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Published: 30 October 2019

Contemporary Asian art and

Western societies: cultural
“universalism” or “uniqueness” in
Asian modern art
Dirk Michel-Schertges

Asian Journal of German and European Studies 4,

Article number: 6 (2019) Cite this article

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Abstract

The expectations modern art has to fulfill are of

various kind. Modern art is to be a seismograph
of societal developments and thus sensitive to
political and economic themes. Thus, Western
(critical) contemporary art is in the dilemma to
deal with and challenge capitalism in mostly
bourgeois frameworks of musealized
exhibitions, criticizing political leadership and
social inequalities and presenting it largely to
exactly the established classes. Here
contemporary art’s task lies in both the
individual and arts self-reflection and self-
critique. Creating awareness of individual and
collective historical processes and being able to
sense and experience societal antagonisms can
be described as conscious making by the means
of critical modern art. Taking in account that to
learn (socio-historically) art and thus to be able
to sense dissonances is a pre-condition to
understand modern art the question arises:
How to deal with contemporary art from
foreign cultures and unfamiliar civilizations?
How to understand Asian critical contemporary
art with a Western sensual kind of sensing and
understanding? It is the question of universality
and uniqueness of modern art and/or the
integrating power of Western capitalism and
consumerism within the sphere of critical art. Is
it possible to sense and understand Chinese or
Japanese art with a Western education and
different socio-historical and political-
economical understanding? How to decipher
and contextualize modern art without “cultural
expertise”? This contribution deals with the
contradictions between the (cultural) particular
and the general serving as gatekeepers for
sensing societal and historical grown
antagonisms and sensing of cultural and social
dissonances in modern art production. Is
modern art by definition Western? By
experiencing Asian modern art the purpose of
this research is to find the particularities and
the general of (Asian) critical modern art.

Globalization, culture and art tourism

In the course of globalization and

industrialization, art has been becoming
increasingly a subject of (inter) national
interest. With the development of the tourist
industry, art and cultural entertainment has
proven to be an important economic (national)
factor in most countries. “Art tourism has
always been stimulated by the relative
immobility of art – that for a variety of reasons
it is ‘placed’, where it was created, or where it is
collected together, or where it is displayed,
where it is traded and where it is embedded in
the cultural life of specific cities, civilisations
and peoples.” (Franklin 2018, p. 404–405).
Before modern globalization and the global
expansion of the international travel
infrastructure, the modern phenomenon of
“(mass) tourism” was unknown and the
purpose to travel was mostly related to reasons
of trade, education or pilgrimage. However,
cultural education, learning languages and
getting familiar with other cultures by the
means of travelling has been a privilege of the
rich. Howard Hughes emphasizes that from the
16th to the early nineteenth Century the British
young (male) upper-class travelled around
Europe to gain knowledge and experience “of
government and culture before returning to
‘settle down’ to the business of land-owning and
governing. This, by the eighteenth century, had
become common for men of wealth,
accompanied by tutor and servants. The
particular focus was usually Italy as the
birthplace of the Renaissance and of the earlier
Roman civilization though France was an
important destination also. ‘Pleasure’
undoubtedly featured in this Grand Tour
despite the high-minded intentions and there
were many opportunities for pleasurable
diversion such as plays, concerts, parties,
socializing, sexual encounter, eating and
drinking during the journey and at destinations.
By the end of the eighteenth century the
‘pleasure’ attractions of Italy, its people, climate
and way of life, were increasingly recognized as
being the reason for travel (Withey, 1998).”
(Hughes 2000, p. 49). Nowadays, the “traveler”
has turned into a “tourist”. The first one was
open and spontaneous with respect to time and
space due to financial possibilities and/or
occupation-related-freedom, when the latter
one is restricted to a narrow time frame and
financial resources as a result from the
respective (national) wage-labor contractual
agreements on the duration of vacation and the
level of income. In the beginning of the tourism
industry, the aim of the masses was to travel in
order to relax and regain their work power.
However, with the increase in white-collar labor
the focus shifted more and more to cultural
tourism. Hughes differentiate between
“universal cultural tourism”, “wide cultural
tourism”, “narrow cultural tourism” and
“sectorized cultural tourism”. Concerning
universal cultural tourism, Hughes states that
most “international tourism is ‘cultural’ in this
sense because it usually involves some exposure
to aspects of other cultures. Even those tourists
who do not deliberately seek to experience
other cultures will be exposed, to some degree,
to the culture of destinations. It would be
misleading though to classify it as cultural
tourism as it does not have a deliberate
‘cultural’ purpose.” (Hughes 2000, p. 52). Wide
cultural tourism is related to experience
different (national) cultural areas, as for
example, “the arts, crafts, work, religion,
language, traditions, food and dress” (Hughes,
2000, p. 52) that are related to non-Western
ethnic cultural heritages. However to
experience just (superior) cultural techniques,
intellectual and/or artistic artworks, and not
everyday culture is framed as narrow cultural
tourism (Hughes 2000, p. 52). Sectorized
cultural tourism is understood as
historical/heritage, arts and musealized
tourism (Hughes 2000, p. 53), that is museum-
and exhibition-hopping in order to reassure to
see originals artworks from the famous artist
and cultural workers.
Adrian Franklin differentiates between cultural
tourism and art tourism. For him “cultural
tourism is the putative orientation of tourists to
learning or experiencing at firsthand the
cultural specificity of any given destination.
While this is certainly true for many activities
often included in cultural tourism, Stylianou-
Lambert (2011) shows that it is certainly not
true for them all, and especially not in the case
of visitors to art museums.” (Franklin 2018, p.
401). Art museums are characterized by their
specific subject matter that is more related to
(cosmopolitan) arts enthusiasts than to tourists
showing an interest in knowing better other
cultures. Franklins sees the increase of art
tourism in relation with urban development,
that is the growing numbers of art museums
and urban festivals, as well as “the centrality of
art, and especially of contemporary art to
contemporary life, culture, design, making and
the life-chances of cities and regions; the
growing significance of major exhibitions,
events, biennales and festivals (Seffrin, 2006;
Stevenson, 2003) and the generalised hope that
tourism and cultural florescence will go a
significant way towards replacing the jobs,
income, identity and morale – in other words,
the vitality of urban, regional and national life –
from lost manufacturing, industry and trade
(Grodach, 2008; Landry, 2012; Plaza, 2000)”
(Franklin 2018, p. 401).
However, the focus of art, culture and tourism
is too one-sided putting the viewer/observer
and consumer in the middle of the interest but
neglecting largely the history of the artwork, its
socio-cultural aspects of the artists as well as
the power relations that are related to Western
art hegemony.

