Are there any famous Japanese philosophers...

Are there any famous Japanese philosophers? Why does it seem like Asian nations lack philosophers of significance like the west (besides China of course)?

you probably just think there's a lack of significant thinkers because of the linguistic block, the specifics of asian culture are still pretty isolated from common western knowledge.

look up the Kyoto School for more contemporary thinkers, or for classical thinkers look up Dōgen.

The Kyoto School including Keiji Nishitani were quite influential but a lot of the work hasn't been translated very well yet. I'm pretty sure he studied under Heidegger for a while

DT Suzuki is probably the most important philosopher for understanding how Buddhism was popularized in the west.

I could be wrong but the majority of his writings are not particularly academic nor does he profess to be such. I wouldn't particularly call him a philosopher, or at least that's not what he is most well known for

goddamn it they should translate that shit or at least do some fansubs

fuckin insular nation

Asian philosophy is very different from Western. An Asian philosopher can't be groundbreaking in the way a Western one can.

Why?

well, academic is of course a western standard. But if you want insight into the "brand" of buddhism that was popularized in post war america, DT Suzuki is the guy who brought it all to california.

Not sure you can call Socrates Dialogs particularly academic, they're filled with strawmen and softball questions, but it's origin of a lot of stuff.

I think Suzuki's writings are worth study for a similar reason.

Capital P Philosophy is a very Greek invention. See, the Greeks were incredibly arrogant fucks who believed the individual could just "figure out" the nature of reality by thinking about it hard enough, and such an assumption has underlied western thought ever since. To the Asian mind this is a very weird point of view, since they tend to believe that reality is ineffable.

Anyway, the Asians are much more sensible in this regard. Philosophy has given the west reams upon reams of total bullshit, starting from Thales ("dude what if everything is water lmao"), through Hegel ("all of human history is in service to my intellect !!!") etc.. The only thing which prevents rationalism from being the root of all evil in western civilisation is that it kinda gave us science, which redeems it totally. Funny that.