Somaesthetics and the
Philosophy of Culture
Higuchi, one of the pivotal scholars in introducing Shustermans somaesthetics to Japanese audiences in the early 2000s, provides insight into how this philosophy has developed in Japan, and the affinity it has developed with a non-Western culture.
Dividing his insights into the categories of innovation, practice, and educational implications, Higuchi presents the Japanese perspective on somaesthetics, with contributions from four of his students. They develop the philosophical discussion of areas such as the aesthetics of sport, bodily knowing, learning as mimesis, and learning culture through language. In this way, the book illuminates the philosophy of somaesthetics using Japanese experience and research while presenting a unique perspective on Japanese culture.
This book will be of especial interest to scholars of Japanese culture, and of the philosophy of aesthetics and education.
Satoshi Higuchi is Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University, Japan.
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Somaesthetics and the
Philosophy of Culture
Projects in Japan
Satoshi Higuchi
First published 2021
by Routledge
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2021 Satoshi Higuchi
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Higuchi, Satoshi, author.
Title: Somaesthetics and the philosophy of culture : projects in Japan / Satoshi Higuchi.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge contemporary Japan series | Includes bibliographical references. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020045022 (print) | LCCN 2020045023 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367443436 (hbk) | ISBN 9780367743086 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003009191 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: AestheticsPhysiological aspects. | Human body (Philosophy) | Aesthetics, Japanese. | JapanCivilization.
Classification: LCC BH301.P45 H54 2021 (print) | LCC BH301.P45 (ebook) | DDC 111/.850952dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045022
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045023
ISBN: 978-0-367-44343-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-74308-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-00919-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
Foreword by Richard Shusterman
Preface
PART I
Innovation of aesthetics
Aesthetics of sport: its framework
The somaesthetic experience of the sports performer
Sport and art: innovation of the concept of art
PART II
Significance of practice
Bodily knowing
Eastern body theory and somaesthetics
PART III
Meliorism or educational implications
Somaesthetics and learning
A critical investigation on the education in meliorism
JIYUN BAE
The body facing the violence in education: critical options from somaesthetics
TAIKI MATSUDA
Learning culture through language
SHOKO NAGATA
The meaning of language in education
YAYOI SUTANI AND SATOSHI HIGUCHI
Bibliography
Richard Shusterman
I am very pleased to write this foreword for Professor Satoshi Higuchis new book entitled Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture: Projects in Japan. There are many reasons for my pleasure in undertaking this task. These include some personal reasons: not only the satisfaction of discharging the duties of friendship but also that of paying a debt of gratitude to someone whose efforts were essential to my progress in learning about contemporary Japanese culture. But there are also several academic reasons for welcoming with a foreword this book on somaesthetics and Japan. I will confine myself to briefly sketching reasons relating to four important topics discussed in Higuchis book. I will consider them in the following order: the role of Japan in the development of somaesthetics, the relationship of somaesthetics to sports, the relationship of somaesthetics to issues of education, and the relationship of somaesthetics to language.
Somaesthetics and Japan
I first arrived at the idea of somaesthetics in 1996, through Western sources. The most important roots were my work in pragmatist aesthetics, which recognized the soma (the living, sentient body) as the necessary locus of aesthetic experience and artistic making; my research on philosophy as an art of living, which implies a concern for the soma as the medium through which one lives; and my reading of Alexander Baumgartens original broad notion of aesthetics that had a practical, cognitive, meliorative dimension but neglected the somas role in experience and knowledge production. With respect to the practical dimension of somaesthetics, I similarly began with Western sources, experimenting with Alexander Technique and undergoing a four-year professional training in the Feldenkrais Method (1998-2002).
However, Japan soon had a crucial role in the early development of somaesthetics in two major ways. First, the existence of contemporary Japanese thinkers who took the body as a serious philosophical topic for theory and practice. A notable example was Yuasa Yasuo who connected a key Japanese term for the body
