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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.
Show moreThis 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.
Show moreForeword
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
A. Minh Nguyen is professor of philosophy and Asian studies at Eastern Kentucky University.
Aesthetic concerns permeate Japanese culture; thus, a comprehensive
understanding of Japanese culture requires a comprehensive
understanding of Japanese aesthetics. Nguyen (Eastern Kentucky
Univ.) achieves just that in this collection. The volume opens with
two introductory essays: an excellent overview of central Japanese
aesthetic concepts, practices, and their histories by Yuriko Saito,
and a comprehensive overview of contents by Nguyen and the
contributors to the volume. The 27 original essays are divided into
six parts, each covering Japanese aesthetics in combination with
another topic, namely philosophy, culture, cultural politics,
literature, visual arts, and the legacy of Kuki Shūzō, author of
"Iki" no kōzō (The Structure of Iki), 1930, regarded as the most
important book on Japanese aesthetics of the 20th century. The
strengths of this volume are many, and included among them are its
breadth and depth, its deft engagement with both contemporary and
historical concepts and issues, and its cross-cultural (East and
West) nature. With regard to the last, Western philosophers are
used to helping readers understand the Japanese concepts, and
Japanese concepts are used to explore issues not usually treated in
Western philosophy. This rich cultural/historical reciprocity
permeates the book. This reviewer came away with the feeling that a
lifetime could fruitfully and joyfully be spent studying this
text.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and
above.
*CHOICE*
A. Minh Nguyen’s New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics is an important,
comprehensive, and fascinating collection. Beginning with
historical and systematic overviews of the philosophical tenets of
Japanese aesthetics and treatments of central themes in Japanese
art and aesthetics, this is a book of enormous scope, including
discussions of traditional art forms such as the tea ceremony,
calligraphy, haiku, Nō drama, pottery, and the martial arts,
quotidian activities such as gift wrapping, flower arranging,
cooking, etiquette, and gardening, and contemporary movements in
Japanese literature, film, and the visual arts. This is a book that
no student of Japanese aesthetics, whether beginning or advanced,
should be without.
*Philip Alperson, Temple University*
A. Minh Nguyen’s New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics is a
kaleidoscope of twenty-seven new contributions on the unrelenting
pursuit of elegance across Japanese culture that have been written
specifically for this volume by nothing less than a cadre of the
world’s most distinguished Japanologists. As it is turned in the
hand of the reader, it reveals from a bottomless array of angles
the different strategies this always unique and yet porous culture
has deployed to enchant the human experience, aspiring as it does
to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and the mundane
into the sublime.
*Roger T. Ames, Peking University*
A. Minh Nguyen’s New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics is a most
impressive collection. This volume provides important information
to all who study Japanese aesthetics. I know of no other book that
covers the subject so completely.
*Donald Keene, Columbia University*
A. Minh Nguyen has put together an important volume that gives us,
in one place, the tools to understand the knotty subject of
Japanese aesthetics. The most notable scholars address these
questions from various perspectives: some of them walk us through
the history of aesthetics in Japan, others explicate the broad
issues and ramifications of these ideas, while others take us deep
into particular artists, genres, and works. This is an impressive
achievement of long-lived value.
*Doug Slaymaker, University of Kentucky*
Japanese aesthetics, famous throughout the world, is more often
revered and celebrated than meticulously analyzed. New Essays in
Japanese Aesthetics goes beyond surface pleasures to uncover the
relations and tensions that shape aesthetic worlds in Japan.
Encyclopedic in breadth, the book is a must-have for anyone seeking
to better understand this intriguing and elegant domain.
*Kristin Surak, School of Oriental and African Studies*
A trove of treasures for thinking across the history of Japanese
artistic practice and aesthetic thought, ranging from literature
and the visual arts to philosophy, politics, and the aesthetics of
daily life, this is a compendious work that will return many
readers and introduce many more to the most vital topics and motifs
of the Japanese cultural tradition with fresh insights and lucid
clarifications of complex matters. A perfect text for reading in
and for teaching from.
*Alan Tansman, University of California, Berkeley*
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