The Idea of the Body in Japanese Culture and its Dismantlement

Bibliographic Data

ID19192282
AuthorsHiroyuki Noguchi (0009-0007-4679-9822, corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume2
Pages8-24
Publication date2004-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Sport and Health Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1348-1509 • E-ISSN: 1880-4012
PublisherJapan Society of Physical Education, Health, and Sport Sciences (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5432/ijshs.2.8
OpenAlexW1974743854
LanguageEN
Citations received5

At the heart of a culture lies a certain view of the body, and this view decides which perceptual experiences the culture chooses to value. In trying to achieve those experiences, certain principles for moving and handling the body are established, and these principles then set the standards for the mastery of essential skills that penetrate through all fields of art, creating a rich foundation from which the culture can flourish. The culture of traditional Japan, which disintegrated at the hands of the Meiji Restoration, indeed possessed such a structure. The idea of the body, the shared perceptual experiences, and the principles of movement that existed in traditional Japanese culture were radically different from those that arrived from the West and have been blindly disseminated by the Japanese government ever since the Meiji Restoration.This paper discusses the feeble underpinnings of modern Japan as a culture built upon the destruction of its own traditions, and explores the possibility of giving birth to a new culture by looking into the structure of its lost traditional culture

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Epistemology · Foundation (evidence) · Government (linguistics) · Japanese culture · Literature · Meiji period · New Culture Movement · Perception · Political science · Set (abstract data type) · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Computer Science · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy