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Nietzsche in Japan from right to left. Rethinking the East–West dichotomy in entangled modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Ken'ichi Mishima
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Abstract

The haunting image of Nietzsche as a pre-fascist ideologist does not fit the early impression of him in Japan and Germany. At the beginning of the 20th century, he stimulated young intellectuals to liberate themselves from the culture of the bourgeois. This was replaced by a Heideggerian interpretation of Nietzsche given in the Nazi-period, which influenced conservative circles both in Germany and Japan after World War II. There is now emerging a new interpretation of Nietzsche from the perspective of the cultural left. Considering the impressions of Nietzsche in the two cultures, the author comes to the conclusion that we must forget the old-fashioned dichotomy between East and West and speak instead of the ‘entangled modernity’.

Type
Focus: Japan and Europe
Information
European Review , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 2000 , pp. 569 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2000

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References

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