Contemporary Japanese Thought

Today I will speak of the famous “Overcoming Modernity” symposium, which was held in 1942 (Shōwa 17), following the outbreak of hostilities between Japan and the United States. While a careful study of this symposium could not possibly be undertaken in such a short lecture as this, I in fact plan to spend the next year on this topic in the course of a university seminar. Today I can speak of only one aspect of the symposium.

A diverse group of people participated in the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium (which includes here the presented papers). The symposium basically consisted of three groups: the Bungakkai [Literary World] group, the Japanese Romantics, and the Kyoto School, but there were also present a natural scientist, a Catholic theologian, and a film critic. In a larger sense, however, those who did not participate in the symposium should not be overlooked. For example, while Kobayashi Hideo of Bungakkai was present, neither Yasuda Yojūrō of the Romantics nor Nishida Kitarō of the Kyoto School was involved. In his article “Kindai no chōkoku” [Overcoming modernity], Takeuchi Yoshimi focuses primarily on Yasuda Yojūrō, one of these nonparticipants. Likwise, Hiromatsu Wataru discusses such figures as Nishida Kitarō and Miki Kiyoshi, who were also absent from the symposium.

It must thus be said that the thinking of “overcoming modernity” comes out most fully before the early 1940s, that it was already present in the 1930s in the minds of various thinkers. Even looking at the symposium in this broader fashion, however, we can see that one of its most obvious traits lies in the fact that the participants were primarily influenced by German and French philosophy and literature. This fact is highly significant when we consider that the symposium took place at the beginning of the war between Japan and the United States. The war was not fought against Germany and France, but rather against England and the United States. Nevertheless, there was hardly any discussion of these latter countries during the symposium.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium took place at a specific time through the organization of a specific journal. The time was after the outbreak of the Japan-U.S. War and the journal was Bungakkai, edited by such people as Kobayashi Hideo and Kawakami Tetsutarō. For example, members of the Kyoto School conducted the “Sekaishiteki tachiba to Nihon” [The world-historical standpoint and Japan] roundtable discussions that appeared in the journal Chūōkōron. In these discussions, there is a very clear standpoint that regards the Japan-U.S. War as “world-historical.” The Kyoto School sought to provide a philosophical grounding of both the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the Japan-U.S. War. In contrast, what is conspicuous about the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium is that it never arrived at such a clear conclusion, but rather avoided one. Indeed, this symposium not only toned down such a political standpoint, it also seems to have criticized that philosophical standpoint.

The notoriety of the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium stems from the fact that its standpoint is seen as identical to that of the Kyoto School and of Yasuda Yojūrō. Those who write on the symposium generally claim that it lacked anything coherent, and so they focus instead on those absent Kyoto School members or on Yasuda, who was likewise absent. Yet this lack of any coherent conclusions is seen as the fault of such kind of Japanese-style roundtable discussions. Or again it is attributed to the great number of writers in attendance, because of which discussion remained intuitive and inconsistent. I disagree with such views. The symposium’s inconsistency or incoherency was actually foreseen from the start by its organizers. As Kawakami Tetsutarō writes in his “Ketsugo” [Concluding remarks]:

Symposiums of a similar format were held about ten years ago at the League of Nations by the “Committee for Intellectual Cooperation,” with several chaired by Paul Valéry. There one could see the mobilization of intellectuals as a stopgap measure of the Treaty of Versailles, whose contradictions had already begun to be exposed. Toward this end, it was skillfully contrived that the topic for discussion be “How are Europeans possible?” First-rate intellectuals thus exhausted their minds in trying to strip the body from the intellect. The attempt to ban political statements from the proceedings succeeded remarkably in the end in strengthening the political effects of their discourse as a whole. Although versed in intellectual etiquette, the participants’ chorus sounded empty amid the emasculated if apparently rich and glorious harmony. Their forlorn hopes are revealed today by the real state of European politics. (Kindai no chōkoku, Fuzanbō Bunko)

It is clear that Kawakami had Valéry’s “Committee for Intellectual Cooperation” in mind when he organized the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium. Of course Kawakami criticized that project as “empty,” but I don’t think we should take this criticism at face value since such comments were commonly made during this time of censorship. In fact, Kawakami “attempted to ban political statements from the proceedings” of the symposium. Whether this attempt “succeeded remarkably in the end in strengthening the political effects of [the participants’] discourse as a whole” is of course another question. But it is clear that, to say the least, Kawakami knew the political effectiveness of the apolitical.

