New Essays in Japanese 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.

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., 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., 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., 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., 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.

A. Minh Nguyen is professor of philosophy and Asian studies at Eastern Kentucky University.