1,721,005 research outputs found
L'estetica dell'ombra
No full textJapanese writers of the Meiji period (1868-1912)
were fascinated by light, which through the development
of technology had illuminated the country's dark cities.
The 'city without night', Tōkyō, symbolised
the transformation of Japan during the era of
modernisation and westernisation. Light is
an essential element in Tanizaki's early stories,
it is the rays of the sun that bring out the brilliance
of the tattoo in Shisei (The Tattoo) or the brightness
of the whiteness of the skin of western women: white
and beauty are synonymous. But what accentuates and gives
value to white is darkness. White in itself does not create
no aesthetic effect, except in the contrast
with black. The beauty lies in that indefinite space,
in that void where shadow thickens, which makes the
beauty of Japanese art inseparable from darkness.
A value that is not obvious, but can only be understood
only in the light of classical Japanese aesthetics.
In In'ei raisan (lit. In Praise of the Shadow) of 1933, this
traditional Japanese sensibility is posited as
antithetical to that of the modern West:
it is not a reversal in the aesthetic tastes
of the writer, nor an invective against modernity,
but an awareness of how the country has changed
following a model of westernisation that
Tanizaki did not share. The author reflects on
modernity in everyday life in the 1930s,
starting with the architecture of the home and the problems
faced by those who wanted to furnish a house
maintaining Japanese tradition and style.
In the conclusion he recognises that there is an area
where the aesthetics of shadow can still materialise:
That of art and literature
La scoperta dell'infanzia. Tanizaki, Vita e opere
No full textIn Japan's opening to the West and modernization in the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century, a profound revision of educational processes and gender formation is implemented. Boys and girls become the perspective model of adult citizen values. The modern education system gives literary impetus and popularity to stories concerning childhood and adolescence. In the two stories presented here, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō confronts these new values, anticipating some of the characters of his most famous characters in the mature production and approaching the subject of education from a critical point of view. Shōnen (Adolescents, 1911) and Chiisana ōkoku (The Little Kingdom, 1918), show how the writer devoted his writings to childhood not because he was nostalgic for the past but because children were essential to his artistic vision.
From his earliest works he gives imagination a primary role and recognizes the artistic fact as having absolute value. It has often been pointed out as a consequence of this attitude, the refusal to pay attention to political or social phenomena. However, it cannot be said that Chiisana ōkoku and Shōnen are devoid of ideological vision. Indeed, the very stories that feature children and childhood games as characters allow Tanizaki to subvert the social and ethical values of the time. In these stories, the writer seems to challenge the predominant ideology that saw childhood as the age of innocence and conceived of education with a rigid division of roles and gender. It is precisely the ambiguous nature of children that allows Tanizaki to invent, in the fiction of play, roles and themes opposed to the foundations of the modern nation, namely the patriarchal system. Chiisana ōkoku already suggests in its title an alternative world, a prophecy of a totalitarian regime; in Shōnen the transgressive Mitsuko wields power that was previously exclusively male and becomes the queen of her tiny, secret kingdom
Gen di Hiroshima 2
No full textPrima edizione critica dell'opera integrale tradotta dal giapponese in italiano, ampliata da note (M.Mariotti) e corredata dal saggio "Responsabilità e oblio: voci del genbaku bungaku, la letteratura della bomba atomica in Nakazawa Keiji" di Luisa Bienati. Corrisponde ai volumi originali 5, 6, 7, delle Edizioni Chuokoron
- …
