The main content of the article is a critical analysis of the ideas of major Japanese theorists and critics of postmodernism. Paradoxically, the main subject of postmodern scientific discourse in Japan has become the very question of the transition of its culture to the state of postmodernity through the stage of modernity. Since the concept of cultural paradigms and their characteristics was initially developed within the framework of Western science and based on the historical material of Western societies, this issue turned out to be closely related to the problems of national identity and the universality of cultural development. An attempt to use Western terminology in the analysis of native culture, made by Japanese scientists, reveals the peculiarity of the Eastern epistemological tradition. The author of the article also offers his own view on the problem under consideration, based on the understanding of cultural paradigms as discursive spaces.

Keywords: modernism, postmodernism, postmodernism, modernization of Japan, Kyoto School, "Kokugaku".

Japan is widely regarded as an "economic miracle" country, a society of universal prosperity and prosperity. However, the" era of change", which has stretched in this country for more than a decade, continues to supply more and more scientific subjects to Japanese studies. Recently, among scientists not only in Europe and America, but also in Japan itself, the question of the transition of this country's culture to a postmodern state has become a popular topic for research and discussion.¹

The transfer of fundamental Western scientific concepts, such as cultural paradigms, to the field of the Japanese philosophical tradition is in itself an interesting theoretical problem, the analysis of which can bear fruit in the field of intercultural communication, give an interesting new angle for considering the features of the Eastern epistemological tradition.

In addition, the modern-postmodern paradigm shift in Japanese culture is by no means a philosophical abstraction detached from the life of society. The rapid surge of interest in postmodern issues in the scientific community of Japan, followed by an equally rapid decline, is undoubtedly symptomatic. As discussion theses, postmodern theories have borne fruit in the analysis of Japanese art and society in its past and present. But, as you know, postmodernism, adopted as an ideology, has more serious effects. The postmodern postulate "everything is normal" legitimizes the degraded elements of mass culture, the tyranny of consumption and technocentrism, and the relativistic attitude to truth and objectivity in postmodernism opens the way for irrational catastrophes.

¹ In terms of modern science, " postmodernism "is understood, as a rule, as the state of modernity, the general direction of development of modern culture, and" postmodernism " - the state of a postmodern mentality that is aware of postmodernism, a special type of philosophy, literature, and art. (See, for example: [Dugin, 2009]. - editor's note).

actions, for example, such as the terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, carried out by members of the Aum-shinrikyo sect.

Of particular interest in the field of research outlined in this article is the attempt to define Japan's own culture in alien coordinates. Figuratively speaking," the end of modernism "in Japanese can be translated as" the bankruptcy of the West", which gives new life to Japanese traditionalism, which successfully survived the Western era of modernity with its enlightenment ideals.

Western science has already paid tribute to these problems, but in domestic Japanese studies, the development of Japanese philosophical thought at the present stage in general and the problem of changing cultural paradigms in particular have not yet become the subject of separate research. In this regard, the article was written on the material of Japanese sources and literature, mainly translated into English (due to the extreme difficulty of accessing the original texts for non-Japanese readers), so references are given to works in foreign languages.

CONGRESS "OVERCOMING MODERNISM": THE END OF MODERNITY AS THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE WEST

It is difficult to say whether the period of modernization in Japan can be called modernism (in the Western sense of the word). Of course, the concepts of "modernism" and "modernization" are not identical and are always divorced in science2. However, in the context of the cultural and historical development of Japan, these terms do not just appear as single-root terms. Modernization began there in the Meiji era (1868-1912) and proceeded, in fact, in the form of voluntary self - colonization of Japan by European countries (before World War II), and then - in the first decades after the defeat in the war-by the United States (with more obvious elements of colonialism). Modernization was primarily aimed at overcoming the country's logistical gap with the West. But at the same time, there could not but be a significant borrowing of elements of spiritual culture (since the spiritual and material as elements of one cultural system are always inextricably interrelated)³. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Western culture experienced, one might say, the apogee of modernism, approaching the full development of the"modern project". Modernism was perceived by many Japanese thinkers as a cultural error in accepting an alien element imposed by the West, and suspicions about the connection between postmodernism and reaction in Japanese culture will only be strengthened if we recall that such rhetoric flourished among Japanese nationalists in the early years of World War II.

