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Asserting Selflessness : The Case of Watsuji Tetsuro Title 無我の主張：和辻哲郎の例

Author(s) C. L. Starling（C.L.スターリング）

Citation 研究紀要（SHOIN REVIEW），第 42 号：33-56

Issue Date 2001

Resource Type Bulletin Paper / 紀要論文

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Asserting Selflessness : The Case of Watsuji TetsurO

by C. L. Starling

The term philosophy, in its original Greek sense of "the love of wisdom," carries the implication of a serene, contemplative vocation. In keeping with this, the uninitiated might imagine the history of philosophy to be a long succession of distinguished minds, striving in peaceful seclusion to make sense of the world. In fact, of course, such placidity is rare, as even a cursory review of the three main philosophical traditions (the Indian, the Chinese and the European) will show. More typically, philosophy is combative. A new vision is advanced against predecessors or against contemporary adversaries. In India, Upanishad thinkers reinterpret Brahmanas mythology ; Jain theorists scoff at Vedantic Hinduism ; countless schools make com- peting claims to "truly" interpret Siddharta Gautama... In China, Mengzi contests Gaozi's belief that there is no human nature ; Xunzi takes issue with Mengzi's view that this nature is good ; Xin Xue questions Li Xue' s axiom that li exist outside the mind... In Europe, Socrates berates the Sophists ; Aristotle challenges Plato's idealism ; Rousseau undercuts the intellectualist tenets of the Enlightenment ; Marx revolutionizes Hegel... Philosophy evolves by negation. In Hegelian terms, thesis is challenged by an- tithesis and from this opposition arises a new synthesis, itself open to challenge. In thus evolving, philosophy may even come to redefine itself. Until the nineteenth century, this polemical evolution of philosophy was, relatively speaking, a local affair. Each controversy arose within China, India or Europe, and their respective spheres of influence (and this is true even in the case of North Asian Buddhists disagreeing over Indian antecedents). In particular, there existed be-

33 tween the philosophic worlds of Asia and Europe a veritable divide. To be sure, previ- ous centuries had yielded incidental (and, if sometimes fanciful, often accurate and per- tinent) musings on differences of culture by European travellers in Asia (see, for example, the writings of Portuguese soldier and trader Galeote Pereira in the 1550s). But neither these reflections nor even the concentrated attention given to China by seven- teenth and eighteenth century thinkers like Leibniz, Montesquieu or Voltaire were enough to bring Asia's and Europe's traditions of thought to engage each other in their totalities. In the nineteenth century, however, the clash of European and Asian civilizations made, in the first instance, Asia's philosophic insularity untenable. Asia, struggling to cope with a European imperialism that was self-assured to the point of arrogance, felt urgently obliged to investigate (with the option of assimilating) the ideas that sub- tended such assurance and power. In consequence, the philosophical traditions born in India and China found themselves challenged, as never before, from outside. Perhaps nowhere in Asia was this challenge greater than in Japan, for if Japan had been strongly influenced by cultural elements (Confucianism, Buddhism) imported from a (relatively) rationalistic China, it had continued to be characterized by the non- rationalistic predilections and exigencies that pre-existed this importation. This ensured that Japan's philosophical encounter with a modernist, rationalist Europe was even more radical than that which occurred on the Asian mainland. From the introspection that ensued, the best of Japan's twentieth century thinkers ultimately produced an impressive counter-challenge that was to contribute to Europe's questioning of its own central ontological assumptions. At the same time, these same thinkers strove, less con- vincingly, to ground philosophically what they saw as a desirable national ethic for Ja- pan and its people. In this essay, after detailing the philosophical and political polarization of Japan that emerged in the Meiji era, we shall focus primarily on the reflections and strategies of one of those thinkers, Watsuji TetsurO (1889-1960), outlining both his ontological insights and ethical misdirections.