Takeuchi Yoshimi writes the following: “In my view, the greatest legacy of the ‘Overcoming Modernity’ symposium was not its status as war and fascist ideology. Rather it lies in the fact that the symposium failed to achieve even this, and that its attempt at intellectual formation resulted in intellectual loss” (“Kindai no chōkoku”). Yet the symposium did not aim at “intellectual formation,” as Takeuchi puts it. If we take up the Kyoto School and the Japanese Romantics individually, we can certainly see some “intellectual formation.” But by arranging these two groups relatively in a row, the “symposium” came to “result in intellectual loss.” It is for this reason that the symposium still bears reading even today, or rather this is why it appears as a “riddle.”

For example, as I have mentioned, the “Sekaishiteki tachiba to Nihon” symposium actively sought to give meaning to Japan’s standpoint. That is, both the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the Greater East Asia War came to be endowed there with philosophical significance. But the most dominant feature of the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium is what can be described as its derision of such significance. This attitude can be seen not only in Kobayashi Hideo, but also in Nakamura Mitsuo, who, however, spoke little during the proceedings. In other words, this was the attitude of the journal Bungakkai. As Nakamura Mitsuo writes in his symposium paper:

When they (Europeans) reject or negate the human spiritual-intellectual order (or disorder) that is modernity, we can see their implicit conviction that they themselves have lived through that order (or disorder) to its end. When they claim that nothing more can be expected from modernity, their despair stands alongside their confidence that they have accomplished virtually everything that modernity allows.… Now in reflecting upon this question, do we have such a healthy despair or confidence about “modernity,” one that is rooted in our very lives?

Nakamura Mitsuo is clearly critical of the symposium. Rather than reject it, however, he attempts to position it as the very site of criticism. For example, Nakamura states that he too was aware of Valéry’s Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, having attended Valéry’s lectures while studying in France before the war. When such scholars of French literature as Kawakami Tetsutarō and Nakamura Mitsuo refer to “Europeans,” they mean France. At the time of the symposium, however, France was occupied by Germany, and Europe (with the exception of England) was “unified” by the Nazis. Thus it is natural that Kawakami would say that Valéry’s committee “sounded empty.” Nevertheless, Kawakami seems to have tried to align himself with the esprit of the defeated French.

There is no question that Valéry envisioned his Committee for Intellectual Cooperation as an opposition against the fascism that was then spreading throughout Italy, Spain, Finland, and Germany. But this opposition was quickly defeated. It is hardly possible that Kawakami and Nakamura were happy with this defeat. At the same time, however, they were fully aware of Valéry’s powerlessness. I think that their “hopeless hope” lay in their desire not to suffer a similar fate.

As represented by Heidegger, the notion of “overcoming modernity” was actively discussed in Germany, even if this exact phrase was not used. For example, the realization of a Grossraum or “large area” (the European community) that would transcend modern sovereign states was part of this notion of “overcoming modernity.” But Germany was Japan’s ally, not its enemy. Rather it can be said that the framework for the “overcoming modernity” debate in Japan (as put forth by the Kyoto School and the Japanese Romantics) came from Germany. Thus we can say that one of the characteristics of the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium was its criticism of such German thought. In other words, the symposium’s opposition was in a sense an opposition between German thought and French thought. Which is to say, it represented a conflict between the camps of philosophy and literature. As Kobayashi Hideo writes:

In effect, the overcoming of modernity is really a question of overcoming western modernity. It is easy to speak of Japanese modernity. To slightly change the topic, both your (i.e., Nishitani Keiji) essay and that of Yoshimitsu [Yoshihiko] are extremely difficult. I would go so far as to say that these essays lack the sensuality of the Japanese people’s language. We feel that philosophers are truly indifferent to our fate of writing in the national language. Since this language is the traditional language of Japan, no matter how sincerely and logically expressed, its flavor must appear in one’s style as that which can only be achieved by Japanese people. This is what writers always aim for in their trade. It is linked to literary reality, and so either moves people or leaves them unmoved. Thought is contained within this literary reality. Philosophers are extremely nonchalant in this regard. If this attitude is not overcome, however, it strikes me that Japanese philosophy will never truly be reborn as Japanese philosophy. What are your thoughts on this?

