confession as system

Japan

transcritique

universality

nationality

Japanese

occupation / innovator as

philosopher

literary critic

university teacher

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is a 19th century european notion with its own concealed historicity. For a Japanese to develop a proper appreciation of shakespeare, it requires years of training and a deliberate adaptation of sensibilities.

His real concern was to point out that that universality was not a priori, but historical. It was, moreover, a universality premised upon the concealment of its own origins. 'When I appeal to my own experience, I learn that the realm of poetry created by Shakespeare does not possess that universality that European critics ascribe to it. For us as Japanese it requires years of training to develop a proper appreciation of Shakespeare, and even then this is only a dim appreciation based on a deliberate adaptation of our sensibilities.' (soseki in Karatani 'landscape'). When the notion of universality was established in nineteenth-century Europe, its own historicity had to be concealed.Soseki had no choice but to reject such notions as the history of literature (bungakushi) because he was aware of the historicity of the very term 'literature.'(Karatani 'landscape')

Kojin Karatani

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Kojin Karatani