Culture, history and modern (Asian) art

In thesis XVII in “Theses on the Concept of

History” Walter Benjamin emphasizes that
historicism ends up in universal history and
that the additive methodological approach of
historicism “offers a mass of facts, in order to
fill up a homogenous and empty time”
(Benjamin 1992, p. 152). According to this
concept to understand and classify history,
historical events and products, human
achievements are summed up in a linear and
homogenous order. Benjamin opposes this
approach with the concept of materialist
history. Understanding history as a constructive
principle, the historical materialist works with
the historical object while grasping it as a
monad, a unique encounter in history having
the potential to confront the suppressed past.
“He perceives it, in order to explode a specific
epoch out of the homogenous course of history;
thus exploding a specific life out of the epoch,
or a specific work out of the life-work. The net
gain of this procedure consists of this: that the
life-work is preserved and sublated in the work,
the epoch in the life-work, and the entire course
of history in the epoch. The nourishing fruit of
what is historically conceptualized has time as
its core, its precious but flavorless seed.”
(Benjamin 1992, p. 152).
Benjamin’s critique on historicism can serve as
example how historiography can narrow down
(historical) perception and thus reducing the
potential of understanding the past and its
relatedness to the present and future. In the
same way, historicism is treating specific events
and time in an inadequate way, a parochial
focus on regional and cultural space conceals
(inter-) cultural complexity.
The origin and development of modern art is
typically related to modernity and the
perception of Western society’s industrial
development, progress and societal fractions.
The concept of individuality and the capability
to question and confront (societal) appearances
and general social assumptions with modern
artwork seem to be related to Western master
narratives of modern art. However, the
development of (modern) art is not absolute
spatially separated. Even if China as well as
Japan closed themselves up for foreigners for a
specific period, Asian artists and artwork have
influenced European artists. In line with the
world exhibitions in Paris, that is the
“Exposition Universelle” in 1855, 1867 and
1878, Japanese Ukizo-e-woodcuts became
known and inspired, for example, Claude
Monet. From the two-dimensional graphic
artworks made by Utagawa Hiroshige and
Katsushika Hokusai Édouard Manet learned to
shorten drastically the perspective in his
paintings. And Monet did not just adopt the
shortened perspective but integrated
additionally the asymmetric composition of
Ukiyo-e in order to create emotional tension
(Gompertz 2014, p. 62). According to
Gompertz, many European artists adopted
Japanese techniques and integrated them in
their work. Especially the impressionists have
been “impressed” by the plain elegance. Edgar
Degas was fascinated by the artist Hiroshige
who produced, inter alia, graphics of all 53
resting stations of the 470-km long street from
Edo to Kyoto (Gompertz 2014, p. 63). One can
see the influences of Hiroshige’s work especially
in Degas’ painting “Dance Lesson” where he
works with alike techniques as Hiroshige in the
artwork “The Station Otsu”. Both works are
composed with a bird’s eye perspective and
integrate a diagonal – from lower left to upper
right – thus transmitting a feeling of movement
and creating a spatial construction giving the
notion that the action in the scene is moving to
the upper right, even out of the graphic. With
these techniques, Degas gives the impression of
movement and immediacy in his paintings
(Gompertz 2014, pp. 63–66). However, at least
until the mid-nineteenth Century it was not a
cultural exchange, rather a one-sided transfer.
Because of their contacts to foreign countries
and their acquired knowledge and techniques
from the so-called “Dutch-sciences”, the painter
Watanabe Kazan (1793–1841) and the physician
Takano Chôei (1804–1850) have been
negatively sanctioned by their Shôgun (Ishida
2008, pp. 29–30).
In the letters from Arles, Vincent van Gogh
describes, especially in the ones to his brother,
Theo, the enormous influence of Japanese
artwork on his artistic development. He bought
many Japanese prints himself and he admired
the Japanese artists’ dedication, art-focused
way and simple way of living as well as
relatedness to nature. The (diagonal)
perspective, asymmetrical composing of the
scenery as well as the heavy contours, the use of
color and the intense focus on the simplest
motifs fascinated him. In a letter from Tuesday,
June 5, 1888, he writes to his brother: “Look,
we love Japanese painting, we’ve experienced
its influence — all the Impressionists have that
in common — and we wouldn’t go to Japan, in
other words, to what is the equivalent of Japan,
the south? So I believe that the future of the
new art still lies in the south after all.
(…) I’d like you to spend some time here, you’d
feel it — after some time your vision changes,
you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel
colour differently. I’m also convinced that it’s
precisely through a long stay here that I’ll bring
out my personality. The Japanese draws
quickly, very quickly, like a flash of lightning,
because his nerves are finer, his feeling simpler”
(Van Gogh 1888).
Even if Asian art in general and Japanese art in
particular influenced and coined (especially)
from the beginning of the nineteenth century
European artists, Asian art was never really
recognized as art stile competing with European
and American art stiles and movements. It was
rather acknowledged as a curiosity, as an exotic
stylish ingredience giving the European artwork
more impression but Asian Art did not get the
recognition for its very own sake. A decade ago,
David Clarke claimes that it was difficult to find
Western artists giving the expression that they
could learn something meaningful from
contemporary Asian art (2002, p. 238).
Contemporary Asian art falls in terms of
recognition far behind the pioneers of European
modern art. “Despite vastly increased
possibilities for travel and the massive high-
speed flows of information between cultures in
our electronic age the asymmetry of knowledge
which prevailed in the 1920s and 1930s still
exists: it is the Asian contemporary artist who
knows what his or her American counterpart is
doing and not the other way around.” (Clarke
2002, p. 238). However, Clarke notes a change
in interest, but he makes clear that this interest
is primary in “contemporary art exhibition
spaces rather than in studios” (2002, p. 238)
and it is the interest of curators and not of
artists. Although admitting that there are signs
of a change Clarke believes that due to the lack
of a sense in mainstream or of artistic progress
that comes along with the postmodern era that
Asian art is still regarded as regional
peculiarity. He claims: “Rather than forcing a
reorganization of the system of conceptual
pigeonholes, Asian contemporary art may still
be placed as a further temporary novelty for
Western palates or viewed as comforting
evidence that the non-Western world is
becoming more like the West, is learning to
speak its (artistic) language.” (2002, pp. 238).
Even if Asian contemporary art is increasingly
displayed, it seems to be that the context is
more a Western appropriation. To support this
hypothesis, Clarke points to different examples
in order to show the missing acknowledgment
of Asian in general and Chinese art in
particular. Considering popular US-American
college art textbooks, he emphasizes that in the
textbook “Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, for
instance, [it] seems so unaware of the basic
facts of modern Chinese history that its ninth
edition (published 1991) can have a sub-
heading in its only chapter on Chinese Art
which reads ‘Ming, Ch’ing, and Later
Dynasties’. There were no ‘later dynasties’, of
course, and a mindset is revealed which wants
to subsume modern Chinese history into that
which had preceded it, to emphasise continuity
over change.” (2002, p. 240). And he continues
that placing the Chinese art chapter before
European Renaissance indicates the
development of European and Western art
shows Chinese art – in comparison to the
Euramerican one – as “static” and
“homogeneous”. Clarke continues with
Gombrich’s book “The Story of Art” revealing
the unquestioned leading Western perspective
in matters of art and with Sherman Lee’s “A
History of Far Eastern Art” where Chinese art is
“compressed” to some worthy examples of
Chinese art whilst ignoring Asian art in the
twentieth Century. He concludes that because
treating Asian art in the textbooks more in
anecdotal way “that even where modern and
contemporary Asian art is being dealt with in
the classroom, it is being largely confined to an
Asian Studies ghetto and not placed alongside
its European and North American counterpart”
(Clarke 2002, p. 240). Like the contemporary
scientific hegemony, that is neglecting, for
example, Arabian scientific achievements;
Western art hegemony either ignores other
cultural art traditions not taking them as equal
worthy, or is treating art otherness as exotic
and different as supplement. Caught in the
world of ideas of Euramerican history, not
being aware of the regional cultural socio-
historical developments art history is mainly
centered on narratives of Western artists.
However, with the acceleration of
contemporary globalization it gets increasingly
difficult to ignore cultural art otherness or at
least to accept socio-historical (art)
developments influencing mutually – more or
less – each other. “Indeed, what is needed is a
dethroning of Western-centred narratives of
artistic modernity altogether, an awareness of
the variety of ways of responding to the modern
condition that artists in different cultural
situations have made. What might be crucial in
one cultural situation may have no relevance in
another: early 20th-century Chinese
modernism for instance had no need for
Cubism since there had not been the several
hundred year dominance of illusionistic realism
that European art was attempting to throw off.”
(Clarke 2002, p. 241). In order to begin to
create awareness and understanding of
different cultural historical contexts and the
interrelating – as well as different – aspects of
global art development is a fundamental change
in the perception and appreciation of art
deriving from unprejudiced acknowledgment of
cultural regional developments. Or as Clarke
puts it: “Only when a multiplicity of such
perspectives exist, in dialogue but with none
granted in advance any particular priority, can
we talk of art history as having become
globalised as a discipline. Globalisation requires
an insight into the local nature of meaning
which rules out the possibility of a panoptic
mastering viewpoint.” (Clarke 2002, p. 241).

