CRISIS AND RENAISSANCE IN POST-WAR JAPAN

Abstract

This article explores the intellectual and political meanings surrounding scholarly reconstruction and reimagining of the Renaissance in pre- and post-war Japan, analyzing in particular the work of Hayashi Tatsuo, Watanabe Kazuo and Hanada Kiyoteru, through comparison with some of the dominant perspectives on the same subject produced during the same years in Europe and America. It focuses specifically on authors from other Axis countries, namely Hans Baron and Eugenio Garin. For although Italian and German scholarship has been seminal in setting out new ways of interpreting the Renaissance, beyond this criterion, the selection of the intellectuals whose work I shall investigate does not follow strictly disciplinary lines. Instead, they have been selected because of their relevance in proposing an image of the Renaissance that played an important role in post-war public intellectual debates about crisis and rebirth in post-war Japan.