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The Father of Modern Sinology in Japan, December 17, 2011
This review is from: What Is Modernity?: Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi (Weatherhead Books on Asia) (Paperback)
Although he read and commented philosophical works throughout his life, Takeuchi Yoshimi cannot be described as a philosopher. As he himself confesses, he is "not someone who can discuss things systematically". He is an intellectual typical of the Japanese postwar tradition, a thinker who devoted his life to writing and scholarship, but who did not attach his name to a system or school of thought. His writing style reflects this very personal approach to scholarship: his essays go into many directions, and only approach their topic tangentially. Concepts are not treated as building blocks that need to be put together to form a coherent whole, but rather as isolated gems which are singled out for their particular glow. Although the author uses categories such as "Asia vs the West" or "overcoming modernity", he is well aware of the tainted meaning that these categories bore during Japan's militaristic episode. "I don't put faith in words, and I only submit myself to them provided they don't betray me".
Takeuchi is different from the other intellectuals of his generation in that he was neither drawn to Europe and the United States, nor toward an idealized Japan that would take pride in reviving its ancient traditions. Upon graduating from Tokyo Imperial University in 1934, he made a trip to China and then "suddenly felt as [he] had discovered the dream or vision that had all this time been lying dormant inside" his heart. He consequently made the decision to dedicate his life to the study of Chinese modern literature, not as a "kind of dead scholarship" but rather "to change the very way we studied China by exploring the hearts of those actually living people who were our neighbors".
He chose to concentrate on Lu Xun, the writer and social critic who was associated with the May Fourth Movement, and who himself had spent some time in Japan as a foreign student during the late Meiji period, during which he absorbed elements of Japanese modernity. For Takeuchi, China represents a different type of modernization in Asia, one based on resistance and social struggle, whereas Japan's modernization was imposed from above and imitative of the West. Many intellectuals have made the same observation in the pre-war period. Natsume Soseki, the Japanese novelist, deemed that Japan's modern civilization was a failure in that it was not internally generated and remained an external affectation through and through. John Dewey, the American philosopher and educator, spent two years in China after visiting Japan and witnessed the May Fourth student movement with his own eyes; he predicted that China would ultimately have a voice in world affairs, whereas he thought that Japan's apparent progress served only to mask its weaknesses and postpone its inevitable demise.
The flaws in Japanese modernity culminated in the Pacific War, when Japanese militarists tried to cover up their invasion of Asian nations under the banner of anti-colonialism, constructing their war of aggression as a liberation struggle against Western imperial powers. But this dual structure was already in place during the Meiji period, when Japan forced unequal treaties upon Korea and Taiwan while at the same time denouncing the unequal treaties that had been imposed upon her by the Western powers. Indeed, Takeuchi traces this history back to the Seikanron debate of 1873, in which the leaders of the newly established Meiji state, under the guidance of Saigo Takamori, launched a plan to invade Korea and so expand Japanese influence in the region. Although this plan was subsequently aborted, Takeuchi regarded it as symbolic of the imperialist violence underlying the formation of Japan as a modern nation-state.
For Hegel, "the history of the world travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the End of history, Asia the beginning". Takeuchi does not fundamentally challenge this vision but, in line with the notion of world history (sekaishi) developed by the Kyoto school, argues that history has to come back to its point of origin in order for mankind to accomplish its destiny. "Simply being Europe does not make Europe Europe", he writes. "In order for Europe to be Europe, it was forced to invade the Orient. (...) Now the Orient must change the West in order to further elevate those universal values that the West itself produced. (...) Resistance in the Orient is the historical moment at which Europe becomes Europe. Without Oriental resistance Europe would be unable to realize itself".
For Takeuchi, this spirit of resistance is to be found in nations such as China, India, and Russia, or rather in individuals such as Lu Xun, Gorky, and Tagore. By contrast, Japan's lack of resistance vis-a-vis Europe is due to the structure of its culture. "Japan has never received things from the outside as pain, it has never received them in its resistance to them". When one imported concept no longer fits its function, it is discarded in favor of another. "Thus in Japan the failure of liberalism leads to totalitarianism, and the failure of totalitarianism to communism. Or again, the failure of Stalin leads to Mao Zedong, and the failure of Mao Zedong to De Gaulle".
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