木村敏記念
臨床哲学文庫

On the opening of the Bin Kimura Memorial Archive of Clinical Philosophy, I find myself reflecting on the profound connection I was fortunate to share with Professor Bin Kimura.

Our hospital’s journey toward housing Professor Kimura’s personal collection began with a suggestion from Dr. Takashi Ikuta, who was my supervisor during residency. Although I hesitate to write about so great an intellectual figure, I would like to share a few personal memories of Professor Kimura.

My memories of him fall into three periods.

The first goes back to my childhood. While Professor Kimura was at Nagoya City University, he visited our hospital twice a week to see inpatients. His name was always present in my father’s conversations about psychiatry. In his autobiography, From Psychiatry to Clinical Philosophy (2010), Professor Kimura wrote that his years in Nagoya were “the most productive period for constructing my original theories of psychopathology.” For our hospital as well, this was a time of lively discussion, marked by reading groups and by the gathering of many distinguished scholars.

What remains particularly vivid in my memory is seeing Professor Kimura engaged in translation work at our mountain villa in Kisokoma, and the various occasions on which I was able to spend time with him. Through the conversations of the adults around me, I came to sense that psychiatry was a “two-wheeled” discipline, consisting of biological and psychological dimensions, and that even if the pendulum swung too far toward one side, it would eventually swing back. Since my mother was involved in the world of music, Professor Kimura and I also shared a bond through music. Our families were close, and I fondly remember his taking me to concerts when I was a young boy.

The second period began when I myself entered the field of psychiatry. By then, Professor Kimura had already moved to Kyoto, but I visited his reading group there together with my colleagues. Although I struggled with German, the way the group worked—trying to grasp the author’s true intent behind the words—taught me something of enduring importance, something that transcends language itself. Those lessons remain invaluable to me even now.

The third period is the present, as I reread Professor Kimura’s works in preparation for the opening of the archive. I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of his intellect. I feel both great honor and a certain apprehension, wondering whether our hospital is truly worthy of such a legacy. Yet as I gain more clinical experience, and as I remain in touch with many senior doctors who studied under him, I am constantly reminded of the depth of his influence. Even today, doctors from outside Aichi Prefecture often remark, “Yagoto Hospital is where Professor Kimura held his reading groups.”

Recently, I have felt that opportunities for deep and rigorous debate on clinical practice have diminished. Yet through his writings, I can imagine how Professor Kimura shaped his thought within the rich fabric of aida, or “betweenness,” among many people. As digitalization in psychiatric care continues to accelerate, I believe that the human, “analog” dimension will be sought all the more strongly in the future—or at the very least, that the pendulum will swing back in that direction. I hope our hospital may be able to play a small part in that movement. I feel that this providential connection is encouraging us onward, and I am determined to do everything I can to honor this legacy.

Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mr. Gen Kimura, Dr. Takashi Ikuta, Dr. Susumu Okamoto, and Dr. Kenshin Shimizu for their immense support in establishing this archive.

After returning from Heidelberg in 1970, Bin Kimura taught in the Department of Psychiatry at Nagoya City University Medical School for sixteen years, until 1986, serving first as Associate Professor and then, from 1974 onward, as Professor. This was the most academically productive period of his career. It was during these Nagoya years—marked by the arrival of Hisao Nakai as Associate Professor and by the flourishing of the workshop series on the psychopathology of schizophrenia—that Kimura developed his signature concepts of ante festum, post festum, and intra festum.

Throughout his years in Nagoya, Yagoto Hospital served as Kimura’s principal clinical base. He became an advisor to the hospital immediately upon his appointment to Nagoya City University, and Yagoto Hospital played a crucial role as a center of research alongside the university department. Numerous reading groups were held there on German- and French-language works in psychopathology and philosophy. Two of Kimura’s most representative translations in the field of psychopathology emerged from these Yagoto reading groups: Wolfgang Blankenburg’s The Loss of Natural Self-Evidence and Hubertus Tellenbach’s Melancholy.

Even after moving to Kyoto University as Professor, Kimura maintained close ties with Nagoya. His later translations of Viktor von Weizsäcker also grew out of the Nagoya reading groups. Moreover, the first “Symposium of Clinical Philosophy,” which later became the central stage for his intellectual work in his later years, was held in Nagoya in memory of his beloved student Mari Nagai, who herself had been active at Yagoto Hospital.