Short description:

Higuchi provides insight into how this philosophy has developed in Japan, and the affinity it has developed with a non-Western culture. Dividing his insights into the categories of innovation, practice and educational implications, Higuchi presents the Japanese perspective on somaesthetics, with contributions from four of his students.

Long description:

?I regard Higuchi?s book as particularly valuable because it highlights dimensions of somaesthetics that have not been sufficiently explored. I refer not only to the various traditional Japanese somatic disciplines whose somaesthetics aspects Higuchi reveals, but also to central topics far beyond Japanese culture.?

-Foreword by Richard Shusterman

Higuchi, one of the pivotal scholars in introducing Shusterman?s somaesthetics to Japanese audiences in the early 2000s, provides insight into how this philosophy has developed in Japan, and the affinity it has developed with a non-Western culture.

Dividing his insights into the categories of innovation, practice, and educational implications, Higuchi presents the Japanese perspective on somaesthetics, with contributions from four of his students. They develop the philosophical discussion of areas such as the aesthetics of sport, bodily knowing, learning as mimesis, and learning culture through language. In this way, the book illuminates the philosophy of somaesthetics using Japanese experience and research while presenting a unique perspective on Japanese culture.

This book will be of especial interest to scholars of Japanese culture, and of the philosophy of aesthetics and education.

Table of Contents:

Foreward (Richard Shusterman)

Preface

Part I Innovation of Aesthetics

1. Aesthetics of Sport: Its Framework

2. The Somaesthetic Experience of the Sports Performer

3. Sport and Art: Innovation of the Concept of Art

Part II Significance of Practice

4. Bodily Knowing

5. Eastern Body Theory and Somaesthetics

Part III Meliorism or Educational Implications

6. Somaesthetics and Learning

7. A Critical Investigation on the Education in Meliorism (by Jiyun Bae)

8.The Body Facing the Violence in Education: Critical Options from Somaesthetics (by Taiki Matsuda)

9. Learning Culture through Language (by Shoko Nagata)

10. The Meaning of Language in Education (with Yayoi Sutani)