A History of Modern JP Aesthetics

8/12/2019 A History of Modern JP Aesthetics

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COPYRIGHT NOTICEMichael F. Marra/A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics

is published by University of Hawaii Press and copyrighted, 2001, byUniversity of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

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Introduction

In Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader,I presented English trans-lations of major works on aesthetics by leading Japanese aestheti-

cians who applied their theoretical knowledge of the philosophy ofart to discussions of Japanese art, literature, religion, and philosophy.Each translation in the Reader is preceded by an introduction inwhich I try to shed light on the historical context of each text whilealso attempting some sort of interpretationa task made particularlydifficult by the scarcity of hermeneutical attention paid to these textseven by Japanese specialists. While working on the Reader,I felt thatreaders would have benefited from at least an outline of the historyof Japanese aesthetics; but this, unfortunately, was not to be found inany language, including Japanese. Japanese scholars of aesthetics hadcopiously and learnedly written on topics related to Western aestheticsespecially Germanbut had seldom historicized their efforts to

explain themselves and their culture by using the language of aes-thetics. It was possible to find scattered articles in scholarly journalsand in book chapters, however, outlining the achievements of Japa-nese aestheticians in articulating discourses on the philosophy of artin relationship to Japan. The present book brings together a selectionof such articles in order to provide readers with a History of JapaneseAesthetics.

The reader might wonder why I relied on the work of others ratherthan writing my own history of Japanese aesthetics. Since, in order towrite such a history, I would have had to rely on the works presentedin this book, I thought the reader would benefit most from being givendirect access to important secondary sources. Once the reader becomesfamiliar with the major issues introduced in this book, the interpre-tation of these issues will become a shared responsibility and, hope-fully, a ground for discussion among all those who take an interest in


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2 Introduction

Japan. Above all, my choice was determined by my personal views

of the field of aestheticsa field I consider a footnote, albeit an im-portant one, to the larger discipline of hermeneutics (in the sense oftransmission and translation of messages). In my opinion aes-thetics is a major stage in the history of interpretationa stagethat has shaped modern perceptions of art since, at least, the mid-eighteenth century. As a believer in the fundamental role played byinterpretive acts in the formation of what we tend to perceive asobjective realities, I consider the writing of a history of aestheticsanother example of interpretation. Therefore, how could a chain ofinterpretations be better presented than by having major contem-porary hermeneuticians from Japan interpret the founding fathers ofthe field of aesthetics?1Readers should pay attention to this double

narrative. On the one hand, they might benefit from being intro-duced to a series of issues that make up the field of aesthetics in Japan.On the other, they are confronted with the act of creating what todaywe call Japanese aesthetics, which is the result of the hermeneu-tical efforts of writers such as those presented here. In a sense, readersare confronted with a dialogue of aestheticians talking to and aboutother aestheticians and, in the process, creating the field of Japaneseaesthetics.2

Although it would be presumptuous to seek a common denomi-nator among the many aestheticians discussed in this book, all ofthem to a certain degree were faced with the paradox of voicing whatthey felt to be at the core of their subjectivitythe specificity of a

local culture, a local artby relying on a supremely alien language:the Western language of aesthetics. It is not only that Japanese thinkersare caught in the dilemma of articulating themselves through the other-ness of an aesthetic discourse that was born in the West as a secular-ized version of theology. These thinkers also found themselves in theodd situation of relying on hermeneutical frameworks of foreignorigin in order to represent to themselves, as well as to the world,

1. With the exception of an outstanding essay on Mori gaioriginally written inGerman by Bruno Lewin, all the essays in the present book are by Japanese scholars.

2. By Japanese aesthetics I mean speculations on the philosophy of art on thepart of professionally trained Japanese aestheticians who take Japan and the Japanese

artistic production as their objects of study. I do not include work done by Japanesephilosophers on aesthetics proper, that is, the Western philosophy of art. Such workshould find its place in standard Histories of Aesthetics, although, with the excep-tion of Nishida Kitar(18701945), this is rarely the case.


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Introduction 3

3. Tezuka Tomio himself gives a description of this encounter in Haidegto noIchijikan (An Hour with Heidegger)a text that Reinhard May includes in the orig-inal Japanese version, followed by a German translation, in his Ex Oriente Lux: Hei-deggers Werk unter ostasiatischem Einfluss(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989),pp. 8299. Graham Parkes provides an excellent translation of Mays book, includingAn Hour with Heidegger, in Reinhard May, Heideggers Hidden Sources: East AsianInfluences on His Work(London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 5964.

4. Among Heideggers best-known colleagues from Japan were Kuki Shz(18881941), Tanabe Hajime (18851962), Nishitani Keiji (19001990), and Miki Kiyoshi(18971945). See Michiko Yusa, Philosophy and Inflation: Miki Kiyoshi in WeimarGermany, 19221924, Monumenta Nipponica53(1) (Spring 1998):4571. For a de-tailed examination of Heideggers ties to Japanese thinkers see Hartmut Buchner, ed.,Japan und Heidegger: Gedenkschrift der Stadt Messkirch zum hundertsten GeburtstagMartin Heideggers(Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1989), and Graham Parkes,ed., Heidegger and Asian Thought(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987).

5. Inquirer: Here you are touching on a controversial question which I often dis-cussed with Count Kukithe question whether it is necessary and rightful for East-asians to chase after the European conceptual systems. The English translation is byPeter D. Hertz. See Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language(New York: Harper& Row, 1971), p. 3.

