The Kyoto School and International Relations

Non-Western Attempts for a New World Order

Kosuke Shimizu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9780429863301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Imperialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Kyoto School and International Relations explores the Kyoto School's challenge to transcend the 'Western' domination over the 'rest' of the world, and the issues this raises for contemporary 'non-Western' and 'Global IR' literature.

Was the support of Kyoto School thinkers inevitable due to the despotism of military government, thus nothing to do with their philosophy, or a logical extension of their philosophical engagement? The book answers this question by investigating individual Kyoto School philosophers in detail. The author argues that any attempts to transcend the 'West' are destined to be drawn into power politics as far as they uncritically adopt and use the prevailing ontological concept of linear progressive time and dominant meta-narrative of Westphalia. Thus, to fully understand this problem, there is the need to be cautious of the power of language of Westphalia and the concept of time in IR.

Aimed at students and scholars of IR theory, Japanese politics and East Asian IR in general, this book provides some introductory explanations of these academic subjects, developing a theory based on the concepts of time and language of Kyoto School philosophy.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429460302-1

Introduction

Non-Western discourses seem to be one of the central topics recently in the field of international relations (IR). From 2000 to the present, there have been numerous books and articles published on this topic (Acharya & Buzan, 2010; Kavalski, 2015; Nordin et al., 2019; Qin, 2018; Shani, 2008a; Shih, 2012; Shilliam, 2011; Tickner & Blaney, 2013; Tickner & Wæver, 2009; Trownsell et al., 2020; Yan, 2011; Zhao, 2019). Some of them focus on the postcolonial state of contemporary world affairs, while others search for new possibilities of IR theorisation with ‘non-Western’ knowledge. One of the possible reasons why these ‘non-Western’ discourses flourish in the new millennium was the influence of the ‘Third Debate’. Indeed, the major development in IR in the 1990s was the debate between positivism and post-positivism following the First Debate of realism vs idealism, the Second Debate of behaviouralism vs historicism (if we count the so-called ‘neo-neo’ debate as the Third Debate, then the debate between positivism and post-positivism would be the Fourth) (Devetak et al., 2007). Against the positivist claim for universal knowledge and transcending truth with scientific methodology, post-positivism advocated critical engagement with IR, particularly in terms of epistemology (Smith et al, 1996; Tickner & Wæver, 2009).

As the name of an important discourse of post-positivist IR would suggest, we seem to be in the era of post-modernity, or at least, some scholars discern that we should move to the next phase of history that supposedly comes after Western modernity. This is because there are full of unexpected and unpredicted events in the field of contemporary IR. As Katzenstein and Seybert (2018) argue, the contemporary world seems to be suffering uncertainty and unpredictability. From the end of the Cold War, through the market crash of 2008 and the Arab Spring of 2011 to the pandemic in 2020–2021, there have been a series of big changes and uncertainties not many IR scholars succeeded in predicting. Taking the statement of Roger Altman, former Deputy Secretary of Treasury, saying that unpredictability became the ‘new normal’, and the Director of National Intelligence’s talk to Senate Armed Service Committee that ‘unpredictable instability’ is the new normal, Katzenstein and Seybert question if this is really a new normal (Katzenstein & Seybert, 2018, p. 3). Of course, it is not. In fact, IR is always full of uncertainty and unpredictability, and this is what has often been referred to as the crisis of modernity.

Indeed, the crisis of modernity is not really new. It effortlessly becomes clear that the idea of the modernity crisis incessantly penetrates our history if we shift our eyes to narratives in the past found in nations that had experiences of encountering the ‘West’. The non-Western world is full of examples of thinkers critical of modernity, such as Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Sun Yat-sen, who posited that alternatives to Western modernity are desperately needed (Gandhi, 1993; Sun, 1929; Tagore, 1992). Even in the ‘West’, the sense of crisis was not unusual in the realm of economic growth. Based on modernist and positivist thinking, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and David Ricardo all predicted the end of economic prosperity (Heilbroner, 1999), as did Friedrich Nietzsche, who also made an important contribution to the discourse of crisis of modernity (Nietzsche, 2013). More directly, Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West in 1918 and indicated the end of Western domination over the world (Spengler, 1918).

