On the European Roots of the Identity Crisis in Japanese Aesthetics of the ХХ-ХХI centuries

During the second half of the 20th century aesthetical students in Japan demonstrated growing activity, aimed at the investigation in the field of national aesthetical heritage applying the method of hermeneutics. The Western forms of philosophical thought and comparative studies were supposed to be necessary for this purpose. But there appeared a group of young scientists, who chose the road of national alienation, who stressed the specific features of Japanese culture in general and the essence of art in particular - Sakabe Megumi, Sasaki Ken’ichi, Iwaki Ken’ichi. As a result, two quite bright but different trends in Japanese aesthetics emerged. They disagree on a number of issues related to the status of aesthetics as a philosophical science and art as a professional activity. At the same time representatives of both movements consider themselves heirs to the ideas of the famous philosopher Nishida Kitaro. Thus, Amagasaki Akira, who shared the point of view of this group on the altering the status of art in the epoch of predominating of mass culture, proposed to give up the previous concept of art, implying professionalism, high quality of works, systematic study and, so to say, sacred horizon, that is the strive for abandoning the frames of mundane world, which are the characteristic features of Western image of art. The aesthetics of ХХ-ХХI centuries in Japan demonstrated variety of opinions: on the one hand, it was the strive for theoretical reconstruction of the fundamental elements of the traditional artistic thought, drawing towards philosophical analysis applying the methods of Western thought. On the other - we see the return movement back to traditional heritage giving up Western methodology and insisting on immediate, spontaneous individual experience abandoning any generalization, which is a kind of “aesthetical nominalism”.