6. Japanese: Now I am beginning to understand better where you smell the danger.The language of the dialogue constantly destroyed the possibility of saying what the

dialogue was about. Inquirer: Some time ago I called language, clumsily enough, thehouse of Being. If man by virtue of his language dwells within the claim and call ofBeing, then we Europeans presumably dwell in an entirely different house than East-asian man (ibid., p. 5).

their own innermost othernesstheir past and their ancient idioms.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (18891976) has potentlydescribed such an impasse in his Aus einem Gesprch von derSprache (Out of a Conversation from Language, 1954), which heincluded in his Unterwegs zur Sprache (On the Way to Language,1959). Written as a fictional dialogue between a Japanese and an In-quirer, this work was allegedly inspired by Heideggers brief encounterwith Tezuka Tomio (19031983), a professor of German literature atTokyo University and a member of the Japanese Academy.3It mightbe more correct to say that Tezukas visit at the end of March 1954reminded Heidegger of the many conversations he had had in thepast with Japanese thinkers who in the 1920s flocked to Marburgand Freiburg in order to study philosophy with him.4In the dialogue

Heideggerthe Inquirerhighlights the danger of reducing the fac-ticity of Japanese existence to European conceptual systems,5and hestruggles to elicit from the Japanese answers that might help himunderstand how the articulation of othernessin this case, Japancantake place in spite of what Heidegger calls the danger of language.6


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4 Introduction

Moved by the anxiety of a technological rationalism that is leading

to the objectification of being and to the complete Europeanizationof the earth and of man, Heidegger points out the paradox of im-prisoning the Japanese world in the objectness of photography byhaving the Japanese past framed by Western cinematic conventionsas in Kurosawa Akiras movie Rashmon.7

By being doubly critical of the aesthetic project in general, whichaccording to Heidegger is deeply enmeshed in the metaphysics ofobjectification,8as well as the value that can be derived from castinga non-European reality into the language of aesthetics,9 Heideggerframed the major questions that all the aestheticians cited in thepresent book had to confront head-onbeginning with the issue ofcompensation that led to the replacement of God with beauty and

the work of art and to the displacement of the temple in favor of themuseum.10

The aesthetic adventure began in Japan in the 1870s. At the time,the country was in the midst of a cultural revolution spurred by thethreatening presence of the Westa presence that inspired attentivemembers of the Japanese intelligentsia to make civilization andenlightenment (bunmei kaika) their civil mission. Steeped in thecultural framework of Neo-Confucianism, these ambitious thinkerssuddenly faced a reformulation of local artistic practices (such astheatrical performances of nand kabuki) and ritual acts (such as thetea ceremony) in the new languages of Western philosophy. Japanesethinkers were confronted with a flood of thoughts and ideologies

idealism, positivism, materialism, utilitarianismwhich provided

7. Japanese: This is what I have in mind. Regardless of what the aesthetic qualityof a Japanese film may turn out to be, the mere fact that our world is set forth in theframe of a film forces that world into the sphere of what you call objectness. Thephotographic objectification is already a consequence of the ever wider outreach ofEuropeanization (ibid., p. 17).

8. Japanese: Meanwhile, I find it more and more puzzling how Count Kuki couldget the idea that he could expect your path of thinking to be of help to him in hisattempts in aesthetics, since your path, in leaving behind metaphysics, also leaves be-hind the aesthetics that is grounded in metaphysics (ibid., p. 42).

9. Inquirer: The name aesthetics and what it names grow out of European think-

ing, out of philosophy. Consequently, aesthetic consideration must ultimately remainalien to Eastasian thinking (ibid., p. 2).

10. On this issue see Odo Marquard, Aesthetica und Anaesthetica: Philosophischeberlegungen(Paderborn: Schningh, 1989).


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Introduction 5

them with methodologies to discuss their own performative and

ritual past in terms of culture (bunka)and art.11

One among these thinkers was Nishi Amane (18291897), whointroduced modern aesthetics to Japan in a series of lectures titledBimygaku Setsu (The Theory of Aesthetics, 1877).12 Nishi wasconfronted with the task of reconciling eighteenth-century views ofaesthetics, which stressed its autonomy from the spheres of ethicsand logic, with modern, nineteenth-century utilitarian concerns thatexplained aesthetics alleged lack of purposethe Kantian pur-posiveness without a purpose or finality without an end (Zweck-mssigkeit ohneZweck)as a project contributing to the formationof a civilized society. Nishi was forced to synthesize in a few pagescenturies of Western aesthetic thought with all its paradoxes result-

ing from the combination of conflicting theories. At the same time,he was compelled to present convincing arguments to his listenersmembers of the imperial family and leading bureaucrats of the Meijiperiodon the usefulness of a science that was born as a form ofknowledge free from pragmatic concerns of utility. Apart from thedifficulty of providing heterogeneous theories with some sort ofcoherence, Nishi was also challenged by the lack of a vocabularywith which to discuss beauty in the context of a philosophy of art.New words had to be devised for conveying in Japanese the notionsof beauty (bi),art (geijutsu),and fine arts (bijutsu).

At the beginning of the Meiji period, beauty was usually indi-cated with the word birei. Inamura Sanpaku (17591811) used

this word as a translation of both the adjective schoon(beautiful)and the name schoonheid(beauty) in his Dutch-Japanese dictionaryHaruma Wage(A Japanese Rendition of Halmas Dictionary, 1796).13

11. On the formation in Japan of the notion of culture (bunka)see Yanabu Akira,Ichigo no Jiten: Bunka(Tokyo: Sanseid, 1995). On the birth in Japan of the notionof fine arts (bijutsu) see Sat Dshin, Nihon Bijutsu Tanj: Kindai Nihon noKotoba to Senryaku(Tokyo: Kdansha, 1996).

12. For a complete English translation see Michele Marra, Modern Japanese Aes-thetics: A Reader(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999), pp. 2637; on theparadoxes related to the expression modern Japanese aesthetics see the introductionto that work (pp. 114).

13. Also known as the Edo Halma, this work was an adaptation of Franois

Halmas eighty-thousand-word Dutch-French dictionary in which Inamura substitutedJapanese translations for the French equivalents. See Hirakawa Sukehiro, JapansTurn to the West, in Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ed., Modern Japanese Thought(Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 39.


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6 Introduction

Nishi Amane still used bireiin his Theory of Aestheticsof 1877.

