Japanese Culture: The Religious and Philosophical Foundations takes readers on a thoroughly researched and extremely readable journey through Japan's cultural history. This much-anticipated sequel to Roger Davies's best-selling The Japanese Mind provides a comprehensive overview of the religion and philosophy of Japan. This cultural history of Japan explains the diverse cultural traditions that underlie modern Japan and offers readers deep insights into Japanese manners and etiquette. Davies begins with an investigation of the origins of the (...) class='Hi'>Japanese, followed by an analysis of the most important approaches used by scholars to describe the essential elements of Japanese culture. From there, each chapter focuses on one of the formative elements: Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Confucianism, and Western influences in the modern era. Each chapter is concluded with extensive endnotes along with thought-provoking discussion activities, making this volume ideal for individual readers and for classroom instruction. Anyone interested in pursuing a deeper understanding of this complex and fascinating nation will find Davies's work an invaluable resource. (shrink)

One of this century's leading works on Zen, this book is a valuable source for those wishing to understand its concepts in the context of Japanese life and art.

The analysis of the reciprocal relations of the discipline of philosophy and other cultural phenomena requires a few disclaimers. First of all, the characterization of philosophy as a cultural phenomenon along with literature, music and theater, or culinary arts, fashions and sports, rejects claims that philosophy somehow relates to absolute truths which transcend the limits of any particular cultural context and mean the same things for anyone who manages to reach the heights and/or depths necessary for that purpose. This also (...) entails that any pursuit of philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy in Japan, is only possible within the network of textualities and cultural practices that surround it, and the people engaged in it relate to the cultural codes and institutions of their environment just as they relate to the internal rules of their philosophy and its received heritage. Secondly, we have to acknowledge two major aspects in approaching any cultural phenomenon, namely, its texts and its practice. The texts produced by the people engaged in, say, philosophy or literature or cooking are distinct from, yet always related to, the practical aspects of that phenomenon, which determine who produces these texts, how and why they are produced, and how they are used and disseminated. Alternatively, seen from the aspect of practice, texts are a sort of by-product of what people do; for example, reciting Buddhist sutras does not imply a deep understanding of their semantic, textual, and philosophical content. Both of these aspects are equally relevant to the phenomenon as a whole, and neither can be sufficiently analyzed without the knowledge of the other. In this article, I will focus on some key categories and issues mainly as they have been reflected in the domain of literature, especially since it can be argued that literature is the filter through which Buddhist influence, and its philosophical aspect, in particular, has been mediated to other spheres of culture. (shrink)

Zen and Japanese Culture is one of the twentieth century's leading works on Zen, and a valuable source for those wishing to understand its concepts in the context of Japanese life and art. In simple, often poetic, language, Daisetz Suzuki describes his conception of Zen and its historical evolution. He connects Zen to the philosophy of the samurai, and subtly portrays the relationship between Zen and swordsmanship, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese love of nature. Suzuki's (...) contemplative work is enhanced by anecdotes, poetry, and illustrations showing silk screens, calligraphy, and examples of architecture. Since its original publication in 1938, this important work has played a major role in shaping conceptions of Zen's influence on Japanese traditional arts. Richard Jaffe's introduction acquaints a new generation of readers with Suzuki's life and career in both Japan and America. Jaffe discusses how Zen and Japanese Culture was received upon its first publication and analyzes the book in light of contemporary criticism, especially by scholars of Japanese Buddhism. (shrink)

Since Japan adopted the concept of informed consent from the West, its inappropriate acquisition from patients in the Japanese clinical setting has continued, due in part to cultural aspects. Here, we discuss the current status of and contemporary issues surrounding informed consent in Japan, and how these are influenced by Japanese culture.

The essence of human being resides not only in his/her brain, but also in every part of the body, therefore, the idea that brain-death equals human death can not be true in a certain context. Of course their arguments are not so strictly constructed, but if we take this theory seriously and develop it philosophically, it may have the possibility of criticize the very basis of contemporary civilization which is inclined to see humans only as a reasoning and calculating machine (...) made up of brain's complicated neuron-networks. (shrink)

This paper does not attempt to breathe a new life into the sociology of literature. The real concern here is limited to making a possible contribution to the work conducted in Japanese language and literature departments by using the sociology of literature as a method. The discussion begins with a summary of the sociology of literature, merely to make clear the basic characteristics of the method developed by well-known intellectuals. Then the novel Botchan is taken as an example for (...) the suggested approach. (shrink)

Studies of mythology and the philosophy of religions ascribe violence an important role in understanding traditional societies. Whether perceived as sacred and capable of renewing the world, or as oppressive and destructive, violence acquires a twofold valence, whose constituents are interpreted in a complementary relation of interdependence and entail a world outlook with profound implications. Retrieving this ambiguous dimension of religious violence, Kenzaburō Ōe’s novel imagines, against the historical background of post-war Japanese society, a game that enacts the eternal (...) rivalry between two brothers. Lest the history of this seemingly lost present should fall prey to political abuse, the Japanese writer proposes a return to myth, without, however, idealising it; instead, myth is revalorised and tradition is re-conceived from the vantage point of rationalism, with full and alert awareness of the dangers inherent in an ideology that is imposed by force and aggression. Kenzaburō Ōe’s novel is a lucid meditation on Japan’s modern and contemporary history. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to define the 'ethnocategory' mushi in Japanese culture, through a semantic analysis of the Chinese characters bearing the radical "mushi," and fieldwork research in rural Japan. The research offers criteria for an animal's inclusion in the category, reveals the differences in people's perception of mushi according to age and gender, and elicits a structure of the category as a series of concentric circles around a semantic core. The richness and complexity of the findings (...) provide insight into Japanese attitudes towards animals and nature. (shrink)

