A History and Tradition of Philosophical Practice in Japan

In Japan, from the pre-war to the post-war period, unique indigenous philosophizing cultures have been nurtured outside academism. The contemporary new philosophical practices which have been recently imported from Europe and North America are welcomed and widespread in Japan because of this indigenous traditional cultural soil cultivated by those local forerunners in the past. In this paper, the 'Life Experience Writing Movement', which was popular from the late Taisho era until the early Showa era, as well as the Science of Thought journal, which was founded by Shunsuke Tsurumi and the other six coteries in 1945 and continued to be published for fifty years until 1996, are discussed