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Beyond “East and West” Nishida's Universalism and Postcolonial Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Yoko Arisaka
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Extract

During the 1930s and 1940s, many Japanese intellectuals resisted Western cultural imperialism. This theoretical movement was unfortunately complicit with wartime nationalism. Kitaro Nishida, the founder of modern Japanese philosophy and the leading figure of the Kyoto School, has been the focus of a controversy as to whether his philosophy was inherently nationalist or not. Nishida's defenders claim that his philosophical “universalism” was incompatible with the particularistic nationalism of Japan's imperialist state. From the standpoint of postcolonial critique, it is argued that this defense is insufficient. Philosophical universalism is not in itself anti-imperialist, but can in fact contribute to imperialist ideology.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , Summer 1997 , pp. 541 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1997

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References

1 From 1639 to the mid-1850s, the Tokugawa Shogunate isolated Japan from nearly all foreign contact in order chiefly to control the spread of Christianity; only the strictly controlled port of Nagasaki was open to continue trading with China and Holland. After 1653, no Japanese could travel abroad, and all Japanese who lived abroad were prohibited from returning.

2 Samsom, G. B., The Western World and Japan (Tokyo: Charles Tuttle Co., 1984), p. 383,Google Scholar

3 For instance, women wearing dresses, as opposed to the traditionallcimonos, were “modern.” The choices in daily life—anything from umbrellas, shoes, furniture, eating utensils, hairstyle—reflected one's position in the process of the assimilation of things Western.

4 Shinichi Funayama dates the introduction of Western philosophy to Japan in 1862, when Amane Nishi and Mamichi Tsuda went to Holland and brought back Comte and Mill's utilitarianism. Shinichi, FunayamaHêgeru Tetsugaku to Nishida Tetsugaku (Hegel's philosophy and Nishidal's philosophy) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1984), p. 107Google Scholar. See also Ohashi, Ryôsuke, Nihon-teki na mono, Yôroppa-teki na mono (Things Japanese, things European) (Tokyo: Shinchú-sensho, 1992)Google Scholar, chap. 2. Nishi is credited with coining many philosophical terms in Japanese, including the term “tetsugaku” (philosophy).

5 Of course, ethnocentric discourse is not limited to Europe. China, for instance, has had a long tradition of understanding itself to be the “center” of the world; however, this consciousness was already eroding with the arrival of the British and the Opium Wars since 1839.

6 Less dominant views of history included, for example, the romantic conception of Rousseau which represented history not as “progress” but as “decline.”

7 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History; Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Representations 37 (1992): 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Nishidaásworks are collected in Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (Collected works of Nishida), vols. 1–19 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1987–1989)Google Scholar which will be abbreviated as NKZ and followed by the volume number. This quote is from a lecture “Nihon Bunka no Mondai” (The problem of Japanese culture), NKZ 14: 404–405. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author. For a good discussion of Nishida's conception of modernity, see Feenberg, Andrew, Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995),Google Scholar chap. 8.

9 NKZ 14: 407.

10 NKZ 12: 341.

11 Zen no Kenkyu is NKZ1. For an English translation, seeAn Inquiry into the Good, trans. Abe, Masao and Ives, Christopher (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

12 For a discussion of the theory of pure experience, see Feenberg, A. and Arisaka, Y., “Experiential Ontology: The Origins of the Nishida Philosophy in the Doctrine of Pure Experience,” International Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990): 173–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Robert Sharf argues that the kind of Zen which emphasizes “immediacy,” such as D. T. Suzuki's writings, is a post-Meiji construct already driven by nationalism. For analyses see Sharf's, “Zen and Japanese Nationalism, History of Religions 33 (1993): 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited,” in Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, ed. Maraldo, John and Heisig, James (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995).Google Scholar See also critique, Bernard Faure's, “The Kyoto School and Reverse Orientalism,” in Japan in Traditional and Postmodern Perspectives, ed. Fu, Charles Wei-shun and Heine, Steven (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995).Google Scholar

14 The broad rubric of “Kyoto School” (Kyoto Gakuha includes Nishida and his colleagues and students, such as Hajime Tanabe, Tetsur00F4; Watsuji, Keiji Nishitani, Iwao Kôyama, Masaaki Kôsaka, Toratarô Shimomura, and Shigetaka Suzuki. The term Kyoto School was first used by Jun Tosaka, a Marxist student of Nishida's, in order to designate the right-wing thought which developed in the early 1930s.

