Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Regarding the philosophical significance of criticism, I had previously written various works.
I now intended to expand upon this.
Were we to define the notion of "philosophical significance" more rigorously, we might term it "epistemological significance."
Why "philosophical" strictly speaking becomes "epistemological" constituted a more fundamental preliminary question, but I proposed to let this clarify itself through our developing discussion.
The epistemological significance of criticism would essentially signify criticism's function within epistemology—or rather, its function when epistemologically grounded.
At present we could only relegate this point to conjecture; yet were we provisionally to accept this premise, even should one attempt to conclude that criticism ultimately formed an integral component of epistemology itself—meaning none other than a function of cognitive theory—this would scarcely differ from our current understanding.

However, this conclusion was not merely an inevitable one; from a practical standpoint, it had become greatly needed today.
In Japan’s cultural world, where intellectual reflection on criticism remained woefully underdeveloped, this was precisely what proved most necessary.
And as an insight for advancing culture’s grand avenue—or rather, its true path—this had now grown into an urgent necessity.

That art is generally expression remains common knowledge today.
No one doubts artworks constitute external expressions of humanity, inner life, daily existence, vitality, or spirit.
Many artists confess their creative struggle lies in expression—as evidenced by H. Matisse’s writings.
Yet passively accepting such common sense differs fundamentally from actively asserting such a viewpoint.
Confession and assertion are not identical.
For when one emphatically asserts something already widely understood, this implies conscious recognition of some opposing element; depending on that opposition’s nature, both content and essence of the assertion transform accordingly.
Every assertion presupposes an adversarial principle.
This transcends mere acceptance of common sense.
But we must not forget such assertions themselves inevitably become absorbed into common sense.
The very claim that art must be nothing but expression—indeed precisely expression—constitutes itself part of today’s common sense regardless of oral or written articulation.
Ultimately common sense begins asserting itself under pressure.
It resembles the inertia (what scholastic scholars conceived as substance’s inertia) sustaining various commonsense notions.
Thus what appears non-assertive in such common sense ultimately reveals itself as assertion.

Let me give an example.
Spingarn points out that modern criticism is culminating in the study of expression (J. E. Spingarn, *The New Criticism*).
In revolt against the canonical critical spirit extending from Aristotle’s *Poetics* through Scaliger and Boileau—those enforcers of normative standards—today’s new criticism argues that works should be seen not as standardized products but as free expressions of something.
The argument goes that art has come to be consistently regarded as an expressive technique.
Indeed, it is common sense in today's criticism that grammar and rhetoric—not to mention poetics and even dramaturgy—must not serve as judges of literary works.
Prescriptive grammatical standards may serve as references for texts, but they certainly cannot judge texts today.
Originally, criticism is considered to have the obligation to first understand before judging.
What is to be understood? It is the life and thought of the author and the era, people, and class behind them as expressed in the work.
In that sense, asserting that art is expression is not at all mistaken.
Only the problem of what exactly this "expression" constitutes remains.

But this assertion required slightly more scrutiny. If one were to assert that art in general was expression in this manner, then this should not be something limited solely to art. What were regarded as expressions—this also referred to expressive works—were not limited solely to artworks. Science, philosophy, religion, consciousness, and all other cultural phenomena—social phenomena such as economy, politics, customs, and morality—had to all be expressions. The expression of life had to be considered as both culture and human history. Indeed, cultural histories based on German idealism and historicist philosophies of history had consistently maintained precisely such claims. Spingarn himself acknowledged that he was none other than its American version. Burckhardt regarded the Italian Renaissance state as a work of art because he viewed political form as an expression. For those who thought more metaphysically, even the human body itself was an expression, and it was said that the essence of action lay in the "expressive act."

Then, does asserting that art is fundamentally expression amount to claiming it imparts no distinctive quality to our conception of art? That could not have been valid. Art was never mere expression—it signified specifically the technique of expression. It was art precisely because it constituted this technical dimension of expression (art). Thus our ongoing argument introduces a new consideration: art being technique-of-expression—since it excludes other technical domains—(interpreting “technique” here strictly as method or procedural approach). For instance, art belongs neither to techniques of appreciation, nor edification, nor consolation; nor does it fall under techniques of cognition. Therefore we must conclude art exists precisely as “technique” of expression.

This was probably the unfeigned intent underlying the art-as-expression theory’s assertion.
But when it came to this point，a different kind of objection could not help but intrude once again.
After all，did science not also possess a technique of expression?
Scientific research results that remained unexpressed could not be historically transmitted，and therefore fundamentally could not exist.
Unless orally transmitted or recorded in writing，scientific achievements could not be established；without this，the historical development of science would have been entirely impossible.
Modern scientific papers were none other than those written with the clearest awareness of this very circumstance.
Research left incomplete did not constitute scientific research at all.
For work to qualify as research，one had to compile its results.
Observations，measurements，experiments，calculations，or literature surveys left unprocessed held no meaning whatsoever.
Compiling them was precisely research’s objective.
Until compilation occurred，even researchers themselves could not know their precise results.
This held all the more true for working adults.
Thus，compilation had to constitute expression within scientific research.

Admittedly, even if the writing is somewhat poor, as long as the content remains accurate and the viewpoint elevated, it makes for an excellent scientific paper.
In that sense, the aspects that make expression what it is become irrelevant here; one might consequently argue that present-day expression is not truly expression in essence.
Yet this parallels how poor penmanship in a manuscript doesn’t keep it from being an excellent scientific paper—if the prose itself is sound and the descriptions masterful, nothing prevents it from being a splendid literary work.
Handwritten characters belong to another expressive technique altogether, with East Asian calligraphy (*sho*) constituting a form of pictorial expression.
Artistic expression cannot be reduced to mere depiction.
There exists the view that novels require an appropriate mingling of description and explanation (as Kikuchi Kan argues in Kojima Masajirō’s novel *Kikuchi Kan*).
Nor can academic reports be said to exclude description.
Yet conversely—what exactly does “calligraphy (*sho*)”, seemingly a type of painting, purport to “depict”?

The value of expressive technique in literary works does not lie in the technique itself as something isolated; rather, it should reside in how the author’s observations, contemplations, investigations, lived experiences, reflections, and other such elements are expressed therein.
The circumstances surrounding how any observations, experiments, or investigations by scientists are compiled as scientific achievements do not formally differ from this.
At least, insofar as the issue is not what *kind* of expression—description, explanation, or otherwise—but whether something *is* an expression at all, why should we hesitate to call the presentation of scientific achievements “expression,” just as calligraphy (“sho”) and prose are equally expressions, no less than artworks in general?

