Nishida Kitaro and the Logic of Place (Basho)

Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) is generally regarded as the founder of the Kyoto School and the first Japanese philosopher to construct a fully systematic original philosophical framework rather than simply importing or commenting on Western thought. Born in Kahoku, Ishikawa Prefecture, he studied philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University as a non-regular auditing student, graduated in 1894, and after teaching posts at provincial schools including the Fourth Higher School in Kanazawa, he was appointed to the philosophy faculty at Kyoto Imperial University in 1910, becoming full professor and chair in 1913. He held that post until his retirement in 1928, when he was succeeded by his former student and eventual philosophical rival, Tanabe Hajime; Nishida's decades at Kyoto gave the Kyoto School its name and its institutional home. His breakthrough work, An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyu), published in 1911, introduced Japanese readers to a philosophy built around "pure experience" and quickly became one of the most widely read philosophical texts of twentieth-century Japan.