Hi, it’s a long story to say how I am where I am to ask this question; I’m just curious though. I am going through Japanese art and design elements to find the common themes and patterns. I understand the culture, religion and ways are different there in Japan…I just find it curious that love does not seem to addressed much if at all in Japanese art. Is it because the expression of love in the culture (traditionally) has been such a private emotion?
Basically I was looking for examples in art that involved this emotion to view the Japanese perspective on this visually. When I google this I only get a couple of the feudal style paintings with what looks to be some rather painful sex acts, haha. But sex is sex even though based on context it can imply love also.
Can anyone help me with a few works that give an example of love in Japanese art?
Love is a private emotion to all cultures–and it’s an internal emotion, too. I don’t think I really understand the question. Can you give any examples of Western art depicting love? I suppose there are illustrations of people we understand to be ‘in love’ because of other texts (illustrations of famous love stories or legends) and maternal or spiritual love is depicted in the case of some religious artwork but until fairly modern times there were no non-pornographic pictures of, say, people kissing, as far as I know. There are such examples in Japanese artwork, certainly–illustrations concerning the tale of Genji, for example, or religious depictions of the Buddha or Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy (who serves a somewhat similar role to say, Mary). And yes, there are the acrobatic sex acts too.
First off -sure it’s homework, but I’m the one assigning it -to myself
Second it doesn’t have to be famous, just Japanese art, depicting love -hand holding, embraces, kissing…if you do a image search for “love in American art” you instantly find all the above examples I gave. But Japanese art, take away all things anime style is and you’re just left with cherry blossoms and bamboo silhouettes, cross-hatching design elements, Koi fish and fish scale designs, very nature oriented subject matter, when I finally find something with humans in it they are having sex with each other…
When a man in Japan cares for a a girl in Japan does that ever come to light as an actual piece of art? Art for the sake of love has been going on since the beginning of time, just think about the Taj Mahal or the pyramids. How is love expressed through art in Japan? Th-at is my question… I’m not really interested in Octopi pleasuring women that is 1) not a human to human relationship and 2) straight sex.
Before I get any arguments, I think I’ll just take back what i said about the pyramids… different situation done mostly for examples of power… but regardless art many times and for a very long time has depicted strong feelings for another. I’m just looking for that in Japanese art.
Wow, such a low turn-out for this post. I could really use more feedback if it’s possible, err -useful/productive feedback that is, hehe.
I did some more research last night, and I was seeing that unlike the traditional Western association of love and sex (not that it always happens that way). The Japanese (and probably adjacent countries) can easily separate the two from each other. Which I would think would influence what they draw, paint, and write.
So how about this, I’ve already put a APB out on any “love” associated artwork from Japan, but how about Poetry?
Japan is very well known for poetry -Japanese love poetry anyone? haha, yeah I don’t think I’ll get many hits on that request, but just puttin’ it out there:rolleyes:.
If there’s anything well known that you guys can think of, I’d appreciate it to give me a better window into their world.
Well, you certainly earn your name Captain Thank you very much, finally a little insight and you even put the effort forth to list it all here for me… awesome… you rock
That “traditional association of love and sex” is not true to every Western location and through Western history: does the concept of “Platonic love” ring a bell? Amor cortés, the Platonic love between two people who know better than to even think of physical love (either one or both married to other people, different social standing, different religion) is a running theme in Western literature, and in the life of Francis Borgia to mention the name that comes to mind (the wiki link doesn’t say it, but he’d been very much in love with the Empress; to him, she wasn’t just “an exceptional beauty”). The notion that “if you so much as like someone, you do everything in your hand to have sex with them, no matter how old/young you two are and which your social situation is” is definitely not universal: quite the opposite.
Expository anecdote spoilered because it’s long.
Last year I took a graduate course in Translation. We had one class dedicated to “translation of computer games”. The teacher asked whether any of us had Japanese among out languages: “nu-hu”.
T: “Nobody”
S: “Nope”
T: “None of you can speak Japanese, read Japanese, understand Japanese”
S: “Right”
Then she played us the end of one of the Final Fantasy games, in Japanese. Blonde Dude steps into the light, Girl in Robe says, softly, “arigato” - and the class explodes in proud/amused yells of “hey, I got that! She said thank you!”
T: “Aha! So, you do understand Japanese, even if it’s only arigato and sushi. Now, we’ve talked about how in videogames it’s customary to translate to English, and have the translators to other languages work from English. Let’s look at the English version.”
