Thinking Landscape in the Light of Tsujimura Kōichi’s Notion of the Circumspective

ABSTRACT This paper looks into Tsujimura Kōichi’s notion of the “circumspective,” which not only indicates a type of composition in traditional Chinese landscape painting but also a way of seeing and relating to the world: human beings must not only see and think about the surrounding world starting from themselves but think and see themselves starting from the surrounding world. In so doing, this article seeks to problematize the relationship between human and nature as it has been conceived in certain artistic practices and philosophical works in Asia and the West. In particular, the issue of culturally-mediated nature and the historicity of landscape will be addressed through literary and pictorial examples from Japan.