2. Inoue Tetsujirō and the Birth of the Construction of ‘Japanese Philosophy’

We use the expression birth of the Construction of ‘Japanese philosophy’ instead of birth of ‘Japanese philosophy’ here because from the early 1900s to the 1930s, that is, from the end of the Meiji period to the beginning of the Showa period, only studies on Japanese philosophy and the history of Japanese philosophy that dealt with works written before the Meiji period appeared in Japanese scholarship. After the 1940s, scholars no longer pursued these early approaches to the study of Japanese philosophy. The subject matter of the earlier research was essentially thematically assigned to Japanese intellectual history. Since then, Japanese philosophy has referred mainly to the latter period, that is, to works by Japanese scholars that emerged with the introduction, acceptance, and exploration of Western philosophy. In particular, the philosophical works of the Kyoto School, represented by Nishida Kitarō, have become synonymous with ‘Japanese philosophy’ (Lin and Ge, Reference Lin and Shiyan2022). For this reason, the early constructive attempts at Japanese philosophy based on texts from before the modern era cannot be called just ‘Japanese philosophy’ but rather should be called ‘construction of Japanese philosophy’ to distinguish it from the later so-called Japanese philosophy. These early attempts at reconstructing traditional Confucianism as philosophy to form Japanese philosophy are not meaningless. Rather, they are essential to the question of how to connect the early exploratory phase with the period after the 1940s in order to construct a history of Japanese philosophy that covers the entire content in the style of a general history and is not itself fragmentated. In Japanese scholarship, this exploration has long been deferred and has not yet achieved organic integration; thus, there is no complete history of Japanese philosophy from ancient to modern times. This is certainly directly related to how Japanese scholars understand the issue of philosophy and to their nationalistic pursuit of self-identity. The re-examination and reinvestigation of the early exploratory stage of Japanese philosophy have become indispensable in Japanese scholarship. Only by solving this problem can we understand what came to be called ‘Japanese philosophy’ after the 1940s. With respect to the early exploration of ‘apanese philosophy, the pioneer was Inoue Tetsujirō, who was then an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo. In Japanese scholarly circles of the Meiji era, he made the first attempt at an academic reconstruction of Japanese philosophy by applying modern disciplinary understanding to the history of Tokugawa Confucianism.

Inoue had the most ‘first person’ scholarly titles in modern Japan. Even so, he was not very highly rated by Japanese scholars. This was not only because he was the representative ‘imperial scholar’ in Japan, i.e., the scholar recognized by the Meiji government and assisting the government in establishing political ideology, at that time, but also because his critics felt that his academic work was too broad and had limited depth, as it encompassed both Western philosophy and all Eastern philosophies, including Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophy.

Although his academic achievements have been questioned, his contributions to modern Japan and even to the entire field or East Asian scholarship are objectively undeniable. For example, he led his university colleagues in collecting and organizing relevant concepts to compile the first philosophical dictionary in the East Asian academic community, Dictionary of Philosophical Terms (Tetsugaku jii, 1881), which had an important influence on the development of modern scientific language in the humanities and social sciences throughout East Asia.

Inoue’s thoughts on Japanese philosophy had already emerged before he wrote and published The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School. When he first taught ‘History of Oriental Philosophy’ at the University of Tokyo at the end of 1882, the original plan was to include Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophy. Japanese philosophy as a component of Oriental philosophy was already included in his written plans for the university curriculum at that time (Inokuchi, Reference Inokuchi2009). However, he taught ‘History of Oriental Philosophy’ at the University of Tokyo for only about a year before being sent to study in Europe the following year. According to students’ class notes that were handed down (the lecture manuscripts have been lost), he covered only the section on Chinese philosophy (Shina tetsugaku) that year (Lin and Chang, Reference Lin and Chang2021).Footnote ² He went to Europe to study for several years and returned to Tokyo University as a philosophy professor. However, he soon became an official scholar of the Meiji government and became involved in interpreting the Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyōiku chokugo), so he did not pursue his plan to research Japanese philosophy.

In 1897, Inoue was commissioned by the Meiji government to attend the ‘International Congress of Orientalists’ in Paris, where he gave a speech titled The Development of Philosophical Thought in Japan. This conference was one of the most important opportunities for him to write about Japanese philosophy. Three years after this trip, he published the first book on Japanese philosophy, The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School. In the preface, he clearly stated the urgency of participating in this conference: ‘After my return to Japan, I consider it more and more necessary to study the history of Japanese philosophy, in order to clarify the origin of ethics (literally “the teachings of virtue”), and to try to explore the relationship between the schools’. Thus, he began to write, with the result that ‘the manuscripts filled the storage basket more and more. Among them, material on the Yangming School became a separate book, which I called The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School’ (Inoue, Reference Inoue1900, pp. 2–3).

At the same time, together with Kanie Yoshimaru, he compiled the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics, which were published in 1901–1903 (10 volumes in total). The first and second volumes of this series are dedicated to the Yangming School and contain a selection and compilation of representative documents. The third to sixth volumes cover the Ancient Learning School (kogakuha), the seventh and eighth volumes the Zhu Xi School (Shushigakuha), and the ninth and tenth volumes the documents of several other small schools. Judging by the arrangement of the contents, this documentary collection was obviously related to the editorial sequence of the so-called Trilogy, which he also published during this period.

