The early modern period

The early modern period of Japanese philosophy corresponds roughly to the Edo, or Tokugawa, shogunate (1603–1868), whose highly efficient rule enforced relative peace and stability. Confucian ideas, which had been utilized in the ancient period to centralize and unify the state, again became a focus of study and application. With political stability and urbanization, the power of the merchant class increased, literacy rose, and secular academies sprang up in the major cities to tutor merchants in the Chinese classics. During peacetime, some samurai took up scholarly pursuits and used the newly developed Bushidō (“Code of the Warrior”) to express ideals of loyalty, stoic self-control, and personal virtue. These ideals were consistent, respectively, with Confucian propriety, Buddhist self-discipline, and Shintō purity of heart.

Tokugawa Confucian thinkers can be divided, according to their source of inspiration, into two groups. The first group built upon the neo-Confucian philosophies of Chinese thinkers from the Song and Ming dynasties, respectively exemplified by Zhu Xi (Japanese: Shushi; 1130–1200) and Wang Yangming (Ōyōmei; 1472–1529). This group included Japanese philosophers such as Hayashi Razan (1583–1657) and Nakae Tōju (1608–48), who promoted the works of Zhu and Wang, respectively. Other thinkers in this group believed that the dominant forms of neo-Confucianism in Japan were too abstract in their emphasis on metaphysical “principle” (ri) as the structuring force of the universe. Kaibara Ekken (1630–1714), for example, tried to make neo-Confucianism more practical by developing a naturalistic philosophy that emphasized vital force (ki) rather than principle and by devising concrete guidelines for everyday life.

The other major group of Confucians founded a tradition that is often referred to as the school of “ancient learning” (kogaku). Such thinkers as Itō Jinsai (1627–1705) and Ōgyū Sorai (1666–1728) believed that the theories of metaphysical principle and vital force deviated too far from the thought of Confucius, who was primarily concerned with the education of humane scholars and officials who would promote good government. Thus, the kogaku scholars wished to return to the “original Confucianism” of the Chinese classics, which avoided metaphysical speculation and emphasized the basic virtues and relationships fundamental to social harmony.

In opposition to Confucianism and Bushidō, there arose a philosophical school called kokugaku, the “study of our national heritage.” It was led by such thinkers as Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), who urged a return to the “ancient ways,” the restoration of Shintō, renewed reverence for the emperor, and a Heian-period aesthetic exemplified by mono no aware, a “sensitivity to” or “sympathy for” the things that constitute the world. Despite their many differences, most early modern Japanese philosophers were alike in turning away from the classical period’s interest in the cosmic order and from the medieval period’s interest in personal spirituality. Instead, they focused primarily on the social and political dimensions of human life.

Modern and contemporary Japanese philosophy

The modern period of Japanese philosophy began with the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the subsequent opening of Japan to Western influences, including Western philosophy. In fact, a new word, tetsugaku—from the words for wisdom (tetsu) and learning (gaku)—was coined to translate the Western term philosophy. Although tetsugaku was initially restricted to scholarly reflection on Western philosophy to the exclusion of Japanese philosophy, it soon encompassed a broader range of studies. An Inquiry into the Good (1911), by Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), was the first major work to construct a new philosophical system in the Western style. As his thought evolved in later works, Nishida focused on the experiential and logical grounds of judgment and action, which he called “Nothingness” (mu). Nishida’s philosophy drew upon both Western and East Asian (especially Zen) ideas. For example, his concern with “pure experience” came from the Western thought of the American pragmatist philosopher William James, while the term Nothingness came from Buddhism.

Nishida’s new style of philosophizing was the inspiration for the Kyōto school, 20th-century Japan’s most influential philosophical movement. The Kyōto school set the stage for a distinctly Japanese philosophical discourse by exploring affinities and differences between Western philosophical traditions and the East Asian philosophies and religions that had been foundational to Japanese life since the classical period. For example, the metaphysical speculations of Nishitani Keiji (1900–90) further explored the nature of Nothingness, integrating insights from both Zen Buddhism (following Nishida) and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, under whom Nishitani studied. Other Japanese philosophers, both within and outside the Kyōto school, began to draw more explicitly on Japanese cultural traditions as a resource for developing their own philosophies. An influential example of this trend is the work of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960), who criticized both Western individualism and Confucian collectivism, positing instead an ethical notion of “betweenness.” According to Watsuji, each person stands in dialectical tension between the ideal of individual freedom and socially imposed norms. The wellspring of ethics, then, is the recognition that personhood is articulated amid this continuous opposition between self and society rather than through an unbalanced focus on one or the other.

The end of World War II brought greater freedom of thought and expression to Japanese society, liberating Japanese philosophers from the context of wartime ideologies (which some had endorsed, others had opposed, and others had tried to ignore). The postwar period also stimulated philosophical reflection upon the role that philosophy had played in the rise of ultranationalism and militarism. The later work of Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), the most prominent member after Nishida of the Kyōto school, provides a prime example of the fruits of such reflection. In the 1930s Tanabe argued that most traditional philosophical schemes that attempted to explain the relation between the universal (or “genus”) and the particular (or “individual”) had excluded the role of the specific (or “species”). In defining human existence, for example, they had emphasized a person’s universal human nature and atomistic individuality but had virtually ignored the crucial dimension of identity that specifies a person as an ethnic, national, and cultural being. Tanabe’s arguments for “the logic of the specific” were subsequently invoked to support Japanese nationalism because they seemed to prioritize the interests of the Japanese nation over those of the individual and humankind at large. By the end of the war, Tanabe had rejected this use of his ideas and had developed the theory of “metanoia” (zange)—repentance or change of heart. Because no intellectual system can ever be universal or absolute, he argued, every responsible philosophy contains a metanoetic dynamic that serves to undermine any tendency to treat it as such.

Academic philosophy continues to thrive in Japan. While some philosophers have stayed within the parameters demarcated by Western philosophy, others have developed philosophies out of traditional Asian ideas. The latter group includes modern Buddhist philosophers such as Tamaki Kōshirō (1915–99) and Nakamura Hajime (1911–99). Still others continue to engage other traditions—Western and Asian—in hopes of developing philosophical insights suitable to a global, and not merely monocultural, perspective. These philosophers include Yuasa Yasuo (1925–2005) and Ueda Shizuteru (born 1926), a thinker who upholds the Kyōto school tradition.