Japan's Cultural Identity. Some Reflections On The Work of Watsuji Tetsuro (1965)

Japan's Cultural Identity: Some Reflections on the Work of Watsuji Tetsuro
Author(s): Robert N. Bellah

Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Aug., 1965), pp. 573-594
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
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Japan'sCulturalIdentity
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE WORK OF WATSUJI TETSURO
ROBERT N. BELLAH
T has become customary among many Western scholars to consider Japan as part
1 of an East Asian cultural area, or as a participant in Chinese or Sinic civilization.
In a general conception of Asian culture viewed as consisting of East Asian, South
Asian, and Middle Eastern cultural areas dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Is-
lamic civilizations respectively, it seems obvious that Japan belongs in the first cate-
gory. Yet most Japanese scholars use another classification which would divide Asian
culture into four areas: Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and-as a separate category on the
same level as the other three-Japanese. Without denying the close relation to China,
the Japanese scholar is apt to emphasize the unique configuration of Japanese culture
which makes it in some sense sui generis. This is only one among many manifesta-
tions of the widespread feeling in Japan that Japanese culture is "unique," and "dif-
ferent." This sense of Japan's uniqueness may give rise to pride, sorrow, or a feeling
of loneliness; but that it is shared by Japanese with otherwise quite varying views is
itself a fact of significance.
Correlative with the sense of uniqueness is a strong feeling of personal identifica-
tion which Japanesefeel with their culture. A Japanese abroad seldom forgets that he
is Japanese,just as a foreigner in Japan is seldom allowed to forget that he is not Jap-
anese. (The overtones of the Japanese word "gaijin" are scarcely captured in the
translation "foreigner.") Perhaps it would even be possible to stretch the concept of
role narcissism, which George DeVos has developed,' to apply to the representative
role of being Japanese.Such a "national narcissism"is of course found to some degree
in any country. To apply the term especially to Japan is not to say that Japan is in this
respect pathological, but to emphasize that Japan is, comparatively speaking, extreme.
Given the salience of Japanese self-consciousness, it follows that Japanese would
be likely to show great concern about the national self-image or cultural identity. This
in fact seems to be the case. Not only has there been a long and continuing concern
with what is Japanese, but often studies of other societies seem more interested in
placing Japan relative to them than in understanding them for their own sake. Again,
the Japanese are not alone in this, but the preoccupation seems greater than elsewhere.
Some effort will be made to explain this special Japanese preoccupation in the final
section of this paper after illustrative material on particular Japanese self-conceptions
has been presented. The main body of evidence will come from the work of Watsuji
Tetsuro, one of the leading interpreters of Japanese culture in this century. But first
I will turn to a brief sketch of some of the conceptions of Japan's cultural identity
which have appeared in the last century.
The author is Associate Professor of Sociology and Regional Studies, Harvard University. An earlier
version of this paper was read at the spring, I964, meeting of the Association for Asian Studies.
1 George DeVos, "Role Narcissism and the Etiology of Japanese Suicide," mimeo, I964.
573

574 ROBERT N. BELLAH
Few Japanese in late Tokugawa times had any very sophisticated conception of
the world and Japan'splace in it. Hirata Atsutane (I776-I843) knew more than most
about the West, but he was capable of bizarre views as to the physiological peculiar-
ities of Westerners and seems to have believed that Japan's superiority over other
nations is proved by the fact that the sun first shines on it each morning.2 As an ex-
ample of the sort of thing which was current in early nineteenth century Japan, we
may cite a passage from the influential thinker of the Mito School, Aizawa Seishisai:
The earth in the firmamentappearsto be perfectlyround, without edges or corners.

However,everythingexists in its naturalbodilyform, and our Divine Land is situatedat
the top of the earth.Thus, althoughit is not an extensivecountryspatially,it reigns over
all quartersof the world, for it has never once changed its dynasty or its form of sov-
ereignty.The variouscountriesof the West correspondto the feet and legs of the body.
That is why their ships come from afar to visit Japan.As for the land amidst the seas
which the Westernbarbarianscall America,it occupiesthe hindmostregion of the earth;
thus, its peopleare stupidand simple,and are incapableof doing things.3
The cruder aspects of these comfortable assumptions were soon to be exploded, but
the habits of thought which lay behind them were not so easily dispelled. A tacit as-
sumption that Japan itself provides a standard for all values goes far back in Jap-
anese history. This cannot be called nationalism as there was no concept of nation,
certainly no notion of a sovereign people so indestructibly bound up with modern
nationalism. If there was any structural reference at all, it was not to the nation but
rather, as in the case of Aizawa, to the imperial dynasty. Shinto, on the whole lacking
an explicit theological structure, gave ritual expression to the largely inarticulate
union of land and people. It is true that Buddhism in the case of Shinran and D6gen
and Confucianism in the case of Ogyiu Sorai produced thinkers oriented to transcend-
ent or universalistic values for whom Japan itself had no ultimate meaning; but it was
generally the fate of Buddhism and Confucianism to become subsumed in and sub-
ordinated to Japanese particularism. Since loyalty was primarily to what Nakamura
Hajime speaks of as a "social nexus,"4however broadly or narrowly defined, and not
to a set of abstractideas, there was not, in the Japanese tradition, a strong philosophi-
cal or religious orthodoxy such as existed in China, the Islamic world, or the West.5
The opening of the country in the early Meiji period gave a severe blow to Jap-
anese cultural particularism and provided the possibility for the growth of certain
tendencies counter to it. But from middle and late Meiji times Japanese particular-
ism, never seriously menaced as an unconscious assumption, was able vigorously to
reassert itself. As examples of the counter-trends,two of the most important thinkers
of the Meiji period may be mentioned,Fukuzawa Yukichi (I834-I90) and Uchi
mura Kanzo (I86I-I930).6 Both of them were Japanese nationalists, but neither of
2 See Donald Keene, "Hirata Atsutane and Western Learning," T'oung Pao, 42, 1954, pp. 353-380.
3 Ryusaku Tsunoda, et al., Sources of the JapaneseTradition, Columbia, 1958, p. 596.
4 Nakamura Hajime, The Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, revised translation, Hawaii, East-West
Center Press, I964, chapter 35.
5 This is a point which has been stressed by Maruyama Masao. See his Nihon no Shisd (Japanese
Thought), Iwanami Shinsho, 196I.
6 The interpretationof Fukuzawa and Uchimura owes much to conversations with Maruyama Masao
and Ishida Takeshi as well as to Ienaga Saburo'sKindai Seishin to Sono Genkai (The Modern Spirit and
Its Limitations), Kadokawa, 1950.

JAPAN'S CULTURAL IDENTITY 575
them was a Japanese particularist. Both of them based themselves on values which
could not be derived from or reduced to the Japanese social nexus.
Fukuzawa, who seemed to embody the rather untheoretical pragmatism of Toku-
gawa culture, found theoretical expression for it in English individualism and utili-
tarianism. For him personal independence and national independence were insepa-
rably related. But the independent nation made sense for him only as a framework for
the independent individual, not subordinate to any ultimate social nexus. As a tactical
measure Fukuzawa could support the suppression of political freedoms for the sake
of national unity in the dangerous international climate of the late nineteenth century,
for loss of national independence would destroy any hope of independence for the
individual. But it was to liberal individualism that he gave his ultimate loyalty.
Uchimura was linked more to the idealistic current in Japanese tradition, to the
great religious thinkers and the men of action who died happily for lost causes. He
found in Christianity an absolute religious reference for his idealism. Japan would
become great to the extent that it embodied the commands of Jesus. The individual,
because he is ultimately a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, can never find final
meaning in an earthly social nexus.
Both liberalism and Christianity were important currents in Meiji thought, but
they by no means went unchallenged. Rather, Japanese particularism found a new
degree of theoretical explicitness in the thought of what the Japanese call the "em-
peror system" which began to crystallize from about i890o. The problem was raised
sharply by the beginning of constitutionalism in Japan. Western constitutionalism
rests ultimately on a natural law basis with strongly theistic presuppositions. If the
Japanese constitution was not to rest on a notion of God which was neither indige-
nous nor well understood, what would be the locus of ultimate authority and value?
The answer as embodied in the imperial rescript on education and the constitution
itself is: the imperial line, unbroken for ages eternal. No clearer assertion of Japanese
particularism was possible.
Though sometimes referred to as an "orthodoxy,"it should be evident that em,
peror-system thought was not an abstract philosophical or religious system. It was
rather an assertion about ultimate authority and value which for many proximate
purposes need not be invoked at all. A wide variety of types of thought could oper-
ate under its mandate, rousing no strong objections unless certain sensitive areas were
touched upon. The difficulty was that what was considered sensitive could not be
predicted but varied in accord with the general state of Japanese society. What might
be said with hardly a mutter of protest in I9I4 could be condemned as un-Japanese
and treasonable in I935. What had changed was not the idea expressed but the sensi-
tivity of Japanesesociety, or rather of its establishedguardians.
Though emperor-system thought was securely established from the eighteen
nineties, anti-particularistictendencies were also present in Taisha and early Shawa
times. Chief among these were liberalism and socialism. It is true that liberalism, or
at least populism, and some aspects of Marxism, could be harmonized with the em-
peror system and indeed did provide strands in the "emperor-systemfascism" which
7 See Ishida Takeshi, Meiji Sciji Shisoshi Kenkyfi (Studies in the History of Meiji Political Thought),
Miraisha,1954.

