Watsuji on nature: Japanese philosophy in the wake of Heidegger
Abstract
CONTEMPORARY JAPAN 2021, VOL. 33, NO. 2, 243–265 BOOK REVIEWS Watsuji on nature: Japanese philosophy in the wake of Heidegger, by David Johnson, Evanston Ill, Northwestern University Press, 2019, 242 pp., $99.45 (Hardback), ISBN 978-0-8101-4047-9; $34.95 (Paperback), ISBN 978-0-8101-4046-2 In philosophical Watsuji scholarship, the intricate relation between Rinrigaku (Watsuji, 1961c, 1961d) and Fūdo (Watsuji, 1961b), and Heidegger’s Being and Time (Heidegger, 2010) seems to be well, if not exhaustively explored. Virtually every contribution to the subject refers in one or another way to the famous quote at the very outset of Fūdo, where Watsuji confesses his indebtedness to Heidegger’s masterpiece. Since Tosaka Jun’s criticism of Watsuji’s etymological hermeneutics (cf. Tosaka, 1965, p. 299–308), which, as he keenly observed, was obviously inspired by Heidegger’s style of crafting and remodeling philosophical concepts, a lot of work has been done to make Watsuji’s philosophical writings comprehensible via a reading of the early Heidegger. Sakabe Megumi’s Watsuji Tetsurō (Sakabe, 1986), Yuasa Yasuo’s Watsuji Tetsurō. Kindai Nihon tetsugaku no unmei (Yuasa, 1995), and, most explicitly, Mine Hideki’s Heideggā to Nihon no tetsugaku (Mine, 2004), are examples that readily come to mind, as do the studies of Augustin Berque, to whom I will come back