place in the period of the six dynasties (second half of the third century of the Christian era). We shall look at the controversy between the argument of Ouyang Jian and that of Xun Can. Then we reach the theory of Wang Bi, who synthesizes the controversy and invents another idea about language. This idea is a ‘forgotten language’ that tries to annihilate completely the alterity of language. What is aimed at in the annihilation of language is a world of pure meaning which increases profit, which is governed magnificently: it is a world where everything is reduced to the One.

By focusing on the concept of “clinical philosophy”, this paper develops a Narrative/Trauma approach to deal with the philosophical problematic of oppression and violence. It establishes a link to a “philosophy of the feminine” and brings it together with clinical wisdom to describe a “sphere of intimacy without violence”. The ideology of motherhood so deeply embedded in Japanese society makes unavoidable for feminist philosophy in Japan to question femininity from the standpoint of the double nature of female self as woman and mother. Confronting the motherhood that regulates core Japanese culture and mentality requires a critique of the practice of matri-archy in the intimate sphere. Historically, post-war Japanese family appears in continuity with the matriarchal nature of the imperial and military regime in pre-war Japan. To be fully effective, feminism should therefore transform itself from a gender category to a philosophy, and create a concept of feminine that would be the core notion of feminism as a philosophy.

One of the hallmarks of Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945) and the Kyoto School formed around him is their emphatic endeavor to reconsider perennial philosophical questions from what they called the “stand of the acting-self.” In this paper we begin by bringing into relief the contemporary significance of Nishida’s pioneering notions – such as “logic of place,” “acting-intuition,” and “historical body” – by relating them to some kindred meditations by James, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. Along the way, we call into question some shortcomings that we consider inherent in these philosophical perspectives – with special attention to their expression in the thought of Nishida’s disciple, Kiyoshi Miki, who sought to advance his master’s thought critically under the headings of “dialectics of logos and pathos” and “formative imagination.” Then, we discuss some issues regarding inhuman weapons – particularly the so-called DU (depleted uranium) weapons, which we regard as the “nuclear shadow” – in order to illustrate the aspects of human reality to which Nishida and Miki failed to give adequate consideration. In particular, we examine the destructive capabilities of our “technological bodies” and the reality of the often invisible “pathos of others” – especially in times of war – which ultimately is ours as well.

In this paper, I would like to argue that brain-dead small children have a natural right not to be invaded by other people even if their organs can save the lives of other suffering patients. My basic idea is that growing human beings have the right to grow in the form of wholeness, and dying human beings also have the right to die in the form of wholeness; in other words, they have the right to be protected from outside invasion, unless they have declared their wish to abandon that right beforehand. I call this the principle of wholeness. Natural rights, which were discussed by Hobbes and Locke in the 17th century, have to be extended to include the right to grow and die in the form of wholeness in the age of scientific civilization, where peripheral human lives are being threatened by aggressive biomedicine and other advanced technologies.

This paper aims to introduce my thought as an “anti”-Logocentrism. To begin with, I would like to point out two aspects of this theme. First, even if philosophical thinking is essentially based on logical form, it is sometimes exposed to illogicality. But this illogicality is meaningful. Second, it has to do with differences between Western and my thought. The former respects rational thinking and follows strictly formal logic. It is true that we cannot think without rationality, but when, for example, we deal with complex systems, we cannot follow the law of excluded middle because of the contradictory effects that coexist in interfaces which emerge in complex systems.

In terms of complex systems, it is not acceptable to choose only one possibility and to deny the other. It is not uncommon to see such ambiguous situations, but we often overlook them. These situations are, however, not as disordered as we think, and they can be accepted as they actually are. I refer to such thinking as “passive thinking”. In this way, there are two types of philosophical thinking. One is rational thinking, and the other is passive thinking. The latter stays often in contradiction without following logical form, which occurs in interfaces in complex systems. In such cases, we cannot think rationally, because contradictory effects coexist there. Furthermore, we find there something whole new, namely, “emergent property”; that is just what passive thinking deals with. Since early times, Japanese have attached more importance to passive thinking.

In my paper, I will try to renew the public philosophy. As a result of specialization and professionalization of academic disciplines since the late 19th centuries, a rather unsound academic situation prevails at many universities in the world; social sciences without any philosophical foundation on the one hand and an academic philosophy without any concern about social theory on the other hand. In order to break out of such deadlock, the public philosophy that has a long tradition since Aristotle to Smith and Hegel must be renewed as a comprehensive trans-discipline now. The public philosophy in this sense is an attempt in the “time of post-specialization of sciences.” What I mean by the time of post-specialization is the academic environment in which social sciences, humanities and natural sciences cooperate with one another to tackle serious problems of our time such as human rights, peace building, dialogue among religions and so on.