European art hegemony

In line with Clarke’s argument, there is,

according to John Clark, a lack of discourse in
global art history taking modern Asian art
seriously into account. Pinpointing to single
examples, such as the exhibition in 1834 in
Amsterdam of the Asian artist Raden Saleh,
Clark states that Asian modern art was not
seriously recognized in the global discourse
before the Venice Biennale in 1993 where
especially Chinese artists presented their works.
Until then global art was covered “by an
immanent Euramerican hegemony” (Clark
2014, p. 68). This can be explained by “the
pragmatic interlinking and its hermeneutic
positioning” of the “empirical nature of art
practice” (Clark 2014, p. 68). Until the 1990s
postmodern, postcolonial, transnational as well
as global discourses served as the conceptual
framework of art interpretation. Another
approach is “the ‘worlding’ of phenomena—the
application of interpretive frames to art
discourses that are visible in a global
perspective across cultural and temporal zones
—that have been occluded, by Euramerican
domination, as derivative or different from
those in Euramerica. This occlusion did not
mean these discourses, which include parallel
or alternative modernities made possible by
that worlding, had not been there already,
however difficult to view they might have been
from a Euramerican position.” (Clark 2014, pp.
68–69). Worlding is thus a conceptual
framework focusing on local interpretative
frames that are not generated by dominant
(global) discourses. “‘Worlding’ is marked
sometimes temporarily, by the period when a
discourse is supposed to have overcome its
inwardness or closure, or it is spacially
designated as in distant, regional, provincial
styles within an art culture.” (Clark 2014, pp.
69). Thus, worlding is not that far away from
Benjamin’s concept of understanding history as
in a materialist way, that is, to focus on a
specific epoch related to a specific life in order
to grasp the interrelation between the
uniqueness and general of both the specific
epoch in question and the entire course of
history (cf. Benjamin 1992, p. 152). The
potential contradictory interpretations of
endogenous and exogenous regional, cultural
and hegemonic complexities in time and space
can be exemplified by the task of following the
Japanese art of the tea ceremony and its
changing concepts due to the socio-historical
context.