15 The debate was initially published in Bungakukm {Literary World), 1942; for the texts and commentary, see Kawakami, T. et al. , Kindaino Chôkoku(Tokyo: Fuzanbo, 1990)Google Scholar. For commentary, see also Hironmtsu, Wataru ‘Kindaino Chôkoku’Ron (Tokyo; Koclansba, 1989).Google Scholar Discussions in English include Harootunian, H. D., “Visible Discourse/Invisible Ideologies,” inPostmodernism in Japan, ed. Miyoshi, M. and Harootunian, H. D. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), pp. 63–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Minamoio, Ryoen, “The Symposium on ‘Overcoming Modernity,’” in Rude Awakenings, pp. 197–229.Google Scholar

16 Jeffrey Herf's concept of “reactionary modernism” is useful for understanding Japanese philosophersś reaction to Western rationality from the 1920s to the end of the War (Herf, , Reactinary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984])Google Scholar. The works of the German reactionary modernists—such as Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, and Carl Schmitt—were introduced to the Japanese audience through young Japanese philosophers who went to Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. German nationalists believed that Germany could meaningfully combine technical rationality and spirit, since Germans were supposedly uniquely cultured in a way the Anglo-Americans and French were not. Many promodern Japanese intellectuals were also strongly nationalistic and hoped to create a specifically Asian modernity in Japan. They rejected Western imperialism while trying to coopt Western rationality for their project.

17 For a more detailed analysis of the debate, see Arisaka, Yoko, “The Nishida Enigma: ‘The Principle of the New World Order,’” Monumenta Nipponica 51: (1996): 81–105. For a collection of essays on the politics of the Kyoto School, see Rude Awakenings.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Fujita, Masakatsu, “Nihon ni Okeru Kenkyushi no Genjo” (An overview of the history of research [of Nishida] in Japan), in Nishida Tetsugaku: Shin Shiryô to Kekyu e no Tebiki, ed. Kayano, Y. and Ohashi, R. (Kyoto: Minerva Shobo, 1987), p. 118.Google Scholar At that time, Nishida accepted this criticism (see his letter to Tosaka, 749, NKZ 18: 460).

19 See, for instance, his essay “Sekai Shin Chitsujo no Genri” (The principle of the new world order), NKZ 12:426–34. For an English translation, see Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma.”

20 The critics, largely representing the intellectual historians of modern Japan, include H. D. Harootunian, Tetsuo Najita, John Dower, Robert Sharf, Peter Dale, Bernard Fame, and Pierre Lavelle. See especially Lavelle's, “The Political Thought of Nishida Kitaro,” Monumenta Nipponica 49 (1994): 141–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Excerpts from “The Problem of Japanese Culture” are translated in Sources of the Japanese Tradition, vol 2, ed. and trans. de Bary, W. T. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958)Google Scholar. Both the “New World Order” essay and “The Problem of Japanese Culture” are included in NKZ 12.

22 “Hakkôiu,” or more typically “hakkôichiu,” was used to justify Japanese expansionism. The phrase was taken from Nihon Shoki. It is also translated as “all the world as one family,” or “the universal harmony.”

23 NKZ 12: 428Google Scholar. Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,”p. 102.

24 Lavelle, , “Political Thought of Nishida Kitaro,” p. 160.Google Scholar

25 One of the items of the declaration at the Great East Asia Meeting reads: “Each nation of the Great East Asia should respect each other's tradition and each people should promote each other's creativity in order to enhance the culture of Great East Asia” (Satô, Kenryô, Dai Tôwa Sensô Kaikoroku [Tokyo:Tokuma Shoten, 1966], p. 318)Google Scholar The meeting was held in 1943 in order to strengthen the coherence of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere under the auspices of Tojo. Nishida's “The Principle of the New World Order” was initially conceived at the request of the Tojo military government in preparation for this meeting. For detailed discussions of the circumstances, see Yusa, Michiko, “Fashion and A letheia, Hikaku Shiso Kenkyu 16 (1990): 281–94;Google ScholarFuruta, Hikaru, “‘Sekai Shin Chitsujo no Genri’ Jiken-ko, I and II,” (NKZ, 14 and 19, inserts); and Hisashi Ueda, Zoku Sofu Nishida Kitaro (Tokyo: Nansosha, 1983).Google Scholar

26 NKZ, 12:430.Google Scholar Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,” p. 102.

27 On Nishidaás personal writings, see Yusa, Michiko, “Fashion and A-letheia,” and “Nishida and the Question of Nationalism,” Monumenta Nipponica 46 (1991): 203–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Nishida and Totalitarianism: A Philosopher's Resistance,” in Rude Awakenings.