An alternative expression to indicate beauty (schoonheid)in Japa-nese was utsukushisathe word used in Oranda Jii (Japanese-Dutch Dictionary, 1833), published in 18551858 under the name ofKatsuragawa Hosh (17511809). The same word utsukushisaappears written with the Chinese character for beauty (biin con-temporary Japanese) as the Japanese translation of beaut,beauty,and schoonheid,in Sango Benran(Handbook of Three Languages,1857) by Murakami Hidetoshi (18111890), who is considered thefounder of French studies in Japan. It was not until the late 1880sthat the Japanese word bi became the standard translation ofbeauty, as we can see in the series of articles Bi to wa Nani zo ya(What Is Beauty?, 1886) by Tsubouchi Shy(18581935).14

Prior to 1872 the word geijutsuwas usually employed to indicatearts and crafts and to emphasize the technical skills (gijutsu)requiredin the creation of such arts. When art came to be defined as anactivity pursued for its own sake, another word had to be created:bijutsu,which appears as a translation of fine arts, for the firsttime, in the catalog written in 1872 under the auspices of kumaShigenobu (18381922) listing the objects exhibited at the ViennaExposition of the following year. In his Theory of Aesthetics,NishiAmane included in the category of bijutsupainting, sculpture, en-graving, architecture, poetry, prose, music, Chinese calligraphy, dance,and drama. As late as 18831884, however, there was neither con-sensus nor clarity on the meaning of art. In his translation of Eugne

Vrons (18251889) LEsthtique (Aesthetics, 1878), Ishi Bigaku(The Aesthetics of Mr. V.), Nakae Chmin (18471901) used severalexpressions to indicate artsuch as gijutsu (skills), geijutsu (artand craft),gigei(skillful art), and kgei(ingenious art)without everexplaining the different meanings these expressions conveyed. Theywere all variations of the basic notion of skill (gijutsu)an indica-tion of the unlikelihood that in the early 1880s the distinction be-tween practical skills and autonomous arts was generally accepted.

Considering the confusion that the Western notions of beautyand fine arts were introducing to Japan, Nishis struggle to find a

14. For a complete English translation see Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 4864. For the creation in Japan of the word and notion of bi,or beauty, seeYanabu Akira, Honyakugo Seiritsu Jij(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1982), pp. 6586.


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Introduction 7

proper equivalent in Japanese for the word aesthetics comes as no

surprise. As early as 1867, in an attempt to reconcile the ethical andaesthetic spheres, he called aesthetics the science of good and beauty(zenbigaku),using this expression again in Hyakuichi Shinron(NewTheory of the Hundred and One, 1874). A redefinition of aestheticsin terms of the faculty of taste (and a judgment of taste) led Nishi torevise his translation as the discipline of good taste (kashuron),which he used in Hyakugaku Renkan (Encyclopedia, 1870). Afterbeing drawn into the modern philosophy of utilitarianism, he furtherrevised his translation of aesthetics, finally settling on the scienceof the beautiful and mysterious (bimygaku) in Bimygaku Setsu.But Nishi did not have the last word on this matter.15The word cur-rently used in Japan to indicate aestheticsbigakuwas created

by Nakae Chmin for his translation of the title of Eugne Vronsbook (Chapter 1).On the practical side, the official Meiji impulse toward modern-

ization led to the foundation in 1876 of the Technological Art School(Kbu Bijutsu Gakk) within Tokyos Engineering College (Kgaku-ry) and the invitation of several foreign scholars and artists to

Japan. In 1876 the Italian painter Antonio Fontanesi (18181882)arrived in Tokyo with a teaching contract from the Japanese gov-ernment; he was followed in 1878 by the American art historian andphilosopher Ernest F. Fenollosa (18531908). The two men spear-headed opposite movements in the field of aesthetics. A painter in thestyle of the Barbizon school, Fontanesi was a driving force behind

Japanese painting in the Western style (yga) and the appealto realist sketching that young Japanese painters, such as YamamotoHsui (18501906), Asai Ch (18561907), and Koyama Shtar(18571916), eagerly embraced.16 In contrast, Fenollosa played a

15. On the relationship between terminology and philosophy with regard to Nishistranslation of the word aesthetics see Yamashita Masahiro, Nishi Amane on Aes-thetics: A Japanese Version of Utilitarian Aesthetics, in Michael Marra, ed.,JapaneseHermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation(Honolulu: Univer-sity of Hawaii Press, forthcoming).

16. On Fontanesi see Marco Calderini, Antonio Fontanesi: Pittore Paesista(Turin:

Paravia, 1901); L. C. Bollea, Antonio Fontanesi alla R. Accademia Albertina(Turin:Fratelli Bocca, 1932); Shko Iwakura, Note Biografiche Fontanesiane, Il Giappone6 (1966):8793; Andreina Griseri, Fontanesi a Tokyo: Pittura e Grafica, Nuove Pro-poste, Studi Piemontesi7(1) (March 1978):5058.


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8 Introduction

major role in convincing the Japanese authorities of the greatness of

their own artistic heritage, thus promoting a renaissance of paint-ing in the Japanese style (nihonga).In 1882, the year of Fenollosasfamous speech to members of the Dragon Pond Society (Rychikai),Bijutsu Shinsetsu (The True Conception of the Fine Arts),17 theTechnological Art School was closed and the governments interestin painting in the Western style began to fade. Seven years later,in 1889, the Tky Bijutsu Gakk (Tokyo School of Fine Arts)was founded and the countrys artistic heritage was put at the centerof the teaching curriculum. Okakura Tenshin (18611913), a dis-ciple and collaborator of Fenollosa, was appointed head of the newschool.18

With the establishment of art as the object of aesthetic contempla-

tion, secularized versions of temples housing beauty were built in theform of museums in order to accommodate demands for the wor-shiping of art. Thanks to the efforts of Fenollosa and Okakura, whosaw in the Asian counterpart of the Hegelian spirit the driving forcebehind the idealism of Japanese paintings, the entire country came tobe seen as an art museum of Asiatic civilization: the privileged settingfor preservation of cultures that had already disappeared from theircountry of origin. The revalorization of Asias artistic heritage at atime when Japan was launching its victorious army against China(18931894) further underscored the deep political implications ofaesthetic discourses and proved to the Japanese authorities that theWestern language of metaphysics and idealism could be easily chan-

neled into political action (see Chapter 2).19

17. See J. Thomas Rimer, Hegel in Tokyo: Ernest Fenollosa and His 1882 Lec-ture on the Truth of Art, in Marra,Japanese Hermeneutics,forthcoming.

18. On Fenollosa see Lawrence W. Chisolm, Fenollosa: The Far East and AmericanCulture(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). On Okakura see F. G. Notehelfer,On Idealism and Realism in the Thought of Okakura Tenshin,Journal of JapaneseStudies16(2) (1990):309355; Stefan Tanaka, Imaging History: Inscribing Belief inthe Nation,Journal of Asian Studies53(1) (1994):2473. For an English translationof Okakuras Lecture to the Painting Appreciation Society see Marra, Modern Japa-nese Aesthetics,pp. 7178.

