• Ho Tzu Nyen
  Language
  2021, Augmented Reality
  Commissioned by National Gallery Singapore

The Kyoto School is a network of scholars formed around the figure of the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945), who is typically regarded as a key figure of Japanese modern philosophy. In this work, we hear fragments of 3 texts by 3 different members of the Kyoto School. The first text is The Problem of Japanese Culture, developed from a public lecture the Nishida delivered in 1938. The second and third texts are by Hajime Tanabe (1885 –1962) and Kiyoshi Miki (1897 – 1945).

Tanabe is considered to be Nishida’s first disciple and successor. His text, Death-Life was a lecture delivered to a crowded auditorium at Kyoto Imperial University on 19 May 1943 as part of the Monday Lecture Series. In autumn1943, about five months after Tanabe’s lecture, all male humanities students over 20 were subject to enlistment. In Death-Life, Tanabe says that there are three types of attitudes towards death. One: a “natural” attitude where you don’t think of death because it’s no use. Two: an attitude of “self-conscious being” where you will yourself to face up against death and thus gain awareness of your existence. Three: a “practical” attitude where, by actually dying for the state, an individual is connected to the absolute. Present in the lecture was Masuzo Ohya, who not only stenographed it, but also wrote six tanka poems about it. One of this poem goes: “Lectured on death and sent students to war who said it was philosophy that bleeds.”

Another is the title of this piece. The other text we hear in this work is by Kiyoshi Miki, The World Historical Significance of the China Incident, which was a talk he gave in 1938. In 1945, Miki was arrested for harbouring a communist fugitive playwright. On 26

September 1945, six weeks after the war ended, Miki was found dead in Toyotama Prison, reportedly of nephritis due to scabies and malnutrition.