eizogaku

Show abstractHide abstract

“To see” is a neutral and suspended verb, and it is not plain whether it refers to its object or subject, unless it is put beside these words. However, “to see” itself in Japanese context, preconditions the situation that someone sees an object in the world. Manazashi (le regard) means putting on a light in the dark indetermined sphere, opening my eyes and awakening the vision of unidentified senses to the real world lined up with, “flesh”. When the world is rearranged and perceived in the perspective of possibility of my behavior, the consciousness of “I” is generated.

To open my eyes means not only awakening my body but opening the eyes of an object seen by me, thus the object is also awakened, which again means that the object gets first aware of being seen. I describe the process of this realization as follows; I gather up my Mi (Me-Body) from within my Tai(You-Body) opening my eyes(Me), deposit it in the environment and awaken the world of neutral Tai by so doing. In the course of the exchange of Mi between the world and me, I locate myself in it. The exchange of eyes, that is, the reflection of my eyes onto themselves by means of the otherness, is what is called Manazashi. It means opening the eyes of the otherness and looking back at myself with them.

However, now it is the days when the sight does not precondition the presence of human being. All the once-sacred or privileged Manazashi had been handed over to mass people and is now turned into absent Manazashi of technology and commerce without human being.

View full abstract

Download PDF (949K)

An actor died in the mid-summer of 1987, His death became an event far more momentous in Japan than that of any other actors. Thousands of people from all over the country crowded to his funeral. The newspapers and magazines issued special numbers, and TV stations released special programs about him. They generally discussed his daily life in exhaustive detail.

His real life has been elevated to a mythology. One of the reasons for this is that the characters he played in most of his films symbolized the youthful ardors of the Post-War generation in Japan or its desire for the ideal youth. Besides this, there is a simple confusion between the characters he played and the character as he is.

View full abstract

Register with J-STAGE for free!