The Play of Shadows in Japanese Cinema

The medieval Japanese Buddhist-inspired aesthetic concept of yūgen emphasizes the absence of light, movement, and form in order to create a sense of deep but non-discursive meaning. This pre-modern concept can be applied to the film Rashomon to appreciate how the movie uses light and shadow to point...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cho, Francisca (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Taylor & Francis [2015]
In: Material religion
Year: 2015, Volume: 11, Issue: 4, Pages: 507-525
Further subjects:B Shadows
B yūgen
B Hirokazu Kore'eda
B Akira Kurosawa
B Light
B Emptiness
B non-diegetic
B yin
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:The medieval Japanese Buddhist-inspired aesthetic concept of yūgen emphasizes the absence of light, movement, and form in order to create a sense of deep but non-discursive meaning. This pre-modern concept can be applied to the film Rashomon to appreciate how the movie uses light and shadow to point to the necessity of abandoning intellectual knowledge in order to move towards moral action. The yūgen concept is also instantiated in the way the film Maborosi uses shadows to create stunning images that form an alternative perception of the world beyond conventional human concerns.
ISSN:1751-8342
Contains:Enthalten in: Material religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2015.1103480