Author: 衡山

Derridian Haunting: The Disillusion of Maternal Identity in Japanese Science Fiction

During 20th century Japan, the aftermath of World War II led to sociopolitical instability and growing anxieties about national identity and subjectivity. Raechel Dumas’ article “Monstrous Motherhood and Evolutionary Horror in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction” explores the idea that motherhood symbolizes a loss of identity between the mother and the child. The framework of motherhood in Japanese science fiction sets up mothers as vessels for forces that exceed or erase the identity of the self. When read alongside Jacques Derrida’s theorization of spectrality and the instability of presence, Dumas’s analysis reveals that the monstrous maternal is not merely a gendered threat but a philosophical challenge to ontological certainty itself. 

Dumas uses the Parasite Eve to illustrate how the material body transforms and unravels identity. The mother figure Kiyomi experiences dream sequences that describe a “womb-like warmth” consumes Kiyomi and makes her identity indistinguishable from her parasitic child Eve.¹ This dissolution of the maternal body is a dramatic retelling of Derrida’s concept of hauntology which is the condition in which the present is never whole or self-sufficient but is unsettled and in conflict with what comes before and after it.² Kiyomi’s dreams illustrate losing boundaries and becoming inhabited by the parasite Eve. This metamorphosis mirrors Derrida’s claim that identity is always impacted by ghosts or external forces that aren’t fully one’s own. Kiyomi’s maternal body becomes the site where the past overtakes the present, demonstrating Derrida’s assertion that the living present is always “disjoined” by those who are “no longer or not yet there”.³ The maternal process creates a disillusion of identity that portrays motherhood as a figure of excess, inseparable from external forces that affect the women themselves. 

Derrida’s ideas of logic are clearer in Dumas’s reading of Queen of K’n-yan, where the mother is not merely a biological threat but a spectral manifestation of historical trauma. The alien queen in this story is portrayed as a combination of human and alien forms caused by Japanese grotesque wartime crimes. Japan’s imperialist crimes that were “forgotten or culturally repressed” illustrate Derrida’s ideas concerning homogeneity.⁴ Through the use of the media, societal structures, and academia, Derrida claims that one’s identity is tied to the political and societal structures influential in one’s life.⁵ Dumas notes that Derrida’s haunting “belongs to the structure of every hegemony” and the past returns as a monstrous mother whose reproductive excess literalizes the return of the repressed.⁶ The mother in K’n-yan becomes a hauntological figure who embodies a presence that is never fully present but rather is an unstable identity that refuses containment. K’n-yan’s mother illustrates both biological horror and ontological crisis.⁷ Overall, motherhood is shown to dissolve identities of bodies, histories, and identities which echoes Derrida’s claim that the self is always already inhabited by others and not the self.

Ultimately, through examining Dumas’ reading of Japanese science fiction parallels between motherhood and Derrida’s hauntology becomes obvious. Both Parasite Eve and the Queen of K’n-yan illustrate how monstrous motherhood illuminates anxiety about identity’s dissolution whether that be personal, familial, or national. By reading Dumas’ article this loss of identity through the lens of Derrida, the maternal becomes a site for Japan to be haunted by its own repressed histories and unstable futures.

 

  1. Raechel Dumas. “Monstrous Motherhood and Evolutionary Horror in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 45, no. 1 (2018): 26-27.
  2. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf, Routledge, 1994.
  3. Dumas (n 1) 42.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Derrida, Jacques, and Bernard Stiegler. “Spectographies.” The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory, edited by María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 37–52.
  6. Dumas (n 1) 41.
  7. Ibid. 43.

Reimagining Tradition: Boston Confucianism’s Transformation of Global Thought

Boston Confucianism illustrates a significant transformation of philosophical traditions in order to be more applicable and relevant to modern intellectual projects. Robert C. Neville and Tu Weiming treat Confucianism as a “portable tradition” that addresses the ever changing multicultural late-modern world.¹ The transformation of ancient philosophical traditions specifically Confucianism occurs through acts of translation, reconstruction, and intercultural dialogue and Neville and Weiming argue that these processes are necessary to unbind Confucianism from the Sinocentric ideas seen in the historical interpretations of Confucianism. 

