著者

春木 有亮

出版者

北見工業大学

雑誌

人間科學研究 Studies of human science (ISSN:13495526)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.13, pp.1-30, 2017-03

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The Japanese word Kakkoii, used mostly by children and teenagers,was a buzzword in the 1960s and then became a common word duringthe 1990s. This word, as well as Kawaii, has created its own field ofculture and of aesthetics. However, there is no analytic argument whichshows the connotation of Kakkoii culture. This article treats theJapanese notion of Kakkoii as an "aesthetic quality".Kakkou, a part of the origins of the word Kakkoii, was imported fromChina and used as an adjective verb and as a verb, at the latest, in the15th century and as a noun in the 16th century. With such a syntacticchange, the meaning of the word Kakkou varied from "to suit" itself to thestate of a thing which is suited to another thing, or to the normative stateof a thing. From the end of the 16th century to the 18th century, Kakkoucame to mean the appearance of a thing which vaguely implies suitability,or of a thing no longer suitable. After the 18th century, the expression"Kakkou ga yoi/warui(Kakkou is good/bad)" frequently appeared inwriting.In the newer senses of the word Kakkou, the suitability which itsignifies has been internalized for a thing, especially for the appearanceof a thing. The suitability has become independent of Kakkou with itsalternative, the positivity/the negativity and has been transferred to (thesubject of) the judgement: "yoi/warui". This author proposes that thisvisualization and this subjectificaiton of the suitability in the history fromKakkou to Kakkou ga yoi are the "aestheticization" of the suitability.Kakkoii, an adjectification of the phrase: "Kakkou ga yoi" became aneducational issue in the 1960s. It was "a physical, sensual and visualvalue" in perceiving "sensitively" the "form" and the "figure" as"appearance" of a thing in the context of the time when the "visualcultures" as "photo, manga, television and advertisement" weredeveloping(Tadao SATO,1964, and others). The use of the word Kakkoiiwas guilty of giving priority to the "appearance" and of decreasing thevalue of the "substance". However that is a way of life where "theyconstruct the reality by imagination, going against the modern way ofcognition, which attaches importance to the essence abstracted from thereality"(Jiro SAITO,1979). When "Kakko ( カッコ) is notKakkou(appearance)(格好) itself but the whole object including theessence expressed in the appearance of a thing", we can start with ajudgement of Kakkoii and create the "reality" from the "appearance"(SAITO,1979) to get the suitability of a thing.If this "paradoxical" structure makes the situation where the norm ofthe suitability which exists on the side of (the subject of) the judgment isbrought back again by imagination to the side of the thing, we can addKakkoii to the same line of "aestheticization" of the suitability fromKakkou to "Kakkou ga yoi".