Japanese philosophy

The Buddhist culture introduced politically by Prince Shōtoku was completed as the "making a country safe" thought in the Nara period.

When the Heian period (794–1185) began, in substitution for the "making a country safe thought", a form of esoteric Buddhism collectively known as mikkyō became widespread.

The Buddhist policy of the state reached its apex during the Nara period, as evidenced by Jianzhen of the Tang dynasty bringing an imperial ordination platform to Todai-ji Temple, While Nara Buddhism followed only the "making a country safe" thought, Heian Buddhism brought not only national peace and security but also the personal worldly profit.

Saichō, a Buddhist monk who also journeyed to China, learned the practices of the Chinese Tendai sect and argued that the teachings of the Lotus Sutra should be the core of Japanese Buddhism.

The Jōdo faith, which affected by the Jodo sect of the late Heian period, relies on salvation through the benevolence of Amitābha, and is going to be relieved by its power.

His pupil, Shinran who initiated Pure Land Buddhism, thoroughly carried out Honen's teaching and preached the absolute dependence.

He advocated the attainment of Buddhahood during one's lifetime and regarded his interpretation of the Buddhist teachings as the correct form of practice for the Latter Day of the Law mappō.

The chanting of the Mantra "Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō" is to this day the central practice to almost all Nichiren Buddhist schools and organisations.

In addition, rational Confucianism stimulated Kokugaku, Rangaku and the non-official popular thought after the middle Edo period.

The Zhu Xi school of neo-Confucianism respected family-like feudal order which upheld fixed social positions.

Hayashi Razan assumed the Zhu Xi school of neo-Confucianism to be the theoretical basics of the Tokugawa shogunate.

In addition, deriving from his substantial studies of ancient Chinese classics, Ogyū Sorai insisted that the original Confucian spirit is to rule the world and to save a citizen.

In the middle of the Edo period, Kokugaku, the study of ancient Japanese thought and culture, became popular against foreign ideas such as Buddhism or Confucianism.

By the Sakoku policy of the Tokugawa shogunate, Edo intellectuals could not have any positive contact with Western civilization, and so Rangaku, Dutch learning, was the only window to the West.

In the middle days of the Edo period, Kokugaku became popular while being influenced by positivist Confucianism with nationalism as a background.

Kamo no Mabuchi wrestled with the study of "Manyoshu" and called "masurao-buri" for masculine and tolerant style, and he evaluated the collection as pure and simple.

Through his study of the Kojiki, Motoori Norinaga argued that the essence of the Japanese literature came from "mono no aware" which were natural feelings to occur when you contacted an object.

Through his study of Kokugaku, Hirata Atsutane advocated nationalistic State Shinto, the obedience to the Emperor and abolition of Confucianism and Buddhism.

Ando Shoeki called nature's world the ideal society where all human beings engaged in farming and they lived self-sufficiently without artificiality.

In the Meiji Restoration, English and French civil society was introduced, in particular, utilitarianism and social Darwinism from England, and popular sovereignty of Jean-Jacques Rousseau from France.

The thinkers of the early Meiji period advocated the British Enlightenment values derived from Western civil society.

From the late period of Meiji to the Taishō era, a democratic trend spread as a background of bourgeois political consciousness.

While Yosano Akiko denied gender differences, Raicho emphasised motherhood raising a child and she acknowledged the official aids for women to demonstrate their feminine ability.

Christian social movements were active after the Sino- and Russo-Japanese Wars, which brought capitalism and its contradiction to Japanese society.

However, the social movements were suppressed by the security police law of 1900, and finally in the High Treason Incident of 1910 socialists were pressed by the military and the fascist government.

Kōtoku Shūsui originally attempted to realize socialism through the Diet, however he became a unionist and he argued for a direct action by a general strike.

Meiji statism attempted to restore national sovereignty and pursued imperialism and colonialism through the Sino- and Russo-Japanese Wars.

Kita Ikki advocated the exclusion of the zaibatsu, senior statesmen and political parties and the establishment of government for direct connection with the emperor and the people.

Among those, Ōmori Shōzō, Wataru Hiromatsu, Yasuo Yuasa and Takaaki Yoshimoto created original works under the influence of Marxism, phenomenology and analytic philosophy.

Ōmori Shōzō created a unique monist epistemology based on his concepts of "representation monism", "double depiction", and "language animism".