Watsuji Tetsuro's concept of 'fudo' (climate/environment) represents a philosophical framework for understanding the totality of human existence as an inseparable unity of natural and cultural dimensions. Rather than viewing environment as merely external conditions, fudo is understood as an 'in-between' space where nature and culture co-implicate each other, creating a dynamic relationship that shapes human life. This theory challenges environmental determinism by emphasizing that human agency and cultural practices actively transform and reshape environmental conditions, making fudo both a condition of existence and a product of human activity. The framework has been extended to address contemporary issues like climate change, disaster revitalization, and the vulnerability of human-environment relationships in an era of rapid environmental transformation.
International Conference at the 2026 Summer School on the Kyoto School - Totality and Contradiction
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Okay, good afternoon everyone. I hope the microphone is working. Is it working? Yeah, you can hear me. Very good. Excellent. Uh good afternoon. Uh my name is Salos Ganas. I'm here from the philosophy department and it's a real pleasure for me uh to welcome the next keynote speaker whose work has contributed greatly to the spread of Japanese philosophy in various corners of the world including this very one in Hong Kong. Uh Chongqing Yun or CY is professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo.
He has authored and edited a wide range of books and special issues including works on Nishidaqaro, Japanese philosophy in transcultural perspective and also recent studies on disaster pilgrimage and plays. He has also co-founded and helped shape several important scholarly platforms including the Journal of Japanese Philosophy, the Tetssugaku Companions, the Japanese Philosophy series, and the International Association of Japanese Philosophy.
In other words, if Japanese philosophy has a road network, CY has built some highly important junctions in it.
Beyond publishing, he has held important academic and editorial roles at the University of Tokyo and previously at CK where many of us first came to know him. Ci is an extraordinary dialogue partner. So take advantage and engage in discussion with him if you haven't done so yet.
He has also served in a remarkable number of international collaborations, visiting appointments, conference committees, editorial boards, while continuing to organize, translate, mentor, and develop projects that connect Japanese philosophy to broader East Asian and global debates. His work moves effortlessly across various places, networks, frameworks, always with an eye to how ideas travel and transform.
Today's talk, totality, contradiction, and feudal studies promises to bring together many of the themes that have made his scholarship so very interesting. deep textual insights, cross-cultural range, and a willingness to think where philosophy meets the lived world. So, please join me in warmly welcoming Professor Chung Chin Yen. The floor is yours.
Thank you uh professor uh Salus Genesis my good friend Salus and uh it was my huge honor to uh visit u CHK again uh uh let me switch it off uh to uh have a reunion uh to many of friends uh thank uh Greg uh for the invitation and uh to me is a really uh touching moment to be here uh speaking uh in front of you uh in the same building I used to work for many years.
So today my topic is about um uh food studies. Uh so I have to uh explain to you that this is a Japanese uh concept uh which is uh well I just show you my uh picture uh in New Asia College. I was a a student there uh where we had lunch.
Um the most important thing I would like you to to show you is uh this one. Yeah.
Uh today I'm not going to talk about Nishi Takalo. I uh work on Nishi Takalo uh when I was a student uh in Tohoku University in Sai, Japan. Uh but today I'm going to talk about Wajui Turo. Uh if you uh look into this uh Japanese philosophy, a source book Turo is introduced as a uh premier ethical theories and historian of ethics uh in the first half of uh 20th century sector. So Washi is such a important figure in um Japanese philosophy but probably not uh really has a strong tie to Kyoto. Uh well he was born in Hyoko Prefecture more to Coobe and uh actually after he uh had a very good career in Kyoto actually he uh spent uh his uh remain of his career at the Tokyo University.
Yeah.
And today uh I'd like to focus on this concept of food uh which uh Wiji uh elaborated in his book uh food uh published in 19 uh 35. Uh the subtitle of this book is uh study uh anthropological studies. So uh it's a study of men. Yeah. Uh well u if we look into the details of this book, it is of course not merely about anthropology as such. But uh this is again uh I would say are studies on both uh culture and nature man uh and the uh environment uh as an individual and as the collective. Yeah. So this I hope will suit very well to uh the uh the theme of this uh conference about uh totality and chronics and um if we have to look into the food right um I'm actually uh writing a book on uh I what I would say what I would call the shin fun uh or the shin fuong uh actually I had a double meaning of this shin fudo. So one of course it is a new type of food studies but at the same time we are actually experiencing uh a new photo I will explain it later uh we need to work on these changes uh in our nature and culture. So uh there uh it is a book written in uh Chinese. So I will basically uh work on these topics. Uh but you can see from these uh subtitles it will be deal with this uh foreign food or aton fudo the flame fudo and also this philosophy of food um food change is actually the the most important uh takeaway uh for today and then the food uh revitalization uh which uh as s mentioned earlier uh it had something to do with uh what happened um 15 years ago uh in Fukushima. So uh the disaster is still happening but uh there are some people trying to uh work on uh the on the revitalization of the area. Yeah.
So I asked AI to give a summary of my book and uh surprisingly uh it's rubbish.
Um well um there are some uh well uh beyond determinism things uh the different translation uh uh projects uh alternatives is trip which is I think not as simple as that and uh wages is a very well-known uh three categories of food namely the monsoon type the middle type and the desert type which there but uh I will try to explain more right so uh this is uh just kind of common sense uh this is actually quite nice uh this is the kind of photo I would like to discuss with you later you can have this visualized image first uh the uh the deep mountains the lm uh and then uh we have the village in in between but how about the buffer the what we call the satyama or the mountain villages or the buffer to the sea we have these uh uh coastlines satumi and then of course the deep sea we cannot live there so uh this is the kind of photo as in a vertical dimension yeah uh which is not my uh uh idea it is the idea uh developed by uh a French uh geographer uh stim and of course these are the uh basic ideas uh AI thought I'm going to talk about uh but I'm going to skip that all and go back to the uh more like analogic uh PPT. Uh first of all uh the AI missed some really important uh discussion in my book. Uh I uh started my book with the discussion of the translation or the non-transation of furo. So as you know that many we discussed earlier today many philosophical concepts uh are left untransated like uh daine uh like uh perhaps uh like uh as we mentioned earlier this satyama or we have all kinds of concept which has a really difficult uh issue to translate. I think fudo uh is of course one of these concepts. uh but of course there are different ways to uh approach uh these uh this Japanese concept. So usually we use the word climate to translate voodoo except uh again we have our French colleague uh Okusbeck sensei who prefer his own uh translation mill right. So English translation is something like this uh fudos or fudo uh supposed to be uh the um a factor within the structure our existence. So fudo is actually part of our existence but but in English uh this fudo unfortunately uh is translated as climate. the climate seems to be something out there. It's not in my existence. Right? So, uh you have if you have to say there's a climate in me that seems to be quite weird in English.
Um and of course uh the more like uh uh philosophical issue for this translation would be the uh so-called environmental determinism which Waji uh was trying to uh reject. So uh food is not the kind of climate terrible Hong Kong climate humid and hot and you know really like a sour kind of climate that uh make me suffocating right because so this is the kind of climate that determined uh Hong Kong people would be lazy or or or hyper or or they prefer to uh switch on the air con like 15° C. So this is uh the kind of determinism that make no sense at all. That is Waj's argument.
So but the problem that if we we actually use the word climate uh to translate food we we easily we will uh fall into these kind of uh deterministic uh policy. Yeah. So actually Waj why it is climate actually there was a reason.
The reason is that uh Waji himself use the word klema. uh but this is not English climate the the uh the German word kar which is uh a kind of uh not the the climate we are using uh these day uh for the German word klema it has to go back to for example waj's reading of her um uh study of history or study of uh um kmatology that kind of project and kurma at the time uh has a broader meaning than just the climate. Uh it had it could be cultural. Uh it could be more like related to our uh yeah history that kind of uh meanings. So uh uh the German translation was trying to overcome this issue by using of course kmer but at the same time emphasize on the zuzan h from kma that was the uh inter relationship between climate and culture which is I think it makes sense in the German language and uh many people mention waj's uh quote of her but not many of them actually look the Heraldas original work. So I check into the held work and I found that maybe these actually Heroda had two different uses of the the word KLMa. Uh so in one sense KLMa could be the kind of actually exactly the kind of climate temperature humidity that kind of meaning. Yes. So in the first quotation the old notion that humans can live only in the climate when the temperature does not exceed the heat of their blood. Of course now in India people are living in the temperature like 45 50 degrees they they can still live there but uh yeah uh helder believe that uh actually we we can do it if we want to and and but there's another use of the word uh they use the word the breath of air how uh they lift uh we keep breathing this air the or we will introduce this concept atmosphere uh later which is not just the air the physical air it include also this cultural uh collective um meaning of you know atmosphere something like that but yet we uh understand very little about the essence of this kind of lift.
So uh for Helder his project is to work on uh a study of all human powers of thought and feelings al and craft.
So uh in short uh climate seems to be in English not the best translation but the German word klema seems to be fine. Uh it also we we look into the Latin uh origin the kar uh French also has the word kar. So uh fo could easily have been translated as kar in French but uh be sensei had another idea. So he translated this concept as millia.
Uh if we look into his uh uh defense of Millier uh you can look into this paper uh about uh confronting geographic complexity uh contribution from some uh Latin countries uh which means including French right um KLMA uh according to uh Beck uh well uh is not the best one because if you look into I quote the word fudo right is composed of two syoggrams wind and earth. Uh and the wind uh also is not just wind but stands metaphorically for customs while the earth stand for natural features and a certain land and um we need to uh differentiate our kmer to uh kiko fudo and kiko. Kiko is actually uh Guho, right? The uh kind of uh atmospheric uh the weather conditions that uh shape us. But uh if Waji was using another word, not a Kiko but uh KMA. So we need to use different concepts to uh translate these two different uh words. So we finally make a decision that okay uh uh since uh we need that word a millia could be the word because uh according to the English use it is not just a climate but it's a kind of environment state of light or social surrounding me uh has this rich meaning in English and and even richer in French this is Austin's uh argument uh so in his book zage at Last tip feast uh the savage the the wild nature and also this uh artificial the human cultural world uh be was trying to argue that uh millia has three different dimension. First it is both natural and cultural. It is both subjective and objective. It is both collective and both individual. So this is the kind of contradiction uh make no sense uh at all right but uh what about why we have such a millia here right uh both cultural and natural right what is that right so um back uh trying to make his argument works by uh developing waj's concept into a methodology uh he used this concept Millar uh in between the usual concept of lear and also this concept of spbas the space uh or in other words uh millar is something like in between in between uh something in between what in between. So uh millar or methology have the same kind of uh well uh uhmology ethmological meaning that it has the meaning of in between.
in between for example the the bashaw the lear and the adonu between uh the nature and the culture between uh a subject and object. So this inbetweeness is exactly what uh back was looking at into uh a photo.
So there's a a specific example uh in uh uh back uh book uh the uh um the savage and latifs he used the word uh sizen in English the corology of the nature cultural or natural uh cultural relationship. So uh he was trying to use these pairs of concept. So in in the western civilization we trying to distinguish between uh the nature and culture uh the fat festive and the dayto-day every day everydayness the sacred and the profine the mountain and our uh uh rural habitat uh the festival and web today I think to me is is a festival but for many of us it's just another day of web right um so these are the usual distinction ction between these you know uh contradictory concepts. But uh uh now back uh look into another possible framework namely between the nature and culture we have the in between like the border. So alam and agument is not two different separate uh places. There are a kind of buffer area that has both the alam and the agument both the mountain and uh the habitat both the land of gods and both the human uh world. So these kind of inbetweeniness exists in for example in Japan as I mentioned earlier the Satyama also uh in Hong Kong uh I would say uh somewhere between uh the countryside and also uh our downtown like Saikong right I hope uh uh at least Salos is could understand what I mean because we all live in the Saong we call this the Saikong school of Japanese philosophy.
Yeah.
So, um the usual distinction here is uh of course uh it's like uh contradictory. So LM is uh from the words uh LMOS or the set that means places that we cannot live and not liveable right and equally used as leen scrum or this kind of uh history during the Nazi this uh oil commander. So this these are the places we could live. So according to watch this framework of course uh desert is almost non-livable. Of course we can live there as kind of monarch but usually we live in the nicer aumen like the monsoon area or the middle area. So this this is the usual wages way of understanding lm and equan but um as uh back sensor mentioned there's a vertical dimension here. So uh when we look into the border uh we have the uh pond or or the shore area uh which has a lot of uh interaction uh between the mountain and the on the people. So one example in Japan we call these the uh migrations of gods. Uh so here gods means really different kinds of gods from the mountains and uh and the field gods the field mean the rice field. Uh so in the spring we actually uh receive gods from the mountains. So the these uh fields go will protect our crops uh during summer during the typhoon season the monsoon season and then uh in autumn uh where we have uh after this uh harvest uh we'll send back the gods back to the mountains. So we will have this uh you know uh movement uh of the gods. So uh mountains uh to many people is just like uh the wild nature and for the field it is had nothing to do with the gods but uh in Japan we have this kind of uh interaction uh exactly between the nature and the culture and these two are all together. So uh the mill here is at the same time natural and cultural.
Another example I would like to uh use uh in my class uh is this uh only yesterday uh I think my almost almost almost my all-time favorite uh animation uh um it is about uh the To<unk>hoku area in Japan uh exactly where uh I spent many years there. Uh so uh after a drive to a volcano lake uh they are uh driving back to their town but on the way they stop by a mountain village this satyama and then these uh ladies from the city pointing to the uh the field said wow this is wild nature this is nature right but and then the local guys said unfortunately this is not wild nature these are all human uh managed nature. We have the wise sphere which is nothing natural at all.