In a sense, such a view still remains today. For example, Hiromatsu Wataru points out that in the postwar period the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium is discussed only in terms of literary criticism, thereby neglecting the role of the Kyoto School. Yet there are certain reasons for this. The Kyoto School’s remarks were extremely crude and empty—although this is in no way a characteristic of “philosophy” as such, but rather of a certain kind of philosophy. This point can be grasped by looking at Hiromatsu’s own prose. Modern Japanese philosophy has been formed by the vocabulary and ways of thinking of German Idealism. It is this that has come to be seen as “philosophy.” Yet philosophy must consist of clear thinking that is based on one’s life and experience. In this sense, it is precisely the “literary critics” who were the more philosophical. Yet these men were primarily affiliated with French literature and philosophy.

Hence it must be said that the opposition between literature and philosophy was really an opposition between two kinds of philosophy. Conversely, however, this can also be described as an opposition between two kinds of “literature” or “aesthetics.” For example, Kobayashi Hideo set “Bergsonian aesthetics” against the German Romantics’ notion of aesthetics. What is crucial is that, first, both of these were nothing more than “aesthetics”; and secondly, England and the United States, with whom Japan was then at war, were completely omitted here. Such omission is closely connected to the fact that these writers were “aesthetic.”

It is said that Japan has been “Westernized” since the Meiji era, but the meaning of the “West” here is generally confusing. I would like to consider the West in terms of the division between England and the United States on the one hand and France and Germany on the other. This distinction can be clearly seen particularly among intellectuals. The most representative thinker of the early Meiji era, Fukuzawa Yukichi, belongs to the English-American tradition. As a practical issue, English has now come to be adopted in the schools as a required language. Yet the Meiji state was modeled on Bismarck Germany, and German was indispensable in such state discourses as law, medicine, and philosophy. Since Inoue Tetsujirō, Japanese “philosophy” has centered on German Idealism. Meanwhile, French established itself as the language of literature in the latter half of Meiji. For example, both the Naturalists and the Shirakaba School were exclusively devoted to France.

Let us here place Natsume Sōseki between these two spaces. As goes without saying, Sōseki was a scholar of English literature, and yet he was ordered to study not English literature but rather the English language when sent to England by the Ministry of Education in 1900 (Meiji 33). Sōseki then inquired of Ueda Kazutoshi whether this meant that he was not to study English literature. Since matters were of course not so strict, “I realized that I had some room to change things according to my own judgment.” These words appear in the preface of Sōseki’s Bungakuron [Theory of literature]. Or rather, Sōseki could not but expressly write them. Yet why was he ordered to study the English language? This question is deeply related to his work Bungakuron.

German was the “state” language while English was the language of the economy and practical matters. This is clear from the fact that English has now come to be the required language in schools. At the time, English was a global language that circulated throughout the British Empire and the United States. Precisely for that reason, however, it became difficult to make English the language of literature. Kant says that interest must be discarded in aesthetic judgments, and there is too much interest at stake in English. Even now, to study English literature is to study the English language, which will be useful later on. Among the many students in English literature departments, there are few who enter to study literature. However, this is not the case with students in French literature departments. Even with a college degree, it is difficult to make a living with French. For example, while there are many who study abroad simply in order to master English, this is all but impossible in the case of French. Those who go to France do so in order to study such things as literature and philosophy or cooking and fashion. In a broad sense, moreover, these are all related to “aesthetics.”

Such an atmosphere in fact already existed when Sōseki was studying in England. French literature was then dominant not only in Japan, but in England as well. In other words, to study literature at that time represented both opposition to the state and a renunciation of economic interest. However, to Sōseki, having studied English literature, the meaning of “literature” was far from clear. He was unable to simply separate it from the useful, the moral, and the intellectual. Bungakuron represents Sōseki’s attempt to inquire into what literature fundamentally is. Yet he perhaps would not have asked this question had he studied something other than English literature. Those of his contemporaries who studied French literature or German philosophy were far more sanguine. From the perspective of these latter disciplines, English literature and philosophy seemed empirical, lacking in depth and coherence.

However, in the eighteenth century, England was the most developed modern society in the world. In both its bourgeois economy and its political form, England brought forth from its own experience things that belonged uniquely to it. In Sōseki’s words, the country achieved a “spontaneous” development. For example, in England Sōseki cherished and studied the eighteenth-century writers Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne. But England at that time was under the influence of French literature, and neither Swift nor Sterne was considered literary. Similarly, Sōseki’s work Wagahai wa neko dearu [I am a cat] was also seen as nonliterary by the Japanese literary establishment at that time, which was dominated by French Naturalism. For in this work there can be seen all kinds of discussion, from politics, economics, and science to cultural critique.