The prehistory of Japanese postmodernism can be considered the congress organized by the magazine" World of Literature "("Bungagu-kai") in July 1942 and went down in history under the appropriate title "Overcoming Modernism" ("Kindai te: Koku") [Minamoto, 1994]. This congress met with warm support in wartime Japan, it was a demonstration of the country's determination and independence, a sign that it was marching in the intellectual vanguard of its time

² The term "modern" refers to a specific cultural and historical complex that has ideological and stylistic unity and is characterized primarily by monologue and a clearly expressed hierarchical system of values; "modernism" is a type of philosophizing and art that corresponds to this cultural and historical era. "Modernization" is understood as all possible transformations in the culture of an innovative nature, in a narrow sense-changes that have occurred in the last half century and are associated with modern norms and requirements.

³ The establishment of the modernist paradigm in this historical period is evidenced, in particular, by the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the return of real power to the emperor. The ideological basis of the coup was the national Japanese mythology, according to which only the Emperor, who is a descendant of the gods, has the sacred right to rule over Japan and represents its people. These ideas undoubtedly indicate the beginning of the formation of the Japanese national identity, which is considered one of the fundamental features of the thinking and worldview of the modern era.

keep up with the entire international community. Indeed, all participants were unanimous in their view of the war as an expression of Japanese heroic idealism, although it was not the main topic of debate.

The congress was attended by members of the circle formed around the magazine "World of Literature": Hayashi Fusao (1903-1975), a writer who switched from communist to fascist positions, critics Kamei Katsuichiro (1907-1966), Kobayashi Hideo (1902-1983), Kawakami Tetsutaro (1902-1980), Nakamura Mitsuo (1911-1988) and the novelist Miyoshi Tatsuji (1900-1964Kyoto School ⁴ scientists Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990) and Suzuki Shigetaka (1907-1988); independent contributors: physicist Kikuchi Seishi (1902-1974), composer Moroi Saburo (1903-1977), philosopher Shimomura Torataro (born 1902), film critic Tsumura Hideo (1907-1985), and theologian Yoshimitsu Yoshihiko (1904-1945).

The most active participants of the congress were representatives of the Kyoto School. Characteristic of the congress are the reports of Hayashi (2008), who gave a sentimental and fanatical speech about loyalty to the emperor, containing interesting remarks about the corrupting influence of European literature, and Nakamura (2008), a subtle critic of the imperfections of Japanese assimilation of Western discoveries. To give a general idea of the specifics of the presentations made at the symposium, I will briefly outline the main ideas of the report made by Nishitani [Nishitani, 2008], who argued that the Buddhist concept of "emptiness" is able to connect the torn epochs of the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment in European Art Nouveau.

Nisitani, in his arguments, brought the Buddhist ideal of "overcoming oneself" closer to self-sacrifice in the name of the State. The unity of the State implies that all its citizens destroy their "ego". Such religious ethics (associated with Shintoism, "the way of the gods") can completely replace the motivation of remuneration for work inherent in capitalism. It also makes the terminology of Marxism unsuitable for analysis. Absolute transcendence and immanence, according to Nishitani, are combined in Japan, which is absolutely impossible in the West, and this creates conditions for the maximum accumulation of"spiritual energy". The uniqueness of this moral achievement makes Japan the "artery of world history". Nisitani argued that the impersonal concept of the Absolute could reveal a transcendent meaning to the secularized technocratic world more than the Western personified concept of God could.

The participants of the congress adhered to different concepts of modernism. Some were his supporters, others were skeptical. Therefore, their ideas about ways to "overcome modernism" were different. Yoshimitsu [Yoshimitsu, 2008], Hayashi [Hayashi, 2008], and Kamei [Kamei, 2008] argued for a return to pre-modern forms, either a restoration of medieval Christianity, or a renewal of Japanese beliefs in spirits and gods, which would nullify modernist experiments. Kikuchi [2008], Tsumura [2008], and Moroi [2008], who were more positive about modern technology and art, did not come out with harsh criticism of modernity. Representatives of both the Kyoto School and the World of Literature circle are critics of modernism, they are modernists who are critical of their era, but not yet postmodernists. They spoke enthusiastically about historicism and pluralism, which was quite in the spirit of postmodernism, but at the same time rejected reductive historicism, and their emphasis on the importance of the unity of the people negated all the praises of absolute plurality.

