Artificial flowers

Presentation

The image of Japanese imitators has a long history: in Europe, it emerged in the 18th century, and until recently has gone through various characteristic phases. Although linked to modernization, this history not only sheds light on Japan's encounter with European culture, it also mirrors conceptions of art in the West, where counter-models were needed to support the idea that creation is the supreme value. The first part of this book aims to show, through discourses on Japan, how and why in the modern era the aesthetic question of imitation is at the heart of relationships of symbolic domination between cultures and, more broadly, between men.

The Japanese were not passive in the face of this situation. They assimilated and re-employed this discourse, particularly with regard to China, and tried to react to it, whether through denial, the reactivation of local know-how or the invocation of a national spirit. However, while they rejected most purely mimetic devices, they did not accept a purely subjective attitude to creation, manifested in a taste for all that, of matter, cannot be sublimated, such as earth or bone.

Analysis of major works of modern and contemporary Japan such as Kurosawa Akira's Living and Miyazaki Hayao's The Voyage of Chihiro aims to show, how great Japanese artists of the twentieth century made the notions of creation and imitation work together, and how these alternative approaches, which oppose a heroic and desocializing vision of the author, make it possible to assume, as much as possible, death in life.

Author

Michael Lucken is an art historian and Japanologist. He is University Professor at Inalco, Department of Japanese Studies.

278 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 19/05/2016
ISBN: 9782858312696