Introduction

This introduction examines the meaning of “Japanese philosophy.” Rather than searching for an unchanging essence, it begins by looking at the ways this locution and its Japanese counterpart, Nihon tetsugaku, have been used in English and in Japanese. Furthermore, it engages in the critical and constructive project of suggesting why some usages are more problematic and others more compelling. Attention is given to the disputed question of whether some discourses of traditional Japanese “thought” should be called “philosophy,” as well as to the myriad and contested ways in which “philosophy” has been defined in the Western tradition. After discussing some generalizations that can be made about the nature of Japanese philosophy, the question of what it means to qualify a type of philosophy as “Japanese” is addressed. In the end, it is argued that “Japanese philosophy” is best understood as mainly a subset of “philosophy in Japan,” a subset which includes any rigorous thinking about fundamental issues that draws sufficiently and significantly on the intellectual, linguistic, cultural, religious, literary, and artistic sources of the porous and ever-developing Japanese tradition.

Bushidō and Philosophy

This chapter explores the philosophical and ideological landscape of the so-called bushidō (way of the warrior) tradition in Japan. It contends that bushidō has often been misunderstood or misrepresented as only a simple code of conduct tied to the historical samurai. Instead, this chapter seeks to reveal the richness of bushidō as a sophisticated and complex field of philosophical inquiry into questions of ethics, justice, being, violence, conflict, and death. Drawing on intellectual and cultural traditions as diverse as Buddhism, Shintō, Confucianism, the Kyoto School, and currents of Western philosophy, bushidō’s full philosophical importance emerges only in the twentieth century. While the political and ideological dangers of aspects of bushidō were clearly manifest in this period, its philosophical potential was only just beginning to be understood.

Natural Freedom

Many of us today can neither swallow the metaphysical dogma that would separate our souls from the natural world nor bite the deterministic bullet and renounce our longing for—and inner sense of—freedom. The question, then, is: Can we find a path that leads beyond these apparent conflicts between freedom and nature? One thing seems clear: if there is such a path of reconciliation, it must entail along the way a radical rethinking of the very concepts of “nature” and “freedom.” This essay demonstrates that Zen Buddhism and related strands of Japanese thought have much to contribute to precisely such a rethinking of nature and freedom—a rethinking that sees them as nondually interrelated in their origins and as ultimately reconcilable through practice. By drawing on a number of traditional and modern thinkers, it explores the philosophical sources in Japan for recognizing and realizing the possibility of a natural freedom.

Postwar Japanese Political Philosophy

When examining political thought in post-1945 Japan, we must acknowledge that the postwar philosophical landscape was fundamentally a trans-war one. Narratives that sought to rationalize the past war laid the foundations for a divided consciousness after the war that entrenched antagonistic opposites as the parameters for postwar discourse. State versus self, politics versus ethics, theory versus value, ideas versus action and intellectuals versus “ordinary” people were all manifestations of the desire in the postwar era to establish ethical legitimacy through the dynamic of normative distancing. Paramount in this endeavor was an insistence by Japan’s postwar thinkers on creating and maintaining a hostile separation between civil society and the state as the proof of a rehabilitated ethos for postwar democracy. This conceptual framing had consequences for postwar thought and how it was articulated. In effect, the retrospective fragmentation of subjective responsibility led to the alienation of politics and value in the postwar era, preventing the coherence of subjectivity and responsibility upon which the integrity of the trans-war narrative depended.

The Philosophy of Zen Master Dōgen

Dōgen Kigen (1200–1253) was the founder of the Sōtō school of Japanese Zen Buddhism, and he is widely held to be the most significant philosopher in the Zen tradition. The kernel of his thought is expressed in his most famous text, Genjōkōan, rendered here as “The Presencing of Truth.” This chapter explicates the key ideas of this text, offering in particular an interpretation of its epistemological implications. It argues that Dōgen’s view of enlightenment as an ongoing practice of enlightening, as an unending path of discovery, implies an egoless perspectivism. It is a perspectivism insofar as reality is understood to only ever show itself one aspect at a time. In delusion, this perspective gets narrowly determined by the will of the ego. In the practice of enlightenment or enlightening, however, the self “forgets itself” in the “total exertion” of a participatory engagement in the world, and truth presences in and through such nondual events of interconnectivity.

