Shizen: Harmony with Disharmony

Rethinking Nature in Post-Fukushima Japan, 2018

The history of elite housing from ancient times onwards was based on a concept of space in which man was an integral part of his natural surroundings. This conception of space derives from the symbiosis between 'architecture' and 'garden' and is inherent to the long and rich tradition of Japanese and Sino-Japanese thought fed by myths, legends and sacred beliefs, from primitive Shinto cults to the influence of Indian thought through Buddhism imported via China, not to mention the major influence of Taoist concepts of the universe from the Heian period on. These successive influences never put into question the fundamental relationship between man and nature but, on the contrary, gave it new substance, and left their mark on all forms of social expression including architecture, art, the sacred, and mythology. Japanese architecture has always reflected the fundamental relationship between man and nature, which is why the various archetypes of Japanese dwellings from ancient to pre-modern times rely on the intrinsic relationship between architecture and garden. Summary 1 From Aristocrats' Palaces to Modern Japanese Housing.-2 Galleries and Verandas as Links Between the Garden and the House, Between Man and Nature, Between the Outside World and the Inside World.-3 The Integration of Man into the Landscape.-4 Habitat, Garden and Ritual.-5 Conclusion.

2014

The result of the Western transposition of the Japanese garden is able to create more of a material harmony than a spiritual one, losing part of its initial effect, that of an axis mundi, of the sacred communion between Heaven and Earth. In literature and arts the hyperbolized garden, endowed with fantastic features is able to create the state of reverie. Western garden, decorated with grottos, Japanese bridges, pavilions and pagodas, with the direct scope of facilitating the coupe meeting and reverie, becomes a reflection of the states of mind, and taste of an entire period, dominated by megalomania. The comparison between the Japanese and Western culture is based on the iconological analysis of the literary text and the visual elements. The transmitter and the receiver of the influences are not related directly, being mainly separated by the linguistic barrier, but the intermediaries assume the role of mediation and promotion of the specific Japanese cultural elements, unknown bef...

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies , 2007

The Visual Cultures of a Zen Monastery is a study of how Daitokuji's visual cultures functioned, and continue to function, in practice and in memory. In this monumental book, Levine has made the substantial amount of material manageable by organizing it into a prologue, epilogue, and four parts, each with a short section to introduce the unifying theme followed by two to three chapters. Daitokuji is, of course, well known as one of the most important Buddhist temples in Japan, but Levine deals with the stuff of Daitokuji in new ways. Rather than concentrating only on Daitokuji's major monuments, as had been the custom of past art historical scholarship, he challenges old cannons by addressing topics of broad interest and weaving the monuments, as well as objects with less "art historical" panache, into his study. Daitokuji is an archive, a location of collecting, and a repository where objects not only reside, but it is also a space where people interact with them. In the prologue Levine sets up key issues for the study and frames the site's material by considering the life of Daitokuji's "visual culture(s), " a fluid term, which he explains "is best taken as a placeholder in a dynamic semantic, visual, and social field" (xiviii). Another significant issue that runs through this study is the slippery subject of "Zen art, " which Levine reminds us usually has more to do with notions set up in the modern era. "In short, objects of varied representational technique and form turn out to be far more profuse in Chan/Zen communities, and their meaning and status more flexible and contested, than we have heretofore believed" (p. l). He continues, "Although I do not view this book as a direct response to the problem of "Zen art, " I will speak to certain assumptions and debates" (p. l). Undoubtedly many reviews will be written about this magnificent book; here I will not only praise the virtues of its scholarly contributions, but will also discuss it from the standpoint of a teacher, since I have had the luxury of using it as an assigned reading in an art history seminar. In spring 2007 I taught a graduate-level seminar titled "Japanese Buddhist Temples in Context" at the University of Kansas for students with backgrounds in Chinese, Korean, European, and Japanese art history. In

2019

The essay investigate Japanese aesthetic values based on Zen Buddhism in relationship to philosophy of experience of Kitaro Nishida and Martin Heidegger’s, their definition of art. The essay discusses matters of existence of our being and our consciousness in relation to time and to objects- pphenomenology: the philosophical study of what happens to our consciousness when our perception meets an object. The study of phenomenology points this analysis towards investigating works of art that reveal their materiality (ontology). Work ought to bring an awareness, that allows them to be “present” and to experience “subject-object duality”. I uses thin and delicate paper - directly glued onto wooden panels using animal skin glues – that is painted using traditional painting techniques to prepare the surface. Painting works project these qualities; pushing the materiality of the work into the foreground. It references post modernism concerns of minimalism and mono-ha movement, where the artists used simple material as the core of their work. In terms to paintings, it refers to Robert Ryman’s painting as “realism” and question on “what is painting?”. Key concerns are the core elements of painting: the medium, the surface, the support, the hanging system, in relationship to the installation space. I am taking this further questioning the relationship of the installation and the studio space. This research project is motivated by the belief that works of art that we produce in the present are inevitably rooted in the past. Thus, there is value in investigating the relationship of traditional Japanese aesthetic values to contemporary art.