developed in the nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties.8 But to the degree that
liberals or Marxists maintained a loyalty to universalistic principles which trans-
scended Japan there was always the possibility of direct confrontation. The liberal
Kawai Eijir6 (I89I-I944) and the MarxistKawakamiHajime (I879-I946) provide
cases where the confrontation became irreconcilable.
Having briefly outlined the development of Japanese particularism and its
counter-tendencies in modern Japan, we now turn to the conceptions of Japanese
history and culture developed in association with these various trends. The old praise
and blame historiography of largely Confucian inspiration which took loyalty to the
emperor as its highest criterion was seriously undercut in the rush of new learning
which entered early Meiji Japan.9Both Christians and liberals taught a conception of
history dominated by the idea of progress in terms of which Japanese history could
be understood but which endowed it with no special meaning. While social Darwin-
ism could be appropriated, like almost everything else, by the emperor system, and
indeed was as a justification for imperialism (as elsewhere), nineteenth century posi-
tivistic history could not solve all the needs of revivified Japanese particularism.
Inoue Tetsujiro (I856-i944), author of the official commentary on the imperial
rescript on education,'0 was perhaps the closest approximation to an "official"philos-
opher of the emperor system. Inoue, whose chief claim to scholarly standing rested on
surveys of Tokugawa Confucianism,"1ransacked the Japanese tradition for suitable
materials. He came to focus on three concepts which became the heart of Japanese
ethics as taught by the Ministry of Education: kokutai,chui, and ko. Kokutaiis the
almost untranslatableterm for the quintessence of Japanese particularity; chu7and k6
are loyalty and filial piety. Inoue and others like him asserted the ultimate value of the
harmony of Japanese emperor and people (kokutai) and the obligations to emperor
and ancestors which flow from it (chu and kt).
But even as Inoue was arguing with the liberals and Christians, other sensitive
and educated Japanesewere finding commitment to simple minded "national ethics"
or to doctrinaire Western ideologies unacceptable.The writer Natsume Soseki (i867-
I9I6) and the philosopher Nishida Kitaro (I870-I945) were representative of this
latter group. Feeling a deep nostalgia for Japanese culture and values, yet unable to
turn away from the intellectual achievements of the West, they hoped for a recon-
ciling position to which they could devote themselves. It was Nishida, more than
anyone else, who, with the help of Zen Buddhism and German idealism, contrib-
uted to the formation of the new position which strongly influenced all Japanese
literature, thought and culture from the period of the First World War.
The new basis which Nishida found rested on aesthetic experience and mystical
insight, neatly skirting the issue of ultimate value and authority, for the personal ex-
perience which he valued so highly had no immediate relevance to social and ethical
8 For a stimulating treatment of several aspects of Japanese fascism see Maruyama Masao, Thought
and Behavior in Modern JapanesePolitics, Oxford, I963.
9 Carmen Blacker, The JapaneseEnlightenment, Oxford, I964, chapter 7.
10 Inoue Tetsujiro, Chokugo Engi (Commentary on the Rescript), Keigy6sha, I89I. His Waga Kokutai
to Kokumin Ddtoku (Our kokutai and National Morality), Kobund6, 1925, was prescribedfor use in the
public schools by the Ministryof Education in the prewar period.
11 These works on the Yomei, Shushi and Kogaku schools of Confucianism were published in 1897,
1915 and I9I8, respectively, by Fuzambo. Robert Cornell Armstrong, Light from the East; Studies in
JapaneseConfucianism,Toronto, I9I4, is based largely on Inoue.

reality. Nonetheless from his positions there were certain social implications. Though
never engaging in vulgar nationalistic propaganda, he nonetheless spoke of the indi-
vidual and the whole mutually negating themselves with the imperial household as
the center.'2 Absolute negativity which was so central to his philosophy provided in
actuality no alternative to the human nexus as a locus of authority and value. It is not
surprising then that though Nishida himself withdrew into obscure privacy as the
Second World War approached, some of his leading disciples were ardent, though
sophisticated,propagandistsfor Greater East Asia.
Finally, before turning to Watsuji, we must mention several cultural historians
who took positions in varying degrees outside the established view and who pro-
duced conceptions of Japaneseculture quite different from that of the Nishida school.
Tsuda Sokichi, a great scholar of China as well as of Japan, represents the liberal
and pragmatic position applied to the history of Japanese culture. For example, he
interpreted the Taika Reform in terms of power politics rather than lofty ethical
idealism, and he viewed Bushida as a cover for the essentially self-interested land-
grabbing of the feudal warriors.13 In a book published in I939 and suppressed during
the war Tsuda argued that Japan is essentially modern and has little in common with
"oriental"culture as found in China.'4 He held that the old Japanesepattern of an em-
peror who reigns but does not rule is appropriate in modern society. In all these re-
spects Tsuda's work tended to explain Japanese cultural history with the categories
of liberal utilitarian social thought leaving little basis for a mystical Japanese particu-
larism.
Hani Goro is one of the best known of the Marxist writers who from the late
nineteen twenties began to give their version of Japanese cultural history. Hani in-
terpreted certain Tokugawa thinkers such as Arai Hakuseki and especially the Koku-
gaku movement as representing middle class thought in opposition to feudal think-
ing."' The Marxists interpreted Japanese culture in terms of general categories rather
than particularism.
Still another anti-particularistinterpretationwas that of Ienaga Saburo who, in his
pre-war writing, developed a view of Japanese culture which might be seen as
consonant with the position of Uchimura Kanza.16 In Ienaga's view the greatness of
Japanese thought rests in those few men who were able to transcend Japanese par-
ticularity and attain to universal value, especially Shotoku Taishi (in his rather spe-
cial interpretationof him), Shinran and in the modern period Uchimura.
It should be remembered that these men, who were either persecuted or led very
retired lives during the war, were representative of a small minority. Most writing
during the nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties dealt with the Japanese spirit
in mystical and absolute terms, based either on fairly straightforward translations of
12 Nishida Kitaro Zenshfi, Volume I2, p. 27I, as cited in Tatsuo Arima, "Failure of Freedom," un-
published doctoral dissertation, Harvard, I962.
13 These matters are discussed in Volume I (i9i5) and Volume II (I9I7) of Tsuda's Bungaku ni
Arawaretaru Waga Kokumin Shiso no Kenkyfi (A Study of Our National Thought as Expressed in Litera-
ture), Rakuy6d6.
14Tsuda Sokichi, Shina Shisd to Nihon (Chinese Thought and Japan), Iwanami, I939.
15 A representative work of Hani Gor6 is Nihon ni okeru Kindai Shiso no Zentei, (Precursors of
Modern Thought in Japan), a study of Kokugaku, Iwanami, I949.
16 On Ienaga see Robert N. Bellah, "Ienaga Saburo and the Search for Meaning in Modern Japan," in
Marius Jansen, ed., Changing JapaneseAttitudes Toward Modernization, Princeton, I965, where there are
extensive bibliographical references.

