Publications of Note

Toshihiko Izutsu and the Philosophy of WORD: In Search of the Spiritual Orient. By Eisuke Wakamatsu; translated by Jean Connell Hoff. International House of Japan, Tokyo, 2014. xxvi, 457 pages

Originally published as Izutsu Toshihiko: Eichi no tetsugaku (Keio University Press, 2011), this “intellectual biography” follows the intellectual development of “one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century” (p. xi). Izutsu was a “philosopher of language in the higher sense, . . . a metaphysician of kotoba . . . , WORD” (p. xii). The book includes a chronology and bibliography.

L’Éblouissement d’un regard: Découverte et réception occidentales du théâtre japonais de la fin du Moyen Âge à la seconde guerre mondiale. By Jean-Jacques Tschudin. Anacharsis, Toulouse, 2014. 389 pages. €27.00.

Tschudin’s exploration of the Western discovery of Japanese theater begins with observations by Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century, follows Japanese troupes on their tours of Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century, introduces Japanese stars of the Western stage, and demonstrates the influence of Japanese theater in Western dramatic works and productions and on individual playwrights such as William Butler Yeats and Bertolt Brecht.

Individu-s et démocratie au Japan. Edited by Christian Galan and Jean-Pierre Giraud. Presses Universitaires du Midi, Toulouse, 2015. 332 pages. €25.00.

The 14 essays in this volume originated in workshops in 2008 and 2010 and explore themes on the individual, human rights, and protection of democracy in Japan. Contributors (in addition to the editors) are Emmanuel Lozerand, Asari Makoto, Isabelle Konuma, Fujiwara Dan, Isabelle Marty, Corrado Neri, Claude Lévi Alvarès, Anne Gonon, Érick Laurent, Yves-Marie Allioux, Sumitani Hirobumi, and Horio Teruhisa.