Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan (Revised English Translation)

by Hajime Nakamura, Philip P. Wiener (Editor)

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Genres: Philosophy, Japan, Nonfiction, History, Asia, China, Anthropology

736 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nakamura was a great scholar whose translations of Buddhist Pali scriptures are still unsurpassed in Japanese. In addition, he was a post-WWII Orientalist who nevertheless was sensitive to, and thus pioneered the critique of what today has (through the work of Said) become more popularly known as Orientalism. This volume is, among other things, an early attempt towards more nuanced narratives concerning Asian cultures, which had long evidenced a tendency to fall too neatly into an "East : West" (and never the twain shall meet) dichotomy.

Navigating dangerously close to an almost Worphian linguistic determinism, Nakamura argued how the Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese languages, constituting as they do the very stuff of thought, have influenced thought in those cultures.

No matter how alluring Nakamura's approach may seem, sailors who voyage seas are (with all due reverence to Nakamura) advised to lash their limbs to the mast and wax their ears with a simultaneous reading of Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought.

J.

[Rudyard L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this book were downright genius. It’s very good at explaining how people in different cultures come from very different philosophic trajectories and logic in different manners. A lot of this was very Enlightening.

However, this book can get desperately dull. The author is so authoritative in making each point that the book gets nigh unreadable at points. This is mostly tolerable in the Chapters about India, China and Tibet, but just becomes unbearable with Japan. In the Japanese chapters, he could have cut of 4/5ths of the material. The general impression I got from this book is that it should have been half the length.

[Paul Hoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should have read the section on Japan when I arrived in 1975. This is a wonderful background document on what makes the Japanese tick. It also reveals the terms on which Buddhism was introduced and how it evolved within the Japanese people's social nexus. Fascinating first read, and now I am working through it again with the aim of incorporating what I have learned in my book on the history of Izuvia.