classical Confucian and Shinto texts or utilizing more or less elaborate theoretical
structureslike those of the Nishida school. A few, of whom Muraoka Tsunetsugu is
perhaps the outstanding example,17 were neither particularist nor anti-particularist,
but devoted themselves to the highest standards of scholarly research.
Watsuji Tetsuro (i889-ig6o),18 born the son of a small town doctor, received the
best education available in the Japan of his day. Graduating from the First Higher
School in Tokyo, where he had been profoundly impressed by its recently appointed
principal Nitobe Inazo and the great novelist Natsume Soseki, he entered the philos-
ophy department of Tokyo University in I909. After seriously considering a literary
career-he had translated Byron and Shaw, written a number of stories and plays,
and collaboratedon a literary magazine with his friend Tanizaki Junichiro-Watsuji
decided to devote himself seriously to the study of philosophy. Though responding
negatively to the pedantry and self-importance of his teacher Inoue Tetsujiro, he
found spiritual sustenance and encouragement in the teaching of Okakura Tenshin
and especially the famous Koeber Sensei (Raphael Koeber, I848-I923), the Russian
born philosophy professor who influenced a whole generation of Japanese thinkers.
After this auspicious beginning Watsuji's career unfolded with ever more bril-
liant success. Having been one of the first to introduce existentialist thought in Japan
with his book on Nietzsche19 in 19I3 and his book on Kierkegaard20in 19I5, Watsuji
turned to the study of ancient Japanese culture and comparative culture in general.
During the nineteen twenties he published epoch-making studies on early Japanese
art and literature,21early Indian Buddhism,22 the Buddhist cultural influence in Ja-
pan, 3 Greek culture,24and primitive Christianity.25In 1938he rounded out his series
of original researches on ancient cultures with a book on Confucius.26He was very
close to the dominant literary and philosophical movements of the day, namely, the
Shirakaba literary circle and the Kyoto school of philosophy centering on Nishida
Kitaro. In I927-1928 he visited Europe where he studied with Heidegger in Berlin and
traveled extensively Italy and Greece. In 1925 he was appointed to a professorship
in
at Kyoto University and in I934 became professorof ethics at Tokyo University.
But it is with an event of I944 that I wish to begin my consideration of the thought
17 Representative works of Muraoka include Motoori Norinaga, Iwanami, 1927, and Nihon Shis5shi
Kenkya (Studies in the History of Japanese Thought), Iwanami, 4 volumes, I927-I948. A selection of
his essays has recently been translated by Delmer Brown for the JapaneseUNESCO series.
18 Biographical material on Watsuji has been drawn from his own writings, from the introductory
notes to various volumes of the Watsuji Tetsuro Zenshui,Iwanami, 20 volumes, I96I-I963, and the article
on Watsuji by Shida Sh6z6 in the Asahi Journal,Volume 5, No. 5, I963.
19 Nietzsche Kenkyi, Tokyo, 19I3; Zenshu7,Vol. i.
20 Soren Kierkegaard,Tokyo, I9I5; Zenshui,Vol. I.
21 Nihon Kodai Bunka (Ancient JapaneseCulture), Iwanami, I920. Zenshu7,Vol. 3.
22 Genshi Bukkyd no lissen Tetsugaku (The Practical Philosophy of Primitive Buddhism), Iwanami,
I927; Zenshki,Vol. 5.
23 Koji Junrei (Pilgrimages to Ancient Temples), Iwanami, I920; ZenshIi, Vol. 2. Also Nihon Seishinshi
Kenkyt7 and Zoku Nihon Seishinshi Kenkyji (Studies in JapaneseSpiritual History), Iwanami, I926, I935
(Zenshki, Vol. 4), contain material on Buddhist as well as non-Buddhist aspects of ancient and medieval
Japanese culture.
24Polis-teki Ningen no Rinrigaku (Ethics of the Polis), Hakujitsu Sh6in, I948; Zenshu7,Vol. 7. (Parts
of this appeared serially as early as I936.)
25 Genshi Kirisutokyd no Bunkashi-teki Igi (The Significance of Primitive Christianity in the History
of Culture), Iwanami, 1926; Zenshkt,Vol. 7.
26 Confucius, Iwanami, I938; Zenshki,Vol. 6.

of Watsuji Tetsuro. On the tenth of July, 1944, the first pamphlet in the "Wartime
National Library" was published, and two million copies were distributed by the
Ministry of Education. It was composed of two short pieces entitled "The Way of the
Subject in Japan" and "America's National Character,"27whose purpose was to indi-
cate the superiority of Japanese culture to American and the necessary collapse of the
latter when confronted by the former. The author was Watsuji Tetsuro.
It is not unusual to find a scholar writing what is in effect war propaganda, but
these pieces have more than usual interest. In these pages we can see one of Japan's
most widely educated minds reflecting on the meaning of the war. Here is not to be
found the hysterical rhetoric characteristic of much Japanese wartime writing, but
the clarity of expression and the fine use of Western methods of scholarly analysis for
which Watsuji is so famous. The essay on American national character can even be
compared to its American counterpart-Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemumand the
Sword28 -though it is much briefer and less ambitious. The Pacific War posed for
Japan the profoundest problems of its cultural identity-the relation of Eastern to
Western culture and the relation of the Japanesepast to the modern era. It is instruc-
tive to see how Watsuji dealt with those problems at that critical juncture.
"The Way of the Subject in Japan" was first delivered in I943 as a lecture at the
Naval College, and this fact helps to explain some of its content and intention. Wat-
suji begins by quoting a naval officer who defined the Japanese military spirit as in-
volving two stages. The first is "to die happily for the sake of one's lord." But an even
higher stage is expressed in the injunction, "Do not die until the enemy is defeated."
Watsuji explains that the first statement is good but still contains a strong conscious-
ness of self and of the importance of one's self-sacrifice. But the second statement,
which puts one's duty above everything else, is truly to throw away the "I" and at-
tain a standpoint beyond life and death. In this essay Watsuji reflects on the "Way of
the Subject" throughout Japanese history in order to distinguish the true ethical re-
alization of that way from limited and partly selfish expressions of it. There is little
doubt that these historical reflections are aimed in part at the immediately contem-
porary situation and in the context of the Naval College even represent a veiled crit-
icism of the dictatorial army leadership of the day.29
But the point of interest to us is not so much that immediate problem, but the fact
that the pamphlet brings up the general issue of universal ethical value in the Japa-
nese tradition and the special nature of that tradition when compared to other tradi-
tions. For Watsuji the core of ethical value in the Japanese tradition and the reason
for its superiority to other traditions lies in the Way of Reverence for the Emperor.
The ancient Japanese,he says, grasped the absolute in reverence for the emperor. That
method was fundamentally different from the so-calledworld religions of Christianity,
Buddhism and Islam. To them the absolute was limited to their particular religious
27 Nihon no Shindo; Amerika no Kokuminsei, Chikuma Shob6, I944. Nihon no Shindo is in Vol. I4
of the Zenshui,Amerika no Kokuminsei in Vol. 17.

28 Houghton Mifflin, 1946. Incidentally the influence of Nietzsche and Dilthey lies behind both Benedict
and Watsuji.
29 This would mean not a criticism of the war itself but of the direction of the war by the army
bureaucratswho were probably seen by Watsuji as acting too much for themselves and not enough for
the emperor. The "shin" in "Nihon no Shindo" is difficult to translate. While it means "subject"relative
to the ruler, it implies "vassal" or "retainer" rather than common people. "Shind6" could therefore in
the present context be translated"Way of the Officer"as well as "Way of the Subject."

forms; that is, Jehovah, Buddha or Allah. Holding these to be absolute, they had to
oppose all other gods and deny their existence. This led to intolerance, persecution
and religious wars against peoples of other religions. Christianity and Islam are
equally belligerent in these regards, but Buddhism seems to be more tolerant. Actu-
ally it is only Japanese Buddhism, says Watsuji, which is really tolerant; Indian
Buddhists undertook cruel persecutions of heretics. Besides their hositility to other
gods, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam all attempt to express the absolute in dogma,
which is to turn the absolute into something limited, and use that dogma in order to
attack every other dogma.
According to Watsuji, the early Japanese,however, grasped the realm of the abso-
lute without limiting it as an absolute god and without constructing a dogma.
Among the several gods of early Japan, Amaterasu the Sun Goddess was most re-
vered. But Amaterasu was not the first of the gods, nor was any claim made that she
was an absolute god. Rather the absolute was mediated through Amaterasu as an in-
termediate god, and so the absolute could be truly expressed without having to at-
tack the gods and beliefs of others. The emperor, who, as the descendant of Ama-
terasu, bears some of her sacredness,has an analogous function. Sacredness is absolute
but as manifested in Amaterasu and the emperor it is not exclusive. Through relying
on the emperor, one could rely on the absolute. Thus the absolute was concretized in
the early Japanesestate in a more specific way than in the world religions and in not
making the absolute into a fixed god, the Japanese had a higher, potentially more in-
clusive, standpoint than the world religions. From this higher standpoint any religion
can be placed under the influence of the emperor and be accepted in Japan. From this
there developed the broad ideal of taking the best from all countries.
Thus Watsuji turns the tables on those who would hold Shinto to be inferior to
the world religions and who would stigmatize early Japanese culture as inferior be-
cause primitive. Watsuji was fully aware that early Japan was primitive, but he be-
lieved that Japan's primitiveness was the seed of its vitality, its sense of living com-
munity, and of the emperor system which provided the legitimation for the accept-
ance of foreign culture. He did not at all believe literally in the myths of early Shinto,
but held that they could be reinterpreted in terms of the more sophisticated higher
culture later introduced from outside without thereby losing their true significance.30
Returning to the pamphlet, let us consider the decisive theoretical justification
Watsuji gives for his position. That which relates men to their deepest and most
basic absolute is only actualized truly and concretely in a human relational structure,
most fully in the state. The claim of the world religions that they relate men directly
to the absolute is only a pretence. They actually develop human relational structures
like the sangha and the church as substitutes for the state. For the sake of the power
of those substitutes they try to destroy the sacrednessof the state.
This position can be understood better if we take into consideration Watsuji's
more extended analysis of these problems in his Ethics.3"There he argues that there
is no such thing as a universal religion or a religion which relates the individual to
80 Already in Nihon Kodai Bunka he had developed this position. He criticized Motoori's absolute
irrational faith in Shinto myth and argued for the continuous philosophical reinterpretationof myth, only
emperor worship (or reverence) remaining constant. See the discussion of faith and myth, Nihon Kodai
Bunka,Zenshiu,Vol. 3, pp. 260-279.
81 Rinrigaku,Iwanami,Vol. I, I937, Vol. 2, I942, Vol. 3, I949; Zenshui,Vols. Io and ii.

the absolute without any social context. He holds that the so-called world religions
only became extensive in the context of "world empires." Thus the Roman Empire
was a necessary precondition of Christianity. Further, Christianity is only widespread
in the modern world because of the power of Western imperialism. All religions are
necessarily the religions of particular peoples and cannot be truly universal. Watsuji
points out that Yahwe in origin is nothing but the national god of Israel and remains
to the present in some sense a "tribal deity."
For Watsuji religious organization is valid and makes an ethical contribution
when it gives up any claim to being an organization superior to the state and accepts
its place as an organization included in the state. For Watsuji the state is the highest
ethical structure. It is the "relational organization of relational organizations." Only
in the state are selfishness and factionalism overcome and every private relation trans-
muted into a selfless public relation. For Watsuji the state is the expression of the ab-
solute whole which is the same as absolute negativity or absolute emptiness. He views
human nature as composed of two mutually negating aspects, the individual and
the social, which by denying each other give rise dialectically to the absolute
negativity which is their ultimate source. All human groups-the family, kinship
groups, local groups, economic groups, cultural groups-have this quality of self-
negation, but each tends to express selfishness and partiality anew at the group level
even when overcoming it at the individual level. Only in the state is selfishness over-
come absolutely and the truth of man's nature and the nature of the absolute realized.
Reverence for the emperor, which is the heart of Watsuji's ethics, is precisely the par-
ticular Japaneseexpression of this universal truth.32
In the second essay in the I944 pamphlet Watsuji portrays the Anglo-Saxon char-
acter, especially as it was developed in America. Here Watsuji finds the almost perfect
negative image both to his conception of human ethics in general and of Japanese
ethics in particular. He opens with a quote from George Bernard Shaw's Man of
Destiny in which Napoleon describes the English character as motivated solely by
self-interest, but always justifying its acts in the name of religion and morality.33He
finds the chief Anglo-Saxon traits to be individualism, utilitarianism, and a legalistic
moralism, and he traces these back to their classical expression in the seventeenth
century thinkers Bacon and Hobbes.
Watsuji relies on a distinction which developed in Germany, especially in the work
of Spengler, between civilization and culture,34to express the essence of Anglo-Saxon
character.Bacon, says Watsuji, believed only in civilization, meaning the mechanical
utilitarian control of nature. He was totally uninterested in culture, that is, the realm
of the spirit as expressed in ethics, religion and art. The Anglo-Saxon respects culture
only when it is useful, when it has immediate practical results, and places his chief
emphasis on mechanical inductive natural sciences. Watsuji recognizes the contribu-
tion which this attitude made to the development of modern science but holds it to
be very one-sided.
82 Watsuji discusses religious organization in Rinrigaku, Part 3, Chapter 6; the state in Part 3, Chapter
7; Zenshui,Vol. I0, pp. 5I9-625.
83 George Bernard Shaw, The Man of Destiny, in Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, Dodd, Mead, I942,
Vol. II, pp. 2I2-2I3.
34 For a discussion of Spengler's terminology and its context in German thought see Alfred L. Kroeber
and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, Peabody Museum Papers,
Harvard University, Vol. 47, No. I, I952, especially page 26.

Hobbes developed a theory of society which is consonant with the Baconian view
of civilization, says Watsuji. It is to Hobbes that Anglo-Saxon individualism is to be
traced. The essential truth, for Hobbes, is the war of all against all. Individuals only
agree to abide by moral rules out of self-interest,and are bound to obey them only so
long as they accord with self-interest. Thus the Anglo-Saxon emphasis on equality is
only the equality of the struggle of nature, and Hobbesian theory can be used to jus-
tify any kind of imperialism.
Watsuji then traces the development of Hobbesian characteristicsin America. Un-
like the Spanish, who wanted to conquer the Indians for the sake of religion, the
Anglo-Saxons wanted to conquer them only for the sake of their land. Using the
slogan "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," the Americans justified their aggres-
sion on the grounds that they were a more "civilized" people, that is, more mechani-
cally advanced. Getting the Indians drunk with rum, they induced them to sign con-
tracts selling their land for a pittance and then found them "lacking in morality"
and "failing to understand the sacrednessof contract"when they failed to clear out of
the vast forests which had been thus extracted from them. Such immoral people
could be justly slaughtered, according to Anglo-Saxon morality. Without any pangs
of conscience the Anglo-Saxons adopted precisely the same attitude toward the Ne-
groes whom they enslaved and brought over to work for them. The phrase "all men
are created equal" which occurs at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence
does not mean what it seems to, for Indians, Negroes (and later Asiatics) are not
included. Rather what it really means, according to Watsuji, is that "all Anglo-Saxons
are created equal" and that Anglo-Saxon Americans are as good as Anglo-Saxon
Englishmen. The "Treaty of Friendship" which Perry concluded with the Japanese
under threat of naval bombardment has the same characteras the "treaties"which the
Americans had concluded with the Indians. Similarly at the Washington Disarma-
ment Conference the Americans as usual in the name of "peace"and "righteousness"
forced the Japanese into a treaty whose only aim was the furtherance of American
national interest.
The development of Baconian characteristicsin America is expressed in the great
stress on mechanical invention and on respecting learning only for the sake of utili-
tarian results. Benjamin Franklin is the true American representative of the Bacon-
ian tradition. Franklin was greatly interested in practical invention and experiment
and made a great contribution to the development of journalism, which is the char-
acteristic American form of cultural expression, much more than religion, art or poli-
tics. The Americans have since reached the extreme point in the development of ma-
chine civilization. Themselves lacking in morality and art, they judge all other peo-
ples in terms of machines. Those lacking machines are "uncivilized" and so justly to
be regarded as inferior. But the American has become helpless without his machines.
American democracy means that every man is his own boss and there are no fol-
lowers. Everyone has slaves: cars, radios, refrigerators, etc., and lives better than
ancient kings. But at the same time the Americans have become enslaved to the ma-
chine and have lost all feeling for anything but comfort. Such a world in the control
of machines is everywhere quantified. The Americans conform the qualitative hu-
man spirit to quantitative machines rather than the reverse. Number is the demon of
American civilization. Number is the highest expression of this civilization which is
the extreme development of the Baconian spirit.

Watsuji sums up his assessment of the Americans as having the character of col-
onizers(kaitakusha). In the faceof a difficultenvironment the Americans haveper-
formeda greattaskin openingup a new continentand subduingit mechanically.
Butin the courseof thisenterprise theoriginalcalm,patientandstolidAnglo-Saxon
character hasbeenundermined. The American"pursuit of happiness" hasbecomea
cravingforstrongstimulation andthedischarge of energy.It is expressed in a loveof
actionandtension,as indicatedin theAmerican fanaticism aboutsports.The Ameri-
canshavecometo needa constantsuccession of explosions. Theywantsuccessforthe
stimulation it gives-not foranymoralreason.In thistheyarelikegamblers. Onlyin
thiscontextcanwe understand America's schemeof worlddomination, saysWatsuji.
Thereis no reasonor necessityfor themto invadeand conquerothers-theydo it
onlyoutof thegambler's desireforstimulation. ThustheyinvadeAsiaoutof no high
idealanduse"peaceandrighteousness" onlyas cloaksfortheirmisdeeds. Filledwith
irrationalself-righteousnesstheyrelysolelyon machinepower.However,beforethey
havemet onlyhelplessnativeswhereasnow theymeetthosewhosemasteryof ma-
chinepoweris superiorto theirs.They relyon quantityandnumberto crushtheir
enemies,buttheyareheadingfor a nervousbreakdown. A people'sbasicstrengthis
moral,spiritualpower,not quantitative power.A gamblerwho betseverything will
collapsewhen he leastexpectsit.
ThusWatsujiconcludes his I944 pamphlet. In it we seethevividcontrastbetween
theparticularisticJapanese gemeinschaft community(Qy5d6tai) in whichall persons
andgroupsaretakenup andbothincludedandnegatedin reverence fortheemperor
as the expression of the absolutewhole,andthe Americangesellschaft society(Wat-
suji'sJapanesetermis literally"profitsociety,"riekishakai)basedonly on naked
utilitarian betweenJapanese
self-interest; culture(bunka)andAmericancivilization
(bummei).Thoughthisis perhapsa starkerstatement of the basicconfrontation in
termsof whichWatsujiinterpreted contemporary worldhistorythanis to be found
elsewhere in hiswork,it is in almosteveryelementforeshadowed in his writingsdat-
ing fromwellbeforethewar,in somecasesevenfromthe earlynineteentwenties.It
is not a conception produced to orderforwartimeconsumption. It hasrootsdeepin
someof themaincurrents of Japanese thought,andthatis its interestto us.
The civilization/culturecontrast is foundin thefirstchapterof Watsuji's TheSig-
nificanceof PrimitiveChristianityin the Historyof Culturepublishedin I926. There
he compares theRomanworldat the timeof the originof Christianity to the world
of the twentiethcentury.The Romansrepresented civilizationovercoming the early
Greekculture,just as todaythe Anglo-Saxon civilizationis replacingthe earlier
European culture(to whichEnglishandAmericans contributed at an earlierstage).
Americans of today,he says,beara surprisingresemblance to Romanportraitbusts,
not so muchin theirphysicalformas in the expression of theirinnerlife.Likethe
Romans, the Americans the of
give impression being uncultured, realisticandpracti-
cal.Romanachievements arechieflymeasured termsof size andtechnicalingenu-
in
ity as aretheskyscrapers andmachinesof theAmericans. The Romanloveof bloody
sportsin the coliseumis matchedby the Americanpassionfor insaneautomobile
races.The Romansweremastersat the creationof artificial socialstructures through
law,andtheAmericans areequallyadeptat theconscious creationof groupsthrough
legaldevices.AndjustastheRomansruledtheworldof theirdaywithweaponsand
Romanknow-how, so theAnglo-Saxons aftertheFirstWorldWarhavecometo rule

the world with weapons and the power of modern science. Roman wealth at the ex-
pense of the conquered nations is matched by the unheard-of concentration of wealth
in the Anglo-Saxon countries and the extreme impoverishment of the rest of the
world.35Here indeed we see what can almost be considered a preliminary sketch for
his later essay on American national character.
Watsuji's notion of the special nature of the Japanese gemeinschaft community
and the role of reverence for the emperor in it is foreshadowed in Ancient Japanese
Culture published in I920. This is the first of several rather idealized treatments of
early Japanese society and culture. An interesting article contained in Studies in Jap-
anese Spiritual History of I926 on "Political Ideals in the Asuka and Nara Periods" is
an answer to Tsuda Sokichi's critical evaluation of the Taika Reform of 645. Con-
trary to Tsuda who viewed the reform as having little real meaning and impugned
its ideals as hypocritical, Watsuji sees the Taika Reform as a very model of Japanese
political action and refers to it as an attempt to establish state socialism under the har-
monious influence of the emperor.6 In The Practical Philosophy of Primitive Bud-
dhism of I927 Watsuji developed his ideas of absolute negativity and absolute empti-
ness as the basis for ethical action. These notions are quite close to Nishida's concep-
tion of absolute nothingness and serve to give a deep historical grounding in the basic
philosophy of Buddhism to the general position of Nishida philosophy. In Ethics as
the Science of Man37 (I93I) and the first volume of Ethics (I937) Watsuji developed
in detail the dialectical negation of individual and group in the absolute whole, which
is then related to an essentially Buddhist metaphysical underpinning on the one hand
and the specifically Japanese gemeinschaft community and its emperor on the other.
So by I937 virtually every element in "The Way of the Subject in Japan" had been
worked out.
The dramatic confrontation of two closed systems in the wartime pamphlet is not
only stark, it is also static. But it is interesting to note that Watsuji viewed the same
confrontation as actually going on inside Japan. This is especially clear in two essays
in the second volume of Studies in Japanese Spiritual History, one on the "Japanese
Spirit" and the other on "Contemporary Japan and the Chonin Character."In the
latter of these essays we discover that most of the charactertraits of the Anglo-Saxons
-individualism, utilitarianism, and a self-serving moralism-are also found in Japan,
even before the modern period, in the chonin or townsman class. It is precisely the
character of the chonin to make profit take primacy over all other considerations and
to adopt only such morality as will be practically useful. The only specifically Japa-
nese aspect of the chonin is that perhaps unlike the Western bourgeois, his concern is
with family profit rather than with the profit of the isolated individual. However, the
chonin character was not very well rationalized in theoretical terms, depending
mostly on the hackneyed moralizing of the Shingakusha. But after the Meiji Ishin
all the advanced philosophical and political theories of Western gesellschaft society
came into Japan to make up for this lack. Utilitarianism as a philosophical theory was
widely espoused and the notion of the state as existing just for the interests of indi-
viduals got established through the popular rights movement. The chief agents of this
propaganda were the enlightenment publicists like Fukuzawa Yukichi for whom
35 Zenshui,Vol. 7, pp. I0-I4.
-6 Nihon Seishinshi Kenkyi7, revised edition, Iwanami, I940, pp. 3-38.
37 Ningen no Gaku to shite no Rinrigaku, Iwanami, I93I.

Watsuji felt very little affection.38It is true that Watsuji accepted the advancement of
gesellschaft society to some extent as dialectically necessary, but he argues that it is
only progressive if it leads to the emergence of a new gemeinschaft community at a
higher level. In the essay on the Japanese spirit this general problem receives more ex-
tensive treatment. Watsuji's main problem in this essay is that intellectuals seem to feel
that talk about the Japanese spirit is somehow reactionaryor even fascist. Watsuji ar-
gues that the Japanese spirit is simply the Japaneseexpression of modern nationalism
and is reactionary or progressive depending on the context and the uses to which it is
put. He argues that on the whole such notions as those of Yamatogokoro, Yamato-
damashii and Nihon Seishin39have been more progressive than reactionary. Kokug-
aku, for example, contributed to the destruction of the feudal system in the Tokug-
awa Period by stimulating a feeling of national consciousness. The Yamatodamashii
spirit of the Sino and Russo-Japanesewars, he argues, was not reactionary, for those
were anti-imperialist wars and in fact the consciousness of national community ex-
pressed then was the harbinger of a general turn in world history away from gesel-
lschaft to a new form of gemeinschaft. It was precisely Japan's role as an Asian na-
tion, oppressed by all the Western nations, which made it become conscious of this
new need before other nations and gave Japan a special world historical mission.
Watsuji argues that socialism is basically a form of chonin ideology. It accepts the
bourgeois premises of materialism and utilitarianism. It is merely a family quarrel
within the confines of gesellschaft society and it is not really progressive. Watsuji pays
tribute to the spirit of idealism and self-sacrificeof the young Marxist students, but
says they are unconsciously expressing the basic Japanese traits of practical idealism
and absolute obedience to authority (in this case the authority of the Communist
Party). It is the role of the Japanese spirit today, said Watsuji in I935, not to oppose
the bourgeois society and socialism in a reactionary way by wishing to go back to
something earlier, but to oppose them by overcoming them and going beyond them
so as to build a new, more adequate gemeinschaft society.40
Finally, in clarifying Watsuji's analysis of the cultural situation, let me refer to an
eloquent article of I937 on "The Standpoint of Persons Responsible for Cultural Cre-
ation."4"In this article he excoriates those who argue that cultural pursuits are mean-
ingless in a time of crisis. He argues that Japan's historical position is precisely to be
understood in terms of culture. Japan's isolation in the world is caused by the com-
bined hostility of the imperialist powers to Japan, who stands as the sole protector of
Asia's millions from complete enslavement. Japan is the champion against racism and
imperialism. Furthermore, Japan is the champion of culture against civilization. Wat-
suji says that not only must Japan accept and protect the high culture of India and
China which have been reduced to such a miserable condition in their homelands, but
Japan must accept and protect the high culture of the West against the perversions of
modern Western civilization. Japan must be a beacon for all world culture, and it is
precisely here that Japan'sworld historical mission lies. Thus there are no grounds to
disparage cultural activity on grounds of military urgency.
38 Zoku Nihon Seishinshi Kenkyfi, Iwanami, I935, pp. 338-383.
39 Various terms used at different times to denote "Japanesespirit."
40 Ibid., pp. I-72.
41 "Bunkateki Soz6 ni Tazusawaru mono no Tachiba," first published in Shiso, October, I937, then
reprinted in a collection of Watsuji's occasional writings, Men to Persona, brought out by Iwanami in
December, I937; Zenshui,Vol. I7, pp. 44I-444.