The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School was published in 1900, and in the following year, the first to third volumes of the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics were published. The Philosophy of the Japanese Ancient Learning School was published in 1902. In the same year, the fourth to eighth volumes of the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics were published, of which the fourth to sixth volumes cover the documents of the Ancient Learning School. The Philosophy of the Japanese Zhu Xi School was published in 1905. The documents on the Zhu Xi School, which form the seventh and eighth volumes of the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics, had been published three years earlier in 1902. Thus, the documents contained in volumes one to six of the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics are closely related to the writings of The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School and The Philosophy of the Japanese Ancient Learning School. The writing of the two series was carried out simultaneously. In other words, when Inoue wrote these two books, he also collected and arranged the corresponding texts and published them separately as a collection of documents. During this period, he also collected the documents of the Zhu Xi School and compiled them into the seventh to eighth volumes of the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics, which were published together with the documents of the Ancient Learning School. It was not until 1905 that he finished writing The Philosophy of the Japanese Zhu Xi School; thus, the third work of the Trilogy was published later than the corresponding documentary compilation. To compose the Trilogy, Inoue apparently began collecting, sorting, and studying the relevant authoritative documents. While writing the corresponding works, he also completed the compilation of the documents of the Yangming School, Ancient Learning School, and Zhu Xi School of Tokugawa Confucianism. This is supported by the fact that, in the chronological order of the rise of Tokugawa Confucianism, the Zhu Xi School came first, followed by the Ancient Learning School, and then the Yangming School, while Inoue’s Trilogy begins with the Yangming School, and the arrangement of the contents of the individual volumes of the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics corresponds to the time that he was composing his Trilogy. Inoue’s research and compilation work had an important influence on subsequent research on Tokugawa Confucianism and Japanese intellectual history. Takeuchi Yoshio, for example, explicitly emphasized the importance of Inoue’s work in his Spirit of Confucianism (Takeuchi, Reference Takeuchi1982, pp. 1–2).

It is worth noting that the Trilogy is named ‘Philosophy’, while the compilation is named ‘Ethics’. In other words, at the time of the collection, arrangement, composition, and compilation of the relevant documents, Inoue considered them philosophical material in his thematic works and ethical material in the documentary collection. From the perspective of Aristotle’s classification of philosophical disciplines, ethics is in the category of practical philosophy and is indeed an integral part of philosophy. This illustrates Inoue’s perspective on his philosophical reconstruction of the three Tokugawa schools of Confucianism, the core of which is the investigation of morality and ethics. Although the preface to The Philosophy of the Japanese Ancient Learning School provides only an extremely brief overview of its content and aims, namely, ‘to narrate the philosophy of Japan historically and use it to connect with future philosophy systematically’ (Inoue, Reference Inoue1902, p. 1), the other two volumes of the Trilogy and the preface to the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics confirm the ethical tendency he articulated. In the preface to The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School, Inoue made it clear that he wanted to promote Japan’s ‘national moral mind’ by expounding upon the philosophy of the Yangming School in order to resist the utilitarianism and egoism that were popular at that time (Inoue, Reference Inoue1900, pp. 2–6). In the preface to The Philosophy of the Japanese Zhu Xi School, he pointed out that ‘the Zhu Xi School is completely opposed to utilitarianism and is specifically dedicated to achieving one’s perfect personality. The moral teaching of the Zhu Xi School is similar to today’s concept of “self-realization”; it differs in form but is almost identical in spirit’. ‘Self-realization’ here refers to the Zhu Xi School’s pursuit of ‘becoming a person of noble spirit (kunshi)’ and realizing the perfection of personality by being ‘gentle’, ‘humble’, and ‘respectful’ (Inoue, Reference Inoue1945, pp. 2–3). The preface to the Collected Works on Japanese Ethics clarified the reason for compiling this collection: ‘The morality of our country has gradually deteriorated, and the situation is critical. On the contrary, occidental morality is being introduced into our country faster and faster, almost as if it were rolling away our spiritual world. […] Today, although it is not difficult to buy a book on Western ethics, it is not easy to buy a book on Japanese ethics. A gentleman of our time who is interested in moral education will regret this’ (Inoue and Kanie, Reference Inoue and Kanie1901, pp. 1–3).

