Abstract
The human body, which is one of our greatest concerns today, is discussed from thethree Japanese points of view: a point of nikutai as to mean the physical aspect of abody with the whole chronological span of an individual existence, a point of shintai, thehuman being itself as an individual whole with both spiritual and physical aspectsorganically unified, and a point of karada as the totality of organic parts of a body.Generally speaking, Japanese concept of body is rather based on a monistic view ofhuman existence, while European one is on a dualistic view of human beings as beingthe body and soul/spirit/mind unified. Throughout the process of Japanese assimilationto the Western civilization, most Japanese are said to have lost a real sense of stabilityalong with the traditional sense of body. Thus some researches on our traditional bodylanguage have started now to recover a sense of the bodily center of gravity.
