Against Japanism

In the second part of an interview with Robert Stolz, we continue our conversation about the affinity between fascism and liberalism, as well as the difference between idealist and materialist philosophies theorized by Tosaka Jun in his book The Japanese Ideology from 1935.  According to Tosaka, idealist philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Fredrich Nietzsche, and Nishida Kitaro adapt a metaphys...

In this two part series, Kota is joined by Robert Stolz to discuss the anti-fascist philosophy of Tosaka Jun, a Marxist philosopher and cultural critic active during the 1930s.  Tosaka is often associated with the Kyoto School, a group of academics who studied together at Kyoto Imperial University, led by his academic advisor Nishida Kitaro, influenced by German idealist philosophers such as Kant,...

Kota is joined by Kazuma Hashimoto and Andrew Kiya to discuss the Ghost of Tsushima, its fetishization of the samurai through a misinterpretation of Kurosawa Akira's films, Cyberpunk 2077, how Orientalism and the idealization of Japan in these games (re-packaged and exported abroad through the Japanese state's "Cool Japan" initiative) enable the far right pro-imperialist politi...

Warm and militant greetings!  I'm your host Kota and welcome to the Against Japanism Podcast: Destabilizing Japanese History from the Left! In this introductory episode, I discuss the goals of this podcast and the principles behind it, and preview the upcoming episodes that I have already recorded and will be published here very soon.  To sum up, this podcast is a study of Japanese history th...