All this clearly shows that Inoue focused on the aspects of morality and ethics when writing and compiling his work. More importantly, he attempted to collect, organize, and write a Japanese philosophy that not only opposed the trend of the Westernization of thought in society at that time but also revealed characteristics of the ‘Japaneseness’ of traditional Japanese morality and ethics. This was also the period when Japanese people were striving to establish their self-identity, or what they called ‘Japaneseness’ (Tohiro, Reference Tohiro1935, p. 12).Footnote ³ From the time when Inoue taught Chinese philosophy at Tokyo University in 1882 until the publication of his treatise on Japanese Philosophy in 1900, many scholarly treatises on the history of Chinese philosophy appeared in Japan. Inoue found it unacceptable that there was not a single book on Japanese philosophy that could show the self-confidence of national culture at a time when Japan had emerged victorious from the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the Russo-Japanese War. This kind of ideological motivation is apparent in the preface to The Philosophy of the Japanese Zhu Xi School: ‘The Russo-Japanese war has come to an end today. As the splendor of our country spreads around the world, scholars in Europe and America will increasingly want to explore where our country’s strength comes from. Over the past 300 years, the Tokugawa clan has become the educational doctrine of our country; the historical research of the Zhu Xi school and its great influence on the development of national morality cannot be disregarded’ (Inoue, Reference Inoue1945, pp. 5–6). His Trilogy was obviously written as a Japanese philosophy to promote the power of Japan’s national morality to the world and to emphasize Japan’s strength as a victor. In a sense, the Trilogy was written against the backdrop of the Meiji government’s twisted re-evaluation and revitalization of Confucianism in response to the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement and Westernization policies. Moreover, it was a product of the era of Japan’s East Asian expansion. Inoue believed that ‘both Confucianism and Buddhism were necessary tools for the development of the unique spirit of the Japanese nation, that is, they became the food for strengthening the great spirit and great bones of the Japanese nation. Both were assimilated into Japan’ (Inoue, Reference Inoue and Goan1905b, pp. 454, 456). Based on this understanding of the nation and culture as a response to the needs of the times, his efforts to build a Japanese philosophy, i.e., his Trilogy of Tokugawa Confucianism, obviously had a clear tendency towards Japanese nationalism, with the emphasis on Japaneseness being the most notable feature of his thought.Footnote ⁴

Inoue began to define, investigate, and explore Japanese philosophy at the end of the 19^th century, prompted by a sense of mission and urgency and following the representative imperial scholars who conducted pioneering research in philosophy in that period. Although the abovementioned circumstances called for the birth of a Japanese philosophy, Japanese scholars at that time were faced with the difficulty of overcoming the two kinds of ‘otherness’ – the otherness of philosophy and the otherness of Chinese language heritage (kanji kango and kanbun) – to develop the so-called Japanese philosophy. Perhaps this is why Japanese scholars introduced and accepted philosophy from the West as early as the beginning of the Meiji period and why Chinese philosophy emerged soon afterwards. However, Japanese philosophy was born in difficulties. The study of Chinese philosophy needed only to deal with philosophy, and its adaption to the modern disciplinary pattern of knowledge could follow that academic paradigm. For Japanese philosophy, on the other hand, in addition to the problem of philosophy, it was even more important to deal with the problem of linguistic otherness in traditional Japanese studies. How did Inoue face and overcome this problem?

3. Kanji and Kango as the ‘Other’ in the Japanese Language and the Debate about the Reform of the National Script and Language

As philosophy was introduced and accepted in modern Japan, Chinese philosophy had emerged earlier because, as mentioned above, the construction of Chinese philosophy was confronted only with philosophy as the ‘other’ from the West. Therefore, Japanese scholars need to change only their framework of discourse to adapt traditional Japanese Sinology to the Western knowledge order and realize the modern transformation of traditional scholarship. However, to realize the transformation of traditional Japanese teachings to a modern academic discipline, it was necessary to deal with the ‘otherness’ inherent in the Japanese language and literature. In other words, of the ‘twofold other’, the ‘other’ of language was more difficult to handle because traditional scholarly writings before the modern era had essentially been written in kanbun, the Japanese-adapted style of literary Chinese, and using Chinese loan words (kango) and Chinese characters (kanji).

The year after the publication of Inoue’s The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School in 1900, which marked the beginning of research on Japanese philosophy, Nakae Chōmin published A Year and a Half (Itchinen yūhan), in which he clearly stated that ‘Japan has no philosophy’ (Nakae, Reference Nakae1983, p. 115). Despite the subsequent publications of Arima (Reference Arima1902), Okada (Reference Okada1929), Muraoka (Reference Muraoka1932), Nishi (Reference Nishi1933), and related works, Japanese scholars were not able to find commonality in the topics of discussion and consistency in the authoritative texts to elucidate the history of Japanese philosophy. In other words, the question of authoritative texts of Japanese philosophy in Japan before the modern era was inconsistently addressed by scholars. The texts of the Ancient Learning School from the early-modern period seemed to be a consistent object of study, but scholars had different views on what parts of the writings of the Ancient Learning School fully belonged to Japanese philosophy. In the so-called Japanized Confucian classics, which are based on Song Confucianism and had undergone Japanese-adapted ways of interpretation and understanding, it was difficult to eliminate ‘foreign’ traces, and scholars had different conceptions of them. The main problem was that these documents were all written in kanbun with kango and kanji and could not be discussed without reference to those forms. As mentioned above, the pursuit of ‘Japaneseness’ was the primary goal of Japanese scholarship at that time, while kango had originated from the Chinese language and was not an indigenous element of the Japanese language. The question of how to deal with this Chinese heritage became a problem that scholars had to face. In other words, for Japanese scholars, kango was an ‘other’ that inherently existed in the Japanese language. Although Japanese Confucian literature contained the value conceptions and intellectual traits of the Japanese people, its content was presented in the kanbun style. The Chinese way of thinking inherent in kanbun and kango was insurmountable. For scholars exploring Japanese philosophy at the time, how to cope with the other of the Chinese linguistic heritage in pre-modern texts was an unavoidable question in determining the identity of Japan’s ‘self’ (Koyasu, Reference Koyasu and Chun2021, pp. 1–2).Footnote ⁵ Since philosophy had originated in the West and had also become an other for the modern transformation of East Asian scholarship at the time, the kango and kanji question and philosophy became the twofold other that Japanese scholars encountered in their investigation of traditional thought and construction of Japanese philosophy.

