Abstract
This chapter aims to highlight Sartre’s reception in Japan, notably regarding the following question: how did Sartre’s philosophy, especially on the status of others, exert an influence on the shift of the intellectual scheme in post-war Japan? To tackle this question, one must notice first of all that a philosophy must be translated, then presented, and eventually practiced, in order to have an influence on a foreign country. Who, then, are the Sartreans that have played this mediator role between Sartre and his foreign public? What means were used? Which Japanese ideology did they fight against? How could the use of Sartrean philosophy help change the Japanese society after the war? From these perspectives, our chapter will focus on the academic reception of Sartre, but will also aim to go beyond academia and consider the impact of his philosophy within the whole society.
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Notes
- 1.
For an overview of the relationship between Sartre and Japan see Sawada (2013, 2004) and Müller (2008). For an analysis of the reception in the field of publishing, see the Japanese article by Ishii (2006); the author comments: “all the insights we acquired from data on publications analysis lead to the following conclusion that 1966 is the acme year of Sartre’s reception in Japan” (Ishii 2006, p. 103).
- 2.
The encounter with this Japanese philosopher who will later participate in the famous Kyoto School (京都学派) is not episodical if we consider that Sartre discovered German contemporary philosophy at an early stage thanks to this Japanese who studied with Heidegger. Cf. Light (1987).
- 3.
- 4.
Nariaki Kobayashi mostly drafted the first part, while Hiroaki Seki did the latter.
- 5.
See Yasuhiko Masuda (2007). Surprisingly, The Wall, The Room, and an extract of Nausea were already translated before the war.
- 6.
For instance, Martin Heidegger mentions Shūzō Kuki in Dialogue on Language Between a Japanese and an Inquirer (Heidegger 1976).
- 7.
Another example is Kiyoshi Miki (1897–1945) who, also as a Kyoto School member, mentioned in his 1937 study on imagination the name of the author who published L’imagination during the previous year.
- 8.
He also translated Sartre’s philosophical writings such as La transcendance de l’ego,Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions and La Critiquede la raison dialectique, and co-edited, with Michihiko Suzuki (to be presented in the next chapter) in 1966, the oeuvre entitled The Totality of Sartre which reproduced important articles written by various Japanese authors.
- 9.
See the article “The Kyoto School” published in Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Some refuse, however, to consider Watsuji in this School. In the Encyclopaedia of Thinking and Philosophy the article on The Kyoto School explains that Watsuji “is located at the periphery of this school” (Nakaoka 1998).
- 10.
See, for example, “the fusion of two [the Nation as the spiritual community and the personality as part of the nation] enables us to achieve, at the finitude of human being, the greater fusion of the two moments, the personal one and the collective one. The personality as individual comes back, through wiping any egotism away, to the totality of the nation with the holy” (Watsuji 1942, p. 452). “The individual’s return to the ultimate totality can be achieved thanks to its devotion to the State. […] Man can experience real human being which is removing egotism through courage and living in the totality” (Watsuji 1942, p. 505). “To have faithful subjects, we must build all the paths of human relationships from family to the State, through regional or cultural communities. […] The Emperor wishes that all his subjects walk the human relationship path so they can answer to his holy heart and fully express their fidelity” (Watsuji 1942, pp. 506–507).
- 11.
Watsuji’s thought goes beyond this political conception of course, which is imposed by time constraints. For a moderate conception, see Karube (2010).
- 12.
Number 14 of Les Temps modernes (January 1946) revealed the Heidegger affair for the first time in France. An anonymous op-ed says “it is possible to look at Heidegger’s existentialism for what could promote accepting Nazism” (N.N. 1946). However, the author, who is said to be Sartre, did not go further.
- 13.
We observe that at the beginning Takeuchi was not highly critical of Watsuji. On the contrary, the young Takeuchi was close to Watsuji’s thought. This aspect was highlighted by Nariaki Kobayashi, “‘L’après-guerre’ of Yoshirō Takeuchi” at the 39th symposium of the Japanese Sartrean studies association, on 15 July 2017. In that sense, Takeuchi’s criticism of Watsuji and the Kyoto School is auto-critique.
- 14.
