Bridging Civilizations Through Nothingness: Manchurian China as Nishida Kitaro’s “Place”
Author: Chih-Yu Shih, Wei-lin Huang, Chih-chin Chang, Yu-chun Huang, Ting-yin Chen, Hsin-ting Huang
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Bridging is a metaphor used by colonized people torn between traditionalindigenous culture and the intruding Western civilization to transcend materialweakness and provide spiritual remedy to the materialist West. This paperintroduces Nishda Kitaro’s model of bridging, with a note on Rabinfranath Tagore’smodel as a reference. The Nishida model, embedded in the philosophy ofnothingness, takes away individual agency for transcendence. The paper engagesShiratori Kurakichi and his notion of Manchuria as the origin of world civilizations,which later reifies the place of nothingness. The resultant enthusiasm toward theestablishment of Manchukuo was both a form of bridging and a twist towardimperialism. Overall, our paper reinterprets the meaning of bridging in the contextof modern Japanese political thought.