Before Japanese scholarship began to construct Japanese philosophy, the debate on the ‘reform of the national script and language’ (kokuji kokugo kairyō) had developed in the early Meiji period and lasted for more than 30 years. The various viewpoints that emerged in this controversy were compiled in an important document entitled Opinions on the Reform of the National Language (Kokugo kairyō iken), which was edited and published by Jijikan Press in 1900.Footnote ⁶ In the same year, Inoue published The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School.

Opinions on the Reform of the National Language was not academic work but rather a compilation of materials from various statements by Japanese scholars. The beginning of the book was the Petition for the National Script and Language Reform submitted by the Imperial Education Association (Teikoku kyōikukai) to the government in 1900, and the last statement was a compilation of Inoue’s views On the Reform of the National Script (Kokuji kairyō ron) in two articles by Inoue. The penultimate article was the Report of the Investigation Department of the Imperial Education Association on the Reform of the National Script to Kana. The relevant materials of the Imperial Education Association were used as the introductory and penultimate articles, and Inoue’s views were placed as special materials at the end of the book. This was probably due to the editor’s consideration of the appropriateness of the arrangement of the collection.

The Imperial Education Association was founded in 1896 as a national advisory group on educational issues established jointly by the government and private individuals. This organization submitted a petition to the Imperial Diet (Teikoku-gikai) based on Japanese scholars continuously advocating a ‘Reform of the National Script, Language and Literature’ (kokuji kokugo kokubun kairyō) at that time, thereby suggesting that the Meiji government should reform the Japanese language. To make this proposal convincing, the organization specifically submitted a survey report on the opinions of Japanese scholars on ‘The Reform of the National Script to Kana’. This way of arranging the documents in the collection was considered most appropriate for the purpose of the proposal. Beginning with the ‘petition’ and ending with the ‘investigation report’, the document collection included 65 statements made by scholars from the early Meiji period to the late 19^th century. These views and the Investigation Report of course became the basis for the petition, while the materials titled ‘Opinions of the Imperial Diet’, i.e., the opinions of the deliberations and votes of the House of Peers and the House of Representatives, could be used only as an ‘appendix’ and placed at the end of the book, thus forming a relatively complete collection of materials on ‘The Reform of the National Language’. Inoue’s views were separated from the views of the 65 other scholars and placed at the back of the collection, as his two papers summarized the opinions of Japanese scholars at that time and could be used as an interpretation of the collection of documents. In his discussion papers, Inoue summarized various statements proposing the exclusion and abolition of kanji and kango as well as defending the existence of kanji and kango in the Japanese language; at the end, he explained his own opinion and position.

According to Inoue’s review and conclusion, Japanese scholars at that time had the following ten main theses on the reform of the national script, language and literature (Jijikan Press, Reference Press1900, pp. 399–400):

1. 1. The kanji reduction thesis

2. 2. The kana thesis

3. 3. The rōmāji thesis

4. 4. The thesis of complete alteration of the national language

5. 5. The kana rewriting thesis

6. 6. The kanji rewriting thesis

7. 7. The new national script thesis

8. 8. The hangul thesis

9. 9. The shorthand thesis

10. 10. The visible speech thesis

In addition, there were two opinions in favour of Sanskrit or Russian as the national language. Regarding the above ten or even twelve views, it is worth noting that Inoue commented, ‘In the discussion on the reform of the national script, the most important views are only the following four: the thesis of rewriting kana, the rōmāji thesis, the thesis of the new national script, and the shorthand thesis’ (Jijikan Press, Reference Press1900, p. 401).

