A Dao-centric or Nature-centric Perspective on Human Environment: A Contribution from Modern Japanese Aesthetics

Japanese aesthetics was first introduced the non-Japanese audience around the turn of the twentieth century through now classic works, such as Bushido (1899), The Ideals of the East (1904), and The Book of Tea (1907), all written in English and published in the United States.' Since then, Japanese aesthetic concepts, such as wabi, sabi, yugen, iki, and mono no aware, have become better known, some even popularized today.2 Some traditional Japanese art media, such as flower arrangement, Noh theater, haiku, martial arts, and, perhaps most prominently, tea ceremony, are now widely studied and sometimes practiced outside of Japan. The authors of all these studies generally characterize Japanese aesthetics by focusing on aesthetic concepts and phenomena that are unique to Japan and different from non-Japanese aesthetic traditions, the Western aesthetic tradition in particular. Meanwhile, recent scholarship in Japanese studies examines the historical and political context during the rapid process of Westernization (late nineteenth century through early twentieth century) that prompted Japanese intellectuals at the time rediscover and reaffirm the character, and sometimes superiority, of their own cultural tradition and values, particularly aesthetics. Some argue that, whether consciously or not, this promotion of cultural nationalism paved the way for the political ultra-nationalism that was the ideological underpinning of colonialism.3 Despite recent efforts introduce, popularize, or contextualize Japanese aesthetics, uncharted territories remain. In this paper I explore one such area: the moral dimension of Japanese aesthetics. I characterize the long-held Japanese aesthetic tradition be morally based by promoting respect, care, and consideration for others, both humans and nonhumans. Although both moral and aesthetic dimensions of Japanese culture have, independently, received considerable attention by scholars of Japanese aesthetics, culture, and society, the relationship between the two has yet be articulated. One reason may be that there is no specific term in either Japanese or English capture its content. Furthermore, although this moral dimension of aesthetic life is specifically incorporated in some arts, such as the tea ceremony and haiku, it is deeply entrenched in people's daily, mundane activities and thoroughly integrated with everyday life, rendering it rather invisible. Similarly, contemporary discourse on morality has not given much consideration this aesthetic manifestation of moral values, despite the emergence of feminist ethics, ethics of care, and virtue ethics. Although they emphasize humility, care, and considerateness, discourses on feminist ethics primarily address actions or persons, not the aesthetic qualities of the works they produce. Japanese aesthetics suggests several ways for cultivating moral sensibilities. In what follows, I focus on two principles of design: (1) respecting the innate characteristics of objects and (2) honoring and responding human needs. Exploring them is important not only illuminate this heretofore neglected aspect of Japanese aesthetics, but also call attention the crucial role aesthetics does

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 appealto nonacademic professionals and general audiences. This seminal work will be essential reading for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of 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 appealto nonacademic professionals and general audiences. This seminal work will be essential reading for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of Japanese aesthetics.

