31Oct 2017 by Roman Pașca No Comments

A New Theory of the Earth

Philosophy
As I was working on my presentation on Yamagata Bantō's philosophical discourse for the ENOJP conference in Paris, I started to look more thoroughly into the various influences that informed his Yume no shiro 夢の代, the encyclopedic work he finished in 1820. And this is how I came across an extremely interesting text from 1696, William Whiston's A New Theory of the Earth - apparently, the text was translated in Japanese as 『西洋天話』 by Hashimoto Sōkichi, one of the most prominent rangaku scholars in early 19th century Osaka. Bantō read it, was fascinated with the model of the solar system that Whiston proposed (cometary catastrophism included) and then later used as a basis for his own model. But the most fascinating thing about Whiston's book is probably the full title: A New Theory…
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20Oct 2017 by Roman Pașca No Comments

EJJP 2

Philosophy
The second issue of the European Journal of Japanese Philosophy (EJJP) is just out this week from Chisokudō Publications, in time for the conference in Paris. And, honestly, I can't wait to hold it in my hands and then stick my nose in between the freshly printed pages - yes, I confess, I'm addicted to the exhilarating smell of new books. And only after imbibing the smell of ink and paper will I also imbibe the knowledge... For this issue, I contributed a translation into Romanian of Andō Shōeki's parable of the birds from his Shizen shin'eidō, and a book review. The complete Table of contents and the Introduction are available here.  I know that Takeshi and Gerrit, the editors, worked really hard to put together this issue (as they…
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