Now, the view that science constitutes cognition whereas art (and literature) constitutes expression is by no means uncommon in intellectual discourse.
While this formulation's intuitive appeal remains understandable, its substantive vacuity becomes evident through our preceding analysis.
Such conceptual framing inevitably yields problematic conclusions.
If we adopt "expression" as our criterion, all must be expressions; if "cognition," all must be cognitions.
The true distinction should have resided in specifying what *manner* of expression or *form* of cognition—what semantic dimension and structural configuration—each domain embodies.

But I do not intend to develop here the distinctions or connections between art and science, nor theories of art.
For now, let us assume the traditional view of realism that art constitutes an artistic “cognition” of the world.
Here realism refers not merely to a technique but to an epistemological stance concerning artistic cognition—yet regarding art itself as a cognition of the world, expanding the concept of cognition (and epistemology) into such dimensions must be considered both our present expectation for epistemology and art theory (indeed cultural theory broadly), and a development demarcating philosophy’s new phase in scope.
Nevertheless, this point has not necessarily been seen as thoroughly examined by people.
It can scarcely be found except in a handful of recent works in literary studies and art theory*.

*Takeda Takeshi’s *Bijutsuron* (Art Theory) had been based on such an intention from the beginning.*
However, due to insufficient analysis of the mechanism of artistic cognition, it failed to sufficiently convince readers of the fundamental distinction between realism and technical representation.
Mr. Amakasu Sekisuke’s paper “On Technical Representation in Art”
*(Gakugei*, No. 71, 1938) pointed out this weakness and offered several excellent insights.
However, the conclusion that what art expresses ultimately reduces to “life” was in fact no solution at all, but merely a reduction to common sense.
The epistemology of art should have started from questioning what exactly this “life” signified.
Unless one fundamentally emphasized the perspective that art was cognition, it became clear that essential progress in current art theory remained arduous.
The artistic life had to be analyzed epistemologically.

Now, if we assume art to be a form of world cognition, it should be readily accepted that criticism constitutes a form of examination of cognition—that is, the cognized.
Criticism (whether critique or commentary), by any account, has developed most fully as artistic criticism and carries significant weight.
Since art is regarded as a form of cognition, criticism—which must most frequently engage with artworks—should naturally maintain awareness that it perpetually examines objects of cognition and thereby cognition itself.
The endless opposition between scientific criticism and impressionistic criticism now holds no relevance.
In any form of criticism, there must always exist a central pillar forming an “ism” of criticism—whether this “ism” denotes doctrine, spirit, or unified phenomenon. For this reason precisely, the premise of examining cognition must itself constitute criticism’s indispensable central pillar.

Of course, whether critics are conscious of this premise or not is a separate issue; regardless of whether critics are aware of criticism’s pivotal axis, it does not prevent actual criticism—and indeed criticism of considerable sophistication—from being conducted.
And there is sufficient reason for this: although Sainte-Beuve is regarded as a giant of impressionist criticism, what he saw in artworks was invariably an expression of personality—or, to account for what we have just discussed, he consistently discerned therein human cognition—and this theory constitutes the hidden pivotal axis of his criticism.
Because the first impression is inevitably modified by later, secondary impressions, criticism cannot help but fluctuate around this pivotal axis.
Fluctuation arises not from the absence of a pivotal axis but from around the pivotal axis.
So to speak, it was precisely because of this hidden pivotal axis that he was able to become an outstanding impressionist critic.

But now—since what was at issue was not criticism’s practical manifestations but rather what precisely constituted criticism as a concept—the pivotal axis of criticism (namely that it constitutes an examination of cognition) had to be consciously recognized; such a critical spirit had to be brought explicitly to light.
Therein arose the necessity to assert that criticism constitutes an examination of cognition = objects of cognition.
Thus it follows that criticism itself constitutes an epistemological activity.
Or at least—unless anchored by some form of epistemology—it cannot be considered criticism accompanied by full awareness.

The conclusion I wish to arrive at is precisely this kind of conclusion.
This is criticism as epistemology in this sense.

I have no intention of obscuring the fact that everything I have discussed thus far rests entirely on a single assumption.
[I] have assumed the realist art theory that art is cognition.
To comprehensively prove this assumption in advance would likely be impossible in the natural order of things.
But that being said, this is not merely an assumption.
It is a scientific hypothesis generalized from what has already been partially substantiated in considerable measure.
By adopting this hypothesis as a working hypothesis, one can instead contribute to substantiating this general proposition itself.

II

Needless to say, criticism does not necessarily denote a specific doctrine such as “criticalism.” Still less does it necessarily equate to criticalism as one philosophical attitude. The unified phenomenon and activity called *hyōron* (critique) are what is ordinarily referred to as criticism (*kuritishizumu*). While it is true that criticism attracting the most attention has traditionally been literary or artistic criticism, there is no reason to limit the objects of criticism here to literature or art alone—for no one is unaware of the fact that criticism also rigorously exists for the social sciences, natural sciences, society, customs, and other domains. That criticism generally constitutes cultural critique, critique of life, and critique of human existence—even before considering M. Arnold—is something that leading theorists of criticism have emphatically asserted. This point will become clear later.

But the fact that criticism was not entirely unrelated to what might be called the philosophical attitude of “criticalism” or “criticism-ism” proved particularly worthy of consideration in this instance.
In philosophy, criticalism had been seen as beginning with Kant; however, this generally signified a system for critiquing rational faculties.
Even when not strictly limited to reason in its narrowest sense—while encompassing critiques of all faculties directly tied to human reason (judgment and others)—the examination of rational capacities broadly constituted the work of Kant’s criticalism-criticism.