First, Neville argues that Confucianism shouldn’t be exclusively tied to the East in both historical and ethnic contexts but rather put into dialogue with Western philosophers to foster a multicultural understanding of Confucianism.² Neville argues that Confucianism should be approached similarly to Western philosophers who for example, commonly use Greek philosophies in their works without being Greek or knowing classical Greek. The same framework of reinterpreting ideas from thinkers outside one’s own geographic origins should be applied to Confucianism. By restrategizing how Eastern philosophies and intellectual works are studied and interpreted in academia, Confucianism is reframed as a “world philosophy” or a philosophy that is able to reach and transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries while maintaining its integrity and cultural significance.³ Tu Weiming builds upon Neville’s point by emphasizing the importance of breaking through linguistic barriers through translation of works.  Weiming states that Confucianism cannot survive the changing modern ideologies and stay culturally relevant without being accessible to other cultures through language. If Confucianism was to never be translated into other languages the philosophy would be “linguistically forever inscribed in a Sinitic mode”.⁴ The vitality of Confucianism depends on the intercultural exchange of ideas that is only gained through accessibility in new languages and cultural environments. Therefore, translation according to Weiming is not only a semantic technicality but an essential to Confucianism’s current relevance and modernization. 

Along with intercultural exchange through translation, Neville highlights the transformation of Confucianism through reconstruction as seen in Boston Confucianism. Confucianism tradition has always leaned towards being more dynamic and open to reform as seen through critiques such that of the Zhou ritual and Neo-Confucianist metaphysics.⁵ This internal dynamic of critique leads Confucianism to be able to adapt well into new cultural settings. Boston Confucianism demonstrates Confucian adaptation through the feminist critiques at the Berkeley conference.⁶ Boston Confucians responded to the criticism by separating Confucianism from the traditional patriarchal East Asia history and argued that Confucian principles represent reciprocity and harmony over oppressive hierarchies. Through internal structures of criticism and adaptation, Neville demonstrates how Confucianism is reinterpreted to contemporary ethical and social concerns. 

Through using intercultural intellectual resources made available through translation and adaptability Confucianism is transformed into a global philosophy. Neville and Weiming stress the creation of a “world culture of philosophy” which reconstructs all traditions and allows for all ancient philosophies to address late-modern concerns.⁶ Confucianism as seen through Boston Confucianism becomes indispensable among many emerging discourses and displays how tradition can maintain a connection with its heritage and culture while also reshaping itself to be applied in new contexts. 

  1. Tu Weiming, “Foreword,” in Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World, p. xii.
  2. Neville, Boston “Preface” Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World, p. xxii.
  3. Ibid, p. xxx.
  4. Ibid, p. xii-xiii.
  5. Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Neo-Confucian Philosophy,” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 
  6. Neville, Boston “The Short Happy Life of Boston Confucianism” in Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World p. 21-22.

Breaking Dialectic: Tanabe Hajime’s Adaptation of Hegelian Reason in the Logic of the Specific

       In modern Japanese philosophy, Tanabe Hajime stands out as a philosopher who assimilated and transformed major parts of Western thought, specifically German idealism. Tanabe’s engagement with Hegel best displays his inspiration from German idealism. While Tanabe draws strongly from Hegelian dialectics in his own works such as the Logic of the Specific (種の論理), Tanabe ultimately reworked Hegel’s logical system to display historical fallibility, ethical failure, and the necessity of radical self-negation.¹ This comparison illuminates both Tanabe’s intellectual development and a broader evolution of the Kyoto School. While philosophers and Japanese society debated between Buddhist notions of impermanence and non-self and Western systematic philosophy, Tanabe Hajime was able to rework both areas of thought to confront guilt concerning unethical historical acts and transform the individual and society through self negotiation. Through deep engagement with Hegel’s dialectical philosophy Tanabe transforms Hegel’s philosophy by rejecting Hegel’s teleological reconciliation of contradictions and replaces it with a model focused on historical fallibility, the instability of communal structures or species, and the need for radical self-negation or metanoesis.