If England is “spontaneous” (naihatsuteki), then other areas must be “externally motivated” (gaihatsuteki). For example, it can be said that French Enlightenment thinkers idealized (rinenka) what England experienced, while German intellectuals grasped it in a more ideal (kannenteki) form. Here the distinctions between England, France, and Germany are not important; rather, we should refer to things as English, German, or French. These terms archetypally express three types of spiritual attitude.

For example, it is often said that Marx’s thought has its roots in Germany (philosophy), France (socialism), and England (economics). But Marx moved from Germany to France and then on to England. His ideology critique was originally a critique of the process by which a “problem” is grasped and “overcome” merely as an idea when no problem actually exists. This is the reason that German and French philosophy found acceptance in Japan. Here modern society was ideally grasped and even “overcome” where no modern society actually existed.

For example, the thought of “freedom” (jiyū) did not originally come from philosophy but rather from economics. As Tosaka Jun writes in his 1935 (Shōwa 10) text Nihon ideorogīron [On Japanese ideology]:

As goes without saying, liberalism (jiyūshugi) first began as economic liberalism. The departure point of such liberalism was the rejection of state intervention as based upon the Physiocrats and subsequent classical economics (whereas state intervention was grounded upon mercantilism). This economic liberalism, with its economic policies and theories of free trade and open competition, soon gave birth to political liberalism and all that went with it. Political liberalism consisted of freedom and equality (as the social position of citizens) as well as the specific political concept of democracy (i.e., bourgeois democracy) as based upon freedom and equality.

We can cite, for example, Ishibashi Tanzan as a Japanese economic liberal. In his early Taishō period essay “Dai Nihonshugi no gensō” [The fantasy of great Japanism], Ishibashi called for the relinquishing of such colonies as Korea and Taiwan. There was no need for a Great Japan, he said, when a smaller Japan would be sufficient. Arguing for free trade, Ishibashi wrote that Korea and Japan would willingly participate in such trade if Japan were to voluntarily liberate them. This position is one of liberalism as based upon Adam Smith. Ishibashi continued to immerse himself in such liberal thought, but he was of course in the minority. In a way, Natsume Sōseki was an English liberal, as can be seen in his lecture “Watakushi no kojinshugi” [My individualism]. It can perhaps be said that Sōseki’s philosophical standpoint was that of Hume.

However, such intellectuals have been extremely rare in Japanese history, and they have all been treated with contempt. For example, even those figures of “Taishō democracy” were already mere “political liberals” as compared with Ishibashi. They saw the colonies as a self-evident premise. Yet what of “liberalism” in the Shōwa period, when even the possibility of “political liberalism” had disappeared?

As Tosaka writes, “But the third phase of liberalism was created out of these economic and political liberalisms, or perhaps it was grounded upon or corresponded with these. For convenience’ sake, let us call this phase cultural liberalism” (Nihon ideorogīron). For Tosaka,

The very meaning of such liberalism is literary, it must be a liberalism that is decisively cut off from liberalism in the sense of political action (which would necessarily lead to the pursuit of democracy). Even in its political aspect, it is here nothing more than liberalism as a literary concept, one that utterly transcends politics.… Now surprisingly enough, such literary liberalism contains a path that runs through fascism.

The notion of “aesthetics” that I previously spoke of refers to this “literary liberalism.” In an environment in which the Left had been destroyed and political and economic liberalisms themselves had been hunted down, the journal Bungakkai represented the standpoint of “cultural liberalism.” The “Overcoming Modernity” symposium was not so pernicious as some have claimed without, however, having actually read it. Rather it is shocking that such statements were possible during this time of war. In other words, Bungakkai was perhaps the sole journal that sought to preserve “freedom” of speech.

The phrase “end of modernity” was popular around the year 1935 (Shōwa 10). While these words are similar to the “end of history” phrase that one hears today, it should be noted that Marxism was at that time completely suppressed in Japan. With the destruction of the Left, Kobayashi Hideo’s Bungakkai was envisioned as a site of intellectual resistance as based upon liberalism. In fact, the Marxist thinker Miki Kiyoshi participated in its activities, and Kobayashi even actively recruited Nakano Shigeharu as a member, despite his break with them. However, to claim that Bungakkai had to be the site of liberalism is precisely to say that liberalism at this time could only be literary liberalism. That is, in a Japan that utterly lacked any actual liberalism, “freedom” here was realized at an imaginary level, and so could only be “aesthetic.”

As Kant states, aesthetic judgment is based upon “judgment” (imagination), which surmounts and unifies the contradiction between sensation and idea. In Kant, this notion of aesthetic judgment is in the end merely an appearance. With the Romantics who followed Kant, however, aesthetic judgment was placed at the foundation of all judgment. In this way, “aesthetics” became the foundation of philosophy. Since the Romantics, philosophy has in fact meant aesthetics.