34 Let us note first that in Japan, with its blend of indigenous intuitions with thought systems imported from the Middle Kingdom (on occasion nuanced by passage through Korea), the European incursion paradoxically gave impetus concurrently to rationalist and anti-rationalist currents which, though mutually opposed, alike contributed to trans- form a local philosophic rift with China into a near total estrangement. European rationalism, for its part, had gained credence unceasingly through the

demonstrated superiority of Western science over conventional Chinese "knowledge ," which was in certain cases exposed as so many suppositions and superstitions . A quin- tessential moment had occurred in April, 1771 when two Japanese physicians, Sugita Gempaku and Maeno Ryotaku, having acquired a 1731 Dutch book of anatomy, Tafel Anatomia, by the German, Johann Adam Kulmus, observed the dissection of a human corpse and found the internal organs "exactly as depicted" in the Dutch work and "quite unlike the old [Chinese] descri ptions." (in Keene, 22) Such invalidations made Chinese thought itself the object of widespread skepticism. Growing disregard of and disdain for China was inevitably accentuated as Europe's rationalism became increas-

ingly seen by many Japanese as underpinning impressive Western technology, which Japanese patriots found it prudent for their nation to adopt. Meanwhile, this same impulse to protect the Japanese nation and assert its identity in the face of European cultural imperialism drew increasingly on the nationalism pro- moted by the so-called National Learning scholars (notably Motoori Norinaga , 1730- 1801), and founded on traditional accounts of Japan's divine election laid out in the Kojiki, Nihon shoki and Nihongi. Inspired by Confucianism's own effort to go back to its sources, this 'fundamentalist' ShintOism had rejected China's would-be rationalistic philosophies as not being consonant with ancient Japanese wisdom. When Europe's rationalism then became seen not only as an incidental and strate- gic acquisition for nationalistic and military purposes but also (by liberals) as the basis of radical social reform, there emerged in Japan an irrevocable duality, both political and philosophical, that remains to this day a key characteristic of Japan's intellectual milieu.

35 Politically, certain Meiji intellectuals saw in the philosophies of Europe's Enlight- enment an opportunity and recommended emulation. Nakae Chomin (real name Nakae Tokusuke,1847-1901) translated Rousseau's The Social Contract with a passionate hope that the ideas therein might take root in his own land. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834- 1901) astonished most Japanese by his statement that the upper class had no absolute right to rule. Condemning absolutism, he declared : "we have inherited a disease from our distant ancestors." (151) These words evidence the exigency of personal autonomy that was to make of their author, in retrospect, a pioneer in the career of assertive shutaisei (subjectivity), although the term shutai, as translation of "subject," would gain currency only in the 1920s. Eager to see the personal autonomy of the Japanese subject radically transforming Japanese politics, Fukuzawa characteristically coined (in his newspaper Jiji Shimpo in 1885) the catchcry : "Datsu-A, NyCi-O" ("escape from Asia, enter Europe"). Needless to say, such liberal ideas appalled conservatives, who saw in them a threat, and advocated rejection. Sakoku (the closing of the country) being no longer a tenable policy, a broad consensus was arrived at by which Japan would strive to assimilate Western scientific and technical knowhow while maintaining its cultural integrity (although this, of course, could be perceived in various ways). To the latter end, the Right drew its inspiration primarily from the indigenous Shint6 and National Learning movement, but also learned to exploit anti-liberal thought in the Western libraries, commissioning translations of European conservative writings such as Edmund Burke's Reflection on the French Revolution and consistently favouring and promoting the West's more communitarian philosophies (notably Hegelianism). As we shall see, a certain interpretation of Buddhist history, with Hegelian overtones, was also to serve the anti-modern camp. In the years preceding the Pacific War, it was, of course, conservativism in its most nationalistic form that triumphed. The chances of success of the foreign-inspired reformers began to fade as early as the 1880 s as the Japanese became more and more indignant over the "unequal treaties" forced on the country by the Western powers, not

