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