Cold War

mono no aware

is a western-centric fiction that renders invisible various local, hot wars while initiating and perpetuating their existence and proliferation.

the cold war is a Western-centric fiction that renders invisible various local, hot wars while initiating and perpetuating their existence and proliferation.

is an erroneous term for global conflict in that, amidst a large number of global conflicts, to call it 'cold' is to privilege only a limited range of subjectivities and relegates all others to insignificance.

Hammond contends that the Cold War is 'an erroneous term for global conflict,' for to claim that the international conflict was 'cold' is to '[partake] in the same hegemonic Euro-Americanism that defined the conflict itself, privileging a limited range of subjectivities and relegating all others ot insignificance.'

is often considered a passive and sometimes conservative mode of feeling, but it also has radical potential.

Conversely, Hammond also seeks to reappraise Ozu's sensitivity to the textures of the material world. In this manner, while mono no aware is often considered a passive and sometimes conservative mode of feeling, Hammond argues for, and teases out, the term's radical potential.

is sometimes considered a feeling that is only made manifest in particularly poignant moments and sometimes treated as something that permeates every waking hour as a fundamental way of relating to the world.

Not only with Richie (and he is more careful than many), but in the use of the term generally, it often remains ambiguous as to whether mono no aware should be considered a feeling that is only made manifest in particularly poignant moments or whether it is something that permeates every waking hour. In relation to Ozu's films, then, it is equally possible to claim mono no aware as a fundamental way of relating to the world or to dismiss it as a general, catchall phrase for anything resembling a sense of melancholy, or pathos, or even considered reflection.

is to at least some extent the acceptance of inevitable change as part of the cycle of life rather than a mild form of mourning for what is being lost.

This account COMES close to associating mono no aware with a sense of nostalgia, touching upon one of the contradictions that surrounds the term. The extent to which mono no aware is truly conceived as an acceptance of change as part of the cycle of life rather than a mild form of mourning for what is being lost is near impossible to delineate. As the father in Late Spring loses the will even to peel his apple and his head drops to his chest in sadness, he is a long way from reaching any serene acceptance of the inevitable. Here, if any sense of mono no aware can be detected, it would be in the waves crashing on the shore, washing away mankind's personal tribulations into the 'cycle of life:' However, it is the viewer of the film who is prodded into an understanding that this is the way thing are-and the way they should be irrespective of the character's own acceptance, or not, of the fact.

HammondThinkers

Hammond