This conference will focus on the contemporary significance of the work of Nakai Masakazu 中井 正一. Although Nakai’s work is widely recognized in media studies, it is all but absent in philosophy. While there are chapters on Nakai in just about every classical anthology on Japanese cinema theory, Nakai’s works are not found in any of the anthologies of Japanese philosophy, and his name does not appear even in a footnote in the otherwise comprehensive The Oxford Handbook on Japanese Philosophy. This conference brings together scholars working on Nakai from France, the United States, Canada, and Japan. The conference papers will be first drafts that will find their way into the first Anthology of Nakai’s work in any language.

ART AND TECHNOLOGY 

15:00-16:00  小田部胤久 Otabe Tanehisa (Professor Emeritus, University of Tōkyō): “Nakai's Inquiry into the Concept of Ki (気) in Light of his Theory of Japanese Aesthetics”

16:00-17:00  上原麻有子 Uehara Mayuko (Kyōto University): “Collaboration of Art and Technology in the Philosophy of Nakai"

17:10-18:10  竹花洋佑 Takehana Yōsuke (Fukuoka University): “Masakazu Nakai’s Optimism of Technology” 

SOCIO-POLITICAL 

10:00-11:00  Michel Lucken (Inalco, Paris): "Nakai and American pragmatism: who is the traitor?"

11:00-12:00 織田和明 Oda Kazuaki (Osaka University): “Belief in the Laws of the Universe: Nakai Masakazu's Aspiration for Constructing Social Order” 

IN RELATION TO THE KYOTO SCHOOL 

15:00-16:00 Steve Lofts (Roche Research Fellow, NIRC): “Nakai, The Kyoto School, and the ‘Ariadne’s thread’ between Cassirer and Heidegger”

16:00-17:00 Philip Kaffen (The University of North Carolina):“From the Seer to the Actor: Nakai Masakazu and the Life of Media”

17:10-18:10 Kyle Peters (The Chinese University of Hong Kong): “Nakai and Watsuji on the Spatiality of Existence: Betweenness, ma (間), and aidagara (間柄)” 

18:10-   Final considerations