Learning to See With Ozu, Or an Inquiry Into the Non-Modern Conditions of a Media-Anthropology of Gestures

Main Article Content

Milan Kroulík

Abstract

Recent occidental research, following above all the work of Agamben (2000) has opened an inquiry into gesturality in general, and the gesture in and through cinema in particular. Much of this research has been done in media studies and linked, via Mauss, to anthropologies of technology and the image (Schüttpelz, 2010). Here, I aim to experiment with cosmotechnics (Hui, 2017) and will propose a way to rethink the concept of gesture in techno-modernity from within a Buddhist cosmology. This thought process will happen through the very concrete work of Ozu Yasujirō, who developed an idiosyncratic style that enables the appearance of gestures (Hasumi, 1997). In demonstrating how certain cinematic techniques tie in with Buddhist ways of thought and how they can engender a different attunement to the impermanence of not only the gestural, I will point towards the force of the technology of cinema in constructing different possible worlds within and without academia.

Article Details

How to Cite
Kroulík, M. (2021). Learning to See With Ozu, Or an Inquiry Into the Non-Modern Conditions of a Media-Anthropology of Gestures. Journal of Integrative and Innovative Humanities, 1(1), 49–66. Retrieved from https://so07.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/DJIIH/article/view/1064
Section
Research article

References

Agamben, G. (2000). Means without end: Notes on politics (V. Binetti & C. Casarino, Trans). University of Minnesota Press.

Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility. In W. Benjamin, The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility and other writings on media (pp. 19–55). Belknap Press.

Benjamin, W. (1979). A small history of photography. In W. Benjamin, One way street and other writings (E. Jephcott & K. Shorter, Trans.) (pp. 240–257). NLB.

Bernardi, J. (2001). Writing in light: The silent scenario and the Japanese pure film movement. Wayne State University Press.

Berque, A. & Sauzet, M. (2004). Le sens de l’espace au Japon. Vivre, Penser, Bâtir. Éditions Arguments.

Bordwell, D. (1988). Ozu and the poetics of cinema. Princeton University Press.

Burch, N. (1979). To the distant observer: Form and meaning in the Japanese cinema. University of California Press.

Chen, K. H. (2010). Asia as method: Toward deimperialization. Duke University Press.

Cox, R. (Ed.). (2008). The culture of copying in Japan: Critical and historical perspectives. Routledge.

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell III, Trans.). Columbia University Press.

Derrida, J. (1997). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press.

Doganis, B. (2012). Pensées du corps: La philosophie à l'epreuve des arts gestuels Japonais (Danse, Théâtre, Arts Martiaux). Les Belles Lettres.

Engell, L. (2005). Medienphilosophie des films. In M. Sandbothe & L. Nagl (Eds.), Systematische Medienphilosophie (pp. 283–298). Akademieverlag.

Fan, T.-F. (2016). Modernity, region, and technoscience: One small cheer for Asia as method. Cultural Sociology, 10(3), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975516639084

Fauré, B. (2009). Unmasking Buddhism. Wiley-Blackwell.

Gad, C. & Jensen, C. B. Lateral concepts. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2, 3–12. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2016.77

Geist, K. (1997). Buddhism in Tokyo story. In D. Desser (Ed.), Ozu's Tokyo story (pp. 101–117). Cambridge University Press.

Hall, J.M. (2017). Hay’s Buddhist philosophy of gestural language. Asian Philosophy, 27, 175–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2017.1350334

Hansen, M. B. (1999). Benjamin and cinema: Not a one-way street. Critical Inquiry, 25, 306–343. https://doi.org/10.1086/448922

Hansen, M. B. (2012). Cinema and experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. University of California Press.

Hasumi, S. (1997). Sunny skies. In D. Desser (Ed.), Ozu's Tokyo story (pp. 118–130).Cambridge University Press.

Hasumi, S. (2004). Ozu's Angry Women, Rouge 4. Retrieved February 2, 2021 from http://www.rouge.com.au/4/ozu_women.html

Hideyuki, N., & Heitzman, K. (2010). Ozu, or on the gesture. Review of Japanese Culture and Society, 22, 144-160.

Hui, Y. (2017). On cosmotechnics: For a renewed relation between technology and nature in the anthropocene. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 21(2–3), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne201711876

Jensen, C. B., Ishii, M. & Swift, P. (2016). Attuning to the webs of En: Ontography, Japanese spirit worlds, and the “tact” of Minakata Kumagusu. Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6, 149–172. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau6.2.012

Jensen, C. B. (2017). New ontologies? Reflections on some recent ‘turns’ in STS, anthropology and philosophy. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 25(4), 525–545. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12449

Jiménez, R. D. (2015). Test et violence, Benjamin et Ozu, ou l'appropriation du temps par-delà la guerre et l'après-guerre. In A. Naze (Ed.), Walter Benjamin – Politiques de l'image (pp. 89–106). L'Harmattan.

