history of thought – Nagahiro KINOSHITA


Nagahiro Kinoshita has written extensively on the history of modern thought of art. Since retiring as a professor from Yokohama University in 2005, he has organized courses to 'clear the general frames of "art history" in which anyone can participate'.






Nagahiro Kinoshiton the hidden power behind 'landscape' as fu-kei

We seem to have built up the concept of 'landscape' so that it functions for our convenience. But this is not just limited to 'landscape'; the same can be said of any other concept or idea.
Upon further investigating the adjective 'our', you come to realize that although 'our' is a collective form of 'my', it is not really or truly equal to any single 'my'. It is the very collectiveness that matters here, and this 'collectiveness' is in most cases provided and endorsed by power. For example, we use words and concepts like 'rationality', 'peace' and 'humans' to communicate with each other without worrying about what they really represent because the power is quietly but firmly standing there behind them, supporting their meanings.

'Landscape' is one of those words which has been guaranteed within a power structure. This power has nothing to do with the ruling authorities of the time that have control over society, but has already permeated and been built into our consciousness. Such power was evidently visible in pre-modern times. Nowadays, however, the power no longer manifests itself in such an explicit manner. Rather, it intervenes in our consciousness by ruling over the very process of thinking. When we try to consider a thing or phenomenon or people, the power intervenes like a formula, influencing and controlling our consciousness and thoughts. In other words the power works at a semiconscious level when I – or the individuals we call 'I' – confront the things that surround us and try to build up a relationship with them in one way or another.
There are three levels of relationship, and the power structure intervenes at each and every one of them, be it:
  • Level 1 relationships, such as the fundamentally physical relationships within a family, where we share shelter and food in physical terms;
  • Level 2 relationships – i.e. those at a social level among friends and workplace colleagues, etc. in which we sustain both physical and mental relationships; or
  • Level 3 relationships where, not unlike level 2 relationships, social interaction is maintained, but here with the elimination of physical contact – e.g. relationships through newspapers and television, books and magazines, the Internet, and works of art of various forms.
This 'hidden power', so to say, no doubt warrants further discussion on some other occasion. Suffice to say here that it becomes more influential where physical contact is involved less. That is to say, it is more powerful in level 3 relationships than level 2 or level 1 ones. The less tangible the relationship, the more powerful it gets.

With regard to 'landscape', I want to put the focus on how this power works upon and affects it. The concept of 'landscape' wears an innocent look, as if to claim that it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the power structure. However, anything with such an innocent appearance, any such concept or way of thinking, is in truth riddled with power on the inside.



Observations ~ 
                         by Nagahiro Kinoshita & Masako Yasuki (painter)



Kinoshita:
In European countries, 'landscape' is an object that is captured in the human eye, or surrounds humans. Unlike the way san-sui (山水) or 'mountain-and-water' concept of 'landscape' in East Asian countries, it has no 'spirit' within itself. However, when the word 'landscape' was translated into Japanese as fu-kei (風景) or 'wind-and-scape', the word that came out somewhat latently deviated from the original Western concept of 'landscape'. To translate the word in a truly literal manner, we should have used chi-kei (地景) or 'land-and-scape'. But it is too late now. I suspect that when we Japanese-speaking people consider the word 'landscape', the concept of san-sui  sneaks into the back of our thoughts. The Chinese character fu (風) has long since been given a rich variety of implications in cultures where Chinese characters are used.

The word fu-kei has existed in China since ancient times, and has been used to convey not only 'scape' or 'scenery' but also 'grace' and 'figure'. The character of  fu is used to represent a wide range of things including 'convention', 'lesson', 'temperament', 'air', 'song', 'to sing', 'to move', and 'to communicate'. All these things are contained simultaneously inside the word 'fu-kei', or 'landscape'.


Yasuki:
'Landacpae' should be awe-inspiring, and therefore it has to contain an element of fear. It should also stand apart, not affected in the slightest by the desires or need for convenience of 'humans'. To admit and accept this would mark the first step that each one of us can make toward a new way of thinking – and a route by which we might free ourselves from the restrictions of national interest or an individual lifetime.

