Last week the school hosted the 9th Conference of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy (ENOJP) for the first time. Host Philosophy PhD student Ellie Palmer Davulcu, recalls the success of the event. Amongst the international community of world philosophies, the University of Edinburgh is garnering something of a reputation for its feats in Japanese Philosophy, thanks to Dr. Takeshi Morisato and his research team, which I am so grateful to be a part of. After my tremendously valuable experience attending the first PhD workshop and this conference last year in Tallinn, it only seemed right to volunteer to host this year’s event here in Edinburgh.An outstanding successNo matter how much one prepares for an event – and believe me, we spent an entire year in intense preparation – anyone who has organised a conference will sympathise with the lingering fear that something (or everything) will go terribly wrong. Yet, despite a packed four-day program that included only the second ever PhD workshop the ENOJP had hosted, the decision to host the conference in a hybrid format and three simultaneously running rooms of talks, the event was an overwhelming success.We welcomed 81 presenters over 3 conference days, including keynote speakers Prof Hiroshi Abe (Kyoto University) and Prof Shaun O’Dwyer (Kyushu University). The programme also included a roundtable discussion on translating and publishing Japanese philosophical texts and book presentations featuring new scholarship on Japanese philosophy, in honour of the 50th Anniversary of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. Prof Hiroshi Abe (Kyoto University) gives keynote presentation - credit @PierreBonneels at ENOJP 2025 (Edinburgh University) Supporting younger scholarsHaving been a participant in the first-ever ENOJP PhD workshop in Tallinn and understanding the invaluable support it provided me, I wanted to ensure it becomes a regular part of all ENOJP conferences going forward. As a PhD student or early career researcher, it can be daunting to attend such a large-scale yet close-knit network like the ENOJP for the first time. However, the PhD workshop, organised in a more informal setting the day before the main conference, gives PhD students the confidence to get the most out of the rest of the event.The aim of the workshop is to create a cross-national network of advanced graduate students and scholars in Japanese philosophy. The schedule included the following:a presentation session where participants, working with their peers, can get and give feedback on their respective research projects.an advising session where participants are paired with a senior scholar specialised in a similar topic and can get personalised, in-depth feedback and advice.a “sempai talk session”, in which students would be able to talk directly to recent PhD graduates, discussing various aspects of the process of writing a dissertation (from organising the bibliography to overcoming writer’s block, or managing the life-work balance, etc.), but also post-doc programs, working the dissertation into a publishable manuscript, applying for jobs etc.a publishing session, providing information about journals and publishing houses, what to know when submitting, how to write an abstract etc.We hope to stay on trend and double participation again next year! If you are interested, you can join the ENOJP mailing list to ensure you are aware when the applications open for the 2026 workshop here. Environmental Ethics in Japanese PhilosophyThe conference focused on the question of how to relate philosophical and religious traditions of Japan (Buddhism, Daoism, Shintoism, and modern academic thought) to world philosophical discourse, idioms, and structures of thinking specific to Western and other non-Western intellectual traditions. This year, to facilitate this cross-cultural dialogue between Japanese and world philosophies, we focused on the theme of nature, including but not limited to ecology, environmental philosophy, and animal ethics. What do we gain or lose in applying Japanese philosophical concepts of nature and living beings to ongoing discussions on ecology and the philosophy of the animal? How do we conceptualise the ongoing environmental problems affecting our life at the global scale, through philosophical concepts that are always already limited to specific historical and cultural contexts of Japan? How can Japanese philosophy contribute to the discussions on the world philosophical problem? The presentations asked these philosophical questions to raise critical questions about the nature from numerous scholarly perspectives. Abstracts on the conference are available below. Video recordings of the presentations are also available on our YouTube channel linked below. The FutureNext year’s conference will take place in Akita, Japan. You can keep up to date with its progress via the mailing list linked above, or by visiting the ENOJP website. In the meantime, if you are interested in Japanese Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, we run various smaller events throughout the year, including our upcoming World Philosophies Lecture on 6th October, 3:15pm, on Experimental Music and Japanese Philosophies: The Aesthetics of Silence and Nature. Related linksEllie Palmer DavulcuDr Takeshi MorisatoAbstractsEdinburgh Philosophy YouTubeENOJPToshiba FoundationJapan FoundationPPLS Philosophy Events Publication date 15 Sep, 2025
