ABSTRACT
One of the most notorious events in the Japanese intellectual history of the twentieth century is a roundtable discussion conducted in July 1942 in Kyoto, entitled Kindai no chOkoku, 'Overcoming modernity'. Called together by Kawakami Tetsutaro and some other members of the group of literati related to the Bungakukai, or 'Literary World' magazine, the participants discussed for two days various issues related to modernity, Westernization and the problems these processes had caused for Japan, with the general keynote of a need for finding a way out of the situation, a distinctly Japanese, or Asian, way of moving forward in history. Some of the participants had also previously stated their positions in more detail in commissioned essays printed in the magazine in September and October 1942, and all ofthe material was published together in the following year.
