Tradurre l’altrove. Riflessioni sulla trasversalità dell’esperienza estetica a partire dagli Scritti sul Giappone di Karl Löwith

This paper aims to address the issue of translation from an aesthetic and cross-cultural perspective. In particular, the focus of the paper is on Karl Löwith’s reflections on his experience in Japan, contained in a series of essays published between the 1940s and 1960s. These essays are a valuable and at the same time problematic testimony to the dialogical and translational relationship between the German West and the Japanese East. The issue of translation is therefore not only addressed in this paper in literary terms, but, in a broader sense, as a possibility to access common cultural experiences and worldviews. First of all, it was intended to show the relationship between hermeneutics and translation through a brief critical reconstruction of the positions of Heidegger, Gadamer and Löwith. Secondly, we have showed how Löwith describes the Japanese spiritual experiences of Zen and Shintō, with the aim of challenging the idea that Löwith’s positions are based solely on Hegelian Eurocentric assumptions. Thirdly, we addressed the issue of the translatability of experiences such as “truth” and “kindness” in the aesthetic sphere, with reference to the theme of dissimulation. We also addressed the theme of the “modernisation” of Japan with reference to Sōseki Natsume’s work Sanshirō and some of Georg Simmel’s reflections on the metropolis. Finally, we addressed the issue of translation in relation to Japanese architecture and the notions of kire-tsuzuki (切れ・つづき), utsuri-watari (移り渉り) and ma (間).