Abstract
Mitate is the name used to describe a typically Japanese visual trope, in which one object is meant to be seen as something else. While mitate is a defining element of Edo period haikai and ukiyo-e, a this kind of overlapping meanings can be found in much earlier sources. Its aesthetic effects are often smile, laughter, and parody, but mitate can also bestow a hidden depth to the commonplace and the contemporary through explicit and implicit connections to more noble and remote cultural antecedents. In this paper I examine mitate and mitate-like configurations throughout the history of Japanese aesthetics, and conclude by asking whether mitate is indeed a uniquely Japanese phenomenon and by analysing whether and how it can be relevant to some philosophical discussions (Husserl's and Wittgenstein’s) concerned with the phenomenological and ontological status of images.
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Marinucci, L. Seeing Something as Something Else: The Logic of Mitate 見立て. Journal East Asian Philosophy (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43493-024-00045-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43493-024-00045-8