The enigma of iki

[imomus]

During one of my long train journeys with Aki Sasamoto recently she mentioned Shuzo Kuki's book Anatomy of Iki, a long essay published in 1930, and asked me if I was familiar with the aesthetic of iki. I said "I don't know much about iki, but I think of it as something to do with the way a geisha turns away slightly or pretends not to be projecting her sexuality, while actually doing so."

In contrast to Japanese aesthetics like wabi sabi, Iki is something I find it very hard to grasp. It seems nebulous and contradictory to me. I wanted to make some notes -- somewhat in the technique we were talking about yesterday, the "pick five adjectives" technique -- today about the ways people have defined iki.

Wikipedia calls iki "a variety of chic culture current among the fashionable set in Edo in the Tokugawa period". Here's the adjective cluster for iki they provide:

simple, improvised, straight, restrained, temporary, romantic, ephemeral, original, refined, inconspicuous, etc. An iki person/deed would be audacious, chic, pert, tacit, sassy, unselfconscious, calm, indifferent, unintentionally coquettish, open-minded, restrained

Things that are not iki: perfect, artistic, arty, complicated, gorgeous, curved, wordy, intentionally coquettish, cute



A couple of years back, Click Opera's own expert in such things, Kumakouji, provided a list of iki things and contrasted them with iki's antonymn, yabo:

Yabo is loud, Iki is sassy.
Yabo is showy, iki is chic.
Yabo is colourful, iki is muted.
Yabo is childish and cute, iki is sombre and restrained.
Yabo is being intentionally sexy, iki is being unintentionally sexy.
Yabo is a samurai, Iki is a buddhist monk.
Yabo is arty, complicated and wordy, Iki is improvisational straight-forward, and to the point.
Yabo is self-concious and closed-minded. Iki is unselfconcious and open-minded.

Hisae gave her definition: "Yabo is more like countryside, whereas Iki is more like a city-type thing. I think of Yabo as something unsophisticated or unrefined or inelegant -- akanokenai, gauche. To me Iki is more like courageous, or with good grace and more straightforward, like edoko or saba saba. Of course Iki is more like you have something natural, they just act from what they have, whereas Yabo is more like you're trying to disguise or to pretend something. Yabo is quite dasai."

The best definitions (though still, for me, confusingly scattershot) come in An aesthetic of everyday life, a paper by Yamamoto Yuji. Yamamoto, following Kuki, associates iki with the sexual attitude of the geisha:

erotic allure, pride, resignation ("dynamically sustaining physical and emotional distance between the opposite sex, but not completely losing it").

Yamamoto quotes an 1853 encyclopedia entry on iki which says it means: pumped up, chivalrous, valiant, courageous, energetic, gallant, dashing, dapper, smart, rakish, stylish (the meaning seems to have changed quite a bit since this definition).

More tips from Yamamoto: iki is casual and impromptu, and can be superficial and vulgar. An iki attitude would represent "disinterestedness, purposiveness without purpose, and the free play and autonomy of the aesthetic function", though art that proclaims itself as such can't be iki.

Kuki recognized iki in stripes, especially vertical rather than horizontal ones, because "parallel lines express the dichotomy of the self and the opposite sex.” Kuki thought that only grey, brown, and blue were truly iki colours. The only paintings which could be iki were simple ones.

Iki has to be implicit, not explicit. You can't be iki if you say you are, or seem to know you are. Your beauty must be something for someone else to discover, to prise out of you or read into you. Iki is an aesthetics of the back, of the nape of the neck. It can't be face-to-face. It's an aesthetic of obliqueness and peripheries -- it "avoids focus and despises intellectual analysis".

If I'm still not sure I understand what iki means, that may be because, as Kuki believed, iki doesn't exist in the West and can't really be grasped by non-Japanese.

Momus plays New York's Highline Ballroom tonight, starting at 7pm sharp.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think of dandyism as a defiant frontal flamboyance, a rebellion against discretion which declares itself like a righteous challenge. As such, it couldn't be iki, though I suppose there must be a sub-category of "oblique dandyism" which might come closer.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Well, dandyism can take obvious, flamboyant forms, but ultimately those are aberrant forms of dandyism. Even when it is being very declarative and upfront, there should be a subtle, oblique quality to it. True dandies leave small, hidden details that most passersby will never notice, but to the initiated eye will be marks of distinction: the slight patina on a button, the use of different colored polishes on one's shoes, etc. The true extent of one's dedication to exquisite detail hides in plain sight.

Dandyism involves dressing around corners, but more importantly, it is a mode of life. Dandyism is mistaken for hedonistic narcissism, but in actuality it is a kind of asceticism, a form of self-effacement--even self-amputation--in the hopes of becoming a living emblem.

Dandyism isn't really the reserve of aristocrats, but of upstarts: the greatest dandies were middle class, and rose through the ranks of society by force of personality and style.

This link (http://www.showstudio.com/project/politicalfashion/movies/2008-04-03/) might help to clarify without boring the hell out of everyone by launching into a tiresome thesis.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

(Oops--too late!)

[(Anonymous)]

You know nowt about dandyism, Lordy.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for that, Lord Whimsy (you're not boring, how dare you think you are). I find it quite an interesting topic, especially the part about "hoping to become a living emblem". I wish I had money for your book right now, but alas, I have to wait to get to read it.

[(Anonymous)]

More Pooterism than Dandyism, I would say, his dining out on a tenuous Depp thing and using sock puppets to sell said book.

Hounded by the bitterati again!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Hah! Yes, apparently you would say. Even though you wouldn't know.

Re: Hounded by the bitterati again!

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry to pop your fantasy, but there really is no Lordy-geared bitterarti.

I was interested in Momus's take on iki, and found it irritating when one of his hangers-on, who clearly knows nothing about the subject, steered it round to Dandyism in an attempt to seek attention for himself. Not so much Beau Brummell as Paul Burell, I would say.





steering the subject away from iki to Dandyism.