Most Famous Japanese Philosophers

Japanese philosophy combines the indigenous Shinto tradition with several waves of Buddhist, Confucian, and (in the modern period) Western influence. Medieval Japan produced major Buddhist philosophers — Kukai (founder of Shingon), Honen and Eisai (Pure Land and early Zen), Dogen (Soto Zen), and Ikkyu Sojun — whose work remains central to East Asian religious philosophy. The Edo period contributed Confucian and bushido thought, including Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure. Modern Japanese philosophy is dominated by the Kyoto School, with Nishitani Keiji as one of its central figures; D. T. Suzuki was the major exporter of Zen thought to the West.

Japanese philosophy is unusual for the depth of its religious traditions, the speed of its modern engagement with Western thought, and the originality of its twentieth-century synthesis of the two. The thinkers below include the founders of Japanese Buddhist sects and the modern philosophers who carried the tradition into dialogue with European philosophy.

Japanese philosophers

Dogen 1200 – 1253 · Japanese
Eihei Dogen was a 13th-century Japanese Zen Buddhist priest and philosopher, the founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan. After studying in China and returning to Japan in 12...
D. T. Suzuki 1870 – 1966 · Japanese
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki was a Japanese author, scholar, and translator who did more than any other figure to introduce Mahayana Buddhism, especially Zen, to the English-speaking ...
Honen 1133 – 1212 · Japanese
Honen was a Japanese Buddhist monk and the founder of the Pure Land school of Japanese Buddhism. After decades of intensive study and practice on Mount Hiei, he came to the conv...
Ikkyu Sojun 1394 – 1481 · Japanese
Ikkyu Sojun was a Japanese Zen master, poet, and calligrapher of the Muromachi period, abbot of the Daitoku-ji monastery in Kyoto, and the most idiosyncratic figure of medieval ...
Kukai 774 – 835 · Japanese
Kukai, posthumously known as Kobo Daishi, was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, poet, and the founder of the esoteric Shingon school. After studies in China under the Tant...
Nishitani Keiji 1900 – 1990 · Japanese
Nishitani Keiji was a Japanese philosopher and one of the principal figures of the second generation of the Kyoto School. A student of Nishida Kitaro at Kyoto and of Heidegger a...
Yamamoto Tsunetomo 1659 – 1719 · Japanese
Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a Japanese samurai and philosopher of the early Edo period, a retainer of the Saga domain who, on the death of his lord in 1700, was forbidden by Tokugawa...
Eisai 1141 – 1215 · Japanese
Myoan Eisai was a Japanese Buddhist monk who is credited with introducing the Rinzai school of Zen and the cultivation of green tea to Japan. After two study journeys to Song Ch...
Hakuin Ekaku 1686 – 1769 · Japanese
Hakuin Ekaku was a Japanese Rinzai Zen master, painter, and reformer of the Zen tradition. After a long and intense practice marked by repeated breakthroughs in kensho, he settl...
Nichiren 1222 – 1282 · Japanese
Nichiren was a Japanese Buddhist priest of the Kamakura period and the founder of the school of Buddhism that bears his name. After decades of study across the major schools of ...
Shinran 1173 – 1263 · Japanese
Shinran was a Japanese Buddhist monk and the founder of the Jodo Shinshu, or True Pure Land, school. A student of the earlier Pure Land master Honen, he was exiled with him duri...
Abe Masao 1915 – 2006 · Japanese
Abe Masao was a Japanese Buddhist philosopher of the Kyoto School and the principal exponent of Zen thought in interreligious dialogue with Christianity and Judaism in the late ...
Bankei Yotaku 1622 – 1693 · Japanese
Bankei Yotaku was a Japanese Rinzai Zen master of the Edo period, abbot of the Ryomon-ji and the Korin-ji, and one of the most original Zen teachers of seventeenth-century Japan...
Inoue Tetsujiro 1855 – 1944 · Japanese
Inoue Tetsujiro was a Japanese philosopher of the Meiji and Taisho eras and one of the founders of academic philosophy in modern Japan. After early studies under foreign teacher...
Kuki Shuzo 1888 – 1941 · Japanese
Kuki Shuzo was a Japanese philosopher who studied with Heinrich Rickert and Martin Heidegger in Germany before returning to teach at Kyoto Imperial University. His most original...
Maruyama Masao 1914 – 1996 · Japanese
Maruyama Masao was the most influential Japanese political philosopher of the postwar period and a long-time professor at the University of Tokyo. His Studies in the Intellectua...
Miki Kiyoshi 1897 – 1945 · Japanese
Miki Kiyoshi was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School and one of the most original Japanese interpreters of Marx, Heidegger, and Pascal. After studies under Nishida Kitaro...
Nakae Chomin 1847 – 1901 · Japanese
Nakae Chomin was a Japanese journalist, translator, and political philosopher and one of the principal voices of the Meiji-period Freedom and People's Rights movement. After stu...
Nishida Kitaro 1870 – 1945 · Japanese
Nishida Kitaro was a Japanese philosopher and the founder of the Kyoto School. Bringing the resources of European philosophy, particularly German idealism and phenomenology, int...
Saicho 767 – 822 · Japanese
Saicho, posthumously known as Dengyo Daishi, was a Japanese Buddhist monk and the founder of the Tendai school in Japan. After studies in China at the great Tiantai monastery on...
Tanabe Hajime 1885 – 1962 · Japanese
Tanabe Hajime was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School and the principal successor of Nishida Kitaro at Kyoto Imperial University. After early studies in philosophy of mat...
Watsuji Tetsuro 1889 – 1960 · Japanese
Watsuji Tetsuro was a Japanese moral philosopher and cultural historian and one of the principal figures of twentieth-century Japanese thought. Drawing on Heidegger, Kant, and t...