Regarded as one of the foremost thinkers in postwar Japan, Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977) questioned traditional Japanese thought and radically reconfigured an understanding of the subject's relationship to the world. His works were also central in drawing Japanese attention to the problems inherent in western colonialism and to the cultural importance of Asia, especially China. Takeuchi's writings synthesized philosophy, literature, and history, focusing not simply on Japan and the West but rather on the triangular relationship between Japan, the West, and China. This book, which represents...

In the summer of 1942 Japan's leading cultural authorities gathered in Tokyo to discuss the massive cultural, technological, and intellectual changes that had transformed Japan since the Meiji period. They feared that without a sufficient understanding of these developments, the Japanese people would lose their identity to the reckless and rapid process of modernization.

The participants of this symposium hoped to settle the question of Japanese cultural identity at a time when their country was already at war with England and the United States. They presented papers and held roundtable...

Appearing for the first time in English, the writings in this collection reflect some of the most innovative and influential work by Japanese intellectuals in recent years. The volume offers a rare and much-needed window into the crucial ideas and positions currently shaping Japanese thought (shiso).

In addressing the political, historical, and cultural issues that have dominated Japanese society, these essays cross a range of disciplines, including literary theory, philosophy, history, gender studies, and cultural studies. Contributors examine Japan's imperialist and nationalist...

Naoki Sakai is an important and prominent thinker in Asian and cultural studies and his work continues to make itself felt across a broad range of both national and disciplinary borders. Originally finding a home in the otherwise circumscribed field of Japan Studies, Sakai's writings have succeeded in large part in destabilizing that home, exposing the fragility of its boundaries to an outside that threatens constantly to overwhelm it.

Bringing together an expert team of contributors from North America, Europe and Russia, this volume takes the groundbreaking work of Naoki Sakai as...

This work focuses on the writings of the postwar Japanese thinker and sinologist Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977). It presents itself less as an intellectual biography than as a series of explorative readings of his work. These readings attempt to trace out the various problematics with which Takeuchi was engaged throughout his career, with particular emphasis given to the notions of modernity, subjectivity and alterity. In all cases, an effort was made to do justice to the difficult notion of resistance, for which Takeuchi is perhaps most well-known. We have argued that what Takeuchi refers to...

In the work of writer Abe Kōbō (1924-1993), characters are alienated both from themselves and from one another. Through close readings of Abe's work, Richard Calichman reveals how time and writing have the ability to unground identity. Over time, attempts to create unity of self cause alienation, despite government attempts to convince people to form communities (and nations) to recapture a sense of wholeness. Art, then, must resist the nation-state and expose its false ideologies.

Calichman argues that Abe's attack on the concept of national affiliation has been neglected...