Hans Peter Liederbach’s research while affiliated with Kwansei Gakuin University and other places

In the West, philosophy in Japan still is chronically understudied. In part, this is under standable: there is the seemingly insurmountable language barrier, the fact that Japanese philosophers still publish mostly in Japanese, and, last but not least, self- hypostatising tendencies among some strands of philosophical scholarship in Japan that make it difficult to appreciate what Japanese philosophers have to contribute to the discipline. Raji C. Steineck, Elena Louisa Lange, and Paulus Kaufmann, the editors of Begriff und Bild der modernen japanischen Philosophie (all of them belonging to the Department of Japanese Studies at the University of Zurich), have set out to remedy this regrettable situation. They provide a historiographical overview of the richness and diversity of philosophical themes and positions from the Meiji period until today — while at the same time tackling the problem of the validity of the term “Japanese philosophy” itself. Their book is comprised of a foreword, an introduction, and three parts: (1) systematic inquiries: themes of modernity, (2) philosophical strands in Japan, and (3) main topics of philosophical research in Japan. In this review, I will focus on the theoretically important introduction and on part 1. First, however, I will make some brief comments on parts 2 and 3. In the West there is, of course, some familiarity with philosophy in Japan, at least so far as the so-called Kyoto School in Japanese philosophy is concerned. Some major works of Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō, Nishitani Keiji, and others have been translated into Western languages, and there is a small but visible community of scholars engaging themselves in the interpretation and elucidation of concepts like “absolute nothingness,” “place,” and “climate.” Since in the West this is the only visible form of engagement with Japanese philosophy, it is readily identified with the Kyoto School. One of the strengths of this book is to point to the one-sidedness of this view (p. 35). Philosophy in Japan is far richer and more diverse than some Westerners might think. To give an overview of this richness and diversity, the editors have collaborated with younger Japanese philosophers, who contributed to the second part of the book with chapters on selected topics like empiricism (Toda Takefumi), German idealism (Uchida Hiroaki), phenomenology (Kajitani Shinji), existentialism (Matsumoto Keijirō), and analytical philosophy (Yamaguchi Shō). Descriptive in style, each of these very informative chapters is complemented by an extensive bibliography. No historiographical account of modern philosophy in Japan can omit any of these topics, but one misses a chapter on how Japanese philosophers received postmodernism and the poststructuralist movement. Also, philosophy of history (represented best by Noe Keiichi and Kashima Tōru) is absent. It lies in the very nature of any historiographical endeavor that it cannot be all-encompassing, and the editors are well aware of this problem (p. 35). However, the influence that Lyotard, Derrida, and other postmodern/poststructuralist thinkers have exerted on philosophy in Japan as well as its philosophical debates on history and narratology, which are ongoing since the late 1980s, are too important to be left out completely. A similar objection could be made with regard to the third part of the book. To be sure, the chapters on social philosophy (Abe Akira), environmental ethics (Abe Hiroshi), and philosophy of body (Steineck) are helpful inasmuch as they provide comprehensive overviews on how these problems are discussed in Japan. One only wonders why the recently prominent strand of clinical philosophy (Shimizu Tetsurō, Nakaoka Narifumi, and Washida Kiyokazu) is not mentioned. This question arises in particular as Japanese philosophers are at the very forefront of international research in clinical philosophy. I am sure the editors had good reasons for making their choices. Still, it would have been helpful if they had made them explicit. These few reservations are not meant to detract either from the book’s informative value or from the editors’ intention to throw light on lesser-known strands of philosophical research in Japan. My real concern lies in another area; it relates to how the editors understand the notions of philosophy in general and of Japanese philosophy in particular. For that reason, I will now turn to the introduction and the first part of the book. Since Maruyama...

The paper describes Watsuji Tatsuro's (a Japanese philosopher, 1889-1960) reception of Heidegger. For Watsuji, just as for Heidegger, the most significant problem was the problem of Dasein as a Being-in-the-world. Unlike Heidegger, whose analysis of the Dasein in Being and Time was completely in the service of fundamental ontology, Watsuji - discussing Heidegger's project - develops ethics as a »science on the Dasein«. The interpretative survey of this discussion leads to the conclusion that Heidegger's »fundamental-ontological« research' and Watsuji's »ethical« description both show specific problems, which make it necessary to introduce a third view. In this sense, the author points at Watsuji's climatology, as developed by him in Fûdo.

In this paper I wish to initiate a dialogue between two philosophers: Martin Heidegger and Watsuji Tetsurô. The subject of this (fictitious) dialogue will be the problem of authentic self-understanding regarding the ontological category of spatiality. Before I go in medias res, I wish to make some preliminary remarks. It is well known that Watsuji's Ethics (3 volumes, 1937−1949) took shape through a critical assessment of Heidegger's Being and Time (1927). This is remarkable, for the scope of Watsuji's philosophical endeavor differs largely from that of Heidegger. Heidegger aimed at retrieving the question of being, whereas Watsuji was striving to accomplish an ethical system that could meet the requirements of the time. This fundamental difference is to be held accountable for most of Watsuji's misunderstandings of Being and Time. These misunderstandings are not about side issues but refer to the core concepts of an ontology of man as being-in-the-world. One cannot but get the impression that, regarding these ontological concepts, Watsuji and Heidegger are talking at cross-purposes. Thus, one could doubt whether an examination of the philosophical relationship between Watsuji and Heidegger would be worth the effort. Of course, there is much these two philosophers do have in common; at least five points could be mentioned: (1) Watsuji and Heidegger were deeply dissatisfied with the prevalent philosophical currents of the time, in particular Neo-Kantianism. Both strove for providing a fresh outlook on their relevant fields, that is to say, ontology and ethics, respectively; (2) both aspired to overcome the paradigm of subjectivity prevalent in Western philosophy since Descartes; (3) methodologically, both drew from hermeneutics and phenomenology; (4) both wanted to give an account of man as concrete being in the world; (5) Heidegger and Watsuji emphasized the notion of authenticity or authentic self-understanding, albeit differently. To be sure, any of these points is worth paying attention to, but still one could argue that, due to the aforementioned fundamental difference, bringing together these two philosophers would be only of historical interest and, thus, serve the purpose of, say, add some footnotes to the effective history of Being and Time. However, I believe that a dialogue between Watsuji and Heidegger is of interest not so much for historical, but for systematic, reasons. As I will try to elucidate, a careful examination of how Watsuji interpreted Heidegger's conception of "Being-there" (Dasein) as being-in-the-world and how he implemented it into his own theory of "man-as-betweenness" (aidagara), could open new perspectives Key Words: Watsuji and Heidegger, spatiality, inter-cultural philosophy This essay is the revised and extended version of a lecture I gave at the Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, University of California Los Angeles on February 26, 2010. I am grateful to the late Professor Michael Marra for his kind invitation and generous hospitality. My special thanks go to Miguelángel Verde (FU Berlin) for checking my English.