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(★)(Kuwabara Takeo is by training a scholar of French literature, yet his intellectual curiosity has led him to the comparasive study of cultures. As one of Japan´s leading intellectuals, he is admired and respected for his bold and unorthodox statements and for the plain language in which he makes them : his pragmatic style is persuasive because of his very lack of pretension. In the eleven stimulating essays collected in this volume, Kuwabara addresses himself to the question of modernization : touching on a variety of topics, both cultural and historical, from Meiji to contemporary Japan, he presents as insightful view of a nation that in some one hundred years developed from a feudal and hierarchical society to a modern and economically advanced nation. He sees a number of factors contributing to Japan´s rapid modernization process : the role of ´historical luck´in a nation that had never been colonized and hence was receptive to Western ideas ; the people´s flexibility and willingness to experiment with anything new ; and the absence of a mono-theistic religion. Kuwabara also comments on such varied topics as the social effect of the arts, the effect of modernization on tastes in feminine beauty, and ideological conflicts over the modernization and westernization of the country. In the realm of academia, he attributes the low productivity of Japan´s higher education to its bureaucratic and hierarchical university system and describes a rash experiment in his own Research Institute for Humanistic Studies at Kyoto University. Kuwabara sees the Meiji era as one primarily of cultural revolution. He rejects the standard historical term ´Restoration´in favor of ´Revolution´to describe the drastic social and cultural changes that took place in the nineteenth century --such as the abolition of the hierarchical classic system and the institution of an egalitarian educational system. Kuwabara has great confidence in Japan´s cultural and economic strengths : he does not look to the West as a model, and he is critical of those who belittle Japan. At the same time, he is willing to puncture what he sees as cultural illusions at home --for example, dismissing haiku as a second-rate art form. Katoo Hidetoshi, himself a scholar of comparative culture, has provided comments on the background of each essay and its significance in the development of Kuwabara´s thinking during the postwar years. The skillful translations in this volume bring for the first time the personal warmth, wry humor, and humanistic philosophy of a major Japanese intellectual figure to readers of English. Kuwabara Takeo, born in 1904, is professor emeritus of Kyoto University and member of the Science Council of Japan. Katoo Hidetoshi is professor of sociology at Gakushuin University and research fellow at East-West Communication Institute, East-West Center. Kano Tsutomu and Patricia Murray are translators at the Center for Social Science Communication, Tokyo.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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