If you will rise in natural wild environment, they will be uh covered with weed immediately. And uh all these shintosh and all these uh uh forest seems to be natural forest but most of them are managed by local people. The Japanese concept of forest management is that you need uh cutting trees to keep the forest more healthier. So maybe for many Hong Kong people we believe cutting any trees will be kind of uh unethical, right? But uh the Japanese ideas is that you need to cut the the unhealthy tree to make sure that the trees grow much better. Yeah. And this is how they manage uh the the middle uh area. And this is both natural and cultural.
And of course uh I think media is such a wonderful concept. But I uh believe that uh back senses uh translation lacks the taste of food. uh the taste of the land and the wind, the cultural taste, the traditions uh and also the soil. So uh I propose a word uh tea uh the French word tua uh for food because tua as you know that it is about wine or coffee or even rice. They have uh kind of uh uh the taste of of course the land but at the same time they have the cultural taste the cultural dimension of a different uh vineyard. They have even the the same under the same uh uh climate conditions the taste are different uh because of these cultural uh human factors. So tua seems to be better but uh back has said no this is not no no this is not a good idea. Millia is better and and and also uh uh his uh disciple uh homic uh Janelle which is my very good friend who is now living in Kyoto. He believed that Tua is too countryside. Uh well perhaps from the Palisians of course they don't really like well um that is my point. I believed tea can avoid the problem of this you know uh physicality or in English term uh tera too natural right uh at the same time tea can avoid to be too ontological too uh tasteless uh too dry right and then uh some years ago I was able to uh uh develop this idea with my Mexican colleagues uh And the the Spanish word for tewa to me is uh fascinating because the the pronunciation I'm not good tuno uh means not just the the wind the land tua but also the homeland. So this is I think a very profound understanding especially to the indigenous people of the mountains. Tuno is uh not the pure uh natural landscape but a landscape uh for the people uh for the everyone uh for uh kind of significant cultural meaning. Uh so I believe Teluno is even better translation because uh we have a a really strong affiliation uh to this photo and I developed uh a a Spanish word for this. uh we are now facing this crisis of uh everyone knows this German word loss guide but uh could be really problematic. So uh I developed this word desa mto which is the the destruction of our tea our tuno our fudo and I hope uh uh my our Mexican colleagues uh would uh stand my point and also my uh uh Ukrainian uh colleagues uh I host one uh Ukrainian scholar in Tokyo and I learned a lot from him. uh Alex uh Alex uh is his name. Uh he uh taught me uh everything about uh Ukraine and the most important thing I learned from him is that Ukraine is exactly a place with very rich food because it is not just a wild grassland and it is not just another uh uh capital city. Uh it is the border uh the borderland and here borderland is not something marginal or like uh lack uh in history. Borderland is a place which in photo it is both natural and cultural and of course we all know that uh this uh borderland is fragile. uh fudo. Uh if I look into uh the uh flag of uh Ukraine, which is actually to me the the food here, we have the the blue wind and then the yellow land here. But we all know that uh this uh wind and the earth uh could be changed uh for var reasons. And uh when I read this uh uh article uh that uh the Ukraine of my childhood is being erased uh I could uh immediately understand that uh there are a lot of you know um uh problems that uh the food here uh was like under some kind of destruction and it already happened already. Uh Sus told me that uh he also had this memory that uh in 1986 uh explosion happened in the Chernobbile nuclear plant and that is the kind of food destruction uh I would use the word photo change uh that uh changed uh our living world forever.
So uh how um my uh photo studies could contribute to this you know uh we are understanding of food um well to have a deeper understanding of food my proposal is to followed uh Wu's path uh his way to uh actually experience uh fudo. Look the book Fudo was published in 1935 as I uh mentioned earlier but uh actually he uh spent one year in Europe uh from 1927 to 1928 July almost like one year. The next year is the uh uh uh uh uh 100 years that Wajuji was in Europe. Um as a really uh uh good scholars as we mentioned earlier he was very good at literature as well.
So he wrote very detailed letters and uh diaries and a description of what he uh saw uh in Europe. So u um this book uh Italian uh pilgrimage to the Italian temples or the uh Waji's letters to his wife Teru uh are of high uh importance when we have to understand food. So according to uh Inagashimi who was here uh in CHK many years ago uh in a conference on Japanese philosophy uh he uh actually mentioned this uh Waji's journey and other uh Japanese thinkers journey to Europe and I have to say uh this journey uh is nothing impressive the most impressive uh traveler I've ever seen is actually a Yoshi. He traveled even to the uh to Sweden to the very north part of Europe and then uh he also went to uh Greek everywhere. So uh Wui actually uh learned a lot from a trip uh and and but he had no uh time to uh uh to go all the places. He was supposed to stay in Europe for three years. Uh but because something happened in Japan uh he uh shortened his uh study in Europe. So most of the time he was studying in Berlin but uh uh in the winter of 1927 he decided to take a long journey all the way down to uh Maseru and then through uh N and uh Genova. he had a uh very uh uh yeah interesting trip to Italy. So uh what he was actually doing there um Waju at the time uh was teaching uh art uh of course he uh studied philosophy he wrote books about ner gig uh etc. But uh his earlier jobs has to do with uh modern art and and Asian art and Buddhist art. Uh so he uh was trying to look into all the um um museums uh and temples uh etc. in uh in Italy.
But uh doing this trip uh from the uh more like the central part of Europe to the southern part of Europe or in other words uh the usual middle type of uh fudo the poku kata to more like chichu kakata the medi mediterranean fudo it's very different uh I guess some of you can understand what I mean in uh in Italy or or the southern part of the the apps the Pluto has uh to change a lot. The sun is there. The sun is always shiny uh in Slovenia etc. So um uh immediately realize that uh the weather is uh not the same. It's more like warmer.
The sunlight is strong. The trees look different like this. Uh this is the the the shape of the tree uh where I uh I took which I took uh when I was in Rome last year doing the well contract of philosophy. Uh in uh two years time uh the same WCP will be organized in Tokyo. If you would like to enjoy the heat uh in uh in summer uh in Japan, please uh join us.
Um so um he uh had a lot of uh you know detailed description so they may not sound philosophical just like a kind of memoir of you know going to a temple going to uh uh this museum every day he he went to different museum etc. uh I actually uh visited uh some of the the the work uh he mentioned in his books. For example, the birth of Venus in this museum national Roma and also this this is a very impressive uh status of Caponius Venus in also in Rome. Uh watches uh really like this one the Venus of Sirene but this is already returned to Liby Libya. Uh so uh if we go to Rome now we cannot see that. Uh also we have this dying uh Leo Leo bit something like that and even uh Waj spend time in Vatican to see this masterpiece by uh Raphael but uh he said not a great painting uh but a pleasant one right uh well it's maybe as a as a art teacher I I I don't know what this is standard right uh but uh well I Um what uh impressed uh Waji is not just this uh art uh from uh the the Greek uh period or the uh Renaissance period. Uh the more important finding uh by Wajji is the uh the heat the the food the uh food uh the uh discovery of food the f discovery of food uh that uh after spending a really cold winter in the north now we we have such a nice uh food nice weather uh in the Mediterranean countries. is but this is different to Japan. Uh the humidity is different. Uh the for example the Va uh Lufier Luffa uh seems like a Japanese uh place. I I could not visit there but u what I learned from the internet photos is that uh it may looks like exactly the mountain villages uh Fatyama places.
So I uh look into other uh traces of uh Waj's uh understanding of food. So maybe maybe Gertter uh is one of these uh well source uh in ger's Italianer uh he uh had another very detailed description of his journey from the north part of Apes all the way to uh Rome and Nepal etc. So I look into uh Gerta's uh um writings and find that uh this is exactly I think what uh Waji uh would say for example uh when Gert was talking about Kimar right uh this weather reporter uh would uh well has a different uh ideas uh well G would say But I was mistaken as I should have known long ago for it is not the the pole uh the uh latitude uh something like that um that determines uh climate and weather. So this is not the pole uh alone that determines climate and weather but the mountains ranges especially those that run from the east to west across the land. So this is a kind of a vertical dimension uh that Okus and back uh would uh agree.
So uh the the richness uh of not just the the the natural setting but also in the mountain areas we have a lot of uh human uh factors. Um another example would be these uh words by G. Uh now a few words about uh the plant kingdom which is influenced uh in countless ways by uh in in in German KMA uh back her and Floyd decide. So KMA um of course here could be just another uh uh word for climate uh the temperature for example. Yeah. But uh in the other quotation, Klema uh means more than just climate.
And since Waji missed the chance to uh look into the most interesting uh photo in Europe, namely uh Switzerland, uh the mountain areas. Uh if he had the chance to visit Switzerland, he might have uh gained a deeper appreciation of the so-called the middle fudo.
So uh we all know that uh Switzerland has a really beautiful landscape photo rich food uh but uh these are not untouched nature.
Of course the mountain airs is are almost like untouched nature but uh generally speaking um the uh many mountain villages are already uh inhabited by people. uh the pressures across the country has undergone centuries of controlled management uh to suppress the growth of trees and shrubs allowing grassland to thrive. So that is the kind of uh satyama kind of philosophy that requires some kind of management of our nature. So this example would be this uh bin talu valley uh I've never been there but uh that's why I uh seen I I saw from from this report uh they have the mountain v just now the nature uh might have uh well uh re restored uh part of this land reclaimed part of this land. uh but the these are not uh pure uh many of these uh landscape are not purely uh natural uh 100% natural and um this is again very interesting if you look into the meaning of the word the Deutsland and the Switzerland I think they have a really different uh approach to uh land to to our uh land or to our food. The Deutsch line is from this old German word uh dish I think. So belonging to the people. So it is not defined by natural borders rather by a kind of shared sense of identity could be blood uh or language or ethnicity etc. But Switzerland on the other hand derives from the medieval German term uh Swiss uh I think originally from this uh place uh so it's more like a specific uh place uh in the mountain or uh it also uh is related to the old high German verban meaning uh to burn uh here uh this burning of forests or the clearing of uh forest land is interesting because by clearing part of the forest now this place is liveable. So we make uh this a land uh into a kind of agument for the Switzerland people the Swiss people. So uh in this this sense from the beginning that this uh place is not purely natural but rather uh it is exactly the kind of totality or this uh symbiotic relationship linking natures and cultures and the beauty of Switzerland's landscape lies precisely in the fact that this is neither a pure natural landscape nor uh just a Hong Kong city landscape. Yeah, but uh we all know that uh our nature is powerful. Uh our culture is you know uh terrible at the same time but uh our food is vulnerable. Uh what I would like to say is that uh even uh the kind of middle food uh discussed by uh Waji the the European food right uh Waji argues that these European uh med uh photo the med actually experiences fewer natural disaster than the ones in monsoon food Japan and uh China for example because of the the wind here is stronger uh Well, I'm glad that you guys are fine uh in this two weeks. Uh but uh from now on it is a typhoon season. So uh when we really have a typhoon season here, the winds are destructive and uh we uh our staff will be happy because we don't need to work uh when we have a typhoon here. And um uh in the case of this kind of uh uh well uh the usual understanding of photo uh in GSC years that could be the case but now we all know that even in Switzerland uh we are experiencing uh different kinds of disaster like uh the the B glacier collapsion uh in 2025. In the same year uh actually in Taiwan uh near the Han country they also have a similar uh flooding uh which is uh at a very similar um yeah reason. The climate change uh makes our food more vulnerable. But I have to say this is not just the climate change we also experiencing a food change. Uh food change uh exactly uh is the the problem that uh when we have a place we supposed to be uh livable right uh this livable environment food uh could be unlivable for various reason and it is not just climate reason it could be because of human disaster because of wars because of all these uh catastrophe happening here and in the Middle East etc. And um I would like to also draw attention to uh you know Wajji's later revision of his uh fudo theory. uh in the later years uh after the war uh he actually added uh two more types of photo namely the American type uh in American uh which is not that America but also uh Latin America and the center America and of course uh the American that belong to the indigenous people that is the American uh food but he used the word kitaku salafo So, kitaku actually means uh development or uh kind of um uh yeah uh cultivation. Yeah. So let's make the land liveable by cutting the trees by uh well uh I use the word carefully by uh uh well by negotiating with the indigenous people to live together. But at the same time actually this negotiation could be more like one d direction kind of negotiation and and of course uh finally uh we make the land livable but at the same time for the ind for the indigenous people they are livable land they live there becoming unlivable just because of this development or cultivation and uh that is a very interesting uh uh discussion uh u Waji actually wrote this during the war but because uh Japan was in war with America at the time uh but uh uh Waji actually has a really harsh criticism of American photo uh really harsh criticism um too harsh that I uh cannot quote here but uh uh but uh I would like to yeah just mention that um Waji uh unlike the European and also even the desert type. He was like pass through the um um uh yammen or other uh the Red Sea etc. So he he actually experienced some kind of desert food. He experienced the monsoon fudo, he experienced the maido photo in Europe but he never have been to America. So his American photo uh theories is like uh not really uh substantiated. Uh I added my own interpretation of American food namely in Mexico uh which is very tricky because uh for example in case of Mexico city uh it has an attitude of more than 2,000 meters. So it is no longer a mountain village. all the it is almost like a deep mountain uh in in uh the case of uh like uh Japan uh and of course uh the kaiaku salafudo uh I think the best example would be Brazil because uh Japan uh sent many uh Japanese people to Brazil uh 100 years ago for exactly kitaku for hotop for development but at the same time they may be just sent to some coffee farms to to work as a non-white uh slave and maybe someone was sent to I I met a gentleman uh in Sa Paulo uh a few years ago and this guy was like spent at least two years cutting trees in the jungle and I believe he was not cutting a trees like that but you know huge trees and he said some of his colleagues died because of this very dangerous tree cutting but somehow he survived but he received no salary for more than two years. And he realized that actually nobody care about their lives. They just work there, they die there and they will just become a bwak, right? just a longing t kind of backward and you know nobody will remember uh their existence and um so this kitaku this development um uh was again uh uh we we need more uh uh historical uh uh examples cultural examples uh to uh complement Waji's uh Ninigaku and also this step pair Uh I hope uh some of you may uh understand this Russian word stepper. Uh I try to understand as it as a kind of grassland uh uh in this you know uh the kind of uh Euro Asian uh continent uh which is not desert but uh at the same time it is almost like not almost not livable.