       First in order to understand Tanabe, Hegel’s philosophy must be explained. Hegel’s dialectic operates within the teleological movement of Absolute Spirit, where contradictions are ultimately reconciled through sublation or a simultaneous canceling and lifting up of a concept.² For Hegel, the historical process tends toward increasing actualization of freedom through institutions such as the state, ethical life, and shared rational structures. Individuals participate in this rational whole and do not participate in anything outside of the rational whole.³ Historians of philosophy have often seen Hegel as offering a self-confident modernity in which reason’s capacities are affirmed, even when they operate through contradiction.

       In connection to Hegel, Tanabe’s early work heavily drew from the Hegelian model of the rational structures. But by the 1930s and 1940s, Tanabe found many limitations in the idealist assumption of an ultimately harmonizing rational structure or state. In the Logic of the Specific, Tanabe replaces Hegel’s concept of Spirit, an overarching structure where all things in existence are a manifestation of this “Spirit”, with a three part structure: individual, species, and universal.⁴ While this format resembles Hegel’s universal individual mediation, Tanabe assigns a very different role to the mediating term. Hegel’s mediating structures (especially the state) are rational embodiments of universal ethical principles. Tanabe’s “species,” however, are historically contingent communities such as nations, religions, cultures, social institutions that shape the individual’s concept of meaning and are very prone to flaws such a collective delusions or mob mentality. In contrast to Hegel’s confidence in the rationality of historical development, Tanabe depicts these species as inherently unstable, prone to self-absolutization, and capable of generating collective delusions.

       The shift from Hegel’s trust in rational historical development to skepticism can be associated with Tanabe’s interaction with crises of Japanese nationalism during World War II.⁵ While Hegel’s state is the ethical culmination of Spirit’s self-realization, Tanabe saw the Japanese state of his time showcasing the species’ capacity for violent error. Therefore the Logic of the Specific is both a philosophical model but also a historical critique that seeks to explain how rational systems and communal forms can betray their supposed universality.

       The conflict between Tanabe and Japanese nationalism leads to what Tanabe later called metanoetics, or the philosophy of repentance.⁶ While Hegel propels Spirit forward by incorporating contradiction into higher unity, Tanabe believes the Spirit’s self realization signals the breakdown of reason’s self-sufficiency. Tanabe states, reason cannot fully comprehend or repair its own failures and transformation requires not sublation but absolute self-negation through “other-power” (tariki), a concept drawn from Shin Buddhist thought.⁷ Tanabe’s turn to metanoetics marks a significant rejection of Hegel’s rationalism in order to focus on existential and Buddhist forms of dialectic. 

       Overall, Tanabe retains Hegel’s insight that human existence is mediated by communal and historical structures where individuals cannot access the universal directly but Tanabe uses this framework to criticize Japanese imperialism. Where Hegel envisioned reconciliation, Tanabe insists on an ongoing cycle in which individuals are forced to confront their complicity in the failures of the species and must reform it. Tanabe’s Logic of the Specific represents a reorientation of dialectical philosophy toward historical consciousness where Buddhist-influenced self-negation and ethical responsibility are used to navigate modernity’s crises.

  1. Tanabe, Hajime. Philosophy as Metanoetics. Translated by Yoshinori Takeuchi, James W. Heisig, and Valdo Viglielmo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
  2. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  3. Hegel, G. W. F. Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

  4. Tanabe, Hajime. The Logic of Species (種の論理). In Tanabe Hajime: Collected Works, vol. 7. Trans. Yoshihisa Yamamoto. University of Tokyo Press, 1998.

  5. Heisig, James W. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.
  6. Ozaki, Masakatsu. “Tanabe’s Interpretation of Hegel.” The Eastern Buddhist 20, no. 2 (1987): 107–130.
  7. Tanabe, Hajime. Philosophy as Metanoetics. Translated by Yoshinori Takeuchi, James W. Heisig, and Valdo Viglielmo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

The Paradox of Peace: Japan’s Evolving Identity from 1919-1964

       After Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1933 and withdrawing from the League of Nations in 1933, the world believed Japan to be rejecting internationalism.¹ The believed rejection of internationalism by Japan was proven to be false as Japan developed the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a pan-Asian conglomerate with the aim to promote an anti-colonialism from the West.²  From the interwar years through the postwar decades, Japan’s engagement with the world was full of contradictions torn between universal ideals and imperial ambitions. As historians Jessamyn Abel, Tomoko Akami, and Mark Lincicome each show, Japan’s global identity was never simply nationalist or internationalist. It was a constant negotiation between empire and moral legitimacy.

