ABSTRACT
Japan has an extraordinary history of aesthetics connected to its religious traditions, and its influential cinema has used religio-aesthetics related to Shinto and Buddhism in diverse ways. This book explores sacred space, symbols, and concepts embedded in the secular framework of films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Makoto Shinkai operate as expressions of and, potentially, catalysts for transcendence of various kinds. This introductory chapter explains the ways transcendence will be defined and establishes key connections between Japanese aesthetics, religion, and history, particularly focusing on the rise and fall of the Economic Bubble and its aftermath. The circulation of reductive discourses of Japaneseness, as these pertain to aesthetics and film, is examined. Paul Schrader’s prominent theory of transcendental style, especially as it relates to Yasujirō Ozu, will be explored along with the connections drawn between Ozu and Kore-eda. Finally, the chapter explicates the book’s approach to aesthetics and religion using the multifaceted and protean concepts of ma (structuring intervals), kū (emptiness, sky), and mono no aware (compassionate sensibility, resigned sadness). All of the films covered in the book feature ma as an aesthetic and philosophical signifier, but the films themselves also are ma—framed spaces of flickering, ephemeral light—in which senses of connection can be awakened and interdependence can be apprehended.
