Karatani Kōjin is one of the most important Japanese thinkers of the late 20th and early 21st century. Karatani is a Japanese intellectual who seeks to understand the position of Japan in the world system in relation to Western culture, through a broad discussion of concepts, thinkers and schools of thought both in Japan and in Europe. As opposed to the previous generation of Japanese thought, which sought to anchor the discourse over Japan’s exceptionalism, Karatani takes the opposite approach that examines Japan as a hybrid culture influenced by a multiplicity of sources, including influences of India and China, Portugal and Holland, Britain and Prussia, and a range of practices and ideas – philosophical, political, literary and more – which reached Japan from different sources and at different times. In that sense, Japan is a paradigm of a postmodern culture that arose from the appropriation and integration of a multiplicity of cultural sources.