2015 Volume 82 Issue 1 Pages 1-12
This paper focuses on a Japanese philosopher, Saigusa Hiroto (1892-1963), and explores how he tried to produce ‘knowledge’ aimed at the public.
In postwar Japan, intellectuals confronted strong doubts cast upon the social class gap as the outgrowth of existing academic disciplines and universities, which led them to set about establishing a “civilized nation” through democratizing academism. This has been pointed out before, but little research has been done concerning what kind of thought and academic disciplines were consequently shaped and reconstructed. When faced with a new audience, intellectuals were required to change their conventional methods of enlightening the public and demonstrate novel ideas in an unorthodox way. Subsequently, they brought into question and transformed the existing academism and embarked on the reform of educational institutions. This paper argues why and how Japanese intellectuals reshaped Japanese academism by juxtaposing the transformation with that of their own intellectual activity.
This paper examines Saigusa’s contributions as principal to the foundation and administration of an unorthodox educational institution called “Kamakura Academia” by linking the proceedings with his intellectual turning point. His involvement in “Kamakura Academia” coincided with his new theory, “technology of life” (seikatsu no gijutsu). First, this paper analyzes his doubts as to politics and relates them to his reasons for believing that philosophy was necessary for life (Section 2). Subsequently, the process is examined by which his interest in philosophy turned toward the philosophy of technology. An important point is that he referred to “technology” as a unique intellectual field different from science or ethics (Section 3). Following this, this paper looks at the difference between Saigusa’s theory on technology and that of Taketani Mitsuo (1911-2000), a Japanese physicist who was influential in the Japanese postwar science movement, and examines how the two academics debated intellectuals’ participation in a mass society.
Saigusa’s idea was to place the people as the producers of “knowledge” and the subject of philosophy, as well as intellectuals. The idea couldn’t be realized in the intellectual circuit supplied by the existing academy, and thus Saigusa’s ideas enabled the advent of new “Academia” such as the “Kamakura Academia”.
