Occidentalism

From: nanowave (nanowave@shaw.ca)
Date: Fri Feb 14 2003 - 01:15:21 MST

  • Next message: Spudboy100@aol.com: "Re: Occidentalism"

    This is a wee bit dated by web time standards (January 17, 2002) but a good
    read nonetheless.
    RE

    -excerpt-

    In 1942, not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of Japanese
    philosophers got together in Kyoto to discuss Japan's role in the world. The
    project of this ultra-nationalist gathering was, as they put it, to find a
    way to "overcome modern civilization." Since modern civilization was another
    term for Western civilization, the conference might just as well have been
    entitled "Overcoming the West." In a complete reversal of the
    late-nineteenth-century goal of "leaving Asia and joining the West," Japan
    was now fighting a "holy war" to liberate Asia from the West and purify
    Asian minds of Western ideas. Part of the holy war was, as it were, an
    exercise in philosophical cleansing . . .
    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15100



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