(A pioneering philosophical exploration, this volume seeks...)
A pioneering philosophical exploration, this volume seeks to clarify the function of climate as a key factor within the structure of human existence. The author takes as his starting point the argument that the phenomena of climate should be treated as expressions of subjective human existence and not of natural environments. In developing his argument, Watsuji first examines the basic principles of climate and then proceeds to examine three types of climate in detail - monsoon, desert, and meadow - and their relative impacts on the human experience. As both a unique guide to Japan and her culture and a penetrating philosophical study, Climate and Culture will be enlightening reading for students and scholars of modern Japanese thought.
(Watsuji's Rinrigaku (literally, the principles that allow...)
Watsuji's Rinrigaku (literally, the principles that allow us to live in a friendly community) has been regarded as the definitive study of Japanese ethics for half a century.
(Purifying Zen is the first English translation of Watsuji...)
Purifying Zen is the first English translation of Watsuji’s landmark book. A text intended to reacquaint Japan with one of its finest philosophers, the work delves into the complexities of individuals in social relationships, lamenting the stark egoism and loneliness of life in an increasingly Westernized Japan. In addition to an introduction that provides biographical details on Watsuji and Dogen, the translation is supplemented with a brief guide to the themes and ideas of Shamon Dogen, beginning with a consideration of the nature of faith and the role of responsibility in Watsuji’s vision of Dogen’s Zen. It goes on to examine the technical terms of Dogen’s philosophy and the role of written language in Dogen’s thought.
(Watsuji’s Koji Junrei is a book of impressions of a trip ...)
Watsuji’s Koji Junrei is a book of impressions of a trip he took in 1918 to Japan’s ancient capital of Nara, where he saw a number of Buddhist temples. By then, Watsuji had already published influential, groundbreaking books on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and the book Gūzū saikō (Resurrection of Idols). Koji Junrei is significant in that it began a modern literary trend of "travel writing" about ancient temples and shrines in Japan and elsewhere. While the genre had existed for centuries, it was Koji Junrei that almost singlehandedly resurrected it.
Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents
(Providing translations of and commentaries on primary sou...)
Providing translations of and commentaries on primary source materials of modern Japanese philosophy, this sourcebook centers on the creative philosophical writings of the Kyoto School broadly conceived, featuring the thought of Nishida Kitarô, Tanabe Hajime, Kuki Shûzô, Watsuji Tetsurô, Miki Kiyoshi, Tosaka Jun, and Nishitani Keiji. The 22 selections include unabridged whole works, essays, or chapters of books. Also included is exhaustive bio-bibliographical information as well as editorial commentary. For most scholars, this will be the first look in English at the thought of Kuki Shûzô, Miki Kiyoshi, and the Marxist critic Tosaka Jun. The sourcebook will be of interest to scholars, The selections show the intensely dialogic character of the philosophical writing of the Kyoto School of the early Showa period (1926-1949) and are of particular interest as representing philosophical strains of a golden age of Japanese thought during the war years between 1935 and 1945. In the interstices of the thought of the seven authors, the reader will find a mine of commentary on, and assimilation of, the schools of Western thought and the world's religions, accompanied (with the exception of the internationalist Tosaka Jun) by very resilient affirmations of the strength of Asian traditions.
Tetsurō Watsuji was a Japanese moral philosopher and historian of ideas. He is an outstanding representative of modern Japanese thinkers who have tried to combine the Eastern moral spirit with Western ethical ideas.
Background
Tetsurō Watsuji was born on March 1, 1889, in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan as the second son of a physician named Mizutaro. His father practiced medicine not for the income it brought, but as a service to humanity. Tetsuro Watsuji grew up observing his father responding to any emergency regardless of the time of day, bad weather, distance, or even the patient's ability to pay for his services. Everyday Tetsuro walked six kilometers to school, but he could not ask his father for a bicycle because of his father’s example of self-discipline and simplicity.
Education
As a student at Himeji Middle School, Tetsurō Watsuji displayed a passion for literature, especially Western literature, and is said to have been fired with the ambition to become a poet like Byron. He wrote stories and plays and was co-editor of a literary magazine. Watsuji entered the prestigious First Higher School in Tokyo in 1906, graduating in 1909.
