Ideals of the East

Kazuko Okakura

• 03 juli 2012
• 9781462904754

Samenvatting:

Here are the long-cherished ideals of the East with special reference to the ageless art of Japan. Japan, Okakura wrote more than 60 years ago, is a museum of Asiatic civilization, and yet more than a museum, because the singular genius of the race leads it to dwell on all phases of the ideals of the past, which welcomes the new without losing the old. He wrote of that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of Asiatic races, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world.

In Buddhism he found "that great ocean of idealism, in which merge all the river-systems of Eastern Asiatic thought--not colored only with the pure water of the Ganges, for the Tartaric nations that joined it made their genius also tributary, bringing new symbolism, new organization, new powers of devotion, to add to the treasures of the Faith."

Asiatic art and culture went hand in hand, and how well Okakura wrote about both!