36 to mention the frequently arrogant and racist attitudes shown by Westerners both in Ja- pan and abroad. In 1889, the nationalistic mood proved favourable to a new constitu- tion that finally secured the ascendancy of imperial over popular sovereignty. It is true that a new individualistic trend that emerged around 1900 and outlasted the nationalistic flurry of the Russo-Japanese war was to lead again towards liberalism, in what has been called the "TaishO democracy" (from about 1905 to 1932). However, the forces of the Right could henceforth justify themselves by reference to an immovable orthodoxy. We observe here the triumph of arguments the Mito school scholar Aizawa Seishisai (1782-1863) had advanced in his clandestine 1825 work Shinron (New Discourse). Ai- zawa had affirmed that Japan's kokutai (national polity), with the central place it accorded the Shinto gods and the emperor, was evidence of the nation's superiority. With such ideas now mainstream, the kokutai became a key concept of the 1889 Meiji con- stitution. Tracing the evolution of this ideology, Reischauer and Craig note that in a subsequent step, history was merged into Shinto myth so that the emperor became sa- cred "not simply as the embodiment of a moral order, but also as a lineal descendant of the Sun Goddess." (213) Then, in a final touch that brought the kokutai ideology to the form in which it prevailed in the 1930s, a theory of absolute monarchy was appended "in which the emperor was identified with the body of the state." (213) In the presence of such a dominant, all-embracing orthodoxy, political dissenters were obliged either to engage in an arduous struggle, or to submit. Those who could not be induced to switch to the Right risked being branded as shisohan (thought crimi- nals). The fact that so many Japanese did indeed switch to nationalist allegiance (in the tenko phenomenon) testifies to the coercive powers and techniques of the authorities. But it also poses the question of how far Japanese could assimilate Western perspec- tives and social systems against a quite contrary psychological and social grounding. With the defeat of Japan in the Pacific War, ultranationalism was repudiated and democratic ideas and Marxism both made comebacks to compete for the high moral ground. When Marxism lost credibility in turn, liberal and democratic elements may have appeared definitively to win the day. And yet, partly because politicians of nation-

37 alistic persuasion have continued operating in democratic guise, the ambiguity subsists between the Japan of mythic nostalgia and that of enlightened aspirations. If Japan since Meiji times has been characterized politically by nationalism (and ultranationalism) facing off against both liberalism and Marxism, the philosophical po- lemic parallelling this conflict has principally focused on the self and the nature of subjectivity (shutaisei). The debate has consistently been between the proponents of the autonomous self (usually prescribing socially efficacious action) and those of the selfless (in the first instance emphasizing their specific notion of authenticity). For the philosophers of selflessness (Watsuji TetsurO among them), the real divide was between a rationalistic modernity centred on the logos (with its legacy of individualism), and the ancient instinctive predilection of the Japanese for the pathos. To counter the European logocentrism, so foreign to the Japanese psyche, the most prestig- ious of the TaishO and early ShOwa philosophers proposed the master paradigm of "overcoming modernity," and accordingly set about honing a philosophy with a com- batant edge, a philosophy of emancipation from alien ideas. Rather than a quest into the unknown inspired by any mere love of wisdom, one sees here an endeavour to safe- guard beliefs and values, a defence of wisdom. The demands were arduous : to avoid being subsumed in the invasive Western

perceptions and lexicon ; to formulate a response comprehensible to the invaders and yet continue to speak in one's own voice, in one's own language ; to speak, even when speaking itself may betray fundamental intuitions. But, as we indicated earlier, Japa- nese thinkers ultimately surpassed themselves in meeting the challenge. Already by the turn of the century we see Japanese philosophers who, in contrast to Nishi Amane, Tsuda Mamichi and other illustrious predecessors, are no longer active mostly in im- porting Western thought, but are instead intent on employing Western thought (notably German idealism) to examine Japan's 'modernization.' Thinkers who aspired to transcend the Western optique generally started out with universalistic aspirations. Such was already the case of neoKantians like Tomonaga Sanjuro, Kuwaki Genyoku, or---most originally---Hatano Seiichi. However, the pro-

38 jects these "culturalist" thinkers elaborated tended to be too abstract to have social or political impact. Najita and Harootunian have written :

The emphasis on the capacity of the self to create universalistic val-

ues turned writers and intellectuals away from questions of social

responsibility and political action. In the final analysis , their philosophical aim was to construct a domain of pure creative spirit inde-

pendent of the world of existing structures. (736)

But, in the presence of the all-embracing doctrine of the kokutai (national polity), this position was hardly tenable. This "self " that was to "create universalistic values" was a Japanese non-self that had not learned to define itself vis-a-vis the ambient ideol-

ogy that laid claim to it. It was thus vulnerable to absorption by that same ideology . Subsequently, any "self-assertion" by this non-self (and the paradox of these words already indicates the betrayal) would be infused with ideological content .