When he entered the First Higher School in Tokyo, even though he had decided to pursue philosophy seriously, he remained as deeply immersed in Byron as ever and attracted chiefly to things literary and dramatic. He is said to have had several excellent teachers at this school, and his interests were considerably expanded in the arts and in literature. The Headmaster, Nitobe Inazō, was of particular importance. Nitobe's book on Bushidō, The Soul of Japan, began to awaken Tetsurō not only to the Eastern heritage but also to the study of ethics. Still, while this early glimpse into the forgotten depths of his own culture may have planted the seeds of later inquiries and insights, Watsuji gained sustenance and insight at this time in his academic career from his reading in Western Romanticism and Individualism.
In 1909 Watsuji entered Tokyo Imperial University, where his specialization was philosophy, in the Faculty of Literature. Watsuji graduated from Tokyo University in 1912, but not without a frantic effort to write a second thesis in a very short span of time because the topic of his first thesis was deemed unacceptable. At the time the atmosphere in the Faculty of Philosophy was inimical to the study of a poet-philosopher like Nietzsche. Consequently, Watsuji’s 'Nietzschean Studies' was rejected as a suitable graduation thesis. In its place, he was obliged to substitute a second thesis on Schopenhauer, which he entitled "Schopenhauer’s Pessimism and Theory of Salvation." This thesis was presented only just in time for him to graduate. Both theses were eventually published.
Watsuji enrolled in the graduate school of Tokyo Imperial University in 1912, the same year that he completed his undergraduate studies. His studies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in 1912, and of Kierkegaard in 1915 provide ample evidence of his interest in and competence in Western philosophy. At the same time, he continued to study the Romantic poets, Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, and Keats, being torn between his literary and philosophical interests. In any case, perhaps because his literary attempts were failures, he decided to give up literary creation and devoted all his exertions to the writing of critical essays and philosophical treatises.
In 1932 Watsuji earned his doctorate degree with a thesis on The Practical Philosophy of Primitive (Early) Buddhism from Kyoto Imperial University.
Tetsurō Watsuji quickly became in demand as a teacher, first as a lecturer at Tōyō University in 1920, an instructor at Hōsei University in 1922, an instructor at Keiō University in 1922-1923, and at the Tsuda Eigaku-juku from 1922-1924. But his real break came in 1925 when Nishida Kitarō and Hatano Seiichi offered him the position of lecturer in the Philosophy Department of the Faculty of Literature at Kyoto Imperial University, where he was to take on the responsibility for the courses in ethics. This put him at the center of the developing Kyoto School philosophy. As was the custom at the time with promising young scholars, he was sent to Germany in 1927 on a three-year scholarship. His reflections on that sojourn in Europe became the substance of his highly successful book, Fūdo, which has been translated into English as Climate and Culture. In fact, Watsuji spent only fourteen months in Europe, being forced to return to Japan in the summer of 1928 because of the death of his father. In 1929, he also took on a part-time position at Ryûkoku University, and in 1931, he became a professor at Kyoto Imperial University. In 1934, he was appointed professor in the Faculty of Literature at Tokyo Imperial University, and he continued to hold this important post until his retirement in 1949. Perhaps part of the reason that he is so often viewed as someone on the periphery of the Kyoto School philosophic tradition has to do with his work in Tokyo, geographically removed from the center of discussion and dialogue in Kyoto.
One cannot help but be impressed by the extent of Watsuji's published output, as well as by its remarkable diversity, spanning literature, the arts, philosophy, cultural theory, as well as Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Western traditions. In addition to his studies of Schopenhauer (1912), Nietzsche (1913), and Kierkegaard (1915), in 1919, he published Koji junrei (Pilgrimages to the Ancient Temples in Nara), his study of the temples and artistic treasures of Nara, a work that became exceptionally popular. In 1920 came Nihon kodai bunka (Ancient Japanese Culture), a study of Japanese antiquity, including Japan’s most ancient writings, the Kojiki and Nihongi. In 1925, he published the first volume of Nihon seishinshi kenkyū (A Study of the History of the Japanese Spirit), with the second volume appearing in 1935. This study contained his investigation of Dōgen’s work (in Shamon Dōgen, [The Monk Dōgen ]), and it can be said that it was Watsuji who single-handedly brought Dōgen’s work out of nearly total obscurity, into the forefront of philosophical discussion. Also, in 1925, he published Kirisutokyō no bunkashiteki igi (The Significance of Primitive Christianity in Cultural History), followed by Genshi Bukkyō no jissen tetsugaku (The Practical Philosophy of Primitive Buddhism) in 1927.
