1st Edition
The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance A reading, with commentary, of the complete texts of the Kyoto School discussions of "The Standpoint of World History and Japan"
Prologue: The Kyoto School, Confucian Revolution and the Exhaustion of Liberal History
Part 1: Introduction and Commentary: The Prince of our Disorder and the Fate of Imperial Japan
1. Versailles to Pearl Harbor: Woodrow Wilson and the Origin of the Ethics of ‘Liberal Imperialism’
2. Ethics as Power: The Prince of our Disorder and the Fate of Imperial Japan: What is the Kyoto School?
What is the Kyoto School?
3. Learning to Resist Imperialism: The Three Phases of the Classic of Kyoto School and the Chūō Kōron Symposia on ‘the Standpoint of World History and Japan’
4. Confucianism, Realism and Liberalism: Three Approaches to the Chūō Kōron Symposia
5. How East Asians Argue: The Confucian Form and Language of the Chūō Kōron Symposia: The Pacific War and the Exhaustion of Liberal History
The Pacific War and the Exhaustion of Liberal History
6. The Revisionism of what Happens when: Parkes, Ōhashi, and the Exhaustion of Liberal History
7. Rejecting Tōjō’s Decision for War: The Kyoto School Rethinks the State, International Law and Globalization
8. Are Japan Studies Moral? Confucian Pacifism and Kellogg–Briand Liberalism between Voltaire and Walzer: The Kyoto School and the Post-Meiji Confucian Revolution
The Kyoto School and the Post-Meiji Confucian Revolution
9. Endless Pearl Harbors? The Kyoto Thinker as Grand Strategist
10. Confucian Tipping Points: How East Asians Make up their Minds
11. Plotting to Bring Tōjō Down: The Post-Meiji Confucian Revolution and the Kyoto School–Imperial Navy Conspiracy
Part 2: The Standpoint of World History and Japan or a Reading of the Complete Texts of the Three Chūō Kōron Symposia
I. Two Weeks Before Pearl Harbor: The First Symposium: ‘The Standpoint of World History and Japan’ (26 November 1941)
II. Three Days after the Fall of the Dutch East Indies: The Second Symposium: ‘The Ethical and Historical Character of the East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere’ (4 March 1942)
III. Five Months after Midway: The Third Symposium: ‘The Philosophy of World-historical Wars’ (24 November 1942)
Biography
David Williams is a leading thinker on the Orient and a preeminent expert on the wartime Kyoto School. He is the author of Japan: Beyond the End of History (1994), Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science (1996) and Defending Japan's Pacific War: The Kyoto Philosophers and Post-white Power (2004) and The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy (2006).
‘This deeply researched and provocative study highlights the key significance of Confucian political ideas for Kyoto School thinkers while demonstrating the futility of approaching their philosophy from the standpoint of ‘moral history’. – Graham Parkes, University College Cork, Ireland