The fact that Kant began with critiquing humanity’s subjective faculties was actually for the purpose of systematically examining the various cultural domains existing within society through critical analysis. Had there been no such purpose, this system would have become merely a kind of psychology. If that were the case, part of Kant’s analysis might—to state it bluntly—have been reducible to Tetens’ psychology. That this was not limited to something like Tetens’ psychology but could possess a certain logical function stemmed entirely from its pursuit of critiquing existing culture. However, even if one pursues the logical functions of psychology and consciousness, unless there exists again the intention to critically examine various cultural domains, even something like today’s pure phenomenology (such as E. Husserl’s) should suffice to meet basic requirements. In reality, the analysis Kant conducted was thoroughly modern-phenomenological in nature. Thus, the defining feature of Kant’s criticalism lay not merely in examining psychology, consciousness, or the residual elements of faculty psychology—that is, humanity’s subjective capacities—but precisely in targeting their critique. Moreover, the critique of such mental faculties was not itself the ultimate aim of this criticism; rather, it aimed to undertake, through this very critique, an examination of society’s living cultural worlds. Therein lay its distinctive feature. Mathematics, astronomy, physics, biology, morality, religion, art, human history, and even metaphysics—these constituted the cultural worlds Kant perceived.

This was not the time to scrutinize each individual point of Kant’s criticism.
Such analyses had already been more than sufficiently conducted by others.
Our interest lay in the critical spirit within his criticalism—that is to say, in criticism’s essential intent.
While it was well known that his criticalism was founded not on scholastic concepts but on a world-concept, this global interest simultaneously signified societal concern.
He had been first to respond to Enlightenment’s imperative and first to clarify cosmopolitanism’s conception.
Originally, Kant had reformulated all problems through fresh perspectives while establishing provisional systematic resolutions.
He stood as late eighteenth-to-early-nineteenth-century Germany’s supreme Encyclopedist.
Yet compared to Fichte and Schelling—those presumed intimates of Romantic and cosmic realms—we had to consider why he particularly embodied this Encyclopedist role and what that signified.
As generally observed, his own interest in systematic interconnections among cultural worlds had birthed an Encyclopedist—but indispensable to this had been literati-critical social engagement.
Genuine cultural concern must necessarily have meant concern for culture existing within actual society.
Without vigorous social interest in diverse cultures, where could we locate the ultimate motive for Kant’s encyclopedic criticism?—This constituted his critical spirit.

I held almost no sympathy for what was called Kant’s transcendental idealism as criticalism.
One could not defend the incompleteness of what was termed “coy materialism” within Kant’s system, nor the defects of its non-dialectical metaphysics and mechanism.
But at the very least, what deserved considerable evaluation in Kant had been the spirit of his criticism.
Of course, since this spirit of criticism manifested itself in Kant’s distinctive form as an actual phenomenon, one had to refrain from indiscriminately generalizing it.
First, it must also be stated that this “criticism” had been produced by Germany’s impoverished political reality as a substitute for political practice.
In this sense, such criticism signified nothing but a negative.
Yet Hegel himself—who had dismissed criticalism as mere armchair theorizing—likely remained equally unliberated from German reality’s poverty.
Even he had produced influential critical schools targeting religion.
He had even spawned proponents of “critical critique.”
And he ultimately came to produce critics of the “critique of critical critique.”
While one might say Hegel represented a great critical spirit in some positive sense, one must not overlook that this tradition of critical spirit had precisely belonged to Kant.
The reason Hegel deliberately chose Kant as his direct intellectual adversary from within humanity’s history of thought remained by no means difficult to discern.

Let us recall that Kantian criticalism came to be termed epistemology by later Neo-Kantians.
This so-called epistemology ultimately amounted to nothing more than methodological supremacism concerning primarily scientific cognition; when not that, it reduced to a species of anti-realist metaphysics (?)—something resembling value philosophy.
This was likely something Kant himself had not necessarily conceived of, and one could only conclude that it represented a marked diminution in the scope of Kant’s own epistemological theory.
The most substantial cultural characteristic of Kant’s epistemology had lain in its critical spirit oriented toward cultural critique, yet precisely this cultural characteristic became diluted—its place usurped by technical exaggerations of professorial philosophical concepts like constructivism and logicism—thereby constituting this “epistemology.”
Yet despite this, the sole merit of this epistemology remained that it had not yet entirely lost sight of its aim of cultural critique.
Though operating through strabismus and atrophy, it nevertheless claimed to aspire toward a philosophy of culture.
We must bear in mind that Neo-Kantian criticalism did accomplish a certain measure of work in civilizational critique as a philosophy of cultural criticism.
This point tends to be forgotten amidst scholarly critiques of criticalism.

Of course, this philosophy of culture emitted a not entirely wholesome essence.
This essence might well be called culturalism.
Its origins cannot be said to lie completely outside Kant himself.
For instance, according to him, Enlightenment first took shape precisely by abstracting politics from culture.
This cultural autarky was undoubtedly connected to autonomy (self-legislation) in Kantian moral philosophy.
This autonomy led later Neo-Kantians toward methodologicalism in epistemology and views regarding the transcendent validity of cultural values.
Thus it follows that this very culturalism became what narrowed and distorted Neo-Kantian-style epistemology.
Moreover, this same culturalism fundamentally degraded evaluations of the philosophy of culture that epistemology sought to establish.
But setting that aside—if we consider meaningful even the pretense of being a philosophy of culture—we must remember that compared to epistemologies seen in works like the so-called empirio-criticism of *Critique of Pure Experience* or Jerusalem’s criticalism in *The Sociological Critique of Human Reason*, this epistemology possessed from the outset a certain superior cultural qualification.
Particularly with something like empirio-criticism, not only does it fail to withstand criticism from academic-conceptual perspectives (see *Materialism and Empirio-Criticism*), but when measured against world-conceptual scales for resolving cultural issues, its growing insignificance becomes apparent.

Thus, the fact that Kant’s criticalism—reduced through Neo-Kantian reinterpretation—has become a philosophy of cultural critique qua epistemology will offer us a crucial hint regarding our problem. This demonstrates nothing less than how a systematic and principled critical framework for cultural worlds constitutes epistemology itself—the very fact that criticism belongs to epistemology’s domain. Yet this triad of criticism, epistemology, and cultural critique (philosophy of culture) has been distorted through Kantian stylization and atrophied through Neo-Kantian reductionism respectively. As an exemplar of the forms philosophical criticism currently assumes, this situation merits particular attention.

However, since the current discussion concerned Criticism (Criticalism) as a philosophical system, it did not necessarily coincide with general critical activities.
However, it was hardly justifiable to imagine that Criticism as a philosophical system and Criticism as critical activity were grounded in separate critical spirits.
In critical activity there existed both an explicit and implicit consistent critical mechanism; a system was indispensable.
There had to be a systematic method.
There had to be a dynamic critical principle.
If one claimed that those who particularly refined such principles could have no direct relation to Criticism as a philosophical system, that would have been somewhat strange.
The connection between systematic philosophical Criticism and ordinary critical activity would rather have constituted part of the epistemological essence of Criticism itself.
In order to clarify such points as well, the above examples served as an analogy.
But we had to first and foremost analyze the various elements that Criticism contained.

