The End of Drifting Reason - The 1970s

The End of Drifting Reason - The 1970s

Shotaro Yasuoka and Shoichi Watabe's "Can the Japanese Survive?" is a unique dialogue on the mental fatigue and drifting values of the postwar Japanese people against the backdrop of the Cold War structure and the end of economic growth in the 1970s. While viewing industrial espionage and the intensification of information warfare as strategies for national survival, the two authors worried about the reality that human ethics had been neglected and a deep fault line had developed between individualism and group ethics.

In the midst of economic stagnation caused by the oil crisis and the Cold War between East and West, Japan was facing a dual crisis of affluence and spiritual hollowing out. Yasuoka, as a literary scholar, sought to "restore humanity," while Watanabe, as a historian of ideas, criticized the loss of ego brought about by the importation of Western rationalism. What both men share is the conviction that if national prosperity is accompanied by ethical poverty, it is nothing less than the defeat of civilization.

They further attack the ambiguity of Japan's international position. Lacking a political philosophy in the midst of the U.S.-Soviet confrontation, Japan exists as a "drifting nation," they say, drunk with economic success while losing its spiritual roots. Yasuoka calls for the "end of prosperity without ethics" and Watanabe calls for the "rebirth of reason." This dialogue, which reexamines the ideological coordinates of postwar Japan, remains a profound critique of civilization concerning the stagnation of the times and human rebirth.