In the summer of 1942 Japan's leading cultural authorities gathered in Tokyo to discuss the massive cultural, technological, and intellectual changes that had transformed Japan since the Meiji period. They feared that without a sufficient understanding of these developments, the Japanese people would lose their identity to the reckless and rapid process of modernization. The participants of this symposium hoped to settle the question of Japanese cultural identity at a time when their country was already at war with England and the United States. They presented papers and held roundtable discussions analyzing the effects of modernity from the diverse perspectives of literature, history, theology, film, music, philosophy, and science. Taken together, their work represents a complex portrait of intellectual discourse in wartime Japan, marked not only by a turn toward fascism but also by a profound sense of cultural crisis and anxiety. Overcoming Modernity is the first English translation of the symposium proceedings. Originally published in 1942, this material remains one of the most valuable documents of wartime Japanese intellectual history. Richard F. Calichman reproduces the entire proceedings and includes a critical introduction that provides thorough background of the symposium and its reception among postwar Japanese thinkers and critics. The aim of this conference was to go beyond facile and unreflective discussions concerning Japan's new spiritual order and examine more substantially the phenomenon of Japanese modernization and westernization. This does not mean, however, that a consensus was reached among the symposium's participants. Their tense debate reflects the problematic efforts within Japan, if not throughout the rest of the world at the time, to resolve the troubling issues of modernity.

Here, in a well-polished and interpreted translation, is the defining cultural text of wartime Japan. This collective inquiry into the possibility of attaining a modernity beyond that proffered by the West, so important in Japan's past, also resonates with the world's present, which has yet to solve--or overcome--the challenge of the modern. -- Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, Columbia University

About the Author
Richard F. Calichman is an associate professor of Japan Studies and chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the City College of New York, CUNY. His previous publications include Contemporary Japanese Thought, What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, and Takeuchi Yoshimi: Displacing the West.

Reviews
An important text for anyone interested in the challenges to modernity in historical Japan or in much of the contemporary world... Highly Recommended. CHOICE Calichman's English version of Overcoming Modernity... is without doubt an excellent achievement and will be indispensable reading for any serious student of modern Japan. -- Yasunari Takada Journal of Japanese Studies Calichman has formulated a powerful and radical philosophical critique. -- Christian Uhl Monumenta Nippocica The book is not only essential reading for scholars of Japanese intellectual and political history, but also of interest to anyone concerned with the crisis of modernity and various reactions to it. -- Viren Murthy Social History ...the collection, finely translated by Calichman, will be indispensable for the study of Japan's modern intellectual history and as such is to be highly recommended. -- Christopher W. A. Szpilman Pacific Affairs



Book Information
ISBN 9780231143967
Author Richard Calichman
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press