As many postcolonialists have already pointed out, while the Western world frequently depicted the non-Western world as being outdated, barbaric and uncivilised, the ‘rest’ of the world often saw Western modernity as problematic. This is because the people living in the non-Western areas must find a way for the reconciliation between Western modernity and local cultures by problematising the Western as ‘Other’. Japan is no exception. Most scholars ranging from literary critics through philosophers to political scientists were acutely aware of the problematic nature of Western modernity and its application to the local contexts. Particularly during the inter-war period, the problem of Western modernity became even more salient. However, for those intellectuals who engaged with it, the problem of modernity was by no means confined to the local context but rather appeared in the form of a global catastrophe such as the Great War. It is against this historical background that the Kyoto School’s philosophy can be thoroughly understood. Indeed, the Kyoto School philosophers were well aware of the crisis of Western modernity and believed that the Japanese, as well as Western peoples, were losing their humanity and ethics and turning into mere cogs in the money-generating machine of capitalism. This human isolation was the main result of Western modernity, and the philosophers of the School attempted, in a sense, to rescue all of humanity (Kawakami & Kosaka, 1979; Kosaka et al., 1943).

A Japanese philosopher, Hiromatsu Wataru, states that the concern of the Kyoto School philosophers in the inter-war period appears to be legitimate and reasonable, even in the analysis of the contemporary world (Hiromatsu, 1989). Indeed, the main concern of the Kyoto School seems to be the same as that of contemporary discourses of ‘non-Western’ IR, that is, finding ways to transcend Western modernity by excavating the local knowledge allegedly inherited from the past. Certainly, the Kyoto School philosophers attempted to bring the alleged Buddhist thought into the context of the West/Japan confrontation to formulate an alternative to the hegemony of Western modernity. A number of research projects have been conducted on contemporary IR, and books and articles have been published with such concepts as ‘non-Western’, ‘post-Western’ and ‘global’ IR to transcend Western IR – and the Kyoto School philosophy has been regarded as one of the sources of inspiration. However, if we investigate the discourses of the Kyoto School, it becomes clear that there are extremely diverse perspectives within the School, and it is hardly possible to see the School as monolithic or unified. Nishida Kitaro, for example, was more concerned with the ‘truth’ of being and was thus ontologically focused, while the second generation, including Nishitani Koji, Kosaka Masaaki, Koyama Iwao and Suzuki Shigetaka, developed the ‘philosophy of history’ political narrative, which later became incorporated with the imperialism of the Japanese Empire. Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka Jun, representatives of the leftist philosophers, engaged with a difficult attempt to establish the public, thus promoting dialogue among different peoples.

Why Study the Kyoto School Now?

An underlying assumption of this book is that there are some similarities between the inter-war period and the contemporary world in terms of the political landscape. The similarities include the decline of hegemony, an overwhelming liberal economy, the alienation of individuals, a division between the haves and have-nots, a nagging sense of uncertainty and unpredictability, and the emergence of non-Western discourses as a result of them (Aydin, 2007; Gandhi, 1993; Tagore, 1992). The Kyoto School philosophers’ attempts were indeed to address non-Westernness in their own way in order to provide solutions for these problems. Some simply failed to clarify its meaning; some resulted in supporting violence of imperialism; and some ended tragically, dying in prison. Despite the diversity of consequences, what penetrates their political engagement was the prediction that Western modernity would not bring peace to the world and an alternative was desperately needed.

The Kyoto School philosophers attempted the establishment of alternative world order. They (re)interpreted world history to elucidate Japan’s responsibility for the future of the world. Their intellectual endeavour extended to politics, economy, culture, history and, of course, religion. However, I will argue throughout this book that they conclusively lacked dialogue and cooperation with others. Their philosophy was formulated in isolation and, as a result, their argument became extremely abstract. They only talked with old acquaintances, never with Westerners, let alone Asian ‘Others’, while describing a free and open world based on their philosophy. This total lack of concrete dialogue with others seems to be decisive. In fact, one of the points that I am trying to clarify in this book is the result of this lack of dialogue in the age of division and confrontation. In other words, we will try to find a way to promote dialogue among peoples with different understandings of politics, economy, culture and religion when the world looks as if it is falling apart and shifting to mere competition and confrontation. By making an attempt to elucidate what prevented the Kyoto School intellectuals from engaging in dialogue with people from different cultural, religious and historical backgrounds, I will try to find possibilities in the contemporary world to promote conversation among diverse subjectivities. Indeed, I have been fascinated to know how ironic it is that Kyoto School philosophical discourses became abstract and detached from peoples’ concrete lives, despite their incessant insistence on the importance of bodily experience. In a sense, this book is about stories of the School’s philosophers’ attempts and failures to establish what Hannah Arendt called the ‘public sphere’, a space where plurality is guaranteed (Arendt, 1998).