Reviewed by: Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture Richard M. Jaffe (bio) Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture. By Elisabetta Porcu. Brill, Leiden, 2008. xi, 263 pages. €119.00. Apart from a few notable exceptions, scholars of Japan not in the field of religious studies have paid little attention to the established Buddhist denominations after the Tokugawa period. English-language surveys of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese art, history, and literature lack in-depth analysis of the role of religion, particularly the established Buddhist denominations. If one looks at the now, admittedly, somewhat dated Cambridge History of Japan, for example, it is notable that the two volumes covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries do not have a single chapter devoted to religion, let alone Buddhism. More recent one-volume surveys of Japanese history do not do a much better job dealing with the topic. Historians are not unique in this regard. As Patricia Graham points out in her valuable recent survey of Buddhist art from the seventeenth century to the present, Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600–2005 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), most scholars of Japanese modern art and architecture have been equally dismissive of traditional Buddhist visual culture and the Buddhist sources that continue to inspire independent, secular artists. Elisabetta Porcu's Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture brings much-needed attention to Buddhism's impact on Japanese culture in the twentieth century. Although the main purpose of Porcu's work is to highlight the ongoing importance of Pure Land Buddhism, particularly Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism, in modern Japanese culture, her book also demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Buddhism in literature and the arts. In this fine book, Porcu explores why one of the largest established Buddhist denominations in Japan, Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land) Buddhism, has been overlooked as a vital cultural force in Japan. Porcu limits her discussion of Pure Land Buddhism's influence to literature, "creative" (visual) arts, and traditional arts (primarily tea ceremony), so entitling the book Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture is somewhat misleading. Many other vital cultural arenas (for example, politics, economics, and social organization) in which Pure Land Buddhism has played a role receive no mention. Nonetheless, Porcu does an excellent job revealing the contributions of Jōdo Shinshū to literature and the arts in modern Japan. Given the relevance of this subject for most Japanologists, it would be a shame if the high price of the book and the apparent narrowness of the topic prevented a wide readership. [End Page 198] Porcu builds on the writing of scholars such as Galen Amstutz1 who have attempted to explain why scholars have paid so little attention to Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism, despite its size and prominence. Porcu writes not as a partisan of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism but as one hoping to utilize the methods of the Study of Religion (Religionswissenschaft) to complicate mono-causal, essentialist understandings of modern Japanese culture that portray Buddhist creative arts and, particularly, traditional arts such as tea ceremony and flower arranging as solely the by-products of Zen Buddhist influence. In her useful first chapter, "Creating Images of Japanese Buddhism and Culture," the author traces how Orientalist and Occidentalist sentiments shaped the reconceptualization of Japanese Buddhism that took place during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like many other scholars of this subject, Porcu places blame for this monolithic understanding of the traditional arts and the use of Zen as a synecdoche for an unchanging Japaneseness at the feet of Japanese intellectuals D. T. Suzuki, Nishitani Keiji, Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, and Abe Masao, along with many others. In this chapter, Porcu provides a thorough summary of two decades of scholarship concerning the ways these proponents marketed their repackaged Buddhism as the foundation of Asian culture and Zen as a free-floating, decontextualized system of thought that had influenced every aspect of Japanese cultural life. The chapter does not depart from the conclusions of scholars such as Bernard Faure, James Ketelaar, Robert Scharf, and Judith Snodgrass with regard to the ways Japanese Buddhism was used to promote Japanese cultural nationalism. However, the author's command of Italian...

