Chi-Yu Shih’s “Bridging Civilizations through Nothingness: Manchuria As Nishida Kitaro’s ‘Place’” in v65 examines how pre-War Japan conceived itself as a bridge between the East and the West, drawing on the Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945) and his philosophy of nothingness. The article argues that Japan’s establishment of Manchukuo (1932–1945) was not reducible to nationalism or colonialism but was a manifestation of the Japanese intellectual attempt to transcend the East-West divide through the philosophical concept of nothingness.

Shih compares Nishida’s bridge with Rabindranath Tagore’s: Tagore saw individuals as the meeting place of civilizations, with each individual consciously allowing their own bodies to serve as the meeting places; Nishida looked to a collective subjectivity, locating Japan’s place in “nothingness” as the foundational corpse (jiti) that exists beyond specific situations and could serve as the ultimate seer — parallel to the imagination of the Goddess Amaterasu. Whereas Shiratori Kurakichi (Tokyo School) traced the origin of civilization to Mongolia-Manchuria, Nishida (Kyoto School) gave the philosophical foundation for the bridge, with Manchuria as the empirical reification of the place of nothingness.

In v94, “Toward the Ideal of a World Civilization: Progressive Exploration by Japanese Scholars” by Kōji Yoshino continues this tradition of Japanese civilizational thought, tracing how Japanese scholars have progressively explored the ideal of a single world civilization.

Source summaries:

  • v65 (Fall 2011) — Chi-Yu Shih, “Bridging Civilizations through Nothingness: Manchuria As Nishida Kitaro’s ‘Place’,” with co-author Chiung-chiu Huang. (v65)
  • v94 (Spring 2026) — Kōji Yoshino, “Toward the Ideal of a World Civilization: Progressive Exploration by Japanese Scholars,” traces the contemporary Japanese engagement with the ideal of world civilization. (v94)