Making a Case for a Cultural Exchange of Aesthetics between Europe and Japan: The Three Stages of Cultural Globalization

Abstract

What characterizes cultural globalization? In my paper I approach this question from an aesthetic point of view and with an especial focus on the exchange of cultures between Germany and Japan. The aim of this paper is to show that the process of cultural globalization occurs in three distinct stages discussed below: Stage One: Eastern and Western worldviews unified during the Age of Discovery. Up until this time, European- or Christian-oriented images of the world had prevailed in Europe, while specifically Asian worldviews abounded within Asia. In 1602, Matteo Ricci (Pinyin: Li Madou, 1552-1610), an Italian missionary, drew up his World Map, thus enabling Asians and Europeans for the first time to develop common worldviews. However, this exchange between the East and the West remained a partial one, as can be seen in the case of the chinoiserie or japonaiserie in Europe and the reception of European paintings in Japan. Stage Two: During the 19th century, the imperialism that led to the hegemony of European culture in Asia became established as an absolute standard. The Eurocentric assertion that Eastern culture was an earlier stage of Western culture spread not only throughout Europe, but also within some Asian nations that had been compelled into modernization, namely westernization. For example, a Neo-Hegelian view of world history developed among many peoples in Asia. Stage Three: The period commencing during the latter half of the 19th century and continuing through the start of the 20th century saw a rise of Asian nations. In Asia, cultures were constrained by modernization and European culture was accepted as the absolute standard. However, simultaneously, these same Asian countries began to recompose and reinterpret their own traditional cultures. Such movements in Asia came to react to, transform, and relativize the cultural standard that had originated in Europe. That is, those Asians involved in a globalizing process became active participants in that process, an action that characterizes cultural exchange in the globalized age in the true sense of the word. In my paper, I examine this cultural exchange with an especial focus on how modern Japanese aesthetics address modernization or westernization, and I draw on Kakuzo (Tenshin) Okakura (1862-1913), Curt Glaser (1879-1943), and Tetsuro Watsuji (1889-1960) as examples. It is concluded that cultural globalization is not a univocal process that can be dictated exclusively by one particular culture; cultural globalization is instead a manifold process; it grows as a collective project among various cultural systems that are often in collision. The task of intercultural philosophy is to pay attention to these interactions between cultures and to understand each cultural phenomenon as a collaboration between various cultures.