Although the impulse toward culture as the manifestation of uni-

versal value was initially informed by cosmopolitanism, thus dramatizing the possibility of a unique Japanese contribution to a

universal human culture that recognized no national boundaries, the affirmative role of a particular cultural inheritance could easily dis-

solve into cultural exceptionalism. (736)

Watsuji Tetsuro, in his own effort to define the Japanese non-self in such a way as to assert it against invasive modernity, provides us with a symptomatic case of this would-be cosmopolitanism 'gone wrong.' Let us now examine his intellectual itinerary with particular reference to two landmark works that have gained an international read- ership, Fado (translated as Climate and Culture) and Rinrigaku (available in English as Watsuji TetsurO's Rinrigaku : Ethics in Japan).

39 Watsuji made his mark very young with deeply original studies of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but soon turned to the study of Buddhism and its origins, and it is he who is credited with having rescued Dogen from near-oblivion. The significance accorded to Dogen reflects his emphasis on aesthetics rather than social aspects in his exploration and re-presentation of Buddhist history. In this, and the form his thought was to take thereafter, Watsuji manifests the influence of his reading of Okakura Tenshin (real name Okakura Kakuzo, 1862-1913). A much-travelled and highly-cultured art curator and critic, Okakura had begun his The Ideals of the East (1903) with the catchphrase "Asia is one ," and traced Indian and Chinese cultural ideals through successive stages to a culmination that guarantees Japan a special significance :

...Japan is a museum of Asian civilization ; and yet more than a

museum, because the singular genius of the race leads it to dwell on all phases of the ideals of the past, in that spirit of living Advait-

ism which welcomes the new without losing the old. (vol. 1, 16)

Increasing Westernization of Japan had come to threaten this legacy, a develop- ment that clearly left Okakura saddened, appalled and indignant. Hence, when he treats of the Meiji period, both here and in the 1904 The Awakening of Japan, his writing modulates from erudite exposition to passionate militancy. Asian countries, he affirms, must join forces to oppose Western imperialism. As he wrote epigrammatically else- where : "Our recovery is Consciousness. Our remedy is the Sword."(Awakening, vol. 1,156) Okakura Tenshin's vision of cultural history--whether Advaitistic or, as some have said, Hegelian--was to be echoed not only by Watsuji Tetsuro but by many of the latter's famous contemporaries who also, moreover, re-edited Okakura's militant stance. In Watsuji's case, following an attempt to portray the Japanese spirit in his 1926 Nihon seishin-shi kenkya (Studies of the Japanese Spirit), the effort to revive the sense of a common Asian identity based on concrete phenomena and experience resulted in the

40 1935 Fado (Climate and Culture). Fado (Climate and Culture) is an intriguing piece of writing which begins on a neutral tone of philosophical inquiry, progresses to an affirmation of Japan's "particular cultural inheritance," and concludes with an appeal for loyalty to the Imperial House. Before proceeding to analyze this work, let us observe parenthetically that from the 1920s the focus of Japanese thinkers shifted away from neoKantianism towards the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and, above all, the existentialism of Martin Heidegger, The Japanese interest in and enthusiasm for Heidegger have proved endur- ing. Even today, he remains the Western philosopher of choice among Japanese intellectuals. The reason, no doubt, is that in Heidegger the Japanese to some extent recog- nize themselves. Specifically, one might point to affinities centered on a redefinition of Being that was radical for Europeans, but in no way novel to a people lacking the tradition of a metaphysics of substance. This does not mean that Heidegger's thought was accepted without reserve. In- deed, often it was deemed by Japanese to be too concerned with the individual at the expense of the social. In this respect, Watsuji Tetsuro's response was typical. Why, he wondered, did Heidegger in Being and Time emphasize time so much, while giving relatively little attention to space? In Watsuji's view, the neglect of space prevented a description of human existence sufficiently concrete to allow for a true depiction of history, and (to cite Watsuji's chosen focus), of climate's role within it. Here, we see clearly the Japanese predilection for the empirical and phenomenal over the abstract and transcendental. In order to overcome the "limitations of Heidegger's work," Watsuji first estab- lishes what he sees as "the basic principles of climate," using experience of the cold as an example, and concludes :

That we feel the cold is an intentional experience, in which we discover ourselves in the state of "ex-sistere," or our selves already

out in the cold. (Climate, 4)

41 Or rather, as Watsuji goes on, "out among other 'I's," for this is a shared experience, in which "we," in a "mutual relationship," discover our selves in the cold. Having set down this Heideggerian schema, Watsuji can undertake to show how humans apprehend themselves in climate and how climate has affected not only cloth- ing styles, building design and diets, but also "all the expressions of human activity, such as literature, art, religion, and manners and customs" (Climate, 7-8). Broadly speaking, he continues, there are three kinds of climate : monsoon, desert and meadow. Cultures of monsoon climates are characterized by "receptivity" and "resignation," but in the case of the Japanese character, these traits are both "tropical" and "frigid" : "tenacity" (from the cold zones) underlies "emotional changes" (from the tropics).

