Table Of Content‘This deeply researched and provocative study highlights the key significance
of Confucian political ideas for Kyoto School thinkers while demonstrating
the futility of approaching their philosophy from the standpoint of “moral
history”’.
Graham Parkes, University College Cork, Ireland
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The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime
Resistance
The transcripts of the three Kyoto School roundtable discussions of the theme of
‘thestandpointofworldhistoryandJapan’maynowbejudgedtoformthekeysource
textofresponsiblePacificWarrevisionism.PublishedinthepagesofChu-o- Ko-ron,the
influential magazine of enlightened elite Japanese opinion during the twelve months
afterPearlHarbor,thesesubversivediscussionsinvolvedfourofthefinestmindsofthe
second generation of the Kyoto School of philosophy. Tainted by controversy and
shrouded in conspiratorial mystery, these transcripts were never republished in Japan
afterthewar,andthey haveneverbeentranslatedintoEnglishexcept inselectiveand
often highlybiasedform.
David Williams has now produced the first objective, balanced and close inter-
pretativereadingofthesethreediscussionsintheirentiretysince1943.Thisversionof
the wartime Kyoto School transcripts is neither a translation nor a paraphrase but a
fuller rendering in reader-friendly English that is convincingly faithful to the spirit of
the original texts. The result is a masterpiece of interpretation and inter-cultural
understanding between the Confucian East and the liberal West. Seventy years after
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Tojo came to power, these documents of the Japanese resistance to his wartime gov-
ernment and policies exercise a unique claim on students of Japanese history and
thoughttodaybecauseoftheirunrivalledrevelatorypotentialwithinthevastliterature
on the Pacific War. The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance may therefore
standasthemosttrenchantanalysisofthepolitical,philosophicandlegalfoundations
oftheplaceofthePacificWarinmodernJapanesehistoryyettoappearinanylanguage.
DavidWilliamsisoneofEurope’sleadingthinkersonthemodernOrient.BorninLos
Angeles, he was educated in Japan and at UCLA, and contributed for many years to
theopinionsectionoftheLosAngelesTimes.HehastaughtatOxford,wherehetook
his doctorate, Sheffield and Cardiff Universities. He has worked for the Industrial
- -
Bank of Japan, Mitsui and Co., the Iran-Japan Petrochemical Co. and Toyo Keizai
(‘TheOrientalEconomist’).Duringtwelveofhistwenty-fiveyearsinJapanhewasan
editorial writer for The Japan Times, before working in financial services in Tokyo,
London and New York City. He is the author of Japan: Beyond the End of History
(1994),JapanandtheEnemiesofOpenPoliticalScience(1996)andDefendingJapan’s
Pacific War: The Kyoto Philosophers and Post-white Power (2004), and co-editor of
TheLeft intheShaping ofJapanese Democracy(with Rikki Kersten, 2006). Hiswork
has been short-listed for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the John Whitney
Hall History Award. In 2009 he delivered the inaugural Master Class on Paradigm
Innovation in Interdisciplinary ResearchatUniversityCollegeCorkintheRepublicof
Ireland,whereheisnowvisiting fellow in philosophy.
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