The Japanese Aesthetics of Hipsterism

In her essay on Japanese aesthetics, Yuriko Saito argues that the marked appreciation for the asymmetrical, the unfinished, and the damaged stems from philosophical attitudes that deal with the process of coming to terms with the unpalatable realities of life—specifically its impermanence and general messiness. (1) Essentially, the Japanese preference for the care-worn and the subtly decaying is part and parcel of an acceptance of the fluidity and intransigence that characterize life on earth. Though this is all well and good, Saito fails to fully explore one of the most interesting aspects of this phenomenon: the trend toward the deliberate production of well-worn and damaged objects that originated at least in the Heian period (794-1185) and became fairly common from the fifteenth century on.

Saito notes the trend, but for the most part attributes it to a general preference for contrast that is intertwined with the philosophical currents previously mentioned. The tea master Murata Shukô (1423-1502) is said to have reframed an elegant hanging scroll that was given to him by the shogun using rustic materials; another tea master deliberately destroyed one of the handles of a perfectly symmetrical vase; another was ridiculed for repeatedly destroying the perfection of highly-prized objects. (2) In each of these cases, Saito argues that these acts bespeak a specific philosophical stance and furthermore that they are only valuable acts because the objects are capable of being perfect, but are not:

It is important to note that this aesthetic celebration of the imperfect and the insufficient presupposes not only the yearning for but also the attainability of the optimum condition, understood as a shiny mirror, a gorgeous and properly framed scroll, a meticulously maintained garden, and a perfectly formed vase. A cloudy mirror Sei Shônagon appreciates is not a cheap or defective product; it was shiny once. A wild garden exalted by her did not result from the owner not being able to afford maintaining it; rather, it was a calculated neglect (emphasis added). Falling cherry blossoms are aesthetically superior to those in full bloom precisely because they had previously achieved the stage of full blossom. Chipped and cracked tea wares could be repaired. The impoverished looking scroll does not imply an inability to choose opulent materials; it is a production of conscious design. Similarly, a flower vase missing one handle is not a result of failed creation. (3)

But it is precisely this deliberate intervention into the aesthetic forms of various objects, which picked up speed in the Momoyama and Edo periods (1576-1868), that is the crux of the matter. In the seventeenth century, for example, the tendency to prize objects that had been accidentally broken and then repaired was transformed into an affluent fad where objects were deliberately broken and repaired using gold and silver rivulets along the cracks. (400 years later a number of these admittedly exquisite objects found their way into an exhibition at the Freer and Sackler galleries in DC—Moonlight and Clouds: Silver and Gold in the Arts of Japan.) What had once been an aesthetic grounded in simplicity became evidential of a considerable level of affluence.

And for me that is the really interesting process. Because, it is a process that happens all the time all over the place. Hell, we see it right now in dieting fads and hipster culture—the ironic appreciation of something that is suboptimal, which ultimately transforms into a major marker of wealth, power, and influence. The ancient, medieval, and early-modern Japanese had what I would consider to be a fairly clear-cut hipster culture. It was so clear-cut that it even came under the same kind of scrutiny that hipster culture comes under today. In the eighteenth century, the Confucian scholar Dazai Shundai (1680-1747) called the wealthy tea ceremony practitioners out for aping the culture of impoverished, arguing that while the rich might find it amusing to copy the poor, the poor would never find it amusing because their condition was not something that they merely dabbled in. (4) In many ways, though not in all ways, the tea ceremony (and many other arts that stemmed from the same aesthetic roots) was an ironic enjoyment of something that the partakers would never have enjoyed in its original context. In other words, it was "hipster."

And for reasons I cannot explain (but probably because I am something of a hipster myself), it delights me no end to discover that hipster culture has—in a weird way—always been around.

Notes:
1) Saito, Yuriko. "The Japanese Aesthetics of Imperfection and Insufficiency." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55, no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 377-385.
2) Ibid., 378.
3) Ibid., 380.
4) Quoted in ibid., 381


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In Defense of Genre Fiction

In his recent article for Time Entertainment, "Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology," Lev Grossman addresses the fairly long-standing perception that genre fiction is inferior to literary fiction, and he addresses it magnificently. (1)

In particular, Grossman raises a couple of key points that resonate with other things I've read, or have been reading, recently. The one that was most interesting to me is that genre fiction is not merely a form of escapism. On the contrary, the severity of genre fiction subject matter instead suggests that it is a means of confronting everyday problems by observing them in new configurations. He states:

We seek out hard places precisely because our lives are hard. When you read genre fiction, you leave behind the problems of reality—but only to re-encounter those problems in transfigured form, in an unfamiliar guise, one that helps you understand them more completely, and feel them more deeply. Genre fiction isn’t just generic pap. You don’t read it to escape your problems, you read it to find a new way to come to terms with them.

This eloquent excerpt pretty much completely describes my theory of the historical relationship between horror and society. I have always felt that horror-booms have a tendency to occur in tandem with stressful periods in history, when people need to cope with the uncertainties that they face. It is therefore helpful to consider things like horror-booms as specific cultural responses to periods of destabilization and the anxiety that inevitably accompanies them. (2)

Michael Baxandall's articulation of the relationship between art objects and their circumstances of production is particularly helpful to conceptualizing this idea. For Baxandall, art objects can perhaps be thought of as solutions to specific problems. Consequently, the job of the art historian—or, more broadly, the cultural historian—is to reconstruct the relations between the problems (social circumstance) and their solutions (art objects), and to hopefully do so without interjecting too much of one's own personal perspective into the reconstruction. (3) Of course, the term "problem" as deployed by Baxandall does not necessarily have to carry a negative connotation, but in the case of horror—and other "escapist" genres like science fiction and fantasy—I think the problem that is being responded to is often a negative or, at the very least, unsettling one.

Nevertheless, the main point in all of this—a point that Grossman expresses more than once—is that genre fiction (horror, fantasy, sci-fi) is not something that should be treated as a lower order of cultural production. (4) In fact, it fulfills a very important function in society. Developing and pursuing an interest in genre fiction, and its related cultural products, is part and parcel of how human beings deal with the stresses of living. The practice, and what it can suggest about both contemporary and historical societies, is worthy of serious study—not derision.

Notes:
1) Lev Grossman, "Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology," Time Entertainment (May 23, 2012).
2) Fantasy and science fiction should also be considered in this context. Though perennially popular genres among specific groups of people, there seem to be marked increases in their widespread popularity at certain times in history. It would be interesting, for example, to study the history of supernatural television shows broadcast in the US from the perspective of periods of social, political, and economic crisis.
3) Baxandall ultimately defines "problems" in a far more narrow fashion than I am comfortable with, but his metaphor is nevertheless eloquent and instructive. Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 14-15.
4) This is a statement that can be applied to other cultural products as well: action films, comic books, pop art, etc.


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