The Concept of Image in Chinese, Western and Japanese Cultures

Abstract

Abstract: Global multicultural interaction accommodates the conflict between monism and pluralism. The paper examines the three different forms of beauty as reflected in the different concepts of image in Chinese, Western and Japanese cultures as art symbols of expressing feelings and ideas. The concept of image as a Western concept finds its counterparts in Chinese phrase of "xingxiang" (形象 form-image) and Japanese "sugata" (姿 idea-image). "Image" in the ancient Greece referred mainly to the exterior form, which in turn pointed to the "body" and highlighted in the geometrical "form." The concept of "form-image" in Chinese emphasizes the image over the form, aiming at the vision through the shape, which eventually reached the "spirit" in the identification between the subject and the object and enacted in man's presence in the world. The concept of "idea-image" (sugata) in Japanese culture is not the form of reason but the form in the intuitive experience. The "idea-image" is formless and shows in both the still motion and the moving stasis, and the idea-image formed in an instant suggests the fluidity of the world.

Key words: image, xingxiang (form-image), sugata (idea-image)

Xi Haohui. The Concept of Image in Chinese, Western and Japanese Cultures[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2015, 35(2): 95-102.

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