III

On one hand, we must consider Criticism as something as commonsensical as possible.
If one excludes what are called critiques, criticisms, and evaluations that discuss the merits and demerits of people and things, then Criticism becomes nothing but a laughable scholastic term.
If the meanings of the same word in everyday language and philosophical terminology were to become entirely distinct and unrelated, there could be no more meaningless philosophical method than this. At the same time, on the other hand, we must refine this into as scientific-philosophical a language as possible.
Criticism is an ordinary phenomenon; to theoretically refine it constitutes scientific labor.

Now, whether as an everyday phenomenon or a theoretical category, the first thing one notices about Criticism is its well-known characteristic of being expressed through language. Even if not written down or actually vocalized, something that is not ready to be put into words at any time cannot be called criticism. It would be permissible to describe this linguistic characteristic using the term “idea,” but if sensations or perceptions such as timbre and color can also be called “ideas,” then the term “idea” becomes somewhat less clear. Rather, terms such as *concept*, *understanding*, or *reflection* are more accurate. The phenomenon in which conceptual, intellectual reflection on a single sensory impression is articulated through words constitutes the very condition of criticism across all instances. In this way, criticism possesses what might be called a secondary quality (in Lockean terms). It transports the sensory impressions imparted by artworks—by translating them into the world of words—to another dimension, to a different order of existence. This is why criticism constitutes a secondary quality in relation to the work’s primary qualities. However, this secondary quality simultaneously gives rise to both the independence and uniqueness of the world that is Criticism. Thus, literary criticism is often seen as a servant to literary works while simultaneously being regarded as their judge or teacher—such is the reasoning here.

This might have seemed like an obvious point, yet the various conclusions it should entail were not necessarily accorded their due respect by the world.
――There exists a common saying that Criticism flourishes when creative activity declines.
However, the rise of proletarian literature and the emergence of new literary criticism occurred simultaneously across various nations worldwide.
The era of French materialism stood as the finest example from the past.
The tradition of French literary criticism had been forged during the same period as classical writers' heyday.
The German Romantics' era could well be considered a time when criticism and creative work converged.
While it held true that criticism had grown increasingly prominent as a cultural phenomenon in the modern era―to such an extent that some claimed no criticism existed during ancient Greece's age of plastic works―
counterexamples could indeed be readily adduced (e.g., Mr. Iijima Tsutomu's "The Art-Historical Significance of Criticism"―*Tetsugaku Kenkyū* [Philosophical Studies], Nos. 268–269).
The reason Criticism came to be viewed as symptomatic of creative decline stemmed from perceiving it as emerging from an essence wholly divorced from creative activity; consequently, observers either regarded it as creative endeavor's most servile slave or conversely its most merciless executioner.
Yet language accompanies all human activities.
It constitutes the most universal form of expression.
Should one not therefore conclude it far more natural and equitable to posit that the more vigorous creative activity grows, the more Criticism flourishes as linguistic praxis?

Contrary to this, the extreme opposite view posited that creation *was* Criticism itself.
"Poetry can only be criticized through poetry; nearly all art criticism is either too general or too specific."
Critics must seek a new mean within their own creations.
"One should not seek this within the creative works of artists."
Thus stated F. Schlegel’s fragment.
This thought peculiar to the German Romantics contained a grain of truth in that it suggested a certain necessary connection between criticism and artistic creative activity (and even more so with theoretical activity).
However, it was precisely in conflating this connection as if it were an immoderate organic system that one found what made the Romantics the Romantics.
One might say this kind of statement amounted to nothing more than irony.
It would have been a mistake to forcibly impose a merely convenient harmony upon the actual schism and antagonism between Criticism and creative activity.
If there were those who derived the notion of “creative criticism” from this Romantic approach to Criticism and imposed it as if it were Criticism’s true path, their error became all the more pronounced—for this would lead to the absurd conclusion that painting must be criticized through painting itself, and music must be criticized through composition and performance.
It was precisely in literature’s case (poesy/poetry) that one could nonchalantly assert that creation equaled criticism.
It was precisely because literature happened to be an art employing words (concepts, understanding, reflection—in other words, ideas) as its vehicle that such statements could be made.

Creative criticism may be a meaningful term when contrasted with what could be called anti-creative criticism (that is, criticism devoid of any understanding or sympathy for the work), but it obstructs Criticism’s liberation from individual works or specific artistic genres and its consequent acquisition of a unique worldhood as Criticism proper.
In other words, it risks hindering Criticism’s progress.
It would indeed be problematic if these very proposals—painstakingly crafted to elevate Criticism—were to impede its advancement.
In culture, “improvement”
does not necessarily equate to progress.
The secret of this cultural duality lies precisely within Criticism’s own mechanisms—though we shall set that aside for now—for broadly ignoring artworks’ antagonistic relationship with Criticism can only debase criticism’s fundamental mission.
This point demands attention.

Criticism dictates how to re-pursue the ideals that the writer actually sought to pursue in their work, and even raises higher, top-down ideals as challenges.
Criticism takes such idealization as its mission.
Thus, criticism becomes both a suggestion and even a prophecy for the movement of creative activity toward the future.
This is the meaningful gap between Criticism and creative activity observed in their temporal structure.
But that alone does not suffice.
In a parallel structure, Criticism mediates individual works to other works, to works of other artistic genres.
Criticism, which mediates, maintains a correspondingly negative distance from the creative works that are mediated themselves.
These gaps and intervals make Criticism both a servant and a teacher to creative works.
The linguistic characteristic of Criticism—its conceptual, intellectual, and reflective features—in short, its cognitive characteristic is precisely this.*

＊ According to Chapter 4, “Art Criticism and Art History,” in Croce’s *Aesthetic Outline* (B. Croce, *Grundriss d. Aesthetik*), “The critic’s work first establishes itself precisely where received impressions are both preserved and overcome.”
The critic’s work pertains to thought.
Thought overcomes imagination and sheds new light upon it.
“It transforms intuition into perception, examines truth, and distinguishes truth from falsehood” and so on.