It is neither unresisting acquiescence of the tropical zone nor per-

sistent and patient doggedness of the frigid zone. For, although es- sentially resignation, through resistance it becomes mutable and

quick-tempered endurance. Violent winds and deluge rains in the end enforce resignation on man, but their typhoon nature provokes

in him a fighting mood. (Climate, 136)

Resignation is similarly ambivalent. Thus,

Resistance, lurking behind this mask of resignation, can erupt with

the unexpected savagery of a typhoon, yet once this storm of emo- tion has died down, there remains an equally abrupt and calm ac-

quiescence. (Climate, 137)

Watsuji comes here to a striking explanation of the samurai ethos that enables us to discover "the national spirit of Japan." From the point of view of the sort of resignation "symbolized by the cherry blossom" or by the "open-hearted throwing away of

42 life," anything that is grounded on resistance or fight is a clinging to life. For all that, when this attachment to life was exhibited in its most intense and objective aspect, the most prominent and central feature of this attachment was the attitude that was the very opposite, a complete contradiction of this tenacity. This is shown to perfection in war. The spirit of Japanese swordsmanship is the harmony of sword-and calm meditation. This, then, for Watsuji is the paradox of Japan's "typhoon resignation." We see it also, he claims, in ancient Japanese love poems. Loves there "have a typhoon savagery," yet often manifest in suicides a "calm and selfless resignation." The monsoon climate is also linked to a "community of family life" different to the emphasis on the couple (in meadow climates) or the tribe (in desert climates). And this family life ex- hibits the same dichotomy observed above. The family is characterized by a calm affection. However, if thwarted, "this quiet affection turns into ardent passion, forceful enough even to overwhelm the individual for the sake of the whole family." Indeed, "the family relationship takes the form of a heroic and martial attitude , unsparing even of life itself." The samurai, for example, was willing to die for his house. Watsuji discusses at length the way in which contrasting Japanese and European house design and use reflect corresponding contrasts in national characteristics. The European house is compartmentalized, in accord with individualism ; the Japanese house is "open, unpartitioned," with family members linked indissolubly. "It was," he says, "by way of the concept of the house as a whole unit that the Japanese came to be aware of themselves as a whole" (Climate, 147). Hence the religious unity of this "land of the kami." It was as if the Japanese people as a whole constituted "one great family which regarded the Imperial House as the home of its deity." The individual's duty becomes the protection of the state :

Within the borders of this state as a whole, there should be the

same unreserved and inseparable union that is achieved within the

household. The virtue that is called filial piety from the aspect of

the household becomes loyalty from the standpoint of the state.

43 (Climate, 148)

In these lines, a highly original attempt at cultural comparison finally lapses into the 'exceptionalism' referred to earlier. Watsuji falls foul of an unavoidable problem- atic associated with the attempt to 'overcome modernity'. The philosophy imported from the West, informed as it was with alien individualistic values and rationalist con- cepts, was seen as contrary to what most Japanese, in their hearts, were comfortable with, and felt their country stood for. Yet, on the other hand, since the Japanese people were conceived as belonging to a family-state identified with the emperor, any philosophy for the Japanese was susceptible of becoming too a philosophy for the empire. Since other thinkers who sought to overcome modernity were caught in the same pre- dicament, it is hardly surprising that their schemas bore a close resemblance to that of Watsuji. Notable examples are Nishida KitarO, Tanabe Hajime, Miki Kiyoshi, and mi- nor figures of the Kyoto school like 'Osaka Masaaki and KOyama Iwao. In their efforts to rehabilitate traditional values in contradistinction to those of the West, all these thinkers tended, whatever their intermediate pathways, to converge on a broad consensus consistent with imperial ideology. The nationalistic position Watsuji Tetsuro arrived at in Fad° (Climate and Cul- ture) was to make him a villain in the eyes of postwar critics of Japan's militarism. This, however, should not make us blind to the work's valid objective of demonstrating cultural relativity, using climate as a referential theme. In an era in which, as we have seen, Western culture held the centre ground with its own imperial power and not a little imperious disdain, there was certainly the need to affirm Japan's local particularity, on its own terms. As we know now, several decades later, voices within the West itself were to call into question Western ethnocentrism and logocentrism. Michel Butor, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Paul Ricoeur are just a few of the French writers who rewrote the intellectual maps, undermining the arrogance of the centre, and pro- viding new justification and vindication for those on the periphery. In this sense, might not Watsuji's refusal to have Japan's culture and society judged according to an alien

