Reimagining Modern Education: Contributions from Modern Japanese Philosophy and Practice - Vol. 3(1) - Article

Oct 15, 2026

Amid persistent efforts to think beyond Western frameworks for education, the study examines why Japan is often overlooked despite its clearly modern appearance. It argues that prominent Japanese philosophical traditions directly challenge core onto-epistemic assumptions in modern Western thought. It outlines key ideas of modern Japanese philosophy and compares them relationally with other Special Issue projects.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages26

Reading Time1 h 6 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction: Beyond the Western horizon via the Kyoto School?

Buddhism, the Kyoto School, and education

Self-negation as a mode of learning

Reimagining Modern Education: Contributions from Modern Japanese Philosophy and Practice? Hikaru Komatsu and Jeremy Rappleye Kyoto University ECNU Review of Education 2020, Vol. 3(1) 20–45 ª The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/2096531120905197](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120905197)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120905197)[journals.sagepub.com/home/roe](journals.sagepub.com/home/roe) Abstract Purpose: Amidst ongoing attempts to think beyond Western frameworks for education, there is a tendency to overlook Japan, perhaps because it appears highly modern. This is striking given that some prominent strands of Japanese philosophy have formulated an explicit and exacting challenge to the core onto-epistemic premises of modern Western thought. It is also surprising because Japanese educational practices have resulted in some of the highest achievement outcomes—both cognitive and noncognitive—found anywhere in the world and inculcate a worldview that is distinct. Design/Approach/Methods: Herein, we thus attempt to make visible the potential contribution of modern Japanese philosophy by outlining some of the core ideas, then turn to sketch resonances with and responses to other projects outlined in this Special Issue. Our approach is elucidation through relational comparison. Findings: Through this process, we suggest that the notion of self-negation as a mode of learning may be helpful in explaining why—at the empirical level—the outlook of Japanese students, and perhaps other East Asian students, diverge markedly from their Western peers. Yet we also find that an attempt, such as ours, to link divergent onto-epistemic thought to alternative empirical hypotheses quickly gives rise to various doubts and discomforts, even among otherwise sympathetic scholars. Corresponding author: Jeremy Rappleye, Kyoto University, Graduate School of Education, Yoshida Honmachi, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. Email: [rappleye.jeremy.6n@kyoto-u.ac.jp](rappleye.jeremy.6n@kyoto-u.ac.jp) Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). Originality/Value: In directly responding to these doubts, one original contribution of our piece is to show just how difficult it may ultimately be to divest from the symbolic foundations already laid by Western liberalism: Even if divergent thought can be imagined and different cultural narratives explored, dominant readings of empirical “realities” continue to be entrapped in the logic laid by Western liberalism. Keywords Japanese education, Kyoto School philosophy, modes of learning, stereotypes, Western liberalism Date received: 1 August 2019; accepted: 15 October 2019 Introduction: Beyond the Western horizon via the Kyoto School? Buddhism in this respect is ontologically a system based on the category of relatio, in contrast to, say, the Platonic-Aristotelian system which is based on the category of substania. —T. Izutsu (1977, p. 23) Our contribution to the Special Issue attempts to think through the Kyoto School, one of the most original and influential strands of modern Japanese philosophical thought. Built largely out of Japanese interpretations of Zen (Chinese: Ch ’an) and existential phenomenology, the Kyoto School stands as both challenge and co-creation: It arose from the conflict of Buddhism and Western modern thought but is marked by interactions that are highly creative. Herei

FAQs

What is the article’s main purpose?

The article aims to make visible the potential contribution of modern Japanese philosophy and to compare it relationally with projects in the Special Issue, especially in contrast to Western frameworks.

What approach does the authors’ study use?

It uses relational comparison: first outlining core ideas of modern Japanese philosophy and then sketching resonances with, and responses to, other contributions in the Special Issue.

What finding explains differences between Japanese and Western students?

The article suggests that the notion of self-negation as a mode of learning may help explain why Japanese (and perhaps other East Asian) students’ outlook diverges markedly from Western peers at the empirical level.

Oct 15, 2026

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