Takeuchi Yoshimi

Takeuchi Yoshimi, 1953

Takeuchi Yoshimi ( Japanese 竹 内 好 ; born October 2, 1910 in Usuda (today: Saku ), Nagano Prefecture ; † March 3, 1977 in Musashino , Tokyo Prefecture ) was a Japanese sinologist and cultural theorist.

Takeuchi studied Chinese literature at Tokyo University from 1931 . In 1932 he visited China for the first time and on his return founded the Society for Chinese Literature Studies ( Chūgoku bungaku kenkyūkai ) with some friends, including the writer Takeda Taijun . This was the magazine Chūgoku Bungaku out, in which he published essays and translations. After completing his studies, he lived again in China from 1937 to 1939. During the Pacific War he was drafted into military service in 1943 and served in China until the end of the war.

After the war, Takeuchi began to teach, first at Keio University , and later at Tokyo University. An offer to join the Communist Party, he turned down in 1949, but he later became involved in the left-wing Institute for Humanities ( Shisō no kagaku kenkyūkai ), the u. a. the philosopher Tsurumi Shunsuke and the political scientist Maruyama Masao belonged. In 1960, in protest against the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States , he resigned from teaching at Tokyo University.

Takeuchi's first book Ro Jin ( 魯迅 ) about the Chinese writer Lu Xun was published in 1944. This was followed by numerous essays on Chinese and Japanese literature, the cultural development of Japan and the country's relationship to modernity. A selection of his essays appeared in German translation in 2005 under the title Japan in Asia .

literature

• Richard Calichman: What Is Modernity ?: Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi . Columbia University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-231-50913-8 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Web links

Commons : Takeuchi Yoshimi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Pearl Divers - Yoshimi Takeuchi: Japan in Asia

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Takeuchi is the family name, Yoshimi the first name.