Aesthetics and Japan's Cultural Identities
Because of its nature, Japanese aesthetics has a wider relevance than is usually accorded to aesthetics in the West. In her path making book, Eiko Ikegami reveals a complex history of social life in which aesthetic ideals become central to Japan's cultural identities. She shows how networks in the performing arts, the tea ceremony, and poetry shaped tacit cultural practices and how politeness and politics are inseparable. She contends that what in Western cultures are normally scattered, like art and politics, have been, and are, distinctly integrated in Japan.
After the introduction of Western notions in Japan, Wabi Sabi aesthetics ideals have been re-examined with Western values, by both Japanese and non-Japanese. Therefore, recent interpretations of the aesthetics ideals inevitably reflect Judeo-Christian perspectives and Western philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Aesthetics
Famous quotes containing the words aesthetics, japan and/or cultural:
“For aesthetics is the mother of ethics.... Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe—not empirically, alas, but only theoretically—that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.”
—Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940)
“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“If in the earlier part of the century, middle-class children suffered from overattentive mothers, from being “mother’s only accomplishment,” today’s children may suffer from an underestimation of their needs. Our idea of what a child needs in each case reflects what parents need. The child’s needs are thus a cultural football in an economic and marital game.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)