Soon after the Meiji Restoration, voices were raised in the Japanese educational world for the improvement of the national language (kokugo). The reason was that the prevailing opinion of Japanese scholars was that the kanji and kango in the ‘national language’ (as the Japanese language was called to foreigners) made it confusing and difficult to learn and write; thus, the Japanese language needed to be improved. In response to these views, of course, there were also voices defending kanji, kango, and kanbun for writing. These voices came mainly from monks and scholars of Chinese literature. Inoue summarized them in the following views (Jijikan Press, Reference Press1900, pp. 416–26). First, it is a fallacy to believe that because Westerners think Japanese writing is confusing and difficult to learn, it needs to be improved. Second, by using Chinese characters, Japan had become a country with the same script and language as China and Korea, which facilitated communication among those countries. If kanji were abolished, this advantage would be lost. Third, the script itself was related to morality. If the script were reformed, morality would change, which would have an impact on the morality of the people. For example, the two characters 忠孝 of chūkō (‘loyalty’ and ‘filial respect’) contain the component ‘heart’ (心). If they were changed to rōmāji, this important moral effect would be lost. Fourth, regarding the reform of the entire script into newly created characters, even if the difficulties in learning kanji could be overcome, new difficulties would certainly arise. Fifth, the improvement of the national script could be carried out only after the standard language was established. Sixth, the adoption of new writing symbols would only lead to new inconveniences; for example, it would become necessary to learn Japanese, kanbun, and foreign languages as well as the new script and new words. Seventh, kanji are characters of art, and the abolition of aesthetic characters would be regrettable. In his response, Inoue refuted each of these points. He believed that ‘kanji must be rejected and completely transformed into a national script (kokuji)’. This was his consistent proposition. His ultimate position was that a new national script (shin kokuji) should be created to replace the existing kana and kanji. He believed that ‘kokuji must be invented and applied. Today, there is nothing more important than this’ (ibid, p. 408). ‘Since script (moji) is just an instrument (tool) for the exchange of ideas, the discovery (invention) and application of a more convenient script than the present rōmāji in our country will accelerate the progress of our country’s civilization and make our nation stand out among all nations’ (ibid, p. 408). If a new script could not be made, it would at least be easier and more convenient to use ‘shorthand’ instead of kana and kanji (ibid, p. 405). For this reason, he believed that among the above ten opinions of Japanese scholars, the kana rewriting thesis, the rōmāji thesis, the new national script thesis, and the thesis of shorthand characters were the most important.

Inoue’s position on the ‘Reform of the National Script and Language’ (kokuji kokugo kairyō), mentioned above clearly showed that he advocated the creation of a new script instead of using kana and kanji because he believed that the kanji in the national language were harmful to the progress of Japanese civilization. Not only would they be an obstacle to the development of the idea of the nation, they would also hinder the development of the national language. For example, he said, ‘Since kanji have been adopted for a long time, they do not allow the language (of the Japanese people) to develop. If the habit, always to borrow kanji for expressions like “spirit”, “emotion”, “generosity”, “imagination”, or “research” continues, no development of the national language can be expected’ (Jijikan Press, Reference Press1900, p. 397). He not only believed that kanji would hinder the development of the Japanese language but also that the use of kanji by the Japanese people could not prevent it from being dominated by Chinese literature, which ‘not only hinders the independence of our national literature, but also brings many obstacles to the progress of civilization’ (ibid, p. 396). To support his view of ‘the harm of kanji’, he also cited an article published in the Asahi Shimbun on 14 April 1898, which reported on the tendency among Chinese scholars in the late Qing Dynasty, such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, to advocate the simplification of Chinese characters to prove that ‘even the Chinese people have already realized the disadvantages of Chinese characters’, thus demonstrating the rationality of his proposal to abolish kanji (ibid, p. 398).Footnote ⁷ Based on this understanding, Inoue was an active advocate among Meiji scholars of changing the national script and language (kokuji kokugo) and creating a new national script and language (shin kokuji kokugo) in place of the old kana and kanji.

4. The Source of Inoue’s Position on Kanji Theory and the Contradiction and Conformity in Constructing Japanese Philosophy

Inoue’s so-called ‘Kanji obstacle theory’ and ‘Kanji dominance theory’ had a long history along with similar views in the scholarship of Meiji Japan. Inoue was not the first to promulgate these views. In the first article of Opinions on the Reform of the National Language, for example, Maejima Hisoka held a similar view and was the first proponent of the abolition of kanji in Japan. Maejima Hisoka believed that in his time, China’s ‘national power was in abysmal decline and its people were barbaric and backward so they were insulted by Western countries. This is because they are completely poisoned by their hieroglyphs and have no knowledge of general education […]’ (Jijikan Press, Reference Press1900, pp. 9–10). Another example is Ueda Kazutoshi, who was the first to advocate studies of a Japanese national language (kokugogaku), pointing out in a speech in 1895, ‘[w]hen it comes to the Japanese language, it is considered very humble. For until the Meiji era, speaking kanbun was a sign of high knowledge and erudition, while speaking in Japan’s native language was considered distasteful and uneducated’ (ibid, p. 225). Ueda Kazutoshi’s speech ‘On the New National Script’ (Shin kokuji ron) in Opinions on the Reform of the National Language can still be described as relatively mild. His book For a National Language, published in 1897, contained a lecture manuscript entitled The National Language and the Country from 1894 (the origin of the Japanese word kokugo, ‘national language’, can be traced to this lecture), in which he clearly indicated that the prevalence of kanji meant that the old language used in Japan since ancient times had been abandoned, leading to a reversal of host and guest in the relationship between kokugo and kango. This led to the situation in which ‘even today, those who do not use kango cannot issue imperial decrees, make statements or gain social status’. Therefore, ‘although Japanese is the national language, it has unfortunately become the “wife” of the Chinese language and grammar (literal veins)’ (Ueda, Reference Ueda1897, pp. 32–33). He was disturbed by that Japanese people and scholars not finding it strange to use kanji and kango. Considering that Japanese scholars still adopted sentence patterns from Chinese and freely used them in the Japanese language, he asked, ‘[w]hen will the time of complete independence dawn for this Japanese language?’ At that time, this understanding was widespread among scholars, which naturally laid the groundwork for the birth of the ‘kanji obstacle theory’ and the ‘kanji dominance theory’. This view of kanji and kango persisted in the intellectual world of Japan, especially in linguistics circles. After the 1930s, it even developed into the ‘kanji invasion theory’, referring to kanji and kango as invaders of the Japanese national language (Yamada, Reference Yamada1940, pp. 29–30).

