The main content of the article is a critical analysis of the ideas of major Japanese theorists and critics of postmodernism. Paradoxically, the main subject of postmodern scientific discourse in Japan has become the very question of the transition of its culture to the state of postmodernity through the stage of modernity. Since the concept of cultural paradigms and their characteristics was initially developed within the framework of Western science and based on the historical material of Western societies, this issue turned out to be closely related to the problems of national identity and the universality of cultural development. An attempt to use Western terminology in the analysis of native culture, made by Japanese scientists, reveals the peculiarity of the Eastern epistemological tradition. The author of the article also offers his own view on the problem under consideration, based on the understanding of cultural paradigms as discursive spaces. Keywords: modernism, postmodernism, postmodernism, modernization of Japan, Kyoto School, "Kokugaku". Japan is widely regarded as an "economic miracle" country, a society of universal prosperity and prosperity. However, the" era of change", which has stretched in this country for more than a decade, continues to supply more and more scientific subjects to Japanese studies. Recently, among scientists not only in Europe and America, but also in Japan itself, the question of the transition of this country's culture to a postmodern state has become a popular topic for research and discussion.1 The transfer of fundamental Western scientific concepts, such as cultural paradigms, to the field of the Japanese philosophical tradition is in itself an interesting theoretical problem, the analysis of which can bear fruit in the field of intercultural communication, give an interesting new angle for considering the features of the Eastern epistemological tradition. In addition, the modern-postmodern paradigm shift in Japanese cult ... Read more