Kinoshita:
We have always seen 'landscape' through a window, or something like a window or its alternative. It could probably be argue that, without the concept of 'window', we might have never come up with the concept of 'landscape'. The origin and history of words such as 'landscape', and 'paysage' have always been closely accompanied by the idea of the 'window', I think. The window was then turned into the picture frame, and ultimately is used nowadays as an indispensable term in the field of personal computing, which has now taken on the most important and influential role in human communication. 


Yasuki:
As is evident in the fact that the ideas hidden behind the 'window' and the 'painting are connected with each other, the concept and the idea of 'window' must have been originally valid only in the context of 'modern history' in one specific region of the world. Likewise, the concept of 'subject' and 'painting' would have been originally valid only at one certain area on Earth. It is therefore important, I feel, that we open our eyes to the current situation where the whole world is entirely trapped within the perspective of that one particular regional history.



Nagahiro Kinoshita on landscape and the window 


There was a full moon in Florence, looking down upon us calmly from above the piazza where Savonarola was burned. It seemed to have a different face from the one I knew in Japan.

When I was little, I had polio, and as the disease prevented me from walking about outside, I used to play alone on the engawa, a kind of veranda. The moon I knew well was the one I saw from this engawa. I'd bark at that moon as if I were a dog.


The house I moved to after that had a window. I used to spend time watching people pass along the road. From veranda to window, the objects I watched had changed. However, there was one thing that never changed. It was the feeling that the landscape I watched was living and breathing beside me. It is like that scene from the Edo-era by Kusumi-Monrikage, 'Family enjoying the evening cool'. It gives you a sense that wherever people look at and enjoy a landscape, be it from a room or on a rush mat in the garden, they are really in it; they live and breath the landscape.

I found that by contrast, the windows set in European houses work to separate the inner world from the outside. It is on this principle that the windows of trompe-l'œil were created. The landscape (the world) we look at through a trompe-l'œil window is different from the landscape (the world) that people usually live in. So it is also with the windows on the world of God in churches; it is the same principle at work in stained-glass windows. The light from the ceiling window of the Pantheon in Rome is indeed full of a divine brilliance.

In the traditional Japanese house, though, there is no window that aims to work as the stained-glass window does. There are skylights, but they are simply a means by which to allow light into a dark interior, and a way in which to invite Nature – the landscape – into daily life.

Looking at the skylight in the Roman Pantheon, I could not but believe that in Europe the landscape comes to us as an 'anti-daily-human-figure'. The light given by God. The ceiling window of the Pantheon is a window, but it is a window through which human beings can never look out.


The frame of a painting is often thought of as a window through which we look out at the landscape from the inside. It cuts out the landscape that we look at and paint. There is, of course, no such window in the real world, as Kuski-Morkage's 'Family enjoying the evening cool' shows. The frame of this painting does not work as a device to cut off the landscape. Here, the family sitting on the rush mat is  looking at the the moon, but not the moon in the frame. The moon they are looking at is reflected on the surface of water outside the frame. In this way, the landscape continues from inside to outside this painting.


The window is a means by which to look at landscape, but in the past there was a substantial difference between the West and East in approach to landscape. Even my own childhood experience points to this. The experience of modernization in Japan, though, has led us to translate the word 'landscaspe' as fu-kei (風景). As a consequence, we are in a state of mind in which we believe that fu-kei  is the immediate world which surrounds us, and that we can easily cut and frame it.

The word fu-kei has changed. Between the moon in Florence and the one in Kusumi-Morikage, we can see this difference in the way of judging beauty.


A Perspective on Nagahiro Kinoshita 
                                                         by Keita Hayashi (visual artist)

In his first letter to me, Nagahiro Kinoshita stated that we are forced by people to believe in particular words/ concepts without realiszing it, and that these people are the ones who really possess power.