44 point of reference make of him, ahead of his time, a hero of the periphery? Villain or hero? The same ambiguity arises in a more substantial opus Watsuji published later as the culmination of a number of writings on ethics : Rinrigaku. Writ- ten largely in opposition to Western notions of individuality, subjectivity and temporality, this work is at once the description, defense and prescription of a manner of being and social ethic that follow from a conjunction of Confucian and Buddhist elements. It was published in three volumes (in 1937, 1942 and 1949) and evidences a striking the- matic consistency with both Fad° (Climate and Culture) and certain of Watsuji's political statements. As in his earlier master work, Watsuji taxes Heidegger with having neglected the relative importance of space with regard to time, and of the social with regard to the individual. But here he is more thorough-going and more profound, as when he engages the ideas of Being and Time on spatiality and temporality in a sustained critical analysis, and turns Heidegger on his head. Heidegger, he complains, stuck fast to an atomis- tic individuality and kept his eye focused on the total possibility of the self only as comprehended with the aid of the phenomenon of death. This individual self was seen as that authenticity inherent in a human being. (Rinrigaku, 224-25) But this Cartesian, Hobbesian notion of self, Watsuji declares, is artificial. In the following excerpt, where he offers a corrective view of authenticity, ningen is the Japanese word for "human being," either in the singular or plural.

One can contend that I becomes aware of itself only through the medium of non-I, by making a detour of nothingness only on the ground of the subject in which the self and the other are not yet dis- rupted. In holding this view, we must assert that the self and the other come to be opposed through negation only on the ground of ningen's authenticity. This authenticity is the source of the self, and at the same time, the self comes to be established only as the negation of this authenticity. The negation of authenticity is inau-

45 thenticity. What Heidegger calls authenticity is, in reality, inau- thenticity. And when this in-authenticity becomes further negated through the nondual relation of self and other, that is to say, when the self becomes annihilated, only then is authenticity realized.

(Rinrigaku, 225)

Enough of abstractions. Put more simply, Watsuji's ontology (like his ethics) is centered on the notion of aidagara ("betweenness"). As Yuasa Yasuo words it,

Watsuji argues that man's life can exist only in the "betweenness" that is its foundation.... This view of man...inherits the East Asian tradition of Confucian ethics. Insofar as his mode of behavior is concerned, a person (ningen) is determined a priori by his position within the social hierarchy. (170)

Thus, not only does Watsuji undertake to correct Heidegger by giving due attention to space alongside time, but he emphasizes "subjective spatiality," space pervaded by the cultural and social. Rejecting the primacy of the individual, Watsuji stresses the supraindividual. A human being belongs from the outset to a society, and his or her social position is defined at various levels (by the couple, the family, the community and ultimately the state). Moreover, since the individual is inseparable from a cultural and social context the individual/society relationship constitutes, to use Nishida Kitaro's terminology, a "self-contradiction," insofar as he or she is at once an individual and a member of a society, and cannot be exclusively one or the other. This, we already know from Watsuji's critique of Being and Time, is why assertion of the self as an "atomis- tic" individual is misguided and inauthentic. Such assertion, in effect, negates the "absolute negativity" (read "emptiness") that is the authentic nature of selves and society. The return to authenticity and absolutely wholeness, and the move to the "law of human beings, that is, basic ethics" (Rinrigaku, 124) can arise only by negating this "re-

46 volt."