Yeah. So we need some kind of again some kind of uh human factors to make it liveable by cultivation or by some development.
and stepper. uh here is important because uh for example Mongolian culture uh mong in Mongolia we also of course we have a huge desert there but uh maybe more they are more like uh uh the kind of step back culture than the desert culture and in the earlier Rajes uh distinction u it could not actually explain very well why the Mongolian food uh could become such a a global power uh with this desert type way.
So um if that is the case uh I think that will be the very last uh part of my uh talk. Um what we can learn from uh these uh fudo studies. Um for example here I show you two pictures of Japan uh A and B. Uh anyone do you like A or P? Right.
So a is actually uh the the photo you see quite commonly uh when I took a singen the highspeed rail from Tokyo to Sai um there are after leaving Omia or that kind of city places now now we can see very uh easy this kind of Japanese landscape and for B it is actually in Hokkaido so you can See the the arrows here? The arrows pointing to the edge of the road. That means in winter it was all covered by snow. So this is the only way you can drive your car on a road.
Right. So um but um Hokkaido was not the kind of photo the best food for rice growing. Uh but um as uh this is a quote by August Beck uh for example Japanese society established wise petties in Hokkaido which in a sense was a recreation of Japanese landscape fuk or sensuru yeah on the idu land ioshima.
So this is what what happening here is historically this uh replication was uh predicated on imperialism and exclusion of one indigenous society by another foreign society. So uh Waji uh had a very weak uh uh understanding of the imperialism of Japan. But uh I think back was trying to uh criticize uh Waji uh in the sense that uh Japan actually uh changed the photo uh of Hokkaido.
And um black uh made this point because he spent some years in Hokkaido, he was in Saboro, he spent some year and vit that uh it was not just the the climate.
So everyone by common sense believed that since climate change now Hokkaido is warm enough to uh hot enough to grow rice, right? This is our common sense.
But actually there was a lot of human factor that make rice growing possible.
So this is not just the the nature and pure natural uh setting here. There are lot of food setting happening in Hinokaido and back believe that only food or in his words familiar uh can explain what is happening here on this Hokkaido land. Yeah.
But uh as you know that uh the our recent uh problem in Hokkaido is not just uh the rice growing but also uh this problem of wild animal the brown bears uh which is not the black bears uh we uh see recently in the honu of Japan in Hokkaido they are the brown bears which could be as big as 3 mters or weights as heavy as 200 or 300 kilos and uh they having uh I recently watched this documentary about the uh one year and a half uh uh report of uh the wild uh bears in Hokkaido. And the the the the problem is that uh because of the lack of the the Satyama, the lack of the indigenous people, the Anu people used to have their own way of uh seeing the bear as God. And in in in this sense they do the huntings of bears but at the same time they keep the bears in a good number in control by hunting they keep the the nature in a managed number but uh since are not hunting anymore and then the sat yama is not functioning and uh there's the buffer between the wild nature and the and human tongues are no longer there. So when the buffer is not there, the wild bear can enter our human uh equipment easily and we had no choice but to kill them or we be eaten by them, right? or uh uh the the the in the north part of Kaido. The sad idea is that there used to be a place with 500 bears uh in that area and recently reported they already killed 300 of them just because uh in the name of uh yeah safety or you know the difference and the the bears actually they they try to avoid this by just going to something far away and they walk on the coastline to somewhere they they they thought they they would find another uh place to live for the bears but uh they could not find any places and their destiny uh is to be killed on the road. Uh of course the bear and their cops right.
So um my conclusion um of course we all know that we are facing this uh problem of climate change but I would like to draw your attention that we are actually facing this problem of food change. Our equ could be could become alammed any time and at the same time uh this alam could become deliverable by this idea of kitaku or development or by cultivation. But at the same time uh these changes uh could uh make uh lives very difficult for some natural friends like our bears and of course in some cases to us as well.
So I recently uh further developed these ideas in a conference in in France. I'll skip all these. Oh, I cannot skip this because uh uh I was talking about the the problem of Fukushima. So I recalled our trip to Fukushima uh more than 10 years ago. Yeah. What it is? And uh it was uh unforgettable trip.
It was 2 years after the nuclear disaster and uh this gentleman uh uh believed that he could be the first niterranean to visit that really nice place. Everything is beautiful.
Everything is perfect. Uh you also said that they could be the most beautiful places uh you visited. I I believe that you said the same when you visited a cyclone. Yeah. Uh well, but you made a point here how a place can be so beautiful and could be so unsafe and unlivable. So this is the photo change issue here. So uh in other words this livable area uh suddenly become unlivable and your uh explanation is that to make it liveable you need to have a kind of self for uh uh denial self uh for forgiving. You have to uh make sure that uh this place you have to deceive yourself everything is okay etc. Of course, I try to explain to that no because Japanese people they they love their homeland food or blah blah blah.
But actually, you were right. Uh if this pay is not liveable, we should make sure that it is not safe for everyone to live there. So, I think you had a good point and that is actually the point uh made uh by the uh United Nations higher commissioners for human rights uh some years later. I think you you're perfectly correct. Yeah. And the last very last things that even though but that was almost like 10 years ago but recently some areas are actually livable is actually safe now. So there are some guys working very hard to make it liveable by planting rice uh with all this scientific method. So they are they know what they're doing and there are some group of artists they wanted to change the food by uh working with all these artists to understand how nuclear uh become part of the food nuclear was like already there nuclear energy was the the nuclear the concept of nuclear uh was already there when uh the beginning of the earth right there is a food house in it village we can go there and talk to the people and share our views. U my point is that Raji might have a very interesting concept in food but we need uh back methodology to develop further but my project is to make it even more relevant to us by understanding the crisis of our deserento or the crisis of food change.
Thank you for your attention.
Yes, thank you very much for your talk.
Use your words before coming here to your talk. It was all work for me but now it was a test. So thank you very much for that naturalisticception.
So the floor is open for your questions.
We have some discussions who would like to begin.
Please um thank you so much for your talk. Uh it's really an exciting way to um rethink Watsagi past some of his kinds of uh limitations and give birth to his philosophy in new and exciting ways.
I wanted to ask um particularly about the later revision. Sorry, I have to my voice. the later revision of the fudo theory and this theory of like um America and the step. Um uh this has been criticized by uh Tanikawa Tatsuzo um on the grounds that uh he says something like uh he he this is I'll quote a little bit he assues uh the diverse natural environment of these regions in favor of a unified understandings of Russians and Russian culture and Americans and American culture.
Um, and so in in your um in in your analysis, is what these regions share almost like the the rapid remaking of the land from like the natural environment to a human environment? And if so, will you kind of speak on that a little bit more?
>> Okay. Okay. Okay.
>> Yeah. So um to my surprise actually uh Wii mentioned uh Ukraine uh when he talked about step. So uh I I I believe he's be one of the first Japanese philosopher who actually noticed the difference between Russia and these Ukraine uh countries for example. And uh this is I think uh this the kind of sensibility of you know the the part of Europe uh that he actually missed uh during his uh visit uh a very brief visit uh in 1920s.
And if that is the case, there is another kind of Europe that cannot be uh explained uh clearly with this uh middle type uh middle type means uh cold uh temperature and cold uh and low uh humidity uh and uh and mountain areas for example. Um um if we need to have another types of photo so uh the eastern Europe kind of uh land could be I think better explained by this uh step type. I think that is what uh what Roi was trying to do. It's not just the the Russia and of course uh uh you're right that um uh most of the the expandation actually fit for Russia but but also Mongolia as well. So uh the the the cut the part of that part of uh area that would not be easily be explained by uh the middle type uh now he has a I think a better solution and from America uh since he've never been there. So he was supposed to spend some uh times in uh northern America uh on his way return from Europe to uh to Japan but actually he took the usual way of going back through uh the Middle East. Um um so he had no uh firsthand experience of food.
Uh so uh but actually he mentioned both the not just the northern America but also this uh Latin American uh uh world uh which is uh could be a beginning for further understanding of Americans uh food but uh that was not many thing Wuji himself uh could do since he's never been there uh unlike the the first three types he already experienced. Yeah. And one more uh point is that but but I actually I I prefer the earlier types because uh it is not just the uh the universal you know the covery of all the different photo in the world. But this is the kind of photo which are more like the Hagen uh uh three settings of you know the the the liable monsoon type and then we have a very different livable but different namely the the middle type. Now we have a completely different desert uh possibility the the desert type that is more like uh philosophically interesting than the just like uh the kind of uh collection of different foods in the world. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Thank you very much. Maybe I will jump in here and just follow up on a point that I found very interesting. So um so on the one hand the concept of climate is too you know naturalistic and the concept of millu is too cultural, right? And you are looking then for uh for something in between. Um but when it comes to these concepts such as the American feud or the pudo of the steps, it seems to me to be a very natural concept in the sense that well >> I don't see in which sense and to what degree can we think of pudo as a historical concept. So for instance, if we look at the history of art within one and particular cultural framework, we'll have say approaches to nature that are guided by the principles of the enlightenment, a British park.
You have the ideas of romanticism, nature that is opposed to the city, the idea of a wild nature. You have 20th century alternatives, right? So within one and particular natural framework. So to what degree is the concept of says itself historical.
>> So all you mentioned here uh especially if you seen from a naturalistic uh way approach these are perhaps all our arts could be explained by this naturalistic approach. At the same time, we may also uh uh use for example a completely cultural approach to explain all different art. There must be some kind of cultural inferences that uh shape these kind of uh styles. But uh for example, taking uh the Japanese uh Wukio as an example, you know, these uh uh wooden craft uh paintings of Fuji mountain or this path etc. So the the the motive of uh these uh landscapes seemingly they are the n natural scenes right? But if you look carefully all these uh uh wooden craft prints they also they have a lot to do with a human uh in in this nature. So um maybe the the explanation could be naturalistic but the motive and also this uh exactly the the the scene there is not just the nature and not just the culture there are a lot of you know the the photo uh landscape uh there. So if that is the case uh in the case of uh um we call it the the the ink landscape uh in China or even uh some kind of monet uh you know uh impressionist kind of paintings they are not purely natural scenes or not they are not uh purely uh you know cultural scenes. There are many actually many of these uh uh artworks uh has to do with the food. Nobody maybe use this the food approach to understand art. But uh if we see art as uh from this you know uh in between kind of uh angles we can uh have a I think a more uh totalistic way of understanding the richness of not just the nature and the culture there.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah. Thank you. Further questions, please. Yes, please.
>> Uh let's see.
>> Yes, thank you. Um thank you for your presentation. Um I um I believe I have uh seen like two tendencies in your presentation of food. Um one tendency is maybe similar to Watsuji in the sense that uh uh there is like the uh work of uh collecting under some categories uh some specific spaces or places and make of uh different uh places like one category like monzone area and so on.
But on the other end, I found very interesting at the end of your presentation, you went very specific and in some other points um like looking at one CD or um one part of the cost. Uh so I I see this uh two um tendencies and I remember that Watsuji uh was um um like uh um he uh like um how can I say uh he was um yeah his theory was taken as too deterministic because of the first tendency I spoken about.
uh what is the role of the second tendency is something new or something already in Watsuji something that you would like to like stress more uh for developing further food studies or thank you >> this is very important uh so in my uh book I would mention this Japanese scholar I chill uh who is a professor of uh agriculture uh in the university of Kyoto and uh according to uh you know uh his specific example will be Iraq. So he was there uh of course before the Iraq war uh he uh believed that it was such an important place uh in human civilization that is exactly where the me uh uh Potamia was there. They have the richest food that are ranked as the one of the beginning of our human civilization. But at the same time now becomes so you know such a at that time it was such a poverty this uh really know undeveloped uh area etc. It has all these political problems such a terrible food right. So if exactly if we use Wu's uh theory the type theory the type is there uh the type guarantee some kind of uh characteristic some kind of promise of the land but uh the the the food is still there but uh but why that place could have this food change from such a civilized that developed place into such a you know terrible place not terrible but but maybe not such an undeveloped underdeveloped place right so the explanation according to enuma is that exactly what was wrong with these uh types theory so uh he missed the point that uh fo uh could be changed uh he used a word so we we we in I think in after covid we get used to this means We have this dynamic ways of understanding food. So the types really is interesting but uh they cannot explain this change in the food and but agricultural uh you know study these scholars look into the change in the the tools exactly the tools of all these farming tools. they because of this change in humanity they have to use different they develop different uh you know tools to to to to make a better crop etc. So if we look into the history of agriculture there is a kind of development of uh our interaction uh with the nature. So this really dynamic way of understanding photo is exactly what wine miss in in in his old theory.
