Translating Fūryū, Reappropriating Chanoyu: Japan’s Nation-Building, Imperialist Ambitions, and Meiji Modernization

This paper analyses fūryū—an aesthetic concept that characterises specific taste—and the practice of chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony) to explore why certain aspects of Japan’s premodern arts and culture survived the modernization process while others did not. This is achieved by analyzing intellectual discourses and popular narratives on chanoyu and fūryū during the Meiji period (1868–1912). The paper posits that while the two were long associated, the connection was dissolved in the modern era. This can be attributed to the divergent transformations undergone by the social significance of chanoyu and the concept of fūryū within the modernized Japanese Empire. Chanoyu was reappropriated and canonized as a Japanese tradition for the modern Japanese nation, and this was accelerated by Japan’s growing imperial ambitions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Conversely, fūryū was translated as a poetic and aesthetic awareness overshadowed by a nostalgia that challenged Japanese modernity.