Aesthetics in JapanAuthor(s): Masao YamamotoSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 11, No. 2, Special Issue on OrientalArt and Aesthetics (Dec., 1952), pp. 171-172Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/426043 .

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AESTHETICS IN JAPAN*

MASAO YAMAMOTO

The theory of beauty and of art in Japan has a long history, as traditional as art itself. But on the whole it is rather personal reflection on the experiences of the artist, lacking in systematic construction and objective description. It is no more than one hundred years that we have had aesthetics as science or philos- ophy. The reasons are, (1) that our traditional art has developed in the wide field of synthetic worth of culture or life and has not been differentiated dis- tinctly into an individual division of the value of art; (2) that our artist has been inclined to set more value, not on the work of art, but on the creative effort it- self for his character-building and has not needed systematic art-theory, which is abstracted from the art-practice. And moreover, (3) that our traditional sci- ence or learning has had also such synthetic and practical character.

In 1867, for the first time, Amane Nishi (1829-1897) lectured enlighteningly on European aesthetics in his private school at Ky6to. Since then, this scientific thought was introduced to the Japanese people for about fifteen years following, through the writings of Haven, V6ron, Chamber, Fenollosa etc. Further from about 1880 the current of western arts streamed into Japan and called for critical studies of art. Thus it came to happen that aesthetic theory was required as the basis for art criticism. Hajime Onishi (1864-1900), Rintar6 Mori (1862- 1922), Rinjir6 Takayama (1871-1902), Yasuji Otsuka (1868-1931), and Taki- taro Shimamura (1871-1918) searched for several trends of western aesthetics; e.g., first the idealistic aesthetics of Kant, Hegel, and Hartmann, the enlighten- ment aesthetics of Diderot and Voltaire, the empirical aesthetics of Hutcheson and Burke, and the realistic aesthetics of Herbart; later the scientific aesthetics of Fechner and Volkelt, of Spencer, Sully, Allen, Santayana, Wundt, Grosse, and Groos, of Guyau and Plechanov. But after these endeavors about thirty long years it was proved that the theory of western aesthetics is not directly applicable to our traditional art. Therefore our aesthetics, turning away from art criticism, consequently from the current of the arts of those days, was obliged to make its own methodological study, so as to solve the hard problem which resulted from heterogeneity between the western and the eastern art.

From about 1910 to World War II the aesthetic seminars of our main universi- ties pursued such a purpose. Of course these studies went on in close connection with the development of western aesthetics. That is to say, in Tokyo University Dr. Yasuji Otsuka and Dr. Yoshinori Onishi (1888- ) held a typological method of aesthetics under influences of Dilthey's life philosophy and the phenomeno- logical school. Especially Dr. Onishi applied this method to our traditional art. In Ky6to University Dr. Yasukazu Fukada (1878-1928) and Dr. Toshizo Ueda (1886- ) tried to establish aesthetics as philosophy of art from a standpoint of transcendentalism, criticizing the theories of Fiedler, Croce, Dessoir, and Utitz.

* Read at the Orientation Conference of the-Seminar in American Studies at the T6ky6 University, July 13, 1951.

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172 REVIEWS

In T6hoku University Prof. Jiro Abe (1883- ) undertook to systematize the aesthetics "von innen heraus" against the aesthetics "von oben" and "von unten," with reference to the psychologism of Lipps and the life philosophy. And in Waseda University Dr. Umaji Kaneko (1870-1937) advocated also aesthetics as philosophy of art in deep consideration of the development from the aesthetics of the German romantic school to the aesthetics of existentialism.

Now after World War II many young scholars took up these important courses of aesthetic studies, each choosing his own. And it is worthy of our notice that these young scholars, who were studying hitherto each by himself, have now found a more effective way. Namely in 1949 all Japanese students of aesthetics organized the Japanese So4iety for Aesthetics with leadership of the former mem- bers of the Society for Aesthetic Researches both in T6ky6 and Kyoto Univer- sity. This Society has issued quarterly Bigaku (Aesthetics) and has held annually six meetings both in the East and the West Division and one all-Japan congress. It has remarkably quickened not only the synthetic progress of aesthetics in Japan, e.g., the theoretical connection between aesthetics and art history, and the comparative study of arts; but also the exchange of results of aesthetic study with foreign societies, e.g., the American Society for Aesthetics. At any rate, to explain the intrinsic value of the Japanese arts, and further, that of the Oriental arts and to bring them into the field of universal art-worth or into the cultural history of the world is the present task of students of Japanese aesthetics. And additionally, it seems that problems of the cultural function of art and art educa- tion will require our efforts in future.

REVIEWS

GIBSON, JAMES J. The Perception of the Visual World. Boston, 1950, Houghton Mifflin, pp. xii + 235, $4.00. Setting out as a comprehensive "text," the book develops rapidly into an exposition of

the author's findings and ideas in the field of space perception. This is just as well, although an up-to-date book on visual perception in general is badly needed. For Dr. Gibson is one of the very few people who have made a substantial contribution to the theory of space per- ception since the earlier gestalt studies. His work is now conveniently accessible.

Rehabilitation of vision as a cognitive tool is overdue. Traditionally it has been assumed that vision in itself could provide little more than mosaics of color dots and that the qual- ities of shape, motion, and depth were added to it by courtesy of other mental faculties, such as the sense of touch, association through repetition, logical speculation, and the per- ceptions of the past (which for some reason were considered wiser than those of the present). Recently a veritable temple of thought has been elected on the notion that three-dimen- sional vision is based on nothing but "assumptions." In the face of such trends Dr. Gibson shows that the visual experiences of depth, slant, volume, and motion in space, are pre- cisely correlated with corresponding properties of the retinal image. His principal result is that in many cases these stimulus correlates are gradients, that is, scales of size, intervals, or speed. In particular he has worked out the patterns of apparent centrifugal, centripetal, and transversal movement in the environment by which an observer in motion perceives the

direction of his travel.

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