So uh Enuma made a major contribution in uh explaining developing these uh dynamic photo studies but uh somehow he's never mentioned by uh philosophers because philosopher with very little about agricultural scholars right but uh but that is actually I find really interesting and this scholar read very carefully and and realize that there's something uh you uh really problematic in this you know type theory question here. I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. You might have your hand up.
Thank you for your talk. It was very enlightening. Um so uh yeah I'm this is more of an anthropological question instead of a philosophical one. And uh but like yeah I'm generally I'm kind of unfamiliar with Watsuji. So I'm wondering if he or um new food studies could respond to um something like so it seems to me that the relation of food is primarily grounded on people contra nature >> but I'm thinking also of the case of food that is people contra people right so you kind of alluded to this in multiple places in your presentation um displacement and uh having a food be like irrevocably changed by things like natural disasters or like something like colonialism, right? So, um I'm wondering if like how would new food studies respond to something like displacement cuz you see in the contemporary crisis things like mass immigration and postcolonialism where you know you are alienated in your own foodu so you encounter this disharmony despite you not doing anything it's beyond your power.
>> So how would new food studies respond to like that sort of radical you know situation? Thank you for your uh really important uh question and the best answer is from Waj's food because he mentioned the case of Hong Kong in his book uh could be I think the first analysis Hong Kong philosophy uh in history and uh in his book uh the the 1935 photo he believed that Hong Kong is so special but he never landed on Hong Kong. He was just looking into uh know what's happening from uh from the the the the boat ferry and he realized that well he had he didn't mention the the the nature of Hong Kong but he mentioned that the many Hong Kong people living on the boat san right uh they are carrying guns in the boat so for Waji from a more like civilized uh country from Japan he real why These people are living on the boat and at the same time why they are carrying their own cannons and the only explanation is that these people are not just but they are but Hong Kong uh Shanghai uh Japan they are all the same monsoon type of photo but something is really different because uh in Japan monsoon is like the kind of natural disaster that make people work together to have a stronger bond to cope with the disaster. But here uh we have uh even though we have the the same kind of monsoon but more uh you know dangerous was uh for example these uh pirates or all these you know uh um the brutal use of force by the you know some local uh fishermanmen or some local people and they have no choice but to protect themselves you know by their own guns by their own cannons.
And they supposed to have a you know a state a really strong state to for police to control everything. But uh in these three really uh southern place of nowhere in in Wesi was under the col colonial rule of uh the British uh you know government. So uh they have really weak uh control of uh the the um the living there. So they have no choice but to use their own uh you know justify their own use of force to protect their families. And this is not just uh you know the usual explanation of uh our our human nature connection. This is exactly the kind of really complicated human human uh factors. uh but uh still we need to uh justify not a strong state but almost like a anarchist kind of uh way to protect themsel and this finding is I think uh really interesting uh for example Philippines for example uh later uh Mickey Kioshi also has some mentions of Philippines uh because he was a reporter uh uh when during the war uh but uh uh I say that the food of theory might give uh the Philippines uh more justice than just a a journalistic report by a state person. And Roi could actually look into the more like the uh uh the the core of uh the local people rather than the state level.
Thank you very much.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh Jose have talked about the sensible changeableness of the food. I think it is very or most important to me because um um now I cannot fully understand what Watsuji intended in the theory of food because um from Nishida's aspect or maybe from my interpretation of Nishida I've talked this morning um in theory of Hud Hudor Uh raising a hoodo seems as if as if raising some substantial homoganized typical >> typical >> type of culture. Yeah, >> it's a very it seems very dangerous >> maybe for Nishida or maybe for me but if what you wanted at least if what you also wanted to indicate the changeableness of food it sounds different to me. So yeah, I ask what you think about this topic and please make a comment.
>> Yeah.
So the moment I realized the problem of photo is when I had to teach here in this uh campus about Japanese culture.
So it's not in a philosophy class but uh in a Japanese studies setting. I had to mention for example Inu culture uh in Japan and uh usually there's nobody mentioned Anu in for for Japanese philosopher but uh August back mentioned I knew uh in this book and it was a really strong criticism to uh Waji and and I realized that actually if we take back these three types of void it is not just about the type but as a method to understand my food and then and then uh different types of food and then the third possibility of uh uh completely different way of doing food. Uh that method could be used for as well. For example, IU their number one photo is hunting, gathering, is dealing with nature and then the other possibility is farming.
So Yamato is actually the the second Fo and then the third Fo is actually the kind of land that even the Yamato people and the under people could not handle.
Uh so this method uh will be more uh I would say uh uh yeah important than look into this you know absoluteness of you know uh monster type or uh desert type.
Yeah. And I think find it uh if we look into this uh uh another perspective of food, we we make uh our understanding uh more comprehensive and and many of my uh uh uh understanding photo has to do with when when has to do with my dialogues with colleagues in the Chinese philosophy because many of my Chinese philosophy colleagues really wanted to use confusion ism to explain everything.
They believe this is their universal philosophy that can solve all the problem. Harmony is the best blah blah blah. But what would uh this Chinese philosopher uh say when they have to understand that is a non confusious photo in for example in Taiwan we have the indigenous people in Japan we have a people which has nothing to do with confusionism even in China we have the the the not the Han group of people they have really different uh philosophy like the huh the the Muslim Chinese Muslim my grandfather is a Muslim uh his surname used to be Ma so these ma the um um they're the ma guys I I have to say many of them are have Muslim backgrounds uh but you know Muslim never got a a place in Chinese philosophy where Buddhism almost like the same kind of uh uh foreign uh religion. Uh Buddhism is part of Chinese culture blah blah blah. But you know, but how about these Muslim ideas of uh well, sympathy, compassion?
Yeah, they have no say. When if you have time, I can show you my grandfather's graveyard in uh Taiwan.
You would be amazed that all the mountains are Muslim family gra and but but I would say I'm not a Muslim because uh my uh my grandfather somehow become a Chu uh because he was become a a Yoshi in the Ch family and then and then uh he married to a non-Muslim uh lady my my grandmother and my my parents are no longer Muslim.
still have two minutes. I know there's one question maybe go for it quickly and then >> um thank you so much for the talk. Uh it's a very interesting um notion fudo.
I mean we have um in my culture in Bengali in Bangla we have a similar word which jolu to refer to climate which has these two elements wind is common but we don't have earth we have uh water instead of earth. I think fudo is better because I'm reading it literally. Uh there is uh the both the two elements in this in in fudo they signify movement like unamis and stasis at the same time.
Right. So I think what you're talking about this inbetweeness it's uh literally there in in the you know in the like in the lit literal uh contour of the word itself. What I was thinking is uh this inbetweeness between culture, nature, history, uh you know, culture and so on. How much of this in between uh how much of this signals inbetweeness as opposed to uh let's say a mutual implication of subjectivity and otherness on both sid sides because for Watsuji at least uh to the extent that I am aware um fudo is not an absolute idea. It always co-implicates the other like uh it it essentially and and it it is intrinsically empty, right? So nature intrinsically it's of no consequence, right? And at the same time what we call man or any being creature it's intrinsically of no no consequence. So do you do you see this mutual co-implication this very mubious strip-like you know structure this topological structure of uh fudo uh this somewhere uh connecting to the broader Kyoto school you know ideas metaphysics of nothingness uh do you do do you think that can be a tenable connection >> um in my book I actually try to avoid uh the undesant understanding of uh Uh well probably because uh I think um if we I really have to use I would prefer Tanabe. Uh so there's a the between exactly like not the individual not the uh the the the stage but there's in in between the shoe uh there's the the logic of species that sounds much better than uh than the nothingness. Right. So, so this inbetweeniness we realize that this is not uh maybe uh the kind of you know all embracing uh you know nothingness but uh we still have to deal with the living world and nothingness is kind of tricky in a sense and and I have to say uh thank you for your uh explanation of the language and monsoon is interesting because it's also from the Arabic word monsoon uh so it we have very little understanding of that specific way of understanding of wind.
The the different ways of understanding of wind uh could be really crucial. This is mentioned actually by uh uh Haruda even maybe maybe Gert as well. So Wu is very weak on this uh wind name. Yeah.
And the earth name as well. Yeah.
>> Well uh I would like to continue but unfortunately our time is up. So we need to finish here this session. So please join me in thanking the speaker.
Thank you. Thank you.
>> I hope I can sleep.
>> Yes. You've been up for uh very very long.
>> Yeah, I think. Yeah, we rewarding. Thank you for this.
>> Yeah. No, we're so excited to have you here.
Uh, Ivy, how do I >> I put my flash drive in, but >> I'm sorry. What are you >> just my flash drive?
>> Okay, >> let me say it's on this side.
>> Um, may I run to the bathroom real quick?
>> No worries. It's good.
there. Thank you.
Am I supposed to use >> your moderator?
>> Yeah, apparently the moderator.
>> Am I supposed to use >> because there's a YouTube?
>> Oh, there's YouTube live.
>> I missed I missed your talk. I'm sorry.
You're always How long?
You have already done my job.
I don't believe right.
Good times.
always I had the exact same thing. I was desperately It's not That's it.
Not really.
I went up to your office.
He's like, >> "Sounds like you.
No, no. I just Okay. So, we can tomorrow.
We were talking about very bad.
That's awesome.
What is this?
All right.
Start.
Is that okay?
Okay. Um I'm assuming you can all hear me. I am happy and excited to um introduce the speaker for the final session for today. So today I'm introducing Kyle Peters who is um an assistant professor at the department of Japanese studies and he's been um in the I'm also at the uh in I'm also a professor in the department of Japanese studies took part in hiring him and he has been a fantastic addition to our department not only in his wonderful energy which I'm sure you have all experienced but also his wonderful facial hair. So, >> knew you were going to say something.
>> If I were going to introduce you, Greg, I would introduce your facial hair as well. But, um, today it's only Kyle's turn.
>> So, anyways, um, he his work is on the Kyoto School, which is why you're all here. He is helping reimagine the Kyoto school as not simply a school of thought that talks about nothingness, but all one that deals with totality. And today's talk is on a lesserk known Kyoto school theorist. And I will seed the floor to you. So if we can all give Kylo a professor Peters, I'm sorry, a round of applause.
The floor is yours. Thank you, Jeremy.
Um so, uh thank you for that wonderful introduction. Uh and um Jeremy actually kind of touched on a couple of the points that I wanted to start with and that's um kind of my position in the field. I I very much imagine and kind of define myself as I think what can be called the historically minded philosopher. Um and one of my goals is really to kind of uh keep these philosophical ideas in their historical context. um but also show how that historical context kind of mirrors certain conditions today. Um the other thing I'm really interested in is expanding our definition of Kyoto school. Um and that includes focusing on new figures like Nakai Masakazu who still remains underststudied uh in anglophone scholarship uh especially um but also uh to kind of uh new venues. So we think of the Kyoto school and we think of Kyoto University. But actually so much of this philosophical production is kind of unfolding amid the backdrop of kind of the dramatic advance of print capitalism. So for me very much the magazines that these people are publishing in is really central to their thought particularly uh Marxist magazines and modernist magazines where they're taking up Kyoto school ideas and putting them in new forms. And that's really going to I think uh uh I I hope that will shine through in our talk today on the kai masakazu and I'm and what I'm calling uh the revolutionary potential of consumption in 1930s Japan.
Um so on one level this talk is really trying to look at the intersection of media theory and social practice in 1930s Japan as it connects with Kyoto school philosopher. Um, this is going to take us across some exciting uh media and social spheres from print culture like magazines and newspaper to radio and film to calf spaces, cafe spaces and more. Uh, all that are kind of emerging in tandem with strong social movements and revolutionary social ideas which themselves are being circulated through new media technologies that are connecting people together in new ways.
Um and these profound social movements and ideas uh all are unfolding in response to what is widely being discussed as a moment or a time of crisis. uh hijology. Um and this is discussed by on the one side uh you know socialist thinkers pushing for revolutionary social programs um but also by conservative thinkers uh kind of preoccupied with changing norms, attitudes and social conventions. Um to be sure this crisis is not only in the mind of these Japanese writers and intellectuals. Uh in this period, Japan is rocked by a series of economic booms and busts. Um Japan has undergone rapid economic development in the World War I period, assuming control of new markets as Europe kind of goes about decimating itself. Um the end of the war in 1919 allows the British and French victors to resume control of these markets, bringing an end to Japan's wartime prosperity.
Testing, testing, testing.
>> Okay. Is that better?
>> Okay. Um, I'll try not to move too much.
Uh, yeah. So, the end of the war in 1919 allows these uh European victors such as British and uh the French to resume control over these markets. And this kind of brings an end to Japan's wartime prosperity. Um, and one result of Japan's wartime development uh throughout this period is a dramatically uneven economy and the intensification of a split between newer modern capital industries and so-called traditional sectors of agriculture. Um this split or this uneven uh relationship emerges between uh large metropolitan sites like uh Tokyo and Yokohama or Osaka and Coobe and then a countryside that tends to provide these cities with labor force and capital. Um and so you have this kind of interesting moment where while on the one hand you have this deep excitement about uh urban culture in this moment as seen in these new discourses and practices of modernism uh as the booms of World War I fade, you also start to see a more critical component in the city as seen in the proliferation of Marxist ideas and literature.
uh and the crisis worsens in the late 1920s and 30s as Japan's hiji or time of crisis becomes ever more widely discussed across Japanese society, the media and the government.
Uh the extent of the crisis is apparent in Japan's jobless figures uh which are estimated to have exceeded more than 3 million between 1930 and 1932 which means that about 15% of workers in Japan's in new uh industrial sectors find themselves out of work with that rate nearly double in major urban areas.
Uh this is true in rural areas as well where rural tenency disputes began outstripping industrial labor disputes.