The tea ceremony and Japanese aesthetics

The traditional tea ceremony can serve as a very

good example to explain Japanese cultural and
aesthetical uniqueness. Cultural heritage,
extraordinary sense of aesthetics in
combination with spiritual superiority by the
means of humbleness characterized by an
idealized picture of Samurai feudalist culture
and Zen Buddhism are mainly brought into
relation with the tea ceremony. In “Zen and
Japanese Culture” Daisetz T. Suzuki presents
an idealized understanding of the tea ceremony.
He introduces the principle of the art of tea
(cha-no-yu) as “the spirit of harmonious
blending of Heaven and Earth” providing “the
means of establishing universal peace.”
(Suzuki 2010, p. 276). The tea ceremony and
everything related to it is not left to coincidence
but is meticulous planned and performed. The
spirit of Zen Buddhism and the art of the tea
ceremony are inevitably interrelated and a
founding figure of this “humble” social praxis,
Sen no Rikyū. expressed the spirit of art as
follows: “When tea is made with water drawn
from the depth of Mind Whose bottom is
beyond measure, We really have what is called
cha-no-yu.” (Suzuki 2010, p. 280). In the pure
understanding of the tea ceremony by Sen no
Rikyū it is about the concretization of the (Zen
Buddhist) philosophy of emptiness that is
expressed in solitariness, poverty and
absolutism. Thus, the landscape where the tea
hut is placed, the architecture of the tea hut and
the setting of the tearoom, all utensils have to
be in full harmony. As described by Suzuki “the
principles regulation the tearoom are four: (1)
Harmony (wa), (2) Reverence (kei), (3) Purity
(sei), and (4) Tranquillity (jaku). The first two
are social or ethical, the third is both physical
and psychological, and the fourth is spiritual or
metaphysical. When one goes over these four
items, one will see that here are represented the
four schools of Oriental teaching: Confucianism
is for the first two, Taoism and Shintoism for
the third, and Buddhism and Taoism for the
fourth.” (Suzuki 2010, pp. 304–305).
This specific understanding and celebration of
the tea ceremony is caused by an antagonistic
struggle of the meaning and (re-)presentation
and the aim of the ceremony as such. Yasushi
Inoue gives a revealing impression of the power
struggle related to the power of definition of the
tea ceremony and its protagonists. He describes
in his famous novel “Death of a Tea Master” the
life and work of Sen no Rikyū and his
confrontations with other interpretations of the
tea ceremonial. At the end, Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, the Imperial Regent of Japan, for
whom Sen no Rikyū served as tea master,
ordered Sen no Rikyū to commit ritual suicide.
Even if the full circumstances remain unclear,
the ritual suicide of the tea master is related to
confrontational interpretations and teachings of
the tea ceremony (Yasuchi 2017). In order to
grasp the contradictory implications of
(modern) art in Japan, in general, and the tea
ceremony, in particular, it is crucial to
understand its socio-historical development.
Kato Shuicho subdivides the tea ceremony’s
history in three periods. The first period is
connected to the Muromachi (1392–1573),
Momoyama (1573–1615), and Edo (1615–1867)
period and includes four tea masters: Murato
Jukō (1423–1502), Takeno Jōō (appr. 1504–
1555), Sen Rikyū (1520–1590) and Kobori
Enshū (1579–1647). The tea ceremony was not
just a ceremony of the nobility but it expressed
the societal understanding of the relation
between art and life. The first relation between
art and life can be identified with “art for art’s
sake”, that is art serves only its own purposes
and is not related to other aims. Art for art’s
sake has been attributed to Japanese literature
at approximately the beginning of the
thirteenth Century. The peak of this long period
is especially related to the tea master Sen no
Rikyū emphasizing the concept of “wabi” to its
extremes. The concept of wabi refers to
simplicity and imperfection (Yuriko 2007, p.
94) and is spiritual related to Zen Buddhism. It
is an art period where the artists dedicated their
life to art. At this time “life for art’s sake” was at
its peak in Japan and it has been obtained
under the “patronage of despotic authority”. In
the service of the powerful ruling families of
Ashikaga, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Tokugawa,
the tea masters run at risk to be put to death
while failing to carry out their art to the regent’s
fullest satisfaction, as it happened in the case of
Sen no Rikyū. The tea master’s “transformation
of life into art was not the transformation of the
life of society. It was an undertaking possible
only to particular individuals under particular
circumstances – to the specialists, that is, who
were master of the tea ceremony.” (Shuicho
1981, p. 155).
The second period – being partly at the same
time with the foregoing period – is from the
ending of the Momoyama period and lasts
during the whole Edo period. The tea masters
coining this period are Katagiri Sekishū (1605–
1673), Matsudaira Fumai (1751–1818) and Ii
Naosuke (1815–1860). In this period the
relation between art and life is “art for life’s
sake” dominating largely the eighteenth
Century within the Edo period. Here, art
served, on the one side, to experience pleasure
and to enjoy life, and on the other side, it
reflected the Confucianism’s instrumental
notion of art for moral educational aims.
And the third and last period begins in the
twentieth Century in modern Japan (Shuicho
1981, pp. 155–156).
According to Kato Shuicho, the first period of
the tea ceremony that begins around the
thirteenth Century at the Heian period is
inevitably connected to civil war and a crucial
change in the Japanese political power
relations. For the artist, art for art’s sake is an
attempt to escape from these times of political
unrest due to the struggle between the Japanese
feudalist society and the shogun-system. Along
with the decline of Japanese feudalist structures
and the transition to the military rule of the
shogunate, there was as well a religious
transition from Buddhism to Zen Buddhism
because Buddhism faced severe problems of
legitimation in order to explain the societal
chaos. Buddhist trends proclaimed salvation
after death and emphasized, thus, a faith of
“Latter Day”. In contradiction to this faith, Zen
Buddhism emphasized the notion of “void” and
“nothingness”, “on obtaining control of one’s
own emotions through methodical religious
training ( …) ‘Void’ – was to give rise against the
same background of social secularization, to the
system of aesthetics typified by the tea
ceremony with its emphasis on wabi. ( …) The
beauty and harmony that man perceived in the
simplest, most rustic dwelling, once he
discovered that even the most ornate palace was
essentially no different from that dwelling, are
the basic principles underlying the aesthetic of
the tea ceremony.” (Shuicho 1981, pp. 154–155).
Wabi is related to pure enjoyment and
satisfaction of nature; it is about sensing the
interrelatedness of the artistic and creative
spirit of nature in valuing the greatness of the
simplest everyday experiences. Thus, wabi
contrasts material sensation or comfort (Suzuki
2010, pp. 257–258). The concept of wabi
constitutes life for art’s sake.
In the second period of the tea ceremony, the
tea masters were not professional artists. Their
priorities were to serve as ministers of the
shogunate. Their dedication to the tea
ceremony’s art was only relevant beside their
political life. Even if they felt totally committed
to the art, their political duty acquired a lot
more attention and work. This “second period
sees the tea ceremony as such cease to be an
end in itself; instead, it functions in the service
of and as one of its adjunct – the whole life, that
is, of the individual concerns. Thus even within
the history of the tea ceremony, a shift had
occurred from ‘life for the sake of art’ to ‘art for
the sake of life.’” (Shuicho 1981, pp. 156).
The last period of the tea ceremony begins in
the twentieth Century. The tea master is not an
artist anymore but an instructor of the
ceremony following a process of
commercialization that began before the
Second World War. The art of the tea ceremony
were (almost) exclusively taught to upper class
women of Japanese society. After the Second
World War until today, the tea ceremony as
symbol of social rank and social prestige
changed to a subject of mass consumption.
“Whatever the case, the development of the tea
ceremony from ‘life for society’s sake,’ even
though it may not in itself reflect the process of
secularization that has been going on in
Japanese culture for centuries past, at least
illustrates the process of the commercialization
of art that is its result.” (Shuicho 1981, pp. 157).

