Defending Japan's Pacific war
Subtitle: the Kyoto School Philosophers and post-white power
By: David Williams.
Publisher: RoutledgeCurzon
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
Subjects: Philosophy -- Japan -- 20th century; World War, 1939-1945 -- Japan
Description: "Often wrongly accused of being fascists, the wartime Kyoto philosophers were among the first non-White thinkers to brood on the secrets of effective national action. They believed, with Marx, that the point of philosophy is to change the world. They exploited a sophisticated idea of history, borrowed partly from Ranke, partly from Hegel, to develop a Japanese understanding of rational self-mastery. This is the first study based on a meticulous examination of the primary sources in Japanese, which clarifies who these forgotten intellectuals were while challenging the orthodox prejudices that explain why we do not know more about them.

In their published writings and hitherto secret anti-Tojo seminars of 1940-44, the philosophers of the Kyoto School took the first soundings of the post-White age that will define our tomorrow. They offered us the philosophy of our future."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Rise and fall: 1. Roman questions: American empire and the Kyoto school; title: 2. Revisionism and the end of white America in Japan studies; title: The decay of Pacific war orthodoxy: 3. Philosophy and the Pacific war, Imperial Japan and the making of a post-white world; title: 4. Scholarship or propaganda, Neo-Marxism and the decay of Pacific war orthodoxy; title: 5. Wartime Japan as it really was, The Kyoto school's struggle against Tojo, 1941-44; title: In defence of the kyoto school: 6. Taking Kyoto philosophy seriously; title: 7. Racism and the black legend of the Kyoto school; title: Translating Tanabe's the logic of the species: 8. When is a philosopher a moral monster?, Tanabe versus Heidegger versus Marcuse; title: Nazism and the crises of the Kyoto school : 9. Heidegger, Nazism and the farmas affair; title: The European origins of the Kyoto school crises: 10. Heidegger and the wartime Kyoto school; title: After farmas, the first paradigm crisis (1987-1996): 11. Nazism is no excuse, after farmas- the allied Gaze and the second crisis (1997-2002); title: After america, philosophy: 12. Nothing shall be spared, a manifesto on the future of Japan studies.