Blonde Dude steps into the light, Girl in Robe says, softly, “I love you” - the class was Not Amused. Betrayal was one of the lightest words thrown out.
That translation was forced by the Americans, who claimed that the original “did not match Western sensibilities”; translators to other languages found that line jarring, as it simply doesn’t fit what you usually see coming out of Japan (they’re more likely to show people having sex than someone saying “I love you”), discovered the original was “arigato”, but were not allowed to use “thank you”, it had to be “I love you” because the Americans were convinced that they knew more about these translators’ native cultures than the translators did. The Chinese students in the room were, admittedly, not Westerners, but the French, English, Scottish, German, Swiss, Cypriot, Spanish, Italian ones were… and to us, turning that “thank you” into an explicit “I love you” was akin to turning a shy teenager into the class slut. We would have been perfectly able to read “my heart leaves when you do, I will love you always” in a “thank you” where apparently the Americans needed the neon lights of that “I love you” - and they imposed the neon-lit version on everybody else.
Sometimes, people don’t say “I love you” to express love: they say “thank you”. Sometimes, they do not look straight into each other’s eyes before jumping into a French kiss: they look at each other out of the corner of their eyes before blushing and looking away. The kind of manifestations of love that you’re used to seeing in American art are, as has been mentioned, something which entered art very recently: medieval poems, Renaissance stories, the Song of Songs… heck, Fiddler on the Roof, talk about love and show love with very little recourse to its more biological manifestations. Go look at those, learn to read love between the lines in Western art, and you’ll be able to find it everywhere in Japanese art as well.
Barring the possibility that the same iffy translation happened in multiple games, the game in question is FF X…this is the whole ending, in English, but the scene in question ends about 2 and a half minutes after where it’s cued. (Here’s the Japanese version.)
It’s kind of funny, really - that one line of dialogue is the ONLY thing about the scene that wasn’t blindingly obvious about Tidus and Yuna’s feelings - the looks on their faces during the whole thing, the head shake, the fact that the two of them are separated from the rest of the group. Everything about it (including details that you’d need to have played the game to notice) makes it pretty obvious. (And I say this as part of the North American audience the altered translation was supposed to be accommodating.)
Actually, to go on a tangent, which demonstrates, I think, a big problem with applying this philosophy to translating - more than unnecessarily anvilizing the love angle, as someone in the comments for the Japanese version points out - that ‘arigato’ carried a lot of meaning which was lost by distilling it down like that. Everything you said is in there, but…she was honestly thanking him, not just for their romance, but everything else about their relationship. A lot of meaning was lost in the attempt to make one aspect obvious (that shouldn’t have needed more ‘neon’).
Well, thanks to Turkey day I’ve gotten a little more time to address my post that I have poorly maintained lately due to time constraints. Both interesting points and perspectives guys, But the purpose of the post was more for an illustrated example of love in Japan’s culture.
Usually posting on this site is kinda like doing a Google search, there are many results that come back with more questions of how or what I’m asking then usable information. This time however, I have gotten some pretty interesting feedback, so it encourages me to keep pushing this topic back out there until this gravy train of intellect runs dry.
That said, this site is called “Straight Dope” you must talk to me like I’m five or rather just show me what you’re talking about versus speaking in length about it. Even though I absorbed everything that was said and welcomed the add to my post I’m looking for examples in art and I further opened the doors requesting poetry or even writing. For the post to be useful to me the comparison to Western ideals is for me to do, the presentation of Japanese examples was what was called for.
I know about platonic love, but unless there is a diary entry or a photograph or painting, a piece of poetry etc. demonstrating what you’re talking about I’m really not so interested. I understand Japan’s culture is more in terms of subtleties, I just want the opportunity to surround myself with examples of this and then absorb the gist of this -to everything there is repetition -a pattern.
The Final Fantasy example was interesting because I hadn’t thought to look in video games for any answers, I appreciated the perspective. However “lost in translation” is a very well know phrase and rightly so because so many of the little nuances in a particular language can’t be carried over to another so well. And this was just another example of this.
It is the main reason I first pursued art as the primary means of expression of love in Japanese culture. Because even if writing is translated, some little important detail could be lost… but I expanded the parameters again, because it’s my little homework assignment and it will just be my job to pull out as much as I can from what information pops up here. Please don’t let the way I word things dissuade anyone from adding to the conversation, I am merely stating what I’m looking to do with what is posted here, but all submissions are welcome. In other words, “Thank you”
Thank you very much, finally a little insight and you even put the effort forth to list it all here for me… awesome… you rock