Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation

8. Nishi Amane on Aesthetics: A Japanese Version of Utilitarian Aesthetics

89 8 Nishi Amane on Aesthetics A Japanese Version of Utilitarian Aesthetics Hamashita Masahiro Nishi Amane’s (1829–1897) great accomplishment in establishing the fundamentals of Western learning in modern Japan suggests many interesting questions, ranging from the translation of technical terms of Western learning and to the transition from feudalistic, traditional Confucian ways of thinking to those of Western practical ways. In this essay on Nishi’s modern aesthetics I will confine myself to two issues: first, Nishi’s studies of aesthetics and the development of the words he used to translate the term “aesthetics” and, second, how the terminology for aesthetics reflects Nishi’s mental attitude toward a Western set of ideas. Translating “Aesthetics” into Japanese In the East Asian cultural sphere where Chinese characters are still currently used, “aesthetics” is today translated as “bigaku” (literally, “the study of beauty”). The Japanese people imported Chinese characters from China through Korea, while modern Japanese scholars have coined words in Chinese characters for categories taken from Western sciences. Nishi Amane was among those who invented this terminology by arranging and modifying traditional Chinese characters to interpret Western scholarly categories in the humanities. The word “bigaku” is not Nishi’s invention; it is rather the product of a later period. In his 1881 Tetsugaku Jii (Dictionary of Philosophy), Inoue Tetsujiro ̄ still translates “aesthetics” as bimyōgaku (science of the beautiful). Nakae Chōmin’s coinage of bigaku, however, in his 1883 translation of Eugène Véron’s L’Esthétique must have had some influence, and it is said that by the thirties of the Meiji era (late 1890s), bigaku was the standard word for “aesthetics.” When Nishi Amane translated the word “aesthetics,” he seemed unconcerned with finding a precise Japanese term that would translate literally the original meaning of “aesthetics”—that is, the science of sense perception/sensibility . The following is a chronological list of his translations of “aesthetics”: 1867: zenbigaku (science of the good and the beautiful)1 1870: shigagaku (fine arts of poetry, music and picture)2 kashuron (theory of good taste)3 takubi no gaku (science of supreme beauty)4 1871(?): bimyōgaku (science of the beautiful)5 1874: zenbigaku6 bimyō no gaku (science of the elegant)7 1878(?): bimyō gakusetsu (treatise on the science of the beautiful). The dates of these terms are generally accepted. A problem remains, however, with the date of the term “bimyōgaku” (science of the beautiful); thus, the question marks for 1871 and 1878. To understand the development of Nishi’s concept of aesthetics, it is very important to establish the exact date of composition of Bimyō Gakusetsu (A Treatise on the Science of the Beautiful), the most elaborated among Nishi’s texts. The original draft was apparently a lecture addressed to the Meiji emperor. According to Aso Yoshiteru, it was written in 1871.8 Ōkubo Toshiaki estimates the date to be around 1876.9 After a thorough examination of the archives of the Takamatsu no Miya Family, Mori Agata has claimed that Bimyō Gakusetsu was written in 1878, and not as a lecture to the emperor but as a colloquy with members of the royal family.10 I find Mori’s thesis the most persuasive. Although Nishi had already used the term “science of the beautiful” in his 1874 translation of Joseph Haven’s Mental Philosophy, Nishi’s Treatise on the Science of the Beautiful (Bimyō Gakusetsu) represents his most systematic thought on aesthetics. Let us trace the development of Nishi Amane’s aesthetic thought from zenbigaku (the science of the good and the beautiful) to kashuron (the theory of good taste) and, finally, to bimyōgaku (the science of the beautiful). Zenbigaku In Nishi’s Hyakuichi Shinron (New Theory of the One Hundred and One Principle ), “zenbigaku” (the science of the good and the beautiful) suggests a concept similar to the Greek “kalokagathia” in Western aesthetics. The word “hyakuichi ” (one hundred and one) in the title refers to the idea that there must be 90 Hamashita Masahiro one principle that unifies hundreds of religious and moral ideas. The “principle ,” for Nishi, is positivism, which he thought was lacking in Eastern culture. The book distinguishes between law (hō) and moral teaching (kyō) and between the physical (butsuri) and the mental (shinri). The distinction between politics and morality came to Nishi through his study of Ogyū Sorai who chose to return to Confucius...