That Criticism belongs to thought was, of course, not a view held solely by Croce.

It seemed to me that the motive driving theories of creative criticism—in their various interpretations—to harmoniously bridge the distance between Criticism and creative activity by smoothing away their differences stemmed from an unease with Criticism’s perceived passivity when contrasted against creation’s assertiveness.
Unless the gap between the two was smoothed out, critical Criticism would likely continue to be relegated to a Mephistophelian role embodying passivity and negation—which was precisely why they attempted to forcibly graft Criticism onto creative activity, deemed assertive and constructive, to avoid this fate.
Indeed, those who criticized the Kantian “critique” due to its negativity and passivity were not limited to Hegel alone.
A. Comte was also a prominent critic of it, and his so-called positivism consequently carried the literal meaning of “activism.”
The reason the attitude of criticism and critique was particularly disdained in society’s official discourse lay precisely in this premise—whether framed as nitpicking or logical argumentation.

But in a certain sense, reflection was always negative.
It had to be said that the essence of concepts, understanding, reason, and logic—the essence of logic itself—lay in negation’s great function, which constituted logical common sense.
Criticism became what occurred when this conceptual function transformed into a social function.
Now, did this negativity immediately imply passivity?
By no means was this the case.
If it were truly nothing more than passivity, why would anyone in society particularly need to dislike this movement?
When one considered it, terms like “passive” and “active” could be wielded arbitrarily—much like how evaluations such as “good” or “bad” were childish—so these too amounted to mere infantile sentimental adjectives.
Negation’s function was passivity if one wished to call it passivity, and activeness if one chose to view it as activeness.
They had to be called nearly useless adjectives.
Thus, what appeared passive or otherwise in Criticism was none other than thought’s great negating function made social. Since one could not dismiss thought and intellect’s negating function as mere passivity, how could Criticism’s negative function be demeaned by labeling it passive?
Those social elements negative about Criticism’s functional significance would inevitably emerge as deniers of human intellect itself.
Through negation’s great function, Criticism acquired its own uniqueness.
In a certain sense, negation was Criticism’s privilege.
Slander and censure were nothing but the most peripheral forms of Criticism’s negating function within public discourse.

There are various kinds of negation.
Merely extinguishing things constitutes its minor function.
The great function of negation must lie in mediation.
In this case, negation becomes negation for mediation.
In logical abstraction, one might express it thus—let us note that what mutually mediates between cultural works, between works and their authors, and between cultural domains constitutes Criticism's unique function.
I cannot presently provide concrete examples by citing specific cases.
For everything serves as an example of this principle.
It is generally asserted that criticism must concern itself with fixed, preexisting works.
Yet criticism of *War and Peace* cannot proceed without connection to *Resurrection* and *Anna Karenina*.
Criticism of *War and Peace* must inevitably transform into criticism of Tolstoy himself.
This immediately becomes a comparison between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (as seen in Merezhkovsky’s criticism).
People find themselves compelled to compare these two as mirrors reflecting Russian social transformations.
Dostoevsky must then be compared with Turgenev.
*Demons* demands comparison with *Fathers and Sons*.
One must consequently recall figures like Pushkin (consider Pugachev in *The Captain’s Daughter*).
And so on.
Thus criticism of *War and Peace* eventually forms a segment of Russian literary history.
It approaches the historical and social narrative of Russian thought.
Viewed thusly, Criticism (as critique) proves nothing less than a seasonal phase within art history and intellectual history.
Therefore, while Criticism ought to concern itself with specific works, it has come to be understood that work criticism need not constitute its ultimate objective.

However, as long as it followed this direction, this ultimately remained nothing more than literary history.
Yet Criticism was not merely a single link in literary or art history.
It had to be, at minimum first and foremost, the substance of literary studies, art studies, or aesthetics.
To phrase it otherwise: By what right did Claude Bernard's physiology become Zola's—or how could it have become so?
Why could a subjectivized Hegel stand shoulder-to-shoulder with G. Freud and emerge as Surrealist art's philosophy?
How did anatomy determine both techniques and ideas of Renaissance masters?
How did P. Valéry mechanize da Vinci's engineering spirit?
How did musical metaphysical perspectives motivate Kepler's discovery of celestial laws?
And others beyond these.
When matters reached this stage, Criticism might belong to art history or intellectual history yet transcended mere categorization—it became precisely the exploration of internal connections within contemporary zeitgeist. To achieve this, one needed unique techniques for each instance to disentangle literature-art-music-philosophy-science-religion's interlacings.
Thus Criticism must not only become cultural history and civilizational critique but first cultivate exceptional discernment in epistemologically processing relations between cultural domains and artistic genres.
If something called critical sense existed, it resided precisely in this discernment—sharpening perception's acuity while rendering resultant reflection agile yet precise.
Diligent historians often proved most insensitive critics because they lacked critical sense's intuition; even education indispensable to Criticism became useless without it—something like an epistemological analytical faculty ultimately determined Criticism's final form.
That was mediation's faculty.

Criticism, as common sense, takes individual cultural works as its natural matrix; yet using the gaps, distances, and oppositions with them as a springboard, it departs from this matrix to develop a unique order.
Criticism becomes that which transports essential qualities from one work to another, from one figure to another, from one era to another (and this constitutes the crucial point for distinguishing historical narrative from logical analysis—even if logic summarizes history, this distinction remains vital), from one artistic genre to another, and from one cultural domain to another.
Like bees carrying pollen between flowers—creatures that differ from other insects both in savoring each blossom's nectar like connoisseurs and in scheming to propagate fruit through their pollen-bearing—it demonstrates greater intellectual purpose than mere instinct.
Cultural portability may be identified as the primary manifestation of Criticism's mediating function.
The act of stripping away fixation and adhesion rooted in individual cultural works' particularity, thereby placing them within cultural universality's trajectory—this constitutes what we recognize as Criticism's negating function.
From this process emerges inevitably Criticism's rational essence.

