The Diversity of Chinese Fudo and Ningen: On Watsuji Tetsuro’s Perspectives on China Expressed in Fudo

Title

The Diversity of Chinese Fudo and Ningen: On Watsuji Tetsuro’s Perspectives on China Expressed in Fudo

Author

Andrew Ka Pok TAM

Page

1-40

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.202206_19(1).0001

Abstract

The relationship between Fudo (Climate) and Ningen (Human Society) is an essential topic to Watsuji Tetsuro’s philosophy of culture. In his book Fudo published in 1935, Watsuji defines culture in terms of the interaction between Fudo and Ningen and categorizes the world cultures into three types: monsoon, desert and meadow. In particular, when discussing the monsoon fudo and culture in China, Watsuji refers to not only objective data and secondary literature but also his fieldwork and subjective experiences during his visit to Hong Kong and Shanghai in 1927 on his marine journey to Germany. However, due to Watsuji’s insufficient knowledge about the geography of China, he misunderstood that the Fudo of China is merely a “monotonous” plain and Chinese people are “unemotional” to politics and disregarded the complexity of the climate and topography of China and the diversity of Chinese culture and society. Nevertheless, this paper argues that if Fudo study is a philosophy of culture based upon the concept of self-consciousness, once Watsuji’s misinformation about China is revised, it may still be employed to rediscover the diversity of Chinese culture consciousness. Natural and Social scientific researches on climate, topography, society, economy and politics of China does not weaken the theoretical value of Fudo study but actually complement each other: the former illustrates the structures of Fudo and Ningen while the later explains the formation of culture from the interaction between Fudo and Ningen in terms of self-consciousness.

Keyword

Watsuji Tetsuro, Fudo, Ningen, China, Shanghai, Geography, Philosophy of Culture

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