James Heisig

James Wallace Heisig (born 1944) is an American philosopher who specialises in the field of philosophy of religion. He has published a number of books on topics ranging from the notion of God in analytical psychology, the Kyoto School of Philosophy (including the works of Nishida Kitaro and Tanabe Hajime) to contemporary inter-religious dialogue. His books, translations, and edited collections, which have appeared in 18 languages, currently number 95 volumes. Heisig currently resides in Nagoya, where he continues to conduct research as an emeritus fellow of the Nanzan Institute, to publish books, and lecture in Japan and abroad on philosophy and religion. He is also famed among students of the Japanese and Chinese languages for his Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Hanzi series.

He served as a lecturer at the Divine Word College (Epworth, Iowa) as a BA student and graduated with a BA degree in philosophy from the same college in 1966. In 1969 he received his master's degree in philosophy from Loyola University Chicago and another in theology from Notre Dame University. After receiving a PhD in Religious studies at Cambridge University in 1973, he went back to Divine Word College to teach philosophy and religion as a lecturer. Between 1974 and 1978, he was a visiting lecturer at Catholic Theological Union, Instituto Superior de Estudios Eclesiásticos (Mexico City), and Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia). In September 1976, he moved to Japan (first in to Kamakura and Nagano, and then to the city of Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture) to take up the position of Permanent Research Fellow at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture on the campus of Nanzan University. He served as the director of the Nanzan Institute from 1991 to 2001 following in the footsteps of the former director and Belgian philosopher, Jan Van Bragt. In 2015, Heisig received an honorary doctoral degree from Tallinn University in Estonia and In 2021 was awarded the Kanazawa University International Award in Commemoration of Daisetz T. Suzuki and Kitaro Nishida. In 2023 he was awarded Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasure.