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Japanese Philosophy? No Such Thing: Japan's Contribution to World Philosophizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2019

Thomas P. Kasulis
Thomas P. Kasulis*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Extract

For almost five decades I have been studying Japanese philosophy, but only gradually have I come to realize there is no such thing. The ghost of Nakae Chōmin 中江 兆民 (1847–1901) probably gloats with satisfaction to hear this gaijin say that. My statement seems to echo his assessment more than a century ago when he pronounced that Japan had always been and continued to be devoid of philosophy. Although I admire Chōmin for his intellectual courage, standing up to the thought police even to the extent of being temporarily exiled from Tōkyō, my position is not at all the same as his. Nakae Chōmin is not only dead, but unfortunately, when it came to understanding both philosophy and its relation to Japan, he was also dead wrong. So although in reference to Japanese philosophy, I claim there is no such thing, I do not mean what Chōmin meant. To understand what I do mean, we have to examine my claim word by word.

Type
Special Contribution
Information
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , July 2019 , pp. 131 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

1 Throughout this text, the abbreviation JPS refers to Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Heisig, James W., Kasulis, Thomas P., and Maraldo, John C. eds. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Throughout this text, the abbreviation EJP refers to Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History, by Kasulis, Thomas P. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

3 Susumu, Ōno 大野 晋 ed., Kojikiden 古事記傳. In Motoori Norinaga zenshū 本居宣長全集 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1968)Google Scholar, vol. 9, p. 6.

4 Bergson, Henri. An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Hulme, T. E.; with an introduction by Goudge, Thomas A. (Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), p. 21Google Scholar.

5 EJP, pp. 544–45, 578–80. It should also be mentioned that the shift to Japanese philosophy departments as teaching only western philosophy had origins in places well before the postwar period. Most notably when Inoue Tetsujirō 井上 哲次郎 (1855–1944) retired as chair of the Philosophy Department at Tōkyō University in 1914, he was succeeded by Kuwaki Gen'yoku 桑木 嚴翼 (1874–1946). Inoue had included Asian philosophy (Chinese and Indian, specifically) as part of the “philosophy” (tetsugaku 哲学) offerings, but Kuwaki insisted on converting the department to the “pure philosophy” represented by such thinkers as Descartes, Kant, and Schopenhauer (so-called “DeKanSho”), moving Asian philosophy to other departments. Interestingly, Kuwaki's move to Tōkyō opened the way for Nishida Kitarō to take over the leadership of Kyōto University's department, making it the spearhead of modern Japanese philosophy.

There was perhaps some practical value in Kuwaki's move inasmuch as the University of Tōkyō lay in the shadows of the political, religious, and ideological centers of State Shintō. There were perhaps, therefore, some benefits in keeping philosophy free of associations with Buddhism and Confucianism, at times seen as rival traditions to Shintō. Fear of censorship and government retaliation was a serious concern. When it came to the postwar situation, Inoue's wartime blending of Confucian values with the Way of the warrior (bushidō 武士道) and the National Morality (kokumin dōtoku 国民道徳) curriculum blended premodern Japanese philosophical ideas with the later much maligned Japanism of the fascist years. Hence, “Japanese philosophy” as a whole was considered guilty by association and disregarded out-of-hand on rather superficial grounds.

Note, however, those are historical causes or conditions for Japan's philosophy departments to wholeheartedly embrace the westernization of their philosophical curricula in the immediate postwar period, making them de facto intellectual outposts or colonies of Europe or the US. Those are not sound philosophical reasons for doing so, however. There were also such postwar causes and conditions for devaluing traditional Japanese literature and arts, for example. Yet, within a decade or two after the war, the Japanese realized there were no good reasons for doing so. As a result, those traditions, unlike premodern Japanese philosophy, once again flourished.