28 Bragt, Jan Van, “Kyoto School Philosophy2014;Intrinsically Nationalist?” in Rude Awakenings, pp. 233–54.Google Scholar

29 Maraldo, John, “The Problem of World Culture: Towards an Appropriation of Nishida's Philosophy of Nation and Culture,” Eastern Buddhist 27 (1995); 183–97.Google Scholar

30 Feenberg, Andrew, “The Problem of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishida,” in Rude Awakenings, pp. 151–73.Google Scholar

31 For the universalist implications of this aspect of Nishida's thought, see Shizuteru Ueda, “Nishida, Nationalism, and the War in Question” and Michiko Yusa, “Nishida and Totalitarianism: A Philosopher's Resistance,” both in Rude Awakenings. The followers of the Kyoto School today generally agree on the defensive voice represented by these essays.

32 For Nishidaás theory of “place,“ see his works from 1926–1937, primarily NKZ 4–7 and other essays. In English, see Feenberg, , Modernity, Alternative, chap. 8; Masao Ane, “Nishida's Philosophy of ‘Place,’” International Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1988): 355–71Google Scholar; and Wargo, Robert, “The Logic of Basho and the Concept of Nothingness in the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1972).Google Scholar

33 NKZ 12:427Google Scholar. Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,” p. 100.

34 NKZ 12:428Google Scholar. Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,” p. 101.

35 For a “postmodern” reading of Nishida, see Karatani, Kôjin, “The Discursive Space of Modern Japan,” in Japan in the World, ed. Miyoshi, M. and Harootunian, H. D. (Durham; Duke University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Nakamura, Yûjiro, Nishida Tetsugaku no Datsukochiku (Deconstruction in/of Nishida's philosophy) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1993).Google Scholar

36 NKZ 12:341.Google Scholar

37 NKZ 12:432–33Google Scholar Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,” p. 104.

38 For the discussions of Nishida's “semantic struggle” with the official doctrine, see Ueda and Yusa above in Rude Awakenings.

39 See Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Roufledge, 1978), pp. 1–28.Google Scholar

40 ibid.,, p. 28. For criticisms of Said, see Ahmad, Aijaz, In Theory (New York: Verso, 1992).Google Scholar

41 As Naoki Sakai observes, “Japan's uniqueness and identity are provided insofar as Japan stands out as a particular object in the universal field of the West. Only when it is integrated into Western universalism does it gain its own identity as a particularity⃜ But this is nothing but the positioning of Japan's identity in Western terms which in return establishes the centrality of the West as the universal point of reference” (Sakai, , “Modernity and Its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism,” in Postmodernism and Japan, p. 105).Google Scholar

42 For a brief history of Subaltern Studies, see Chakrabarty, and also Prakash, Gyan, “Writing Post-Colonialist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32 (1990): 383–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 For representative thoughts on postcolonialism, see Bhabha's, HomiThe Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar; and Spivak's, Gayatri “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in The Post-Colonial Reader, ed. Griffiths, B. G. Ashcroft and Tiffin, H. (New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar. For a scathing criticism of postcolonialism in general, see Jacoby, Russel, “Marginal Returns: The Trouble with Post-Colonial Theory,” Lingua Franca (1995), pp. 30–37.Google Scholar

44 The theme of colonialism and postcolonialism in East Asia has been the working project of “Colonialism and Modernity: The Cases of Korea, China, and Japan” (spring 1995), sponsored by the University of California Humanities Research Institute. I wish to thank the organizers and the members of this group who introduced me to many of the ideas discussed in this article.

45 NKZ 12: 429Google Scholar. Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,” p. 102.

46 NKZ 12: 429Google Scholar. Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,” p. 102.

47 Feenberg, , Alternative Modernity, p. 189.Google Scholar

48 NKZ 12: 434Google Scholar. Arisaka, “Nishida Enigma,” p. 105.

49 I wish to thank Andrew Feenberg and the members of the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco for comments.