Returning from Europe in 1928, Watsuji continued at Kyoto Imperial University until his appointment as professor at Tokyo Imperial University in 1934. In 1929, he edited Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō zuimonki. He wrote as well A Critique of Homer at about 1932, a work that was not published until 1946. Also in 1932, he wrote Porisuteki ningen no rinrigaku (The Ethics of the Man of the Greek Polis), which was not published until 1948. In 1936, he completed his Kōshi (Confucius). In 1935, he completed the important Ethics as the Study of Man (Ningen no gaku to shite no rinrigaku), to be followed by the three-volume expansion of his views on ethics, Rinrigaku (Ethics) appearing successively in 1937, 1942, and 1949.
In 1938, Watsuji published Jinkaku to jinruisei (Personality and Humanity), and in 1943, he published his two volume Sonnō shisō to sono dentō (The Idea of Reverence for the Emperor and the Imperial Tradition). This latter publication is one of the works for which Watsuji was branded a right-wing, reactionary thinker. In 1944, he published a volume of two essays, Nihon no shindō (The Way of the Japanese [Loyal] Subject; and Amerika no kokominsei (The Character of the American People), and in 1948, The Symbol of National Unity (Kokumin tōgō no shōchō). His last publications were the best-selling Sakoku - Nihonno higeki (A Closed Country - The Tragedy of Japan) in 1950, Uzumoreta Nihon (Buried Japan) in 1951, Nihon rinri shisōshi (History of Japanese Ethical Thought) in two volumes in 1953, Katsura rikyû: seisaku katei no kōsatsu (The Katsura Imperial Villa: Reflections on the Process of Its Construction) in 1955, and Nihon geijutsu kenkyū (A Study of Japanese Art), also published in 1955.
Watsuji died at the age of 71, but his philosophical influence in Japan continues long after his death.
Tetsurō Watsuji was one of a small group of philosophers in Japan during the twentieth century who brought Japanese philosophy to the attention of the world. In terms of his influence, exemplary scholarship, and originality he ranks with Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji. The latter three were all members of the so-called Kyoto School, and while Watsuji is not usually thought of as being a member of this school, the influence and tone of his work clearly show him to be a like-minded thinker. By any standard, this is an impressive array of major publications, several of them extremely influential both with the world of scholarship and among the general public as well. One cannot but be impressed by the breadth of Watsuji’s interests, by the depth of his scholarship, and by his ability as a remarkably clear and graceful writer. In 1955 he was awarded the title of the Person of Cultural Merit.
(Providing translations of and commentaries on primary sou...)
1998
Religion
Watsuji gives no evidence of deep religiosity but expresses a profound and sometimes ecstatic ethical humanism, one which is, nonetheless, significantly Buddhist in conception.
Politics
Watsuji’s theory of the state, and his vocal support of the Emperor system, garnered considerable criticism after the Second World War. Despite the fact that Watsuji never promoted or defended totalitarianism, his reliance on nakayoshi, self-sacrifice, and social unity as ethical values remarkably resonates with the official rhetoric that was used in Japan of the thirties.
Views
Watsuji tried to create systematic Japanese ethics using Western categories. In contrast to what he saw as Western ethics’ overemphasis on the private individual, Watsuji emphasized man both as an individual and as a social being who is deeply involved with his society. Watsuji introduced certain Buddhist dialectic elements in order to show how the individual is absorbed into society, and he cited various aspects of Japanese art and culture as expressing the interdependence of man and society. He developed his view of life as it applies to mutual personal and social relations, from the simplest to the fully integrated - from the family to the state.
Membership
Tetsurō Watsuji was a member of the Japan Academy.
Japan Academy
,
Japan
Personality
Tetsurō Watsuji was a great lover of poetry and prose especially of the european romantic movement ones.
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Dōgen
Writers
George Gordon Byron, Natsume Sōseki, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Tennyson, John Keats
Connections
Tetsurō Watsuji married Takase Teru in 1912, and a daughter, Kyōko was born to them in 1914.
