| Description |
1 online resource (xv, 260 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
In spring the cherry blossoms -- Change and nature -- Japanese poetics and a first consideration of animism -- Utsusemi, the Cicada's shell -- Hakanasa and mujo -- Anitya in a world of spontaneity -- Life as it seems, Nagarjuna's emptiness -- Shukke: leaving the world -- Success and failure -- The transcendental order/the order of here-and-now -- Zen, kata, and the noh theater -- Hedonism -- Matsuo Basho, permanence and change -- Mono no aware, the sadness of things -- Protocol and loyal retainers -- Inner and outer: the expanding context of modernity -- Monstrosity -- Change under the transcendental order -- Late-modern Japan (1868-1970) -- The colonial context: adapt or die -- Explaining Japan-linking here-and-now with the new world order -- Japan as bushido -- Japan as tea-ism -- Japan as erotic style -- In the margins of empire-the rape of Nanking -- Other horrors of life on the margins -- Kamikaze -- The a-bomb, and a new kind of nothing -- Occupation: radical change as salvation -- Decadence, moving away from form -- To live! -- Nihil versus nothingness -- Higashiyama Kaii: embracing passivity -- Return to evanescence -- Contemporary Japan (since 1970) -- Fashion and the joy of evanescence |
| Summary |
If we thought that reality were changeable, fragile, and fleeting, would we take life more seriously or less seriously? This book contemplates the notion of hakanasa, the evanescence of all things, as understood by the Japanese. Their lived responses to this idea of impermanence have been various and even contradictory. Asceticism, fatalism, conformism. Hedonism, materialism, careerism. What this array of responses have in common are, first, a grounding in hakanasa, and, second, an emphasis on formality. Evanescence and Etiquette attempts to illuminate for the first time the ties between an epistemology of constant change and Japan's formal emphasis on etiquette and visuality |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-252) and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Impermanence (Buddhism)
|
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Aesthetics, Japanese.
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Social & cultural anthropology -- Japan.
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Oriental & Indian philosophy -- Japan.
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HISTORY.
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Society.
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Aesthetics, Japanese
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Civilization -- Philosophy
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Impermanence (Buddhism)
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| SUBJECT |
Japan -- Civilization -- Philosophy
|
| Subject |
Japan
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| LC no. |
2008005344 |
| ISBN |
9780230615489 |
|
0230615481 |
|
1282198807 |
|
9781282198807 |
|
