Aesthetics of Cultural Chiasm

在土耳其安卡拉举行的第17届国际美学会议上，首席研究员Tanehsia Otabe应邀参加了由高建平教授（中国）举办的“亚洲的多元化美学”研讨会，并发表了题为“日本美学在多大程度上是亚洲的？”论近代日本的自我形象”。这篇论文的目的是从美学的角度来展示“欧洲”和“亚洲”这两个概念是如何在欧洲形成的，以及它们在亚洲是如何被接受和批评的。这个演示是这个项目的主要成果之一，也是下一个项目的前奏。Otabe还受邀参加了2008年在立教大学举行的洪堡-科勒格会议（Humboldt-Kolleg 2008），在会上他发表了一篇论文，讨论了柳宗修（Soetsu Yanagi）的“形”概念。他澄清说，“形”的概念可以理解为一种“习惯”，并提出了一个假设，即日本现代美学是文化交融的产物。Hiroshi Watanabe，另一位研究者，作为共同编辑出版了《世界音乐词典》，他认为必须从这种伴随着东西方文化适应的作用和反应机制的角度来考虑世界上的当代文化；他成功地将日本现代音乐定位在全球化的环境中。他在《作为文化的版权》一文中，以日本现代音乐为例，阐明了欧洲的版权观念一旦被非欧洲地区采用，就会使当地文化堕落。

Tanehsia Otabe, the head investigator, was invited to the symposium "Diversified Aesthetics in Asia" organized by Prof. Gao Jianping (China) at the XVIIth International Conference of Aesthetics (Ankara, Turkey) and presented a paper entitled "To What Extent Are Japanese Aesthetics Asian? On the Self-Images of Modern Japan". The aim of the paper was to show from an aesthetic point of view how the ideas "Europe" and "Asia" were established in Europe and how they were received and criticized in Asia. This presentation is one of the main results of this project and also a precursor of the next project. Otabe was also invited to the Humboldt-Kolleg 2008 at the Rikkyo University to present a paper in which he dealt with the concept of `kata' of Soetsu Yanagi. He clarified that the concept of `kata' can be grasped as a sort of `habitus' and posed a hypothesis that Japanese modern aesthetics is a product of cultural chiasm.Hiroshi Watanabe, another investigator, published as a coeditor "Dictionary of World Music" in which he argued that the contemporary culture in the world must be considered from a view point of such mechanism of action and reaction that accompanies the acculturation between the west and the east; and he succeeded in positioning Japanese modern music in a globalized situation. In his article "Copyright as Culture", taking modern Japanese music into consideration as an example, he clarified that the European idea of copyright, once adopted by non-European regions, tends to degenerate their local culture.