The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance

Edited by David Williams

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About the Book

This is a complete translation, together with a substantial commentary and introduction, of The Standpoint of World History and Japan, by Masaaki Kosaka, Iwao Koyama, Keiji Nishitani and Shigetaka Suzuki. This important work, by leading philosophers of the Kyoto School, long regarded as one of the most notorious "fascist" texts produced in Japan during the Pacific War, is, in fact, the translator and editor argues, an act of bold public dissent from the policies of aggressive expansion pursued by the wartime Tojo regime. As the translator and editor argues, the work of the Kyoto School requires close guided reading, as the true radical meaning is often made deliberately opaque by the writers in order to avoid inviting a hostile reaction from the regime being criticised. The translator and editor provides guidance on how to extract the true meaning from this opaque work, and goes on to cotend that these Kyoto School philosophers were conspiring with the Imperial Japanese Navy to bring the Tojo cabinet down.

Table of Contents

Prologue: What is the Kyoto School. The Book in Brief. Acknowledgements. A Concise Outline of the Great East Asian War, 1931-45. Japanese Usage and Style Part 1: The Philosophy of Japanese Resistance 1. The Event - Pearl Harbour as the End of History 2. The Conspiracy - Plotting to Bring Tojo Down 3. The Text - How to Read The Standpoint of World History and Japan 4. The Significance - Texts Written in the Shadow of Prison 5. The Controversy - Wartime Japan as It Really Was Part 2: The Standpoint of World History and Japan 1. ‘The Standpoint of World History and Japan’ (26 November 1941) 2. ‘The Ethical and Historical Character of the East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere’ (4 March 1942) 3. ‘The Philosophy of Total Resistance’ (24 November 1942) Postscript: The Publication of The Standpoint of World and Japan as a book in 1943 and the Fate of the Publisher Chuo Koron-sha. Appendix: Translation of ‘The Preface’ to the book version of The Standpoint of World History and Japan (1943)

About the Author(s)

David Williams is Lecturer in the Cardiff Japanese Studies Centre at the University of Cardiff, UK. He is the author of Japan: Beyond the End of History (1994), Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science (1996) and Defending Japan's Pacific War: The Kyoto Philosophers and Post-white Power (2004) and The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy (2006).