This blog post explores how society’s wariness toward otaku culture can transform into understanding and respect, examining the process of this positive shift in perception. Long ago, in 2015, I traveled to Japan. On March 30, 2015, Japan hosted the ‘Otaku Expo’ as a side event for ‘Comiket Special 6’. Over 500,000 people participated in the Comiket festival, and over 50,000 people...
Understanding the essence of art requires diverse philosophical approaches. By exploring shifts in the concept of art—such as mimesis, expressionism, formalism, and institutionalism—we illuminate the importance of defining art. Aesthetics, a branch of philosophy that discusses concepts and theories concerning art and aesthetic experience, makes the question of defining art crucial...
This blog post examines various expressive methods and strategies artists use to effectively deliver critical messages about mass media, analyzing their artistic significance. Many artists distrust mass media, suspecting it of manipulation or propaganda, and regard popular culture as shallow. They have expressed their views in various ways. For example, one artist explicitly revealed a...
The meaning of an artwork constantly evolves based on the era and the viewer’s interpretation. This blog post explores how the interaction between the work and the viewer creates new meanings. We often say we enjoy or appreciate an artwork instead of simply viewing it. Enjoying or appreciating an artwork implies deriving pleasure from it or judging its value. This notion implies that...
This blog post examines how film and comics utilize time and space to express reality and imagination. We explore the narrative approaches and visual differences between the two media. In the traditional sense, one major difference between cinematic representation and comic representation is the presence or absence of movement. Film is an art form that reproduces the motion of objects—that...
This blog post explores how film evolved beyond mere entertainment into an art form that recreates reality. The history of cinema has been a journey from its origins as a novelty spectacle, through experimentation with artistic possibilities, to the discovery of its unique means of expression. Early films were limited to the technical marvel of showing simple motion, but gradually began to...
Walter Benjamin criticized cinema in the 1930s for causing traditional artworks to lose their aura, and this remains a pertinent issue even amid the advancement of modern digital technology. Today, film is recognized as a representative art genre of our era, drawing audiences of tens of millions to a single movie. Yet it is intriguing that Walter Benjamin critically examined film as early...
This blog post examines the impact of autophagy mechanisms on aging and Parkinson’s disease treatment, exploring how modern medicine utilizes this process. On October 3, 2016, Yoshinori Ohsumi, Professor Emeritus at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the autophagy mechanism. Professor Yoshinori Ohsumi, the...
This blog post examines how film frames define the boundary between reality and imagination, analyzing how these techniques maximize a film’s creativity. The fundamental unit of film is the frame. Meaning a border or structure, the frame is defined differently at each stage of a film’s creation and screening. During shooting, the frame is defined as the composition of the scene...
In this blog post, we explore why staff from various fields, not just the director and actors, are essential to completing a film. Introduction Movies are a prime example of the cultural activities we commonly enjoy. Watching a film at a nearby theater on weekends or holidays, when meeting friends or going on a date, or simply when time permits, is a routine pleasure and recreational...