Reviewed by: New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics ed. by A. Minh Nguyen Thomas P. Kasulis (bio) New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics. Edited by A. Minh Nguyen. Lexington Books, Lanham MD, 2018. xxviii, 449 pages. $140.00, cloth; $49.99, paper; $47.50, E-book. This book is probably the most notable contribution in English to the field of Japanese aesthetics published in this century so far and one of the most significant in the past fifty years. My judgment rests on the remarkable range of disciplines and quality of contributors included. The first part of this review surveys that variety and the second raises issues for further study. Significance of the book. Besides the front material, the anthology includes 27 essays by established authorities in Japanese aesthetics from philosophy (Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Allen Carlson, Robert E. Carter, [End Page 294] David E. Cooper, Carol Steinberg Gould, Peter Leech, James McRae, John C. Maraldo, Mara Miller, Steve Odin, Graham Parkes, Yuriko Saito, Jason M. Wirth, and Michiko Yusa); from art/art history (David Bell, Richard Bullen, Mikiko Hirayama, and Matthew Larking); from Japanese language and literature (Cheryl Crowley, Hiroshi Nara, C. Mitchell Rich, J. Thomas Rimer, and Meera Viswanathan); and from Japanese culture/ ethnology and history (Timothy Unverzagt Goddard, Roy Starrs, Akiko Takenaka, and Koji Yamasaki). Not only are the fields multiple, but so are the specific arts addressed: gardens, martial arts, cinema, shakuhachi music, food, poetry, nō, Ainu arts, to name just some. Each essay is a gem, even more valuable for its place in the overall setting. None of the 27 essays is a reprint, each representing the latest thinking of each contributor. The chapters tilt toward contemporary phenomena but often vis-à-vis traditional aesthetic values. The authors address a general college-level audience rather than fellow specialists, making the book ideal for college library collections in either Japan studies or aesthetics/ philosophy of art. (As an anthology, price will guide course adoption.) The foreword by artist and art historian Stephen Addiss is an inviting entrée to the book with historical allusions to two key aspects of Japanese aesthetics: the Japanese appreciation of nature and its multiple (ancient, medieval, and Edo) interactions with China and (in the modern period) with the West. The introduction has two sections, the first being adapted from Saito's "Japanese Aesthetics: Historical Overview" in the Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (1998), edited by Michael Kelly. It was wise to make this the one exception to the rule that each contribution be new. Though concise, Saito's article introduces the general development of Japanese aesthetic ideas, hitting the highlights while introducing key concepts like wabi, sabi, yūgen, and yojō. She also contrasts Japanese aesthetic values with a couple of common Western aesthetic principles such as the "intentional fallacy," the interpretive rule that the artist's intention is irrelevant to the aesthetic evaluation of the artwork. This is a crucial contrast because Western aesthetics typically focuses on the artwork, whereas most Japanese aesthetics focuses on artistry, with the artwork's being only its final manifestation. (Sadly, even some essays in this volume sometimes blur this important difference.) The second section of the introduction is a précis of the book which philosopher-editor A. Minh Nguyen weaves from the authors' own abstracts of their chapters. This idiosyncratic technique works surprisingly well in unifying the volume, inviting the reader to peruse it in sequence instead of following the hopscotch approach more common in reading anthologies. Part 1 has essays by Carter, Cooper, Bullen, Odin, and Saito under the rubric of "Japanese Aesthetics and Philosophy." The most common theme (often associated by the authors with Zen Buddhism, an etiology I question [End Page 295] later in this review) is the aesthetic dissolution of the gap between subject and object, self and other, or humanity and nature, a unification achieved by dissolving the ego into its focus. The discussions include training within a communal context, appreciating the vague or hidden (where, as I explain below, mikkyō might have been influential), and cultivating expert knowledge—all with implications for ethical and spiritual, as well as aesthetic, development. Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Nishida Kitarō serve...

Reconstructing the City, Constructing the State: Government in Valparaíso after the Earthquake of 1906

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics that emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. The development of environmental aesthetics has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors have broadened environmental aesthetics beyond traditional aesthetics, and both have helped to set the central philosophical issues of the field, which are due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large, and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with the most basic questions, such as what and how to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, which are typically classified as either noncognitive or cognitive. Positions of the first type stress various kinds of emotional and feeling-related states and responses, which are taken to be the more noncognitive dimensions of aesthetic experience. By contrast, positions of the second type contend that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and thus that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each of these two kinds of approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, more recent work in environmental aesthetics demonstrates that although different in emphasis, they need not be in direct conflict. When conjoined, they bring together feeling and knowing, which combination is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, demonstrates how rewarding such appreciation can be. The initial versions of both noncognitive and cognitive positions were developed mainly by reference to large scale natural environments. Much of the more recent work in the field has focused on human environments as well as on the spaces, places and activities of everyday life. Although each of the noncognitive and cognitive positions is employed in this research, since these two approaches need not be in conflict, especially fruitful work in this area draws on and goes beyond both approaches. In addition to the aesthetics of human environments and everyday life, another new direction in environmental aesthetics has brought together the two approaches to develop an ecological aesthetics, which is favoured by some researchers in the continental tradition, and is actively pursued by scholars in China, where ideas similar to those of the two Western approaches are combined with ecosystem health and ecological ethics to produce a powerful version of what is called ecoaesthetics. The work by Chinese aestheticians is an example of the global orientation of environmental aesthetics, which has been an aspect of the field since its inception but is especially evident in the new work in the field. This global expansion is paralleled by other new research directions that constructively relate environmental aesthetics not simply to environmental policy and practice, but also to topics such as social, political and ethical concerns, animal treatment and protection, weather and climate change and the enrichment of the quality of human life.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japanese art and culture exhibitions at the world expositions served as a catalyst for widely spreading Japanese taste, called Japonisme, in the West for about 40 years. These exhibitions included Japanese teas, tea ceremonies, ceramics, and ukiyoe prints. Interest in Japanese tea ceremony in the United States was maximized in the early twentieth century, especially in the New England region, centering on the elite community of the culture and arts, including the so-called Boston Brahmins, as wealthy, white patrons utilized Japanese cultural objects as a means to signify their refined and eclectic taste. The individual mainly responsible for this phenomenon was Okakura Kakuzo (Okakura Tenshin), a strong advocate of the cha-no-yu, Japanese traditional tea ceremony and author of The Book of Tea. This article focuses on the role of Okakura Kakuzo in the Japanese tea ceremony spreading among the intellectuals and the upper class society in the Boston area during this period of cultural politics of East-West exchanges. It also explores why his book, The Book of Tea, published in English for Western readers is considered a classic for understanding Japanese culture theory in Western academia and art world to this day, and how, with his other book, The Ideals of the East, it provides a framework for forming debates and discourses on his viewpoints or tendency for Japanese nationalism and Asianism.

