WATSUJI Tetsurō: Beyond Individuality, This Side of Totality

Abstract

In 1854, after more than two centuries of self-enforced isolation, Japan reluctantly opened her doors to the great wide world. It was an American, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, who forced the reopening by sailing into Tokyo Bay at the head of four warships. However, once the doors were open, Japan found itself in contact not only with the United States, but with the whole Western world. In the following years, Japan scrambled to study and absorb the science, technology, and social systems of the powerful and “advanced” West. Western philosophy and ethics were also studied with great enthusiasm and an effort made to understand their claims to universality. Yet for the Japanese who first encountered Western philosophy, the overriding impression must have been one of peculiarity and strangeness rather than of universality. It is only natural that some of those born in the following years should try to pinpoint the reasons for that impression of strangeness and attempt to formulate a philosophy less peculiar and less strange to themselves based upon a different kind of universality. NISHIDA Kitarō (1870–1945) and WATSUJI Tetsurō (1889–1960) were the two most important and influential thinkers of this reflective phase of Japanese philosophy.