Place as Transition
Michael Lazarin, Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Faculty of Letters, Professor
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Abstract
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For the Japanese, ultimate reality is transiency; continuous presence is an illusion. For this reason Japanese architecture emphasizes transitional, intermediary zones. Two architectural elements where this emphasis can be seen are the engawa veranda ( ) and the hashigakari bridgeway ( ) of the Noh stage. Given the Japanese emphasis on the temporal dimension of architecture, literary poetics is useful for an appreciation of these phenomena. This paper relies primarily on Martin Heidegger’s “… Poetically Man Dwells …” and 22nd generation Noh actor Komparu Kunio’s The Noh Theater to give a phenomenological description of these two elements.
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Author
Michael Lazarin was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1950. As an undergraduate, he was a double major in mechanical engineering and philosophy. He received a Ph.D. from Duquesne University in 1980, with a dissertation on Heidegger and Hölderlin, directed by Father Andre Schuwer. He taught literature and philosophy in China from 1982-84 and since then in Japan. Lazarin teaches Western literature and art history at the undergraduate level at Ryukoku University, a 370 year-old Buddhist university in kyoto. His graduate seminar is a three-year rotation of Aristotle’s Poetics, Nietzches’s Birth of Tragedy, and Heidegger’s poetics.