Research documentation of unpublished materials of Kitaro Nishida and the process of philosophical formation

Abstract

Prominent Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida founded the Kyoto School of philosophy and is considered the most influential Japanese philosopher of the 20th century. However, there are unrecorded works and materials with untapped potential that researcher Yuta Nakajima wanted to share with the world. Nakajima and Professor Hiroshi Asami, Ishikawa Prefectural Nursing University, Japan, are working to restore and organise recently discovered materials by Nishida. Asami is Principal Investigator on this project and is also Director of the Ishikawa NISHIDA KITARO Museum of Philosophy. He has extensive experience in this area and embarked on this research after a large number of unpublished notebooks from the home of a descendant of Kitaro Nishida were deposited at the Museum. Through this work, the researchers want to widely disseminate the philosophy of Nishida and Nishida's materials, including unpublished materials, and in doing so, deepen the study and understanding of Nishida's philosophy and Japanese philosophy as a whole. In one group of unpublished materials called 'thought notebooks', Nishida himself seems to have written down his own original thoughts and these may contain ideas that have yet to be turned into papers. Asami and Nakajima are also collaborating with curator Sachiko Yamanada. There are a total of 50 water damaged notebooks and memos that the team has been working to restore and they are now published online. Restoration involved vacuum freeze-drying and the use of SMART-GS software.