19. On this last point see Karatani Kjin, Bigaku no Ky: Orientarizumu Igo,HihyKkan2(14) (1997):455. On the political implications of aesthetics see Michele

Marra, The Complicity of Aesthetics: Karatani Kjin, in Modern Japanese Aes-thetics,pp. 263299. The essay is followed by the English translation of Karatanislecture, Edo no Chshakugaku to Genzai (Edo Exegesis and the Present, 1985).


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Introduction 9

Such a language, however, did not go unchallenged, as Tsubouchi

Shys vehement attacks in Bi to wa Nani zo ya against bothFenollosas idealism and Vrons anti-idealism amply demonstrate.Convinced that aesthetics should have a normative value and, there-fore, should contribute concrete ideas to the formation of a modernliterature, Tsubouchi took issue with the imponderable notion ofidea (mys)that Fenollosa was espousing in his lectures. A seriesof debates ensuedbased on a semantic confusion with the notionsof idea, ideal, and thought, which, when they are translated in

Japanese, share the same second character: mys, ris, shis.The debate on paintings of thought (shisga)between Shyandthe educator Toyama Masakazu (18481900) was spurred by a lec-ture Toyama delivered in 1890, Nihon Kaiga no Mirai (The Future

of Japanese Painting). Failing to properly interpret Fenollosas notionof idea (mys)in the Platonic sense of ideal and the Hegeliansense of Idee,as Fenollosa himself had intended, Toyama took mysto convey the English notion of idea or thought. As a result, hemisconstrued Fenollosas appeal to artists to give ideal representa-tions of reality as an invitation to portray concrete ideas and thoughts.Therefore, Toyama argued that Japanese painters should portrayideological paintings, or painting based on thought, thus invitingartists to turn to actual events and social problems when choosingthe subject matters for their paintings. An early practitioner of natu-ralism (shizenshugi),Tsubouchi rejected Toyamas reasoning. Ratherthan paying attention to ideology, he said, artists should reproduce

human emotions as they are (Chapter 3) .Different interpretations of the notion of ideals (ris) by

Tsubouchi Shyand Mori gai (18621922) led to the debate of18911892 between the two writers known as the dispute onhidden ideals (botsuris).In this dispute between a realist and anidealist, Shyargued in favor of the former: although realist artreflects the readers ideas, it is not the purpose of art to accomplishthe task of a philosophical work. In his view, rather than searchingfor greatness in Shakespeares ideas, as if he were a great philosopher,we should admire Shakespeares ability to convey his ideas imag-inatively through the impartial representation of characters. Shyconcluded that we should admire Shakespeare for his submergedideas. gai accused Shyof underplaying the power of ideas in theformation of art, presenting Shys theory of submerged ideas,


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10 Introduction

20. On this dispute see Richard J. Bowring, Morigaiand the Modernization ofJapanese Culture(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 6387. For amodern reevaluation of Shys position see Karatani Kjin, Origins of Modern Japa-nese Literature(Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 145151.

21. Quoted in Bowring, Morigaiand Modernization,p. 67.22. The development of aesthetics from within the walls of academia explains the

overwhelming presence in the history of Japanese aesthetics of writers and scholarsdealing with the fine arts from an academically oriented aesthetic perspective. The

reader should be aware that there were Japanese thinkers from other disciplines writingon a variety of aesthetic issuessuch as, for example, the geographer and politicalcommentator Shiga Shigetaka (18631927), the folklorist Yanagita Kunio (18751962), and the philosopher of religion Yanagi Muneyoshi (18891961).

perhaps unfairly, as if this were a call to deny the necessity of ideals

in the creation of art.20

gai based his critique of Shyon an array of German philo-sophical worksabove all the second part of Eduard von Hartmanns(18421906) Aesthetik(Aesthetics), or Philosophie des Schnen(ThePhilosophy of the Beautiful, 1888), which gai translated in 1892 asShinbiRon(Theory of Aesthetics). This publication was followed byShinbi Kry(Outline of Aesthetics, 1899), which gai coauthoredwith mura Seigai (18681927), and Shinbi Shinsetsu(A New Inter-pretation of Aesthetics, 18981899), in which gai introduced theaesthetics of Johannes Volkelt (18481940). gai was obsessed withthe subtle thoughts of novelists imaginative life and with the intui-tion that gives meaning to the analytical work of a writer. As he

argued in Shsetsu Ron(On the Novel, 1889), he realized that as amedical doctor he was committed to the search for truth: The scalpelis never out of my grasp for long and my test tubes are always athand. But this desire to seek real facts has never hindered dreams ofvisiting the infinite (Chapter 4).21

Debates between defenders of naturalism (shizenshugi)and ideal-ism (kyokuchishugi)informed Japanese cultural life at the end of thenineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. While thefield of aesthetics was following the path of academic institutional-ization, promoters of naturalism and idealism were divided intoseparate academic camps: Waseda University (then known as TkySenmon Gakk), the University of Tokyo (then known as Tokyo Im-

perial University), and the University of Kyoto (then known as KyotoImperial University).22Shywas among the founders of the Depart-ment of Letters at Waseda University, as well as the journal WasedaBungaku (Waseda Literature), from which he launched his attacks


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Introduction 11

23. nishideveloped this argument in Kagawa Kageki Okina no Karon (ThePoetic Treatises of Master Kagawa Kageki, 1892), in nishiHajime Zensh,vol. 7:Ronbun Oyobi Kash(Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sent, 1982), pp. 499537.

24. nishideveloped these ideas in the essays Waka ni ShkyNashi (There IsNo Religion in Waka, 1887) and Kinsei Bigaku Shis Ippan (Outline of EarlyModern Aesthetic Thought, 1897). For a complete English translation of the formersee Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 8392.

against Mori gai. We find in the pages of the same journal articles

by Waseda scholars who shared with gai a belief in the importanceof idealism, such as the Christian thinker nishi Hajime (18641900).Perceiving a weakness of inner spirituality in the Japanese subjectivity,nishi inquired into the work of thinkers of the Edo period, such asthe literary scholar Kagawa Kageki (17681843), who had addressedthe issue of the inner self. nishi pointed out the need to comple-ment the theory of interiority, which Kageki had developed aroundthe notion of magokoro(true, sincere heart), in light of the find-ings of modern epistemology. Psychology and modern philosophysemphasis on the notion of consciousness prompted him to reviseKagekis thought by pointing out the need to replace the belief thatreality is the result of a natural process with the realization that the

world is nothing but the product of a thinking mind. nishi encour-aged modern Japanese philosophers to reconcile traditional thoughtwith the new ideas coming from the West.23

