Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of the theory of time and history of the Japanese philosopher, one of the pillars of the Kyoto school, Tanabe Hajime. The relevance of the work is determined by the fact that this kind of research allows for a more comprehensive presentation of the historical and philosophical picture of the twentieth century by including in the field of view the legacy of the most important personalities of Asian philosophies. The immediate tasks of the author were to consider the stages of the formation of the concept of Tanabe Hajime, to study the ways of understanding Western theories of time and their transformation in the Japanese intellectual space, to clarify the differences in approaches to the problems of time within the Kyoto school, to analyze the use of religious doctrines and mathematical symbols to build philosophical models. The study uses methods of problematic reconstruction of the system of ideas and descriptive analysis of textual material, comparative analysis, logical-semantic and contextual analysis of concepts and terms. Using the example of Tanabe‘s philosophy of time, the article reveals the spectrum of ideas of Western philosophy of the twentieth century that received a unique development in Japanese thought, reflects the most famous philosophical discussion that unfolded between the two founders of the Kyoto school, shows how the ideas associated with the understanding of time by Nishida Kitaro were criticized and received new interpretations. Important results of the study were the description of the process of transformation of Buddhist concepts into philosophical concepts and the definition of their functional status within the framework of Tanabe's discourse related to the problems of time, as well as the identification and examples of the use of mathematical constructions as an evidentiary and explanatory basis for philosophical theory.