A person who has turned his back on his own foundation in revolt-

ing against one community or another may then try to return to his

own foundation by negating this revolt once more . This return may also be achieved by recognizing another community. The acts con-

stituting this movement signify the sublimation of individuality , the realization of socio-ethical unity, or the return to one's own foun-

dation. (Rinrigaku, 134)

The conclusion is Buddhist : the emptiness at this foundation, or "home ground ," is the condition whereby selflessness, and hence compassion , may arise. However, here, as in Friclo (Climate and Culture), Watsuji faces objections that his "authentic individual" can easily be submerged in totalitarianism, in that the community of which he or she is a selfless member is in practical terms inseparable from the state. In all this---we note again---Watsuji's thinking parallels that of his prominent contemporaries Nishida KitarO and Tanabe Hajime . Whatever differences we might point to among them, all three manifest resistance to the West's subjection of all humans and their cultural activity to its own criteria of judgment, and in the elaboration of a counter- ideology, the kokutai becomes for all three a focal point . Despite initial aims of demonstrating cultural particularity, the imperial loyalty that emerges as integral in their thought implies an exclusivist position that, on the surface at least, has all the colour- ings of ultranationalism. Tanabe, who had contested what he perceived as the insufficient political engagement of Nishida Kitaro, and thereby incited Nishida to take an explicit political position, wrote in 1939 :

The act of self-denial in which individuals sacrifice themselves for

the sake of a nation turns out to be an affirmation of existence . Be-

47 cause the nation to which the individual has been sacrificed bears within itself the source of life of the individual, it is not merely a matter of sacrificing oneself for the other. Quite the contrary, it is a restoration of the self to the true self. This is why self-negation is turned to self-affirmation and the whole unites with the individual. The free autonomy of ethics is not extinguished in service to the nation and in submission to its orders, but rather made possible thereby. (The Logic of National Existence, in Unno and Heisig, 283)

Even if we may find differences between Tanabe and Watsuji in the details, the similarity is clear, and the same objections can be made to both thinkers. Can we accept that history can be rendered rational in the way they imply? How, given the all too evi- dent historical circumstances, could these thinkers so idealize the state as a vehicle for realization of the absolute. With what justification could they be almost exclusively preoccupied with the Japanese state as the ideal mediator in the dialectical advance toward the most desirable "universal"? As Yuasa Yasuo points out, we should be alert here to a difference from the West- ern concept of ethics.

Watsuji's ethics deals only with mores as the standard operative in the actually existing social network. No fundamental principle of moral law or transcendental ideal is considered, as the Western reader would expect from ethics. I too feel that Watsuji's ethics is inadequate in this respect, but I must point out that it is indicative of the Eastern attitude of thinking in Watsuji. Watsuji does not dis- tinguish ens morale and ens physicum. Life always displays an inseparable union between nature and mores, just as climate and history, nature and culture, and body and mind are not separate in the

48 everyday life-world. (171)

True as this may be, however, the central problem appears to remain intact, and the major question subsists : in the absence of any "fundamental principle of moral law or transcendental ideal," how might the thinker attain the independent standpoint neces- sary to evaluate specific acts of the state? The historical record shows that at the very moment Watsuji was writing Rinri- gaku, his intentions and philosophical discourse were already themselves being submerged in totalitarian ideology. In 1937 he participated in the drafting of the Kokutai no hongi (Fundamentals of Our National Polity), a text published by the Ministry of Education with the goal of strengthening the nation's ideological uniformity. In it we read, for example, these lines that call to mind both Fad° (Climate and Culture) and Rinrigaku :

An individual is an existence belonging to a State and her history

which forms the basis of his origin, and is fundamentally one body with it. (in Tsunoda, et al ., vol. 2, 281)

The relationship between sovereign and subject, we are reminded, is a "dying to self and returning to [the] One" (in Tsunoda, et al ., vol. 2, 281).

The spirit that sacrifices self and seeks life at the very fountainhead of things manifests itself eventually as patriotism and as a heart that casts self aside in order to serve the state. (in Tsunoda, et al 1., vol. 2, 288)

For all its patriotic overtones , such selflessness, we are told, will ultimately fulfill

a universal purpose :

Our present mission....is to build up a new Japanese culture by

adopting and sublimating Western cultures with our national polity as a basis, and to contribute spontaneously to the advancement of

world culture. (in Tsunoda, et al 1., vol. 2, 288)

