This article focuses on several key philosophical themes in the criticism of Sakaguchi Ango(1906-1955), one of postwar Japan's most influential and controversial writers. Associated with the underground katsutori culture as well as the Burai-ha of Tamura Taijirō(1911-1983), Oda Sakunosuke(1913-1947) and Dazai Osamu(1909-1948), Ango gained fame for two provocative essays on the theme of daraku or "decadence" --"Darakuron" and "Zoku darakuron" -- published in 1946, in the wake of Japan's traumatic defeat and the beginnings of the Allied Occupation. Less well known is the fact that Ango spent his student years studying classical Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Pali and Tibetan, and that at one time he aspired to the priesthood. This article analyses the concept of daraku in the two essays noted above, particularly as it relates to Ango's vision of a refashioned morality based on an interpretation of human subjectivity vis-à-vis the themes of illusion and disillusion. It argues that, despite the radical and modernist flavor of Ango's essays, his "decadence" is best understood in terms of Mahāyāna and Zen Buddhist concepts. Moreover, when the two essays on decadence are read in tandem with Ango's wartime essay on Japanese culture("Nihon bunka shinkan," 1942), they form the foundation for a "post-metaphysical Buddhist critique of culture," one that is pragmatic, humanistic, and non-reductively physicalist.
目次
Introduction 226 The Dharma of Post-metaphysical Buddhism 227 Sakaguchi Ango 228 After the Fall: Kasutori Bunka and the Burai-ha 229 Decadence as Humanism 232 Ango's Buddhism: Contingency, Suffering & Liberation 234 Ango's Critique of Culture 236 Desire, Love & Humanity 239 Against Ghosts: From Dissolution to Disillusion 241