The same concern for a renewed spirituality led nishi to launchhis program of poetic reform: poetry, he urged, should express reli-gious thoughta characteristic he thought was lacking in tradi-tional waka.In his opinion, the inability of Shintoism and Buddhismto inspire such lofty thoughts in Japan should make people turn theirattention to Christianitys potential to supplement the domestic reli-gious heritage in this regard. Aesthetics was called to the task of pro-moting a sense of beauty in order to deepen the spiritual life of the

Japanese people (Chapter 5).24

The issue of inner life was much debated in Japan in the 1890swhen the poet, critic, and pacifist Kitamura Tkoku (18681894)wrote the essay Naibu Seimeiron (The Inner Life). Here interiorityis presented as the discovery of idealistic philosophy that, once it istranslated into literature, incorporates ideas into reality. Tkokuexplains the inner life as the emanating spirit of the universe thatpenetrates the human spirit. Inspiration is crucial to such a life, since


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12 Introduction

25. Kitamura Tkoku, Essai sur la Vie Intrieure, in Yves-Marie Allioux, ed.,

Cent Ans de Pense au Japon, vol. 1 (Paris: ditions Philippe Picquier, 1996), pp.104115.

26. Quoted in Earl Jackson, Jr., The Metaphysics of Translation and the Originsof Symbolic Poetics in Meiji Japan, PMLA(March 1990):264.

it works as an echo bringing the two spirits in communication. Thus

the absolute idea shows itself in concrete form in the interiority of thehuman heart, while transcendence is finally found in immanence.25

The naturalists persistently condemned the idealist notion of transcen-denceas shown in the critique of the poet and critic Iwano Hmei(18731920), a vehement anti-Christian: At the beginning of thenineteenth century, readers were satisfied only with the Words-worthean view of nature. Poets saw the immortality of the soul in therainbow, they heard the whisperings of gods in the rustling ofthe leaves; the view of nature changed completely. Yet this kind ofreligious tendency sacrifices the fecundity of nature to an insipidabstract concept.26

The idealism of nishi Hajime left a deep mark on thinkers of the

Waseda school, foremost among them nishis two most famous stu-dents: Tsunashima Rysen (18731907), who pursued his teachersinterest in ethical matters, and Shimamura Hgetsu (18711918), whofurther studied the issues of aesthetic consciousness and aesthetic plea-sure. Hgetsu applied his knowledge of aesthetics to a parallel studyof the beauty of the fine arts and the beauty of sentences in a majorwork on rhetoric titled Shin Bijigaku (New Rhetoric, 1902). After1905, Hgetsu became greatly influenced by the philosophy of life(Lebensphilosophie), whose popularity was rapidly increasing inEuropea philosophy that reconciled Hgetsu with naturalism inthe latter part of his life (Chapter 6).

Perhaps no one at the time was more vocal in Japan on the issue

of life than Takayama Chogy(18711902), who replaced nishiat Waseda University as lecturer in aesthetics after nishis departurefor Europe. In 1898 Chogyengaged in a famous debate with Tsu-bouchi Shyon the issue of historical paintings. While promotingpaintings in the Japanese style (nihonga), which had found inFenollosa one of its earliest advocates, Chogydefended the repre-sentation of historical themes on the ground that such paintingsgrasp the ideal beauty of history. According to Chogy, the power ofhistorical paintings resides in the beauty of the painting itself, not in


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Introduction 13

27. On this issue see Chogys article, Bikan ni Tsuite no Kansatsu (Observationson Aesthetic Pleasure, 1900), a complete English translation of which appears inMarra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 98111.

28. On this issue see Graham Parkes, The Early Reception of Nietzsches Phi-losophy in Japan, in Graham Parkes, ed., Nietzsche and Asian Thought(Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 177199. See also Randolph Spencer Petralia,Nietzsche in Meiji Japan: Culture Criticism, Individualism, and Reaction in theAesthetic Life Debate of 19011903 (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University,1981).

the historical events portrayed. Historical events, he said, were

simply expedients that artists used in order to express beauty. Shy,however, argued that since history preceded the beauty of poeticthought, the purpose of historical paintings was the representation ofthe beauty of history. Such a historical beauty was allegedly en-dowed with a greater degree of objectivity in comparison to otherworks of pure fantasy.

In this debate Shy confirmed once again his position on theissue of the subject: he believed the subject was a simple mirror re-flecting an objectively reproducible external reality. Chogy, by con-trast, joined those who privileged the working of consciousness inthe act of perceiving external realitythus locating the beauty ofhistorical paintings in the aesthetic perception of beautiful histor-

ical acts. Aesthetic consciousness played a major role in Chogyscreation of an aesthetic statea program that he called Japanism(Nihonshugi), in which the state was considered an expedient tomake human happiness concrete.27

Chogys encounter with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche(18441900), which he helped introduce to Japan, led him to en-vision a concrete implementation of his aesthetics in a momentousarticle, Biteki Seikatsu wo Ronzu (Debate on the Aesthetic Life,1901), that made a deep impression, especially on younger readers.The subordination of morality and knowledge to the power of in-stinctual life (honn)as well as the assertion that the purest aes-thetic value is the satisfaction of the instinctscould hardly go un-

noticed by the avid readership of the popular journal Taiy (TheSun) (Chapter 7).28

Japans adoption of the field of aesthetics during the Meiji perioddrastically changed the way that Japanese thinkers and readers thoughtof their own historical past. By applying to their own cultural heri-


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14 Introduction

tage categories derived from Western aesthetics, Japanese thinkers

ended by creating an indigenous past modeled upon the past ofEuropeespecially Greece, the land to which Johann J. Winckelmann(17171768) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (17291781) had turnedin order to develop their aesthetic theories. Following the same ap-proach taken by European aestheticians who had transformed ancientGreece into a comforting land, a safe utopia free from the anxietiesof a burgeoning modern world, thinkers such as Fenollosa, LafcadioHearn (18501904), and Watsuji Tetsur(18891960) searched fora land free from the ills of modernity in the past of the ancient capitalNara. Nara was transformed from a site of religious worship into anobject of aesthetic contemplation, a symbol of human beauty, as wecan see from Watsujis best-seller Koji Junrei(Pilgrimage to Ancient

Temples, 1919). Aestheticians worked together with literary histo-rians in the creation of a classical Japan in which the southerncapital of Nara was modeled on the image of classical Athens. AizuYaichi (18811956), a renowned second-generation aesthetician fromWaseda University, saw in the land of Yamato the South of Japanin the same spirit that had led German romantic poets to discoverGreece as the South of Europe (Chapter 8).

