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10. The Play of Mirrors: Sakabe Megumi [Includes "Mask and Shadow in Japanese Culture: Implicit Ontology in Japanese Thought" and "Modoki: The Mimetic Tradition in Japan" by Sakabe Megumi]
- University of Hawai'i Press
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TEN The Play of Mirrors Sakabe Megumi Among the major books of the contemporary philosopher Sakabe Megumi (b. 1936), The Hermeneutics of Masks (Kamen no Kaishakugaku, 1976) and Japanese Inside the Mirror (Kagami no Naka no Nihongo, 1989) confront the subject of aesthetic experience. Both deal with the specificity of a Japanese subject that the author describes by resorting to the metaphor of the mask. Sakabe argues that a mimetic view of reality provides a definition of “mask”—kamen literally means “a temporary frontside”—that emphasizes the characteristics of the object customarily taken to be different from “the true self” (makoto no omote): the “unpainted, unfeigned face” (sugao) of the person wearing the mask. He challenges the conceptual poverty of this definition of “reality” as the representation of an allegedly primordial appearance . Sakabe stresses instead the visual aspect of the perception of the self inasmuch as we see others as we see ourselves in the projection of a mirror. The frontside is simply a “sign” (shirushi) of refraction that can only be perceived in its moment of “re-presentation” (saigenzenka). The mirroring process questions the validity of the distinction between mask and face and challenges the possibility of positing a “true self.” As Sakabe argues in the first essay translated here, the presence of a self as “surface” (omote, meaning both “mask” and “face”) implies the existence of a structure of “reciprocity” (sōgosei) and “reversibility” (kagyakusei) that problematizes the visual self as “something that is seen by others, that sees itself, and that sees itself as other .”1 This latter definition applies to both the mask and the face, depriving them of the justificatory ground for positing any kind of differentiation.2 231 1. Sakabe Megumi, Kagami no Naka no Nihongo: Sono Shikō no Shujusō, CR 22 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1989), p. 42. 2. Sakabe explains the Japanese use of the same word “omote” to indicate both “the mask” and “the face” according to the analogical structure of the two objects: “Inasmuch as the face manifests and hides something invisible or almost invisible that is known as ‘the person’ or ‘the heart,’ omote participates in the same As a repository of pure difference, the mask is a metaphor of the human face—the metonymic representation of the person—in the same way that the face is a metaphor of the mask. Sakabe reminds us that the language of poetry has familiarized the reader with similar aporias when we think, for example, of the metaphorical reading of “farewell” as death and of death as “farewell.” The reciprocity of the process of symbolization challenges the customary safety of categories such as “true” and “false” that do not take into due account the powerful working of difference.3 Sakabe gives the example of the nō actor who, before entering the scene, takes his mask to a room called the “Mirror Hall” (Kagami no Ma). The actor sees in the mirror his own face, as well as the mask, while at the same time being seen by his mask in the mirror and seeing himself transformed into the character he will be representing on stage—a god or a demon. The actor finds his presence in the metamorphosis of the other in himself or— which is the same—in the incarnation of the other into himself. The principles of “reciprocity” and “reversibility” explain, in Sakabe’s view, the double signification of omote, paving the way to a softer model of subjectivity.4 In the “Kagami no Ma,” the actor puts on the mask; he sees in the mirror his own face or his own mask; at the same time, he is seen by his mask in the mirror and, finally, he sees himself transmogrified in some deity or demon . Afterward he walks onto the stage as an actor who has changed into a deity or demon or, which is to say the same thing, as a deity or demon who has taken the bodily form of this actor. To say it differently, the actor enters the stage as a self transmogrified into an other or as an other transmogrified into the self. Here we witness the typical manifestation of the structure of omote as I described it a while ago. What is important to notice now is the fact that the structure of omote is evidently the structure of the mask, as we have seen, but, at the same time, it is also the structure of the face. The reason is that the...