was a Japanese Orientalist,

Indologist Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') i ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and academic of

Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute th ...

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

and Buddhist scriptures.

Biography

Nakamura was born in Matsue,

Shimane Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Shimane Prefecture is the second-least populous prefecture of Japan at 665,205 (February 1, 2021) and has a geographic area of 6,708.26 km2. Shimane Prefecture borders Yamagu ...

, Japan. In 1943 he graduated from the Department of Literature at Tokyo Imperial University on a study on "The History of Early Vedanta Philosophy" under the supervision of Prof. Hakuju Ui. In 1943 he succeeded Prof. Ui and was appointed Associate Professor of Tokyo Imperial University. He was a professor there from 1954 to 1973. After retiring from Tokyo University, he established Toho Gakuin (The Eastern Institute, Inc.) and lectured on philosophy to the general public.

Academic studies

Nakamura was an expert on

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...

and

Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravāda'' Buddh ...

, and among his many writings are commentaries on Buddhist scriptures. He is most known in Japan as the first to translate the entire Pali Tripitaka into Japanese. This work is still considered the definitive translation to date against which later translations are measured. The footnotes in his Pali translation often refer to other previous translations in German, English, French as well as the ancient Chinese translations of Sanskrit scriptures. Because of his meticulous approach to translation he had a dominating and lasting influence in the study of Indic philosophy in Japan at a time when it was establishing itself throughout the major Japanese universities. He also indirectly influenced the secular scholastic study of Buddhism throughout Eastern and Southern Asia, especially Taiwan and Korea. Japan, Korea, Taiwan and recently China is the only area in which all major scriptural languages of Buddhism (Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit and Pali) are taught and studied by academics of Indic philosophy. Nakamura was influenced by the

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

n philosophy of Buddhism, Chinese,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese and

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

ern thought. He made remarks on the problem of

bioethics Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, me ...

. Nakamura published more than 170 monographs, both in Japanese and in Western languages, and over a thousand articles.

Awards

* An Imperial Award of the Japan Academy for "The History of Early Vedanta Philosophy", a slightly revised version of his doctoral thesis * The Order of Culture in 1977 (Japan) * A nomination to the Japan Academy in 1982. * Honorary degree of Vidya-Vacaspati by President of India Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

Publications

* * * * * *

Sources

* * * Корнеев М. Я. Хадзимэ Накамура как мыслитель-компаративист: первые подходы к анализу его творчества // Компаративистика- II: Альманах сравнительных социогуманитарных исследований. СПб., 2002. С. 84–87.

External links

Nakamura, ''The ideal ultimate goal in life in the Early Buddhism''

Nakamura, ''Hinduism Influence on Japanese Culture''. Japan Times, Tokyo, January 26, 1992

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nakamura, Hajime Philosophers of religion Japanese scholars of Buddhism 20th-century Japanese philosophers Japanese lexicographers University of Tokyo alumni People from Shimane Prefecture 1912 births 1999 deaths Recipients of the Order of Culture Japanese indologists 20th-century Japanese translators Advaita Vedanta Recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon 20th-century lexicographers