Tetsuro Watsuji (和辻 哲郎) was a Japanese historian and moral philosopher.

Early life

Watsuji was born in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture to a physician. During his youth he enjoyed poetry and had a passion for Western literature. For a short time he was the coeditor of a literary magazine and was involved in writing poems and plays. His interests in philosophy came to light while he was a student at First Higher School in Tokyo, although his interest in literature would always remain strong throughout his life. In his early writings (between 1913 and 1915) he introduced the work of Søren Kierkegaard to Japan, as well as working on Friedrich Nietzsche, but in 1918 he turned against this earlier position, criticizing Western philosophical individualism, and attacking its influence on Japanese thought and life. This led to a study of the roots of Japanese culture, including Japanese Buddhist art, and notably the work of the medieval Zen Buddhist Dōgen. Watsuji was also interested in the famous Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki, whose books were influential during Watsuji's early years.

Career

In the early 1920s Watsuji taught at Toyo, Hosei and Keio universities, and at Tsuda Eigaku-juku (now, Tsuda University). The issues of hermeneutics attracted his attention, especially the hermeneutics of Boeckh and Dilthey. In March 1925, Watsuji became a lecturer at Kyoto Imperial University, joining the other leading philosophers of the time, Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji. These three philosophers were members of the Kyoto School. While Watsuji joined their department, he is not typically considered a member of the School due to the intellectual independence in his work. In July, he was promoted to associate professor of ethics. In January 1927, it was decided that he would go to Germany for 3 years for his research on the history of moral thought. He departed on 17th February and finally arrived in Berlin in early April. In the beginning of summer, he read Heidegger’s Being and Time which had just come out. He then went to Paris. He left Paris in early December and arrived in Genoa on the 12th of that month. From January to March 1928, he travelled to Rome, Naples, Sicily, Florence, Bologna, Ravenna, Padua and Venice. He then cut his trip short, returning to Japan in early July. So his stay in Europe only lasted for roughly a year. In March 1931, he was promoted to full professor at Kyoto Imperial University. He then moved to the Tokyo Imperial University in July 1934 and held the chair in ethics until his retirement in March 1949. During World War II his theories (which claimed the superiority of Japanese approaches to and understanding of human nature and ethics, and argued for the negation of self) provided support for Japanese nationalism, a fact which, after the war, he said that he regretted. Watsuji died at the age of 71.

Work

Watsuji's three main works were his two-volume 1954 History of Japanese Ethical Thought, his three-volume Ethics, first published in 1937, 1942, and 1949, and his 1935 Climate. The last of these develops his most distinctive thought. In it, Watsuji argues for an essential relationship between climate and other environmental factors and the nature of human cultures, and he distinguished three types of culture: pastoral, desert, and monsoon. Watsuji wrote that Kendo involves raising a struggle to a life-transcending level by freeing oneself from an attachment to life.

List of works

Collected Works [和辻哲郎全集], 27 vols. (Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店], 1961-91) [CW]. CW1 CW2 CW3 CW4 CW5 CW6 CW7 CW8 CW9 CW10 CW11 CW12 CW13 CW14 CW15 CW16 CW17 CW18 CW19 CW20-24 CW25 CW26 CW27

English translations