Against the backdrop of accelerating globalization, it is of great significance to conduct in - depth research on the similarities, differences, and integration of Eastern and Western aesthetics. This paper traces back the development histories of Eastern and Western aesthetics. Western aesthetics originated from ancient Greece and Rome and has shown a diversified trend after going through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and into the modern era. Eastern aesthetics is represented by China and Japan. Chinese aesthetics originated in the pre - Qin period and has developed through various dynasties, while Japanese aesthetics is influenced by Chinese culture but also has its own characteristics. The paper deeply analyzes the characteristics of both. Western aesthetics emphasizes rationality and logic, focuses on individual and self - expression, and aims at imitating and reproducing reality. Eastern aesthetics advocates nature and harmony, attaches importance to artistic conception and implicit expression, and emphasizes morality and humanistic spirit. It also compares the differences in aesthetic concepts and artistic expression forms, and explores the different manifestations in the fields of painting, architecture, and literature. By analyzing cases such as the paintings of Li Fangfang, the Western - style gates in the Western Mansions area of the Old Summer Palace, and the fashion designs of Ye Kaiwei, the paper analyzes the integration phenomenon. It points out that this integration brings vitality to artistic creation, promotes cultural exchange, and improves the quality of modern social life. In the future, Eastern and Western aesthetics are expected to further integrate and innovate, promoting the development of human culture.

In this essay I attempt to move the aesthetics of human environments away from what I call the designer landscape approach. This approach to appreciating human environments involves a cluster of ideas and assumptions such as: that human environments are usefully construed as being in general ''deliberately designed'' and worthy of aesthetic consideration only in so far as they are so designed, that human environments are in this way importantly similar to works of art, and that the aesthetics of human environments thus has much in common with the aesthetics of art. As an alternative to the designer landscape approach, I suggest that the aesthetics of human environments should be understood as a major area of the aesthetics of everyday life. To facilitate this shift I develop the idea of an ecological approach to the aesthetics of human environments and the related notion of functional fit. The ecological approach employs an analogy with natural ecosystems and, by stressing the role of functional fit in ea...