⁴ 1) Kyoto School-a movement in Japanese philosophy that was formed about 100 years ago with its center at Kyoto University. Its adherents sought to assimilate the terms and concepts of Western philosophy and theology and used them to reinterpret and reformulate ideas unique to the East Asian religious and philosophical tradition; 2) this is the designation of a group of scientists who worked at Kyoto University in the post-war period and were significantly influenced by the philosophers of the pre-war Kyoto school. These scientists have developed peculiar theories about the uniqueness of the Japanese nation (Clarke, 1991).

It can be said that the congress "Overcoming Modernism" was a kind of foresight of the coming new world order, but its significance should not be exaggerated: it was not the main intellectual event of our time and until recently did not enjoy special attention of scientists. This chronicle of overcoming modernism can be called a chronicle of Japan's cultural fatigue, which has lost its way among the national ways of life and thinking that were borrowed for the benefit of the nation. It is interesting that the Congress did not come to any general conclusions on the issue raised. Its participants seemed to be trying to give new names to phenomena, but not to explain them.

DISPUTES ABOUT MODKRNIZM AND THE PROBLEM OF THE FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY AMONG THE JAPANESE

The Japanese philosopher Maruyama Macao (1914-1996) observed that many scientific papers are based on the same principles.

discussions ( "ronso") In Japan, they are developing according to the same scheme: for a while

for a while, they clarify the situation, but quickly fade away without solving the issues raised - and a few years later they resume and repeat their path from the very beginning, but in terms that correspond to the new political and socio-economic situation.⁵

If this is true, then it is not surprising that the current debate about modernism and postmodernism in Japan largely repeats the terminology and problems of the 1942 Congress. The question arises: do the postmodern studies of Japan in 1980-1990 have any new ideological basis at all?

Some Western theorists considered postmodernism as a fundamentally new paradigm of thinking that replaced modernism and was born out of attempts to revise it. Eco, J.-F. Lyotard, G. Hoffman), some-as the next stage in the development of modernism (D. Bell, X. Letin), but any concepts, one way or another, define postmodernism through modernism. At the same time, all theoretical developments concerning the concepts of postmodernism and modernism initially existed only within the framework of Western culture and on its material. Thus, " postmodernism "is a concept as alien to the Japanese philosophical tradition as"modernism". Therefore, it is not surprising that the "reworking" of these terms is resumed at those moments when the problem of proving its self-sufficiency and establishing its national identity becomes more acute for Japan. ⁶ But why is this question, characteristic of the beginning of the Art Nouveau era, so relevant in Japan to this day?

Another Japanese philosopher, one of the founders of the Kyoto School, Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), coined the term "place of nonexistence" (or "empty place") ^.7 In this topos, Being (in the Japanese sense) is built on its own foundations, and the subject position in it does not exist only from the point of view of the West, where "identity" and "existence" are integral properties of the subject endowed with individuality. However, from the point of view of Buddhist ontology, this "void" is exceptionally complete. The question of identity simply cannot arise in the Japanese national tradition, since it lies outside its epistemological experience (Wargo, 2005).

⁵ Maruyama M. Nihon no shisô (cit. no: [Scats, 2006, p. 49-50]).

⁶ Even today's rhetoric about Japan's economic superiority can be seen as evidence that the Japanese feel an urgent need to establish their national identity, defined in their own terms. Although such arguments usually refer exclusively to economic concepts, they actually refer to the sovereignty of Japan as an independent national state in the context of Western hegemony, which is moving under the banner of globalization (see, for example, [Scats, 2006, p.78]).

⁷ In the original: ("mu-no basho"), in Buddhist practice, mu means"emptiness". In English translations: "place of nothingness".

However, if you look at the activities of the Kyoto School in general and Nishida in particular from the outside, it becomes obvious that the very attempt to rethink Japanese identity in terms of Western philosophy is already a sign that the Japanese have begun to see themselves through the eyes of the West and determine their place in foreign coordinate systems. And the viewing angle itself already determines the result of the analysis.

To clarify the above concept, it should be noted that it was modernism that first separated the individual from the holistic structures of identity, where the subject was integrated into a larger sociostructural field, which formed the individual. In the modern era, the personality is always "indeterminate" and identical only to itself, which is associated with a high level of mobility. Here we can find the roots of the progressive and expansive aspirations of modernity, which proclaimed a movement in itself, a movement for its own sake. Modernism organized space, including social space, into strict hierarchical structures. Hierarchy was undoubtedly also highly characteristic of Japanese traditional culture. But this seems to have been a very different kind of hierarchy, since the Japanese generally did not see progress as an ascent from the lowest to the highest levels of the hierarchy, such as Western evolutionism demonstrates.

