This is for philosophers. They may be able to grasp a complicated thing in their easy thinking.
A Japanese philosopher, the author of an article of a newspaper now focused on in this Report, graduated from Harvard University in 1942.
But unfortunately a war erupted between two countries facing each other over the Pacific Ocean. On an occasion of war-prisoner exchange, he decided to return to the Empire of Japan from the U.S. where he had been living and studying since he was 15. He decided so, because he thought he should live as a "stranger in Japan" rather than in America.
After WWII, he had worked mainly in universities in Japan until he terminated his career in Japan’s universities. His resignation was an expression of his will against management of a private university, of which he was then on faculty staff, having introduced police into its campus to suppress student political activities such as an anti-Vietnam War rally. But by the time, he had already become one of famous liberal philosophers in Japan.
Yes, he was against militarism of the Empire of Japan, Japan-U.S. Security Arrangements, and the Vietnam War. If any philosopher supports these national movements, it would be a surprise to people of sound judgment on a street. If you accept violence, there shall be no room for philosophy.
The old philosopher wrote that America has changed since September 11, 2001. America is changing in the similar way that Imperial Japan was turning into an authoritarian military regime during the Sino-Japanese Incident in 1930’s.
In my view, America changed drastically or profoundly third times in the history. The related keywords are the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and JFK. On each related occasion, people’s good old ways were abandoned. But people never forgot where they had been when they heard a news heralding emergence of a new era or the coming of a great war.
As for September 11, 2001, it also seems that everybody will never forget where he or she first heard and grasped the news. And a smart philosopher might start to wait for America to begin changing. Then, he may find his intellect and instinct still working well. His finding might be that America has again changed abandoning whatever people’s good old ways left until the day.
The old philosopher is a son of a family, very rich and powerful in Japan before World War II. It is said when he first came to America in 1937 at age 15, he visited a famous historian A. Schlesinger at Harvard while staying at an official residence of Japanese ambassador to the U.S.
In the article of a newspaper, he never hid his despise to some professors of Japan’s reputable universities of today, saying that they lack true intellect even ordinary people could exercise. In this context, the philosopher praised one ordinary person who had once placed his hope in Marxism in the era of the Empire of Japan, accordingly had been in danger of attack from police authority, but had successfully avoided showdown relying on his wisdom and intellect of which merit had been thus proven.
Having considered the philosopher himself and his opinions, still I trust more such ordinary people, for example, as a Japanese woman who wanted to help the society by responding to the call for blood on a street but was rejected for her regularly taking prescribed drug, and subsequently wrote about her chagrin in a letter to the editor of a newspaper.
Or I would like to hear news such as the one about an American swimmer who has sold his Olympic Gold Medal in order to send money through UNICEF to Tsunami and flood victims in other countries including Japan, probably as water is a keyword both for those victims and for his sports career.
Would a philosopher make a blood donation or sell his Nobel Prize medal, in a spirit of saving the world no matter if it is based on an innocent sense of expectation?
Nonetheless, there is no denying significance of roles of their profession. And their role might be, as with the article in a newspaper, just telling the world that the U.S. is changing the way it once felt antipathy to.
(Source of Information: The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper and The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, etc.)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunsuke_Tsurumi