AESTHETICISM

AESTHETICISM: translation

   Yuibi shugi or tanbi shugi (aestheticism) is a term used to describe the narrow aesthetic focus of late 19th-century Western Romanticism (and later modernism) that found its way to Japan. Embodied in the phrase “art for art’s sake,” aestheticism focused on sensual pleasure over moral or sentimental ideas. Meiji writer Takayama Chogyu, who edited influential journals, such as Teikoku Bungaku (Imperial Literature) and Taiyo (The Sun), blended aesthetics with Romantic individualism and philosophical self-realization. Mori Ogai reflects this trend in both the journal Shigarami Zoshi (The Wier) and his novel Maihime (1890; tr. The Dancing Girl, 1948). Aestheticism also plays into the works of Mishima Yukio and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro.

   See also SHUGI.