Shuzo Kuki, a prominent Japanese philosopher of the early twentieth century, is best remembered for his seminal work, ‘Iki no Kozo’ (The Structure of Iki). His book was published in 1930; it explores the aesthetic concept of ‘iki’, which is a term that encompasses a sophisticated style prevalent in the late Edo urban culture of Japan. Kuki argued, that ‘iki’ embodied both ideas of cosmopolitanism and modernity, comparable to that of Western cultures.1 Furthermore, especially after the second world war, Kuki’s work would become more well known on the global scale, sparking recognition as a successful synthesis of both Western and Japanese aesthetics.
Leslie Pincus, in her work ‘Fascism and Aesthetics’, critiques the general presupposition of a favourable western interpretation of Kuki’s philosophy. Indeed, she makes the argument that there is a link between Kuki’s modern aestheticism and political fascism, believing that Kuki both admired and was antagonistic towards the West, fearing complete cultural colonization, which is why he tried to assert Japan’s cultural superiority over the West.2Pincus calls for a reevaluation of Kuki’s legacy; to reexamine the extent to which his work influenced cultural nationalism in Japan. She believes that by romanticizing the imperial rule as having ‘traditional harmony’, it led to the Japanese assertion of fascist ideologies,3 who sought to impose these ideas that perhaps never even existed in history to begin with. Pincus offer’s a critical look on Kuki’s work, relating it to still have prevalence in the discussion of Japanese nationalism, modernity, and the ongoing dialogue between the West and Japan nowadays.