IV

Before examining Criticism’s cultural portability further, we must address a problem requiring a slight detour.
Translation too constitutes a form of cultural portability.
The factual kinship between translation and Criticism needs no reiteration.
To take a commonplace example: suppose we translate a foreign literary work of classical value.
Immediately, the text (main text = original text) becomes problematic.
The various texts made available to us have likely undergone textual criticism by numerous philologists.
Yet in this process, these philologists were already functioning as critics.
Thus, even if one attempts translation independently of these critical results, the structure itself prevents this.
When reading R.W. Chapman’s brief essay *The Textual Criticism of English Classics*—which takes Shakespeare’s error-filled texts as prime examples while developing theories of proofreading and typographical errors—one easily discerns that what might seem mere typographical errors (?) in the main text hold far greater significance for translators than simple mistakes.
At minimum, typographical errors in the original become critical stumbling blocks during translation.
Yet simultaneously, translation provides the most meticulous opportunity for correcting such errors.

However, the kinship between translation and Criticism belongs to a more logical essence.
It constitutes precisely an epistemological relationship.
Translation would be the act of reproducing or copying linguistic works into a foreign language.
I once saw a copy of the *Mona Lisa*, which was undoubtedly closer to the original than Mori Ōgai’s translation of Andersen’s *Improvisatoren*.
Even setting aside differences in artistic genres, in terms of classical authority, the original *Mona Lisa* and original *Improvisatoren* would defy comparison.
Yet Mori Ōgai’s *Improvisatoren* possesses higher authenticity (Echtheit) than a copied *Mona Lisa*.
From this perspective, the cultural value of translation must be seen as residing not in the copied approximation of ordinary reproductions—though masters of the field often attempt such copies as studies—but rather in its reproductive uniqueness or creativity.
The differences in national languages—said to render translation nearly impossible—and such gaps and distances instead result in translation’s cultural uniqueness and creativity.
This point must first be noted.

It is said that criticism which “translates” literary works into social scientific thought should not be done.
This is because certain people have predetermined that so-called scientific criticism—the type that abstracts only thought or worldview from literary works—constitutes precisely this.
Similarly, works that “translate” raw thought or worldview into literary form are said to be problematic.
Broadly defined tendency literature, political works, and propaganda art would fall into this category.
Of course, this is not literal translation, but neither does it hold accuracy as metaphor.
If thoughts and worldviews were truly translated into literary form, that would constitute the work’s success; what proves problematic is rather their remaining untranslated—in crude form—and being awkwardly inserted.
Consider how importing categories originally belonging to Han Dynasty Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism into modernity—without undertaking the labor of translating them into modern society’s categories (mere word substitution being insufficient; one must modernize the ideology expressed through categorical systems)—actually obstructs rational understanding in contemporary society.
Were these translated before introduction, they could become cultural assets of immense philological value as Oriental classics for modern people.
Whether one undertakes translation’s labor determines whether gems turn to rubble.
Translation in its broadest sense possesses this sort of logical function; even ordinary translation constitutes a logical operation liberating thought from national linguistic particularity to situate it within universality’s domain governed by cosmic world-reason.
This explains why Chinese classics sometimes prove more suggestive in European translations.
Though translation transforms originals nearly beyond recognition, this metamorphosis must invariably regenerate their essence.
To declare this fundamentally impossible—to seriously claim literary untranslatability—leads inexorably to denying world literature’s very possibility.
The Bible would remain solely Jewish literature; Goethe’s *Faust* purely German.
Yet was not the New Testament written by Greco-Romans in their own tongue?
What then of Marlowe’s English *Faust* or Calderón’s Spanish version?
In truth, world literature does not become possible through translation.
Rather, it precedes translation as cultural precondition enabling translation’s social success.
World literature has been declared an inevitable product of social internationalism.
—Thus regarding literature, translation’s problem fundamentally concerns world literature.

Regarding culture in general, this constitutes a problem of world culture.
It is the issue of globally transporting and mediating culture.
Consequently, this must be said to share essentially the same nature as Criticism, differing only in minor respects.
In reality, translation’s social purpose lies in cultural introduction.
If one attempts to render this introduction slightly more concrete, one inevitably must turn to criticism.
Thus Criticism may be regarded as something akin to a broad form of translation between all cellular units within various cultures.

Now, let us return to Criticism’s cultural portability. That which fails to engage individual objects of criticism cannot constitute Criticism; simultaneously, that which remains bound to individual objects equally cannot constitute Criticism. This duality arises inevitably from Criticism’s role as cultural transporter, yet what emerges is an independent order—a veritable kingdom of Criticism. Culture divides itself into distinct genres. Art theories and aesthetic systems may stitch these divisions together. However, Criticism operating within any cultural domain must necessarily employ elements identical to those in other domains, becoming an integral part of Criticism’s unified whole that permeates all cultural genres. Criticism inevitably presupposes something akin to a system of aesthetics—Alain’s *Système des Beaux-Arts* proves particularly suggestive here.

Each cultural domain indeed possesses techniques inapplicable elsewhere. Literary creative methods appear wholly unrelated to painterly techniques at first glance. Hence arises the natural assumption that technical criticism in literary studies bears no relation to its counterpart in painting criticism—a view held by many. Yet consider how both psychological novels’ methods and Surrealist painting techniques partly originate from research into consciousness and the unconscious. Can these techniques truly be unrelated? If one insists that brushwork and prose description constitute entirely separate processes requiring mutually irrelevant technical criticisms, we must conclude that only painters can critique painting and only novelists can critique novels.

Setting aside debates about artisanal views privileging technical criticism, this logic dictates painters’ fundamental incomprehension of literature and writers’ inability to grasp visual art—specialist artists cannot understand other disciplines, let alone amateurs. Though substantial interconnections exist between cultural domains in social life, cultural criticism fragments them through technical criticism’s obfuscations. This is utterly absurd.

The techniques—or methods—of various arts (science being no exception) must in fact possess some definite interconnections between them. Even when artists themselves fail to grasp such relationships, critics must pursue these technical interrelations in as generalized a form as possible. So-called technical criticism cannot merit that designation unless it encompasses such inquiry. By its nature, technical criticism must inevitably confront at every turn the fundamental question: What constitutes technique in art? For critics to persuasively and unequivocally assess a work's technical success or failure, they must in some sense analyze those secrets of technique that artists themselves wield unconsciously. Artistic technique, true to its name as a product of manual skill, nevertheless leaves unconscious the mechanical principles—of physics, mechanics, and other disciplines—inherent in that acquired ability. Even when Impressionist painting techniques result from conscious studies of light and color, this fundamental condition persists. For the artist, technique represents a qualitative leap in this sense—symbolic precisely because it dispenses with causal explanation. As something given, it remains arcane. While practitioners of craft techniques might deliberately conceal knowledge from others (as with the secret that Masamune's famed swords contain molybdenum), such secrecy—when the creator understands the physical process—constitutes mere concealment rather than the essential mystery at issue here. Truthfully, only through exhaustive analysis of technique's secrets can we discern its quality—this being technical criticism in its highest sense (high-speed cameras having recently assumed this role in certain fields). Thus technical criticism must never remain perpetually bound to isolated esoterica unique to each artistic domain. Precisely by escaping technique's specificity as individual art-world arcana and elevating it to the stage of general understanding does technical criticism constitute itself. In that case, the very concept of what has been called technical criticism must undergo transformation from its very foundations.