On September 7, 1893, the University of Tokyo (Teikoku DaigakuBunka Daigaku, or Imperial University, Faculty of Letters Univer-sity) established a chair system on the model of Western universities.The Chair of Aesthetics was created together with the first twentychairs forming the Division of Letters and Sciences (Bungakubu). In

fact, this became the first university Chair of Aesthetics in the world.The first Chair of Aesthetics in Europe was established at the Sor-bonne of Paris in 1919 with the appointment of Victor GuillaumeBasch (18651944). At first the University of Tokyo hired several for-eign lecturers, entrusting them with teaching a course in aesthetics:Ernest Fenollosa from 1883 to 1886, Ludwig Busse (18621907) from1886 to 1892, and Raphael von Koeber (18481923) from 1893 to1914. In 1900, however, tsuka Yasuji (18681931) was offered apermanent, tenured position (Chapter 9).

tsuka undertook a massive project in the study of patterns(ruikei)types of clothes, architectural patterns, and the likelead-ing to typological studies of the structures, forms, and correlations ofartistic phenomena. He also provided a solid foundation for a com-parative method that led to the comparative typological explanation


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29. For a partial translation of nishisessay on awaresee Marra, Modern Japa-nese Aesthetics,pp. 122140. See also Makoto Ueda, Ygenand Erhabene:nishiYoshinoris Attempt to Synthesize Japanese and Western Aesthetics, in J. ThomasRimer, ed., Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During the Interwar Years(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 282299.

30. For the impact of the notion of aesthetic category on Hisamatsu Senichi(18941976), probably the foremost authority in classical Japanese literature of thetwentieth century, see Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 141142. On the roleplayed by aesthetic categories in the study that Kusanagi Masao (b. 1900) made of

ygenand yojin light of the existentialist philosophy of Karl Jaspers (18831969),see Kusanagis essay Yojno Ronri (The Logic of Passional Surplus), translated inMarra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 148167.

of Eastern and Western aesthetic categories (biteki hanch) on the

part of his student and successor at the University of Tokyo, nishiYoshinori (18881959). nishi authored perhaps the most originalAesthetics(Bigaku,2 vols., 19591960) ever produced by a Japanesescholar. His analysis of expressions taken from the field of pre-modern poetics (kagaku)made words such as ygen, aware,andsabipopular terms in the aesthetic vocabulary of Japan.29His com-mitment to provide local epistemological categories with a universalfoundation reflects nishis efforts to translate Japanese culture intoan idiom that could be understood by an audience trained in Westernhermeneutics. nishis work made a huge impression on Japanesehistorians of literaturewho relied on his theoretical treatment ofaesthetic categories in their classifications of literary textsas well as

on other Japanese philosophers who developed their own analyses oflocal aesthetic categories (Chapters 10 and 11).30

tsuka and nishis preoccupation with adopting scientificmethods to discuss Japan, and their drive toward systematic classi-fications, had a long-lasting effect on scholars of the University ofTokyo, who produced an array of typological studies beginning withnishis Shizen Kanjno Ruikei(Types of Feelings for Nature, 1949).In this work the author classifies a variety of pathic approaches tonature, which he calls sympathetic sensitivity, religious sensitivity,sentimental sensitivity, romantic sensitivity, and haikai-esque sen-sitivity. In Fdo: Ningengakuteki Ksatsu(Climate: An Anthropo-logical Inquiry, 1935), Watsuji Tetsur (18891960), a student of

tsuka Yasuji and Okakura Tenshin and, later, a professor of ethicsat the University of Tokyo, undertook a typological study of climato-


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16 Introduction

31. On the complicity of universalism and particularism in creating a totalitariansubject, as well as the role played by Watsuji in developing such issues, see NaokiSakais articles Return to the West/Return to the East: Watsuji Tetsurs Anthropologyand Discussions of Authenticity and Modernity and Its Critique: The Problem ofUniversalism and Particularism. Both articles are presented in Naoki Sakai, Transla-tion and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism(Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 72116 and 153176.

32. On the popularity of Abe Jirs aesthetic thought during the Taishperiod seeStephen W. Kohl, Abe Jirand The Diary of Santar, in Rimer, Culture and Identity,pp. 721.

33. See, for example, his explanation of the West in terms of representation(mimesis) and the East in terms of expression in his lecture LExpression et SonFondement Logique (Expression and Its Logical Foundation, 1962), translated inMarra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 220228.

logical patterns in which he related differences in climate to social

and cultural differences (Chapter 12).31

A typological approach to the arts of the Tokugawa period canbe found in Tokugawa Jidai no Geijutsu to Shakai(Art and Societyin the Tokugawa Period, 1948) by Abe Jir (18831959), a grad-uate of the University of Tokyo and the author of a very popular Aes-thetics (Bigaku, 1917) (Chapter 13).32 A concern for typologicalstudies is also at work in the writings of nishi Yoshinoris discipleand successor, Takeuchi Toshio (19051982), who in Bungei no Janru(Genres of the Literary Arts, 1954) applied the notion of aestheticpatterns, such as linguistic forms, experiential content, and expres-sive attitude, to a classification of literary genres. Takeuchi blendedtsuka Yasujis idea of Literaturwissenschaft (bungeigaku) with

nishi Yoshinoris notion of aesthetic categories in his systemati-zation of the science of art (geijutsugaku).In 1979 Takeuchi pub-lished a monumental synthesis of his aesthetic system titled BigakuSron(Survey of Aesthetics).

Takeuchis successor to the Chair of Aesthetics at the University ofTokyo, Imamichi Tomonobu (b. 1922), has applied the typological/comparative method to the study of cultures.33 At the same time,he has aimed at creating a new ethics derived from the combinationof ethics, aesthetics, and science. The synthetic approach, which hascharacterized the discipline of aesthetics at the University of Tokyofrom its inception, is very strong in Imamichis thought. We see itsustaining his aesthetic project, which he has called calonologya

combination of beauty(kalon),being(on),mind (nous),anddiscourse (logos). Calonology, therefore, is an inquiry into the


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34. See, for example, his commitment to a dialogue between East and West inMegumi Sakabe, Surrealistic Distortion of Landscape and the Reason of the Milieu,in Eliot Deutsch, ed., Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 343353.