The ‘kanji invasion theory’ was an important viewpoint of Yamada Yoshio, the modern leader of national language studies (kokugogaku). From the standpoint of national quintessence, he labelled kanji and kango ‘invaders’, which directly influenced the language consciousness of Kokugogaku scholars in modern Japan. They believed that it was precisely the existence of kanji and kango in the Japanese language that had led to its language difficulties. In this context, the famous contemporary scholar Koyasu Nobukuni pointed out, ‘[a]lthough contemporary Japanese linguistics no longer calls kanji and kango “invaders” in an obviously nationalistic manner of speaking, kanji and kango are still regarded as carriers of a twofold otherness, i.e. they are the initial originator of the obstacles to Japanese language. This understanding has not changed. It can even be said that kanji and kango are perceived even more as troublemakers’ (Koyasu, Reference Koyasu and Chun2021, p. 19). The reason why kanji represent a twofold otherness for the Japanese language is that kanji, as written symbols, include the twofold otherness of ‘the other in the other’. For spoken Japanese, kanji as written symbols are an other, and at the same time, kanji as written symbols of a foreign language, Chinese, are an other (Koyasu, Reference Koyasu and Chun2021, p. 19). If one follows this logic of Koyasu Nobukuni, then the study of philosophy introduced in modern Japan also had the problem of a twofold other for traditional Japanese scholarship. Philosophy as a word is a kind of other language symbol for the kana or kanji symbols in the Japanese language and is translated as tetsugaku. Philosophy as a discipline and the concepts associated with it are also a kind of other. Thus, in the introduction of Western learning and the modern transformation of the knowledge order, Japan was confronted not only with the problem of a twofold other but also with a ‘multiple other’. Of course, we can set aside the question of how multifaceted the relationship between the self and the other is within language and science. To explore Japanese philosophy from a broader perspective, we must at least examine the twofold ‘self-other’ relationship, one between kanji and kango and the so-called national language, and the other between traditional Japanese studies based on the Chinese language, national studies and philosophy when facing the tradition of Western learning. Against this intellectual background and during this period, the so-called Japanese philosophy emerged through Inoue’s investigation and re-interpretation.

The aforementioned Trilogy on the philosophy, as the titles of the three volumes indicate, takes Japanese studies on Chinese literature as the object and situated the three schools within the perspective of philosophy of Western scholarship, which was introduced in modern times. By expounding philosophical thoughts that existed in pre-modern Japan, Inoue made scholars in Japan and even abroad aware of the existence of a Japanese philosophy in modern times. His work raised questions about the content of such an exploration and about its usefulness as a basis for shaping a national moral consciousness. It is not difficult to find a contradiction between Inoue’s positions in the language debate and his philosophical explorations. In the abovementioned essay On the Reform of the National Language, he argued that the predominance of kanji over the national language had hindered the development of Japanese thought, language, writing, literature, and even civilization. Therefore, he strongly advocated the abolition of kanji and the creation of a new national script to replace kana and kanji. However, when he elaborated and constructed Japanese philosophy, he unhesitatingly chose documents written in kanji and kango by scholars of Chinese literature from early-modern Japan. By referring to the three schools of Tokugawa Confucianism as the representative classics of Japanese philosophy, he made it clear that he ‘wants to describe Japan’s past philosophy historically and use it to systematically connect with future philosophy’ (Inoue, Reference Inoue1902, p. 1). This was obviously a self-contradiction, considering his position in the debate about a modern national language. In other words, if the writings of the scholars of Chinese literature were regarded as the past philosophy of Japan, then the ideas of early-modern intellectual history based on the Chinese heritage of kanji, kango, and kanbun had evolved throughout the history of Japanese philosophy. How then could they be said to hinder the development of Japanese scholarship? If kanji, kango, and kanbun had obstructive qualities, then he could have chosen the texts used by scholars of the national studies (kokugaku), namely, the Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, Man’yōshū, etc., to expound Japanese philosophy. He also need not have continued the use of traditional language in writing his Trilogy. Why did he accept the dominance of kanji and use many kanji and kango to continue his series of writings? Alternatively, he could have used the same method as Shimizu Usaburō, namely, abandoning kanji and using kana for writing (Jijikan Press, Reference Press1900, pp. 210–17). However, he did not do so. While he continued to use kanji and kango for his writings, he also criticized the disadvantages of kanji and kango for the development of Japanese thought, language, writing, literature, and even civilization.