But even the notion that criticism could be confined to so-called technical criticism was itself an overstatement.
Technique—as method—was never meant to be isolated and extracted in such fashion.
We must remember that methods like technique and approach maintained a functional relationship with what we call worldview—the very worldview that creates and nurtures them while being shaped through them.
Of course, the worldviews forming the background of each cultural domain were not identical.
They constituted worldviews that could only emerge from their respective domains.
Just as individual human worldviews differed even among contemporaries of the same social stratum sharing similar ideological leanings...
Yet by that same logic, worldviews could never be mere fragmented particulars.
Despite this variety, worldviews sharing the same tendency across cultural domains still retained fundamental common characteristics.
Artistic worldviews, musical worldviews, literary worldviews—so long as these remained bound to a singular emotional intuition, though they might appear in wholly distinct forms—had to fundamentally constitute the same worldview sharing an identical tendency at their core.
Otherwise, what justification could exist for calling them worldviews?
Wasn't the world meant to be singular and unique?

Needless to say, Criticism that consistently permeates various cultural domains—penetrating even the worldviews and methodologies of each respective domain—remains nothing more than an ideal.
But the fact that this constitutes the ideal of Criticism is already a reality.
Among the various arts, sciences, and other cultural phenomena, there exists a certain concrete commonality.
This is because, even without extracting some abstract portion from these elements, their commonality remains vividly present, serving as a potent stimulus for various cultures.
Among various cultural domains, just as among the cultures of various nations, there exists a conjugate relationship—translation and other such processes.
Criticism, based on this, achieves a unity.
In other words, a horizontal unity gains vitality.
The unity = unitarity that consistently permeates various cultural domains—this constitutes the independence of Criticism’s world and forms a unique ordered realm with its own units known as Criticism.

—Criticism’s aforementioned culture-transporting characteristic explains this.

But this so-called cosmic unity of Criticism—for Criticism as a unit to be achieved through mere cultural aggregation—proved impossible. To accomplish this, Criticism had to prepare a system covertly or overtly (a distinction of mode versus pose). A system meant not schematic diagrams but organizational power. Criticism required a dynamic axis—a shaft. While questions remained about what kind of axis this should be or what tendencies the system must exhibit, without this core mechanism, Criticism found itself technically paralyzed in both cultural transport capacity and mediation function—and let us remember that Criticism constitutes one of the most universal cultural techniques. The encyclopedist (philosophers in Classical Greece, Renaissance polymaths, eighteenth-century French encyclopédistes, and their modern counterparts—all products of great cultural upheavals) stood sustained by none other than this very machinery of Criticism*.

* The so-called genius was, as Kant most characteristically defined it, not an intellectual competence but a sensory one.
This concept remained relatively distant from the encyclopedist’s critical intellectual capacity.
That Kant—the criticist—restricted genius to a kind of artistic faculty proved thoroughly consistent.
The guardian deity presiding over each individual artistic domain was genius itself.
For both encyclopedist and Criticism, however, such a guardian deity might prove elusive.
Here too manifested the previously noted gap between creation and criticism.

At times, these structures and axes that form the flesh and blood of Criticism manifest themselves through philosophy as a theory of sensibility (aesthetics—from which emerged what we call aesthetics). Beyond this approach, there can likely be no other way to conceive it. Even when Criticism's object is not merely something sensory but rather a product of intellectual reflection—such as science or philosophy—this fundamental point requires no modification. From Criticism's perspective, all objects of critique commence with some form of reception. They begin with impressions. All criticism originates as impression criticism. Even regarding scientific theories, what becomes necessary here is a species of sensation or intuition (we might distinguish this from so-called sensory sensibility by adopting the term "categorical intuition"). Should matters not commence in this manner, it would not constitute Criticism but merely some theory about its object. This explains why the more scientific Criticism becomes, the more it primarily demands intuition. Thus lies the significance of Criticism selecting literature—that domain which is at once most conceptual yet most sensory—as its breeding ground (though Criticism's objects must by no means remain limited to literature and art).

But upon reflection, all philosophy seems in fact to reduce to a theory of sensibility.
At the very least, it could be said that in philosophy possessing a realistic and raw vitality, the concepts themselves are profoundly sensory.
It must be remembered that precisely such philosophies possess functions that are themselves profoundly critical.
Philosophy that loses its criticality becomes nothing more than scholastic or priestly dogma.
Thus, the mechanism of Criticism and philosophical principles reach out to each other from both sides.
Epistemology was something that came to be established in precisely such a manner.

Five

Whether Criticism belongs to epistemology remained a verbal issue of relatively minor importance at present.
What proved necessary was the fundamental insight that Criticism's function remained above all epistemological.
From what had been discussed previously, this point seemed not to require reiteration - yet for precaution's sake, something resembling a 'proof' would be offered.

The significance of epistemology lay in being a summation of human intellectual history when considered through its most substantive content.
This however did not equate to being identical with historical narration itself.
The crucial fact resided precisely in its nature as summation.
In this sense it constituted logic rather than history proper.
Epistemology had been logic.
Within its domain interwove inextricably both historical-social moments and logical moments of human thought and cognition - or culture.
This much aligned with common understanding.
But what of theoretical common sense regarding Criticism?
Here formal courtesy demanded invoking Croce once more.
"The historical criticism of art and aesthetic criticism are one and the same," he declared; "True art criticism must undoubtedly be aesthetic criticism - yet simultaneously historical criticism."
He maintained that art criticism constituted both a phase within art history and an operation of philosophy.
Croce positioned true criticism as historical criticism - distinct from taxonomic criticism, moral criticism, author-psychological criticism, formal criticism, rhetorical criticism or formulaic law-based criticism (this classification reflecting his typology of historical narrative styles).
This historical criticism he asserted was ultimately philosophical or even aesthetic criticism.
Since philosophy represented for him logical matter while properly functioning historical criticism inherently implied social critique too - Criticism by his account stood founded upon identity between art's historical-social moments and its logical moments.
When Croce ultimately expanded criticism's function from art critique to 'life critique,' substituting 'culture-thought-cognition' for 'art' became permissible.
Thus even formally - for Croce never grasped epistemology's full significance as previously discussed - Criticism and epistemology stood revealed as structures sharing identical formative moments.