One of the main points of Japan's modernization program was democratization. Of course, the " subjectivity "(read "identity") of the individual's consciousness is one of the main agents of the democratic process, but the democratic process itself is nothing more than the process of identity birth, in which the individual is aware of himself as a subject of history. In Japan, this process was initiated, but never completed. After the Japanese recognized the Buddhist "emptiness" within themselves as an "empty place," it really became a kind of ontological vacuum, drawing in reactionary, nationalist, ultra-right, and ultra-left irrational ideologies.

Modernism and identity as one of its pillars are natural forms of consciousness for cultures of a certain group at a certain stage of their historical development, but they are far from the only and not universal forms. For East Asian cultures, they have never been at the center of the world's perception. The debate about modernism (and now postmodernism) has become so widespread in Japan, apparently due to the success of capitalism, while in communist China it was not observed until recent years. "Modernism" and "modernization" as terms played a significant role in M. Weber's theory, but they could hardly figure in Marxism, since they erase the differences between capitalism and socialism as fundamentally indistinguishable stages of post-feudal development, and this point was fundamental in the Marxist version of history. Apparently, because of the alienness of the very form of consciousness built around identity, the Japanese still cannot come to any decision on this issue.

Not all Japanese thinkers were equally optimistic about this feature of Japanese national psychology. For example, the aforementioned Maruyama saw the origins of the modern ideology of the Japanese state in the activities of the Kokugaku School of Philology, ⁸ which really played an important role

⁸ Kokugaku (dosl, "study of the native land") - the Japanese philological school, which was formed in the XVIII century in contrast to another philological school, "Kangaku", which was mainly engaged in the study of Confucian Chinese texts. Kokugaku devoted all its attention to the analysis of Japanese national literature, through which it sought to highlight and emphasize the features of Japanese national identity that make Japanese culture and the state independent of China and sovereign. In 1868, this doctrine played a huge role in the overthrow of the Shogunate in order to restore power to the emperor. In the 1930s, the main theme of the followers of this school was the intellectual and cultural "revolt against the West". The Kokugaku school of this period is often criticized for popularizing nationalist ideology and even fascism among the Japanese (Burns, 2003).

in the intellectual life of the country from the 18th century to the Second World War. Maruyama accuses the Kokugaku and ideologues of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Japan of spreading anti-rational attitudes that prevented the formation of a modernist national identity, which is necessary for building a democratic political system, and the completion of Japan's modernization. According to Maruyama, the philosophical tradition where the " I " forms a certain core in Japan is completely absent. Maruyama saw this lack of subjectivity and identity as the main reason for the "bad infinity" of Japanese scientific disputes (see [Seats, 2006]).

Kobayashi Hideo, a well-known Japanese literary critic and participant of the congress "Overcoming Modernism", noted in his speech that the participants did not consider modernism as something bad in itself, but rather they sought to implement new social forms, for which modernism had to be overcome: "Overcoming modernism means for us overcoming Western modernism." However, in their attempt to go beyond the historical in the "now of eternity", the Japanese, according to Kobayashi, come across something that does not seem to have a core, a core [Contemporary Japanese Thought, 2005, p. 105].

Thus, we see that for the Japanese, the debate about modernism (and postmodernism, as is clear from other concepts that will be discussed below) is not just a dispute about aesthetics and philosophical concepts, as in the West. This is largely a dispute about the foundations of the nation itself and its place in the context of world history. This problem cannot be understood outside of the political, socio-economic and psychological aspects of Japanese society.

CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE PHILOSOPHERS ON POSTMODERNISM AND THE CULTURAL SITUATION IN JAPAN

A new surge of interest in cultural paradigms emerged in Japan in the mid-1980s. This was the period when the Land of the Rising Sun for the first time in the post-war period began to play a significant role in the international arena not as a universal enemy and a defeated rogue state, but as a new economic force. "Coming out" required the creation of a new business card. Having begun to partially free themselves from the political and military control of the United States and the "dollar imperialism", the Japanese once again began to look for evidence of their national identity, independence and even superiority. By that time, Western science and art were already speaking a different language - the language of postmodernism, and Japan, which no longer wanted to fall out of the global avant-garde, began to actively study it.