One can imagine the satisfaction felt by hardliners to have such gifted scribes at their service. Eventually, Watsuji was swept into the military maelstrom he had gullibly helped to precipitate. Naturally enough, Japan's defeat in the Pacific War led to sober reflection on the precepts and politics that led to that disaster. Watsuji and the surviving Kyoto school thinkers (Nishida himself died in 1945) found themselves out in the cold, their political engagement condemned as being irresponsable. It was an ignominious end for an enter- prise that had started out with so much promise. Defending Asia in a momentous clash of philosophical traditions, in their heyday Watsuji et al might be seen as resourceful combatants for the periphery, postmodernly "deconstructing" the West before their time. And yet, as Karatani Kojin has said, their own projects themselves became constructions, anti-constructive constructions. In coming to envisage the Imperial Army marching in aid of a grand empire of nothingness, these would-be saviours of Japan, despite their postmodern intuitions, became villains of its defeat. Drawing the lesson, and reprising a theme of Fukuzawa Yukichi, eminent political scientist Maruyama Masao (1914-1995) prescribed for the postwar era a strong subject (shutai) to guaran- tee individual autonomy, and hence a 'robust' democracy. Despite Maruyama's urgings and outspoken criticism of intellectual "escapism" by activists like Marxist Karatani, the cultural wellspring that inspired the intuitions motivating Watsuji, Nishida and others remains. A broad inclination to combat modernity endures, marked by nostalgia for the same holistic wisdom that Okakura Tenshin

praised so many decades ago. This nostalgia we find in common in a range of other- wise diverse Japanese intellectuals of the late twentieth century : later Kyoto school figures like Nishitani Keiji and Abe Masao, highly original Zen thinker Hisamatsu

50 Shinichi, prolific student of Buddhism Umehara Takeshi, mind-body theorist Yuasa Yasuo, and even idiosyncratic Catholic philosopher Sakabe Megumi. That so many different thinkers find fellowship within this intellectual current is evidence of a powerful sensibility within society as a whole. Although the 'grafting' of democratic institutions to Japan was, in the view of Meiji liberals as of postwar occupi- ers, unambiguously to enhance the status of the individual, the actual result has been

less clear cut. Considerable as democracy's benefits have been, in today's liberal, capi- talistic society, with its predominance of nuclear families (themselves increasingly frag- mented), the individual often feels alienated from a deep sense of authentic self (Wat-

suji's ningen in the relation of aidagara). The result is a nostalgia for community , and where this was in the Taisho-early Showa years satisfied by the imperial ideology (as macrocosm), it has since been answered by piecemeal substitutes : in the first instance the company (now also a less sure 'home' ), but also an array of sects and cults---often

Buddhist-inspired---, microcosms of community based on selflessness. These include not only huge organizations like the Solca Gakkai , but also minor groups, even extend- ing to the notorious religio-terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo.

In view of its spectacular emergence and the extremist nature of its activities , it may be tempting to write off the Aum Shinrikyo as an aberration. But this would be a mistake. Rather, it can be viewed as an extreme but logical outcome of Japan's holistic beliefs and group dynamics. The Buddhist "emptying" of the self already implies a "giving over" of the individual to nothingnes s. If the individual does not "kill the Bud- dha," in the person of the guru, this giving over to nothingness can easily coalesce with

a giving over of the disciple to the guru and to the cult, with the loss of moral inde- pendence this implies. This feature of the Aum sect parallels the deficiency we have noted in the Buddhist-based ethics proposed by Watsuji (as also by Nishida and Tanabe and others). The designation of the Imperial House (focal point of the state) as the place of absolute nothingness meant the move to selflessness was, at the same time, a giving over to the collectivity. The will of the individual was in effect nullified in selfless obe- dience to the Imperial House.

51 Given all this, we can consider Watsuji TetsurO as a case study, not only of those prewar intellectuals (all considered, flawed heroes of the postmodern periphery) who naively fell in step with the military line, but---in a wider sense---of all who prescribe selflessness where social responsibility, and the exercise of judgment by an autonomous subject, is required. In this sense, perhaps the gravest problem facing Japanese culture remains how to articulate those two currents of philosophy that have dominated its intellectual life since the Meiji era : on the one hand that of the Okakura-Watsuji- Nishida line, emphasizing selflessness and nothingness, and on the other hand that of the Fukuzawa-Maruyama tendency, stressing the subject as moral agent. How to recon- cile the ontology of nothingness at the core of the philosophies of overcoming modernity with the ethical concerns that arise of necessity in society at large.

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