Empire of SignsBrief appreciations of things Japanese, of the "richness, mobility, and subtlety" of the Japanese "exchange of signs": published in France in 1970, and Barthes at his most seductive. These are the observations of every traveler, translated (without strain) into recognitions. "The dinner tray seems a picture of the most delicate order"; it is actually a palette, "with which you are going to play in the course of your meal. . ." (In the next piece: "by chopsticks, food becomes no longer a prey to which one does violence . . . but a substance harmoniously transferred.") And this sequence of thoughts leads Barthes to remark on the absence of a center, "a precious heart," a deep meaning ("food is never anything but a collection of fragments"). There then comes Tokyo: a city with an "empty" center, the forbidden grounds of the (figurehead) Emperor's palace. Japan not only affords Barthes a profusion of complex signs, it suites his penchant for the formal--and for non-meaning, the absence of a symbolic charge. "The haiku is not a rich thought reduced to a brief form, but a brief event which immediately finds its proper form." Thus, also, the reflections on bowing; on Bunraku puppets; on the Zengakuren riots ("a great scenario of signs" climaxing in a purely vocal exercise--"The Zengakuren are going to fight"--without a subject or stated cause.) There is more concentrated pleasure here, along with fewer stylistic and other impediments--than in major works of the canon. |
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according action actor animate appears ball becomes body brush Bunraku certain character chopsticks close color constitutes contrary cooking course designates difference direct draws eating effect empty entire envelope eraser essence establish event everything expression eyes face finally flash foodstuff fragile fragment function gesture give graphic haiku hand hence impossible Japan Japanese kind known labor language less light limit living longer machine manner master meaning merely moral movement natural never object offered once Oriental origin package painting person piece play player politeness practice precisely produce puppet pure reality refers remains seems side signified simple single space speak speech station street stroke substance surface symbolic theater thing thought tion touch trace truth turn violence voice West Western whole writing written