More concretely, “aesthetics” is that which surmounts the various contradictions of everyday life and politics. Such contradictions would include, for example, those between the personal and the communal and between the individualistic and the totalistic. These contradictions always appear in capitalist economies. In political terms, this represents the opposition between liberalist economies and state interventionist (socialist) economies. It also represents the contradiction between the imperialist invasion of Asia and the struggle for Asia’s liberation from such Western imperialism.

As Takeuchi Yoshimi writes,

In a way, the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium represented a condensed version of the aporias of modern Japanese history. Faced with the urgent intellectual task of interpreting the idea of eternal warfare at a time of total war, the symposium marked the explosion of such traditional oppositions as that of reactionaryism and restoration, reverence for the Emperor and exclusion of foreigners, isolationism and the opening of the country, ultranationalism and “civilization and enlightenment,” and East and West.

But it was “aesthetics” alone that sought to “intellectually” surmount these actual aporias. Of course aesthetics can be of several types. One such type is Hegelian dialectics, that is, a dialectics that sublates contradictions in practical fashion. Hegelian dialectics is aesthetic in its belief that the two contradictory terms were originally one. So-called Marxism is an adherent of Hegelianism, but here dialectics at least contains as its premise a telos that is to be realized. Marxism also sets forth the notions of actual change and progress.

But the “aesthetics” that emerged after the destruction of Marxism rejected the very notion that something should be actively realized. Whereas Kant says that beauty exists as separate from interest, so-called post-Romantic “aesthetics” believed that it was precisely the negation of actual interest that was indispensable for the realization of beauty. This is what Yasuda Yojūrō meant by the notion of romantische Ironie. For Yasuda, it was precisely “dialectics” that had to be negated in its actual surmounting of actual contradictions. Although “dialectics” first of all meant Marxism, Yasuda sought more fundamentally to negate the notion of “civilization and enlightenment” itself. He saw Marxism as simply the final stage of “civilization and enlightenment.”

In effect, what Yasuda called “dialectics” was the attitude whereby one sought to make something actual, whereas “irony” represented the opposition to this. Of course Yasuda also applied these notions to Japan’s war. For him, the ideologues’ various war aims and realizations had to be negated. He did not care if Japan lost the war if poetry could be realized in the process. The actual consisted only of the “occasional causes” of poetry or beauty. This attitude differs from jingoism. For example, Yasuda praised Uchimura Kanzō for his pacifism during the Russo-Japanese War, and it was in fact rumored that Yasuda was listed as a security risk by the state authorities.

Yet Yasuda’s attitude was not all that strange. Takeuchi Yoshimi wrote that “the intellectual role played by Yasuda was that of eradicating thought through the destruction of all categories,” but this was entirely characteristic of that “irony” of the German Romantics. What is crucial here is that irony was to be used against “dialectics,” i.e., the notion of active realization. Perhaps this was the reason Yasuda did not participate in the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium.

Yasuda’s notion of “irony” so fascinated people (including Mishima Yukio) because it maintained that interest always dogged those who sought to realize something. Such attempts at realization were thus impure and not “aesthetic.” In concrete terms, the tōsei-ha military authorities were impure in their attitude toward the punished kōdō-ha (who supported the Emperor), since their own interests were at stake. The nation’s youths who were fated to die in the war knew that they were actually part of the interests of monopoly capital, regardless of whether the war was justified or not. Hence the Japanese Romantics, to whom these youths were committed, represented a form of aesthetic resistance. Incidentally, this notion of interest is related to Mishima Yukio’s expressions of sympathy for the Zenkyōtō movement in the 1960s as well as Yasuda Yojūrō’s praise for the Red Guards during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Both Mishima and Yasuda saw in Zenkyōtō and the Red Guards, respectively, an indifference to interest and active realization.

Perhaps actual interest must be abandoned at such moments when death is unavoidable. Akutagawa Ryūnosuke coined the phrase “dying eyes,” which was later widely taken up by Kawabata Yasunari. Landscape is beautiful as seen from “dying eyes” since there is no longer the interest at stake while one still has life. For Yasuda Yojūrō, “beauty” emerges only when one abandons the attempt to actively realize something.

There exists another attitude regarding actual contradictions: Nishida Kitarō’s “logic of nothingness.” Simply put, this logic represents a negation of the Hegelian surmounting of contradictions through struggle. What appears to people as contradiction in fact depends upon a superficial viewpoint, since these contradictions are fundamentally unified as what Nishida calls “absolute contradictory self-identity.” All contradictions are “sublated” by this logic. However, Nishida’s logic is also an “aesthetics.”

