A Synthesis of Educational Status of Japanese Philosophy in Thailand

Abstract

Japanese philosophy is a subject that is considerably studied in Thailand for some time. However, there has never been any exploration to assess the status advancement of this body of knowledge in Thailand.  The aim of this research is to provide a synthesis of the body of knowledge concerning Japanese philosophy in Thailand.   Qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics by percentage were used to analyze and categorized the knowledge into categories.  As a result of this research, it has been found that there are 268 documents related to the subject, which were published during year 1917 and up to year 2017. Unfortunately, after content analysis it is found that there are only 66 documents that are significantly relevant to Japanese philosophy and there are only 13 documents (or 19.69 percent of the 66 significant documents)that can be considered to have direct connection to Japanese philosophy.  The rest of documents have contents that are relevant only indirectly to Japanese philosophy.  They comprise 43 documents on Japanese concepts of thought (65.5 percent), five documents on history of Japanese thoughts (7.68 percent), and five documents on Japanese viewpoints concerning life (7.68 percent).  When the contents of the 13 documents concerning Japanese philosophy are considered, only 6 Japanese philosophers have been studied.  The most studied philosopher is Dogen (35.71 percent), followed by Rinzai (21.43 percent), Shinran (14.29 percent), D.T. Suzuki (14.29 percent), Fukuzawa Yukichi (7.14 percent), and Watsuji Tetsuro (7.14 percent). Thus, by the contents of knowledge and the number of documents, it can be concluded that the body of knowledge on Japanese philosophy in Thailand is not at the advancement status as should be.