RODNEY FERREIRA

This research project is concerned with the relationship between the literary work of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) and the Japanese aesthetic program. We believe that the foundations of this relationship lie in three layers: 1) a socio-historical layer, defined by the thesis that Japan's modernization inserts it into a world-time and a world-system whose material conditions shared with the West imply the sharing of spiritual problems, leading to a conceptual exchange constitutive of the modern Japanese subjective and national identity; 2) a philosophical layer, characterized by the thesis that the various aesthetic theories that emerged between the Taisho era (1912-1926) and mid-Showa (1926-1989) have a common ambition, which is the attempt to define a Japanese subjectivity, responding philosophically to the socio-historical demands of modernity; 3) a literary-philosophical layer, characterized by the way Tanizaki engages in this aesthetic program, not only at the literary level, but properly at the philosophical level, base on thoughts about the gloomy character of the Japanese, whose bases, we propose, are two aesthetic categories: the sabi and the sublime.