Japanese aesthetics of imperfection and

insufficiency

In contradiction to general Western aesthetics

and art that is based on a rather geometric and
symmetric conceptual framework, Japanese
aesthetics seem to have a different approach
focusing more on aesthetics of asymmetry,
imperfection and insufficiency rather than
symmetry. According to Suzuki, Japanese art
shows specific characteristics of asymmetry
underpinning a specific logical formalism. He
claims that: “Japanese are often thought not to
be intellectual and philosophical, because their
general culture is not thoroughly impregnated
with intellectuality. This criticism, I think,
results somewhat from the Japanese love of
asymmetry. The intellectual primarily aspires to
balance, while the Japanese are apt to ignore it
and incline strongly towards imbalance.”
(Suzuki 2010, p. 27). This statement is based on
the assumption that asymmetric aesthetics is a
one-dimensional conception acknowledging
unbalance and irregularity in order to
contradict the symmetric aesthetic approach.
Yuriko Saito explains these kind of Japanese
aesthetics considering philosophical and
religious, social and political, and aesthetical
implications. She also refers to the tea
ceremony and the conception of wabi and
describes the artistic creative steps of this
aesthetics of imperfection. The first one is to
find objects and tools that are already in an
imperfect condition, that is: aged, damaged
and/or having stains, being defect or are
“imperfect” in another kind. Examples are
“weather-beaten or moss-covered rocks” as
stepping stones as well as “rustic and
impoverished” tea huts with an interior with
unpainted walls with caked mud (Yuriko 1997,
p. 378). Regarding to the philosophy of Sen no
Rikyū and Abbot Kōyū she cites the first one:
“Concerning the tea utensils for the small tea
room ... it is recommended that they should, in
every way and aspect, fall rather short of
perfection. There are people who find it
repugnant to have a tiniest defect in them. This
I do not understand.” (Yuriko 1997, p. 378) and
emphasizes this statement with Abbots Kōyū
comment that it is a sign of being unintelligent
to insist on complete and perfect sets of things.
He claims that imperfect things and sets are
preferable rejecting the notion of completeness
and uniformity. Saito attributes the
accomplishments to enjoy and appreciate the
appearance of imperfection and
impoverishment going even one-step further to
create “artificially” non-artificiality. However it
is not about designing the old and wracked as a
new trend of beauty but to acknowledge the
signs of time and history on objects. It is
comparable to perceive wrinkles in a face as a
sign of lived life rather than an even surface of a
polished face with shiny make-up. “The
accidental damages to tea wares or signs of
their age did not stop their use; either the bowls
were left unrepaired or the trace of repair was
left visible. Furthermore, many tea wares were
cherished precisely because of these seeming
defects.” (Yuriko 1997, p. 378).
The religious and philosophical considerations
have its origins in the religious tradition of
Shintoism celebrating via nature worship
everything in the world. Not (just) referring to
the locality of gods like in Shinto, Zen
Buddhism introduces a universal religion that is
based on worldly suffering and an egalitarian
concept. To avoid conflicts between the two
religions Buddhism and Shinto there have been
found ways of coexisting by the means of
integrating Shinto’s “local aspects” to Zen
Buddhism in Japan (Mason and Caiger 1997, p.
39). The binding element in both religions is the
appreciation of nature and with respect to
Buddhism it is the “thoroughgoing
egalitarianism concerning the Buddha nature
(understood roughly as the ultimate reality),
which makes no value discrimination between
various objects and activities” (Yuriko 1997, p.
381) appreciating impoverished, misshapen and
broken things. To overcome the perfect, opulent
and pompous appearance as well as such a
behavior whilst valuing the natural aspects of
life, the imperfect state of being and its
transformation during its lifetime is one of the
ways to Zen enlightenment (Yuriko 1997, p.
382). Concerning the artist’s work, it is a
turning away from the notion of perfect
rationalized and planned artwork and a turn
towards a possibility space of the artist’s
control. Thus, it is a combination between the
knowledge, artistic skills and abilities and the
spontaneous moment creating a unique work.
And that applies also to work with already
marked life utensils. “Instead of lamenting the
fact that the object no longer exhibits the
original, perfectly shaped, lustrously colored
appearance, the aesthetics of imperfection
elevates this fall from the graceful perfection to
an even higher aesthetic plane by celebrating
vicissitude and perishability.” (Yuriko 1997, p.
383).
The aesthetic aspect lies, inter alia, in
contrasting the impoverished and the rich,
shiny attributes. “For example, Japanese
gardens in general are created by arranging
various rocks and trees so as to articulate their
individual characteristics. This is often
accomplished by juxtaposing materials of
contrasting qualities for mutual enhancement,
such as a vertical rock with a horizontal rock, or
a smooth-textured rock with a rough-textured
rock.” (Yuriko 1997, p. 379). The dedication to
the imperfect and insufficient is based on
sensual contradictions. Contrasting the opulent
or the perfect with the opposite creates a
tension. This disharmonic tension is the core of
the aesthetics of imperfection because it awakes
curiosity and helps to arouse a different
perceiving of the everyday overcoming for a
short time everydayness. “The appreciation of
the imperfect is then interpreted as an end
product of a dialectic movement, a resolution to
the disappointment or dissatisfaction in the
ordinary context.” (Yuriko 1997, p. 380).
In the context of the social and political
considerations, it should be noted that the
protagonists of the aesthetics of insufficiency
and imperfection belonged to the privileged and
affluent social hierarchy. Even if it sounds
contradictory, it is exactly their privileged
position that made this unusual special
indulgence possible that is to value the aesthetic
notion of enjoyment of simplicity. “For
example, Rikyū severely criticized his patron
shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s (1536-1598) gold-
gilded tea hut, not only for its garish
uncouthness but also for its political
imprudence for possibly incurring the wrath of
the underprivileged.” (Yuriko 1997, p. 380). In
order to show the exposition of power and
wealth of his patron, the tea hut functioned as a
critical opposition manifested itself in a poor
and humble mountain tea hut with a specific
small size and ceiling height. “In addition, a
symbolic gesture toward social egalitarianism
was displayed in a low washbasin and an
extremely small entrance to the tea hut, forcing
all participants to literally lower themselves and
the warriors to cast aside their long swords, a
proud symbol of their status. The absence of a
spatial center in the tea hut also eliminated the
social hierarchy of seating the guests” (Yuriko
1997, p. 381). Also the interior of the hut was
constructed and kept in a less condition, that is
unpainted (mud) walls and unpolished wood
furniture “decorated” the hut.

Japanese aesthetics of contingency

This concept of imperfection and insufficiency

of aesthetics is questioned by Robert Wicks who
takes the Japanese shōji screens and tatami
mats as starting point for his discussion. Both,
the shōji screens and tatami mats, are
uniformly shaped and do not show any
irregular form, that is they are not following the
pattern of asymmetry, imperfection, nor show
they stains or defects of aging. Taking this into
account Wicks suggests that the general notion
of Japanese aesthetics of imperfection and
insufficiency should be taken into
reconsideration. Rather than focusing only on
the items affirming the aesthetics of
imperfection and insufficiency Wicks claims
that the main difficulty lies in the problem that
the “concept of ‘perfection’ has been
underthematized” (Wicks 2005, p. 89). The
interrelation between the perfect and the
imperfect, the sufficient and the insufficient
shows the larger picture. Stains and signs of
transience and impermanence are highlighted
in the concept of imperfection in relation within
a perfect and sufficient scenery for reasons of
perceptual accentuation. “The typical group of
concepts used to describe traditional Japanese
aesthetics has neglected to give due
consideration to the function of the back-
grounds of perfected items and arrangements
within which the ‘imperfect’ and ‘insufficient’
objects are set and through which they are
brought into perceptual accentuation. Hence it
is misleading to refer to this aesthetics as an
‘aesthetics of imperfection’ to the extent that
the characterization overlooks the important
perceptual role of the perfected background
presentations.” (Wicks 2005, p. 89). This
critique is based on Dōgen’s philosophy of the
appreciation and understanding of the concept
of contingency. That means in Buddhism “the
foundation of things is contingent, conditional,
and nonabsolute” (Wicks 2005, p. 89). It is the
contrast of permanence and change, of stability
and signs of processes of permanent fluctuation
and irregularities. Wicks agrees with Masao
Abe’s interpretation of Dōgen’s understanding
on Bhudda Nature. “If one emphasizes basic
qualities of temporal experience, it becomes
incorrect to reduce to pure change, for the
constancy of the present is a requirement for
the perception of change. From our first-person
perspective, it is always and this ‘now’ is the
absolute and inescapable experiential locale
within which everything happens to us.” (Wicks
2005, p. 92). With regard to (human) being one
could add that with the change of the “now”
follows moreover a change of consciousness.
Thus, Japanese aesthetics is not (just) about the
awareness of impermanence. The notion that
asymmetry stands for imbalance is related with
a superficial understanding of the socio-
historical aspects of aesthetical constellations in
art and everyday life. This misunderstanding is
also true for Western art. “Piet Mondrian’s
paintings from the early 1920s defy all attempts
to divide them in terms of bilateral symmetry,
but their respective arrangements of lines are
perfectly balanced, and Mondrian intended
them to be so. Asymmetry is consistent with the
aesthetic values of balance, perfection, and
organic unity. The simple architectural lines of
a tea room are a clear-cut reflection of this.”
(Wicks 2005, p. 93). And Wicks relates the
Japanese aesthetic of the tea hut to Mondrian’s
art: “The simple architectural lines of the tea
room are perfect in their Mondrian-like
compositional balance, and yet they are
imperfect with respect to considerations of
symmetry and regularity; the irregular teacup is
imperfect with respect to considerations of
symmetry and regularity, but it is perfect with
respect to its exemplifying well, the
desideratum that an irregular item be present.
So the semantic scope of concepts such as
“perfection“ and “imperfection“ should be
contextually specified within these discussions
at the outset.” (Wicks 2005, p. 94). It is the
notion to sharpen the awareness and
consciousness of contingency and not the one of
aesthetics of imbalance and insufficiency. The
latter one should not be ignored or discounted
but has to be seen as one element among others
in a contrasting aesthetical composition. It is
the dialectical movement between the general
and the particular; it is the general harmonious
scenery of the landscape where the tea hut is
placed that is the rich perfect general
environment being set in aesthetical tension by
the means of the particular, the seemingly
dissonant tea hut. Japanese traditional
aesthetics is not just about the “idealization of
contingency” (Wicks 2005, p. 97), and the
aesthetical opposition between perfection and
harmony and imperfection and imbalance but is
about processes of awareness and conscious
raising. An aesthetical configuration, such as
the arrangement of the (traditional) tea
ceremony is cultural related to socio-historical
imaginations. In the process of globalization
aesthetical configurations are constituted
increasingly with different cultural, national
and historical aspects.

