Odrazy vesmíru v nás

The book is a complex dialogue between a generation of Czech and Slovak Japanologists and the work of Professor Zdenka Švarcová, who played a key role in the development of the field in the Czech Republic after 1989. The authors of the collective monograph – mostly students or long-term followers of Švarcová’s ideas – examine her seminal academic publication Vesmír v nás (The Universe Within, 1999) from numerous perspectives: from language and cognitive models to literary tradition, aesthetics, the history of thought, and sensory perception. The individual chapters show the Japanese language, literature, and culture as a surprisingly coherent whole formed by a concept originally inspired by semiotics and structuralism. In addition to being a tribute to a prominent Czech scholar in Japanese studies, the book is an easy-to-read, insightful guide to a world in which language, culture, and personal experience are closely interrelated.