Prince Shōtoku’s Constitution and the Synthetic Nature of Japanese Thought

Throughout its history Japan has shown a talent for using synthesis and syncretism to inspire philosophical innovation. Rather than refuting or rejecting the new or foreign, Japanese thinkers have more often aimed for assimilation, employing a rhetoric based in strategies of allocation, hybridization, or relegation. This article begins with a description of those strategies, citing examples from across the history of Japan’s philosophical tradition. Then it focuses on the Seventeen-Article Constitution, traditionally said to have been authored by Prince Shōtoku in 604 c.e. It is arguably the first extant example of a Japanese philosophical attempt to draw on multiple traditions: Confucianism, Buddhism, and early Shintō myth. The purpose of the Constitution was to create a coherent polity grounded in moral principles. As such, it has been upheld throughout history as a founding document of the Japanese nation.

Japanese Ethics

Ethics in Japan consists of a demand to show compassion (fellow-feeling or human-heartedness) in one’s dealings with others and with the world of nature. A key approach for the teaching of human-heartedness is through the “Japanese arts,” such as the ways of tea, flowers, calligraphy, landscape design, and the indigenous martial art called aikidō. While the ultimate aim of these “ways” (dō) is enlightenment, the more immediate fruit is a genuine expression of compassion. Ideally, the expression of human-heartedness should arise spontaneously and without calculation, as an effortless revelation of one’s true nature. An ethical person will likely have a passion for acting well, for not causing undue pain to others, and for nurturing and protecting the environment at large. This passion arises out of the realization that we are all interconnected, that we are one with others and with nature.

Modern Zen Thinkers

This chapter consists of three parts, each of which presents the philosophical contributions of an influential modern Japanese thinker closely affiliated with Rinzai Zen Buddhism: D. T. Suzuki (Jp. Suzuki Daisetsu), Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, and Masao Abe (Jp. Abe Masao). The first part focuses on the kernel of Suzuki’s “Zen thought,” namely the “logic of is/not” that he sees as underlying Zen koāns and teachings. The second part focuses on the key themes of Hisamatsu’s thought: his understanding of the “true self” in terms of a formless and thus completely unobjectifiable “absolute nothingness” and his claim that this true self is “absolute autonomous.” The third part provides an overview of Abe’s contributions to the philosophical analyses of Zen texts and teachings as well as to intrafaith (especially between Zen and Pure Land schools of Japanese Buddhism) and interfaith dialogue (especially between Mahayana Buddhism and Christianity).

Nishida Kitarō’s Philosophy

This chapter’s content centers on the question “Is there an ultimate context for conceptualizing everything, every being in the world, and even the world itself?” This question, a central concern of Nishida Kitarō in the mature stage of his philosophy, led him to develop a novel alternative to the ways that philosophers distinguish self and world and seek ultimate grounds for them. Nishida’s alternative was the notion of “the place of absolute nothingness” that underlies all distinctions and contextualizes all grounds. This article explores the significance of Nishida’s alternative and points to the positive role that obscurity and context play in making distinctions.

The Controversial Cultural Identity of Japanese Philosophy

This chapter discusses controversies surrounding the cultural identity of Japanese philosophy. Often presented as offering the first “non-Western universalism” over against Eurocentrism, authors have struggled to establish its distinctness, and this endeavor has been mired in questions of essentialism, Japanese imperialism, and cultural nationalism. The exemplary case of Nishida Kitarō’s New World Order essay is examined, and issues surrounding the identity of Japanese philosophy are analyzed historically as well as in the contemporary context of global neo-colonialism. The last section offers an alternative interpretation of Nishida, by way of a first-person approach, in order to produce an existential critical theory aiming at a “decolonized world order.”