ABSTRACT
The relationship between Okakura Kakuzō and Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita and Rabindranath Tagore has been studied. In contrast, a comparison between Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (A.K.C.) and Yanagi Muheyoshi has not been fully developed in art historical research. This chapter proposes to tentatively locate the two thinkers, who followed the traces of Okakura in the colonial context under imperial power politics in the 1910s and 1920s. Both of them rediscovered new values in traditional arts and crafts and tried to construct their aesthetics based on the cultural heritage that had been oppressed under the colonialism. While A.K.C. tried to rehabilitate the pan-Indian mediaeval legacy in his exile in Boston, Yanagi discovered the Korean popular craft under the Japanese rule in which he was implicated. If A.K.C. later developed his religious thought on the basis of Vedanta and approached René Guénon or Mircha Eliade, Yanagi is known to be closely related to D.T. Suzuki. The regaining of Oriental spiritualism in them invites us to reconstruct Eastern cultural heritage in a cross-cultural context.
