Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitaro (review)

Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945) is considered the most important, and perhaps the most original, Japanese philosopher in the post-Meiji period. Indeed, he is widely regarded as the first truly Japanese philosopher, if philosophy names the traditionally Western discipline of rational inquiry that was introduced to Japan in the 1870s and if originality of thought counts as the measure of a true philosopher. Those who judge Nishida to be Japan's first and most important philosopher commonly detect his originality in his infusion of insights from Zen experience into a rational account of the world, an infusion that transformed the Western discipline by opening it to a new source.

The title and tenor of Michiko Yusa's illuminating book, the first comprehensive biography of Nishida in a non-Japanese language,¹ reflect this judgment while not pretending to establish it. The very first sentence in her book reads, "Nishida Kitarō defined for the Japanese what it means to philosophize" (p. xv), and is followed by introductory sections on "Meiji: A Unique Historical Juncture," "Zen and Philosophy," and "Philosophy Beyond Zen." The question of source, however, is not so simple. The copious documentation of Yusa's work makes it evident that Nishida's philosophical predecessors and contemporaries served as sources of his contributions as much as did his personal engagement with Zen Buddhism, and that as often as not a palpable tension held sway between Nishida's life experiences and his philosophical writing. The biography also exposes in great detail another layer of sources and transformations: the historical circumstances that "swept Japan into the vortex of world history" (p.4) and world war, and Nishida's involvement in and interpretation of the plan for a new world order. Yusa's work is unmistakably, if implicitly, a defense of Nishida as leader of the Kyoto School against the charge of nationalism and complicity in Japanese expansionism. Indeed, this biography seems to situate Nishida's writings, a series of highly abstract philosophical investigations, between his personal Zen experience and his public life. A perusal of Yusa's quotations from Nishida's letters and diary indicates the tension Nishida himself often felt between the philosophical writing at the heart of his endeavors and the demands of private Zen practice and family life in his early career, or of politics later on.

Although Nishida's political life and writings, as this biography demonstrates, developed rather late and reluctantly, we might address them first here. They are as strong a reason for his fame today as the mass of his philosophical work. Nishida was a formidable intellectual whom historians of post-Meiji Japan cannot overlook. As a professor in elite higher schools and at Kyoto Imperial University, he had students who eventually became government officials and introduced others to him; his growing reputation as Japan's premier philosopher brought them back for counsel and support. He had once wanted to live as a "totally private man" (p.216), a "total recluse" (p.221), but from the mid-1930s until the end of his life, public figures continually sought his advice concerning education and Japan's role in a new world order. Ministers of education persuaded him to serve on committees and academic advisory boards; Prime Minister Konoe Ayamaru consulted but also tried to avoid him; members of the Diet, university presidents, and naval officers summoned and listened to him, at least perfunctorily. He gave public lectures on national issues and wrote political tracts on the "Problem of Japanese Culture" (1940), the "Reason for the State's Existence" (1941), the "Principle of the New World Order" and "Tradition" (1943), and "Kokutai" (1944). He received Japan's Cultural Medal in 1940 and accepted the honor of delivering the New Year's lecture to the emperor in 1941.

Most of this, if we are to believe statements in his private letters and diary, he considered a diversion or even distraction from his real...