35. I have discussed Sakabes philosophy in Michele Marra, The New as Violenceand the Hermeneutics of Slimness, PMAJLS4 (Summer 1998):83102, and JapansMissing Alternative: Weak Thought and the Hermeneutics of Slimness, in Versus(forthcoming). See also Sakabes articles Le Masque et lOmbre dans la Culture Japo-naise: Ontologie Implicite de la Pense Japonaise (Mask and Shadow in JapaneseCulture: Implicit Ontology in Japanese Thought, 1982), and ModokiSur la Tra-

dition Mimtique au Japon (Modoki: The Mimetic Tradition in Japan, 1985), bothoffered in English in Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 242262.

36. See, for example, his recent book Furumai no Shigaku(The Poetics of Be-havior) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997).

realms of beauty, existence, reason, and science. Recently Imamichi

has pointed out the need to replace metaphysics, or the study ofthe transcendental explanation of the natural world of physics(physis),with a metatechnica, or a philosophy that answers thequestions facing cities in an age of technology (what Imamichi alsocalls urbanica). In Eco-Ethica: Seiken Rinrigaku Nymon (Eco-logical Ethics: An Introduction to the Ethics of Livability, 1990),Imamichi insists on the need to reassess the notion of oikos(house)in order to redefine what he calls the sphere of livability (seiken)(Chapter 14).

The postmodern reader will undoubtedly take issue with therigidity of aesthetic categories and the hermeneutics of comparativetypologies that reduce the variety of particularity to absolute super-

categories such as East and West. While still refusing to reject theheuristic value of such categories,34Sakabe Megumi (b. 1936), a pro-fessor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo, has called attentionto the need to put aesthetics to the task of diluting totalitarian de-scriptions of categories and subjectivities and constructing weaker,softer versions of philosophy that escape the temptations of total-ization and essentialization.35Sakabe has fully embraced Heideggerschallenge to interrogate language. In his philosophy of the Yamatolanguage, Sakabe has developed original interpretations of ancientwords that he has recently incorporated into his formulation of anew ethics (Chapter 15).36

Research in aesthetics was no less active in the ancient capital,

Kyoto. The Kyoto Art Society (Kyto Bijutsu Kykai) was foundedin 1890 as the Kansai area counterpart of the Tokyo-based Dragon


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18 Introduction

37. Nishida developed the idea of pure experience in Zen no Kenky(An In-quiry into the Good, 1911). See Nishida Kitar, An Inquiry into the Good, trans.Masao Abe and Christopher Ives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 4.

Pond Society (Rychikai), which in 1887 had been renamed the Japa-

nese Art Society (Nihon Bijutsu Kykai). Local newspapers and artjournals became common venues for Nakagawa Shigeaki (18491917), a prolific writer and a popularizer of the philosophy of art.Nakagawa introduced major issues of contemporary Western aes-thetics to readers who, thanks to his translations, became familiarwith Karl von Lemckes (18311913) Populre Aesthetik (PopularAesthetics, 1873) and Aesthetik in gemeinverstndlichen Vortragen(Aesthetics in Popular Terms, 1890). Newly imported ideas, such asthe notions of aesthetic category (biteki hanch)and emotionalsphere (kanj-ken),allowed Nakagawa to develop his own aestheticanalysis of the art of Edo literati, especially their drawings (haiga)and prose in the style of haiku (haibun), in Heigen Zokugo Haikai

Bigaku(The Aesthetics of Haikai in Plain and Popular Words, 1906)(Chapter 16).Academic aesthetics began in Kyoto in 1910 with the appointment

of Fukada Yasukazu (18781928) to the first permanent position inaesthetics at the Imperial University of Kyotoa chair he occupieduntil the time of his death. A student of Raphael von Koeber at theImperial University of Tokyo, Fukada received the call to Kyoto afterreturning from a three-year stay in Germany and France from 1907to 1910. Fukada, who was also acquainted with the writer NatsumeSseki (18671916), grounded his humanism in the belief that beautyis the result of cultural characteristics and universals are needed tocombat peoples loneliness (Chapter 17).

The teaching of aesthetics in Kyoto soon fell under the spell of theuniversitys most distinguished philosopher: Nishida Kitar (18701945). Nishida modeled the notion of aesthetic experience onwhat he called junsui keiken (pure experience)a present con-sciousness of facts just as they are prior to the separation of subjectand object.37Nishida attempted to synthesize Ernst Machs (18381916) analysis of sensations and William James (18421910) con-cept of pure experience with the Buddhist ideas of selflessness(muga)and unity of body and mind (shinjin ichinyo)that he had


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38. Steven Odin, An Explanation of Beauty: Nishida Kitars Bi no Setsumei,Monumenta Nipponica42(2) (Summer 1987):217. See also Nishida Kitar, Art andMorality,trans. David A. Dilworth and Valdo H. Viglielmo (Honolulu: University ofHawaii Press, 1973).

39. On this issue see Nishitani Keiji, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans.

Graham Parkes with Setsuko Aihara (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990). See also James W.Heisig and John Maraldo, eds., Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and theQuestion of Nationalism(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).

learned from practicing Zen. We find such a synthesis in the follow-

ing statement at the conclusion of Nishidas essay Bi no Setsumei(An Explanation of Beauty, 1910):

If I may summarize what has been said above, the feeling of beauty isthe feeling of muga.Beauty that evokes the feeling of mugais intuitivetruth that transcends intellectual discrimination. This is why beauty issublime. As regards this point, beauty can be explained as the discard-ing of the world of discrimination and the being one with the GreatWay of muga;it therefore is really of the same kind as religion. Theyonly differ in the sense of deep and shallow, great and small. The mugaof beauty is the mugaof the moment, whereas the mugaof religion iseternal muga.Although morality also originally derives from the GreatWay of muga,it still belongs to the world of discrimination, because theidea of duty that is the essential condition of morality is built on the dis-

tinction between self and other, good and evil. It does not yet reach thesublime realms of religion and art.38

In his definition of art, Nishida moves toward an Eastern mysticalexperientialism: the secret of art, he contends, is found in the point ofunification of subject and object. Nishida calls this point the placeof nothingness (mu no basho),or the experience of seeing the formof the formless and hearing the voice of the voiceless. According toNishida, the true nothingness of artistic intuition culminates in theabsolute free will of the artist (Chapter 18).

