Learning through Kata: The Generation of the Body in Japanese Classical Arts
Prof Dr Yosuke Hirota, Osaka Metropolitan University, Japan
In Japanese classical arts, the ideals of a school's techniques are passed down to future generations through an educational style called kata (form/pattern). This kata refers, first and foremost, to a series of bodily behavior patterns, the philosophy of the art, and the standard forms of performances and rituals. This kata has been handed down over several generations by parents and children, as well as masters and disciples, through teaching, observing, and imitating what can be called the "sensation of the school."
In terms of embodied technique theory, this kata is intended for learners to "generate" within their own bodies the sensational states that the founders of the genre and school felt was "good." This body possesses a spontaneous sensations that are positioned as "nature" in Japanese arts. These sensations are not one of recognizing the external world, but rather senses of assimilation that causes the boundary between the self and the external world to fade. In Noh theater and the tea ceremony, practitioners adopt the prescribed postures and movements determined by the performance or school so that such spontaneous sensations of assimilation arises. These postures and movements are the kata, and through this kata, one's own sensational body is "generated" as if it were an "other" that cannot be easily manipulated artificially. Such an unmanipulatable, assimilative body is not something inherently possessed by humans from the beginning, but is instead "generated" through sensational attention that shifts the perspective to the inside of the body. In this lecture, I would like to demonstrate the educational and philosophical significance of such classical Japanese arts.
Yosuke Hirota, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences, Osaka Metropolitan University. He specializes in the history of educational thought.
Selected Publications:
Hirota, Y. (2026). The becoming of the ageing body in the classical Japanese arts. Mattig, R et al.(ed), Pädagogische Anthropologie des Alterns und der höheren Lebensalter.
Hirota, Y. (2024). The Concept of Nature Underlying Early Childhood Education and Care from Pre-Modern to Contemporary Japan, via Sozo Kurahashi and Kitaro Nishida. History of Education, 53(3), 477–496.
Hirota, Y. (2007). Kindai no Gitai / Gitai no Kindai Kant toiu Text,Shintai,Ningen [Mimicking Modernity: Kant's Philosophy as a Theory of Text, Body, and Human]. The University of Tokyo Press.
Everybody is welcome. The presentation is free to attend. For catering planning purposes, please register until 23rd September 2026 with Dr Karsten Kenklies under: karsten.kenklies@strath.ac.uk