Paper short abstract:

Shūzō Kuki's famous work, "The Structure of 'Iki'," discusses this eponymous Japanese sense of beauty as a philosophical concept and is still attractive for us to read today. In this presentation, I would like to think, whether taking 'iki' as a philosophical concept can be justified.

Paper long abstract:

Shūzō Kuki's (九鬼周造 1988-1941) The Structure of 'Iki' discusses this eponymous Japanese sense of beauty as a philosophical concept and is still attractive for us to read today. It has been well-attested that there are some problems in Kuki's study. One of these is concerned with his methodology, namely that Kuki applied a Western method of hermeneutics to his analysis of the Japanese sense of beauty "iki." The question then arises: Why can we use the Western method for the study of a sense of beauty that has a deep connection with our own culture and history, even though it cannot be translated exactly into other languages? In A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and Inquirer, Heidegger raised the following question about Kuki's theory: Why must "iki" be analyzed with the aid of aesthetics and concepts provided by aesthetics? For it seemed to Heidegger that aesthetics or philosophy derived from the West cannot adopt themselves to Asian thought. Many studies have indicated this methodological problem (cf. Takada 2002, Pincus 1991, Botz-Bornstein 1997).

In this presentation, I would like to try to confront this challenging question in a novel way. Clearly, it is important to answer this question since we frequently rely on Western concepts to talk about Japanese things, and even do so unconsciously. In order to grapple with this question, I will first need to examine Kuki's motivation and method. Then I will also need to examine Heidegger's critique. I hope that this presentation contributes not only to thinking about the possibility of Japanese philosophy, but also to considering how 'Japanese' philosophy is possible.