Abstrakt
Watsuji Tetsurô's (和辻哲郎, 1889-1960) theory of fûdo (風土) as a ""cultural climate"" conceptualizes a ""betweenness"" (間柄) of humanity and milieu as inseparable and mutually determining. Watsuji tends to view fûdo as stable within a particular culture.
However, globalization as a homogenizing element undermines human attachment to physical space, as well as cultural and national differences, which seems to be a prerequisite of Watsuji's concept of fûdo. Thus it may seem that it tells us little about the ethics of inter-relationality between human being and his milieu in the world of globalization and multiculturality.
In my paper, I will argue that in the notion of ""betweenness"" as a fundamental structure of human being within fûdo, there is an ethical insight that enables Watsuji's view to shift from a theory of climatic (or national) characters, as it is often perceived to be, to an approach to cohabitation within a shared milieu that blurs the frontiers of cultures and nations.