Philosophy of ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ: The Floating World of Ukiyo-e

Very interesting! It's great that you tied this into Eastern philosophy, as it's not something I ever got to study as part of my degree. I would disagree with the characterisation of Western philosophy of history as being linear, at least when it comes to postmodern philosophy. Postmodern thinkers like Derrida were inspired by Nietzsche's anti-historicism and so viewed history as having varying time-scales, discontinuities and ruptures. So, for example, Baudrillard wrote "Perhaps, deep down, history has never unfolded in a linear fashion … Everything moves in loops, tropes, inversions of meaning … Everything occurs through effects which short-circuit their causes, through the Witze of events, perverse events, ironic turnabouts, except within a rectified history, which, for just that reason, is not a history."

That's not a criticism of the video though, as it is true that the aforementioned philosophers do not view history cyclically! I'm surprised this isn't more popular, your production quality is great, going to share this on Twitter!

Please make more videos like this!! ❤❤❤

物の哀れ?

It's an interesting attempt of a geneaology, but I don't know - the interpretation feels too associative and therefore forced. I think Vaporwave with it's idea of fragmented time is just the sublime of the virtual age after the end of linear history. What I mean with virtuality: Vaporwave makes us experience the atopic nexus of temporality, where timelines begin, end and intersect. Vaporwave is a look behind the fabric of manifested time; Vaporwave makes us realize that temporality is embedded in modality.

The view of life being transitory goes farthed back, atleast to the Heian period, when mono no aware was the fashionable view of life. The writers Murasaki Shikibu, Kenko and Chomei use this as a major theme in the works.

I’m gonna bookmark this video as an example of when someone only has a superficial understanding of something but makes wildly exaggerated assumptions and connections

Your understanding of ukiyou-e completely serves your purpose, 😂😂😂

Post modernism in many ways was a disaster. Akin the Norse myth of "Jörmungandr" the world snake set about devouring itself. Nothing is left to deconstruct and it was essentially a movement that produced nothing of its own.

this is just dialectical materialism

Intro music and background song(the one b4 future)? 🧐 anyone know?… nvm my own ? Answered at end 😂

Thanks for this, appreciate more of a non-western perspective!

Using Ukiyo-e for a block printing project. Helpful video!

You've captured the ideas that I've struggled to express for years about why I love the cyberpunk aesthetic and especially Shadowrun. Thank you so much.

I adore this video but if they don't un-block the City Pop video soon I'm going to break stuff

All I could think of watching this was, "wow, I need to get out and find ukiyo

What was the background music played not playing future?

Why did you have RagnarRox read that one part? Is it from one of his videos?

what is the name of this background song?

I hardly agree with the analogy of Ukiyo-e and vaporwave/synthewave. Ukiyo-e is more of a depiction of the present in its time period, and there're many more categories of printing/painting such as warriors, scenery, and workers, while vaporwave/synthewave is looking back to the past. And there might be an over-interpretation of the critique of Hedonism. The word Ukiyo originally has a sarcastic meaning of corruption and hedonism, but it later refers to "everything in this world", especially with all these landscape artworks by artist like Hokusai. But there are definitely a lot of similarities between Ukiyo-e and vaporwave/synthewave because of the shared Japanese aesthetics, a sense of nostalgia, and the idea of mono-no-aware.

nope, the dark ages gave you the europ plague. And the Ottoman and Arabians gave you the Renaissance

The innocent consumerism is what makes it feel so nice it’s tied in with what’s destroying our world right now but back then nobody cared about that it was just wow we got all this cool shit

I first found you a year ago with the Daria video. That show was my favorite show growing up since it felt like it perfectly captured the emotions I felt as a young teen.

Now I see this and the idea of a future you don't want but seems like there is nothing you can do to change it. It makes sense everyone has awesome tech but is so lonely. Everyone wants to look back at a simpler time or dread the impending future.

The purple lights also reminded me of something. There was this one time i was asking my japanese friend about the traditional colors and make up that the characters in myths like ukiyo-e wear, and she said that the color purple was really unique at the time, since it was so hard to obtain compared to the others and pretty much just royalty could have it. So looking back on this video now. i feel like personally this is why the purple neon lights feel so lonely to me. it's another example of the distant, floating world this type of art depicts. It's a feeling other futuristic cities in ficional works like Akira (with more yellow and red lights) doesn't give me, but other like blade runner do, especially with the JOI scene in 2049.

This mini documentary is so well done. Congrats dude

Interesting! I was going to show this to my art appreciation students, but he makes the crucial mistake of calling Ukiyo-e works paintings. Works by famous Ukiyo-e artists such as Hokusai and Utamaro are multi-colored woodblock prints, and the advent of cheap and widely available prints was a huge part of the cultural and economic transformation of the time.

Channels like this will be remembered by future generations thousands of years from now just like how we remember the Pythagoreans

Nice 🤙

Never put together that climate change connection. Funny that we go back to identify with a time before that threat felt future-ruining, but it was the cold war. I guess we now know those threats wouldn't be realized. Hope we can live to forget the weight of the threats of climate change and make some retro 2020s

i appreciate your great effort and hard work into uploading these videos, please do not stop! i recently came from your nier videos and i am completely in-love with the content you provide. You’ve got yourself a sub and i am definitely sharing that :)

Bravo, this is a profound and very interesting angle I hadn't seen before. Looking forward to sharing this - I really, truly loved your Nier Automata and Metal Gear analysis... more videos please.

嬉しいよね日本文化にこんなに詳しい人がいるなんて

Guretama is mood.

It is expensive when copyright owners sue people who copy their songs or other material... It is not adviced to publish anything containing material made by someone else (even if it slowed down or otherwise modificated). It really can ruin person economically (something that young people do not seem to realize and that they can face many years later after they release some material).

blowing my mind right now

For me, the aesthetics of retrowave and synthwave give me a great sense of peaceful escapism. The music and the scenes have an almost meditative quality to it. I do not see it as depressing and harsh at all.

You gave me a link between hauntology and Vedic philosophy! Thank you! I've been trying to find a way to tie those things together in some coherent manner. I've never liked the often imposed separation of pop culture and religion, preferring instead to find echoes of the eternal truths inside it. I want to see the ties between them, as everything in this universe is interconnected. Thank you for giving me something to work with!


Jai bhagavan Shiv Shankar!

Am i the only one that can love the vapor wave movement without completly hating the modern world .i know thats a pretty big generalisation and while i know everything link To politics and culture can we not separate an interest for past aesthetics and a feeling of being disenfranchised. I find vapor wave to give me more hope than a yearning for the past.because honestly the world today isn't worst or better than the 80s or 90s every era has issues and people feeling that the current state of things is the worst its going to get.

no, just no

I'm sharing this to a vaporwave subreddit , hope this video gets more views.

cp is just another kool-aid drinker following j.b. peterson

A s s - d e a d - d i c k

Post-Modernism ruined everything!!

I was expecting some DJ Krush beats... :( But that Tatsuro Yamashita ending really Sparkled my day! ;)

Artistic and academic. I enjoyed this video more than I thought I would, it developed like an essay in visual form! I’m staying tuned for more of your work! ✨

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A S S T H E T H I C C

I hope you have a peaceful destruction from one stranger to another.