The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan

by W Puck Brecher and W. Puck Brecher

Eccentric artists are "the vagaries of humanity" that inhabit the deviant underside of Japanese society: This was the conclusion drawn by pre-World War II commentators on most early modern Japanese artists. Postwar scholarship, as it searched for evidence of Japan's modern roots, concluded the opposite: The eccentric, mad, and strange are moral exemplars, paragons of virtue, and shining hallmarks of modern consciousness. In recent years, the pendulum...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0824836669
• ISBN13: 9780824836665
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.1"