Tomoeda Takahiko

Tomoeda Takahiko

Review of the history of the Japanese-German cultural exchange: T. Tomoeda, Nichidoku bunka kōshōshi no kaiko . Japanese Ministry of Education, 1938.

Tomoeda Takahiko ( Japanese 友 枝 高彦 ; born November 4, 1876 in Ōmura, Kōge district (now part of the town of Buzen ), Fukuoka prefecture ; † July 7, 1957 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese philosopher and university professor who worked in the German-Japanese Relationships of the 1920s and 1930s played an important role.

Life

Tomoeda was born a few years after the establishment of the Meiji government in the village of Ōmura as the son of the well-known Confucian scholar and former village chief Tomoeda Hayami. After graduating from Toyotsu Middle School, he attended No. 5 High School in Kumamoto . This was led by the founder of the Kōdōkan-Jūdo, Kanō Jigorō , whom Tomoeda later referred to as the "father of his soul". He then studied philosophy and ethics at Tokyo University until 1901 .

When the Russo-Japanese War broke out, Tomoeda went to Europe as secretary to Baron Suematsu Kenchō ( 末 松 謙 澄 ), where Suematsu was supposed to explain the Japanese position and gather information at the same time. During his two-year stay, he was particularly impressed by liberalism in England.

In 1907 Tomoeda received a position as associate professor at the Imperial University of Kyoto . In September 1910 he was sent to Europe and America for three years on a grant from the Ministry of Education. In 1911 he came to Germany, where he studied in Berlin and Leipzig. On May 21, 1914, he returned to Japan. In 1916 he became a professor at Tokyo University. Kanō Jigorō had meanwhile become rector of the Tokyo University of Education ( Tōkyō kōtō shihan gakkō ) and brought him to this institution as a professor. On the occasion of the founding of the Tōkyō-Bunrika University in 1929, Tomoeda also took over a professorship there.

In the same year, on the recommendation of the philosopher Kanokogi Kazunobu ( 鹿 子 木 一 信 ), he became head of the Japanese-German Cultural Institute ( Nichidoku bunka kyōkai , literally "Cultural Association Japan-Germany") in Tokyo, which was founded as a sister institution to the so-called Japan Institute in Berlin was. As in Berlin, there was also a German and a Japanese director here. Tomoeda's partner became the Japanologist Wilhelm Gundert . In this function he made several lecture tours to Germany. At the same time he represented Japan at international conferences in The Hague (1911), Geneva (1929), etc. After ten years, Tomoeda left the active management of the cultural institute, but remained a member of the board of directors and the Japanese-German cultural committee in Tokyo.

In 1934 he went to Berlin , where he gave lectures and was also director of the Japan Institute. When the first German-Japanese exchange program for students came about, he made sure that the painter Higashiyama Kaii , who later became famous, received a scholarship to study art history in Berlin.

In 1941 he reached the age limit at Tōkyō-Bunrika University and was retired. After his house in Tokyo burned down in an air raid in March 1945, he withdrew to his homeland for a few years. Here he founded the Higashi Chikushi Junior College ( Higashi Chikushi tanki daigaku ) and became its first rector.

In 1952 he moved to Tokyo again. In 1955 he became the first principal of the Tsuru Junior College ( 都 留 短期 大学 , Tsuru tanki daigaki ) in Yamanashi Prefecture . A little later he died in Tokyo. Tomoeda is the bearer of the "Multicolored Order of the Rising Sun on Ribbon ".

In addition to translations, e.g. B. Frank Tilly's Introduction to Ethics , author of Tomoeda writings on ethics and pedagogy, many of them for use in schools and colleges. In addition, there were works on Shinto , Tenno and Bushidō aimed at foreign readers . During the thirties he wrote about the National Socialist movement and after the conclusion of the Anti-Comintern Pact a review of the history of German-Japanese cultural contacts.

Tomoeda's son Munetachi went to Germany during the 1930s and took a. a. participated in the first German-Japanese academics conference.

Works (selection)

• Chūgaku shūshin sankōsho . Tōkyō: Fusanbō, 1923 ( 中学 修身 参考書 ) ( digitized from the National Diet Library Tokyo )
• Joshi shūshin . Fusanbō 1923 ( 女子 修身 )
• Chūgaku shūshin . Fusanbō 1924 ( 中学 修身 )
• International Morality, Chapters Extracted from the Chugaku Shushin ", Text-book on Morals for Use in Secondary Schools in Japan . Geneva / Tokyo, 1926
• Shihan shūshin . Fusanbō 1926 ( 師範 修身 )
• The Essence of Shinto . In: Pacific Affairs , Vol.3, No.4, April 1930
• Nachisu undō no shakaigakuteki kōsatsu . Japanese-German Cultural Institute, Tokyo 1933 ( ナ チ ス 運動 の 社会学 的 考察 )
• Shakai rinrigaku josetsu . Kenbunkan, 1935 ( 社会 倫理学 序 説 )
• Nichi documentary bunka kōshō no kaikan . Kyōgakukyoku, 1938 ( 日 独 文化 交涉 史 の 囘顧 ). German edition: Japan and Germany: Historical review of their cultural connections . Tōkyō: Japanese-German Cultural Institute, 1938
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi . Tōkyō: Japanese-German Cultural Institute, 1938 (On the visit of the Hitler Youth in Osaka)
• Meiji Tenno. Bushido . Tōkyō: Japanese-German Cultural Institute, 1938

literature

• Annette Hack: The Japanese-German Cultural Institute in Tôkyô at the time of National Socialism. From Wilhelm Gundert to Walter Donat . In: News of the Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia (NOAG) . No. 3 , 1995, p. 77-100 ( PDF ).
• Ōgoe Tadamitsu: Tomoeda Takahiko (1876-1957) - Professor - First head of the Japanese-German Cultural Institute . In: Inge Hoppner, Fujiko Sekikawa (ed.): Bridge Builders: Pioneers of the Japanese-German cultural exchange . Iudicium, Munich 2005, p. 118–121 (German and Japanese).
• Michael Rauck: Japanese in the German language and cultural area, 1865-1914: A general survey . Tokyo Metropolitan Univ., Faculty of Economics, 1994.
• Lee M. Roberts: Literary Nationalism in German and Japanese Germanistik . Peter Lang, New York, pp. 75-80 .

Web links

• Website of the city of Buzen on Tomoeda Takahiko (Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 福岡 県 上 毛 郡 大村
2. ↑ Together with five other institutions, this renowned secondary school became part of Kumamoto University in 1949 .
3. ↑ Suematsu, like Tomoeda, came from the family of a village chief in the former province of Buzen.
4. ↑ Rauck (1994) p. 416f.
5. ↑ More on this institute in Hack (1995).

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