ABSTRACT
Japan has always been the test case for the universality of Western culture. The Japanese were the first non-Western people to modernize successfully. They built a powerful economy based on Western science and technology. Yet their society remains significantly different from the Western models it imitates. These differences are not merely superficial vestiges of a dying tradition, but show up in the very structure of Japanese science and technology. Is Japan different enough to qualify as an “alternative modernity?” Does it refute or confirm the claims of universalism? These are the questions Japan raises for us today. An early response to these questions comes from Japan itself. In the 1930s the founder of modern Japanese philosophy, Kitaro Nishida, proposed an innovative theory of multicultural modernity. In this chapter, I will consider the Japanese case and introduce Nishida’s remarkable theory, one of the first attempts to grasp the philosophical implications of globalization.
