THE BOOK OF TEA

Okakura Tenshin once stated that "Japanese aesthetics were perfected during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods." He believed that in the 13th century, with the fall of the Southern Song dynasty, many monks and engineers migrated to Japan. The new ideas and values ​​they brought, combined with Japan's unique sensibilities, formed a distinctive aesthetic sense, such as "wabi-sabi" and "the sense of impermanence."

I believe these aesthetics were not merely aesthetic sensibilities, but also symbols of the normative consciousness shared by the Japanese people of that time (that is, their way of being as a person and their attitude as a member of society). People internalized this normative consciousness through "the inheritance of stories" and "training in discipline," and the spirituality formed in that process deeply influenced their aesthetic sense. "Living in integration" and "dying in integration" were perceived as "beautiful."

However, the digital innovations that have progressed over the past 30 years have drastically altered the structure of these norms. Currently, individual behavior is constantly monitored in the digital space, and a system has spread throughout society where behavior is encouraged by a "controlled environment" before norms can be internalized through narratives and values.
This change coincides with the shift from the "discipline-based power" described by the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the "environment-based power" described by contemporary philosopher Hiroki Azuma. The former controls people from within through shared values, while the latter, while acknowledging the coexistence of diverse values, externally restricts behavior itself. This has permeated society as a new structure in just a few decades because it aligns with the social structure demanded by globalization. And this influence must have extended to the nature of aesthetics.
When I look at old Japanese paintings that express "wabi-sabi" and "impermanence," I feel a certain premonition. Isn't the "beauty" seen by people who once internalized ethical values ​​and lived within a unified system different from the "beauty" seen by us today, whose behavior is controlled by institutions and environments? If so, what kind of "beauty" will people living in the coming era find in it?

This series of works is created with that premonition as its starting point. I hope to highlight the relationship between people and aesthetic sensibilities, which changes along with societal shifts, through my artwork.