The first is a chapter from a book entitled The origins of modern (Japanese) literature (see notes to text here) by renowned Japanese theorist Kojin Karatani. The book was originally published in Japanese in 1980 and translated into English by literature professor Brett de Bary in 1993. The chapter proposes the notion of "discovery of landscape" which I would like to suggest is something similar to cognitive ecology, even though Karatani does not use the term. I would like to connect Karatani's ideas to the other chapter, the introduction to Jon Pitt's Botanical Imagination: rethinking plants in modern Japan, that gives an overview of the emerging field of critical plant theory and outlines how the book applies this approach to modern Japanese literature. What I have in mind in particular is how both Karatani's idea of landscape and Pitt's idea of botanical imagination redefine the subject/object dichotomy, but I would be interested in other people's thoughts more generally.
If you are interested in participating in this seminar, please contact Stefka G. Eriksen.