Socio-cultural and National Aspects of

aesthetics

The possibility of aesthetic perception is

inevitably related to the social-cultural
framework. To “understand” the nation’s
history (of art) is fundamental to build the
sensitive capacity of national cultural
imaginations. Different aspects of culture that
have being constituted in the course of the
(national) history pervade everyday life and,
thus, transmitting social history. Until around
the nineteenth Century the German concept of
culture and the French concept of civilization
differed not much in meaning both referring to
human achievements and action, like technical,
judicial, political, economic and scientific
progress as well as advancements in fine culture
and the arts. Thereafter a process of
valorization of the concept of Bildung to the
detriment of the concept of culture took place in
Germany. Since then philosophy, aesthetics,
arts and (human) education are strong
interlinked with the term Bildung. “Deriving
from German idealist philosophy, the meaning
of culture is mainly coined by the educated
classes resulting in an understanding of culture
that is ‘emphatically targeting the supposedly
higher spheres of the projection of meaning in
value-rational (wertrational) areas’ when
civilization covers ‘the area of the means-end
(zweckrational) organization of human praxis’
(Geyer 2010: 2).” (Michel-Schertges: Toward a
Critical Theory of Critical Cultural Political
Economy of Education, forthcoming).
According to Nagao Nishikawa a nation’s social
cohesion is deeply based on a national ideology
that is interwoven with national culture.
Relating the concepts of culture and nation, she
identifies differences in socio-historical
developed perceptions and understandings.
Nishikawa combines the German conception
with “‘culture-nation’ (Kultur-Volk)” and the
French conception of “‘civilization-nation’” with
the respective differences within the nation-
building processes (Nishikawa 1993, p. 130).
“In Japan, both bunmei (civilization) and
bunka (culture) are translated terms in modern
times. Until the 20’s, in the Meji era the term,
civilization was much more influential (Bunmei
kaika), and later, along with the introduction of
German thought into Japan, the term, culture
gradually became predominant. I [Nagao
Nishikawa] still cannot specify the period when
the translated term, minzoku (Nation-Volk)
came into general use, but it is at least certain
that the period should be in accordance with
that of the diffusion of the concept of culture.”
(Nishikawa 1993, p. 130–131). Nishikawa shows
different interpretations of Japanese culture
and emphasizes, inter alia, on the German
architect Buno Taut (1880–1938) and the
Japanese author Ango Sakaguchi (1906–1955)
both writing on Japanese culture. Taut lived
and worked for a while in Japan and he
describes Japanese culture more from a
European point of view, whereas Sakaguchi
shows a critical stance. Taut classifies Japanese
culture as static and European culture as
dynamic. According to this, he only perceives a
specific notion of Japanese culture as is:
“Japanese culture is not merely one of the
various cultures on the earth, but it is a
harmony filled with vitality. If Japanese culture
has a constant preference for simplicity in art
and life, that is nothing other than what
properly educated people call ‘modern’ in a
positive sense.” (Nishikawa 1993, p. 138). The
key concepts of Taut’s understanding of
Japanese culture can be summarized with
“purity, tradition, nationality, national
character, Japanese spirit, the spirit of
Tennoism” as well as “the good Japanese
tradition such as Katsura-rikyu, Ise-jingu,
Japanese artists from Sesshu to Tessai, noh
play, bunraku, tea ceremony, Japanese cuisine,
sumo, judo, kendo, kyudo, kemari, etc.”
(Nishikawa 1993, p. 139). Taut’s romanticized
picture of Japanese culture that even positions
the ancestry of (European) expressionism in
Japan and excludes rigidly foreign cultural
influences on Japan. This view by Taut is
confronted with Sakaguchi’s interpretation.
Following Sakaguchi especially this kind of
Japanese spirit praised by Taut functions well
as militaristic ideology. Sakaguchi considers the
political situation and militaristic “Zeitgeist”
and is more concerned with “fundamental
questions: ‘What is tradition? What is
nationality? Is there an inevitable character in
the Japanese or is there a fatal factor that leads
us to invent Japanese clothes and warm them
no matter what?” (Nishikawa 1993, p. 142).
Sakaguchi reflects skeptically upon Japan
asking himself if the picture of Japan in
Western eyes offers the possibility of perceiving
the “revengeful nationality of the Japanese”
(Nishikawa 1993, p. 143). Another critique on
the romanticized picture of Japanese culture is
the celebration of spiritual culture aligned with
the German concept of Bildung. In
contradiction to this concept of fine arts
defining social hierarchy, Sakaguchi claims:
“Culture, in the first place, is not a matter of
tradition of nationality but ultimately a
question for each individual: how to live.”
(Nishikawa 1993, p. 146). A nation’s self-
perception is crucial based on its understanding
of its culture, aesthetics and art and its
distinction from other national cultural aspects.

