Nakai and Egypt

[Mathieu Capel]

Dear Kinejapaners,

Those of you who have approached Nakai Masakazu's theory may know that he
often seemed reluctant to fully quote his sources. The realm of his
interests is actually known, more or less, and can be linked, for instance,
and besides other japanese fellows who were his contemporaries, to german
thinkers from the end of 19th century to the beginnig of the 20th.
Nonetheless, when reading Nakai's "Introduction to Aesthetics" (Bigaku
nyûmon), it may be far from easy to locate his sources. In the chapter "Eiga
ni kûkan", Nakai talks about the pyramid of Egypt, and the "fear of space"
they symbolize : this idea actually was borrowed from " one critic" (p. 298
in the Iwanami Bunko edition), but who that critic is, that's something I
wouldn't know.
Being something as a detail of small significance, where he took that idea
may seem of minor importance, but I have the feeling that knowing the name
of that very "critic" may help to rebuild a little further Nakai's network
of influences, thus, to evaluate what was the novelty of his thinking in the
field of "iconology", and then, in the theory of cinema.
I tried to find the answer in Takahashi Naoyuki's "Nakai Masakazu to sono
jidai", but wasn't lucky enough. I have been searching until now around
Burckhardt and his followers too, such as Wölfflin, for Nakai's theory seems
close to the idea of "Zeitgeist" ; around Panofsky's iconology also, after
Warburg, and Cassirer. Anyway, I couldn't find yet the proper quotation...
Would someone know the answer ? Many thanks.

Mathieu Capel
Paris
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