Japanese Film and the Floating Mind: Cinematic Contemplations of Being (Vicari)

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“Beauty in shadows”: could this simple formula express all we need to know about the Japanese aesthetic? It is true that shadows—and indeed the empty spaces which shadows fill—bear little relation to Western critical theory, which tends to look toward empty and ambiguous spaces only for their ability to be occupied with something, for their status as place holders for the soon-to-be-defined, or for their receptivity to often contrived dialectical syntheses. As Barthes observed: “dialectics only links successive positivities.” We Westerners make it our special mission to chase shadows with some kind of light, to block out emptiness with any kind of material presence. Perhaps the particularity of Japanese vision is actually its ability to dwell within empty space untroubled by its emptiness.

Vicari, Justin. Japanese Film and the Floating Mind: Cinematic Contemplations of Being ; 2016