2017

containment" (pp. 7, 11). The author regards the cultural expressions related to these conceptions as part of the demimonde and its "subculture of resistance" (p. 12). This broad conception of the demimonde allows Gralla to include in her study everything from Nagai Kafū 's nostalgic Tamanoi to the prostitutes working so vividly in burnt-out ruins of Tokyo in Tamura's The Gate of Flesh, and the closed world of a rundown geisha house in Kō da Aya's Nagareru. Other Japanese works that Gralla brings into the category of demimonde include Tanizaki's Naomi, Murakami Ryū 's Almost Transparent Blue, and his film Topā zu. At points, she comments on the tension between performances and imagination of the demimonde and the Japanese empire's odious practice of "comfort women." Gralla proves herself a careful and astute reader and critic of works in a range of media. To her credit, she includes a significant comparative component by reading Japanese novels against European, American, Middle Eastern, and Chinese literary works. The author also delves extensively into critical and theoretical stances on the demimonde, eroticism, taboo and transgression, trauma (national and personal), nostalgia, the city, and the figure of the flaneur. One of the most interesting and original chapters is "Dancing the Interior Demimonde," which offers analysis of writer and controversial cultural figure Mishima Yukio (and photographs of him by Hosoe Eikoh), and an especially intriguing reading of butoh performer Ohno Kazuo as "demimondaine" (pp. 211-32). In her commentary on Ohno's renowned work "Admiring La Argentina," the author clarifies her broad use of the concept of the demimonde in terms of space, gender, and art, noting that Ohno "dragged behind him, in his lace train, a theatrical space filled with the essence of multiple artistic and erotic subcultures" (p. 229). Also compelling are her reading of Murakami Ryū 's controversial novel Almost Transparent Blue (1976), in which drugs "facilitate the creation of a personal demimonde of heightened physicality and imagination" (p. 171), and her careful analysis of space and interiority in Kō da Aya's novel Nagareru (1955). While much of Gralla's literary and cultural analysis is thought provoking and thorough, some of the chapters suffer from repetition and would have benefited from an editor's firm hand. One also wishes for greater engagement with the work of Japanese scholars and theorists, beyond the easily accessible and translated work of premier critics such as Isoda Kō ichi and Maeda Ai. The Demimonde in Japanese Literature will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative literature and Japanese studies.

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 2018

A grain of rice is venerated as a Buddha relic during rainmaking rites. An ox gallstone, made into ointment, is given by a Buddhist monk to a midwife who spreads it on the genitals of a birthing empress. A used toy flute made of bamboo is dedicated to the deities of Miho Shrine in order to protect its former user. This special issue examines the relationship between materiality and the sacred by focusing on unassuming, familiar, unformed, or affordable objects-such as scraps of wood, grains of rice, and pieces of paperthat were invested with powerful meanings or cumulative effects. The articles assembled here explore the introduction and circulation of such objects through Japanese religious practice and imagination. Research on religious themes constantly refers to objects and materials. Iconography, implements, and ephemera play important parts in ritual and preaching, and objects serve as markers of faith and as protectors of the faithful. Birgit Meyer's clarification is helpful here: Materializing the study of religion means asking how religion happens materially, which is not to be confused with asking the much less helpful question of how religion is expressed in material forms. A materialized study of religion begins with the assumption that things, their use, their valuation, and their appeal are not something added to the religion, but rather inextricable from it.

2015

Scholars of Asian civilization have often pointed to the primacy of aesthetic value experience or artistic intuition as the distinguishing feature of Japanese culture. In his anthology entitled The Japanese Mind, Charles Moore summarizes the conclusions of several renowned Japanese and Asian scholars on this subject as follows： Tagore has called aesthetics Japanfs unique Dharma. Kishi-moto, here, speaks of the aesthetic as being so significant as to be identical with the religious in Japan, in what is surely a unique emphasis on the aesthetic. Kosaka, here, points to the essential aesthetic emphasis in Japanese culture practically throughout its history—such that Japanese culture is an aesthetic culture. And Nakamura, here and elsewhere, stresses what he calls the primacy of the aesthetic, the intuitive and the emotional.... So important is the aesthetic in Japanese

The Hypospace of Japanese Architecture, 2023

The Hypospace of Japanese Architecture traces back to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 the pathways taken by Japanese architects since 1945. Pushing past clichés of exotica, the book defamiliarizes our notions of Japan by unpacking the polysemy of a country whose history of importing foreign ideas is less about assimilation than transformation, less a process of indigenization than one of cultural invention. Case studies of influential works, consequential events, and critical debates excavate the reasons why Japanese architects have grounded their work in the principle articulated in traditional thought and modern science alike that space and time are interdependent and coexistent phenomena. The possibility that buildings are dynamic events of space-in-time, rather than inert objects outside time, informs the continuing relevance of Japanese architecture and suggests how we might rethink the history, theory, and practice of architecture more generally.

Religious Studies Review, 2007

Open Book Publishers, 2019

We take as our starting point a metaphorical understanding of 'darkness into light' as it explains the historical situation of mid-nineteenth century Japan and as it highlights the seminal role played by Ernest Fenollosa, the Boston Orientalist and art historian, in promoting what Alice Tseng calls 'the invented concept of Buddhist art'. 1 Until Commodore Matthew Perry's 'black ships' appeared on the eastern horizon in July 1853, Japan was, for all intents and purposes, closed to Western contact. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville famously refers to Japan as 'that double-bolted land.' 2 Indeed, the Japanese characters for this self-imposed isolation policy of sakoku initiated by the Tokugawa government in the 1630s literally mean 'locked country': 鎖国. Although during this period trade took place on a limited basis between Japan and the outside world, no Westerner could enter Japan nor could any Japanese leave, on penalty of death. There was no Grand Tour for travelers in search of Japanese art and culture, no Baedeker guide to advise on the delights and dangers of Kyoto and Nara. Indeed, until the Meiji era there was no museum and not even a Japanese word for 'art' as conceived in the West.