Uh going from fewer than 500 incidents in 1917 to nearly 20,000 incidents between 1930 and 1934.
Uh and so there are all sorts of newfound strife and unease in this period. In addition to joblessness and tenency disputes, there are riots over the increasing price of rice and inflation more generally. Uh concerns over academic freedom and freedom of speech. Uh worry over diminishing opportunities for college graduates in the white collar class. Um and as we'll discuss more at the end of the talk, major anxieties over the lack of affordable housing in urban areas.
Now in responding to this time of crisis, the Japanese government um more or less proves itself in unable to meet uh the demands of the time. Uh throughout the 1930s, 10 different party cabinets which are kind of initially seen uh to bear the promise of what's called Taiisho democracy become symbols of political impetence. Um to simplify things a little bit uh one of the results of the time of crisis is a government that becomes increasingly authoritarian and aggressive. uh specifically the government becomes repressive domestically with uh strict laws like what's called the peace preservation law meant to stamp out socialist activities uh and thought um and also increasingly belligerent internationally embarking on further imperial expansion and encroachment into into China leading to a period of total war that sub that kind of engulfs much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Um, I'll note that the situation described here is not totally different than what we face today with concerns over inflation and rising food prices, a major issue, uh, with a housing crisis in urban and many rural areas. Uh, and an ongoing war in uh, well, each time I give this talk, I have to kind of update the places that there are ongoing wars.
So, it feels like everywhere. um all unfolding amidst social and labor movements kind of uh receiving a resurgence um uh more than anywhere in the last 40 years in the US in particular.
So um with this crisis as our background um both historically but also with the present in mind uh I want to foreground one response to crisis that I find particularly compelling uh the work of Nikkai Masakazu. This is a modern Japanese media theorist and Kyoto school philosopher um who's still underststudied in anglophone scholarship today. And I want to focus on a set of Nikai associated print materials including the magazine beauty criticism beha and Saturday doyobi.
Um and I've chosen Nikai and these print materials with twofold aim here. First, I want to historicize Nikkai's media philosophy and practice as a response to his inter war or pre-war historical moment of crisis.
Um, and second to explore the ways that Nikkai's theory and practice can offer insights into contemporary issues that we face today. So, I'll start with a bit of an overview. Um uh Nikkai entered the philosophy and aesthetics track at Kyoto Imperial University in 1922 where he studied under major Kyoto school philosophers like Nishiakaro Tanab Hajime had debates with figures like Tosaka Jun um Watsu Tetro uh Mickey Kyoshi and more um so he's a member of the Kyoto school and it's going to be useful in this talk for us to get our geographical bearings early. So uh this is Kyoto um and this is where Kyoto Imperial University is situated. Uh and Kyoto University was not far from Nikkai's residence. Um first in Kashiwabo from 1925 to 1930 and then Umeo Kimati from 1930 to 1937.
Um, in terms of his area of study, Nikkai charts a wide terrain from neocontian functionalism to high modernism to mass media like print culture, radio, film to phenomenology to Marxism.
And this is all just in the first half of the 1930s.
Um, uh, Nikkai would briefly work as a lecturer at Kyoto Imperial University, um, in 1935 before he's arrested for quote thought crimes under that peace preservation law. Um, after prison, he he survives the war in Onomichi, east of Hiroshima, uh, where he would overwhelmingly focus on aesthetics and cinema in his writings.
And he kickstarts this thing that's called the Hiroshima culture movement.
Um, after making an unsuccessful bid for governor, he then becomes vice director of the National Diet Library. Um, and then uh dies from stomach cancer a few years after that in 1952, I believe. Um, so we're going to work through Nikai and I'd like to begin with uh I'd like to begin historically with Nikkai's involvement in uh this magazine uh Be He where he works as both an editor and a contri a contributor. Um Beiho runs for 32 issues from September 1930 to October 1934.
It's priced at 20 cent and it's first sold uh in the downtown district of Sanjjo Kawadamachi. And if we take a closer look here, we can see the location of the two small downtown book sellers that sold it. Um you have Sotobona Shorten on the north side of Kawaramachi and Goroya Societ on the south side of Kawamachi. And this area really kinds of uh booms as part of this post uh great KTO earthquake influx of intellectuals from Tokyo moving to Kansai uh to Osaka and to Tokyo. Um beyond Kyoto, this magazine sold out of small book sellers in Tokyo such as uh in Jimbo and Osaka. Um, and we can take hints of its cover, of its content from the type face of its cover, which sports this kind of bold art deco and quasi bow house type face. And this gestures to the modernist uh predelection towards two themes that really saturate uh his early philosophy uh new media technology and collectivity.
Um this emphasis is very much formed in the wake of uh Nikkai's writings in the years leading up to the magazine's publication including his writing on uh machine technology and collective aesthetics. So to be clear for Nikai these are not rendered into two separate topics media technology and collectivity.
Um rather across these works, Nikkai develops a theory of the co-constitution of technological and social forms, charting a technological schema from what he calls the spoken word to the written word and most importantly to the printed word and the electronically transmitted word which he talks about in connection with radio and telegraph in his contemporary age. Um but more than simply charting these media revolutions forwards, uh Nakai's goal was to chart a historical trajectory of development where technological transformations emerge in co-constitutive mutual determination with social transformations.
Um with the crisis of 1930s in his mind, Nikai is particularly interested in the unique social forms of the public uh associated with the printed word and the collective associated with the electronically transmitted word. Um we can begin with the public of the printed word for Nikai. Um the distinguishing feature separating members of a public from attendees in a previous moment is the shared sense of belonging that formed in the advent of the printing press. So much as uh Jurgen Hobbermas links the formation of the bajgeois public sphere to the onset of print media, Nikai writing about 30 years earlier states that the public came into being for the first time in the 18th century with the invention of new breakthrough print technology. Now the Nokai marks out both identical content and expanded range of delivery as unique to the printed word.
Here his emphasis is overwhelmingly on the way in which print leads to new forms of connection among addresses so that a reader is quote uh conscious of hundred hundreds of of print materials being read at the same time. Um so this is the first kind of uh social technological transformation that he's interested in. We see the same kind of co-determinative process unfolding with regards to collectivity and newer media practices like uh radio.
Um the collective of radio is distinguished in two respects. First a heightened sense of speed and simultaneity among addresses so that quote the speed of electromagnetic waves is at the same time the speed of the transmission of thought. So Nikai has in mind here radio in which listeners are united in time but dispersed in space.
And the other thing he points out here is an even greater form of reciprocity that makes it so that uh you have the interchange of radio waves making possible the movements of a squad of airplanes, a fleet of ships all in kind of collective coordination and connectiveness.
Um Nikai unpacks a bit further what he has in mind in relation to another new media becoming popular in this period uh film.
He writes this will not make sense but it will come to make sense. The material collective character that is constituted by the social collective character is mutually projective and equivalent.
Therefore, the material collective also carries a reverse invocation for the social collective character. So his claim here is that the social character and the material character of film are wrapped up in a mutual co-determinative relation such that collective organization projects, translates and produces equivalent collective forms in new media technologies. At the same time that these new media technologies project and institute new and equivalent forms of collective organization in the social sphere. Um we can begin with the projection of collective organization on to the material form of film. And the idea is that while a film shoot involves collaborative production among actors, directors, camera crew and studio executives, Nikai wants to say a little bit stronger. Not only is the process of making a film collective, the format itself is already collective. His claim is that the materiality of film like film stock and lenses emerge from the collective collaboration of companies like he lists Eastman, AGA, Pate, Bolex and Dupant um or like Carl Zeiss, Cook and Plasmat or other manufacturers. And the idea is that these materials both record and reproduce the social collective character of film production. Thus, film not only requires a director to work closely with an editor to shape the sentiment of a scene, but this post-p production process already relies on collective collaborative production amongst the technological or the technical crew. For instance, the camera crew and the lighting department.
Um, but film's materiality not only spurs collaboration among crew members, it also makes it so quote lens vacuum film in their very character can form themselves as if they belong within physiological activity.
With the advent of new collective media technologies, Nikai argues the human sensory domain literally extends over the technological media being employed so that uh the collective character penetrates the senses themselves becoming quote the nerve tissue itself of the social collective character and forging a feeling of uh the quote's not on here but quote solidarity and unity on the interior of the senses themselves.
This amounts to he says a phenomenological transformation in the crew. Whereas the self right think Kyto school think subject object worked on the thing. The self now works on the thing as one element of a complex compositional structure.
Same idea being freed from your post even pro provisionally allows you to grasp this kind of mathematical sentiment. He's drawing on functionalism of the thing that p uh that uh is grounded in a perspective that takes in the full picture of the system.
In a kind of new media twist on the writings of Merlo Ponti, Nikkai writing 15 years prior claims that technological media are incorporated into the human sensory domain and literally transform the way that we perceive the world, engendering collective solidarity directly onto our sensory faculties.
Um and so in the first year of Beheill, there's this kind of um utopian excitement about collectivity and new t technology. Their aspirations are for collective technology to develop so that it can brooach the range of the public yet maintain its sense of speed, simultaneity and reciprocity. And this is the really the vector in which these uh kind of modernist Kyoto school thinkers initially understand crisis. To return to our starting point for Nikai, the dominant conservative reaction to the hijouji, the crisis involves a rejection of modernity, urban life, and these new technologies. Drawing from the work of Mickey Kyoshi and criticizing the work of Watsuji Tetso, he says, "There is a fear of technology as a quote brutal figure that squeezes the spilt blood of humans through its cold steel gear." So he's kind of playing with this modernist imagery. Um or else, so this would be the high modernism. or else he says a hatred for the masses as a coarsely dressed and unsightly crowd that encroached upon the refined elegance of the upper classes. This is kind of the mass media component of modernism. And so Nikkai and Behiro's initial intervention was to say that technology and sociality that these conservative thinkers assumed were the cause of crisis were precisely the answer to crisis. that collective technology would somehow develop our connectedness and bring us all together.
Now, there's a lot in this theory that's loudable, but we obviously start to see some cracks here in early behing in its early awareness of the intersection of media, technology, and social forms and in its recognition that the self extends out into the tools that we use. These ideas do seem scarred by a certain technological teology and utopianism as if society is kind of progressing towards ever greater forms of connectedness through inventions in our media technology.
Uh these quasi utopian aspirations would come under scrutiny in the second year of the magazine. And the most immediate cause for this reconsideration was a crisis over academic freedom. what became known as the Takiawa or Kyodai incident. This is when the Ministry of Education kind of spurred on by right-wing figures like Mida Munki um uh uh placed the first regulation review board against a professor. This is seen as this kind of uh defining moment of uh government encroachment on academic freedom. Um, and the government ultimately recommends the suspension of Kyoto University professor of law Takiawa Yuki for his uh liberalist sympathy. So, this isn't just socialism that's now come under attack. Even liberalism in this period is now um up for scrutiny.
Now, when plans for the review board are announced, a major protest movement sparks at the university and around 1,500 students and faculty cram into a lecture hall in the faculty of law to make plans for a collective response, even issuing a formal declaration um threatening resignation. Uh the problem with such declarations is that sometimes they're accepted and what happens is professor Takiawa and a host of members from the university including the university president Konishi uh resign in protest. Um members of Bhiho are active participants in this protest movement. Um, the journal goes on a year-long hiatus in May 1933, the same moment of this um, Beho incident.
Uh, and when it resumes, the playful art deco color and the splashes of orange are gone. The magazine now sports a more straightforward cover page of black text on white paper, resembling many of the Marxist magazines of the time, such as Yui Budong, Kinukai, like Tossaka Jun's Marxist magazines.
Um, the changing cover reflects a transformation in the codery as well.
During its hiatus, Beiho adds a host of new members from the opposition movement that are more actively driven by politics in the wake of the incident.
Um, and they're quite critical of the first year of Beiho, criticizing Nikaya in particular as quote lukewarm and complacent. Uh this leads to a political rift where a number of the artistically inclined members leave and uh more politically inclined members kind of seize control. With the codory changing in this manner, members push to end Behi in October 1934 renaming the magazine sea boonka or world culture. This uh name is specifically chosen uh in response to the narrow nationalism of groups like the Nihon Romanha, the Japanese Romantics. Um and culture is meant as kind of a counterpoint to the rising tide of militarism and fascism in this moment.
And this was a truly internationally oriented magazines. One of the key dimensions of the magazines was its world culture information section where it carried news about you can't quite see um but I will explain uh a variety of important leftist writers and intellectuals including this is the first magazine that introduced Frankfurt school critical theorists like here they're referencing uh Valter Benjamin's the work of art in the age of its me uh mechanical reproduction or technological reproducibility you have references to Herbert Maruzi you have Max Horheimer.
In fact, they um translate Max Horheimer's the rationalism debate in contemporary philosophy. It's quite funny. They're actually in dialogue with him and he takes so long to respond that when he finally agrees, they've already uh translated the whole article.
Um, it also included up-to-date information about fascist developments in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, as well as about the popular front and anti-fascist movements confronting them.
At the same time, it never lost sight of its domestic context um, and explicitly stylized itself as quote an anti-fascist quote popular front magazine devoted to countering the political crisis of 1930s Japan.
When they launched the magazine in February 1935, they began with a telling forward in which they say their era is one of emergency or crisis. He told you you see these words Kiki. Um and they say as we look back and reflect we begin to consider whether the efforts we have been pursuing are right or not. And so while members don't repudiate their modernist commitment to the modern period as being new and different in important ways, in the wake of the Takiawa Behiho Sea Boonka shakeup, they begin asking if they've accurately diagnosed the crisis of the modern period. And they set out to develop a new understanding of technology, of history, and sociality by drawing on one of the most influential kind of strains of thought in this period, Marx and Marxian thought. In the case of Nikai, this involved expanding on his earlier socia structure, which we will recall looked like this to arrive at this diagram.
