Artikel

Kōza en Rōnō. Het naoorlogse marxisme en het Japanse begrip van moderniteit: filosofische en economische debatten

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Samenvatting

How should Japanese capitalism be conceptualized? Debates being waged amongst Japanese Marxists since the interwar years, stemming from the original transition debate between the Kōza-ha en Rōnō-ha schools of thought. This initial debate continued to influence many postwar Marxist economists and philosophers, although the main questions gradually shifted towards analyzing the processes of political and cultural democratization and the reconstitution of a new type of monopoly capitalism. But why did the postwar form of “hypermodernity” not introduce a Western form of possessive individualism? Is Japanese capitalism being intrinsically determined by the notion of hybridism? Why did Japan avoid to install a outright neoliberal form of capitalism in the 1990s? And above all, how did the postwar context influence the unique development of economic and philosophical concepts within Marxist circles? The Kōza-Rōnō debate and its ensuing derivates, ultimately, has to be understood within the framework of a century-long questioning of Japanese scholars, whether they are Marxists or not, how to approach the experienced aporia of Japanese capitalist modernity in terms of universality and particularity. These debates should also be recognized as a form of self-interrogation consisting of the repeated question what it means to be Japanese within the complex of capitalist modernity in a state of constant flux.

Hoe citeren:

Versieren, J., (2025) “Kōza en Rōnō. Het naoorlogse marxisme en het Japanse begrip van moderniteit: filosofische en economische debatten”, Ethiek en Maatschappij 26(2), 31-113. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/em.96160