In Watsuji's position as I have developed it there are obviously links to the general
trends of thought which dominated the intellectuals during the war, especially to
the movement associated with the phrase "overcoming the modern" (kindai no
ch&koku) and the "philosophy of world history" developed by several members of the
Kyoto school.42But for present purposes I would like to concentrate on Watsuji him-
self in an effort to understand what it meant for one of Japan'smost intelligent, cre-
ative, and best educated modern thinkers to have held such a position.
Watsuji's Autobiography43 was unfortunately far from completion at the time of
his death. It carries his story only halfway through his years at the First Higher
School. If he could have finished it, or even if he had been able to carry the story up
to I920, it might have been one of the most interesting personal documents to have been
written in modern Japan. Still, materials are not entirely lacking for reconstructing
his spiritual development. He tells of being a rebel in his youth, of disliking received
convention and authority.44In his Middle School years he was an avid reader of the
Heimin Shimbun which espoused universal suffrage, socialism and pacifism.45He was
early attracted to English literature and published a translation of Byron's "The Pris-
oner of Chillon" in his Middle School magazine. In Higher School he wrote essays
on Shaw and Ibsen, translated Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, and wrote original
stories and plays of his own. Steeped in Western culture in these years, he had
relatively little interest in things Japanese. In his autobiography he tells how he
loathed the required ethics lessons, and it was not until he heard Nitobe Inazo speak
in Higher School that he developed any interest in such things as Bushido. Even
then the students were chiefly impressed with the fact that Nitobe's Bushido was
originally written in English. Watsuji's later very negative reaction to Inoue Tet-
sujiro, the fount of "national morality," fits in with this general picture. In all of this
Watsuji is very much a child of his time and place. He was one of the fortunate few
able to participate in the rich new world of Western culture which the best schools
and universities were opening up. Cut off culturally from most of his countrymen by
a thorough-going exposure to Western culture, and cut off from his family and home-
town background by his life as a student in Tokyo, it is natural that Watsuji, like so
many others in similar circumstances,should become concerned with the problems of
individualism and self-realization.
These concerns were undoubtedly the chief motivations for his work on Nietz-
sche and Kierkegaard. In the preface to his A Study of Nietzsche, he says, "The
Nietzsche who appears in this study is strictly my Nietzsche. I have tried to express
myself through Nietzsche."40 In these studies we can detect Watsuji's aspiration to
construct an ideal self and his struggles with egoistic desires. In his preface to Soren
Kierkegaard he says, "My intention is to struggle resolutely and construct a life for
the self (jiko no seikatsu). My mind does not rest night or day. I recognize in myself
many ugly, weak and bad things. I must completely burn these up through self-
discipline."47But the resolute self-assertion of Nietzsche and the personal faith of
42 See Takeuchi Yoshimi, "Kindai no Ch6koku," in Kindai Nihon Shisoshi Koza (Symposium on the
History of Modern JapaneseThought), Vol. 7, Chikuma Shobo, 1959, pp. 227-28I.

43Zenshii, Vol. I3.
44 Gu7zo5Saik6 (Resurrectionof Idols), Iwanami, I91 8, pp. I2-I3.
45 Zenshui, Vol. I3, p. 456.
46 Zenshui,Vol. I, p. 8.
47 Zenshu, Vol. I, p. 410.

Kierkegaard were not able to provide an adequate solution for Watsuji. Isolated indi-
vidualism did not in itself provide him with any answers-instead, as he said, it "led
him to an abyss of emptiness."48These years of crisis for Watsuji coincided with the
last years of Natsume Soseki, who died in I9I6. The grim last novels of Soseki, which
portray the dead end of pure individualism, apparently moved Watsuji greatly, and
on the other hand, Soseki's philosophy of sokuten kyoshi ("identify with heaven and
throw away the self") as expressed in his Chinese poems may have contributed to
Watsuji's own solution, as his later interest in Nishida philosophy and Buddhism
would suggest.
Watsuji's book of I9I8, Resurrection of Idols, indicates the main direction in
which Watsuji turned after finding individualism inadequate. This book documents
a "change of thought" (ten k; Watsuji uses the word as the title of the first essay). It
is God through such men as Paul who destroyed the idols. But now, as Nietzsche has
said, God is dead, and God, too, was an idol. Yet men still need idols and it is now
possible to resurrect the idols. Idols, says Watsuji, never die. It is only man's under-
standing of them which become lifeless. If we can understand the idols properly,
they can be alive for us again. What the idols were concretely is perhaps indicated in
Watsuji's next book, Pilgrimages to Ancient Temples, which describes in vivid prose
the early Buddhist temples and sculptures of the Nara region. But more generally the
idols stand for a return to Japanese society and culture. In an essay in Resurrection
of Idols entitled "The Roots of the Tree," he tells of climbing in the mountains and
finding an ancient pine tree with its roots extending deep into the cracks in rocky sur-
face of the mountainside. He "felt ashamed of his own shallowness of roots" as he
stood looking at the tree.49
From all we know about Japanesepersonality and group structure,50it is not, per-
haps, going too far to interpret Watsuji's youthful experiences as examples of what
seem to be general tendencies. Japanese group experiences are both very constricting
and very rewarding. Watsuji seems to have been more than usually rebellious and
to have had more opportunity than most young Japaneseto indulge that rebelliousness
and let it lead him where it would. But the anxiety brought on by isolation, acute for
any Japanese, was too much to be borne. He certainly did not capitulate entirely to
that which he had earlier rejected, but he did turn his back on individualism and re-
turn in his own way to the warm gemeinschaft community of Japanese life. Indeed,
the I920 volume on ancient Japanese culture51is a celebration of that harmonious life
in which the individual is perfectly blended in the group, which is such an important
aspect of the traditional Japanese ideal.
Of course Watsuji did not turn his back on the West. His interests continued to be
global and he was dependent on Western scholars almost exclusively in the develop-
ment of his distinctive methodology.52 Indeed, it is the method of hermeneutics
48 Guiz6 Saiko, p. 13.

49 Ibid., p. 237 ff.
50 For example, George DeVos, "The Relation of Guilt Toward Parents to Achievement and Arranged
Marriage among the Japanese,"Psychiatry, 23, I960, pp. 287-33I; Ezra Vogel, Japan'sNew Middle Class,
California, I963.
51Nihon Kodai Bunka.
52 One of Watsuji's Marxist critics, Tosaka Jun, found him especially dangerous just because he ex-
pressed "reactionary Japanism" in "a la mode, modern, chic scholarly methods." Tosaka Jun, Nihon
Ideorogii-ron (An Essay on JapaneseIdeology), Hakuy6sha, I935.

(kaishakugaku) which allowed Watsuji to resurrect the idols in the first place. That
is, the methods of cultural research developed largely in Germany and transmitted to
Watsuji by Koeber and others (Nietzsche's work on ancient Greece may have been
part of the influence) gave him the possibility of understanding the cultural forms
which had become dead to him before and thus bring them to life. All of Watsuji's
scholarly work is closely influenced by the approach of the German culture historians
and phenomenologists.
But the West is a threat as well as a source of light. The West threatens not only the
political integrity but the cultural identity of the East. Watsuji's immersion in Western
studies had, as in so many cases, raised a problem of cultural identity and cultural self-
respect. So already in Pilgrimages to Ancient Temples (1920) we see a continual
comparative interest. Watsuji is not just interested in exalting things Japanese, he
wishes to define the special nature of what is Japanese over against comparable phe-
nomena from the West and other cultural spheres. From this concern developed
Watsuji's profound sense of climate and place which gave rise to one of his most in-
fluential books, Climate and Culture.53In the preface he tells how he came first to re-
flect on this problem. It was in the summer of I927 when he was in Berlin reading
Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. Intrigued with Heidegger's insistence on the importance
of time in the structure of human existence, he was dissatisfied that space was not
given an equally important consideration. In Climate and Culture he develops a the-
ory of three main types of climate and their cultural meaning: monsoon, desert, and
meadow. He is not thinking of climate as a purely external physical factor but as very
much involved in and affected by human culture, so that it is climate subjectively con-
ceived and culturally manipulated, not simply meteorology in which he is interested.
He attributes various strengths and weaknesses to the different climates, holding that
while the limitations can be overcome, one cannot, nonetheless, pretend that one can
live in a different climate. With this theory Watsuji is seeking a rationale for handling
problems of comparative culture and also for defending the necessarily Japanese na-
ture of Japanese culture.
But the problem of space and climate is linked to other problems which get fuller
treatmentin Ethicsas the Scienceof Man (1931) and Ethics,Volume i (I937). Be-
sides being dissatisfied with Heidegger's exclusive attention to time at the expense of
space, Watsuji is dissatisfied with his focus on the isolated individual at the expense
of society. And further he sees these as related, holding that the temporal, historical
aspect of existence is especially linked to individuals, and spatial, climatic existence to
societies. Watsuji develops as the basis for his ethics a view of man which is funda-
mentally relational (aidagara-teki) and criticizes all Western ethics for starting with
the isolated individual. Thus Watsuji makes two important contributions to his sys-
tem which is otherwise based heavily on Windelband, Heidegger, and Husserl-the
notion of climate (fuido) and of relation (aidagara). He even indulges in a little
Heideggerian etymology by pointing out that the Japanese word for man (ningen)
53 Fuido was first published in book form in 1935, though parts of it had appearedearlier in periodicals.
In I943 a revised edition was published which eliminated "tracesof Leftist theory" which were "prevalent"
in I928 when the book was first written, according to Watsuji's preface to that edition. Zenshui, Vol. 8.
It was translated by Geoffrey Bownas for the Japanese UNESCO series and appeared in I96I under the
awkward title, A Climate, though it is clear from Mr. Bownas' preface that his own suggested title was
the much more felicitous Climate and Culture.