Such thinking could already be seen in Okakura Tenshin’s Tōyō no risō [The ideals of the East]. There Okakura writes that “Asia is one,” but this oneness refers to the Oriental arts. That is to say, Asia’s identity is not to be found in its economy, politics, or religion. Criticizing Hegelian dialectics in its focus on contradiction, Okakura saw in Asia the principle of Advaita (nondualism), which represents an identity of contradictories. Although developmental, Western history was based upon incessant strife, whereas the Orient, despite its character of stagnation, represented peace and was based on “love.” Yasuda also grounded his argument on Okakura’s “aesthetics.”

However, such nondualism is the same as Nishida’s notion of “absolute contradictory self-identity.” That is to say, Nishida’s philosophy is an aesthetics. As Nishida’s student Tosaka Jun sharply observes, Nishida philosophy is Romantic and aesthetic:

While it may seem that Nishida’s recent philosophy has lost some of its Romantic-aesthetic coloring, this is rather due to its establishing of Romantic-aesthetic methods (i.e., its manner of organizing the world of meanings and images). These methods have begun to be called “Nishida philosophy” by Professor Sōda.… As I have said, Nishida philosophy is in no way based upon feudal, gothic methods; rather it represents the very essence of modern Romanticism. Nothing is more suited to endorse the cultural consciousness of the modern man of culture. Here modern man’s capitalist education finds a spokesman for its own culturally free (jiyū) consciousness, whereupon it becomes a representative of the philosophy of cultural liberalism (jiyūshugi) (in contrast to economic or political liberalism). Herein lies the popularity of Nishida philosophy.

What I would like to call attention to here is that, in Nishida and still more in the Kyoto School as a whole, this “logic” acted as something that “logically” surmounted actual contradictions. For example, the state-controlled economy was “interpreted” in terms of a “cooperatism” that surmounted both liberalism and communism, or individualism and totalitarianism (Miki Kiyoshi). Likewise, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was “interpreted” as something that surmounted both the modern nation-state and Soviet-style internationalism. In other words, every kind of contradiction was seen as “already” sublated. This “logic” thus came to affirm every established fact, which was wonderfully beautified in the minds of these philosophers.

As Tosaka Jun remarked, such “logic” was thus aesthetic. In this regard, it must be said that the Bungakkai group sought to critique not merely “philosophy” but “aesthetics,” as I have already mentioned. Yet Kobayashi Hideo, who opposed this logic, nevertheless also remained dependant upon “aesthetics.” As he writes,

Nor is it the case that I do not understand the philosophers’ viewpoint. Earlier we discussed the appropriateness of the term “aesthetics” over that of “historical philosophy.” While I have never really studied aesthetics, I have been most influenced these days by Bergson’s aesthetics—despite the fact that he did not particularly write on this. What I find so interesting in Bergson’s aesthetics is his lack of ambiguity, as can be seen so often in the writings of other philosophers. Bergson writes extremely clearly, without any such vague terms as for example that of “concrete universal”..… Seeing historical and social man as masked, he directly constructs a metaphysics from pure perceptual analysis. Although Bergson was once popular in the past, the time will again surely come in our country when he is seriously read. What an empty dream! When seen from the perspective of our efforts to attain reality, the massive historical schemes and maps that we moderns stuff into our heads are really demons that must be destroyed and abandoned.

Since the Eleatic School, there can be seen such paradoxes as “Achilles cannot overtake a turtle” or “An arrow in flight doesn’t fly.” It can be said that such paradoxes have inspired philosophy. Hegel believed that the arrow was in “contradiction” in that it was simultaneously in flight and at rest, and that this contradiction produced movement. In contrast, Bergson held that the arrow appeared contradictory only because time was spatialized and seen analytically. Time was rather durée, or “duration,” and the “now” was not a point but a manifold. Generally speaking, this is what Bergson thought.

In order to come in contact with “reality,” Kobayashi Hideo believed that man should not concern himself with such “aesthetics” as “concrete universals,” but rather abandon the restrictions that shadow our thought and participate within such actuality. In other words, Kobayashi held that we should reject the Hegelian program and teleological history and at the same time surmount actual contradictions through an “aesthetic” attitude. This represented an affirmation of the “present” as “duration,” which merges with the future in the past. Of course Kobayashi’s thinking is also an “aesthetics.” In fact, Kobayashi’s notions are very close to what Nishida Kitarō called “pure experience” in his Zen no kenkyū [An inquiry into the good]. What Kobayashi rejected was simply Nishida’s terminology.