It is understood that the philosophy of alterity has not always been absent from Japanese philosophy. We can think of Shūzō Kuki, a Kyoto School member. He developed the unique philosophy of contingency in Problem of the Contingency (1935), in which he insisted on the contingent meaning of the Other’s existence. This philosopher influenced Takeuchi’s early works, as well as his comment on Nietzsche and his reception of Sartre, so it would be necessary to moderate comments on Takeuchi’s relationship with the Kyoto School. This critical relationship is also a critical renewal. There is the need to prepare another article on the global influence of Kuki on the reception of Sartre in Japan.
- 15.
Zainichi (the term (在日) literally means “to stay in Japan”) are the descendants of Koreans who came to Japan especially after Japan’s 1910 colonization of Korea. Koreans were since then considered as subjects of the Empire of Japan, which introduced many assimilation policies (the adoption of Japanese names, teaching of the Japanese language, etc.). However, many Koreans who came to Japan, often unwillingly, faced various forms of discrimination and in many cases, like that of the massacre during the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, suffered from ferocious atrocities. They were considered as Others inside Japan, where ethnocentric ideology had a great influence.
- 16.
Regarding these ambiguous feelings, see Michihiko’s ‘existential’ biography about his father Shintarō Suzuki (Suzuki 2014).
- 17.
For details of the case, see the annex to Crime, Death and Love [Tsumi to shi to ai to], new edition by Park Soonam (Park 1984, pp. 249–270).
- 18.
For the Korean name, the pronunciations differ slightly in Japanese (Ri Chin-u) and proper Korean (Yi Chin’u). We adopt the Japanese pronunciation for Ri Chin-u and Kim Hiro (Kwon Hyi-ro), as was customary. For other Korean authors cited hereafter, we adopt the Korean pronunciation.
- 19.
- 20.
See on this point the remark by Suh Kyung-Sik: “It is easy to imagine that the ethnic discrimination shared on average by the majority of Japanese at the time was inflicted not only on the police authorities, but also in the media world as well as in a good number of readers. In other words, the way in which Japanese society looked at this affair was from the beginning strongly tainted by ethnic discrimination” (Suh 2010, p. 35).
- 21.
Of these works, two are particularly worth mentioning because they are works by two famous Sartreans. One is a film by Nagisa Ōshima, entitled Death by Hanging [Kōshikē] (1968). It is undoubtedly the best known among the works inspired by the case. The other is entitled Cry [Sakebigoe] (1963), a novel published by Kenzaburō Ōe, a future Nobel laureate. Regarding Sartre’s influence on Nagisa Ōshima, see Müller (2009).
- 22.
This article, first published in 1966 under the title “The Choice of Evil” in the bulletin of his university seminar, was reprinted in February 1967 in the journal New Japanese Literature [Shin Nihon Bungaku] and later in his book The Thoughts of Engagement (Suzuki 1969, pp. 370–388). The quotations are from the last edition.
- 23.
Sartre (2011, p. 659). Here the English translation (Sartre 2012, p. 596) makes an error when it writes: “In claiming absolute objectivity, Genetseems to be a particular opponent of a historical society” while the original is: “En revendiquant l’objectivité absolue, Genet cesse d’être un opposant particulier à une société historique”.
- 24.
“My first impression is that the problem I had been thinking about for a long time in the Komatsugawa case really happened. However, in the Komatsugawa case, I put myself in a safe place when I was looking for Ri Chin-u’s deep interiority, because he was already dead. But this Korean [Kim Hiro] is a living being and, according to the press, he openly declared that he would commit suicide soon. I feel troubled by the fact that things as I thought them were realized in this way” (Suzuki 2007, p. 152).
- 25.
In this sense, we couldn’t agree with the criticism of Cho Kyung-hee, even if it should be taken into serious consideration: “We dare to say, without fear of misunderstanding, that the documents in which Ri Chin-u recorded his own universalistic thinking are suitable for Japanese writers and thinkers, including Suzuki, to draw their own sympathy and sentimentalism. (…) It is not only the problem of Suzuki. What matters here is the weakness of the intellectual base of thinking in Japan, which is incapable of assuming the legacy of the epoque of colonialism which deeply determined the way of being of Zainichi and tries instead of it to relativize it as a property of man in general in order to feel ‘human’ sympathy towards the Zainichi”. See Cho (2017, pp. 247–248).
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Kobayashi, N., Seki, H. (2020). The Discovery of the Other in Post-War Japan: Two Sartreans on Kyoto School and Zainichi Koreans. In: Betschart, A., Werner, J. (eds) Sartre and the International Impact of Existentialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38482-1_16
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