Um, and to see what's at stage and uh or what's kind of important at this stage of the transition, I want to focus on this part um and uh the printed words associated with the transition from industrial system to the finance system.
These terms themselves show the increasing influence of Marx and a new generation of German and Russian Marxist interpreters.
Uh quoting Marx's German ideology without citation. So uh one of the interesting things about these texts is they'll uh just take Marx's language or Lenin's language and put it in the text directly. They won't quote it. And so it's kind of like a a puzzle that you or like a a gold mine where you're like I know that phrase. Um so this one's from uh the German ideology.
Um and he talks uh about a situation which big or largecale industry. Um everywhere has the same relation between the classes of society and in which big industry creates a class having the same interests uh in all nations and for which nationality is already destroyed.
Um, Nikai brings crisis uh together with his theory of big or largecale industry by way of Rudolph Hilfing's finance capitalism and Vladimir Lenin's imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Um using vocabulary from Lenin and Hilfetting, Nikkai claims that the crisis of finance capitalism um uh marks a stage in which quote the economic system is ever more deeply rooted in the finance system and everything is moving towards a stage of imperialism and the European war.
So we have to think about the historical context here. This is written in uh 1936.
This is written in this moment of kind of increasing censorship. This is Nikai drawing from uh the resources at his disposal in order to indirectly criticize the path that Japan is going down. And the idea here in the framework of modern Japan is this is the stage in which large industrial corporations these are the zyatu butressed by their close connections with the finance system and the massive profits that banks can make via long-term invest investment projects further instigate the imperial project. uh he's drawing on Ronoha literature, the uh labor farmer faction of Marxists uh who diagnose um Japan's annexation of Korea um with uh with kind of uh the expansion of the Zybatu. And he's saying the same process is happening in Manuria.
And and as it instigates this imperial project deeper into Manuria, the uh country edges closer to war with full-scale invasion of China beginning less than a year from publication.
Um and we can see see what's at stake here in Nikkai's reading of crisis if we continue this quote. He says this necessitates a high level of mathematics in every aspect of daily life and the structure of heavy industrial production at play here leads both its products and the people who live together with them to become very different from their starting point. Now um I like this quote for a number of reasons. On the one hand, it really shows Nikkai's Marxist inspirations, but on the other, and more importantly, it shows the originality of Nikkai's interpretation of Marxist. So when Marxists of this period generally talk about crisis, they point to crisis as it structures production. And this is because so much of Marx's writing is about production. Volume one of capital focuses on production. And while volume two is about the realization of value, it's really about the process by which products become commodities on the market. Um, so this is the diagram for the realization of value in capital, the circuit of industrial capital. You have money used to per perform commodities in the form of labor power and means of production that are then put into a process a production process leading to a new commodity that is then sold for money plus uh surplus value and this money plus surplus value is then used to start the circuit a new this is the way this is the circuit of capital in Marx's kind of holistic rendering and in Marx's uh reading um the consumer is really rendered Here, as scholars like David Harvey have noted, within the secondary circuit, laborers you use their money wages to buy commodities that they under the control of capitalists have produced with consumer money spent flowing back into the MCM circuit of industrial capital. So while Markx nominally finds a place for consumption to quote create demands for new production, his analysis is systematically premised upon production producing consumption by creating the material for consumption, determining the mode of consumption and creating in the consumer a demand for the products which it first posits.
And what matters for Nikkai is that they are really these consumers are at the mercy of the producer. Uh they are the means by which money flows back into the circulation process so the producer can make more commodities. And what Akai does that I think is really interesting is and really unique um in his understanding of crisis is he makes consumption figure centrally. And so what he says about the crisis is that this is not just uh I'll wait for this one. Uh this is not just a crisis of production, production not being completed. Um not a problem about circulation or realization of value, commodities not being sold. But he says crisis is about a certain disjunct that emerges between production and consumption in finance capitals. And what's unique to Nikai and to how he understands crisis is that he really wants to put power back in the hands of consumers.
Now to tease out this disjunct between production and consumption, Nikai posits two closely correlated forms, what he calls specialization and massification.
Nikkai's claim is that with Japan's transition to finance capitalism, a bifurcated social logic functions to split the modern Japanese subjects between two positions as either specialized uh uh producers divided up within a broader committee of engineers.
This is a twist on uh the council um or the the collective or masses of consumers. Um and so here we find uh uh Nikai redeploying his earlier sociotechnological logics but almost in the reverse manner.
Remember earlier the collectivity was the site in which we unite together and now it's the site of alienation and he wanted to move past the public. Um and now uh he kind of associates with this this with the masses that he's quite excited about. So mediating these new understandings of collectives and the public is uh uh the commodity. Um Nikkai's example is a Ford Model A.
Um for Nikai the Ford model A gives itself in two different ways for producers and consumers. The producer arrives at quote a concept of objects as they are produced through highlevel technical science. The idea is that with largecale industry producers make objects that require a high degree of social organization and integration. Aai calls this the specialized committee or council.
And while the collective was earlier praised for this heightened connectedness and reciprocity, it's now the lynch pin in an alien alienating structure that separates the producer from the complex object they are producing. To this end, uh, Nikai makes another quote of c of marks. This time, and I don't think anyone else has noticed this, so this is kind of new information. uh taking words from chapter 14 of capital without citation or quotation marks. Nikai talks of a situation in which technology becomes compartmentalized mutually independent and the exclusive function of a particular individual and their only duty involves the continued repetition of the same specific act and the concentration of attention on it. So again, this is capital phrased in this uh article as if it's Nikkai's own words. He's trying to get around censorship. And the idea here is that even collectivity within the finance system, this thing that he early put his aspirations in is grounded in alienation and individuation.
So if we take the assembly line for the Ford model A here even highle producers tend to be divided by their areas of expertise. So that you might have put it simply brake specialist, steering specialists, transmission specialists.
But Nai's claim is in this moment rarely do you have someone with a synthetic knowledge of the whole car as it's put together. And this is precisely because we have reached this degree of collective integration that he had earlier kind of celebrated.
So that's the producer. Uh things are worse for the consumer. Contributing uh his analysis from the perspective of consumption.
Nikai shows how the structure of production and investment in finance capitalism realizes this productive bias in an exaggerated form. Here he connects with the earlier mentioned uh Frankfurt school critical theorists like Theodore Adorno featured in Sai Boonka. Uh much as critical theorists like Theodor Adorno discussed the quote standardization of cultural products in line with demands that are quote manipulated to bring about quote relaxed and uncritical mass consumption.
Nikai argues that finance capitalism dismantles consumption.
So the masses are alienated from the general concept and only have simple representations of the product.
With consumers alienated from cooperation with the Ford as a complex function or even as a use value, all that's left is quote the representation of products that are already given to them. The idea is that owing to the increasingly complex structure of production, the rationality of many people of the masses is drawn away from the technological generality of the car and how it functions as a complex structure.
Again, this is functionalism. So that our understanding has descended and distorted to no more than an image of an automobile. For instance, the Ford Model A becomes a symbol of success or wealth.
So Nikkai summarizes the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, all of this is received without the least consideration of the generality possessed by the secret committees of the faculty. So we find a Marxist standpoint leading to a more negative view of collectivity in the second year of the magazine uh as it transitions to Sikkai. Here the collective is a committee of producers alienated from the products of their labor owing to specialization and the masses only relate to the objects they consume as symbols of say success or happiness or wealth.
Now, it's in order to create a social uh a social form that overcomes this alienation between specialization and massification that Nikkai embarks on a new media uh venture. Uh the tabloid format newspaper Doyobi.
Um Doyobi is inspired by the French popular front newspaper Vanjudi. Um, first introduced to world culture readers in May 1936.
Uh, like Vanjudi or or I mean we could just say Friday, uh, Doyobi was aimed to be both socially informative and enjoyable. It runs six pages with uh, pages devoted to culture, uh, women, society, film, and entertainment. And at its height, it's thought to have circulated around 8,000 units. The cover carried an editorial introduction, usually written by Nikai, and a large woodrock print that changed periodically. So, here we find two uh stylusly dressed modern girls or moas and a child at one of the many cafe spaces that are popping up at around the city at this time. And this setting was perhaps intentional as cafes were key to the circulation and economic viability of Doyobi. Initially, the Doyobi founders asked various coffee shops to put the newspaper by the entrance or to sprinkle them around the tables free of charge. And then later, they would sell uh issues in bulk to the coffee shops for around cost um or have the cafes take a 1-cent cut of each issue they sold.
Uh coffee shops also contributed to the financial survival of the magazine by buying ad spaces uh like this one for Cafe Francois. um which uh still exists today in the same location. So if you're interested, I encourage you to go check this out. If you're interested in the history of the Kyoto School, they're all theorizing and philosophizing at this cafe.
Um uh and it's about a 10-minute walk away from these earlier bookstores uh uh where Nikkai's magazines had sold.
Uh the most important dimension of the newspapers is its anonymous reader contributions. So you'll see there are no authors ascribed to these articles.
These anonymous contributions made up approximately 80 to 90% of the final edition of the newspaper. And these represented the concerns and worldviews of a variety of people. blueco collar working men and women working in factories, housewives, white collar workers, artists, intellectuals, farmers, temporary workers, and more.
Um, the emphasis on reader contributions opens onto the relationship between media technology and sociality in Doyobi. Remember, Nikai had become decidedly critical towards the specialized collectives and the alienated masses that proliferated in the crisis of his contemporary moment.
Through Doyobi, his goal was to fashion a new kind of media that would allow for a new kind of social involvement. He broaches this issue directly in his editorial for issue 19. Uh the Japanese here is the collective is seeking out a new language.
Um, using again his printed word and the word of the vacuum tube, um, which is now a standin for the electronically transmitted word, Nikkai writes, "When people discovered the printed word instead of the written word, they were amazed at the effect it had, but they did not make it their own. This discovery meant that millions of people could sp speak and sing with other millions of people, but in fact, people didn't speak with each other. Today, newspapers only give one-sided sermons in a scream of advertisement. It seems that the word of the vacuum tomb is similarly not the ears and mouth of the people. People remain deaf and mute in the collective.
Our doi is new and that the readers become writers and now creating a space in which the ears of the thousands of people become the mouths of thousands of people, a new language is sought. Cannot we say that the voices of the thousands of people of this doi will eventually become the reciprocating voices of the tens of thousands of the millions of billions of people talking with each other. We the deaf are acquiring collective language. So billions of people he's he's ambitious here.
So our question is how could doyobi for nai overcome the social bifurcation between the specialized committee and the alienated masses and open itself up to new forms of collective possibility.
To answer this, we have to look at uh what's widely considered Nikkai's most important article, the logic of the committee or the logic of the councils.
Um this is serialized in world culture as plans for do yobi are underway. And let's pause here and marvel at the strangeness of this proposal because it's like how could a committee or council almost the symbol of bure bureaucratization and mismanagement and the same term that Nikkai uses to describe what is uh wrong with specialization alleviate this situation.
This almost seems like the most J for people mired in Japanese bureaucracy.
This is the most Japanese solution imaginable.
Uh but if you'll bear with me, I think there are some really interesting dimensions of this theory um as a way of alleviating crises. Crises that Nikai faced in his own time and crises that we still face today. So to get at this structure, I think it's best to begin with Nikkai's diagram of the logic of the council. And I'd like to focus on the right half of this diagram. Um, this diagram, like most philosophical diagrams, is initially more confusing than helpful. So, I'd like for us to begin broad and then move into details.
Uh, the first thing to understand is that the goal of this logic is the formation of a different kind of sociality that outstrips that of the specialized committee and the alienated masses. Um, but it does so not by disregarding the bifurcation between the council and the masses, but by directly addressing the uncooperative nature of the specialized council or committee and the uncritical nature of the masses to ensure quote systematic deliberation against the non-critical and systematic representation against the uncooperative. So the goal here is to use the committee or the council and the technologies of modern capitalism to establish and secure a wider form of critical and cooperative mass subjectivity.
So in terms of a first pass and we'll we'll go into so much more detail but the first pass we find a tentative bifurcation between the council and the masses where the committee or council makes some promo proposal and an enact some plan. They then issue a report.
Um here the proposal and the plan as they are implemented are shared with the masses. Um after which the masses uh evaluate this plan and its implementation cooperatively and critically and then by virtue of this critical and cooperative involvement the idea is they come together in new levels of cohesion and mass subjectivity.
They then reflect back their experiences uh to the council thus leading to a second level of mediation between the masses and the council. This last stage is crucial because it means the council mass division is not permanent. Despite this uh graph's harsh angles and arrows, the process is not simply about moving forward. Rather we find quote a recursive and infinite process of fluidity. So to be clear this does not mean that nothing ever gets done. Rather, it means that there is always a check on plans and implementation with the masses conveying their criticisms via their lived experience back to the council and then the council making new proposals based on these reflections and then the masses becoming closer together through their joint cooperative and critical reflection on the plan and with it their lived conditions.
So this is the first pass. Let's add some detail to this structure and I want to do so via a topic that is explicitly treated in doyobi the housing crisis or the housing problem. Um while the transition to housing issues may seem abrupt in fact the so-called housing problem had emerged as a major feature of modern Japan's discourse on crisis. As mentioned earlier, rural tenency strikes and disputes marked a key site of revolutionary activity in the 20s and 30s. Uh as Germaine Hone writes in the countryside between 1920 and 24 there were 7,115 incidents of tenant strikes in contrast with fewer than 500 in 1917 initiating a trend in which disputes would rise uh to n we'll just say 19,139 between 1930 and 1934.
