Purple Displaces Crimson: The Wakan Dialectic as Polemic

Abstract

The cultural phenomenon known as wakan, the creative juxtaposition of Japanese (wa) and Chinese (kan) elements, can be difficult to articulate given the ambiguity involved in defining the boundaries of what makes something Chinese or Japanese, especially over time, or according to the unique perspectives of any given individual. Even at the seemingly irreducible level of language, the apposition of logographs expressing Chinese poems (kanshi), for example, and syllabic kana script expressing Japanese waka poems are not without nuances that render them fluid, interdependent, and aesthetically unified.