Summer 2014
The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan
W. Puck Brecher
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013
Eccentricity and odd artistic behavior in the Edo period of Japan (1600–1868) proliferated as an aesthetic subculture that both resisted the rigidity of the Tokugawa realm and served as a source of moral and cultural values.
This study by Brecher, an assistant professor of Japanese language at Washington State University, delves into the complex role of oddballs and eccentrics as sources of artistic … » More …