The ideas of postmodernism in Japanese humanities were first disseminated by Asada Akira (b. 1957) in the 1980s. Asada was not only the first theorist and critic of postmodernism in Japan. His research interests include contemporary Japanese art, sociology, and economics. The theoretical basis of Asad's work "Structure and Power - Beyond Semiotics "(keisō shobō, 1983) was mainly the ideas of J. R. R. Tolkien. Deleuze and F. Guattari. Asada became a key figure in the so - called New Academism movement "Nyu: aka" - actually the equivalent of postmodernism) in Japan. Largely due to Asad's academic work, postmodernism was the main focus of all intellectual discussions in Japan until the mid-1980s.One might have thought that the intellectual world of Japan was experiencing a new "Overcoming of Modernism". However, then there was a sharp decline in interest in this problem on the part of Japanese scientists, and the number of publications accordingly also declined.

In fact, Asada's work is not so far removed from the theme of the famous congress, but he gave the problems of historicism and identity a postmodern look.-

nist critical perspective. Inspired by the ideas of Nishida Kitaro, Asada created a classification of post-industrial societies. He called the capitalist society of Europe, which is dominated by traditions of transcendence, "senile". American capitalism, marked by an inner sense of individual responsibility to society, Assad designated as "adult". The happiest, according to Asada, is a highly developed and safe Japanese society, where in all areas, including technology and especially advertising, play and parody reign; here one can observe only "purely relative competition of children playing under control" [Asada, 2003, p. 276].

The ideas of Karatani Kojina (born 1941), a philosopher and literary critic, played a major role in spreading postmodern and poststructuralist trends in the academic and cultural discourse of Japan. His main works on postmodernism were the books "Postmodernism and Criticism" (Postmodernism and Criticism, 1985)," Language and Tragedy "(Language and Tragedy, 1989) and the article" One Spirit, Two Nineteenth Centuries "(One Spirit, Two Nineteenth Centuries, 1989). In previous studies, Karatani has shown a particular interest in all types of thinking other than classical Western thinking, so it is not surprising that he responded so quickly to postmodern trends. During several years of lecturing at Yale University, Karatani had the opportunity to personally talk with many Western theorists of postmodernism and post-structuralism, including J. R. R. Tolkien. Derrida [Murakami, 2005, p. 140].

However, the conclusions that Karatani came to when studying the problem of postmodernism in Japan were very disappointing. In his opinion, postmodernism came to Japan like an intellectual storm from the West, and it has no basis in the Japanese cultural and philosophical tradition. This storm knocked down the Japanese critics, who did not even notice it.⁹ In other ways, Karatani highlights the vast cultural distance that separates Japan from the West. In particular, Karatani argues that before talking about deconstruction, it is worth understanding that there is a construction for Japan. According to Karatani, deconstruction of cause-and-effect relationships, which is one of the main features of postmodernism in the West, existed in Japan as early as the 19th century, for example, in the form of criticism of rationalism in neo-Confucianism ("One Spirit").

The same ideas about deconstruction can be found in Language and Tragedy. Karatani believes that in the modern era in Western culture, the concepts of structure and God were hidden, and post-structuralism developed as a method aimed at extracting these concepts to the surface. In the Japanese tradition, both in the humanities and in the natural sciences, there was no need for a transcendent to link structure, so Japanese philosophy has been "postmodern" since the Meiji period. (Karatani analyzes the ideas of Nishida and others.) According to Karatani, in Western philosophy, thinkers such as Baudrillard translated metaphysical principles into a postmodern context, but in Japan these principles remained intact, since in fact they never existed at all. Therefore, deconstruction is a path to postmodernism for Japan as well, but the problem is that in the Japanese tradition, concepts are like currents consisting of many smaller currents and devoid of center and resistance. This can be seen in the example of the Japanese ego-novel genre "shishosetsu"), which, in comparison with European novels, has the following characteristics:

⁹ One of Karatani's works, dedicated to a critical analysis of the ideas of Kobayashi Hidso, the father of Japanese literary criticism and an active participant in the congress "Overcoming Modernism", has an ironic title in the postmodern spirit - "Overcoming Kobayashi Hidso" This example shows that although Karatani had a low opinion of the forerunners of Japanese postmodernism, at the same time he he became the successor of their ideas, which, therefore, in spite of everything, took root on Japanese soil.

The plot, unity of narration, and structure represented by the beginning, development, and denouement are poorly expressed, but historically the ego-novel belongs to the modern era [Seats, 2006].