The concepts of plurality and dialogue are key in promoting peace and stability in our contemporary, divisive world. If this is indeed the case, the binary opposition between West and non-West becomes meaningless, and plurality and dialogue among different perspectives ensure a space in which not only non-Western voices but also all excluded voices are included (Hutchings, 2011, p. 646). However, as we will see in the following chapters, the Kyoto School attempt to promote dialogue between the West and the non-West failed to be expanded to people who had previously been excluded from the international ‘public sphere’, especially those living on the margins.

Bodily Experience, Temporality and Japanese Thought

It is well-known that the Kyoto School philosophers were under the profound influence of Buddhist thought. Although it is controversial as to whether their philosophy can be called ‘religious philosophy’ or not (Sakai, 2010), it was certainly under the immense influence of Buddhism, if we use Buddhism not as a set of representations of religious organisations or teachings but as a set of philosophical discourses. This is more what is called, in the Japanese intellectual context, ‘Indian philosophy’, which connotes a study of ancient Indian thoughts, including the teachings of Buddha, said to focus more on bodily experience instead of abstract concepts and words. It is based on the denial of the essence, thus it encourages followers to be critical of any existence (Ueki, 2012). The Kyoto School philosophers also engaged with bodily experience one way or another. They tried to bring peoples’ everyday experiences into the context of philosophy that had been dominated by abstract ideas and concepts in the age of modernisation, and I presume that this may suffice to argue that the Kyoto School philosophers were under the profound influence of Buddhism.

Then what are these bodily experiences? The key to understanding bodily experience in both Buddhist philosophy and Kyoto School philosophy is the concept of time. In widespread understanding, both linear and cyclical temporalities assume the continuity of time (Shimizu & Noro, 2021a). It is often accepted that linear temporality is inherent in Western thought, while cyclicality is inherent in the non-West. This categorisation has been often employed to establish Western and non-Western selves. I argue in this book, however, that linearity and cyclicality do not make much difference, as they assume that time is a continuous flow and is thus characterised by abstraction. The continuity of time is always abstract in nature. One of the most important reasons human beings started to conceive of abstract temporality is, according to Maki Yusuke, a prominent Japanese sociologist of time, the expansion of human activities transcending traditional boundaries. As we have to understand time in a standardised way when communicating with remote others, time must also have become standardised. When time is standardised, it became spatialised in its numeric form, too (Maki, 2008).

However, the process of the standardisation of temporality left the concrete bodily experience of people behind. This is presumably the beginning of the process that we now call globalisation. When time is standardised and spatialised, peoples’ lives became controlled by time. Rather than using time for their convenience in organising their lives, their lives became organised by time, and they were inevitably transformed into isolated individuals. In turn, the isolated individuals became abstract in their existence and were tied up as citizens of a nation-state.

The significance of this new time is that it is abstract; it opened up the possibility for the transformation of myriad communities that had somehow coalesced into a ‘Japan’, into a unified nation-state that is rational, scientific, and efficient.

(Tanaka, 2004, p. 6)

Stephen Tanaka argues that the introduction of abstract time in Japan was essentially a part of the construction process of the nation-state. It was at this moment that Japan adopted Westphalian modernity and tried to catch up with the West. It was not surprising that many Japanese intellectuals in the process of modernisation suspected that the transformation of the ‘heterogeneous communities of the archipelago into a unified nation-state, Japan’ (Tanaka, 2004, p. 2) was the principal cause of the social disorder, the unethical conduct of its citizens, the self-centred behaviour of individuals, overwhelming uncertainty and unpredictability and the division of the world. In sum, they saw that bringing Western modernity into Japan shattered the ‘good old days’ of local lives. Thus, focusing on the ‘here and now’ – and hence, bodily experience – was a part of the intellectual backlash to the introduction of Western modernity.

