Organizer: Richard F. Calichman, City College of New York

Chair and Discussant: Naoki Sakai, Cornell University

Our panel aims to shed light on the complicated relation between philosophical discourse and political discourse in Japan during the Fifteen-Year War (1931–1945). Specifically, our interest lies in showing how modern Japanese philosophers came to express their support for the nation and the nationalist-militarist project in a highly sophisticated conceptual language. In this way, we hope to make an intervention in the debate surrounding Kyoto School philosophy. This past decade has seen the reinforcement of support for both the pro- and con- positions regarding the Kyoto School philosophers’ activities during the war: those who are favorably disposed toward these philosophers have often sought to divorce their philosophical writings from their politics, while those who adopt a more critical position have at times neglected to consider the philosophical merits of their texts. We hope to bridge this divide by setting forth a critique of the School’s wartime writings from a position that takes into account their philosophical significance. Takeshi Kimoto examines the 1943 "World-Historical Position and Japan" symposia so as to determine the consequences of the notion of totality in the context of the total war. In this regard, his paper should be seen side-by-side with that of Richard Calichman, who provides a reading of the 1942 "Overcoming Modernity" symposium, with particular focus on the philosopher Nishitani Keiji. Finally, Chris Goto-Jones sets forth some of the more general questions—such as concern the notions of responsibility, penitence and apologia—necessary for any study of the Kyoto School’s political philosophy as such.

Takeshi Kimoto, Cornell University

Characterized as "total war," the world wars in the twentieth century not only mobilized but also transformed every aspect of modern society, from military and politics to the economy and culture, leaving a tremendous impact on contemporary thought. While the wars incited various discourses on both sides of the globe to envisage the "total" nature of total war, it was especially in the non-West that the idea of total war acquired a distinctive significance by being closely connected to the decline of the world-historical order of Western modernity.

In Japan under the Asia-Pacific War, the Kyoto School of philosophy, its second generation in particular, proposed this very theme in The World Historical Position and Japan symposia (1943). Criticizing Western capitalism and imperialism, these philosophers aspired to "overcome" modernity through total war and mobilization, and claimed that the Japanese empire assumed the subjective and central position in this new order. Moreover, these philosophers were deeply involved with the Japanese Navy, holding regular secret meetings during the war whose documents were discovered and published only recently.

In this paper, I will mainly focus on the Kyoto School's historical and philosophical determination of total war as the critique of modern social formations, while touching upon the current debates on the wartime collaboration with the Navy. In so doing, I will show how the very project of resolving the contradictions caused by modernity must inevitably reproduce the same problems in a more intensified manner. This necessary self-contradiction I call antinomy.

Christopher S. Goto-Jones, Leiden University, Netherlands

The reputation of the wartime Kyoto School of Philosophy is subject to considerable debate, not only the grounds of the merit of its contribution to the canon of philosophy itself but also on the grounds of its political and moral standpoint (of course, these questions are not always seen as distinct). The central issues revolve around the question of the responsibility (or the lack of a sense of political responsibility) of Kyoto School philosophers during the war years themselves. The burning question has always been whether the thinkers of the Kyoto School were complicit in (or even generative of) the ‘total ideology’ of wartime Japan. This paper seeks a different angle on the question, asking instead about the nature of personal and philosophical responsibility in the work of (in particular) Nishida, Tanabe and Nishitani. Was the work of the wartime Kyoto School self-reflective about its own social, ethical and political role? Just as importantly, how did that self-reflectivity alter in the postwar period? How might we relate a transwar ‘philosophy of repentance,’ which emerged particularly in the work of Tanabe, to questions of the nature and function of philosophy in wartime Japan? And finally, if conceptions of philosophical responsibility and penitence have a genuine place in the philosophy of the Kyoto School, what space does this leave open for apologia and what would it mean to be an apologist for the wartime Kyoto School?

Richard F. Calichman, City College of New York

The "Overcoming Modernity" symposium took place in the summer of 1942. Participants included the leading thinkers of such diverse fields in wartime Japan as music, literature, film, theology, philosophy, and science. Topics naturally varied according to each field, but in general the theme of an Asian—and particularly Japanese—overcoming of western modernity, with its long history of colonial violence against the non-West, took center stage.

Given the relative scarcity of English-language materials devoted to the symposium, I will in my paper first lay out the general problematics treated therein, with particular focus on the East-West dualism that was both attacked and inherited by the symposium participants. I will then discuss some of the meeting’s underlying tensions or contradictions, using as my sources both the symposium essays and the two roundtable discussions. Finally, I conclude with a critical examination of the Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji’s symposium paper, titled "My Views on ‘Overcoming Modernity.’"

Aaron S. Moore, Cornell University

"Technology" (gijutsu) was an important lens through which Kyoto School philosophers viewed wartime modernity during the 1930s and 40s. For Nishida Kitaro, Tosaka Jun, Tanabe Hajime, and Miki Kiyoshi, technology did not just mean instrumental machines and systems of production, but the production of society itself - not only of its laws, institutions, ideologies, social organization, and economic structure but of its citizens and subjects as well. According to Nishida, for example, technology was "practical subjective" (shutaiteki) and defined as "historical manufacturing acts", whereby subjects produce themselves and society through praxis.

Several commentators have noted how such a notion of subjective technology was complicit with efforts to mobilize Japan for total war and the construction of a "New Order in East Asia." This paper will examine the Kyoto School's conception of technology primarily through the thought of the aesthetician, Nakai Masakazu. Nakai develops a wider notion of technology as sensuous, creative activity in a way that comes dangerously close to affirming the creation of a technocratic wartime society. However, he avoids this pitfall by formulating concepts such as the "projective structure of consciousness," the inventive "middle," "technological time," the "new sensorial formations" of film, and the "bodily technologies" of sports. These concepts seek to highlight and stimulate the critical, transformative energies of the people in the context of technocratic efforts by the Japanese state to organize all aspects of life. In articulating Nakai's theory of technology, I wish to highlight another sense of "the political" in Kyoto School philosophy.