Globalization and traditional Chinese

culture

The (main) worlding of Asian culture, in

general, and Japanese and Chinese culture, in
particular, is mainly connected to the
aesthetical concepts of insufficiency and
imperfection as spiritual contemplation.
Unique cultural processes, as the tea ceremony,
serve as signifiers concerning nation-building
and –preserving processes. It is thus a cultural
political economy of aesthetics. Lily Chumley
combines the cultural peculiarities with
national brands. “The identification of an
aesthetic with a social order such as a nation,
culture, or ethnicity is analogous to the concept
of brand. Like brand, this aesthetic identity
produces a “relationship between some set of
otherwise differently construed commoditized
objects and a common formulation of them as
members of the same class (e.g., as Puma,
Reebok, Nike)” (Nakassis 2012:627). And like
brand, this relationship is constituted by
interpretive regimes that take particular
aesthetic features (colors, materials, shapes) as
marks of their place in social orders.” (Chumley
2016, p. 97). Chumley uses the strange picture
to show a “structure of disjuncture” of two
commodities that are associated with different
cultural worlds. A traditional tea set is arranged
alongside a camping furnisher set in a camping
store’s window display in the Tangrenje
shopping mall in Bejing. Both commodities
have been produced in China, but the camping
chairs and the table are imagined as Western or
foreign and the traditional tea set is imagined
as (national) Chinese origin. The contradicting
notions of cultural content embedded in these
two opposing cultural imaginaries show the
(aesthetical) contradictions of national
modernity in times of globalization. The
exaggerated emphasize of national and cultural
“identifiers” may lead to ethnonational
constructions. Chumley introduces the term
Jianwai as a concept of “seeing strange” in the
sense that familiar items are conceived in an
estranged way, opening up for a possibility
room of re-contextualization. “( …) the cultural
identities (and qualities) of people and objects
can be called into question. The coming-to- or
bringing-to- prominence of Chinese things as
Chinese can impose a new frame on other
objects nearby ( …), making it possible for them
to be recognized as ‘un-Chinese,’ and by
extension potentially casting doubt on the
ethnonational identities of their Chinese
wearers and bearers.” (Chumley 2016, p. 99).
Traditional cultural imaginations are turned
upside-down. On the one side, contemporary
socio-cultural aesthetics bear the quality of
modern relatedness of (processes of)
globalization, and on the other side
contemporary socio-cultural aesthetics can only
be understood in relation to its socio-historical
particularities. The latter aspect tries to
contradict the first aspect, that is the ubiquitous
superficiality of aesthetical levelling down
caused by the mechanisms of (Western) culture
industry and the commodification of the world.
However, opposing the general tendency of
globalized (cultural) standardization, the socio-
cultural particular object is in danger to become
fetishized. In order to present its socio-
historical originality, the cultural particular
object turns into a cultural signifier itself.
Within the process of clear dissociation, the
non-identical uniqueness turns self into a
symbolic cultural signifier. Opposing the
camping furnisher set, the traditional tea set
loses its non-identical qualities while
representing the general imagination of
uniqueness and traditional socio-historical
qualities of all traditional tea sets. The
commodification of uniqueness turns it into
cultural superficial abstractness bearing the
general idea of cultural originality.

