| Research Abstract |
Our research project team treated the problem of representations, of which the focal point is "verisimilitude" or "likeness"(relations between expression and appearance or phenomenon). We approached this problem from two perspectives, one theoretical, and the other exemplary. In these perspectives we organized one international symposium, several research meetings, and two field works, and made many long and lively discussions on each occasion. In theoretical researches, we treated as comprehensively as possible the problem of where to place and how to evaluate "verisimilitude" or "likeness," by thinking how contrastive or opponent philosophical concepts such as beings and phenomena, nature and culture, and generality and particularity, are intertwined on the dimension of representations. In exemplary researches, we showed by socio-psychological case studies that in information societies news and news-likeness, or events (cases) and event (case)-likeness are closely interdependent. We
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demonstrated by literary case studies that in theater formation of characters depends much more on "verisimilitude" or "likeness" than on truth, and that when literary works focus on characteristics of some regions or districts, cultural codes plays much greater roles than the real situations of those regions or districts. Moreover, our team clarified by research of fine arts that what really matters in that field is not truth (life) but representativeness (appearing to be true). Further on, by analyses of movies, we ascertained that what forms "verisimilitude" or "likeness" there, is not only the grammar of "naturalness" but also the physical reflexes of human bodies. By analyses of historical movies made for TV and of photo-movies, we proved that it is impossible to distinguish definitely "being true" from "appearing true." Through researches concerning "verisimilitude" or "likeness" in cultural contexts or customs, we made it clear that each cultural "verisimilitude" or "likeness" is a product of multiple and complicated cultural factors and that no single origin of such "verisimilitude" or "likeness" (the truth reflected in such representation) can be delineated. In these ways, we mostly accomplished the objective of our project, that is, concrete and comprehensive reconsiderations of the developments of the modern and contemporary cultures of representations from the perspective of "verisimilitude" or "likeness," rethinking the birth and the changes of cultures of representations as formations and changes of "naturalness." Less
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