So, Why does Koizumi visit Yasukuni shrine?

Japan Times's (guest?) editorial writer is both angry and confused today. David Wall, who formerly taught at the East Asian Institute of the University of Cambridge, is an associate fellow of Chatham House, so you would expect him to be able to analyze Japanese politics fairly objectively. Instead he gets personal. Now, David Wall thinks Koizumi is stupid for angering Japan's neighbours. Typical: whenever something's not understandable for a lefty, it's irrational and stupid action, and perhaps even dangerous! Koizumi has angered Wall by angering Korea and China, as if it was Koizumi's job to just keep the neighbours happy.
Meanwhile, Koizumi knows what he's doing. He's playing the home audience. Contrary to common beliefs, politicians really aren't stupid or irrational, but they do take risks. Sometimes big ones. Instead of getting angry and calculating the damage this will cause the Japanese trade, I would suggest that Wall should try to figure out where Koizumi is heading and what he's trying to achieve by annoying the Chinese and the Koreans: A couple of collapsed trade talks is a small price to pay for a new Constitution. Would it be so terrible to let Japan have an Army? Please, don't think it's ok to patronize Japan.

http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20051103a1.htm

Could I have his job at Chatham House, please? He's obviously not up to his task.

Nishida Kitaro and IR Theory

Yes, I'm aware that I misspell Kitaro. The 'o' should be elongated, but I don't know how to do that, so I do apologise. I know I would scoff in disgust at a site that misspelled Kitaro..

Thanks to Graham Parkes and Chris Jones and all those other scholars who rehabilitated Nishida from being a fascist (as if) to a 'real' philosopher (as if fascists can't simultaniously be good philosophers, I ask you?), he's now getting recognition outside the immediate realm of Japanese studies! I've just finished reading an essay in Millennium: Journal of International studies, 2004, Vol.33 ,No1, called "Building an IR Theory with 'Japanese Characteristics': Nishida Kitaro (sic) and 'Emptiness'", by Graham Gerard Ong, who's clearly not an expert on Japan, but rather 'just' a constructivist researcher in IR theory. Ong puts forward a really interesting thesis on Japan's future as a mover and shaker in the East Asian international community. He looks at evidence on Japanese past excellence in that field by analyzing Nishida's ideas on the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The thesis is that rather than being inward-looking and insular, and crazily militaristic if given swords of any length as it's sometimes thought of, Japan has a past in shaping the future of Asia, a track-record of seeking to shape it, and a sound moral and philosophical base for it's actions. There is no reason why Japan should not, or would not, strive to take a leading role in the international community in the near future, and be 'allowed' to do so. (Reading Ong really clarified the concept of 'Constructivism' for me because he is so evidently of that school of thought, building his thesis from the 'inside out'. )

The Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and Nishida

Nishida's comments on the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere makes for a thrilling read. It's a political thesis that he was asked, and ultimately felt compelled, to write during the war, amidst the militarist madness that was Japanese 'foreign policy', ie invading half of Asia. I hope my explanation makes sense, I am very familiar with him but I don't have any references with me right now. My liking of him is intuitive more than anything else (and he would approve of this approach to philosophy and politics). It's rooted in Nishida's metaphysics and his understanding of individualism and the realisation of one's personality through a kind of dialectic process, and he outlines his metaphysics in An Inquiry into the Good (Aka A Study into the Good: Zen no Kenkyu).
What sets Nishida apart from militarists is that he did not see the formation of a powerful Nation-State as the final goal of humankind. A Nation-State had a personality and was thus subject to certain universal laws - it was not a universal goal in itself. Personality of both individual and nation could be negated to achieve absolute being - Nothingness. Ong calls it 'Emptiness', which just confirms that he's a newcomer to the Kyoto School.
So a Nation-State was simply a step, or intermediary, between nation (as in the people's combined personality) and the absolute - the unity and universality that is humankind. A Nation could thus, and indeed should, contribute to the historical process of the entire world and negate itself in the process. Here, again, we see the influence of Hegelian historicism: that history is a process. (And I dearly hope that I am not distorting Nishida's ideas too grossly here, I am writing this from memory.) As a dialectic process, it involves the inclusion of contradictions and the formation of a synthesis; a World transcending distinctions and 'personalities' such as East and West. In this process it was evident that Japan, as the modernised Eastern country, could lend a hand.
Just like the individual's self-realisation is an absolute unity of contradictions through negation, the history of the World as one (world-of-worlds) will be a process of negation between cultures and nations, until a synthesis is reached. It must be remembered that in those years, most nations believed themselves to be 'shaping history' as if it was an object to be shaped and ushered down different, exclusive paths..
Well, in 1941 or so, the Militarist Government of Japan asked Nishida for a philosophical justification for their rampage in Asia, and rather than supporting or approving of the creation of a strong unified Japan that thrived on the back of the rest of Asia, Nishida tried to make himself heard in the above sense: That Japan was in an unprecedented position to shape History and make way for a World-of-Worlds (sekai-teki-sekai), but also that a true co-prosperity sphere really should do what it says on the tin: It should bring prosperity to all, not just to the Japanese. The synthesising process could not be forced onto the people of Asia, but should happen naturally through the negation of cultural 'opposites'.
I'll tell you now that this is an unbelievably general account of Nishida and I omit a lot of the Eastern metaphysics he also employed in his thinking - I'm personally a whore to the German Idealist camp, so that explains why the Hegelian references in his ideas jump off the page at me while other references seem more subtle, or invisible, even. Dr Jones can cure me of my blindness, I'm sure (Dr Jones, Dr Jones, calling Dr Jones.. Hehe), I'm currently reading his book (see my review of it's review below) but have yet to have fully benefitted from it.