       The three historians all attempt to understand how Japan builds its identity within the global sphere. Abel focuses on the “international minimum” which was Japan’s way of maintaining a baseline of global participation even during times of war.³ The main example of this baseline was the bid from Japan to host the 1940 Tokyo Olympics. Abel frames the Tokyo Olympics as a gesture of goodwill to the international community even though at the time Japan’s imperialism was spreading over Asia. Japan projected an image of peace and enlightenment while simultaneously expanding its empire. The display of Japanese culture on a global scale such as the Kokusai Bunka Shinkoukai sponsoring art and education abroad helped to show that Japan is a key component to bridge the East and the West. Abel concludes that Japan rebranded itself throughout time by using culture as a front to project the image of peace while still expanding the nation’s imperialism throughout Asia.⁴ This use of culture illustrates how Japan reshaped its identity to fit any ideology that the moment required in order to build an identity with the West.

       While Abel traces cultural diplomacy, Tomoko Akami examines international engagement that was meant to foster peace but emphasized global tension. In 1925, The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was created to foster a dialogue between nations around the Pacific Rim.⁵ Japan joined early and eagerly sent scholars and diplomats to discuss trade, diplomacy, and governance. As Japan’s imperialism grew throughout the 1930s, tension grew between the countries and came to a head at the 1926 Yosemite Conference. Japanese representatives defended the nation’s expansions in China stating the expansion as a need for modernization yet this argument illustrates how Japan combined imperialism and internationalism. Akami states, Japan’s participation was a performance of legitimacy as it sought to appear as a civilized and cooperative power, even while defying Western norms.⁶ The IPR revealed how internationalism could reinforce imperial hierarchies rather than dissolve them which illustrates that Japan’s identity in the international stage was centered around imperialism and fake facades of modernization according to Akami.

       Similarly to Abel and Akami, Mark Lincicome uncovers how Japan’s schools and universities became ideal for shaping “international” citizens and uses education as a global identity. After World War I, international education was promoted and students were taught to value peace, cultural understanding, and global citizenship.⁷ But by the 1930s, these ideals were absorbed into the state’s nationalist mission. Under imperial rule, the “global citizen” became an imperial subject who represented Japan’s cultural superiority abroad and brought “civilization” to colonized Asia.⁵ Lincicome’s insight illustrates how Japan used education as another front to cover imperialistic colonization of Asia similar to Akami’s view on Japan’s modernization. The very language of peace and world citizenship that Japan used after 1945 had imperial roots and ideals didn’t vanish; they simply rebranded just as seen in Abel’s view on Japan using culture to project ideals of peace. 

       Throughout the three works, all of the historians portray an image of Japan that ties its identity to facades of peace and global cooperation. Abel’s Japan uses culture to maintain international visibility and a connection with the West even after Japan left the League of Nations. Akami illustrates how Japan uses opportunities of international cooperation and discussion to put on a false image of peace and cooperation between countries. Lincicome combines the two views into one by illustrating how Japan uses education as a part of culture to enforce global ideals that serve the nation. Abel, Akami, and Lincicome remind us that nations rarely reinvent themselves from scratch. They evolve through the reinterpretation of old ideals. Japan’s imperial past was not erased by defeat: it was rewritten through the language of internationalism.

  1. The Japanese Embassy to the State. September 24, 1931.
  2. Beasley, W. G. “The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” In Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945, 233-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  3. Abel, Jessamyn R. The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933–1964. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015. Introduction.
  4. Abel, Jessamyn R. Chapter 3, “Cultural Diplomacy for Peace and War,” pp. 81–107.
  5. Akami, Tomoko. Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–1945. London: Routledge, 2002. Introduction, pp. 1–16.
  6. Akami, Tomoko. Chapter 8, “The IPR and the Sino-Japanese War, 1936–9,” pp. 200–239.
  7. Lincicome, Mark Elwood. Imperial Subjects as Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Education in Japan. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. Chapters 3–4.