ABSTRACT
At the end of this survey the reader may well expect a balance sheet of the hundred years of Japanese philosophy which we have reviewed. Furthermore, he may feel entitled to some judgments on vast problems like the Japanization of Western thought or the possibility of the meeting of Eastern and Western philosophy, given the currency that such ideas have today in the cultural and political world. Not to disappoint the reader, I shall state at once that, though I will offer some tentatively and necessarily superficial generalizations on Japan's modern philosophy, I am of the opinion that problems like those mentioned in the preceding sentence are so complex and frequently have so little to do with the history of ideas, that the better part of wisdom is not to write about them instead of trying to solve them by recurring to the unqualified generalizations of the journalist or dilettante.