In "Language and Tragedy" and in the article "One Spirit, two Nineteenth centuries" [Karatani, 2003], Karatani points out the similarity of the cultural situation in Japan in the 1980s with the situation that developed in the late XIX century (during the Meiji period), and even earlier-in the Edo period (early XVII - mid-19th century). According to Karatani, modernity is united with the Edo period by the desire for closeness, a sense of self-sufficiency and even superiority in relation to the West, which is caused by the feeling of "the end of history" (or the achievement of its ultimate goal). Today, Japan has become a highly developed information society, where nothing significant is produced, but rather "different", and" difference " is equivalent to information. Therefore, desires are reduced to the desire for something else. In this sense, the Japanese feel even more developed than the Europeans. Japan has created a self-contained, painfully closed space in which the concepts of "postmodernism" and "poststructuralism" function as if they don't exist anywhere else. But for Karatani, the difference between the historical stages of modernity and postmodernity in the West and in Japan is obvious, so, in his opinion, in order to become postmodern, Japan must first become "truly" (on the Western model) modernist.

Summing up Karatani's ideas, we can say that this philosopher recognizes the presence of elements similar to Western postmodernism in the archaic and medieval cultural tradition, but, unlike Assad, denies Japan the right to primacy in the process of paradigm shift due to the nature of the fundamental historical differences between Japanese premodernism and Western postmodernism.

One of the most recent researchers of this problem is the Japanese philosopher and contemporary art specialist Azuma Hiroki (b. 1971). Azuma was influenced by the ideas of Zh. Derrida and A. Kozhev (Russian-French neo-Hegelian philosopher). Azuma has written numerous works on a wide variety of topics: representation, narratives, freedom in the post-9711 world, and subculture. But in the context of the problem we are considering, the most interesting is Azuma's latest book, Otaku¹⁰-Information Animals of Japan (Azuma, 2009)    Otaku: Japan's Database Animals (2001). In this paper, Azuma suggests that the consumer behavior of representatives of the so-called otaku subculture can serve as an illustration of the modern global consumer society in general. In such a society, a person refuses to search for some higher meaning in information and begins to use it to satisfy his current needs, which, according to Hegel, brings him closer to the natural animal state.

Azuma uses the model of two types of post-industrial society proposed by A. Kozhev [Kozhev, 2003]: American society - "animal", Japanese - "snobbish". These terms raise the question of the Americanization of Japan, which brings us back to the debate about Japanese national identity. Azuma deconstructs Japanese autoassociation with postmodernism, arguing that it was based more on Japanese narcissism (if one can put it that way) during the high economic growth period of the 1980s than on theoretically valid conclusions. Japan did not go through the full process of modernization (on the Western model), which would really prepare the ground for the development of postmodernism there, and in this case this country would become a project of the global future. However, with such privileges, Azuma

¹⁰ Otaku-a name that has been established in Japan for ardent fans of any part of modern mass culture. Outside of Japan, including in Russia, the word has come to mean, as a rule, fans of Japanese manga and anims.

It doesn't endow Japan. He sees postmodernism as a combination of two processes: "postmodernization" of society (which includes the development of information technologies, globalization, multiculturalism, the formation of a consumer society with many subcultures) and the spread of the postmodern paradigm of thinking (or "postmodernism" itself). Moreover, according to Azuma, the former already made all the changes it could in the development of Japan in the 1980s. And now it does not matter much, and only the second process is actively continuing.

In order to adequately assess the concepts of Japanese postmodern theorists and critics and to determine more precisely the place of each of these concepts in the development of Japanese philosophy, it is necessary to tell a little more in detail about the overall picture of the spiritual life of Japan in the 1980s. It was the era of the" Japanese economic miracle "and"Japanese narcissism." The so-called Nihonjinron ¹¹ is widely used in scientific, pseudoscientific and near-scientific circles. If in the first post-war years works of this type contained a positive charge of healthy ethnocentrism (according to M. Maruyama, for example), then by the 1980s they acquired a clear shade of cultural nationalism, unconditionally asserting Japanese exclusivity and superiority. Philosophical works have often said that the Western project of " modernity "failed, while Japan has continued to preserve such postmodern" virtues " as pluralism, tolerance, and a non-subjectivizing type of thinking that promotes the development of harmonious social relations since ancient times.

