Working title of my research project
Narrative Semiotics of Aesthetic Nationalism:  Decoding Okakura Kakuzō’s History of Japanese Art through the Actantial Model of A.J. Greimas

Project description
This research examines how Okakura Kakuzō (1862-1913, known as Tenshin) adopted, re-interpreted and expanded Hegelian aesthetics in formulating a Japanese art history into a narrative of linear national development to distinguish and elevate Japan from other countries. Often described and even apotheosised domestically as the saviour of Japanese art, who recognised the need to preserve Japan’s cultural heritage from the threat of rapid modernisation, Okakura is said to have provided not only a framework for the disciplinary field of Japanese art history, but also a canon for the depiction of national art that emphasises the distinct beauties of Japan.

Using the actantial model of narrative semiotics developed by the structural linguist A.J. Greimas and analysing diachronically Okakura’s pursuit of fashioning a history of Japanese art, this research posits that both Okakura’s earlier achievements in the arts sector in Tokyo and his later publications in English (e.g., “The Ideals of the East” and “The Book of Tea”) would not have been possible without Hegelian philosophy and its central concept of the dialectically developing self-consciousness as their ‘adjuvant’.

It is hoped that the result of this research will contribute to scrutinising in a more dynamic and flexible way the aesthetic nationalism (as well as ‘Asiaticism’) within Okakura’s narratives, and at the same time, to elucidating the deep-structured mechanism of aesthetic nationalism existing in Japan until today — a kind of biishiki nationalism that in large part originated in Okakura’s eloquently and poetically presented narratives in the Meiji period and their re-interpretations proliferated during the 1930-40s.

Biography

1) Academic background:
MA in Museum Studies (2003, University of Leicester, UK);
MA in Social Linguistics (2007, Hitotsubashi University, Japan);
Since autumn 2008, PhD study in Japanology at the Ostasiatische Seminar (East Asian Seminar), University of Zurich.

2) Theses and publications:
Art History as Cultural Self-Portrait: “the Lectures on Japanese Art History” by Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), MA thesis, Hitotsubashi University, March 2007

The Potential of Museums for Promoting Citizenship Learning for Youth: Towards the Making of a Multicultural Japan, MA thesis, University of Leicester, July 2003

‘Exploration of Museums Studies in England’ in Museum Study Bulletin (March 2001), Meiji University Press, pp. 1-19.

3) Contact: wakakok@arcor.de (Jpn/Eng/Ger)