In urban areas, two tenants associations quickly formed in succession to represent the rights of residents amid rising rents in crowded cities. Um, the first tenants associations formed in Tokyo and Osaka in the early 1920s, but they quickly spread to other urban areas like Kyoto and Coobe in 1929 as renters demanded reductions in rent amid high employment rates.
um uh the very kind of conditions discussed at the beginning of this lecture. Uh, in fact, it was housing programs like the Kyoto Tenants Alliance and the Kyoto Rent Reduction Alliance that kickstarted a lot of the civic activism in Kyoto in this period, including things like the Kyoto Lihood Consumer Cooperative um that Nikkai served on the board for and that uh virtually every major Kyoto school philosopher was a part of including Nishida, Tanab, Batuaji, Tosaka, and Nishai. Um so let's look at Doyobi's writings on the housing problem.
Uh Doyobi's first feature on the housing problem tackles the rising cost of housing in urban areas. Says we the small urban renter classes are moving all the time. Statistics show that in Tokyo and Osaka renters who pay less than 30 yen for a house are more likely to move after 1 to two years. 90% of the urban population of the Europe and the US and 80% of Japan lived in rented housing. But there is an acute shortage of housing for rent in these cities or at least uh there is shortage of affordable houses for rent for laborers and the working class. For this reason, most of us begrudgingly pay high rent to live in rickety houses like customers haggling for a one-y taxi on a rainy day.
In general, landlords look at renting a house and their rental income sheerely in terms of a return on investment, while tenants have to come up with a monthly income that they can use for rental expenses after other necessary expenses, which makes it impossible to solve housing shortages. There is ample evidence from all over the world that the housing problem cannot be solved in the private economic sphere or any commercial uh relationship between a borrower and a lender. He says, "Those of us without umbrellas are now being forced to take frustratingly expensive taxi rides." In effect, the argument is that renters have almost no control over the houses they rent. So, in this anonymous article, um the housing crisis really resonates with Nikkai's theory of crisis, namely the alienation of consumers from uh the products that they pay for.
We find precedents for this overlap between finance capitalism and the housing problem in volume two of Marx's capitalism. He writes, "In the advanced capitalist era, when associated capitalist joint stock companies appear and a credit system has simultaneously been developed, a capitalist building contract contractor builds on the order of private individuals only in exceptional cases. His business nowadays is to build whole rows of houses and entire sections of cities for the market. The funds are procured through mortgages mortgaging and the money is placed at the disposal of the contractor speculatively anticipating the demand for houses.
Though Markx is writing from the side of production and the realization of value, specifically large-scale production by joint stock companies within a proto finance system of credit for the consumer the result is the same. uh little input over one's housing. Um Doyobi's discussion on the housing problem can be further contextualized upon the backdrop of 1930s Kyoto. So I earlier mentioned that Nikai lived here in the northern Kamogawa area. If we zoom out to look at a map of Kyoto city's development here, turned vertically on its north south axis, we see Nikkai's residential district as part of an area only incorporated into Kyoto um four years prior to Nikai moving there in a 1918 city expansion.
uh it was in these areas, these 1918 areas that you had the highest population increase up 279% from 1920 to 1935. So from a housing perspective, Doyobi is pointing to a housing situation that's completely out of whack for renters. Um and uh many of us find ourselves currently living in a similar situation. Uh while I was running this workshop, I actually uh moved out of my apartment because my landlord was trying to raise my rent. Um currently Hong Kong is in its third consecutive year of rent increases with rents increasing by almost 5% in 2025.
Um the government has focused on the also very important problem of housing process uh prices by doing things like cutting interest rates. Um they did this in 2025. Um this has led to an increase in home prices however with new investors in part pursuing uh what are uh policy and analyst terms described as quote attractive rental yields.
And so uh even today we very much find ourselves in a situation that's similarly out of whack for renters. And what I want to do with our remaining time is fill out the logic of the council as it might respond to this issue of the housing problem both in the context of 1930s Japan and the context of today and show how it would allow uh renters consumers to more fully generate and reflect their housing needs.
uh we can begin with the proposal made by a council in reflection on the social, material and economic conditions of reality and with the aim of improving upon them in some manner. Now because the proposal exists in a precarious position, Nikkai says they always have the potential to reflect the distortion of ideology and lose sight of real world conditions. Because of this potential for distortion, there has to be a procedure for amendment. This is the decision procedure.
Here the proposal passes through multiple questions, explanations and debates to arrive at a decision so that the many distorted understandings of the real situation are amended. So in terms of the housing crisis, we can imagine various proposals. One of the examples we find in Doyobi in 1930s Japan is a housing inspection system uh so that uh you can check each house's lighting, ventilation, and other conditions and indicate good or acceptable with a poster on the door plate before being rented. In our own time, there have been proposals to draft a tenant bill of rights or place a cap on rent increases.
Next, uh, with actual conditions foregrounded, we have the drafting, delegation, and implementation of a plan. With regards to our housing example, they might get more ambitious here, calling for the expansion of housing voucher programs or the construction of additional public housing. Hong Kong's quite good at this.
The US is uh not. um after its implementation some really important things start happening to the traditional bifurcated split between the committee or the council and the masses.
So from proposal to implementation we've been dealing on the level of the council but the report opens the council up for wider participation by the masses by the consumers that are normally excluded from the production process. This report can take various forms. Uh, I like the example of Nikkai's later work on documentary film, a readily consumable documentation of the plan, its implementation, and its practical use.
Uh, Frederick Whisman's public housing documentary might serve as an example.
Regardless, the dissemination of the report generates a moment of criticism among the masses that use that specific institution or program. What criticism does is make clear the plan and its implementation and how things play out in lived experience.
This might involve for example community screenings of the documentary in a public Q&A session with council members after. And what's important is that uh in this stage consumers are given the opportunity to reflect on the council's plan and make clear the ways in which it plays out in lived experience. So instead of falling for the sensible images typically given to consumers, the masses are are kind of encouraged to use their critical capacity. This moment is also crucial for another reason. Um criticism for Nikai is a moment in the Hegelian sense bringing the masses together in new levels of cooperative subjectivity.
Nikai writes, "It is through criticism that the subject of the masses truly dive into the depths of itself subject and move towards a new proposal." And I want to pause here again with this term subjectivity because this too is kind of strange. We tend to understand our second >> Yeah, this is the final bell. So, we've been doing about five minutes and that's what I'll need.
>> Um, >> I'm gonna be a little bit harsh, but Thank you. Um, and this too is kind of strange because we tend to understand subjectivity as something individual.
Um, but this holistic rendering of subjectivity, as we've kind of explored throughout this summer school, is one of the defining features of modern Japanese thought. And much the same way that Hegel talks about gist and self- formation and Marx talks about class and class consciousness uh Nikai uh and in much the same way that Nikai envisioned the human sensory domain to literally extend over the technological media being employed in film production becoming the nerve tissue of their social collective character. the masses as a whole are capable of coming together in a kind of cohesion and unity that we similarly ascribe to individual subjects. Now this might sound quasi fascistic this holistic unity and this is an important question for Nikai but what's really key key here is that the subjectivity of the masses is sparked through our critical faculties and so Nikai is talking about a process through which a cooperative and critical mass subjectivity can grow and spread among the masses. This is why in this diagram uh we have subjectivity represented through the dotted line in this kind of expansive process of subjectivity growing and growing. Now after this uh the mass's new critical views that they form together are reflected back to the council. So the report goes out in red while the reflection comes back in orange from the masses to the council with the masses as a whole integrating the council into their process of self-development. This allows the council to have a better sense of any distorted understandings of the real world condition as they start the cycle again. So if we assume a housing improvement project, this might involve for example concerns over the location of the housing or uh the labor market um or educational opport opportunities. In the case of modern Kyoto, this might be about city infrastructure.
Uh for instance, there are slowmoving but important infrastructure projects paving, lengthening and widening and adding tramways that connect these newer incorporated districts. And you can see that these projects are in the work and our closeup of this 1932 map. There's these kind of slight reds uh dashes. Um and they're actually successful in this.
14 years after uh incorporation, the city starts to expand Koji Dori to meet Higashi Oji and they complete this by uh partially by 1937. Alternatively, this reflective stage could be about the architecture itself. The social affairs division responsible for housing improvement projects in modern Japan favored concrete high-rise structures for their cost, efficiency, and size.
But many residents feared the stigma of these high-rise concrete structures. And so by way of their reflections, the council uh uh though pushed for partial um twotory concrete and partial wooden structures. And this actually happens in these Japan uh civics alliance movements in places like Nagagoya um where the government wants to make um uh uh 24 wooden houses uh and the rest concrete structures and they actually end up expanding it to 334 wooden houses. And I'll just note that people have a lot of opinions here. There is a lot in Doyobi um about preferences for housing architecture and housing layouts. And to bring this back to our contemporary moment, it's here in this reflective stage where a lot of public housing programs uh in the US have failed without any robust followup to our social programs. The government systematically cuts funding for basic housing maintenance, let alone aspirations for a high standard of living. to return to our diagram. The point here is that by virtue of their critical faculties, the masses structure the new proposals of the council via their reflections, determining the needs to be met, and thus the structure and membership of the council, the council's proposal. And so ultimately what you have here is people taking a more active role in the products they consume. And so here, this will be my last word. I won't do my long conclusion. we find a new rule for the council and a new opportunity for the masses. The council does not simply offer sensible images to the masses. Instead, the committee or council forms the moment for cooperative criticism among among the masses. It forms the moment in the Hegelian sense by which the masses are able to self-develop and grow a critical and cooperative subjectivity.
Or in Nikkai's own words, in the deepening of this recursive moment which leads from one subjective condition to another subjective condition, there is the very definition of true subjectivity, a dialectic of self-mediating transformation. And I'll leave it here for time.
And I'll also note that my phone says 1 hour and four minutes. So this is my phone's fault, not my fault.
Can we can we share this >> please?
>> All right. So, thank you very much. I'll sit down for this. So, um >> I'm not >> Huh.
>> All right. Whatever. So, um first of all, let me state that I'm a historian.
So my comments might be coming from a different area of specialty than many of you are. But um I was struck by this talk in many ways and I want to have I just have one big question >> okay >> for and before I open this up to all of you I have one big question for Kyle about Nakai. Um so and my question is how do we assess him as a thinker? Um to what extent was he living in the world of ideas and to what extent was he actually dealing with real world problems? And the reason I'm asking this I'm sorry I don't want to drone on but there were three things that struck me.
One is he's talking about Lenin and finance capitalism with an understanding of what Lenin wrote but not an understanding of how it actually applies to Japan. The second was the example of um what what was it the example of consumer alienation through industry. So when people buy cars, he uses the the model A and he's saying that uh we that producers create the cars and they have a great understanding of how a car functions and works, but consumers don't and this product is being forced on consumers.
But don't consumers look at utility of cars? You get a car so you can drive it from one place to another? You wear clothes because they keep you warm.
>> So does he not think about this? And then the third point was with the the logic of the committee. Committees are alienating us. They committees are the problem and so the solution is a committee. So with all of these ideas, it just leads me to think what are we to make of him as a thinker. I'm sorry for going on but >> thank you.
>> Okay. Thank you so much. Um okay. So uh in terms of uh the evaluation of his ideas and um and as a thinker I I want to talk about each of those points um in terms of the connection between uh Lenin and Hilading I don't think Nai is unique here um I I kind of said this in passing but he's very much kind of drawing from a broader literature um in the Japanese communist party there's a split between the lecture faction and the labor farmer faction and the labor farmer faction overwhelmingly kind of um uh gives a similar diagnosis um drawing on Hilfing and Lenin and in fact they say that they date the rise of monopoly capitalism in Japan between 1905 and World War I. Um now uh the extent to which that applies like to Manuria um obviously this is kind of catalyzed by these kind of radical army cadets um uh but it is also kind of instigated further by the zyatu.
I don't think that's wrong to say and I think that's part of the reason that uh American occupation reformers were kind of so eager and misguided to I don't want to say dissolve them because you always tell me that's wrong. What's the right word? Well, they dissolve the whole >> uh Okay. Um so, uh here I think um maybe uh the historian in me is kind of interested in something different. You see Nikai um drawing from the conceptual tools at his disposal that's being translated in this moment. Hilading is translated by his doyobi co-editor to kind of diagnose his contemporary uh moment. Um so that's point one. uh Nikayan use value I think is not dissimilar to a lot of the Frankfurt school theorists uh that he he's kind of translating and I think he's drawing from them. Um the extent to which uh we can simply like uh disregard the the mystifying nature of the commodity. Um I think you're right that obviously people buy cars for the utility. Um but so much of the commodities that we consume aren't grounded in use value. They're grounded in this kind of uh in status.
For instance, this is why we have this idea of luxury consumption. So, um, on that point, I think this does speak to Nikkai as a thinker. Do I think he has all the answers? Maybe not. Do I think he has insights that we can develop as philosophers and bring to our own moments? Yes. As for the third point, um, and this is the the historian in me again, the committee as a solution. uh committee is a translation of inkai but I always choose uh to translate it as council and that's because um the idea is uh there's kind of this legend being told that Nikai is trying to rethink the Soviets. He sees what's going on in Soviet Union. Uh he doesn't like it but he's also very um inspired by people like Rosa Luxembourg and the onset of council communism. Um, so it's him trying to think what like an an authentic council communism might look like. So, you know, I kind of playfully said this is the most Japanese thing you can imagine, but it's also something that a lot of European theorists put their hopes and aspirations in as well.