includes the notion of between men and the Japanese word for existence (sonzai) is
composed of two characters,one emphasizing the aspect of time, the other of space.54
Of course Watsuji wants to include the insights of Heidegger and others about indi-
vidual existence, but in effect individual and group by negating each other give rise to
the absolute whole which, when identified with the state, seems rather to tip the bal-
ance in the direction of society.
This brief glance at Watsuji's spiritual and intellectual development gives us some
grounds for assessing his position as we found it in the wartime pamphlet of I944.
For one thing it is evident that Watsuji is a long way from the fanatic traditionalists.
He is completely in the group of Westernized intellectuals which Maruyama Masao
indicates never gave themselves unreservedly to the fascist and militarist movement.
(Indeed Watsuji was a very pillar of "Iwanami culture"55having been closely associ-
ated with that publishing house from the beginning, an editor of the Iwanami period-
ical, Shiso, and an organizer of several Iwanami Koza.) He remained aloof from both
Shinto and Confucian brands of nationalism and always explained the position of the
emperor in very abstract philosophical language. Watsuji even claims that a Right
Wing Diet member demanded that he be dismissed by the Minister of Education in
the late nineteen thirties.
Like many in this group, he had a passing attraction to socialism in the nineteen,
twenties and absorbed a certain amount of Marxism in his analysis of imperialism
and capitalism. His support of the war was based on his definition of it as an anti-
imperialist, anti-racist war which would both defend Asia's millions against oppres-
sion and possibly lead to the establishment of a more equitable social system which
would overcome the weaknesses of capitalism and socialism. In his enthusiasm for
Japanese achievements he never lost sight of general cultural values and indeed al-
ways justified Japan in terms of its cultural role.
Yet Watsuji, as he himself was later fully aware, made no effective resistanceto the
tendencies leading Japan to disaster. Indeed, the position which he had worked out
did not give any basis for individual or social resistance. Nowhere in my reading
have I found Watsuji defending Japanese democracy in the nineteen twenties and
nineteen thirties. Instead, by attacking the enlightenment tradition of Fukuzawa
Yukichi and the whole structure of gesellschaft capitalist society in terms borrowed
equally from socialist and conservative camps, he implicitly included the democratic
structure, such as it was, in his attack. The new gemeinschaft community which he
held up as an ideal was no effective answer to any contemporary Japanese problem
and in fact blended easily into the rightist rhetoric which was coming to dominate the
country. Similarly, the absolute negativity which Watsuji found at the basis of human
existence gave no effective foundation for individual nonconformism. When, as in
Watsuji's theory, the absolute is always actualized in groups, and most completely in
the state, there is little basis for effective individual protest.
Even more fundamental, perhaps, is the lack in Watsuji's system of any universal-
istic or transcendental standard relative to which individual or social action can be
judged. If the state is the most complete embodiment of human value, the state itself
54 This sort of thing called forth some sarcasticcomments from Tosaka Jun as to the inherent superi-
ority of the Japaneselanguage to any other in intuitively expressing the truth, loc. cit.
55 Maruyama Maso's term. See his Thought and Behavior in Modern JapanesePolitics, Oxford, I963,
pp. 63 and 304.

is expressed in the person of the Japanese emperor. As we noted in the wartime
pamphlet, Watsuji exalted the emperor system above all the religions and philosophies
of the world and found it the highest form of human cultural expression. The heart
of his ethics, as he said himself many times, is the ethics of the emperor system. For
all its sophistication Watsuji's theory is wholly committed to Japanese particularism.
In conclusion I would like to consider briefly Watsuji's post-war writings. Already
in March I945 when the bombings of Tokyo were becoming intense, Watsuji knew
that the war was lost and decided to form a study group to "rethink the modern age
(kinsei) from the beginning."56On the seventh of March after a bad night of bomb-
ing the group met for the first time in a Shinjuku Restaurant. Meeting weekly when
possible and moving from place to place as various members' homes were destroyed
by fire, the group considered a wide variety of topics such as Machiavelli, Shake-
speare,Prescott'sConquestof Mexico,Burkhardt'sCivilizationof the Rennaissance
in Italy, and the Christian culture of sixteenth century Japan,continuing unperturbed
by the surrender until February I946. Out of this discussion group grew Watsuji's
lectures which were eventually published as The Closing of the Country. The basic
thesis developed there and elsewhere in Watsuji's post-war writings is that "Japan's
Tragedy" was in large part the result of the closing of the country at the beginning of
the seventeenth century which had so many evil consequences for Japan's future.
Perhaps the chief defect of the closed country policy was that it greatly retarded the
scientific spirit in Japan, says Watsuji, just at the time when it was making its greatest
advances in Europe. The other side of the coin is that the closed country policy al-
lowed the vigorous development of an unusually narrow fanaticism, based on in-
tuition rather than reason, which considered everything Japanese to be superior. It is
evident that Sakoku marks a sharp break in some respects with "The Way of the
Subject in Japan"and "America'sNational Character";for in the first of those essays
the closed country policy had been defended by Watsuji as justifiable in the face of im-
perialist aggression and in the latter the spirit of modern science which he traced to
Bacon was given a rather negative historical role.
What Watsuji now seemed to feel necessary was a new and vigorous dose of kai-
koku (opening the country). He traced in the final section of his history of Japanese
ethical thought57the development of joi ("expel the barbarians")and kaikokustrands
of thought in the Bakumatsu period and strongly favored the kaikokutrend. On the
other hand, the treatment of Hirata Atsutane and his successorsin the Meiji period is
very violent, some of the harshest remarks going to Watsuji's old enemy Inoue Tet-
sujiro. But this change involves a whole series of re-evaluations of earlier positions.
In the post-war period it seemed to Watsuji a tragedy that the bushi managed to put
down an incipient bourgeois bid for power in the sixteenth century. Thus the whole
chonin tradition and its European counterparts come in for rehabilitation. Watsuji
even says that the shogunate would have collapsed except for the closed country pol-
icy, because if the chonin had been exposed to the ideas of the English and the French
Revolutions they could not have been kept subdued. There is also a revision of his
evaluation of the enlightenment thinkers of the Meiji Period, and Fukuzawa Yuki-
56Sakoku: Nihon no Higeki (The Closing of the Country: Japan's Tragedy), Chikuma Shobo, I95I;
Zenshua,Vol. I5, p. 3.
57 Nihon Rinri Shis6shi (History of Japanese Ethical Thought), 2 volumes, Iwanami, I952, Vol. 2,
pp. 695-793. Zenshii, Vols. I2 and I3.

chi is actually given half of the chapter on Meiji ethical thought where he is treated
quite favorably.
On the other hand, the particularisttradition, which was defended in the pre-war
essay on "Japanese Spirit," now comes in for heavy castigation as the modern con-
tinuation of the closed country policy.
This shift in thinking even affected the structure of Watsuji's magnum opus on
ethics. He greatly revised the section on the nation which had been published in vol-
ume two in I942, removing various statements about the absolute obligation of the
individual to sacrificehimself for the state.58And in the final volume, which appeared
in I949, there is a long discussion of the ethical restrictions on the nation. No longer
is the nation taken as an ethical absolute but is subjected to a general ethical norm
deriving from mankind. And indeed Japan'serrant behavior is seen to derive from its
sakoku policy of isolation. A nation, like an individual, should be a good group
member.
But as this last point makes evident, there is no basic change in the structure of
Watsuji's thought. His central concerns continue and indeed get re-expressed in a
series of essays on the emperor system. Watsuji wholeheartedly accepts the position of
the emperor in the new constitution where he is held to be "a symbol of national
unity." Indeed, this is what Watsuji claims he always meant when he said that the
emperor was an "expressionof the absolute whole." Watsuji argues for the essentially
ethical and non-political significance of the emperor all along and so denies that there
is a change in the national structure (kokutai). However, he finds the word kokutai
confusing and is happy to throw it out. In fact, in his post-war writings he refers to
the kokutaitheory as deriving from the Mito school of Confucianism in the Tokug-
awa Period and as being essentially feudal and not applicableto a modern state.
But the fact remains that even in his post-war writings Watsuji never finds another
standard of value which can transcend the emperor. The fusion of Japan, emperor,
society and individual, which he had held from the early nineteen twenties as the
highest good, remained at the core of his thought. In this, of course, he was merely
giving theoretical expression to a way of thinking which is very old and goes very
deep in Japan. But it is a way of thinking which has become profoundly and in-
creasingly problematicin the course of Japan'smodern history.
Whatever may be his final evaluation as a thinker, there is no doubt that Watsuji
has made a permanent contribution to cultural history in Japan. As Shida Shazo says,
Watsuji's work is itself a many-sided cosmos.59 A distinguished stylist, capable
of bringing life and meaning out of the most diverse kinds of cultural material, often
incisive in analysis, his work will instruct students of Japanese culture for years to
come.
We may now turn to a consideration of what we can learn from Watsuji Tetsur5
about our initial problem of national narcissism, or to use more neutral language,
cultural particularism.Watsuji may be especially helpful in that he gives us not only
an expressionof cultural particularismbut a shrewd analysis of it.
For Watsuji there is no such thing as culture in the abstract.Culture always exists
in a group. Thus there are no universal religions or philosophies but only group re-
58 The appendix to Vol. ii of the Zensha contains the major passages cut from the I942 edition.
59Loc. cit., P. 4:2.

