Takeuchi Yoshimi's 1960 ‘Asia as Method’ lecture

Abstract

Takeuchi Yoshimi was a leading thinker in Postwar Japan. The originality of his work has been rediscovered in the past decade. Based on the present author's Asia as Method—toward De-Imperialization (2010) as a point of dialogue, this essay rereads Takeuchi's intuitive formulation of ‘Asia as Method’ in the 1960 and tries to pinpoint different characteristics of knowledge conditions between now and then. It discovers that the ‘Inter-Asia methodology’ imagined in Takeuchi's time is still a viable proposition to be implemented today, if we hope to break away with the dominant mode of thought that has been trapped in the colonial structure of academic institutions.

Keywords:

• Takeuchi Yoshimi
• Asia as method
• Inter-Asia methodology
• mode of thought

Acknowledgement

This paper was presented in Tainan, Taipei, London, Pala Alto, Hong Kong, and Okinawa. I thank comments and questions from friends and audience.

Notes

See Chen and Chua (2007) and Chen (2010a).

See Takeuchi (2005b).

See Mizoguchi (1996), especially Chapter 1, and Takeuchi (2005a and 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kuan-Hsing Chen

Contact address: Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University. 1001, University Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan.