Selected Topics on Japanese History of Thought

The course consists of the following content-based sets:
- indigenous world view: Kojiki, Nihon shoki and Man'yoshu;
- contact with the continent: early Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism;
- Chinese political thought and state organization in Asuka and Nara periods;
- indigenization of continetal influences and formation of the world view in Heian period;
- the turn in political thought in Kamakura period;
- New Buddhism; the world view of nobility, warrior class and the masses;
- The Ikko-ikki movement and utopical thought since Muromachi period onwards;
- New esthetics: theatre, tea ceremony, architecture;
- first contact with the West: Christianity in Japan;
- The beginnings of premodern thought in the Edo period: Japanese interpretation of Confucianism, political thought, national learning, utopical thought, the beginnings of “Dutch studies”;
- Meiji period between modernization and conservatism: advancement of Western thought, modernization of political structures and emperor cult as their ideological background, nationalism and ideology of state language, jiyuminken movement and the attempt of democratisation from bottom up;
- tennoism and its role in colonial expansion and militarism in the middle Meiji period;
- bushido and “discovery” of tradition;
- late Meiji, Taisho and early Showa periods: Christianity, anarchism, socialism, communism, and democratic movements and the state reaction to them;
- 15-year war 1931-45: the rise of nationalism and militarism and their collapse;
- Japan after the WW2: democratization, the ideological framework of peace and anti-war movements, student riots and their suppresion, consummerism, a new rise of conservative ideologies.

Oguma, Eiji (2002) A Genealogy of 'Japanese' Self-images. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. COBISS.SI-ID - 40890978
John S. Brownlee (1999) Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600-1945: The Age of the Gods and Emperor Jinmu. Vancouver: UBC Press. COBISS.SI-ID - 39813730
Maruyama, M. (1983) Studies in the intellectual history of Tokugawa Japan. Tokyo: U. of Tokyo Press. COBISS.SI-ID - 300557
Maruyama, M. (1961) Nihon no shiso (zg. idej Japonske). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. COBISS.SI-ID - 128455939