New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics

This collection begins with an engaging historical overview of Japanese aesthetics and offers contemporary multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Japan and the central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics.

This collection presents twenty-seven new essays in Japanese aesthetics by leading experts in the field. Beginning with an extended foreword by the renowned scholar and artist Stephen Addiss and a comprehensive introduction that surveys the history of Japanese aesthetics and the ways in which it is similar to and different from Western aesthetics, this groundbreaking work brings together a large variety of disciplinary perspectives—including philosophy, literature, and cultural politics—to shed light on the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Japan and the central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics. Contributors explore topics from the philosophical groundings for Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese aesthetics of imperfection and insufficiency to the Japanese love of and respect for nature and the paradoxical ability of Japanese art and culture to absorb enormous amounts of foreign influence and yet maintain its own unique identity.New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics will appeal not only to a wide range of humanities scholars but also to graduate and undergraduate students of Japanese aesthetics, art, philosophy, literature, culture, and civilization. Masterfully articulating the contributors’ Japanese-aesthetical concerns and their application to Japanese arts (including literature, theater, film, drawing, painting, calligraphy, ceramics, crafts, music, fashion, comics, cooking, packaging, gardening, landscape architecture, flower arrangement, the martial arts, and the tea ceremony), these engaging and penetrating essays will also appeal to nonacademic professionals and general audiences. This seminal work will be essential reading for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of Japanese aesthetics.

Foreword
Stephen Addiss
Preface
A. Minh Nguyen
Introduction: Historical Overview of Japanese Aesthetics
Yuriko Saito
Introduction: New Contributions to Japanese Aesthetics
A. Minh Nguyen

I: Japanese Aesthetics and Philosophy
1 A Philosophic Grounding for Japanese Aesthetics
Robert E. Carter
2 Cloud, Mist, Shadow, Shakuhachi: The Aesthetics of the Indistinct
David E. Cooper
3 Authority in Taste
Richard Bullen
4 Beauty as Ecstasy in the Aesthetics of Nishida and Schopenhauer
Steve Odin
5 Bodily Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues
Yuriko Saito

II: Japanese Aesthetics and Culture
6 Beyond Zeami: Innovating Mise en Scѐne in Contemporary Nō Theatre Performance
C. Michael Rich
7 The Appreciative Paradox of Japanese Gardens
Allen Carlson
8 Savoring Tastes: Appreciating Food in Japan
Graham Parkes
9 Art of War, Art of Self: Aesthetic Cultivation in Japanese Martial Arts
James McRae

III: Japanese Aesthetics and Cultural Politics
10 Ainu Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art: Replication, Remembering, Recovery
Koji Yamasaki and Mara Miller
11 The Idea of Greece in Modern Japan’s Cultural Dreams
Hiroshi Nara
12 Yashiro Yukio and the Aesthetics of Japanese Art History
J. Thomas Rimer
13 Aestheticizing Sacrifice: Ritual, Education, and Media during the Asia-Pacific War
Akiko Takenaka
14 Nagai Kafū and the Aesthetics of Urban Strolling
Timothy Unverzagt Goddard
15 Cool-Kawaii Aesthetics and New World Modernity
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

IV: Japanese Aesthetics and Literature
16 Bashō and the Art of Eternal Now
Michiko Yusa
17 Knowing Elegance: The Ideals of the Bunjin (Literatus) in Early Modern Haikai
Cheryl Crowley
18 The Measure of Comparison: Correspondence and Collision in Japanese Aesthetics
Meera Viswanathan
19 On Kawabata, Kishida, and Barefoot Gen: Agency, Identity, and Aesthetic Experience in Post-Atomic Japanese Narrative
Mara Miller
20 Japanese Poetry and the Aesthetics of Disaster
Roy Starrs

V: Japanese Aesthetics and the Visual Arts
21 Inner Beauty: Kishida Ryūsei’s Concept of Realism and Pre-Modern Asian Aesthetics
Mikiko Hirayama
22 The Pan Real Art Association’s Revolt against “the Beauties of Nature”
Matthew Larking
23 The Aesthetics of Emptiness in Japanese Calligraphy and Abstract Expressionism
John C. Maraldo
24 On Not Disturbing Still Water: Ozu Yasujirō and the Technical-Aesthetic Product
Jason M. Wirth

VI: The Legacy of Kuki Shūzō
25 Finding Iki: Iki and the Floating World
David Bell
26 Iki and Glamour as Aesthetic Properties of Persons: Reflections in a Cross-Cultural Mirror
Carol Steinberg Gould
27 Scents and Sensibility: Kuki Shūzō and Olfactory Aesthetics
Peter Leech

Contributors