Articles
Japanese Philosophers Go West: The Effect of Maritime Trips on Philosophy in Japan with Special Reference to the Case of Watsuji Tetsurō(1889-1960)
Abstract
From 1860 up until 1960 Japanese intellectuals habitually travelled to Europe to absorb the latest Western scholarship. Philodophers were no exception. Going to the West was an intellectual and institutional duty to legitimize one's position in the Ivory Tower of the imperial universities. Fudo by Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960) merits consideration as the outcome of his stay in the West (1927-28). Chronologically, the book was inspired by Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927) and Dilthey's Gesammelte Shriften (1927). Watsuji modifies Heideger's thinking on Zeitlichkeit, replacing his Sein zum Tode with Sein zum Leben in the footsteps of Dilthey. The author also contrasts Japanese and Western culture (monsoon and meadow), while separating East and West by the arid desert area located in between. Watsuji's reflection on humans' relationship with nature (Fudo) was also his reply to Karl Marx. He confronted Marx's theory on Entfremdung with Heidegger's idea of Zuhandensein and rehabilitated Mitsein so as to elaborate his own idea of Sittlichkeit, or the ethics of an idealized Gemeinschaft. This paper seeks to elucidate the extent to which his trp to the West affected his ideas. The sightseeing on his way to Europe stimulated his served as the germinating core of Fudo. Instead of analyzing Watsuji's Fudo as a stereotypical and outdated example of climatic deteminism, this paper elucidates historical as well as spatial conditions by which Japanese Philosophy established itself as an academic discipline in pre-war Japan.