Kobayashi Hideo rejected any attribution of meaning (i.e., interpretation) to the Greater East Asia War: “I gradually came to understand that ‘history’ remains indifferent to the modern interpretations of us moderns. And I first realized that therein lay history’s beauty.” Please note here Kobayashi’s use of the phrase “history’s beauty.” The Greater East Asia War could not be interpreted by any theory whatsoever; rather it achieved “beauty” only through one’s participation in it as “fate.” It was thus already seen through “dying eyes.”

Although Kobayashi still conceived of the possibility of resistance when he formed Bungakkai, he had now reached the point of resignation. Criticizing the war ideology (including that of the Kyoto School), he took the position of those who could do nothing in the war but die, somehow trying to see “freedom” in this.

It should be clear from the foregoing that the differences and oppositions among those who participated in the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium were fundamentally “aesthetic.” We can see there the struggle between France and Germany, as it were, or again between literature and philosophy. As I have already mentioned, however, “Europe” was unified by the fascist powers Germany and Italy, which had formed an alliance with Japan, and so Japan’s enemies were strictly England and the United States. The symposium’s participants had all reflected on Europe’s “depth,” and either ignored or entirely dismissed England and the United States. This was due to the lack of “aesthetics” in those two countries.

I stated earlier that “aesthetics” is that which surmounts and unifies actual contradictions at an imaginary level. Conversely, “aesthetics” becomes dominant in those places where it is impossible to actually surmount actual contradictions. This explains why aesthetics never developed in England, despite the fact that it owes its modern form to such eighteenth-century Englishmen as the Earl of Shaftesbury and Edmund Burke. On the other hand, as I have said, German idealism is basically an “aesthetics,” as is modern Japanese philosophy as well.

The “Overcoming Modernity” symposium realized “literary liberalism” to its highest degree. As I have said, this “literary liberalism” differed from the countless trash pieces that were written by ideologues at around this same time (and which are unbearable to read today). Nevertheless, it was nothing more than simple “aesthetic” discussions. With the exception of the contributions of Shimomura Toratarō and one physicist, what stands out in the symposium is its general contempt for technology. Such topics as “culture” and “spirit” were seriously discussed in its place. Yet this is rather odd considering that people like Kobayashi Hideo, Kawakami Tetsutarō, and Nakamura Mitsuo had all read Valéry.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, Valéry had written an essay titled “The Crisis of the Mind.” Asking the question “What is Europe?” he said that he only first became conscious of Europe in 1894 with the Sino-Japanese War and in 1898 with the Spanish-American War. Until that time he believed that Europe was the “world,” in which there existed such countries as France and Germany. What made Valéry realize that Europe was only one world was the Sino-Japanese War and the Spanish-American War—that is, from Europe’s perspective, the Japan of the far East and the United States of the far West. Moreover, these two countries made free use of the technology that had come from Europe to win these wars. Valéry acutely realized that Europe was now only one world when Japan and the United States, making use of European technology, stood against it.

In other words, what allowed Valéry to realize that Europe was only one world was not the existence of other, heterogeneous worlds. He says in fact that it was Europe’s own product that came to turn against it. This was technology. Valéry did not conceive of Europe in terms of “culture” or “spiritual depth,” but rather as “technology.” Thus technology represented an applicability outside Europe, it was something that could corner Europe. In fact, technology later came to corner the United States just as it will someday corner Japan, and this is because technology is applicability. If technology is a European product, then, Europe has conquered the world, even if Europe were to be destroyed by it.

Valéry had astonishing prescience to speak of the United States and Japan in this way at the end of the nineteenth century, for these countries have, alongside Europe, formed the world’s tripartite structure, which survives even today. Valéry’s insight is related to his rejection of “aesthetics,” as it were. As a critic, he focused on “poetics,” i.e., the question of “technique” or “technology.” Kawakami Tetsutarō criticized Valéry at the symposium as a “mystic of machinery,” but he was of course not a mystic at all. Rather he began his work by becoming conscious of the apparently mystical process of creation itself. In other words, Valéry tried to see all mysticism in terms of its technical or technological form.