Kaul, M. (1983). Seen from nowhere. In A. Vasudev & P. Lenglet (Eds.). Indian cinema superbazaar (pp. 415 – 428). Vikas Publishing House.

Ladwig, P. (2021). Thinking with Foucault beyond Christianity and the secular: Notes on religious governmentality and Buddhist monasticism. Political Theology, 22, 60–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2020.1866809

Land, N. (2014). Templexity: Disordered loops through Shanghai time. Urbanatomy Electronic, Kindle Edition.

Latour, B. (2005). Trains of thought: The fifth dimension of time and its fabrication. In A. Perret-Clermont (Ed.). Thinking time: A multidisciplinary perspective on time (pp. 173-187). Hogrefe & Huber.

Law, J. (2015). What's wrong with a one-world world?. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 16, 126–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2015.1020066

Lowe, B. (2017). Ritualized writing: Buddhist practice and scriptural cultures in ancient Japan. University of Hawai‘i Press.

Mauss, M. (1973). The techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2, 70–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147300000003

McIver, G. (2016). Art History for Filmmakers: The Art of Visual Storytelling. Fairchild Books.

Miyao, D. (2018). Cinema and the haptic in modern Japan. Screen Bodies, 3, 23–36. https://doi.org/10.3167/screen.2018.030103

Morris, M., Siu L. L. & S. C. Ching-kiu (Eds.). (2005). Hong Kong connections: Transnational imagination in action cinema. Hong Kong University Press.

Needham, Gary. (2020). Japanese cinema and orientalism. In F. Hideaki & A. Phillips (Eds.). The Japanese cinema book. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Noland, C. (2009). Agency and embodiment: Performing gestures/producing culture. Harvard University Press.

Noys, B. (2004). Gestural cinema?, On two texts by Giorgio Agamben, ‘Notes on Gesture’ (1992) and ‘Difference and Repetition: On Guy Debord’s Films’ (1995). Film-Philosophy, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2004.0012

Ó Maoilearca, J. (2017). Striking poses: Gesture, image, and remake in the cinematic Bergson. In B. Herzogenrath (Ed.). Film as Philosophy (pp. 1–22). University of Minnesota Press.

Olkowski, D. (1999). Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation. University of California Press.

Rambelli, F. & Reinders, E. (2012). Buddhism and iconoclasm in East Asia: A History. Bloomsbury.

Rodowick, D. N. (2017). What philosophy wants from images. The University of Chicago Press.

Sankrityayan, R. et al. (1981). Buddhism: The Marxist approach. People's Publishing House. Schüttpelz, E. (2010). Körpertechniken. Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung, 1, 101–120. https://doi.org/10.28937/ZMK-1-1 Sharf, R. H. (2015). Is mindfulness Buddhist? (and why it matters). Transcultural Psychiatry, 52(4), 470–484. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461514557561

Snodgrass, J. (2003). Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the west: Orientalism, occidentalism, and the Columbian exposition. The University of North Carolina Press. Steintrager, J. A. (2014). The thirdness of King Hu: Wuxia, Deleuze, and the cinema of paradox. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 8(2), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508061.2014.915560 Stepien, R. K. (2019). Abandoning all views: A Buddhist critique of belief. The Journal of Religion, 99(4), 529–566. https://doi.org/10.1086/704844

Strathern, M. (2002). On space and depth. In J. Law & A. Mol (Eds.). Complexities: Social studies of knowledge practices. Duke University Press.

Swift, P. (2010). Cosmetic cosmologies in Japan: Notes towards a superficial investigation. Open Anthropology Cooperative Press. Working paper series 4.

Tada, M. (2004). Japanese gestures: Modern manifestations of a classic culture (T. S. Stahl & A. K. Stahl, Trans.). Three Forks Press.

Thompson, K. & D. Bordwell. (1976). Space and narrative in the films of Ozu. Screen, 17(2), 41–73. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/17.2.41

Thompson, K. (1988). Breaking the glass armor: Neoformalist film analysis. Princeton University Press.

Viviani, C. (2017). To capture the ephemeral. Comparative Cinema, 5(10), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1145/2666216.2666236

Yoshida, K. (2003). Ozu's anti-cinema (D. Miyao & K. Hirano, Trans.). Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.