As can be seen, the essence of the debate about "overcoming modernism" in the 1980s did not significantly change in comparison with the 1940s. The issue of national identity continued to be the cornerstone of Japanese discourse. The establishment of a new paradigm in the West continued to be perceived by the Japanese as its cultural bankruptcy, which undoubtedly encouraged the self-esteem of Japan, which (as this article shows) I was never able to build my own model of modernism, nor to complete modernization in Western cultural coordinates. To the credit of Japanese scientists, it should be noted that they do not simplify the situation and do not bypass the fundamental questions of the relationship between Western postmodernism and Japanese "postmodernism". Moreover, they critically analyze the attempts of their less far-sighted colleagues to reduce the historical experience of the West, reducing it to the failure of the"project". Modernity and postmodernity are not fixed sets of certain social configurations and ideological attitudes. The problem is that it is pointless to analyze these epochs outside of their living historical interrelation. The inability, diagnosed in Japanese culture, to establish its identity from within, due to the lack of appropriate terms in this culture, does not allow it to localize itself in this flow, without relying on the opposition of itself to Another.

The Japanese epistemological tradition is characterized by a syncretic perception of history. Even after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1853, official documents and scientific literature preserve the chronology of the reigns of the emperors, called "nengo"  ^.12 K. Karatani noted that such a division according to the periods of the reigns makes us forget about the external relationships between these periods and "construct an autonomous discursive space", in fact, all epochs and periods coexist in the same space. culture simultaneously [Karatani, 1993, p. 188].

¹¹ Nihonjinron-dosl, "Theories about the Japanese". The title combines a range of scientific, popular and journalistic literature about the national and cultural identity of the Japanese. The term appeared in the middle of the XX century, but similar works began to be created much earlier - in the XIX century by the Kokugaku school, at the beginning of the XX century. Kyoto School. Most of them have the character of open national and cultural chauvinism (Dale, 1986). The problem of Nihonjinron has also been discussed in Russian Japanese studies (see Alpatov, 2008).

¹² With the accession of a new emperor, a new government motto is adopted, which becomes the name of the era, and the year of adoption of this motto becomes the first year of the new era.

The same trend can be seen in Japanese postmodern discourse. The era of modernization in the language has a special name - " kindai "("New time"), in contrast to it, the modern period is marked as" gendai "("modernity").

This temporary fragmentation creates the illusion that there are some turning points on the rails of history, where it can abruptly change its course. In reality, any historical periodization is conditional, it only creates a collectively imagined "discursive space". For any culture, all epochs are in a relationship not of complementarity, but of coexistence. If there is a certain cultural dominant, each society continues to experience periods of its own pre-modernism, modernism and postmodernism simultaneously. Neither a change of power nor a change of paradigms represents a" breakaway line " in cultural development.

This is especially evident in the case of Japan. Modernization did not eliminate the traditional archaic elements of its culture, and even the highest degree of Westernization could not make this culture Western. The distinctive features of Japanese culture in the postmodern era are preserved in the same way as in the modern era. The very" quality " of the culture has not changed. The "discursive space" has changed , and the old elements have received a new meaning. It can be said that postmodernism has returned to Japan its forgotten and lost cultural heritage, but rather, postmodernism has legalized this heritage, becoming only an occasion for reviving and celebrating the traditional attitudes of Japanese culture, formally close to the state of Western postmodernism. Although the discussion of paradigm shift in the West was not the subject of this small study, I note that this issue is also not so clear in science.

Any paradigm can be considered as the angle of refraction of a particular culture, a certain theoretical and ideological (ideologemic) space. But it is impossible to observe culture from the outside. Paradoxically, all theorizing and criticism of culture is part of it. In this sense, modernism and postmodernism are not only ontological characteristics of cultural development, but also epistemological. In what capacity they are understood by the researcher depends on his general theoretical views and the goals of counter-research. For example, the discourse on national identity is indicative. It is considered an immanent characteristic of the Art Nouveau era mainly because in other epochs it was not (or will not be)exposed to it. such a comprehensive reflection did not have such a large impact on the determination of a person's place in the world.

Paradigmatic periodization, like any other, can be analyzed as a consistent construction of fantasy "discursive spaces". Each new paradigm, as if sensing its own fragility, seeks introspection aimed at clearing and sealing off its place in culture, emphasizing in every possible way at the theoretical level its differences from previous forms. The texts of Japanese culture considered in this article indicate that its self-reflection took place both in terms of modernism and in terms of postmodernism. Another question that started this final discussion is the origin and content of these terms.

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