ONE contemporary scholar who has written extensively about the Kyoto School is Graham Parkes of University College Cork, including books dealing with the influence of both Nietzsche and Heidegger on Asian thought in general. However, one of his chief interests is the way that some members of the School have been wrongly portrayed by Western academia in relation to Japanese fascism. Certain figures – among them Nishida, Tanabe, Nishitani, Kuki Shūzō and Miki Kiyoshi – have been accused of promoting ultra-nationalist ideas and yet the accusatory scholarship, according to Parkes, has turned out

“to be sadly short on facts and long on neo-Marxist jargon and deconstructionist rhetoric. Ideological concerns have stifled philosophical inquiry and are now promoting a kind of censorship that suggests, ironically, a fascism of the left. This would be of no great consequence if fascism had been eradicated after World War II; but since fascistic movements are still very much with us, scholarly discussions of the phenomenon have a responsibility to identify it properly.”

Parkes argues that part of the reason Japanese thinkers have been ignored by Western academia lies in their wartime opposition to British, Dutch and American expansionism in East Asia. Consequently, this led many intellectuals to promote Japanese culture and defend their own imperial values under the auspices of the Emperor. As a result of turning inwards at a time when Japan was under threat, the aforementioned personages are often presented as ‘fascist’ ideologues. In truth, this smear

“is being conjured up by projections on the part of morally superior commentators from the side of the victorious Americans. These dismissals have had the dismal effect of stunting the growth of English-language studies of the Kyoto School thinkers, as many potential students have been persuaded that those philosophers are promoters of fascism.”

My recent posts on Tanabe should demonstrate once and for all that he, in particular, was especially hostile towards all forms of nationalism, but it is equally ridiculous to apply the term ‘fascism’ to various other Kyoto School figures. Nishitani, for example, has been attacked for attending a series of conferences held between 1941 and 1942, with the speeches appearing the following year in a journal called Japan from a World-Historical Standpoint. Whilst, admittedly, these symposiums called for the country to colonise parts of China and South-East Asia, the strategy was presented as the only viable alternative to existing Western imperialism in the region. In addition, Nishitani and his colleagues took a staunchly anti-modernist approach and this was perfectly out of synch with the Hitlerian-Mussolinian tendency to embrace and utilise new ideas.

The meetings held in 1941 and 1942 also sought to quell the assertiveness of the Japanese military, discussing how the country might avoid war with the United States in the wake of the famous attack on Pearl Harbour. This caused the participants at these events to be challenged by some of Japan’s more vocal fascist groups, something that eventually led to the Army suppressing the public activities of the Kyoto School itself:

“Such measures would have been unnecessary had the participants in the symposium been the raging fascists they are now accused of being. What is clear is that their postwar accusers, if they have read the relevant texts at all, have completely ignored their complicated context.”

Parkes notes that it was not until 1994 that the West made an attempt to get to grips with the alleged links between Japanese intellectuals and fascism, and following a meeting in New Mexico a book was published under the title Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School & the Question of Nationalism. Whilst the text saw Occidental writers portray Japan as a wartime belligerent and Oriental contributors attempt to defend their country’s actions, it was clear that those in the West had little understanding of the antagonistic role played by American imperialism.

A year or two later, further criticisms of the Kyoto School appeared and this time there was a deliberate effort on the part of Marxists and deconstructionists to misrepresent the philosophical movement as a whole. The intellectual link to Heidegger, of course, was considered enough and thus became a classic exercise in guilt-by-association. Parkes made an attempt to rebutt these claims in his 1997 essay, The Putative Fascism of the Kyoto School and the Political Correctness of the Modern Academy, and yet despite sending the main culprits a copy of his paper – among them Harry Harootunian, Peter Dale, Bernard Faure and Leslie Pincus – none of these leftist critics bothered to defend their unsubstantiated claims.