Kitaro Nishida's donated books in memory of his deceased son have been newly released

Kitaro Nishida was one of Japan's leading philosophers, but in his personal life he suffered repeated deaths and illnesses in his family.

In June 1920, his eldest son, Ken, who was about to graduate from the Third Higher School, died suddenly of peritonitis at the age of 23. In November 1920, Nishida donated six titles of philosophy books to the library of the Third Higher School (currently Yoshida-South Library of Kyoto University), with the words “In memory of my late son Ken” written in India ink.
Three of the books have photos of Ken in his high school uniform and six tanka poems written by Nishida. These tanka poems honestly express Nishida's deep grief over the loss of his beloved child.

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The donated books were used as general books at the time, but are now designated as rare books. Nishida probably hoped that the books with his son's name on them would be preserved in the library of his alma mater for a long time, so that many people could see them. These books express the greatest sorrow of the philosopher who said, “The motive of philosophy must be the grief of life, rather than 'surprise.'”

As of November 13, 2024, Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive provides 2,154,091 images of 25,510 titles.
(In this digitization, only the written parts were digitized, not the full texts.)

*Reference
Kyoto School Archive. (2024, November 13) Site of Kitaro Nishida's ‘Philosophy of Grief.’