Graham Gerard Ong thinks that Japan is more capable than most countries to find middle ground and mediate between different cultures because of this heritage in Japanese political philosophy. Secondly, he mentions a 'Japanese constructivism' as a possible new strand of IR Theory, and this is where it gets exciting. Applying also Chris Jones's critique of Samuel P. Huntington as forcing an unbelievably Western, conflict-based, theory of inter-civilisational relations, Ong sees Japan's role as being exactly the opposite type in thinking: Nishida's universality that transcends cultures and nations gives a new basis for an inter-national relations theory. Ong implicitly sees the Nation-State as an intermediary, an agent, for a greater IR theory. I will return to Jones's refutation of Huntington in a future post.
I've just re-read the evaluation below. I'm not sure what I mean yet, so read at your peril. The English isn't great either. Will return to it ASAP. (m)
Non-Westernism is a great engine for justifying this theory - it refutes both static (and I really mean static, referring to the State as the sole sovereign actor with legal standing in International Law and the international community) and idealistic constructs that form realism and idealism (or liberalism). It is a stance against realism, which is less of a theory and more of a Western-borne policy to Ong. Ditto, I guess, is with liberalism, although I am reading between the lines here. Graham Ong, by the way, is a political scientist (M.A) who currently works as a researcher at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the University of Singapore.

Ong's essay is interesting because it confirms at least two things. Firstly, it confirms that Nishida has been rehabilitated as a philosopher. Even those researchers like Ong, who rely on secondary sources, can no longer read him as a fascist at face value, or at least have the educational background to question such imposed readings of history. Secondly, it confirms that researchers currently pursuing a career in Asia see Japan as a valuable actor in that region, and see it as a positive move. Maybe I am reading too much into that, but I know I wouldn't mind increased Japanese involvement in negotiating a non-US led existence for the region. I'm pretty sure Ong agrees.

We need to know what Japan thinks of all this (watch this space...)
Ong's evaluation of what the Japanese think of the historical process right now come partly from James Heisig, and I'll be damned if I paraphrase him in a comment on political aspects of Nishida's thought. Suffice it to say that the Japanese suffer from the current history-problem ('historical amnesia') and a kind of split political personality of realism-idealism tugging at the Japanese National spirit. So there's a boundless optimism and a strong idealistic streak in Ong's essay, because to some extent he chooses to forget that in the current system and the state seem together to be a pretty stable form of governance. A State (as a man-made political system, not Hegelian idealistic perfection of Spirit), rather than a Nation, is always more concerned with internal stability and political self-preservation, and will only start shaping history for the benefit of others if it also benefits itself. It's pretty far off the mark to assume that Japan would see the negation of it's national personality as a perk of being part of the historical process.. But Koizumi is doing his best to strengthen Japan's role in the international community, so we're left to see what happens.

I remember once, as a confused undergraduate and having read everything ever written by Nishida, running up to David Williams (I think it was in a parking lot, and it was summer vacation, no less) asking him what the hell Nishida had done with the State? Where would the State go, once Nations had been unified by negating? Williams didn't have an answer, but he emailed Chris Jones about it. I never received a reply.


Ref: Christopher S. Jones: 'If not a clash, then what? Huntington, Nishida Kitaro and the politics of civilisations'. International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 2 (2002)

Retard Cousin of Emperor Says:

"-Japan should exhaust all other options before allowing a woman to ascend to the Chrysanthemum Throne, including adoption and the use of concubines, a cousin of Emperor Akihito said in a newsletter obtained Thursday."
http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051104a1.htm

Our survey says: Concubines? Which century is this guy coming from? Is it even legal anymore?
And what, exactly, is wrong with a future Empress Aiko? Leave Princess Masako and Prince Naruhito, and especially little Aiko-chan ALONE, you retard!
Sheesh, there's one in every family. And I bet the Imperial Household Agency is behind it all, anyway.

