was a Japanese philosopher, best known for his work in the philosophy of religion dealing mostly with western religion and also western philosophical thoughts in theological aspects of Christianity. Biography Hatano was born in Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, and educated at Tokyo Imperial University, from which he graduated in 1899. He was very influential in stimulating the study in Japan of Western philosophy and religion, both through his teaching (he was the first to teach the history of Western philosophy at Tokyo Semmon Gakko, now Waseda University), and through his early writings. These included An Outline of the History of Western Philosophy (1897), The Origins of Christianity (1909), and A Study of Spinoza (1904–1905). The last of these was originally written in German and only translated into Japanese in 1910). It was reprinted after WW2. He opposed a positivist approach to religion, arguing that though rationality underpinned religious beliefs, it depended upon an autonomous form of experience to discover at least partial truth. He died in Tokyo at the age of seventy-three. Bibliography 1897: An Outline of the History of Western Philosophy 1909: The Origins of Christianity 1904: A Study of Spinoza 1920: The Essence of the Philosophy of Religion and its Fundamental Problems 1935: Philosophy of Religion 1940: Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 1943: Time and Eternity References St Elmo Hauman Jr. Dictionary of Asian Philosophies (London: Routledge, 1979) John Maraldo. "Contemporary Japanese Philosophy" (in Brian Carr & Indira Mahalingam [edd]. Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1997) Britannica bio 1877 births 1950 deaths 19th-century philosophers 20th-century Japanese philosophers Philosophers of religion University of Tokyo alumni Academic staff of Kyoto University Academic staff of the University of Tokyo Kyoto School People from Matsumoto, Nagano