ligions and philosophies. He attacks the so-called world religions for claiming a false
universalism and praises the close union of culture and group in Japan as expressive
of the true and proper relationship. Similarly, Watsuji attacks the notion of an ab-
stract individual. All individuals are members of groups and take on real human
meaning only when seen as such. The ideal situation is one in which culture, group
and individual are fused organically into a single body, a gemeinschaft (ky5d5tai).
The most adequate and comprehensive kyadataiis the state, expressed most fully
when embodied in the Japanese emperor who expresses in a mediate way, the only
possible way, absolute value. This conception is, in Watsuji's view, neither doctrinaire
nor narrow-minded. The Japanese emperor system can serve as a protective umbrella
for all the world's culture, taking it up and utilizing it as long as it is willing to re-
main in its properly subordinate role.
Watsuji's negative image, a sort of negative cultural identity for Japan, is also in-
structive. It is summed up in Anglo-American culture which he sees as characterized
by individualism, utilitarianism, legalism, science, and self-righteous intolerance. The
essence of Watsuji's dislike is the gesellschaft (rieki-shakai)nature of Anglo-Ameri-
can society. It lacks organic unity. It exalts abstractmechanical ideals of which science
is the type. It claims that the individual should be independent of social groups. It
establishes society in terms of abstract legal rights rather than warm particularistic
relationships. It relates to nature through mechanical manipulation rather than in-
tuitive sympathy. In a word, it divides and separateswhere Japanese culture seeks to
unite and fuse.
Without denying that Watsuji's characterizationis overly schematic, it is nonethe-
less extremely suggestive and points to a crucial aspect of the problem of Japan'scul-
tural identity. This is its profound resistance to the differentiation of the cultural and
the social system and correlatively to the differentiation of social system and person-
ality. Idea systems are seen as fused with, as ascribed attributes of social systems. Indi-
viduals are defined fundamentally as group members and have no identity inde-
pendent of the group. It is then our hypothesis that it is this tendency for the individ-
ual to identify with his role, his group, and his culture in a relatively undifferentiated
way which accounts for the cultural particularism which was described at the begin-
ning of this paper. This is not to say that such a situation is universal in Japan. But
even when individual Japanesehave renounced one or more aspects of this fusion in
principle, it is often hard for them to avoid particularistic attitudes since they have
been socialized in families and have lived in groups where the fusion was highly
valued and indeed taken for granted. It is the experience of the Japanese collectivity
structure, of the actually operative ky5d5tai, which lies at the root of these attitudes
and makes them so persistent. The emperor system can be seen as a projection of the
ideal pattern of collective life, the kyc5dtai,onto the nation as a whole. Though never
able to overcome profound tensions and factional hostilities in fact, it was able to
symbolize the deep unity of Japanese people, society and culture. It thus provided a
powerful symbolic reinforcement for the maintenance of cultural particularism.
This is not the place for an explanation of this Japanese pattern, but a few tenta-
tive suggestions about its historical background can be made. The type of fusion of
culture, society and personality which seems to be present in Japan is a normal feature
of primitive and archaic cultures. It was found quite generally in the bronze age
monarchies which existed throughout the civilized world until the first millenium

B. C. At that time, however, a series of social and cultural revolutions broke up the
archaic fusion and ushered in a new type of society which I have called elsewhere the
historic type.0OOne of the central features of this new type of society was the emerg-
ence of universal religions and philosophies which cross-cutpre-existing social groups
and gave a new basis for the assertion of individual personality. It is fairly evident
that Japan in the fifth century A.D. was a bronze age monarchy of classic type. How-
ever, in Japan both the monarchy and its associated ritual-religious system, which be-
came known as Shinto, were able to survive and adapt to major institutional and cul-
tural changes which took place under the stimulus of China, a society of historic type
though with its own important legacy of archaism. Though taking on in many re-
spects the features of a society of historic type, Japan did so gradually without major
trauma. This is signalled by the persistence both of the organic type of collectivity
structurewith its very strong emphasis on kinship and psuedo-kinship and by the per-
sistence of the ancient monarchy which continued to exist as it had "for ages eternal."
The continuation of a near archaic type of fusion between culture, society, and per-
sonality was challenged by social disturbance and the importation of historic-type re-
ligion and philosophy. The Kamakura Period, a time of great social instability, pro-
duced the great Buddhist thinkers Shinran and D6gen, who did in principle break
through the fusion. Japanese particularism, however, proved stronger than Buddhist
universalism and gradually reabsorbedthe Buddhist structure, as can be clearly seen
in the subsequent history of the Shin and Zen sects. Confucianism through several
vigorous thinkers of the Tokugawa Period similarly challenged archaic structures of
thought but was similarly unsuccessful.
The modern period brought much more serious challenges, some of which have
been discussed in the first section of this paper. Besides the cultural challenges stimu-
lated by Western ideas, industrialization and bureaucratization created serious in-
roads in the traditional pattern of group life. But once again Japanese particularism
proved remarkably resilient, as the work of Abegglan, Vogel, and others has shown.6'
Ideologically, however, Western universalism and individualism in several guises
proved to be a powerful solvent. It won important converts who themselves have
made major contributions to modern Japanese culture. It stimulated violent hostili-
ties and movements to preserve the national essence. Where it roused neither enthusi-
asm nor hostility, it nonetheless unnerved and disturbed. In the case of Watsuji we
have seen how an educated Japanese could be attractedby Western universalism and
individualism, in his case through the work of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and yet
find it finally unsatisfactory. Many other men-writers, scholars, social thinkers-
went through a similar experience. In trying to find a solution for this situation Wat-
suji sought to reconcile Japanese particularism and world culture. Instead, we have
argued that he succeeded merely in giving Japanese particularism a new Western-
inspired philosophical rationale. The humane and gracious figure of a Watsuji Tet-
suro would not be problematic for modern Japan were it not for the fact that partly
behind the cloak of just such thinking as his, a profoundly pathological social move-
ment brought Japan near to total disaster.The ideology of that movement, referred to
6 The theoretical assumptions and terminology used in this paragraph are explained at greater length
in Robert N. Bellah, "Religious Evolution," American Sociological Review, 29, I964, pp. 358-374.
61 James C. Abegglen, The JapaneseFactory, M.I.T., 1958; Ezra Vogel, op. cit.

by some Japanesescholars as emperor-systemfascism, was the most explicit statement
of Japaneseparticularismwhich had ever appeared.
This explicit version, inextricably bound up with Japanese defeat in the Second
World War, was so deeply repudiated in the post-war period that it can probably
never reappear. But it is of the essence of Japanese particularism that it exists as a
tacit assumption far more than as an explicit ideology. And that tacit assumption re-
mains embodied in Japanese collectivity structure, the myriad "small emperor sys-
tems." Whatever has happened in the realm of explicit ideology, it remains true that
the "human nexus" continues to be more powerful and salient in Japan than either
ideas or individuals. Neither the traditional kycdotai structure nor the monarchy has
been radically disrupted, as might have happened if, for example, the Russians rather
than the Americans had occupied Japan, but both have suffered serious attrition.
It is likely, given the continuation of present world conditions, that the attrition
will continue and that anti-particularistictendencies-universalism and individual-
ism-will continue to grow. But it is far too soon for Japanese particularism, which
has proven so viable over the centuries, to be counted out.


Japan's Cultural Identity. Some Reflections On The Work of Watsuji Tetsuro (1965)

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Japan's Cultural Identity: Some Reflections on the Work of Watsuji Tetsuro

Author(s): Robert N. Bellah

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The earth in the firmamentappearsto be perfectlyround, without edges or corners.

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of the Zenshui,Amerika no Kokuminsei in Vol. 17.

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History of Modern JapaneseThought), Vol. 7, Chikuma Shobo, 1959, pp. 227-28I.

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48 Guiz6 Saiko, p. 13.

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