This book aims to present the historical and political significance of literary and philosophical debates conducted in East Asia during the war years of the 1930s and 1940s. The volume includes seven essays, an introduction and a translation of the manifesto “Principles of Thought for a New Japan (1939),” based on which the vision of the East Asian Community was later put forth. Its perspective is decidedly transnational. In view of the current situation in East Asia, some essays in this volume will attempt a critical re-assessment of Area Studies, within the purview of which the majority of scholarship about the Japanese intellectual history of the interwar period, literary debates such as the symposium entitled Overcoming Modernity and the round-table discussion of “World History and the standpoint of Japan, as well as the Kyoto School of Philosophy have been conducted, both in English and Japanese, during the post World War II period. Furthermore, the book will situate the intellectual debates about the East Asian Community and the symposium ‘Overcoming Modernity’ in the global context of the 1930s.