Criticism is, in the final analysis, what may be called epistemological cultural history, philosophical civilization critique, and so on; the term "scientific criticism" must refer to all the functions of Criticism as we have examined thus far.
Scientific criticism is precisely the designation for this Criticism as epistemology, or at least, it is the designation for Criticism that should perform epistemological functions.
Scientific criticism does not refer to a mere calculator of evaluation but rather denotes an epistemological organization of cultural mediation.
Here too, one cannot simply use the term "scientific" in a vague or haphazard manner.

We finally face the practical necessity of examining criticism's relationship with cultural consciousness.
That a certain society in a given era possesses a measurable degree of culture does not necessarily mean it possesses corresponding cultural consciousness.
The mere existence of various cultural elements does not automatically generate the very concept of culture itself.
The Idea of culture bears fruit only where—through culture already existing in sufficient quantity and quality—the cultural spirit becomes an unequivocal guiding standard.
To be sure, no place in today's world lacks culture.
Consequently, there remains virtually nowhere that the term "culture" or its concept fails to apply.
Yet we distinguish cultural consciousness by measuring how urgently this concept registers in lived experience, how fully it acknowledges social reality, and how consciously it wields social authority.
Even where culture exists objectively, when cultural consciousness remains vague, culture cannot function as social force—in terms of active efficacy, it becomes equivalent to nothingness.
Culture must command authority.
This means culture must never serve as political or social instrumentality but rather become political force in its own right and motive for social action.
That culture possesses freedom and must root itself in popular autonomy amounts to precisely this principle.
Therefore modernity's concept of culture—and relatively speaking that of cultivation too—originated fundamentally from modern democracy.

In Japan as well, today’s concept of culture possessed this historically inherent essence.
As for the pre-Meiji era, let us set it outside our current consideration.
There, various cultures had as their sole aim the spiritually utilitarian goal of edification.
However, since the early Meiji period, the consciousness of culture first manifested itself as Civilization and Enlightenment.
This was undoubtedly a bourgeois concept, both in terms of its intellectual lineage and the reality of Japan at the time.
But even this Rousseau-esque or Spencerian concept had not deeply prepared the preliminary notion of humanity’s progress in Japan.
Therefore, this cultural concept of Civilization and Enlightenment ultimately could not help but end without fully exerting its guiding power as the Idea of culture.

The term "culture" made its renewed appearance with the World War as its catalyst (the character for "culture" [文化] being an abbreviation of "Civilization and Enlightenment" [文明開化], it had not been nonexistent prior to this). It was during this period that several groups of cultural philosophers—including Dr. Kuwaki Genyoku and Mr. Tsuchida Kyōson—emerged and attempted critiques of civilization grounded in cultural consciousness. But the concept of culture at this time was, needless to say, of the lineage of German Idealism and could not transcend culturalism. In other words, it amounted to nothing more than a supporting pillar in the worldview of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. Moreover, for Japan's cultural tradition—which had never accorded much irreplaceable social reality to whatever might be called "culture"—this proved nearly a tacked-on fashion; excepting its somewhat useful role in certain academies (as seen in the epistemology of social and cultural sciences and scientific Criticism—for example, in the case of Dr. Soda Kiichirō), it even degenerated into an exceedingly cheap and faintly ridiculous label among the masses. "Culture" became something akin to Western-style "culture houses" and ultimately ended up as "culture" in the sarumata-style (a type of traditional workwear). In other words, "culture" was critiqued into oblivion by the masses.

The fact that the concept of culture had shed its petty-bourgeois narrowness and even transcended eighteenth-century civility to arrive at democratic qualities was an extremely recent phenomenon worldwide, yet Japan was by no means an exception.
That the significance inherent in this concept of culture had been remarkably elevated here was well known.
The characteristic that contemporary Japan’s various cultural concepts were intricately interwoven in a unique form was not the appropriate occasion to discuss at present.
It sufficed to note that cultural consciousness—not merely the possession of culture but the possession of *cultural consciousness*, meaning a heightened awareness of cultural concepts—constituted a critical problem for people and formed an acutely pressing issue in modernity.
As previously stated, the phrase “mere improvement of culture” had already come to bear multiple meanings.
It was argued that culture must not merely improve but progress—indeed, that improvement must be “progressive.”
Cultural consciousness itself had broken free from mere culture and, by generating new cultural standards autonomously, had consequently engendered this sort of conceptual complexity.

Now, this “cultural consciousness”—which breaks free from mere cultures themselves to calibrate a unique new cultural standard—no longer constitutes an appendage of individual cultures but forms an independent order as an aggregation of representative essences independently formed and unified through development from those cultures.
Whether culture stands high or low must now be measured not merely by improvement in individual cultural aspects but more crucially by the advancement of this cultural consciousness.
As stated, this cultural consciousness forms a unique intercultural order that has achieved independence from individual cultural spheres through diplomatic-envoy-like autonomy.
This point must be kept clearly in mind.
—If this holds true, we would recall that Criticism itself precisely shared these characteristics.
The extraction of cultural consciousness as a guiding idea from various cultures and its subjectification correspond exactly to Criticism’s cross-sectional organization formed alongside those cultures.
Thus, cultural consciousness—in content—amounts to Criticism.
Or we might say Criticism constitutes cultural consciousness’s very activity.
In practice, this cultural consciousness—the awareness of what we call culture, birthplace of modern democratic self-awareness and cultural freedom—distinguishes itself through its critical spirit as its defining feature.
When dealing with something as broadly leveled as cultural consciousness, its stature can likely be gauged only by the vigor or frailty of Criticism’s functions.

The theory of culture belongs to Epistemology.
At least Epistemology must be required to encompass such a scope.
However, the most active content of the theory of culture is naturally criticism of actual cultures.
It belongs to categories such as cultural criticism and civilization critique.
This constitutes epistemology’s seasonal critical mission.
And that very activity is what constitutes Criticism.