Modern Japanese Thought

A comprehensive intellectual history describing the forces that made Japanese thinkers both receptive and hostile to Western ideas and values.

The writings in this collection reflect some of the most innovative and influential work by Japanese intellectuals and cover a range of disciplines addressing the political, historical and cultural issues that have dominated Japanese intellectual life.

Traces the development of jinkaku (moral character) in modern Japanese discourse

Over the past two centuries, Japan has undergone Westernization not only in the external realm of material culture and sociopolitical organization, but also in the inner realm of thought and morals. This comprehensive intellectual history, consisting of chapters from Volumes Five and Six of the Cambridge History of Japan, plus a new Introduction and chapter on postwar intellectual trends, describes the forces that made Japanese thinkers both receptive and hostile to Western ideas and values from the 1770s to the 1990s.

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When militarism was on the ascendant, Tachibana was a vocal critic of military solutions. Yet his services were sought for by the radical elements of the Japanese military he criticized. Through his writings we gain a clearer view of the continuing processes of policy debate in occupied Manchuria.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the relative calm world of Japanese Buddhist scholarship was thrown into chaos with the publication of several works by Buddhist scholars Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro, dedicated to the promotion of something they called Critical Buddhism (hihan bukkyo). In their quest to re-establish a "true" - rational, ethical and humanist - form of East Asian Buddhism, the Critical Buddhists undertook a radical deconstruction of historical and contemporary East Asian Buddhism, particularly Zen. While their controversial work has received some attention in English-language scholarship, this is the first book-length treatment of Critical Buddhism as both a philosophical and religious movement, where the lines between scholarship and practice blur. Providing a critical and constructive analysis of Critical Buddhism, particularly the epistemological categories of critica and topica, this book examines contemporary theories of knowledge and ethics in order to situate Critical Buddhism within modern Japanese and Buddhist thought as well as in relation to current trends in contemporary Western thought.

This collection of seventeen essays situates modern Shin Buddhist thinker Kiyozawa Manshi (1863–1903) and his new form of spirituality, Seishinshugi, in the broader context of Buddhism and religious thought in modern Japan. The work highlights several factors that led to the development of Kiyozawa’s ideas and demonstrates the broad influence that he and his disciples had, putting in relief both the events that led Kiyozawa to set forth his unique formulation of a modern Shin Buddhist religiosity in Seishinshugi and the ways in which those ideas became a force that shaped a large part of Japan’s religious landscape well past the middle of the twentieth century. The book is made up of historical studies that explore the significance of Seishinshugi from a variety of perspectives and chapters that attempt to introduce some of the original ideas of Seishinshugi thinkers and other modern Shin proponents such as Sasaki Gesshō (1875–1926) and Yasuda Rijin (1900–1982). The inclusion of several translations of recent Japanese scholarship on Kiyozawa and Seishinshugi provides a snapshot of the state of the field for Kiyozawa studies today in Japan. Several early chapters present issues that Kiyozawa addressed in his formulations of Seishinshugi. His relationship with Inoue Enryō (1858–1919) is discussed in depth, as is his understanding of the Tannishō and new research indicating that Seishinshugi might more closely represent the thought of Kiyozawa’s disciples than his own. This portion ends with a consideration of the reinvention of Kiyozawa’s historical image by his followers after his death. Later chapters bring together research into the specific ways in which Kiyozawa’s legacy shaped the Japanese religious and philosophical environment in the last century, including contributions on female spirituality as expressed in the Seishinshugi movement and the influence of Kiyozawa and Soga Ryōjin (1875–1971) on the Kyoto School and its implications. Other essays highlight approaches to finding meaning in Shin doctrines by Sasaki, Soga, and Yasuda, and how D. T. Suzuki, an Ōtani University colleague, fits into the movement as a whole.