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The tea ceremony and the martial arts are intimately linked in the
popular and historical imagination with Zen Buddhism, and Japanese
culture. They are commonly interpreted as religio-aesthetic
pursuits which express core spiritual values through bodily gesture
and the creation of highly valued objects. Ideally, the experience
of practising the Zen arts culminates in enlightenment. This book
challenges that long-held view and proposes that the Zen arts
should be understood as part of a literary and visual history of
representing Japanese culture through the arts. Cox argues that
these texts and images emerged fully as systems for representing
the arts during the modern period, produced within Japan as a form
of cultural nationalism and outside Japan as part of an orientalist
discourse. Practitioners' experiences are in fact rarely referred
to in terms of Zen or art, but instead are spatially and socially
grounded. Combining anthropological description with historical
criticism, Cox shows that the Zen arts are best understood in terms
of a dynamic relationship between an aesthetic discourse on art and
culture and the social and embodied experiences of those who
participate in them.
The tea ceremony and the martial arts are intimately linked in the popular and historical imagination with Zen Buddhism, and Japanese culture. They are commonly interpreted as religio-aesthetic pursuits which express core spiritual values through bodily gesture and the creation of highly valued objects. Ideally, the experience of practising the Zen arts culminates in enlightenment. This book challenges that long-held view and proposes that the Zen arts should be understood as part of a literary and visual history of representing Japanese culture through the arts. Cox argues that these texts and images emerged fully as systems for representing the arts during the modern period, produced within Japan as a form of cultural nationalism and outside Japan as part of an orientalist discourse. Practitioners' experiences are in fact rarely referred to in terms of Zen or art, but instead are spatially and socially grounded. Combining anthropological description with historical criticism, Cox shows that the Zen arts are best understood in terms of a dynamic relationship between an aesthetic discourse on art and culture and the social and embodied experiences of those who participate in them.
This book challenges the perception of Japan as a 'copying culture'
through a series of detailed ethnographic and historical case
studies. It addresses a question about why the West has had such a
fascination for the adeptness with which the Japanese apparently
assimilate all things foreign and at the same time such a fear of
their skill at artificially remaking and automating the world
around them. Countering the idea of a Japan that deviously or
ingenuously copies others, it elucidates the history of creative
exchanges with the outside world and the particular myths,
philosophies and concepts which are emblematic of the origins and
originality of copying in Japan. The volume demonstrates the
diversity and creativity of copying in the Japanese context through
the translation of a series of otherwise loosely related ideas and
concepts into objects, images, texts and practices of reproduction,
which include: shamanic theatre, puppetry, tea utensils, Kyoto town
houses, architectural models, genres of painting, calligraphy, and
poetry, 'sample' food displays, and the fashion and car industries.
This book challenges the perception of Japan as a 'copying culture'
through a series of detailed ethnographic and historical case
studies. It addresses a question about why the West has had such a
fascination for the adeptness with which the Japanese apparently
assimilate all things foreign and at the same time such a fear of
their skill at artificially remaking and automating the world
around them. Countering the idea of a Japan that deviously or
ingenuously copies others, it elucidates the history of creative
exchanges with the outside world and the particular myths,
philosophies and concepts which are emblematic of the origins and
originality of copying in Japan. The volume demonstrates the
diversity and creativity of copying in the Japanese context through
the translation of a series of otherwise loosely related ideas and
concepts into objects, images, texts and practices of reproduction,
which include: shamanic theatre, puppetry, tea utensils, Kyoto town
houses, architectural models, genres of painting, calligraphy, and
poetry, 'sample' food displays, and the fashion and car industries.
Beyond text? Critical practices and sensory anthropology is about
the relationship between anthropological understandings of the
world, sensory perception and aesthetic practices. It suggests that
if different sensory experiences embody and facilitate different
kinds of knowledge, then we need to develop new methods and more
creative forms of representation that are not based solely around
text or on correspondence theories of truth. The volume brings
together leading figures in anthropology, visual and sound studies
to explore how knowledge, sensation and embodied experiences can be
researched and represented by combining different visual, aural and
textual forms which it demonstrates through an accompanying DVD.
The book and DVD make an argument for a necessary, critical
development in anthropological ways of knowing that take place not
merely at the level of theory and representation but also through
innovative fieldwork methods and media practices. -- .
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