Now what was rather unique in the symposium were the remarks of the film critic Tsumura Hideo. Tsumura regarded Americanism as the greatest threat. He stood apart from the other participants in that he studied film: “As goes without saying, film is an artistic form that first emerged with the end of modernity.” In other words, there is something postmodern about film itself, and this cannot be separated from the question of technology. As Tsumura writes:

Since the Meiji period, Japan has massively absorbed Europe’s modern spirit and modern culture. There can be no question of this. Since the Taishō period, however, Japan has also massively absorbed Americanism.… What is most frightening about American materialist civilization is the production and furnishing of a lifestyle that fits the present day. It is here that the “masses” have been most influenced and tainted. One would be mistaken to think that only the ignorant masses have been so influenced, and not the intellectuals.… I don’t believe there is anything of value in Americanism that needs to be handed down. Nevertheless, it is treacherous in the ease, inevitability and familiarity with which it infects people.

The dominant opinion at the symposium was that the United States had no “culture,” or only a very superficial one. If this were true, however, why had American culture so strongly permeated Japan? The infectiousness of Americanism was based on the applicability of “technology,” which for Valéry originated in Europe. Yet everyone at the symposium, including Tsumura Hideo, criticized American “materialist civilization” and praised the depth of European “culture.” Even today, for example, “Japanese culture” is associated with such things as Noh drama, kabuki, the tea ceremony, and flower arrangement, but what has spread throughout the globe are the country’s computer games, animation, manga comics and manga-type novels for young girls. Both Western and Asian intellectuals who are opposed to this spread of “Japanese culture” warn against “the ease, inevitability, and familiarity with which it infects people,” exactly as the Japanese of the past ridiculed “American culture.”

But it would be foolish to view “culture” or “spirit” with such scorn. Given that the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium was conceived at the beginning of the war with the United States, what is the significance of the fact that both the United States and England were all but ignored there? Putting aside the question of what the participants of the symposium actually thought, it seems to me that they were simply convinced that Japan had no hope of winning the war. Perhaps it was the case that any interest in the war’s outcome would be un-“aesthetic” or un-“spiritual.”

In closing, I would like to quote from an essay that was written shortly before the symposium and was unconnected to it: this is Sakaguchi Ango’s March 1942 “Nihon bunka shikan” [My view of Japanese culture]. The essay is a critique of the German architect Bruno Taut’s book The Rediscovery of Japanese Culture. Taut’s argument is that “Japanese culture” is something that exists beyond the fall of Western modernity. Such a thesis was considered to be supportive of Japan’s “Overcoming Modernity” discourse at the time. Yet Sakaguchi rejects that sort of “Japanese culture discourse.” As he writes,

However, there is a gap that remains entirely unknown to Taut between his discovery of Japan and the beauty of Japanese tradition and the fact that we, despite our neglect of this tradition, are actually Japanese. That is to say, Taut could only discover Japan whereas we, who are actually Japanese, have no need to discover it. While it may be true that we have neglected classical Japanese culture, it is impossible for us to neglect Japan. For us, there is no need to discuss such questions as “What is the Japanese spirit?” Japan is not born from such an explained spirit, nor is that explanation part of this spirit. If the everyday life of Japanese people is healthy, then Japan itself is healthy.

These words do not necessarily apply to Taut alone, as such “explanations” can be seen in every Japanese discussion of “Japan.” The same can be said for every discussion of “tradition” in the “Overcoming Modernity” symposium. Moreover, Ango’s remarks are a rejection of discourse that describes our alienation and loss of self in modern society. He says that there is no original state to be restored. Ango is speaking here of “beauty,” but he stands poles apart from such notions as that of “dying eyes.” For him, beauty is what “living” and its “necessity” alone create:

What is only superficially stylish cannot become truly beautiful. Everything is a question of substance. Beauty for its own sake is stiff and ultimately inauthentic. In short, such beauty is empty. Empty things can never strike one like true things, but are simply indifferent things. It makes no difference whatsoever if the Hōryūji or Byōdōin temples are burnt down. If necessary, it would be best to destroy Hōryūji and build a parking lot in its place.… If that were truly necessary, then true beauty would certainly emerge there as well, for true everyday life exists there. Insofar as everyday life is lived truly, there is nothing to be ashamed about blind imitation. Insofar as such imitation represents true everyday life, it is just as superior as originality.

In reading Ango’s essay, everything about the “Overcoming Modernity” discussion comes to seem utterly empty. At first glance, Ango’s view appears to be that of “modernism.” But his despair runs far deeper than that of any of the “Overcoming Modernity” participants. Ango says that such discussions about overcoming the modern or returning to the premodern are vacuous, that we are in any case living therein, and that such “life” is to be affirmed. This is precisely what it means to “overcome modernity,” as it were. Yet Ango never explained it like this.