Reviewed by: Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought by Eric S. Nelson David Chai (bio) Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought. By Eric S. Nelson. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Pp. x + 344. Hardcover $114.00. ISBN 978–1-3500–0255-5. Eric Nelson's Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought opens with the following: "The work before you is an interpretive journey through the historical reception of Chinese and Buddhist philosophy in modern German thought, focusing in particular--albeit not exclusively--on the early twentieth century. Its intent is to describe and analyze the intertextual nexus of intersecting sources for the sake of elucidating implications and critical models for intercultural hermeneutics and intercultural philosophy. The possibility of such a philosophy is confronted by the persistent myth and prejudice that philosophy is and can only be a unique and exclusive Western spiritual achievement" (p. 1). The book is directed by "the question of who can philosophize, and who counts as a philosopher" (p. 2), a quintessential question indeed, but I wonder if it dawned on Nelson that this question never occurred to the people of Asia, rendering it an exclusively Western line of approach. The same can be said when Nelson writes: "The much-needed emancipation of philosophy from ethnocentrism, often cloaked in the language of a false universality, requires what could be called 'a critique of European reason,' or a deconstruction of the Eurocentric conception of rationality, which is simultaneously an internal immanent critique of the dialectic of Western philosophy and an exposure to the exteriority of its--in this case East Asian--others" (p. 3). Is this not also true of the lack of Chinese receptivity towards Western thought for much of its history? Until the arrival of the Jesuits in the 16th century, the Chinese lacked the means to converse with Western philosophy, Buddhism notwithstanding. Of course, Nelson is only concerned with the modern Western reception of East Asian thought, but this doesn't make my point moot. Indeed, if the West can engage the ancient traditions of the East, and be accused of misrepresenting or misconstruing their ideas, why is there no similar criticism being made of the modern Chinese reception of classical Western thought? Perhaps the reason is as Nelson says: "A more genuine encounter and dialogue is constrained and undermined by the colonial and racial history of modern Western philosophy" (p. 5). [End Page 1] Chapter 1 "traces episodes in the story of European Confucianism by exploring historical examples of the role and interpretation of Confucianism in modern German philosophy in general and in early twentieth-century thought in particular" (p. 16). A richly detailed historical and intellectual account, it is necessary for Nelson to provide this as it sets the stage for the analysis that follows in subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 examines Zhang Junmai's (1886–1969) relationship with Rudolf Eucken (1846–1926) and Hans Driesch (1867–1941), and how their life-philosophy influenced Zhang's own intercultural thinking. In light of the social and political chaos engulfing China at the turn of the 19th century, many Chinese intellectuals turned to the West for inspiration and potential solutions to the identity crisis sweeping their country. That Zhang turned to the life-philosopher Eucken and the neo-vitalist Driesch is both surprising and also fascinating because Zhang and Eucken co-authored a book in German in 1922 entitled: Das Lebensproblem in China und Europa (The Problem of Life in China and Europe). Nelson describes their collaborative work as "perceiving affinities between early Greek and Chinese thinking, particularly in their Socratic and Confucian moments, as critical reflection concerning the individual and social-political formation of life through self-cultivation and moral government" (p. 50). Such qualities were absent from the China of Zhang's time, deserted when the Qing empire collapsed a decade beforehand. Zhang, therefore, "articulates a modern Confucian philosophy that has learnt from and is open to learning and adopting from Western modernity, in particular from Kantian philosophy and liberal-constitutional and social democratic political thought, in the formation of a distinctive Chinese modernity achieved through a form of enlightenment suited...

Japanese original art theory and aesthetics studies can trace their origin to theories on Japanese poems written early in the tenth century. From the Middle Ages to the modern era, Japanese art theory developed in various other fields, such as Noh drama, floral art, tea ceremony, and so on. Since the Meiji-era most Japanese scholars, when examining aesthetics and art-related problems, have employed a science of ”aesthetics” that is fundamentally an import from the West. It was 西周 Nishi Amane who first introduced into Japan the Western idea of aesthetics, together with other philosophical disciplines, based on a perspective of encyclopedic enlightenment. The first writing on Western aesthetics introduced into Japan was the translation of L' esthetique by Eugene Veron, entitled 維氏美學 Ishi-bigaku. 森鷗外 Mori Ogai presented, however, first systematically aesthetics written by Eduard von Hartmann, and here an academic study of aesthetics has begun in Japan. The next problem was how to introduce the traditional culture to the West. At that time, the Meiji government was promoting extreme Europeanization policies, aiming to catch up with the advanced nations of the West. Japan's traditional arts and culture were being neglected, as symbols of conservative and temporizing elements. It was 岡倉天心 Okakura Tenshin who tried to revalue and revive the national cultural tradition. In this paper I will present a history of Japanese aesthetics in cultural conflict with the West.