I've got a very sharp katana (you can see me wielding it in the highly realistic drawing of me on the profile page) in case I ever come across this 'cousin'.

The Kyoto School Causes Shocking Headlines in Obscure Blog as Scholars Fight over Interpretation!

I have just finished reading James Heisig's (Nanzan U) review articles on two newish book on the Kyoto School of Philosophy. The first one is by Chris Jones (Leiden U), and the second one by David Williams (Cardiff U). (The reviews appeared in the Japanese Journal for Religious Studies, and if you click on the link here http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/jjrs_cumulative_list.htm , and scroll down to issue 2005 32/1, you can access the reviews yourself.)

Chris Jones (Christopher S. Goto-Jones) is a well-known scholar on Nishida Kitaro's philophy and its political dimensions. Indeed, he is expanding the political reading of A Study of the Good (or An Inquiry into the Good, as it's also known), which I would not have thought was possible. I am becoming more and more convinced that moral philosophy categorically cannot have a political reading, but maybe I am heavily mistaken. Heisig's view is usually that a moral philosophy should not have a political reading, and this is exactly the crux of the friction between reviewer and the reviewed. I have yet to read Jones's book, but it's here in the Uni library, so it's coming home with me today. From what I've formerly read by Jones, I've gotten a well-balanced and thoughtful account on Nishida and his work, and a sensitivity to the effects of the political circumstances in which philosophy is written, to the philosophy itself. Nishida remained unconvinced by the ideological framework of the Japanese war effort, but was obviously affected by it in other ways, and this shows in his philosophy. Still, Heisig's occasional inability to probe the more political aspects in especially Tanabe's, but also Nishida's thought, does not stop him from giving a hearty two-thumbs up for Jones. That's not hard to believe, Jones is a convincing writer and excellent scholar on this topic. He's also a bit more soft-spoken than Williams. I'm a former student of Williams, so I know his work and style quite well. I only know Jones from his texts.

Now, David Williams is a minor mystery to me. He has the power, both intellectually and verbally, to bowl you over in awe, but occasionally he just rams you to the ground because he wants to, and it hurts. Heisig's just been rammed into by Williams, and he's reeling from it, wounded and angry. This says a lot about the review on Williams's book, Defending Japan's Pacific War: The Kyoto School Philosophers and Post-White World (RoutledgeCurzon). Again, I have not read the book, but I know Williams' ideas well and have read everything he's ever published, bar his pre-internet era newspaper articles. I'm sympathetic to his views, and he's inspired me to no end. But in the light of what I've just read, I'm beginning to worry for him.
From what I've read before by Williams, such as Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science, I know that he always pushes (and pushes) his main arguments to the extremes. It is not enough to prove one point, or two, but the whole map of social science must be radically altered to remove the inherent Western biases, or the whole socio-philosophical world of scholarship is Doomed! He, almost alone, is the thinker who can see the Bigger Picture, because he is a scholar of Japan. Japan changes everything, because it challenges western theory by eluding orthodox classification and scholarship through being non-Western, but still perfectly formed. He sees Japan as being intentionally marginalised and misinterpreted due to it's success, and this makes him quite a force to reckon with, in good as well as bad.

The problem with scholarship on the Kyoto School, according to Williams, is that most scholars are not able to shake their 'Allied Gaze', and end up interpreting sound moral and political philosophy through the lenses of a winner interpreting the history of a loser (WW2) to suit certain agendas. The bias has, admittedly, led to some pretty dire scholarship on non-existent Kyoto fascism. Harry Harootunian is Anti-Christ in this world of dishonest academia which preys on the seemingly weak non-Whites. Even the victories of non-Whites, such as Kyoto Philosophy, are deemed failures in the attempt to wrongfully uphold a white world order. This world order can only come crashing down if and when we take Japanese Modernity seriously, and enjoy its plentiful fruits as part of our diet of political theory.
Apparently Heisig gets his dues for not giving Tanabe's philosophy the corrected kind of reading. I know Williams's opinions on Heisig from before, and I have on occasion been puzzled by Heisig's tone in his interpretations. He has taken the view that the theory (say, Tanabe's Logic on Species) might be extremely exciting as philosophy, but also deemed it fascist as almost an afterthought. But I never got the impression from Heisig that he thought it was prima facie bad philosophy because of the label of fascism that others before him had stuck on it. That's what I meant when I earlier suggested that he'd rather not give philosophy a political aspect, or elaborate it in his own scholarship, anyway. It leads to some rubbish, Heisig isn't a great writer on late Nishida for this very reason. (I am less knowledgeable on his ideas on Tanabe, and most of my thinking on Tanabe comes from neither writer, but from Naoki Sakai.) Of course Williams has a point in warning against branding philosophy as one or the other carelessly, like is the case with Heisig. But surely Heisig is still one of the better guys in the business? Alas, this isn't enough. It should be, but Williams pushes his argument all the way and takes no prisoners while doing so.

