Ritualzeit – Zeitwahrnehmungen und Zeitpraktiken am Hof um 1000

A notable feature of courtly life in Japan were its ritualized procedures, which not only included periodical religious ceremonies but also political activities. Time at the court was of the essence for its ceremonial routine. Yet how did courtiers perceive their daily occupations in temporal regards, and to what extent did they evaluate their personal time, while the communal time was objectively measured and pronounced? How did those involved in courtly ceremonies encounter time in terms of its availability and its symbolic qualities, e.g. bemoaning a lack of time or adjusting to auspicious as well as ominous dates? Research so far has provided a profound understanding of time calculations, the courtly ritual calendar and especially the divination office, whose task it was to determine favourable days for the various activities at the court. In contrast, concrete political and religious acts at court have received less consideration as temporal processes. In order to find some answers to the outlined questions, I will focus on rituals as a case study of conceptions and practises of time. Information on courtiers’ dealings with their individual as well as social time can be obtained from various sources, among which I examine courtly diaries, with a special focus on Fujiwara no Yukinari’s diary Gonki. The author’s statements about time will help to elucidate some temporal aspects of courtly rituals as well as to deepen our knowledge of time perceptions at the Japanese court during its heydays.

Stuck in painful time: perception of time by individuals with eating disorders depending on their mood

Introduction: Eating disorders still pose a formidable challenge to health care professionals. The suffering of eating-disordered individuals may be profound, with the main contributing factors being low self-esteem, guilt and depression, a sense of hopelessness, and loneliness. The objective of the study was to determine how patients with eating disorders perceive time, and in particular whether their experience of time differs from that of healthy individuals. Another goal was to examine the relationship between the mood of the subjects and their time perspective. Materials and methods: The subjects were 30 women with eating disorders and 30 age-matched healthy female controls. The three measures applied were: the Time Metaphors Questionnaire by Małgorzata Sobol-Kwapińska, the Time Perspective Inventory by Philip Zimbardo, and the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist (UMACL) by Gerald Matthews et al. Results: As expected, statistical analyses revealed that women with eating disorders were characterised by a more negative perception of time than healthy subjects. The study also confirmed the expected correlations between positive and negative time perceptions and mood. Conclusion: The results appear to have a considerable scholarly and practical value, and should be used in the psychotherapy of eating-disordered individuals focusing on existential aspects, including in particular topics regarding the experience of time by sufferers.

Aesthetic Preference and Time: Preferred Painting Dilates Time Perception

In the domain of aesthetic preference, previous studies focused primarily on exploring the factors that influence aesthetic preference while neglecting to investigate whether aesthetic preference affects other psychological activities. This study sought to expand our understanding of time perception by examining whether aesthetic preference in viewing paintings influenced its perceived duration. Participants who preferred Chinese paintings ( n = 20) and participants who preferred western paintings ( n = 21) were recruited to complete a temporal reproduction task that measured their time perception of Chinese paintings and of western paintings. The results showed that participants who preferred Chinese paintings exhibited longer time perceptions for Chinese paintings than for western paintings, while the participants who preferred western paintings exhibited longer time perceptions for western paintings than for Chinese paintings. These results suggested that aesthetic preference could modulate our perceived duration of painting presentation. Specifically, individuals perceive longer painting presentation durations when exposed to the stimuli matching their aesthetic preferences.