Secondary Art and the Two-Story House: Kuwabara Takeo and the Comparative Imagination in Midcentury Japan, 1935-1947

Bronson, Adam

Abstract

This article focuses on the life and ideas of Kuwabara Takeo, a cultural critic and scholar of French literature who became renowned for his 1946 critique of haiku as a “secondary art” in comparison with the novel. By reconstructing Kuwabara’s intellectual trajectory from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, I show how this famous essay was in part an effort to respond to Karl Löwith’s famous critique of Japanese intellectuals. Löwith argued Japanese intellectuals were insufficiently critical towards their own culture, due to the way that they compartmentalized practices and ideas associated with either Japanese culture or Western civilization. Kuwabara resisted such tendencies through the practice of cross-cultural comparison. His work gained encouragement from and responded to Löwith’s critique in a way that illuminates the role comparisons played in the intellectual culture of mid-twentieth century Japan.

Citation

Bronson, A. (2021). Secondary Art and the Two-Story House: Kuwabara Takeo and the Comparative Imagination in Midcentury Japan, 1935-1947. Modern Intellectual History, 18(2), 451-473. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244320000013

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 18, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Feb 19, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-06
• Deposit Date: Dec 20, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 16, 2020
• Journal: Modern Intellectual History
• Print ISSN: 1479-2443
• Electronic ISSN: 1479-2451
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 451-473
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244320000013
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1311378