Nishidas thought had a profound impact on the philosophersand aestheticians of the University of Kyoto. One of his junior col-leagues in the philosophy department, Nishitani Keiji (19001990),

relied on Nishidas notion of nothingness (mu)and the Buddhistidea of emptiness (k)as means to provide a positive response tothe Western nihilism that had penetrated Japan during the culturalrevolution of the Meiji period.39Nishidas philosophy also informedNishitanis thought on aesthetics and the arts, as we can see from


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40. See, for example, Nishitanis article Kto Soku (Emptiness and Sameness),translated in Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics,pp. 179217.

41. See, for example, his use of the hexahedron in summarizing the aesthetic valuesof the Edo period and the octahedron in discussing all the aesthetic categories thatmake up the notion of refinement (fry)in Japan. The use of the hexahedron isfound in Kukis essay Iki no Kz (The Structure of Iki,1930). The octahedronmakes its appearance in the essay Fryni Kansuru Ikksatsu (An Investigation ofElegance, 1937). For an English translation of the first essay see Kuki Shz, Reflec-tions on Japanese Taste: The Structure of Iki,trans. John Clark (Sydney: Power Publi-cations, 1997). The English translation of the second essay is still in manuscript form:

Kuki Shz, A Consideration of Fry, trans. Michael Bourdaghs. See also HajimuNakano, Kuki Shzand The Structure of Iki, in Rimer, Culture and Identity,pp.261272.

his interpretation of haiku in light of emptiness and the logos of

unhindered reason.40

Ueda Juz (18861973), Fukadas successor and holder of theChair of Aesthetics at the University of Kyoto until 1947, developeda philosophy of visual perception (shikaku) that is a blending ofNishidas transcendental aesthetics and the theory of pure visibilitydeveloped by the art historian Konrad Fiedler (18411895). Nishidasnotion of experience returns in Uedas phenomenological herme-neutics of vision, which addresses the formation of the work of art,as we can see in his Geijutsu Shi no Kadai(The Subject of Art History,1936), Shikaku Kz (The Structure of Visual Perception, 1941),and Nihon no Bi no Seishin (The Spirit of Japanese Beauty, 1944)(Chapter 19).

Not even Kuki Shz(18881941)who grew up in Tokyo, waseducated at the University of Tokyo, and lectured in Western philos-ophy at the University of Kyoto only later in lifecould escape themagic spell of Nishida. Kukis education in the Kantarea is evidentin his compulsion toward a geometrical systematization of aestheticissuesa practice which is typical of the Tokyo school and whichKuki took to the highest level of sophistication.41Kuki combined theBuddhist notion of resignation (akirame),the military tradition ofbrave composure (ikiji),and the idea of erotic allure (bitai) totransform ikiinto an aesthetic categorya universal encompassing theparticular elements of the cultural life of the Edo citizen. At the sametime, Kuki was indebted to Nishidas philosophy when he described

the love relationship between a man and a woman of taste (iki)as


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42. See Kuki Shz, Le Problme de la Contingence,French trans. Omodaka Hisa-yuki (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1966). On Kuki and Jean-Paul Sartres (19051980) philosophies of contingency see Stephen Light, Shz Kuki and Jean-PaulSartre: Influence and Counter-Influence in the Early History of Existential Phenome-nology(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), pp. 339.

43. The congress is scheduled to take place on August 2731, 2001. Sasaki Kenichihas summarized the main issues of the congress in an announcement titled Aestheticsin the Twenty-First Century. The announcement was distributed at an international

conference, Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpreta-tion (December 1315, 1998), that I organized at the University of California, LosAngeles.

transcendental possibility (chetsuteki kansei)rather than a nec-

essity of reality (genjitsuteki hitsuzensei). According to Kuki, thelatter relationship characterizes the Western experience of love, onewhich culminates in fulfillment. Yet the tension that must be main-tained to prevent the relationship from stagnating or becoming in-authentic was a guarantee of freedom from the shackles of love. Whileexamining the aesthetics of the pleasure quarter during the Edoperiod, Kuki was actually confronting the same issues addressed byNishida Kitarand, later, by Nishitani Keiji. He was attempting toovercome the anxieties of Western modernity by searching in thelocal intellectual tradition for an antidote against Western nihilism.Kuki later engaged Nishidas place of nothingness in a dialogue withthe Western idea of negation in a study on freedom and chance:

Gzensei no Mondai(The Problem of Contingency, 1935) (Chapter20).42 To this day Nishidas presence continues to influence aestheti-cians working at the University of Kyoto, as we can see from thework of Fukadas and Uedas successors to the Chair of Aesthetics:Ijima Tsutomu (19081978), Yoshioka Kenjir(b. 1926), and IwakiKenichi (b. 1944) (Chapter 21).

Japan continues to play a major role in the field of aesthetics. Thefifteenth International Congress on Aestheticsthe first of its kindto take place in the twenty-first centurywill be held in Tokyo.Sasaki Kenichi, president of the organizing committee, has indicatedthat topics for discussion will include cultural heterogeneity in theexperience of art, the conflict of values in postmodern society, and

the aesthetics of urban design in the midst of ecological challenges.43In this conference Japanese aestheticians will be called upon onceagain to confront the Heideggerian bearing of message and tidings


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44. Inquirer: Because I now see stillmore clearly the danger that the language ofour dialogue might constantly destroy the possibility of saying that of which we arespeaking. Japanese: Because this language itself rests on the metaphysical distinctionbetween the sensuous and the suprasensuous, in that the structure of the language issupported by the basic elements of sound and script on the one hand, and significa-tion and sense on the other. Inquirer: At least within the purview of European ideas.

Or is the situation the same with you? Japanese: Hardly. But, as I indicated, the temp-tation is great to rely on European ways of representation and their concepts. Inquirer:That temptation is reinforced by a process which I would call the complete European-ization of the earth and of man (Heidegger, On the Way to Language,p. 15).

coming from different houses of being. Like the Japanese person-

age in Heideggers dialogue with the Inquirer, they will be challengedto find in the indigenous house the means to dilute the effects ofwhat Heidegger called the complete Europeanization of the earthand of man.44

A History of Modern JP Aesthetics

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