The Subjectivity Issue and the Exploration Turn of"History of Japanese Philosophy":Why do Japanese Scholars Choose only the Texts after Meiji?
After the mid-1930s,the exploration of Japanese scholars into"the history of Japanese philosophy"shifted from focusing on the investigation and exposition of classical documents of the pre-Meiji period onto studying texts of the post-Meiji period.This shift was promoted by a pursuit of Japanese subjectivity.Japanese scholars realized that classical documents before the Meiji period had been predominantly developed against a Chinese background.With this awareness,they intentionally divided Japanese academic history into a pre-modern and a modern era,with the very aim of seeking a so-called"Japanese subjectivity."However,such a deliberate division resulted in the absence of any universally-accepted"comprehensive history of Japanese philosophy."This peculiar phenomenon in the Japanese academia,which is characterized by a divergence on how to understand"philosophy,"discloses a reluctant choice of Japanese scholars to establish the"subjectivity"of Japanese philosophy and thought in face of the modern era.
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