ABSTRACT
Between November 1941 and November 1942 the philosophers Nishitani Keiji, Ko¯yama Iwao, and Ko¯saka Masaaki, along with the historian Suzuki Shigetaka, held a series of three round-table discussions. The four participants belonged to the ‘second generation’ of the Kyoto School of philosophy, a group of thinkers around Japan’s pre-eminent philosopher Nishida Kitaro¯. The transcripts of these symposia were published in the journal Chu¯o¯ko¯ron. The first transcript appeared under the title ‘The World-Historical Standpoint and Japan’ in the January edition of 1942. The transcripts of the subsequent symposia – ‘The Ethical Nature and Historicity of the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’, and ‘The Philosophy of Total War’ – were published in April 1942, and in January 1943 respectively.1 In the same year, 1943, these ‘Chu¯o¯ko¯ron-discussions’ were republished as a book (Ko¯yama et al. 1943). Almost from the start, the ‘world-historical standpoint’provoked harsh criticism;
during the war from the right wing and after the war from the leftist and liberal camps. Until today the Kyoto School is one of the most controversial issues within the debate about intellectuals’ collaboration with the war-time regime in Japan, and philosophy’s contamination by politics.2 However, I do not intend to make this debate the starting point of this chapter. Instead, I would first like to turn back to the transcripts of the Chu¯o¯ko¯ron-discussions, and leave it to its four participants to give the note and beat the time of my inquiry. My point of departure shall be the statement by which Ko¯saka Masaaki opened the first of the three symposia – or, more accurately, my own wondering about this first, introductory statement.