David Williams takes his endeavours extremely personally, and you will, too, if it's you who he attacks. One of the problems with Williams is that his language is fantastically bombastic at times. If you do disagree with him, you will be upset, if only for the arrogance and sheer force of the wording and phraseology he uses to bring you down. As I said, he's got the power, both intellectually and verbally, to kick everyone's arses. But he's a little off-target sometimes, and I get the impression that Heisig would be quite happy to see Williams getting a red card, banning him from the higher echelons of Scholarship. This is what he suggests when demoting Williams' efforts into journalism.
I will return to this subject after I read Williams's book. It would be unfair to give it a bashing just based on Heisig's review. However, if Heisig's allegations of bad scholarship and over-generalisation are true, I will be deeply disappointed, if not that surprised.


Below's a link to a excerpt from Q&A session with James W. Heisig on universality and the Japanese
http://www.barcelona2004.org/eng/actualidad/noticias/html/f043322.htm

Cabinet reshuffle

Below a story from Asahi News. Koizumi is pushing for reform, wouldn't you believe it.
Notice also the grooming of Abe. When he gets to be PM, then they'll really have a problem with China..

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200510310262.html

Koizumi Latest

Well, isn't that nice? Five hours into being a blogger on this subject, and indeed dedicating the Title of my Blog to this very Issue, Koizumi gets Article 9 on the Operating Table, Scalpel in hand. He has worked very hard on the Japanese people to ram through a Change - and I support him in his aims, but the means are wrong and possibly damaging to Japan's self-image. I'll get back to this one later.

"One of the features of the LDP draft is a call for revising Article 9 to state that Japan has military forces for self-defense.
The military forces would take part in international security operations and maintain public order at home in emergencies.
"A national consensus is finally being formed on the position of the Self-Defense Forces in the Constitution following many years of discussions," Koizumi stressed in his address to the troops."
(http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051031a1.htm)

It's important that the Constitution is brought back to reflect reality - the reality that Japan already has a military in the Self Defence Forces. I'm more a realist in Legal Studies, and to some effect in International Relations, come to think of it. Raw Power and the Perception of Power matters in the Far East, so it would be desireable that the Constitution reflects the Military power that Japan in actual fact possesses.
My wish is also that the US gets kicked out of Japan, for good. They have no business being there, and they won't necessarily help the situation if worse comes to worse with DPRK or, indeed, China. Koizumi has shown that he's capable of negotiating with DPRK despite their phobia of the US - he got the Japanese abductees home, after all. Now, that's a feat.
China, on the other hand, will continue to abhor good relations with Japan for at least as long as Japan is in the US camp this firmly. So Expel the Barbarians and Honour the Emperor, I say. A home grown Nationalism with Ideological and Military Independence is far more Modern Asia than hanging on to an alliance with an overstretched Empire like the US of A. Christ, I have been taught well here, haven't I. I sound exactly like a teacher of mine.

One reason why I am worried about Koizumi's tactics is that he deliberately plays the China card to his advantage - controversial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine will not affect his popularity at home either way, but it will bring out the Chinese protests. Koizumi has never looked better than when ignoring protests from a regime that everyone with a Brain Cell to Spare can see is intellectually dishonest and unjust. However, I wonder if it's safe to play with the Chinese. They've got a lot of home grown anti-Japanese Talent.

Templates

Hi Mom,
I know you'll be checking this out because I just sent you a link to the site.
Just in case, hi also to potential other readers.
So, I haven't managed to get to sleep yet, and it's almost 2 AM where I'm at. I guess this is where having a blog becomes handy - there's not much else to do at ungodly hours except surf the 'net anyway.

In the past few hours as a new blogger I have decided that the black template is too sinister, especially as I classify myself publicly as a Japanese Nationalist. All bad-ass nationalists are usually heavily into aggressive and sinister colours, and I'm not a chip off the bad, world-conquering, sword wielding jingoist block at all. Besides, I am looking for something more minimalistic. It would be nice to incorporate the Imperial flag to the site somehow. However, in my search for free templates I almost accidentally destroyed my original blog. After some panicky messing around with the original template, I restored it, but am now a little weary of trying to change it before I know how to do it safely - I am positively IT illiterate. But I definitely need something less generic, and might actually buy one, if the right one comes along and I really take to blogging.

I am also worried about the name. Nippon? What was I thinking? That's plain sad and marks me out as a boring anorak who isn't knowledgeable enough on the general theme of 'Nippon', just some aspects on Japanese society and politics, and the much-loathed orthodox studies on it. So that will probably change into something more dynamic and specific. It's not like I'm planning to run a very busy conversation site on anything 'Nippon'.
Actually, I just changed it - It's Article Nine. I hope my blog will last longer than the Article itself...

The Imperial flag.

Saigo Takamori - with beard