Um, so I I hope that I don't know if whenever you have a philosophical question I go to history and history I go to philosophy, but uh this is uh that I'll leave it there. So, thank you so much. So, um, I guess we can now open up the floor for questions. We have one up there. Do we bring this up?
>> Yes.
>> All right. Go for all the way up to the top.
>> Uh, thank you Kyle for the um really substantial and also like Marxist 101 introduction here, which is great. Can you go back to the diagram that you show at the and I have like two interrelated questions. So first this >> lot of diagram >> this is your your diagram or >> Nai this is Nai's diagram and my colors.
>> Okay. So all these sort of like uh recursivity structure is already >> uses the language himself of recursive and >> do do you think like this is a reference to the cybernetic that um feedback that develop at this I guess a similar time as well because it's really sort of this cybernetic feedback where um subjectivity and via the report and reflection is sort of looped and into that feedback of the um I guess a council and the So I guess what make interesting is that your reading of this subjectivity becomes this organism right where it sort of evolves in a way that um not on the sort of like a one side of proposal like one linear of proposal to the decision but like with the um subjectivity as it is participation part participating um subject that keep alternating and bring renewing the whole system and uh if episode is it's quite interesting because the later the last one you say this is a dialectic of self transformation right >> uh he says that >> oh he say yeah so this dialectic seems not simply on the haggen sense it's seemly more on the buxonian sense of the evolving total evolving organism which is actually the you know novener the inventor of the cybernetic he he's also a buzzernian huge buzzian reader and um I just seeing this kind of connection there uh I don't know maybe just related to your lecture on the books and earlier I see this everything's connected um but I I guess my question is that how the technology is sort of positioned in this cybernetic >> slashrecursive picture because I feel like in the um Ford uh model a >> case that you gave earlier the technology is sort of this because of technological general generalization that get monopolized by the special uh specialized the people that's what would cause this alienation of the commodity from the mass collective um so you also suggest like for Nakai the technology seems to >> I think I set up I set a bad example >> I'm I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I just want to connect all these dots in his talk that seemly a little bit like tension in between that I was want like pointing out um or like I just want to make sense of like what this technology in this cybernetic picture is sort of like function.
>> Thank you.
Uh okay, I'll I'll speak in this. Is it working?
Um okay. So yeah. um uh texturally uh I I like that Bergsonia references but textually he writes this piece just before uh logic of the committee or logic of the council called the problem of the subject and it's in it's so it's also 1935 1936 it's in Shisil um and there he treats uh it's meant to be this kind of re-evaluation of subjectivity using Hegel and this is this moment when all these Kyoto school thinkers um are kind of going back to Hegel and re-evaluating. So, a lot of this we kind of talked about these impoverished interpretations of Hegel, but Nikai finds uh Hegel to be kind of like his hero. Um, and so he says uh what Hegel realized is that subjectivity is not like the a bullet. Do you know if this is a reference to something, Greg? Uh is not like a a bullet shot from a pistol.
>> Okay.
>> Okay, great. And then >> Yeah. And so then uh instead it's this kind of endless process of dynamic self-mediating transformation. And so Nikkai is trying to think this term this subjectivity. He's trying to use it in the expansive terms that we find in Hegel and Marx. Um and he's he's interestingly trying to kind of map it on to consumer movements in a moment um where labor movements uh are under strict scrutiny. Um uh so in this moment where if you kind we talked about the rise of rural tenency disputes outstripping industrial labor disputes and that's because you couldn't really have industrial labor disputes anymore without getting arrested. And so Nikai working within the boundaries of 1930s Japan can't draw on marks. So he makes Hegel his uh hero and he can't um draw on um so he can't draw on Mark. So he makes Hegel as his hero and he can't really talk about production. So he starts talking about consumption. Um I think this I'll just say very quickly I think Nikkai like we talked about with Watsui um wants non-material things to be integrated into subjectivity and the example of that is is like film the film example we saw earlier. So uh we can talk more later.
>> Yeah. is a fascinating thinker. Um how to exactly place him depends on how you're going to fill in some of the important gaps in this scheme.
>> So there are two things which you didn't really discuss although you just gestured at one of them a moment ago.
The first is >> where does the council come from? Who controls it? Uh how's it replaced governed? The second is where do the resources come from to implement the plans? So depending how you fill in the structure, this could be a liberal democracy with a capitalist base with regular effect u um elections or it could be democratic centralism in the Soviet style. So and those are very different systems. So what what does he what does he have in mind?
>> Yeah. Uh so thank you so much. This uh is a great question. It kind of speaks to um the many forms of com council communism that are being debated in this period. like you have uh more radical theorists like Rosa Luxembourg that are envisioning the council communism to uh replace the state. Um and you have more uh conservative theorists like Carl Kowsky who are uh trying to imagine the council as kind of a a replacement of parliamentarian parliament the parliamentary system. My general view of Nikai um is that he if we were to involve Mao he would be called like a right deviationist. He's I think he's very conservative. He wants a strong state but he wants democratic representation. So when I think of the place of uh the council, I think it overwhelmingly um is grounded in like a parliamentary system where the council helps um reflect the needs of citizens um on different levels to the parliament. Um as for where the resources come from, I think this is where you also need the state for Nikai. I think he's really going to um want to draw on like a big state and then the the council is almost this this way by which you kind of help regulate the flow of capitals so that uh money goes to uh uh the citizens and consumers rather than as he sees it to the Zybatu making imperial endeavors abroad. So um I hope that starts to answer uh elements of >> and how they balance out is obviously one thing that has to be faced.
>> Yeah. I mean I I mean no one knows how to do that. Yes.
>> Yes. I I was trying to figure out where he's coming from. Um >> Yeah. No. Um, and I'll say like there are moments in his writings that feel more like uh central big state Marxism and then there's also these kind of radically anarchctic like onlogical moments as well that are quite interesting. So I don't know I don't think Nakai has the answer.
>> If I could just jump in really quickly because um the um when you were discussing the council it was for a ve a hyper local project.
>> Yes. So is he viewing them in these bigger terms of how the state functions or are they like at the level of chaai like super super local?
>> Yeah. So this is one of the things that he's unclear on and I've had debates over uh this topic with the few other people that kind of talk on it. Some people say he wants a small council that's going to kind of like forever expand. My thought is he wants a series of uh councils that kind of are are mediating each other. So I I see him on this very local level in this kind of endless process of uh development. So >> So Greg would Greg has a question. We'll get we'll get you next.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh I try to be short. Um so yeah, it was very interesting um thinking about both this um structure ideally and then also just thinking about um your your call to think about the application today. Okay.
So it's kind of two sides. The first I was thinking also about um I wanted to ask you about the place of freedom of speech in this picture. Um the freedom of people to consider ideas that are unpopular, ideas that may be an affront to power etc etc. So it seems like obviously uh freedom of speech is going to be important here the preservation of it in order to you know um come up with the best outcomes to work out all these various possibilities. uh John C Mill has you know a a valiant defense of this in in on liberty. So I wanted to know about uh the place of freedom of speech in this picture. And then the second I wanted to ask about was about contemporary application. I'm thinking about our country in particular but uh other other contexts are also helpful thinking about polarization like so strong political polarization that affects say uh crossclass polarization right so when we talk about the masses giving critique or the masses you know critically reporting back right um how do we um how does it operate in a in a culture where there's mass polarization and even perhaps where the distinction between truth and falsehood no longer makes any sense.
>> Uh right. So yeah, just to kind of >> thicken the plot. Yeah, >> cons just thinking about our our contemporary situation.
>> So thanks so much.
>> Great. So in terms of freedom of speech, um I' I've tried to show that Nikai is doing his best to operate within the parameters of the state without um running a foul of the law. I'll I'll note this was going to be in the conclusion, but um uh ultimately he fails. He's arrested um for trying to develop a collective form of thought uh and overthrow capitalist system um and for trying to spread and permeate anti-fascist consciousness. So uh in that moment in terms of uh him trying to clearly freedom of speech is like a major issue and I think he's doing his best to kind of negotiate that. The one question for me is uh it does he arrive at the most interesting parts of his analysis which is this revolutionary potential of consumption because he can't talk about production in this moment. Um uh then again he's kind of involved in these consumer cooperatives. So this is one of the things that I think is an interpretive question that I'm always kind of working with. Um in in terms of uh the second question about polarization. Well, do I have a diagram for you?
>> You always have a diagram.
>> Wait, wait, wait.
>> No, no. This is uh so uh this is >> of the talk you didn't get to.
>> Yeah, this is this is my thing. This this is in Japanese because I I I must say I don't quite understand it. This is Nikkai's attempt to kind of like mediate dispute. It comes from his philosophy of language. Um he's very much like so I mentioned habas and the bajgeoa formation of the public sphere. He also kind of has this I think from today's perspective uh radically naive faith and and rational commun rational critical communication. Um and so how well his thought can uh respond to that >> I think uh I don't have the most faith in him for that reason because I don't have the most >> right >> yeah then you democratic yeah well and I I'll say um I I will say in Nikai's defense he's very good at updating his theories in line with kind of technological transformation he's one of the first kind of media media theorist.
So I would have liked to kind of see the way in which he kind of develops these with the onset of social media today.
>> Okay. So I think we'll have time for two more questions. We have one up here and then we'll end with you.
>> Yeah. Uh thank you Kyle. I think this is incredible scholarship firstly uh in many ways. I think this figure particularly is doing is one of the forerunners of critical theory in this sense and I mean Walter Manuan publishes original work of art in the age of mechanical that that's in 1935 and you you you showed us the picture of the one of the pages of the magazine 1936 which refers to Benjamin and it's parallelly constructing a media theory almost a theory of art which is very much you know sort of seems influenced by these factors but >> so I mean he's very up to speed with what is going on in the world and also he has a very active mind clearly. Uh I I'm thinking um with regards to the question that has already came up regarding uh exactly where uh I mean the the position of the council or whatever call it committee council >> um and uh its exact dynamics or how how local or global or big it can be.
you referred to that quote in the middle uh where you talk about uh subjectivity, right? Um uh and I this I think this is the point perhaps where things can connect to the >> bigger picture of totality and with a contradiction like a splintered hole, right?
>> Uh and subject as as subject and the subject as something that constantly dives >> uh back like endlessly, right? sees diving back and forth and like so that is subject like the an object being that one who receives the action. So I I think uh the the in the diagram the direction of criticism uh that plays a significant role in the in the sense of negation because uh that's why it also I think somewhat answers Greg's u question about freedom of speech. I think criticism is very very key very central to this project in a way because uh through this negation itself the subject even asserts its subjectivity through crit critiquing critiquing in the sense so of course speech and the whole thing is it's I mean it's not just marginal I think the way it differs with refers to Graham's question uh how it can how it how to differentiate between liberal luminist government or like liberal government or the more leftwing government I uh this idea of criticism as something which is like coming back in the in sense of a feedback loop and affecting the larger whole in the liberal system uh although it gives the impression that there is a place for that in in reality there is there is barely any so that's I think here there can be a role of that right so I mean yeah these are some marks okay so just because we're running out of time we're gonna take both questions first so hold Uh thank you for your talk how that was really deep fascinating. So um yeah I do I just have a clarificatory question actually. So when you introduce this logic of council right you have this kind of dialectic self-mediating self-determining thing right >> but I was also wondering how exactly it's related to this earlier dialectic that you kind of alluded to early in the presentation about the co-determination >> of technology and social form I was wondering exactly how that relates to the to the logic of council because it seems to me that the way the masses mobilize for this logic to work >> to be enabled is relies on a very particular form of like like mass a conception of mass. So I was wondering if you could speak about how this is related to each other.
>> Yeah.
>> Um well so thank you both so much for these questions. Um uh I like so on Sasha's point I'll just say briefly I really like Nikai because I think he gives a different model of engagement.
I really like Nikai because I think he gives a different model of engagement for how we think of the Kilta school. So we oftentimes think Kyoto school, Hegel, Haidiger. Um but here we have Kyoto school and marks or we have Kyoto school and uh the Frankfurt school of critical theory. Here we're really seeing the Kilta school participate in kind of like the most dynamic pro uh problems of global modernity. So I really like this this point that he's kind of like on on the cusp of dealing with these new social problems and and on that point I think he's he's very much in line with these critical theorists. And so there's a lot of really exciting kind of um overlaps. Um and since we're almost out of time, uh uh Kobe um the question of the the technological and media form and the logic of the committee is really interesting. I think it goes back to Doyobi because he's so excited about um about radio and he's so excited about these new collective technologies and then he he puts his faith kind of in print. Um and I think this is this really interesting moment um where according to his own logic uh it would be like a step backwards but then again at this moment you have this kind of dramatic advance of print capitalism and it's becoming cheaper to print. So um it doesn't it doesn't quite uh fit as well as he wants it to to fit I think is as will be my final kind of comment.
>> Okay. So I guess that's all folks. So, if we can give him a round of applause for a great talk, I think that would be great.
And I'll I'll I'll just note there's a much longer and more thorough version of this forthcoming in positions. Changes can still be made. So, if you're like, I can't believe you did this, let me know and I can and I can edit it out. Yeah.
>> Okay. So, I guess this is the end of the first day. So, as far as I'm concerned, you all deserve a round of applause as well. So, you're going to get one from me.
>> So, we'll see you again tomorrow.
>> You're not coming tomorrow, Jeremy.
>> You're not here for this.
>> Thank you for meet If you have no I just have to see you know be like
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