Chanoyu (literally “hot water for tea”), alternately known as Sadō/Chadō (“The Way of Tea”), often described as “tea ceremony” in English, is an art of social interaction based around the preparation and consumption of matcha (powdered green tea). Considered an art form in its own right, since its development in the sixteenth century, tea culture has provided an important context for the creation, consumption, and display of art forms such as calligraphy, painting, ceramics, lacquerware, and metalwork, to name but a few. Scholarship on chanoyu began in the early twentieth century and burgeoned in the postwar period. Much of the scholarship is dominated by authors associated with the Urasenke School of Tea which has become the largest school both within Japan and internationally in the postwar period and has its own publishing arm, Tankōsha. There is therefore a bias in existing scholarship toward this school, its style of practice and history, however, this has begun to be corrected in recent years. There has been a trend away from focusing on a linear narrative of the development of chanoyu with a focus on the three so–called “founders” of chanoyu: Murata Jukō (Shukō) (b. 1422/3–d. 1502); Takeno Joo (b. 1502–d. 1555); and Sen no Rikyū (b. 1522–d. 1591). More attention is given to developments after the formative period in which they lived, as well as more nuanced approaches to the contributions of these leading figures. The material culture of tea has become an increasingly fruitful area of study, with attention being given not only to the objects themselves but to patterns of consumption, the role of tea practitioners as producers of tea utensils and patrons of craftsman, and the function of tea utensils in gift exchange, identity construction, and for cultivating political capital. Another burgeoning area of study is the role of women in both historical and contemporary tea practice, and what the study of tea brings to women’s lives. This is correcting the male-centered narratives of earlier scholarship. Much tea scholarship is historical but there is a growing interest in bringing academic perspectives to bear on contemporary practice. Recent English-language scholarship has moved away from the term “tea ceremony” because it is not a translation of any existing Japanese term, nor does it capture the breadth of the practice. The term “tea culture” or even simply “tea” is now preferred as it is more encompassing of the various art forms included within chanoyu.

This dissertation argues that throughout premodern Japan, classical Japanese poetry (waka) served as a vehicle for the transmission of social knowledge, cultural memory, and specialized information. Waka was originally indispensable to private and public social interactions among aristocrats, but it came to play a diversity of functions for warriors, monks, farmers, merchants, and other social groups at each and every level of premodern society and over many centuries, particularly from the late Heian period (785-1185) through the Edo period (1600-1868). To trace the changes in the social functions of waka, this dissertation explores several moments in the history of waka: the development of a pedagogy for waka in the poetic treatises of the Heian period; the reception of these works in anecdotal collections of the Kamakura period (1192-1333), particularly those geared towards warriors; the use of humorous waka (kyoka), in particular those with satiric and parodic intent, in Muromachi-period (1333-1467) narratives for commoners; and the use of waka as pedagogical instruments for the codification, preservation, transmission, and memorization of knowledge about disciplines as diverse as hawking, kickball, and the tea ceremony. In the epilogue, I trace the efforts of Meiji-period (1868-1911) intellectuals who sought to disconnect waka from any social or pedagogical function, in order to reconceptualize it under the modern European notions of “Literature” and “the Arts.” I conclude that the social functions of poetry in the premodern period should not be understood as extra-literary uses of poems that were otherwise composed as purely literary works in the modern sense. The roles that waka played in pedagogy, in particular in the transmission of cultural memory and social knowledge across diverse social spaces, were an inherent feature of the practice of waka in premodern Japan.

ФИЛОСОФИЯ И АРХИТЕКТУРА ЧАЙНЫХ ДОМИКОВ ЯПОНИИ