Japanese traditional uniqueness and

universal culture

The concept of Japanese culture, that is (re-

)presented as Japanese uniqueness, has been
supported by the Japanese government from
the 1950s on in order to (re-)produce and
maintain apparent traditional cultural
properties. Even traditional craft techniques
and vocations related to these techniques “were
designated by the government as ‘human’ or
‘national’ treasures” (Goldstein-Gidoni 2005, p.
159). Especially traditional buildings and
locations (still) “maintain” as traditional
signifiers in order to preserve spots of national
and eternal Japanese collective identity as well
as to serve as “authentic” Japanese touristic
spaces. These Japanese traditional villages –
often protected by the Japanese Folklore
Society – sell an image of Japan to the visitors
to Japan (Goldstein-Gidoni 2005, p. 159)
supporting the manufacturing of Japan’s
imaginary of unique tradition. To spread this
uniqueness Goldstein-Gidoni refers to the
(national) support of “cultural brokers”, that is
foreigners who visit Japan in order to learn
cultural techniques, such as for example: the tea
ceremony, kimono dressing, calligraphy,
martial arts. (2005, p. 161–163) These (foreign)
cultural ambassadors are meant to spread the
image of Japanese traditions in the world.
Thus, (mainly) all over the world, workshops
and cultural education (re-)produce the
Japanese imagination of cultural techniques.
This serves, on the one hand, the stabilization
of national Japanese collective identity and, on
the other hand, the marketing and selling of the
product of Japanese uniqueness.
Socio-historical uniqueness in the form of
religion and ritual sites are strongly related to
culture and art tourism. According to Franklin,
the religious and (ethnic) ritual field strong
associated “with travel, tourism and cathartic
periods spent away from the everyday ( …)
Ritual and religious ceremonies typically held at
distant sacred sites, particularly those
associated with individual transformation,
redemption and insight are features common to
most cultures (Turner and Turner, 1978).”
(Franklin 2018, p. 405). In order to see
contemporary art or unique culture, tourists are
ready to travel around the globe, “to the social
margins, to remote Japanese islands,
wilderness areas of China, islands off Australia
and high desert regions of Texas or Nevada.”
(Franklin 2018, p. 412).
Franklin emphasizes John Urry’s
understanding of the “offshoring of Western
paternalistic and corporate manufacturing
prompted the transformation of redundant
industrial capital, plant, architecture and
estates into ‘industrial cultural heritage and
‘archaeology’, and thence into museumisation
and touristification. New streams of income and
employment had to be found and what was one
day the grim, gritty, industrial quotidian
became an aestheticised space for tourists, for
cultural education” (Franklin 2018, p. 411).
However, the uniqueness in contemporary
Japanese art and culture and especially its
preservation and mediation is inevitably related
to the (non-Japanese) cultural ambassadors.
Even though the learning sites and training
centers of Japanese culture are mainly still
situated in Japan, cultural (arts) places are
spreading all over the world offering Japanese
cultural uniqueness. The cultural interested
(art) tourist is not travelling to Japan just to
consume Japanese cultural uniqueness but the
tourist becomes sufficient socio-historical
socialized in order to be transformed into a
cultural art-ambassador. On the one hand,
Japanese culture is mediating and trading its
traditional uniqueness in Japan and especially
all around the world by the means of cultural
(art) ambassadors bringing the cultural (art)
tourist attractions to the countries and cities of
the tourists. On the other hand, contemporary
Japanese art “emancipates” itself from the
influence of the foreign concept of modern art.
There are two main assumptions concerning
the influence of contemporary globalization on
culture. Briefly, the first one can be summarized
as global homogenization that is the
transformation to superficial mass-product
standardization in order to make profits and to
subsume even socio-historical culture under the
logic of Western capitalistic culture industry.
The second main assumption is the cultural
concept of hybridization, which is the mixing of
indigenous cultural discourses with the
(Western) one. Goldstein-Gidoni argues that
both approaches cannot explain adequately the
processes between indigenous and the
(dominant) global cultures. (Goldstein-Gidoni
2001, p. 70; see also Goldstein-Gidoni 2005, p.
168). According to her, it is about self-definition
processes, “the cultural construction of the
West that typically characterized this process (
…) has been coupled with a parallel
construction of the ‘Japanese’ and the
‘traditional’. These parallel processes of cultural
construction are another manifestation for the
relative flexibility with which the so-called local
and the foreign interact” (Goldstein-Gidoni
2001, p. 84).
Goldstein-Gidoni is right to question the one-
sided cultural processes underpinning the
homogenization and the hybridization
approaches of cultural globalization and to
emphasize the interrelatedness of these
processes. The problem lies in the dialectical
process of preserving and levelling up
(Aufhebung) of traditional Japanese culture.
Because it is about preservation of a (re-)
constructed and artificialized imagination of
Japanese tradition and instead of a levelling-up,
rather it is a levelling-down to global standards
of mass production and cultural perception and
understanding related to the global market of
culture production and consumption. The
commercialization of the art of tea ceremony, as
described above, can serve as an example of the
processes of “preservation” and “levelling-
down” of Japanese tradition. Thus, it is the
process of fetishization of the particular, where
the unique (tradition) turns into a general and
universal cultural signifier, undermining
everything that constituted its uniqueness. With
respect to (critical) modern art, Kato Shuichi
exemplifies the development of Japanese
architecture in times of globalization on three
different architectural pieces. The differences in
architectural styles mirror the socio-historical
confrontations with non-Japanese architecture.
The first building is the Hyōkeikan building in
Tokyo. It is built around 1900 and shows a
typical copy of Western architecture. Several
buildings of this type have been erected at this
time in Japan presenting the influence on
Japanese art and the struggle of Japanese self-
confidence in finding its own identity. These
buildings “are all examples of the first series of
buildings erected in Japan using Western
materials and techniques. They resemble the
government offices – exact replicas of what they
were accustomed to at home – that the British
set up in the heart of the great Indian cities.
They reproduce exactly forms that were evolved
without any references whatsoever to the
natural surroundings, culture, and history of
their new habitat, forms evolved in a country
where all these factors were vastly different”
(Shuishi, 1981, p. 164–165). However, the
Hyōkeikan was built by Japanese architectures.
The second example, is the National Museum in
Tokyo. Instead of a simple reproduction of
Western architecture, the National Museum is a
peculiar mixture of traditional Japanese
architecture and Western concrete buildings. It
was built between 1932 and 1937 and is a
typical example of buildings for this time in
Japan. Crude and unadorned concrete walls are
placed under a traditional Japanese roof. A
simple blending between Western and
(traditional) Japanese architecture. The
National Museum in Tokyo can be understood
as an attempt to find a – at this time – adequate
architecture overcoming the architecture in the
style of Western colonization. “The immediate
result of such thinking was this kind of
monstrosity. It is characterized by a total lack of
relationship between the traditional forms (for
example, the shape of the roof) that it
incorporates and the structure of the building
as a whole. The structure of building as a whole
is subject to restrictions imposed by its size, the
materials used, and the purpose for which it is
intended. To take Japanese forms, which were
developed for buildings of utterly different sizes
and purposes and using utterly different
materials, and attempt, on the grounds that
they are “traditional,” to graft the onto concrete
buildings is like trying to graft bamboo onto a
tree.” (Shuishi, 1981, p. 165). The attempt was
unsuccessful because of its pure combination of
two socio-historical different architectural
styles, glued together without any cultural
references to each other. The last example is the
Festival Hall in Tokyo. Built in 1960, after
WWII, it shows a new Japanese self-
understanding. It is a post-modern building
build by a Japanese architect “using what might
be called the ‘international language’ of
contemporary architecture in order to express
himself.” (Shuishi, 1981, p. 168) The Festival
Hall is not just the adaption of “post-modern”
architecture but an artwork where the artist
used contemporary technology and knowledge
in combination with his (Japanese) aesthetical
understanding of architecture. The result is the
realization and fulfillment of the artist by the
means of the artwork. “In theory at least, the
question of whether the results are ‘Japanese’
or not is not of primary importance. In practice,
one is justified in expecting that quality
characteristic of the work of Japanese will make
itself felt in such buildings, and what happens, I
would suggest, is in fact the creation of a
peculiarly Japanese architecture. But this is not
the aim, of course, the aim; the aim is, quite
simply, to create architecture.” (Shuishi, 1981,
p. 168–170) It is not a matter of technology or
finding cultural combinations, but to create
artwork of its own. Shuichi gives further
examples concerning the development of
Japanese music, (abstract) painting, and
literature. The development in all these
presented forms of artistic and aesthetical
expressions is characterized by three stages.
The first one is the simple imitation of Western
aesthetics and styles, the second one is the
simple combination of both Western and
Japanese aesthetics and styles, and the last
stage is characterized by aesthetics and art
where “international styles have come to
provide the framework within which the artist
seeks expression. These international styles
were perfected, not within Japan, but in the
world outside Japan.” (Shuishi, 1981, p. 177).
The quality of contemporary art depends
mainly in the expression of the artist by the
means of the used material. It is the realization
of (inter) cultural internalized aesthetical values
and concepts of the development of global art
that characterizes high quality artwork. It is
neither, the simple adaption of the culture
industry, the affirmation of aesthetical and
political dominating discourse, nor the (re-)
production of traditional imaginations in order
to preserve artificially (“glorious”) past, but the
creation of new authentic artwork that
generates its uniqueness by its inevitable
interrelatedness to the general international.
The same applies to Western art. High quality
Western art and aesthetics must be, too, in
opposition to (Western) hegemonic
understandings and a cultural domination of
art and aesthetics.
Art and aesthetics must fulfill the challenge to
materialize culture. While on the one side art
should be socio-historically constituted by
cultural uniqueness being both preserved and
levelled up (Aufgehoben) in critical processes of
questioning and challenging the dominating
cultures of aesthetics and acknowledging and
absorbing all different forms of cultural
expressions of art and aesthetics irrespective of
cultural or national provenience. In
contemporary globalization, it is the task of
critical artists by the means of their artwork to
raise critical consciousness in the public
concerning the dissonant interrelation between
cultural uniqueness and universalism in order
to spread awareness about the societal and
socio-historical antagonisms (within the art
world). The aim of contemporary aesthetics and
art can be compared to Benjamin’s concept of
materialist history and its confrontation with
historicism. Thus, art should be a constructive
principle, where the artist works with
(historical) unique cultural aesthetical aspects
confronting them with the oppressing
dominating universalities, while not
overestimation uniqueness in itself, turning in
cultural reification that is aesthetical socio-
historicism.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable (no empirical data, just

literature).

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Danish School of Education, Aarhus University,
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Dirk Michel-Schertges

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Michel-Schertges, D. Contemporary Asian art and
Western societies: cultural “universalism” or
“uniqueness” in Asian modern art. Asian j. Ger. Eur.
stud. 4, 6 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40856-
019-0042-4

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Received
26 July 2019

Accepted
20 September 2019

Published
30 October 2019

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40856-019-0042-4

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Keywords
Asian art Western art hegemony

Japanese aesthetics Tea ceremony

Art tourism Aesthetics of imperfection

Aesthetics of contingency

Traditional uniqueness Universal culture

Globalization

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