The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance: A Reading, with Commentary, of the Complete Texts of the Kyoto School Discussions of the Standpoint of

ISBN-13: 9780415476461 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 396 str.

David Williams

Opis

This is a complete translation, together with a substantial commentary and introduction, of The Standpoint of World History and Japan, by Masaaki Kosaka, Iwao Koyama, Keiji Nishitani and Shigetaka Suzuki. This important work, by leading philosophers of the Kyoto School, long regarded as one of the most notorious "fascist" texts produced in Japan during the Pacific War, is, in fact, the translator and editor argues, an act of bold public dissent from the policies of aggressive expansion pursued by the wartime Tojo regime.  As the translator and editor argues, the work of the Kyoto School requires close guided reading, as the true radical meaning is often made deliberately opaque by the writers in order to avoid inviting a hostile reaction from the regime being criticised.  The translator and editor provides guidance on how to extract the true meaning from this opaque work, and goes on to cotend that these Kyoto School philosophers were conspiring with the Imperial Japanese Navy to bring the Tojo cabinet down.    

Recenzje

‘This deeply researched and provocative study highlights the key significance of Confucian political ideas for Kyoto School thinkers while demonstrating the futility of approaching their philosophy from the standpoint of ‘moral history’. – Graham Parkes, University College Cork, Ireland

O autorze

David Williams is a leading thinker on the Orient and a preeminent expert on the wartime Kyoto School. He is the author of Japan: Beyond the End of History (1994), Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science (1996) and Defending Japan's Pacific War: The Kyoto Philosophers and Post-white Power (2004) and The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy (2006).