Abstract

Unlearning is a recurrent theme in Japan. To further understanding of what this entails, we focus on the view of learning laid out by a revered 13th century Zen-inspired playwright. For Zeami, learning involved a movement from the acquisition to unlearning of skills, punctuated by an experience of mushin, followed by creative reemergence. To deepen understandings of this unlearning model, we turn to draw comparison with recent discussions in the Western literature, focusing on Double-Loop Learning and Learning III, both inspired by Bateson. Learning III, which Bateson utilized several Zen references to explicate, appears to gesture towards the alternative punctuation of learning envisaged by Zeami, although differences remain. We then shift to highlight empirical work on contemporary Japanese schooling, highlighting practices which suggest elements of a Zeami-like worldview continue to live on in Japan’s learning culture. Unlearning, when viewed as a living tradition embedded in culture, rather than merely a premodern past or future philosophical possibility, help sets the stage for a transnational, transdisciplinary dialogue on how we learn. We perform our own extended dialogue that led to this piece, a mode of engagement we view as methodological innovation, as we work to unlearn our past parochialisms.

摘要

在日本，忘却是一个反复出现的主题。为了进一步理解这意味着什么，我们关注一位受人尊敬的 13 世纪受禅宗启发的剧作家提出的学习观。对于 Zeami 来说，学习涉及从获得技能到忘却技能的过程，其中不乏对mushin 的体验，其次是创造性的重新出现。为了加深对这种去学习模型的理解，我们转向与西方文献中最近的讨论进行比较，重点是双环学习和学习 III，两者都受到 Bateson 的启发。贝特森利用几个禅宗参考来解释的学习 III 似乎指向 Zeami 设想的学习的替代标点符号，尽管仍然存在差异。然后，我们转向强调当代日本学校教育的实证研究，强调表明类似 Zeami 的世界观元素继续存在于日本学习文化中的实践。不学习，当被视为嵌入文化的活传统时，而不仅仅是前现代的过去或未来的哲学可能性，有助于为关于我们如何学习的跨国、跨学科对话奠定基础。