Mr Kinoshita then raised the question of how to deal with this by saying, "How can we fight this parasitic power that feeds on the 'intelligence' which oversees concepts and produces words? . . . I cannot turn my thoughts away from this power – this power that lives deep inside of me.'

When dealing with words or concepts, Mr Kinoshita always keeps an eye on that power, and tries to keep his distance from its force. No matter how clear the meaning of a concept or a word may be, he refuses to accept it easily. He agilely positions himself at the back of the word, and starts reinvestigating its meaning.

His agile and elegant style can be likened to that of a great detective who, through searching questions, promptly identifies the villain and reveals how the crime was executed; or a master of martial arts who effortlessly dodges the attack of a bigger and more muscular opponent and unleashes a counter-attack, using the very power of the opponent to effortlessly bring him down. The word “landscape” is no exception before Mr. Kinoshita; he broke it down at once.

Nagahiro KINOSHITA + Saori KISHIMOTO Chiharu YAKUSHIGAWA 
– Landscape was translated as 'Fu-kei', but 'Fu' means 'breeze' or 'universal spirit', 
whereas land means 'earth' or 'soil' – cloth・projector・video camera 
The Japanse word for 'landscape' is fu-kei. It comprises two Chinese chararters: 風景. Translated into English, these characters mean 'beauty/ wind + scenery'. This current Japanese word for 'landscape' is a fabrication resulting from an attempt to translate the English word 'landscape'. Prior to the introduction of the word fu-keithe word san-sui was commonly used to convey the meaning of 'landscape'. This older word was based on two Chinese characters that mean 'mountain + water': 山水. The newer word, fu-kei is still missing an important element of the English, though. Why wasn't it translated more literally as chi-kei (地景), a word which would mean 'land + scenery'?

Mr Kinoshita also promptly analyzed the Japanese word for 'understanding': wakaru. The Japanese words wakaru (meaning 'to understand/ comprehend') and wakeru (meaning 'to sort/ divide/ separate') are similar in sound, and also look similar: 分かる and 分ける respectively. Furthermore, the Chinese character in these words (分) has a radical in it that is derived from the figure of  a sword or knife. In fact, this is also true of a number of Chinese characters that carry the meaning 'understanding', such as , and From this, we can see that to 'understand' is to sharply cut and split everything into halves.

Having seen Mr Kinoshita's trademark crafty skillfulness in confronting words and concepts, and witnessed his way of thinking, reasoning and analyzing, one's view is clarified and expanded. This in turn may trigger a chain reaction, forming an allied force with which to confront the enemies and villains with the parasitic power that he identifies. And Mr Kinoshita will lead the pack, positioning himself for an attack from behind, joined by the participants in this chain reaction.

In his letters, Mr Kinoshita, the grand commander, gave me some tactical advice for executing just such an attack through Inverse Perspective 0# Landscape. But can we indeed fight against the villainous people with power over words and concepts that Mr Kinoshita identifies? And together can we hold them down? We can but try.




Translation of Kinoshita's text:













Nagahiro Kinoshita: abridged resumé


– Born 1939

– MA History of Modern Thought of Art, Doshisha University. 

– Professor, Kyoto College of Art.

– Professor (Human Sciences), Yokohama National University. 

– Retired 2005. 

– Visiting professor, Kyoto Seika University

– Currently, organises the 'ABC for Saturday Afternoon' on art history for the general public.


– Publications include: 

  • 'A Perspective on the Art of Dung-Houang' (1984)
  • 'Van Gogh: How Modern Japanese Artists Understood Him' (1992) 
  • 'Marcel Proust on the Tongue' (1996)
  • 'Nakai Shoichi – toward an innovative aesthetics' (2002)
  • 'How to Write Beautiful Japanese' (2005)
  • 'Okakura Tenshin: A Life' (2005)
  • '26 Chapters on Thinking about Beauty and Art – introductory essays on the history of art' (2009).


– For more on Nagahiro Kinoshita's work, visit his website at: http://kinoshitan.com/index.html