Nishida Kitaro is a well-known Japanese philosopher whose work is marked by attempts to combine the world outlooks of the national spiritual tradition with elements of European philosophical thought. The article analyzes Nishida’s views on culture that are an independent part of his original philosophical theory. Religion, art, morality, science are the ideal forms of being in the historical world. The work of a scientist or artist is a manifestation of the formative activity of a person. The historical (...) world as the “sphere of absolute nothingness” is the final point of the introspection of “nothingness,” where reality comprehends the identity of its opposites through human activity. Nothingness, or “Emptiness,” in the East Asian tradition has another, dynamic, dimension – these are the relations between people and the relations between man and the cosmos, or Nature, which are not perceived by rough human feelings and not comprehended by equally rough mind. Nishida stressed that for Japan the issue of the authenticity of the national foundations of culture, separated from Chinese and Indian influences, has a clearly positive answer in the aesthetic sphere: in the field of traditional poetics. The traditional aesthetics of Japan reflects the archetypal structure of the national culture. All world cultures have a common prototype, but each of them is a deviation, one-sidedness of this prototype. In the West, a culture of the form triumphed, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. In Japan, on the contrary, the culture was characterized by fluidity, processability, formlessness. In fact, Nishida is one of founding fathers of modern Japanese cultural studies. (shrink)

It is often said that ethical discussion on robots, robotics and HRI is poor in Japan. However, this is only a superficial response. Although topics such as “autonomy ” or “responsibility ” are not “hot” topics, Japan is a country where different views on robots are commonly accepted. These views are often based on cultural and social traditions. In this chapter, we focus on Japanese robots and their philosophical and ethical backgrounds, examining the discussions by the authors such as (...) Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō, Yuasa Yasuo and Ichikawa Hiroshi. In contrast to the Western views based on the separation of the subject and the object or the mind and the body, Japanese authors often talk about “oneness,” i.e. the undifferentiated situation of entities, things and humans in this world. We will try to see how we can understand Japanese robots, their kokoro 心 and their mi 身 by this kind of cultural, ethical and philosophical views based on the authentic state of oneness of the subject and the object, the humans and the rest of entities in the world. (shrink)

What is culture? What can we learn from art, architecture, and fashion about how people relate? Can cultures embody ethical and moral ideals? These are just some of the questions addressed in this book on the cultural philosophy of three preeminent Japanese philosophers of the early twentieth century, Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō and Kuki Shūzō.

The paper provides an overview of the rise of Japanese philosophy during the period of rapid modernization in Japan after the Meiji Restoration (beginning in the 1860s). It also examines the controversy surrounding Japanese philosophy towards the end of the Pacific War (1945), and its renewal in the contemporary context. The post-Meiji thinkers engaged themselves with the questions of universality and particularity; the former represented science, medicine, technology, and philosophy (understood as ) and the latter, the Japanese (...) non-Western tradition. Within the context, the question arose whether or not Japan, the only non-Western nation to succeed in modernization at the time, could also offer a philosophy that was universal in scope? Could Japanese philosophy offer an alternative form of modernity to the global domination of Western modernity? In this historical context, the philosophies of Kitaro Nishida and Tetsuro Watsuji, two of the tradition's most prominent thinkers, are introduced. Nishida is considered the and his followers came to be known as the . The essay ends with a brief reflection on the influence of philosophy on culture, focusing on the aftermath of the tsunami catastrophe in 2011. (shrink)

Offers a vivid, nuanced, and chronological account of Buddhistreligion in Japan -- from its emergence in the sixth centuryright through to the present day.

Emotion suppression has been found to have negative psychological and social consequences in Western cultural contexts. Yet, in some other cultural contexts, emotion suppression is less likely to have negative consequences; relatedly, emotion suppression is also more common in those East-Asian cultural contexts. In a dyadic conflict study, we aim to conceptually replicate cultural differences found in previous research with respect to the prevalence and consequences of emotion suppression,and extend previous research by testing whether cultural differences are larger for some (...) than for other types of negative emotions. We postulate that cultural differences in suppression are less pronounced for socially engaging emotions than socially disengaging emotions, because the former foster the relationship, whereas the latter emphasize individual goals. Belgian and Japanese couples engaged in a 10-min conflict interaction followed by video-mediated recall, during which participants rated their emotions and emotion suppression every 30 s. As predicted, Japanese participants reported more suppression than their Belgian counterparts, but the cultural difference was more pronounced when participants experienced more socially disengaging emotions than when they experienced more socially engaging emotions. These results suggest that the type of emotion should be considered when describing cultural differences in emotion suppression. Finally, and consistent with previous research, emotion suppression was negatively associated with interaction outcomes in Belgian couples, but not in Japanese couples. (shrink)

In 1961 in Japan, the son of a hospitalized man suffering from severe pain after a stroke mixed a cup of milk with insecticide and arranged for his unsuspecting mother to give this to the patient, who had requested that his son assist him in dying. The son could not endure his father's condition and killed him in order to show his love.