{"id":1271,"date":"2024-11-13T20:53:52","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T20:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/?p=1271"},"modified":"2024-12-02T17:26:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T17:26:22","slug":"authenticating-culture-in-imperial-japan-kuki-shuzo-and-the-rise-of-national-aesthetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/2024\/11\/authenticating-culture-in-imperial-japan-kuki-shuzo-and-the-rise-of-national-aesthetics\/","title":{"rendered":"Leslie Pincus: review of Shuzo Kuki"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shuzo Kuki, a prominent Japanese philosopher of the early twentieth century, is best remembered for his seminal work, \u2018Iki no Kozo\u2019 (The Structure of Iki). His book was published in 1930; it explores the aesthetic concept of \u2018iki\u2019, which is a term that encompasses a sophisticated style prevalent in the late Edo urban culture of Japan. Kuki argued, that \u2018iki\u2019 embodied both ideas of cosmopolitanism and modernity, comparable to that of Western cultures.1<\/a><\/sup> Furthermore, especially after the second world war, Kuki\u2019s work would become more well known on the global scale, sparking recognition as a successful synthesis of both Western and Japanese aesthetics.<\/p>\n

Leslie Pincus, in her work \u2018Fascism and Aesthetics\u2019, critiques the general presupposition of a favourable western interpretation of Kuki\u2019s philosophy. Indeed, she makes the argument that there is a link between Kuki\u2019s 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\u2019s cultural superiority over the West.2<\/a><\/sup>Pincus calls for a reevaluation of Kuki\u2019s legacy; to reexamine the extent to which his work influenced cultural nationalism in Japan. She believes that by romanticizing the imperial rule as having \u2018traditional harmony\u2019, it led to the Japanese assertion of fascist ideologies,3<\/a><\/sup> who sought to impose these ideas that perhaps never even existed in history to begin with. Pincus offer\u2019s a critical look on Kuki\u2019s work, relating it to still have prevalence in the discussion of Japanese nationalism, modernity, and the ongoing dialogue between the West and Japan nowadays.<\/p>\n

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  1. Koshiro, Yukiko. Review of Fascism and Aesthetics, by Leslie Pincus. The Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (1997), p. 606 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Koshiro, Review of Fascism and Aesthetics, p. 606 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Koshiro, Review of Fascism and Aesthetics, p. 606 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Shuzo Kuki, a prominent Japanese philosopher of the early twentieth century, is best remembered for his seminal work, \u2018Iki no Kozo\u2019 (The Structure of Iki). His book was published in 1930; it explores the aesthetic concept of \u2018iki\u2019, which is a term that encompasses a sophisticated style prevalent in the late Edo urban culture of … Continue reading “Leslie Pincus: review of Shuzo Kuki”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions\/1492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}