One Hundred Frogs in Steve McCaffery’s The Basho Variations

The article discusses Steve McCaffery’s The Basho Variations with a focus on various modes of transtranslation/transcreation/transaption of Matsuo Bashō’s famous frog haiku. The emphasis is placed on the complexities (of the processuality) of transtranslation which deliberately alters, distorts and reimagines the source text. The intercultural and intertextual quality of McCaffery’s poems is discussed in the context of multilevel references to classical Japanese aesthetics of haiku writing. The comparative reading of McCaffery’s and Bashō’s texts foregrounds the issue of events, or “frogmentary events,” and the importance of the role of the reader in completing poetic messages.

A Study on Creation Principles of Five-storied Pagoda: From the Perspective of Eco-aesthetics

The novel-Five-storied Pagoda-written by Japanese novelist Koda Rohan manifestly presents ecological consciousness from the perspective of the natural principle, the holistic principle, and the harmonious principle, which are the three principles of ecological aesthetics. By perceiving the harmonious atmosphere among man and nature, individuals themselves, individuals, and society in texts, we can learn that Koda Rohan insisted on traditional Japanese aesthetics and prospectively reflected on the modern aesthetic ideology of Japanese society after Meiji Restoration. This paper explores the aesthetic features of—Five-storied Pagoda—by analyzing text expression from a new angle, and probes into the relationship with the three principles of eco-aesthetics. It is aimed to determine the consensus between eastern aesthetics and ecological aesthetics, and it can be inferred that the consensus will, to a great extent, make a special contribution to enriching the construction of ecological aesthetics.

SHOP-WINDOWS IN JAPAN: WESTERN "OMOTE" AND JAPANESE "MA"

The article is devoted to the national specifics of Japanese shop-windows in an urban environment. In this regard, shop-windows are viewed from the point of view of the interaction of internal and external space, and not just as decor. The purpose of the article is to analyze how the traditional Japanese understanding of space was transformed under the influence of the Western lifestyle and the role of facades and shop-windows began to change. At the same time, it is important to understand that the Japanese designers managed to preserve the Japanese designers in shop-windows design after Westernization. First, according to F. Maki, the traditional Japanese concept of space "oku" ("oku - omote") is considered. Then, its transformation is investigated using the example of the so-called "sign houses" (kamban-kentiku). Then, in search of the national specifics of modern shop windows, the article studies modern shop-windows, and also analyzes the category of modern Japanese aesthetics "intermediate" "ma". The study concluded that the traditional Japanese understanding of space as a reversible void, when the most important thing is located in the depths of the “oku”, faced with the western way of life, is transformed into the model “Japanese oku (depth) - western omote (front side) ". Thus, there are “signage houses” of the kamban-kenchiku, the facade of which is “western”, and the rest with its “oku” is Japanese. In the further transformation, initially "western" shop-windows are also beginning to acquire Japanese characteristics. The most important role in this process is played by the modern category of Japanese aesthetics "ma", although it is closely related to tradition. It can be understood both as a generating void and as a connecting space.

New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics

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Bachelor Japanists: Japanese Aesthetics and Western Masculinities – Christopher REED

Bachelor Japanists offers readers an engaging and richly narrated look at Western “Japanism” of the 19th and 20th century—scholarly, collectionist, and creative engagements with Japanese culture, religion, art, and aesthetics—which, Christopher Reed argues, Western individuals and coteries used to construct queer “bachelor” identities, both male and female, eschewing marriage and evading the domestic norms of their day. The term bachelor, Reed underscores, is not [...]

Global Game

This chapter argues that video games, unlike literature and film, are most often depicted as a form of global art, free of ideologies and nationalist boundaries. It examines how such “global games” reconceive of race as campy and Asiatic through experiences of play, focusing on the games Street Fighter II, League of Legends, and Overwatch. These games, conceived as “global,” contain a dizzying diversity of racial stereotypes that fluctuate between the empowering and the offensive. Exploring theories of camp sensibility (Susan Sontag), traveling erotics (Roland Barthes), and Japanese aesthetics, this chapter asks how “global games” are played as gateways into “the Asiatic,” a playful and digital form of Asian-ish representation that straddles notions of the queer, the exotic, the bizarre, and the Orientalist.