Place and Dream

This is a book about space. On a first level, it reflects traditional Japanese ideas of space against various "e;items"e; of Western culture. Among these items are Bakhtin's "e;dialogicity"e;, Wittgenstein's Lebensform, and "e;virtual space"e; or "e;globalized"e; space as representatives of the latest development of an "e;alienated"e;, modern spatial experience. Some of the Western concepts of space appear as negative counter examples to "e;basho-like"e;, Japanese places; others turn out to be compatible with the Japanese idea of space.On a second level, the book attempts to synthesize, by constantly transgressing the limits of a purely comparative activity, a quantity which the author believes to be existent in Japanese culture that is called "e;the virtual"e;. Be it Kuki Shuzo's hermeneutics of non-foundation or his ontology of dream, Nishida Kitaro's virtual definition of the body of state, or Kimura Bin's notion of "e;in-between"e; (aida) that is so closely associated with the "e;virtual space"e; of Noh plays: what all these conceptions have in common is that they aim to transcend a flat notion of "e;reality"e; by developing "e;the virtual"e; as a complex ontological unity.