Materializing the ‘non-Western’: two stories of Japanese philosophers on culture and politics in the inter-war period

Abstract

This paper investigates the risk presumably involved in the narratives of non-Western international relations theory (IRT) by focusing on a similar historical case in Japan. It reveals the risk of uncritically accepted geographical division, and particularly focuses on the discourses of the Kyoto School's theory of world history as an example of non-Western narratives in the past, which was to ‘overcome’ the Western civilization similar to the contemporary non-Western IRT. However, they are also infamous for providing justification for the wartime regime in Japan for their aggression in the Asian continent. What is the connection between their philosophy and support for the imperialist regime? If there is a connection between them, is there any possibility of the resurrection of the same results in the case of non-Western IRT? To answer these questions, the article introduces the philosophy of Tosaka Jun who was critical of the School but, unlike Kyoto School philosophers, stubbornly fought against the mainstream politics of the time.

Notes

An earlier version of this article was published in O Kwon et al (eds) (2012) The Proceedings of the First Afrasian Centre International Symposium (Afrasian Research Centre, Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan). This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Kiban C 21530139, C 24530185) and Afrasian Research Centre, Ryukoku University. The author would like to thank William Bradley, Linus Hagstrom, Ching-Chan Chen, Young Chul Cho, Josuke Ikeda, Rwei-ren Wu, Dick Stegewerns, and five anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

¹ In this article, I consciously pose a distinction between ‘non-Western IRT’ and ‘post-Western IRT’. While the former refers to IRT that manifests itself in a form resulting from a geographic difference from the West, the latter term refers to an IRT that strives to critically transcend Western IRT (Shani 2008).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kosuke Shimizu

Kosuke Shimizu is Professor at the Faculty of Intercultural Communication at Ryukoku University. Email: [email protected]