Kobe Shoin Women’s University Repository 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 Resource Version URL Right Additional Information 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, rela- tively 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 exam- ple, 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 im- pressive 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 shu- taisei (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 assimi- late 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 nationalis- tic 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,