This article presents a critical reflection by scholar Hiroshi Furuta on the collapse of empirical research within the humanities at the University of Tokyo. Through vivid anecdotes, Furuta exposes the long-standing dominance of authority-driven scholarship, the influence of German philosophy and Marxist progressivism, and the contradictions in Maruyama Masao’s thought. He contrasts this with his own approach—empirical research combined with intuition and transcendence—and argues that Japanese academia has been sustained by fragile authority rather than evidence. A penetrating analysis of Japan’s postwar intellectual landscape.

They must have wanted to protect the authority of sociology at the University of Tokyo.
It was unfortunate for the empirical researchers within the university.
November 29, 2020

I came to know the person named Furuta Hiroshi only after August six years ago.
Just as Masayuki Takayama is the one and only journalist in the postwar world,
Furuta Hiroshi is one of the foremost scholars in the postwar world.
The Asahi Shimbun never informed the public that such a person existed.
The severity of Asahi’s failings is proven more than sufficiently by this one fact alone.
As he himself acknowledges, he is the scholar next to Okada Hidehiro, and this is entirely correct.
I have never read Okada’s books, but Furuta and Takayama both hold him in the highest esteem—
and even Wang Qishan praised the depth of Okada’s scholarship.

Furuta Hiroshi occasionally displays his own unique humor,
and every time, I burst into laughter.
He possesses the kind of humor that only genuine intellects have.

The following is from his essay series, titled “The Fighting Epicurus,” serialized in a monthly magazine.
I burst out laughing right from the start.

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**Let Us Forge a Mindset Suited to a New Era

The Authority of the University of Tokyo’s Humanities Has Fallen to the Ground**

The following conversation is based on a phone call from a former newspaperwoman.

“Professor, how are you so knowledgeable about Western philosophy?”
“Because since childhood, I barely listened to class and instead read Western classics on my lap.”
“Didn’t you read Japanese writers?”
“Well, since the so-called ‘intellectuals’ kept saying that Japanese people were idiots, no good, savages, I thought the things written by such Japanese intellectuals must also be the products of idiots, no good, and savages—so I didn’t read them.”

“Haha, what about university?”
“My academic advisor was Kani Hiroaki (historical anthropology),
the son of a substitute teacher from Gifu—
a thoroughly self-made, hyper-realist—
so he never lied to me.
One day he said this:

—‘Furuta, if my family had been better off,
I would never have studied China.’
‘Then what would you have studied?’
‘Europe, of course.’—

Thinking ‘I knew it,’
I continued my self study of European classics.”

“Couldn’t you have started with Europe from the beginning?”
“No, unless your family background is good
and you have inherited abundant cultural capital accumulated by parents and grandparents,
it’s difficult.
The cultural layer there is very deep.
But mixed within that deep layer are things that are mistaken or useless,
so you must choose the good and proceed.
With zero accumulated experience, one’s study ends up merely as personal hobby.”

“What about East Asia?”
“Almost no cultural depth at all.
And China is full of wrong things,
so if everything is going to be useless anyway,
Korea is easier.
Classical Chinese is simple.
You can read their writings as the records of people
who never attempted to learn anything
and persisted in doing mistaken things.
That leaves more time—time you can spend reading Western originals.”

“That sounds terrible.”
“Yes, it is terrible.
But reality is cold, harsh, and brutal.
Do not think scholarship is something lofty.
Medicine is covered in blood;
engineering is covered in oil.
For the humanities,
if the personality of the scholar who writes is noble,
that is good enough.”

“There were people who made scholarship seem lofty.”
“The Germans are awful.
Out of their inferiority complex toward England and France,
they pretended to be lofty to compensate,
but ended up becoming arrogant.”

“For example?”
“Kant, in dealing with the important concept of the Idea,
left it out entirely.
Because of this, among young people
a despair spread that they could never reach ‘the divine realm = truth.’
This is called the “Kant Crisis.”
Hegel told the lie,
‘The progress of history is inevitable.’
But this lie comforted the German intellectuals
suffering from their inferiority to England and France.
It took another thirty years from that point
until German unification, after all.
In reality, history does not progress.
You can see this immediately if you recall that
beyond Angkor Wat there was not the Middle Ages
but only the darkness of the jungle.
In history, the overwhelming majority of states
do not progress—they perish.”

“Japan’s intellectuals, a backward country, were also deceived and relieved by this?”
“Yes.
Hegel’s ‘theory of historical progress’
was dressed up as science by Marx,
becoming historical materialism.
They kept believing in it.
Professor Maruyama Masao
realized in 1985
that ‘there is no lawfulness in history—only causal relations.’
But he realized that if he said this,
his entire body of work—which was based on the opposite assumption—
would collapse.
So four years later, he reversed his statement.
He urged his disciples:
‘To protect our orthodoxy,
stand upon the view of historical progress,’
thus driving them further into ignorance
(see Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, pp. 49, 50, 53, 195).”

“Why would everything collapse?”
“If one is an empirical scholar,
one reads the records oneself
and discovers causal relationships,
and writes papers accordingly.
In other words,
history is created by the scholar himself.
He writes with that awareness.
But if scholars of historical progress view
lack that awareness,
then it means they had not been conducting empirical research at all.”

“So it was exposed that they were not empirical.”
“Yes, that is the cold reality.
Humanities scholars at the University of Tokyo have not conducted empirical research—
they have done nothing but build authority.
Professor Mita Munesuke of sociology is the same.
By 2006, sociology had already fallen into a condition that defied definition,
yet he urged students toward ignorance by declaring,
‘Sociology is knowledge that transcends boundaries’
(see his collected works, Knowledge That Crosses Boundaries).
He must have wanted to protect the authority of sociology at the University of Tokyo.
It was unfortunate for the empirical researchers within the university.”

“Professor, did you conduct empirical research?”
“Yes.
I conducted empirical research
combined with intuition and transcendence—
that was my social science.
To test whether it could be applied to anything,
I experimented using the records of the Old Testament.”

“That was the book from the other day?”
“Yes, that book.
And in the afterword of East Asia’s “Anti-Japan” Triangle (Bunshun Shinsho, 2005),
I finally managed to express the ‘Hidden Quality’ (qualitas occulta) (laughs).”

To be continued.