However, when Inoue’s understanding of philosophy and attitude towards it are considered, the contradiction in his thinking and understanding disappears. The compatibility is based, on the one hand, on the lack of understanding of otherness in his examination of kanji and kango and, on the other hand, on his pan-philosophical position. Although he advocated for the abolition of kanji and believed that kanji were detrimental to Japan’s development, his understanding was based mainly on the fact that the existence of kanji and kango in the Japanese language made it difficult to learn and use that language. He said, for example, ‘[w]riting forms and writing styles that we have used in our country since ancient times are all too mixed up, which makes learning them extremely difficult. It is definitely not good to use them as a means for future civilization and progress’ (Jijikan Press, Reference Press1900, p. 382). He believed that as long as writing was a tool for civilizational progress, it was necessary to strive for expediency in its use in order to promote civilization and progress (ibid, p. 381). Obviously, he advocated the creation of a new national script not because kanji and kango belonged to an other of the Japanese language but to adapt to the needs of the new Meiji era and to facilitate the learning of the Japanese language by rejecting previous traditional language habits. According to this understanding, there was no awareness of the otherness of kanji and kango. Regarding the position of abolishing kanji and kango in the national language debate, a difference between Inoue and other scholars is notable. Both argued for the abolition of kanji and kango, but the debate centred on recognizing these characters as the other in the Japanese language and their harmful effects on the development of Japanese culture and writing. However, Inoue’s advocacy of the abolition of kanji and kango and his promotion of the creation of a new national script were driven by considerations of the expediency of script use rather than by an awareness of otherness. He advocated the creation of a new national script to replace the traditional Japanese script in order to meet the social demands of the new Meiji era.

Inoue’s position in language politics stood in sharp contrast to that of the famous scholar of national language studies Tokieda Motoki. Tokieda advocated ‘the factual theory of the national language’ in the questions and methodology of national language studies. Perhaps Inoue’s position reflected a position that differed from Tokieda’s ‘factual theory’ (Tokieda, Reference Tokieda1976, pp. 54–56). According to Tokieda, the fact that kanji and kango in the Japanese language belonged to a different language had become a historical fact of the national language, and the existence of them could not be denied because of the otherness of kanji and kango. Instead, it was necessary to scientifically investigate and research the mutual influence and integration of the two in the historical development of the national language. Inoue did not address the issue of otherness but focused only on the issue of practicality in the given facts of the national language. Kanji and kango made the use of the national language impractical, which was why he argued for a new national script. This shows not only a difference between linguists and philosophers but above all a correspondence with Inoue’s consistent research method. For example, when he drafted his ‘History of Oriental Philosophy’, philosophy, as the other of Oriental scholarship, did not exist for him, as he said, ‘[i]t is wrong for Western philosophers to treat only philosophy since Greece as philosophy. One must also think of the philosophy of India and China. […] For the Orient, the most suitable method for the study of Oriental philosophy is to compare it with Western philosophy and develop its philosophical thinking further’ (Inoue, Reference Inoue1932, pp. 85–86). In his view, what was called ‘philosophy’ in the West also existed in the East, and philosophy was not the exclusive domain of Western culture. Accordingly, he saw no essential difference in the nature of learning between Western philosophy and Eastern thinking. When writing his History of Oriental Philosophy, it was on the basis of this pan-philosophical position that he said, ‘[o]ne must start from the surface similarities between Eastern and Western philosophy and make a comparative consideration of Eastern and Western philosophy’ (Lin, Reference Lin2021; Lin and Chang, Reference Lin and Chang2021). In other words, he did not regard philosophy as a separate field of knowledge that had developed only in the West. In his view, philosophy did not exist as the other of Eastern learning.

In Inoue’s academic thought, whether in relation to kanji and kango or philosophy, there was no perspective or awareness of the other. When he wrote about Japanese philosophy, he saw no reason to doubt his use of documents of early-modern studies of Chinese literature as a basis for discussion to transform traditional scholarship into the modern framework of scientific disciplines. In his time as a scholar, a new national script had not yet been created. He perceived no contradiction in using the former national language which includes kanji and kango, as the Japanese people had done for ages, and in writing about Japanese philosophy. In this sense, Inoue was a realist, not an idealist. He could only accept and acknowledge the historical linguistic fact of the existence of kanji and kango in the traditional Japanese language. Without hesitation or second thoughts, he adopted the forms of expression of the Japanese language, in which kanji and kana coexisted, to successfully carry out the composition of Japanese philosophy, i.e., the Trilogy, instead of adhering to the ideal of reforming the national language that he advocated elsewhere and writing in a newly created national script. In the Japanese philosophy that he portrayed, the problem of the twofold other did not exist or was deliberately ignored.

5. Further Discussion

The emergence of the problem of the other is the product of the awakening of people’s ‘subjectivistic’ consciousness. In the era of modern Japan, people endeavoured to establish cultural ‘subjectivity’. To explore and shape Japanese philosophy in this era, the Japanese people obviously had to deal with the problem of the twofold other of kanji and kango and philosophy. Inoue Tetsujirō, the original discoverer of Japanese philosophy, pioneered the first attempt at constructing Japanese philosophy despite the contradictions in his attitudes towards language and philosophy. According to the examination and analysis of this essay, Inoue overcame this internal contradiction through an inherent logic based on his investigation, in which he fundamentally disregarded the problem of otherness. In other words, whether in terms of philosophy or kanji and kango, he avoided examining and grasping the problem of otherness. In this way, he was able to resolve the contradiction between language politics and philosophy through his self-understanding when constructing Japanese philosophy.

