In our Japan, from ancient times down to the present, there is no philosophy.
The schools of Motoori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane were a kind of archaeologist studying old things, and about the principles of heaven and earth, the nature of human beings, the principle of life and so on they had no idea whatsoever. The schools of Ito Jinsai and Ogyu Sorai did bring new interpretations to the classics, but in the end they were people who studied the Confucian texts. Among Buddhist priests there were some who showed originality and founded a sect of their own. But that is a story belonging to the world of religion, and they cannot be called philosophers.
Lately a certain Kato (Kato Hiroyuki) and a certain Inoue (Inoue Tetsujiro and others) call themselves philosophers, and the world grants it. But they are no more than importers of Western theories, and they do not deserve the name of philosopher.
The effect of philosophy is, to begin with, not something you can plainly see. Whether trade is in surplus or deficit, whether finance is sound, how business and industry are doing — these look as though they have nothing to do with philosophy. But a country without philosophy is like an alcove with no hanging scroll: something is missing, and it makes the country's dignity look poor. Kant and Descartes are the pride of Germany and France, the scroll in their alcove. It cannot be that this scroll has no bearing on the dignity of those two peoples.
I would like to say that idle talk like this is of no consequence, but unfortunately it is of consequence. A people without philosophy will be shallow and without depth in whatever it does.
Compared with people abroad, the Japanese are clear about the logic of things, they ride the current of the age and shift with it skillfully, and they are not stubborn. This is why there were no miserable, foolish religious wars in Japan's history. The Meiji Restoration too was achieved almost without bloodshed, and the three hundred daimyo raced one another to hand over their domains and their governing power. Old customs were discarded lightly, and there was no hesitation about remaking things in the Western manner. This too was possible because the Japanese had a flexibility that follows reason and does not fear change.
Turn these virtues over and they become a flighty superficiality. They become the weakness of a will too feeble to carry anything out. They become the reason that no philosophy of our own can be made, that politics has no principles, and that party struggles have no continuity. The reason we stop at petty cleverness and small dexterity and cannot establish any great work lies here too. It is precisely because we are rich in common sense that we cannot transcend common sense. The only way to do something about all this is to reform the foundations of education immediately, and to produce not scholars who learned from dead books but citizens who can create with living knowledge.
Do we leave Japan as it is now and improve it gradually, or do we carry out a great renovation at once and make it one of the states of Europe? This is a large question on which those who direct the present government must settle matters firmly in their own minds.
But the titled men who govern, tormented by the budget, run ragged by parliamentary tactics, dashing about to coordinate the opinions of the cabinet, have no room to think about such things. It is not something they can even dream of.