ABSTRACT

This book puts forward a revisionist view of Japanese wartime thinking. It seeks to explore why Japanese intellectuals, historians and philosophers of the time insisted that Japan had to turn its back on the West and attack the United States and the British Empire. Based on a close reading of the texts written by members of the highly influential Kyoto School, and revisiting the dialogue between the Kyoto School and the German philosopher Heidegger, it argues that the work of Kyoto thinkers cannot be dismissed as mere fascist propaganda, and that this work, in which race is a key theme, constitutes a reasoned case for a post-White world. The author also argues that this theme is increasingly relevant at present, as demographic changes are set to transform the political and social landscape of North America and Western Europe over the next fifty years.

chapter 1|11 pages

Roman questions

American empire and the Kyoto School

chapter 2|15 pages

Revisionism

The end of White America in Japan studies

chapter 3|17 pages

Philosophy and the Pacific War

Imperial Japan and the making of a post-White world

chapter 4|15 pages

Scholarship or propaganda

Neo-Marxism and the decay of Pacific War orthodoxy

chapter 5|18 pages

Wartime Japan as it really was

The Kyoto School’s struggle against Tojo (1941–44)

chapter 6|13 pages

Taking Kyoto philosophy seriously

chapter 8|23 pages

When is a philosopher a moral monster?

chapter 9|12 pages

Heidegger, Nazism and the Farías Affair

The European origins of the Kyoto School crises

chapter 10|10 pages

Heidegger and the wartime Kyoto School

After Farías – the first paradigm crisis (1987–96)

chapter 11|16 pages

Nazism is no excuse

After Farías – the Allied Gaze and the second crisis (1997–2002)

chapter 12|14 pages

Nothing shall be spared: a manifesto on the future of Japan studies

A manifesto on the future