Abstract
This essay highlights some issues regarding the current relationship between the aesthetic and artistic experience of Japan and of the West. A comparison between Hokusai’s pictorial work Tiger in the snow and some crucial notions of Nietzsche’s philosophy (such as the dance and Heiterkeit) will form the basis for a critical deconstruction of Takayama Rinjirō’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought. Then we shall show how the peculiar Japanese ethical and aesthetic concept of kire, theorized in Ryōsuke Ōhashi’s work, can have a theoretical relevance for the contemporary Western aesthetic reflection. Through the analysis of some specific pictorial and poetic experiences (Van Gogh, Takahashi, Bashō), and through the study of some passages of Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra, we shall also show how Japanese thought can help to extend the boundaries of the traditional Western definition of aesthetics by problematizing its categories.