The Westernisation process was a process of self-colonisation. Komori Yoichi, a well-known contemporary literature critic, argues that the process of mirroring the West in the modernisation and economic development was also a process of what he calls the ‘self-colonisation’ of Japan. Komori finds that the self-colonisation process was carried out with the introduction of the Western model of governance based on international laws, political institutions, techniques of governance and mercantilist economic policies. It applied these new techniques of political/social organisation to the local context and succeeded in rearranging entire domestic institutions. The universal norms, such as the standardised time, were brought into the context of the everyday lives of citizens, and their lives were forced to get reorganised. It was a drastic transformation, raising its international status from the barbaric and uncivilised ‘other’ to one as an equal member of the international community as a ‘self’ (Komori, 2001).

However, with the expansion of its territory, Japan’s self-colonisation became covert and eventually became invisible in Japanese history. Having colonies outside of Japan erased people’s self-recognition of the self-colonised. Starting from Hokkaido (Ezo) and Okinawa (the Ryukyus), the more colonies Japan obtained, the less there was self-recognition of being colonised by themselves (Komori, 2001). Instead, they came to think of themselves as one of the colonisers, an equal member to the Western Self. This was the reason some liberal Japanese intellectuals shamelessly and repeatedly used discriminatory expressions towards the indigenous population of Hokkaido and Okinawa and later towards other Asian nations.

However, the self-colonisation process also provoked a massive backlash from self-colonised local intellectuals. Some Japanese intellectuals saw the causes of both domestic and international problems in the modernisation – hence the self-colonising – process. The transformation of temporality to the abstract and universalised timeframe appeared to them as one of the most important aspects of it. For this reason, Japanese intellectuals have been attracted to the concepts of the ‘here and now’ of people’s lives instead of the macro-level international affairs with abstract temporality. In other words, they find non-linear/non-cyclical concrete temporality to be more attractive than abstract and universalised ones. This non-linear/non-cyclical temporality, called the ‘present’, elucidates time in terms of discontinuity and uncertainty. This was also the case in the Kyoto School philosophy discourses. The Kyoto School philosophers subscribing to this particular temporality saw the present as the most fundamental and essential temporality (Nishida, 1948). What Kyoto School scholars endeavoured to do in their philosophical engagement can be interpreted as comprehending contemporary world affairs from the vantage point of the present. Their attempt was to understand world politics through the lens of the present and thus through people’s bodily experience.

For Japanese intellectuals, the West was, and still is, to some extent, historically regarded as the goal of Japan’s development path, the target to synchronise themselves with, while ironically, they are destined to differentiate themselves from the West to uphold their subjectivities. ‘Overcoming the West’ or ‘overcoming modernity’ has been continuously repeated and maintained in the works of Japanese intellectuals, while at the same time, the idea that Japan is the top-runner of modernisation in Asia has been widely shared. As a result, Japanese intellectuals often found themselves sitting on the border of a ‘West/Rest’ dichotomy. Probably nothing illustrates this irony more vividly than World War II. For instance, Chris Goto-Jones writes, ‘The Pacific War had a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on Names and Translations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 East Asian IR Revisited
• 3 Encounter, Transformation of Time and Self-Colonisation: The Japanese Modernisation
• 4 Nishida Kitaro and Tanbae Hajime: The First Generation of the School
• 5 The Transcendental Whole and ‘Inclusiveness’: The Discourse of the Big 4
• 6 Miki Kisyoshi’s Philosophy of Imagination: Towards Everyday Life
• 7 Tosaka Jun’s Theory of Critical Relationality: Morality of Everydayness
• 8 The Reception of the Kyoto School Philosophy in the Post-war Era
• 9 Bringing Bodily Experience Back In Post-war Japanese IR
• 10 Conclusion: Towards a Mahāyāna Buddhist IR?
• Bibliography
• Index