| Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shuzo and the Rise of National Aesthetics Volume 5 Contributor(s): Pincus, Leslie (Author) |
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ISBN: 0520201345 ISBN-13: 9780520201347 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $68.26 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: June 1996 Annotation: Nearly a half century after Japan opened its doors to Western knowledge, intellectual discourse there took a sharp turn inward. Drawing on the cultural resources of a forgotten past, Japanese thinkers of the 1910s and 1930s imagined a realm of authenticity impervious to the fragmenting processes of modernization. Ultimately these thinkers equated authenticity with something irreducibly Japanese and in so doing became complicit, even instrumental, in a repressive and imperialist state apparatus. How did this cultural complicity take shape, and what does it reveal more generally about the troubled relationship between modernity and national culture? To explore these questions, Leslie Pincus focuses on the work of philosopher Kuki Shuzo, in particular his classic study of Edo style, "Iki" no kozo - a text that demonstrates with unusual clarity the philosophical sources, the modernist affiliations, and the ideological implications of this highly aestheticized discourse on culture in interwar Japan. Pincus argues that Japanese intellectuals attempted to resist the inroads of Western hegemony and reclaim what they perceived as a threatened cultural authenticity. But after several generations of assimilation with a modernized West, they had no choice but to delineate Japaneseness against, and within, dominant discursive modes derived from the West. She discovers that these intellectuals were in fact reacting to the precipitous transformation of their own social world, in which the emergence of mass culture and the specter of mass politics promised a Japan of drastically different proportions. Ultimately their own struggle for hegemony over the form and content of national culture would lead tothe most disastrous political consequences. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Eastern - History | Asia - Japan |
| Dewey: 181.12 |
| LCCN: 95012978 |
| Series: Twentieth Century Japan: The Emergence of a World Power |
| Physical Information: 1.06" H x 6.22" W x 9.21" (1.42 lbs) 285 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: During the interwar years in Japan, discourse on culture turned sharply inward after generations of openness to Western ideas. The characterizations that arose-that Japanese culture is unique, essential, and enduring-came to be accepted both inside and outside Japan. Leslie Pincus focuses on the work of Kuki Shuzo, a philosopher and the author of the classic "Iki" no Kozo, to explore culture and theory in Japan during the interwar years. She shows how Japanese intellectual culture ultimately became complicit, even instrumental, in an increasingly repressive and militaristic regime that ultimately brought the world to war. Pincus provides an extensive critical study of Kuki's intellectual lineage and shows how it intersects with a number of central figures in both European and Japanese philosophy. The discussion moves between Germany, France, and Japan, providing a guide to the development of culture in a number of national settings from the turn of the century to the 1930s. Inspired by the work of Foucault, the Marxist culturalists, and the Frankfurt School, Pincus reads against the grain of traditional interpretation. Her theoretically informed approach situates culture in a historical perspective and charts the ideological dimensions of cultural aesthetics in Japan. Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan makes an important contribution to our understanding of modernity, nationalism, and fascism in the early twentieth century. |