ABSTRACT
Hidehito Otani, who studied at the University of Copenhagen from 1958-60 and attained a Ph.D. in Literature from Keio University in 1969 with his dissertation A Study of Kierkegaard's Youth, would say that Kierkegaard can never be understood except by reading him in the original Danish and being familiar with his Danish and Scandinavian milieu. According to the final review of the doctoral thesis, the contributions of Kierkegaard's Youth are that Kierkegaard's journals and other primary sources are intensively studied. One may be tempted to reply to this criticism that Otani intended to provide vital historical documents to Japanese readers, and therefore he intentionally used a good deal of space to make various sources accessible. Otani is quite strict about methodology among Japanese researchers. Further, Otani's method does not allow him to step into arbitrary or stereotyped interpretations, but rather attempts to demonstrate Kierkegaard as a nineteenth-century Dane whose thought was not formed in a vacuum.
