Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life

Lectures On Kant’s Political Philosophy

Little interest was taken in colloquial Chinese at the beginning of the Tokugawa period. Although classical Chinese was painstakingly learned by hundreds of Confucian scholars throughout Japan, colloquial Chinese was mastered by only a handful of interpreters 唐�事 (tōtsūji), most of whom lived and worked in Nagasaki. They were consequently connected with the Chinese trade, which was concentrated in Nagasaki and Hirado in 1613, and in 1635 in Nagasaki only. Never numerous, interpreting was a family profession, which was inherited from generation to generation. In the wake of Chinese trade three Chinese Buddhist temples, the Kōfukuji 興福寺, Fukuzaiji 福濟寺, and Shūfukuji 崇福寺, were built in Nagasaki in the first half of the seventeenth century. Consecutive generations of native Chinese abbots and priests resided in Nagasaki, and it may be assumed that it was there that Chinese sailors and merchants went after arrival. Among these Buddhists were a number of individuals who belonged to a recent Chinese Zen sect, the Ōbaku 黄檗. From its source at the port of Nagasaki this sect spread to many places of Japan. Especially after the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644, numerous Ōbaku Zen monks moved to Japan. By the time of the Genroku period there were Ōbaku temples in Edo, and in the temples abbots and monks of Chinese origin. Chinese clerics in Nagasaki made quick visits to Edo, often at the invitation of nobles. Even though Buddhist priests seem to have been most numerous among refugees after the Ming dynasty collapse, there were also others. The best known among them was Shu Shunsui 朱舜水 (1600–82), a Confucian scholar, who came to Nagasaki in 1659. He was employed by the Mito clan in 1665, in which service he remained until his death in 1682. These priests and other Chinese represented a revival of Chinese studies in Japan. As hinted above, they were in demand by Confucian scholars, and this slowly led to modern Chinese language studies. The most important catalyst

Vernacular Chinese in Tokugawa Japan The Inquiries of Ogyū Sorai

Das 20. Jahrhundert gilt gemeinhin als Blütezeit der Intellektuellen: positiv als Ausdruck eines unabhängigen, aufgeklärten Geistes und gesellschafts­politi­ schen Be wußt seins, negativ als Ausdruck einer Illusion des Marxismus. Die Historiographie datiert die Entstehung des modernen Intellektuellen üblicher­ weise auf das Jahr 1889, symbolisiert durch den Beginn des Engage ments von Émile Zola in der Dreyfus­Affäre, dessen Ende auf das Jahr 1989, mar­ kiert durch den Zusammenbruch des Sowjet­Kommunismus und den Beginn des Siegeszuges des so genannten Neo liberalismus unter dem Banner der Pax Americana. Während dieser Zeit wurde er in “zyklischer Wiederkehr”1 für bankrott erklärt. Aufgrund der von den Dreyfusards vertretenen, auf die Aufklärung zurück­ gehenden Ideale und ihrer spezifischen Aktionsweise: der öffentlichen Kritik unter Zuhilfenahme der Medien, bezeichnet der Begriff – zumindest im fran­ zösischen Verständnis – einen staatskritischen, politisch engagierten Vertreter eines Bildungs bürgertums, oft der freien Berufe, der aktiv für die Verwirkli­ chung seiner univer salistisch­humanistischen Ideale eintritt und mittels sei­ ner auf symbolischem Kapital beruhenden Autorität eine gewisse öffentliche Wirkkraft hat. Er verfügt über das Bewußtsein, die “Gesellschaft” verändern zu können und solidarisiert sich in diesem Sinne oft mit Gleichgesinnten. Sein Mittel des Engagements ist üblicherweise das geschriebene Wort (ferner die öffentliche Rede und insbesondere seit der Verbreitung der Multimedia Fern­ sehen, Radio und neuerdings das Internet), weshalb traditionell das Konzept in engem Bezug zum Beruf des Literaten steht. Zu den Grundbedingungen seiner Entstehung im modernen Begriffsverständnis gehört ein gewisses Maß an Meinungsfreiheit oder, in Pierre Bourdieus Terminologie, die “Autonomie

Das intellektuelle Feld der japanischen Nachkriegszeit im Kontext der Rezeption Sartres und der Debatte um dessen “Plaidoyer”

For many years now our profession has largely ignored what surely should be one of the central concerns of our teaching and research: the threat of nuclear war. Even as the canon has recently opened up to incude important works once invisible or devalued because of their authors' gender, race or class, [it must be further enlarged] to confront nuclear texts: plays, poems, novels, and short stories, to be sure, but also a wide variety of 'non-literary' nuclear texts as well. Far more of us, in other words, must become nuclear critics. —Daniel Zins, \"Exploding the Canon\

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Bomb: A Bibliography of Literature and the Arts

Hiroshima Noto and Oe Kenzaburo's Existentialist Other

Political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) wrote little on Asia, but her 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil suggests how she might have evaluated responsibility for and judgment of war crimes in East Asia. I speculate first about how she might have regarded the 1946–1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and I argue that she would have approved of the executions of those ruled culpable for the Rape of Nanjing while contesting much of the moral and legal thinking that led to them. Second, Arendt’s endorsement of the literary imagination as a tool for judgment allows us to read Hotta Yoshie’s 1963 A-bomb novel Judgment to explore how justice might have been served in the wake of the wartime use of nuclear weapons. 摘要: ナチス·ドイツによるユダヤ人虐殺の犯罪責任を再考察した「イエルサレム のアイヒマン」著者のハンナ·アーレント氏ならば、南京虐殺及び原爆投下をいか に裁いたであろう？東京裁判の記録や堀田善衛の小説「審判」にアーレント思想 を適用し、その法律的、倫理的な諸問題を解いてみる。

John Whittier Treat

Papers

Hiroshima Noto and Oe Kenzaburo's Existentialist Other

Arendt in Asia: Responsibility and Judgment in Nanjing and Hiroshima