However, the early path followed by Inoue in constructing Japanese philosophy in the modern period came to an abrupt end in the mid-1930s and was not continued by subsequent scholars. Particularly after the 1940s, Japanese scholars no longer regarded premodern traditional scholarship as the subject of studies in Japanese philosophy. Instead, the focus shifted to the literature that emerged from the acceptance, study, and research of Western philosophy in modern Japan as the starting point of studies on Japanese philosophy. From then on, the Kyoto School literature represented by Nishida Kitarō became the representative of the true meaning of Japanese philosophy, while the history of Japanese scholarship before modern times was basically included in the field of Japanese intellectual history, no longer being the subject of studies of Japanese philosophy. When examining the reasons for this, Inoue’s pronounced nationalist ideological inclination, which was manifested in his construction of Japanese philosophy, immediately comes to mind. However, this understanding has been contested. First, Japanese nationalism was not abandoned by Japanese scholars until after Japan’s defeat in World War II, but Inoue’s research path ended as early as the mid-1930s. During the upsurge of Japanese nationalism from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, two books on the history of Japanese philosophy were published: Tohiro (Reference Tohiro1935) and Asō (Reference Asō1942). Both of these authors left the Inoue’s research path and shifted the focus to texts influenced by Western scholarship. In contrast, the leftist scholar Nagata Hiroshi, who strongly criticized nationalism, included Tokugawa Confucianism in the scope of investigation and presentation of his Nagata (Reference Nagata1937). Only his study contained a discussion of pre-modern Confucianism. Since Nagata viewed Japanese philosophy from a Marxist perspective, he did not follow Inoue’s constructional path, even though the content of his work overlapped with that of Inoue. Second, research on Japanese philosophy and the history of philosophy after 1945 still revealed the pursuit of subjectivity in Japanese nationalism. The overt form of nationalism in Inoue’s works, especially in the service of expansionism, became a latent undercurrent. These phenomena indicate that the primary reason that Inoue’s research path was not followed by later scholars was not his nationalist inclination. More significant is the fact that he ignored the question of the twofold other in his decision to discuss premodern texts. (1) Although kanji and kango still appeared in modern philosophical texts, these kanji and kango were no longer regarded as other by most scholars. Watsuji Tetsurō, for example, argued that although kanji were still used to translate Western concepts after the beginning of the modern era, they were no longer the traditional form of kango kanbun but ‘just words instead of text. […] The Japanized kango was restructured, and the [original] tradition of kango kanbun was thrown overboard’ (Watsuji, Reference Watsuji1972, p. 511). In other words, the individual kango words created by scholars through the recombination of kanji in later modern times and corresponding to Western scientific concepts as translations were no longer traditional kango words but belonged to the Japanese language. Therefore, the problem of the otherness of kanji and kango could be overcome by late-modern Japanese philosophy researchers. (2) The late-modern Japanese philosophical literature was based on philosophical methods and discourses from the West. Through the confrontation with philosophy and attempts to absorb and digest this other, a new history of scholarship emerged. Beyond traditional Eastern methods of thought, the spirit of philosophical speculation and the exploration of knowledge were accepted and practised. The distinction between philosophy and thought became a new scientific pursuit. However, when Inoue constructed Japanese philosophy, there was an obvious tendency towards pan-philosophy in contemporary scholarship, which led to confusion about the difference between philosophy and thought. After the mid-1930s, as scholars’ understanding of the nature of philosophy deepened, a general standard for understanding what philosophy is gradually emerged: ‘Philosophy comes from the West; it pursues a rigorous logical investigation of knowledge that creates a theoretical basis for a systematized and universal view of life and the world. […] Philosophy is characterized by the exploration of knowledge that proceeds from foundations in order to investigate the nature of things’ (Hiromatsu, Reference Hiromatsu1998, p. 1119). The texts of traditional Japanese scholarship before the modern era were not considered to conform to this standard shaped by Western philosophy. These two points are the main reasons why the path of research followed by Inoue was not adopted by later scholars, who turned to Japanese philosophy and even history of Japanese philosophy and exclusively took late-modern texts as their objects of study.

However, dividing the field into a history of philosophy and an intellectual history of Japan before and after modernity does not solve the problems that have existed since this period. It remains necessary to examine traditional pre-modern Japanese scholarship from the perspective of philosophy. If we understand philosophy as the essential quest for knowledge, we must compare and unfold the continuous nature of Japanese people’s quest for knowledge before and after modernity, starting from the confrontation with the problem of otherness. Unless this problem is examined and investigated so that a philosophy can be effectively explained at the theoretical level of epistemology and ontology, a history of Japanese philosophy with a theme that runs through the research of ancient and modern Japan cannot be completed.