Overcoming of Being Asian?─Temporality and Spatiality in Post-War Japan’s Thoughts on Modernity
Author: Chih-Yu Shih, Tracy Yi-Tsui Tseng
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
An obsession with modernity plagued Japan’s modern thinkers as modernityseemed the key to Japan’s inferiority to the West. One solution was to return to anAsia that enabled Japan to overcome modernity’s alien features. However, thisstress on Asia practically led to imperialist expansion. As a remedy, MaruyamaMasao decided to bring modernity back into Japan’s pre-modern history, whileTakeuchi Yoshimi relied on an Asia that was a process rather than an entity.Koyasu Nobukni echoes Takeuchi with a postmodern narrative on East Asia thatdenies any claim to fundamentalism. In contrast, Mizoguchi Yuzo shuns Asia bylinking each national modernity to the universal world without anything in between.Mizoguchi ironically inspired Baik Youngseo and Chen Kwang-hsing to resort toAsia again. Both cherish peripheral, sub-national narratives. Together, they areunited in the quest for a deconstructed Asia that can overcome modernity’s Westernfeatures.